A Quick Torah Thought

Where did the blood go? With some of the other plagues it's clear that the Torah doesn't have to specify that Moshe miraculously made them go away - the animals targeted by the pestilence were done dying - but here, in the first and most jarring of all of the plagues, it seems like it just stayed around. People had to continually dig for fresh water sources or deposits around the Nile, and it seems that some mention should have been made that the blood came and went, unless it didn't! Another question, no less intriguing : Each of the three triads (1. Blood, Frogs, Lice, 2.Wild beasts, Epidemic, Boils, 3. Hail, Locust, Darkness) had an educational message for the Egyptians, but likely, more importantly - for the Jewish people.  Before the first three, Moshe tells Pharaoh that his intent is basic knowledge of God's presence: "Through this shall you know that I am Hashem. " (Shemot 7:17) Then, before the second round, Moshe tells Pharaoh, "But on that day I...

 It seems that the answer is yes.  And to take it a step further, the Jewish leaders who least wanted to lead, proved the best leaders.  Leaders far and wide, be they good or evil, have often needed a time strictly to themselves, be it in jail, the Soviet Gulag, or in the Jewish version, shepherding one's flock, internalizing the enormity, and the graveness one faces when taking upon him or herself far-reaching decisions that invariably determine the course of another's life.  For Moshe, it was being swept from Pharaoh's palace, because of the seemingless non-commital act of killing an Egyptian taskmaster devoid of the public eye. It so happened that Datan and Aviram - our sages teach us - witnessed the act, or at least became apprised of it, or intuited that it had happened, and Moshe fled to the Land of Midian, abandoned and bereft of his adoptive mother, and bretheren, with nothing to do but wait around for salvation at the shepherds' well, hoping companionship an...

I sat down with my 8-year old daughter, Adina, yesterday evening to help her study for a test on three chapters of the Book of Joshua, chapters 6-8. They are chapters that tell the story of the conquest of Israel through the border city of Jericho, the initial jubilation at its speedy fall, and then, the subsequent demise of no fewer than 36 Jews at the hands of the people of the Ai, near Beth-aven, east of Beth-el. When Joshuah implores God for guidance as to why so many Jews were killed, and the nation disgraced in the latter of the two battles, Hashem states that the Jewish people have desecrated God by stealing from the booty in the War of Jericho, and lo and behold, Achan, of the tribe of Judah had stolen a particulary enticing garment of Babylonian fashion, two hundred silver shekels and a bar of gold; when Achan is put to death by burning, Joshua tells him, “What calamity you have brought upon us! G OD will bring calamity upon you this day.”  The word in Hebrew that is bein...

The situations Yaakov had to finesse to be able to preserve harmony in his home would be deemed insurmountable by any human standards. The Torah itself attests to the impossibility of having two wives: "Were a man to have two wives, the one who is loved, and the one who is hated… (Ki Tetze)." The Torah essentially attests to the reality of two wives in one home causing friction, and acrimony, with that result being incontrovertible; whenever a man has to two wives, one will feel loved, the other hated. Yaakov, as is universally known, had no say in the matter – mission impossible in every sense of the word! And he did it ever so beautifully, walking the finest of lines, his wives competing to be with him, competing to have more of his children, to lay the groundwork down of what would become the "12 tribes of Israel." It was a mean task, one nobody would envy. Competition, strife, a father-in-law with little sympathy and who ran him to the ground. And still, Yaa...