A Quick Torah Thought

Parshat Kdoshim makes us think twice about how we treat people who are mean to us. "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow man as yourself: I am Hashem." The sages teach that taking a revenge takes the following pattern. One man asks his fellow man to lend him a sickle because his has broken and he needs to harvest his wheat and trim the weeds that threaten his wheat. His friend says no. A month later the same scenario plays out, just this time, the one who refused needs one himself. His friend says no. Why, he asks himself, would he lend his friend a sickle if his friend didn't lend him one? The rationale even makes sense. In the business world, there's a new term, "coopetition," companies usually do compete but sometimes cooperate for their mutual benefit. The thinking makes sense when it comes to the nitty gritty of human relations; Nobel Prize winner, Professor Israel Aumann talks about w...

One with tzara'at who must leave the camp to become purified must call out upon his exit, "Impure, Impure." Tame, Tame Yikra . I am impure, I am impure. We are society that never tries to spotlight other's weaknesses or handicaps, and at least here in Israel, where a good number of soldiers have lost limbs in battle, we obviously try to avert our eyes, and not stare at what for them represents a very dear loss. With that in mind, we all know the feeling when we're caught looking, at someone else's malady, or infirmity – or perhaps, more often, handicap. And so, why is it that here, in a case that is inimitable – really, without comparison, we ask the person to not only call attention to his deformity but insist that it be part of his purification process? It would seem, as our Sages teach us, that the person with this malady NEEDS to leave the camp to become whole again. As such, part of the process requires a certain recognition, and even dependency o...

Sometimes we hear something, but we don't really hear what has been said. Or, we understand a message differently from how it was intended. That was what happened in this past week's parsha, Shemini, when Moshe's wrath flared against Aharon's sons, Elazar and Itamar for not eating the he-goat of their sin offering. He chastised them. "Hashem gave it to you to procure forgiveness for the community's sin and to atone on their behalf before Hashem. Its blood was not brought into the sanctuary within; it should have been eaten in the holy domain as I had commanded." For a little bit of background, for Aharon HaCohen, it had been a fraught day to say the least; Elazar and Itamar's older brothers, Nadav and Avihu, had been eaten alive in a heavenly flame that took their lives but left their bodies intact. Moshe commanded Mishael and Elzaphan, their cousins, to then remove them by their tunics and place them outside of the camp. The day, in essence, ha...