Decades ago, I started to speak on this Parasha about the subject of domestic abuse. That began in response to a call for such Derashot in order to raise awareness about the issue in the Jewish community. There was a widespread myth that Jews were immune to this type of behavior. R’ Dr. Avraham Twersky, ztz’l, published a short but powerful book at the time on the subject. He called it, The Shame Borne in...Read more...
There are no paragraph breaks in the Parasha. It’s one long story of Yaakov leaving and then returning. He journeys out on orders from his parents and then, 148 verses later, comes back home. There are many episodes within this long story. Normally, I would concentrate on one of these episodes -- on the angels on the ladder, on the birth of the children, on the confrontation with Lavan. But sometimes...Read more...
We read this morning that “Isaac planted in that land, and reaped a hundredfold that year.”
Last week we read “And Isaac went out to the field and he saw a caravan approaching.”
As head of school of our local Orthodox day school, SPHDS, there are a lot of things that I do which you’d expect the head of school to do such as make
educational and religious policy...Read more...
A word in Hebrew: Nichush. In modern Hebrew, it means “to guess.” This is distantly related to what it means in the Chumash. The Torah forbids one to follow signs, as in trying to divine the future. One is not allowed to say, “if a bird chirps outside my window in the morning, then I’ll sell all of my stocks.”
There are those who say that Nichush is what...Read more...
