Vayikra- March 31, 2017
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 6:56pm
Shabbat Ends: 7:45 pm
Torah Message:
Walking with the King
“And He called…” (1-1)
The Vizhnitzer Rebbe zatzal used to say that it escaped him how someone could be charmed by being honored. Surely this honor would just fill a person with acute embarrassment to the extent that he wouldn’t know where to put himself.
He gave a parable to explain his reasoning:
Once there was a king of who appointed an official to govern a provincial town. As the governor of this town, the official received a great deal of respect from the local inhabitants.
Vayakhel/Pekudei- March 24, 2017
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 6:50pm
Shabbat Ends: 7:39 pm
Torah Message:
Vayakhel: From the Mundane to the Sublime
“…and the seventh day shall be holy to you…” (35:2)
Rashi: “The Torah places the exhortation of Shabbat before the commanding of the labors of the Mishkan.”
The list of skilled labors necessary for the construction of the Mishkan and the observance of Shabbat appear both in this week’s Parsha and in last week’s Torah portion. But with an interesting difference: In last week’s parsha the skilled labors of the Mishkan precede the observance of Shabbat, whereas in this week’s parsha the order is reversed.
Terumah- March 3, 2017
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 5:34pm
Shabbat Ends: 6:23 pm
Upcoming events:
Torah Message:
Life is a Marathon
“…and let them take for Me a portion… ” (13:17)
About two years after I arrived in Ohr Somayach I’d had enough. I assumed that after many “mouth-breaking” months of hard work I would have mastered Hebrew and Aramaic, be fluent in both, and be well on my way to becoming a world-class Talmid Chacham. It didn’t quite work out that way.I was standing outside the Beit Midrash when Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Mendel Weinbach (zatzal) came over to me and asked how I was.
Mishpatim- February 24, 2017
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 5:28pm
Shabbat Ends: 6:17 pm
Upcoming events:
Torah Message:
No Man Is an Island
“If a man shall uncover a pit… the owner of the pit will pay money; he will return (it) to his owner…” (21:33)
“No man is an island entire of itself” wrote John Donne in 1624. As Jews we may take this anti-isolationist exhortation one step further. A Jew has the power to bring a flow of blessing into this world or, G-d forbid, the reverse. As Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner (zatzal) once put it, “Between us and the Ribbono Shel Olam, there is no Switzerland” (This was, of course, back in the days when Switzerland still had an untarnished reputation for neutrality.) Nothing a Jew does is neutral.
Yitro- February 17, 2017
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 5:22 pm
Shabbat Ends: 6:11 pm
Upcoming events:
Torah Message:
The Servant of Two Masters
“And now, if you will surely listen to My voice…” (19:5)
Why is it only now after all the plagues and the Exodus that G-d asks the Jewish People to listen to His voice?The Talmud Yerushalmi explains that a Canaanite slave is exempt from the mitzvah of saying “Shma” because he cannot honestly accept the yoke of Heaven (the purpose of this mitzvah) since he already has another yoke — that of his master.
Yitro- February 17, 2017
Torah Message:
The Servant of Two Masters
“And now, if you will surely listen to My voice…” (19:5)
Why is it only now after all the plagues and the Exodus that G-d asks the Jewish People to listen to His voice?The Talmud Yerushalmi explains that a Canaanite slave is exempt from the mitzvah of saying “Shma” because he cannot honestly accept the yoke of Heaven (the purpose of this mitzvah) since he already has another yoke — that of his master.
Yitro- February 17, 2017
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 5:22 pm
Shabbat Ends: 6:11 pm
Upcoming events:
Torah Message:
The Servant of Two Masters
“And now, if you will surely listen to My voice…” (19:5)
Why is it only now after all the plagues and the Exodus that G-d asks the Jewish People to listen to His voice?The Talmud Yerushalmi explains that a Canaanite slave is exempt from the mitzvah of saying “Shma” because he cannot honestly accept the yoke of Heaven (the purpose of this mitzvah) since he already has another yoke — that of his master.
Beshalach- February 10, 2017
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 5:15 pm
Shabbat Ends: 6:04 pm
Upcoming events:
Torah Message:
Higher than the Angels
“The angel of G-d who had been going in front of the Children of Israel moved and went behind them…” (14:19) The word in Hebrew, chaya, has two seemingly opposite meanings. A chaya is a wild animal, but it is also one of the names of the most elevated of the angels, as we say in our daily prayers: “And the Ofanim and the Chayot HaKodesh…” What possible connection could there be between a beast and a celestial being? Man is called a “walker”. As it says in the Prophet Zecharia, “I will give you strides (mehalchim) amongst the ‘standers’ (the angels) here.” (3:7) An angel can only stand in its place; it cannot move up or down.
Bo- February 3, 2017
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 5:08 pm
Shabbat Ends: 5:57 pm
Upcoming events:
Torah Message:
The Greatest Darkness
“No man could see his brother, nor could anyone rise from his place…” (10:23)
The greatest darkness is when we think we see other people — but we don’t really see them; they are just floating figures in the background of the landscape of our lives — mere bit-players from “Central Casting”. The result of “no man could see his brother” is that no one “could rise from his place” — the power of feeling sympathy becomes atrophied, dark and stunted.
Vaera- January 27, 2017
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 5:02 pm
Shabbat Ends: 5:51 pm
Upcoming events:
Torah Message:
Lebensraum
“And the sorcerers did thus with their spells, and the frogs arose on the land of Egypt.” (8:3)
When one reads of the plagues of Egypt one tends to think that nothing else was happening in Egyptian life at the time. However, the Midrash relates that during the plague of frogs there was an ongoing war between the Egyptians and their neighbors — the nation of Kush — over the precise line of the border.