The king was waging a war. His troops were in the battlefield and he had to get an urgent message to his general. He wrote a scroll with the letters RTB, and a note to the general that the servant would tell him what RTB means.Read More
[P> X:Y (Z)] and [S> X:Y (Z)] indicate start of a parsha p’tucha or s’tuma. X:Y is Perek:Pasuk of the beginning of the parsha; (Z) is the number of p’sukim in the parsha.Read More
Many people lose their temper and then regret it. Is there a magic formula to prevent or at least control our anger?
The Talmud in Shabbat 105b and Nedarim 22b say, “When one becomes angry, it is as if he is serving idols”. This seems to be a very extreme and exaggerated statement. How can the Talmud compare anger to the severe sin of idolatry?
The parsha of this week deals with the subject of following the decisions of the court and judges of one’s time, even if one personally disagrees with those judicial conclusions. From this flows a later concept in halacha of a zakein mamrei – a leading scholar, a member of the Sanhedrin itself, who refuses to accept or abide by the majority position and opinion of his colleagues.Read More
A weekly feature of Torah Tidbits to help clarify practical and conceptual aspects of the Jewish Calendar, thereby better fulfilling the mitzva of HaChodesh HaZeh Lachem…Read More
Question: It is said that minhag turns into halacha and that halacha cannot be changed. Yet, I find a lack of consistency. The Beis Yaakov movement changed the minhag of girls’ education. Minhagim come to replace or greatly alter minhag/halacha, such as rewording agreements to allow receiving pay for work done on Shabbat. Why then, can’t we create new minhagim to obviate the minhagim that make agunot “chained” to their marriages?Read More
In the U.S. constitution there is a “natural born” citizenship eligibility requirement. In order for one to be able to submit his candidacy to run for the position of president he must be born in the U.S. This means that my children, for example, all born in the U.S. to Canadian parents, would have been eligible to run for president at age 35, had we not made Aliya. German born Henry Kissinger, on the other hand, despite being most capable, would have been ineligible.Read More
Last week we took some of our kids to see the Herod the Great exhibit at the Israel museum. I don’t know if they were as excited about the exhibit as I was. Herod may not have been a nice husband (according to some, he killed his wife Miriam) and was not the most favored leader, but he was an amazing builder – expanding the second Temple, building Caesarea, Masada, the monument above the tomb of our Patriarchs in Hebron, his winter palaces in Jericho, and his tomb in Herodion.Read More
As we saw last week, the cell contains extremely small structures that hold the cell’s energy like little batteries. In addition, the mitochondria contain small amounts of DNA which is the map to building a new life – but in extremely rare cases this DNA is damaged.Read More
Parshat Shoftim reminds us of the responsibilities of those who exercise power and authority in society. Of particular interest are the instructions given to a king appointed to rule over the people. One of these directives reads as follows: “And it shall be that when [the king] sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself two copies of this Torah in a book”… (D’varim 17:18).Read More
In honor of the sedra, we’ll take another shot at one of the rules that is grossly disregarded by many people – especially (it seems) by native English speakers.
Many people pronounce the name of this week’s sedra SHOF-TIM. [We’re just looking at the syllables, not which syllable is accented – so we put the whole word in uppercase letters. Most of the words that we will be looking at are accented on the last syllable.]
Upper-left are the symbols of SHO-F’TIM (gavel) and SHO-T’RIM (sheriff’s star)
Negation circle over the planting of a sappling = prohibition of planting trees in the Mikdash or Mizbei’ach area Tilted scales = perversion of justice – a recurring theme in the sedra
TTriddles are Torah Tidbits-style riddles on Parshat HaShavua (sometimes on the calendar). They are found in the hard-copy of TT scattered throughout, usually at the bottom of different columns. In the electronic versions of TT, they are found all together at the end of the ParshaPix-TTriddles section. The best solution set submitted each week (there isn’t always a best) wins a double prize a CD from Noam Productions and/or a gift (game, puzzle, book, etc.) from Big DealRead More