A Quick Torah Thought

 Bukkharian Jews have a custom I view as strange. My father's mother Z"L being Bukkharian, we practiced this custom from as long as I can remember.  On Seder night, during Dayeinu, a pithy prayer in which we show our abundant gratitude to Hashem for each and every step of the Exodus, and the divine providence that enabled each and successive stage of our liberation to transpire, what we do is hit each other with scallions.  The scallions perhaps represent the endless whippings and beatings we took on the part of our Egyptian oppressors, like a child saying in modern Hebrew, dai, dai, dai, enough, enough, enough.  The point of the prayer though, in my humble opinion, is to utter the very opposite, not that we've had enough of the oppression, the beatings, and the like, but rather, like the prayer of Nishmat : "We're entirely overawed by your divine kindness, that the merest thing would have overwhelmed us with gratitude, and now you've done so much more." ...

 With literally hours before the start of Sabbath here in Jerusalem, I would like to share a very quick thought. Rabbi Moshe Shapira of blessed memory related in his weekly shiur that the whole point of seder night is to take the speechless child, and imbue him with the self-confidence to open his mouth - and become a tam , loosely translated as a simple child.  The purpose of the seder night is to give pitchon peh, or an invitation, to one who doesn't have the gumption or confidence to speak up. To take people, perhaps, who are farther away, and add one more insight, to give them the inspiration to pipe up, to say something they wouldn't say otherwise. Interestingly, vis a vis the "wicked son," the medrash shares a different account. It does not say one should "blunt his teeth" - not "knock out his teeth" as it's commonly mistranslated - but rather, the medrash states, "Seeing that this person is still asking questions, you have a mitzvah...

 One of the reasons given for this Shabbat being called "Ha'Shabbat Ha'Gadol," the "Great Shabbat," is the great miracle that Hashed performed for the Jewish people this Shabbat. The Korban Pesach , sacrificial  kid lamb was tied to the bedpost in each and every Jewish home - and then, upon seeing the sacred lamb, the Egyptians, who had enslaved the Jewish people for hundreds of year, were powerless to lift a finger. In essence, this was the symbolic turning point, a dénouement, the first of many, whereby the Jewish people would vanquish their previous oppressors.  It can be said that the vast majority of our customs and practices on the seder night are a reflection of that dramatic turning point, and the travails and victories, both major and minor, that went along with the shifting tides of the Exodus after 400 years of bondage.  One of the major motifs of our collective experience of nationhood is the unity of each and every family - a unity founded on em...

In the first of this week's parshas, Vayakhel Verse 37:1, it states: "Bezalel made the ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high." The ark of the covenant, along with all of the surfaces and fixtures in the mishkan, had dimensions with symbolic import.  The Kli Yakar  famously taught that the half-dimensions are symbolic of our pursuit of Torah; when we don't feel whole, we are inspired to learn more, and never feel fulfilled. In Hebrew, the term for half-dimensions is shavur or broken, and as such, the feeling of lacking inspires us to fill the void, or the lacunae that are part and parcel of the recognition of one's lacking and the successive attempts to grapple with incompletion.  I would like to share, perhaps, another approach, that I feel is equally valid - and in doing so, I would like to mention the name of my great-grandfather, Netanel Sulimannof of blessed memory. R' Netanel was a simple, imp...

Today, I'll be brief. Our week's Torah portion opens with what's called machatzit hashekel , the obligatory half shekel donation for the sacrifices brought in the mishkan , Hashem's desert tabernacle.  There are two striking precepts about this donation that I feel can open a portal into how we view collectivism, and obligation to another. Though the debate in Israel over socialist, collective living is long over - Golda Meir of blessed memory was initially denied entrée into a kibbutz because singles were preferred seeing that children would diminish from per capita output - it would seem that these two precepts were part of what helped Israel create a collective ethos of collective responsibility. Firstly, like in the mishkan , everyone was expected to give exactly the same. A wealthy person and poor person were equal; neither could diverge or deviate from the absolute obligation to give of one's own resources, the striving being to create parity, and equality to ...