The Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (Kremer), who lived from 1720 to 1797, was among the most revered Jewish scholars of the early modern period. He was reputed to have learned by heart the entire Bible by the age of four. But as much as he was acclaimed...
Rabbi Moses Schreiber, known as the Hatam Sofer, connects the opening words of the Torah portion with Avot 1:4 where Yosi ben Yo’ezer teaches about the Sages: “sit in the dust of their feet and drink up their words thirstily.” The practice in the days of Rabbi...
Moses worries. He worries that one day in the future the Israelites might forget what they witnessed at Mt. Sinai and, being led astray by their baser desires, ignore the Torah they were given (Deuteronomy 4:9). So Moses stresses that they must inform their children...
The Midrash (Devarim Rabbah, Parashah 1) assumes that the word “devarim” does not refer to ordinary words but to words of rebuke. Even with this assumption, Rabbi Aha, the son of Rabbi Hanina (Section 4), notes that a question still lingers. Moses speaks the “devarim”...
In his book Mi-sinai Ba, Rabbi Yehudah Shaviv notes that the book of Numbers consistently incorporates the tribal chieftains in decision-making. When, for example, the tribes of Reuven and Gad (along with half the tribe of Menashe) request a special dispensation to...
Buoying the spirits of the Israelites is the knowledge that very soon they would enter into the Promised Land. When it comes to dividing up the land of Israel the Torah says the land shall be apportioned “as shares, according to the listed names: with larger groups...
When Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin co-authored their popular 1986 Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism they hit upon some of the most relevant contemporary Jewish issues like “Can one doubt God’s existence and still be a good Jew?” and “Why shouldn’t I...
Among the perplexing passages in the Bible is the description of the ritual of the Red Heifer. According to the Torah (Numbers 19), a person who comes in contact with a corpse is ritually defiled and must undergo a procedure of cleansing and recovery over seven...
As impressive is the publishing success of J. K. Rowlings whose Harry Potter books have sold five hundred million copies, Mao Tzedung, the erstwhile chairman of the Chinese Communist Party put 820 million copies of his little red book in the hands of his followers....
Twentieth century Biblical scholar Jacob Milgrom notes that the Torah (Numbers 13:2) describes each of the twelve men sent out on the mission to reconnoiter the Land of Israel as a “nasi,” which the Jewish Publication Society translation renders as “chieftain.” But...