What is the connection between this week’s Torah portion's permission to Israelites, soldiers in a war zone to abduct an enemy female woman and God’s permission to Noah (following the end of the flood) to kill animals for food?
Evidently, this week’s Re’eh portion wants to regulate and minimize the craving for frequent meat consumption seeking to limit it to the rate ‘’as the deer or as the gazelle is eaten’’ (v. 22). Namely, only quite infrequently would man eat meat from such animals for they could only be hunted.
This weekly Torah portion Ekev calls upon us to walk in all God’s ’’ways, and to cleave unto Him’’ (Deuteronomy 11: 22). But how is it possible to do so if only because ‘’God is a devouring fire, a jealous God’’ (Deuteronomy 4:24)?
Our weekly Torah portion demands of us to ‘’love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your being and with all your might’’ (Deuteronomy 6:5). When we recall the highly dramatic narrative of the Binding of Isaac, it is quite apparent after a cursory reading of the text (Genesis 22) that Abraham loved his God even more than he loved Isaac...
In Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. words: ‘’…He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it’’. Or as in baseball, three strikeouts and you are out...
What was so terribly wrong in Korah and his followers’ contention with his cousin Moses, that the Talmud singled out as a dispute that “is not for the sake of Heaven”? Contrarily, the Talmud defined the dispute between Hillel and Shammai as positive, the kind of which was for the sake of Heaven
Why did Moses send twelve scouts, or 12 tribal leaders, to tour the Promised Land before entering it? Twelve is too large a number of folks who go on an espionage mission and must, therefore, stay covert.
When the Torah portion of Sh’mini was timed a l o n g time ago in Babylon to fall soon after Passover no one could anticipate that many centuries later it would fall in very close proximity to the State of Israel’s day of commemorating the Holocaust (Yom Ha-Shoah) on 27 Nissan...
One who serves others must be fired up without letting go. And this may very well be the reason for the repeated need for the altar’s flame to keep going constantly...
While the book of Leviticus and its first portion Vaikra focus considerably on animal sacrifices as a standard way of serving God, they do offer alternative offerings...
