People, even well-meaning Jews, students of the Torah, consider these portions the least stimulating and the least relevant section of the Torah. It is not like the ethical or legal areas of the Torah that helped shape the conscience and the values of all societies it has touched to date. It is technical and does […]
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Guest Contibution lz’n Rav Yisroel Plutchok Moving through Sefer Vayikra Rav Hirsch sees symbolism in every nuance of the Temple service. In his Nineteen Letters the Rav takes issue with Rambam’s claim in the Moreh that there is no specific reason for the use of particular animals for particular sacrifices. In fact, Rav Hirsch feels […]
Read moreChanukah is a time for new beginnings. Four years ago it was a beginning for me. Having no access to YouTube at the time, I had my internet filter disabled in order to put up a video that I compiled ten years earlier. It was a compilation of Chanukah lighting in Breuer’s Shul that I […]
Read moreI have an interesting lefty situation regarding the performance of ritual that involves the right hand. The situation arises from the fact that I eat and write as a lefty (fine motor skills), but throw and bat, open doors, play the drums and perform strength activities as a righty. I grew up calling myself a lefty, […]
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Rabbi Aharon Kahn, a rov whose shul I am close to in Brooklyn, and a Rosh Yeshiva in RIETS, tells the story about his rebbe, Rav Joshe Ber Soleveitchik, one of the greatest Torah scholars of his generation and a chochom in many disciplines. Rav Yoshe Ber, while studying in Berlin, davened Yom Kippur at […]
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I have recently shared a group of recordings with the family of our recently departed Chazan Kenner z’l. Besides for his appearance in several videos here and on the YouTube channel, I am sharing a few recordings of note. he can also be heard on one of the posts on this site of the “Songbook […]
Read moreHere is a memory from my days in elementary school in the mid-eighties. Rabbi Avi Weiss had just returned from Poland, where he bravely protested the opening of a monastery on the grounds of Auschwitz, which is essentially the largest Jewish graveyard in the entire world. The school called an assembly and Rabbi Weiss was […]
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Transcribed from a lecture by Rabbi Benyamin S. Hamburger Shlita on Chol Hamoed 5778. Video here. Please excuse that this is written in the flow of a spoken lecture and not as an essay or even a blog post. In the study of minhag we need to be discerning. For example, the minhag of […]
Read moreRav Hirsch wrote his first work under the pen name “Ben Uziel”. In the leaf preceding the work he quoted the Talmud megilah 3a “ But You know very well that I did it not for my own honor, nor for the honor of my father’s house, but rather I did it for Your Honor, […]
Read moreBefore this Yom Tov passes I want to share a “shtikel Torah”. That is not the standard for this Torah blog, but I don’t have confidence that my yeshivah styled derech halimud would qualify my Aschkenaz oriented pieces to the pages of the revered Torah journal that is devoted to this (Yerushaseinu). So, part of […]
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