A Quick Torah Thought

Every year, at some point during the Rosh Hashanah service, the thought strikes me anew that it was on this day that the Holocaust was decreed. It is admittedly an odd thought, for someone who was born two generations afterwards, but at the same time, unintentionally, the gravity of the day sinks in when that thought re-enters my mind.  A day that couples sweet treats, and heartfelt prayer, one in which we ask the previous year's curses to be bygone, and the blessings around the corner to come expediently, is perplexing by its very nature. Perhaps all the more perplexing is the historical context that applies to it. Referred to in the Torah as no more than a day in which there is "remembrance of the blasting of the horn," Rosh Hashana has taken on mythic proportions, rich in detail, angels hastily scurrying about, the Satan, jarred by cacophonous sounds that disturb his quiet, and shift the balance in our favor.  Rosh Hashanah was a day, in the Navi, or Prophets, which si...

אָר֕וּר מַקְלֶ֥ה אָבִ֖יו וְאִמּ֑וֹ וְאָמַ֥ר כׇּל־הָעָ֖ם אָמֵֽן׃  {ס}          Cursed be the one who insults father or mother.—And all the people shall say, Amen. 27:12 Interestingly, the word for insulting in Hebrew, here, comes from the root, קל, "lighthearted." One thus must not treat his parents lightheartedly, but rather with כובד ראש, or honor and respect.  For example, one must not call his parent by his first name. Doing so, would be analogous to making light of one's parents.  The curses and blessings in this parsha serve as a North Star or guide to the direction life must take upon the Jewish people's entrée into the land; forgetting the tradition of one's predecessors would be just that.  It's important to remember in our Torah portion that the forefathers of those who entered the land were annihilated because of their perfidy. Yet, that notwithstanding, the command is all the more salient - and prescient - in light of the imperativ...

There is a dual imperative in the mitzvah of shiluah ha'ken : firstly, one cannot take advantage of the motherly instinct to protect her young. It is something so profound, and deep, that for you to hover over the nest in wait, for the mother to bring food to her young, only to take her for your own consumption, is antithetical to any sense of what it means to be a Jew.  Secondly, and the more complex part, is the prohibition of taking the young in the mother's presence. Much has been said on this matter to the extent that I feel that I have little to add. The early commentators weigh in on the rationale behind the prohibition, and the Rambam and Ramban take slightly different views as to whether or not one should seek logical underpinnings behind the commandments we have been given. The Sefer Hachinuch interestingly sides with the Ramban, and states that were one to chalk up the commandment as a form of internalizing the value of mercy, then, something would be lacking in our ...

A question struck me when reading this past week's parsha, a question that irked me all week long.  "If a case is too baffling for you to decide, be it a controversy over homicide, civil law, or assault—matters of dispute in your courts—you shall promptly repair to the place that Hashem will have chosen,  and appear before the levitical priests , or the magistrate in charge at the time, and present your problem.  When they have announced to you the verdict in the case,  you shall carry out the verdict that is announced to you from that place that Hashem chose, observing scrupulously all their instructions to you." The term that we use in Judaism for the high court is Sanhedrin (a word taken from the Greek language, according to a friend of mine who is a linguist, Yinon Zaafrany). That said, the high court, elsewhere in the Torah, is referred to as a corpus called "the elders." Overwhelmed by unceasing demands, Moshe, in the desert, was instructed to choose elder...