Category: Chumash Vayikra

Some time ago, after a lecture on the ethical challenges of the seventh commandment (“Thou shalt not steal”), I was approached by a fellow from Vienna who was a Holocaust survivor.  “Why do you assume stealing is always wrong?” asked the fellow, “Sometimes, it is even an obligation.” “I always had a strong desire to take things, and I never understood why,” he continued,  “And it wasn’t that I necessarily needed the things I took, I just loved the prospect of being able to steal things out from under people’s noses. I became quite good at it, though my conscience always bothered me. Often, I was able to resist the temptation to take things that weren’t mine, but it was always a struggle. I often wondered why G-d had burdened me with this particular challenge. I knew it was wrong to steal, and never rationalized theft; I just loved the ‘thrill of the take’. Why did G-d create me with this challenge? It...

Look Who’s Talking: The Truth About Gossip “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” ~~Jane Austen “Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.” ~~George Elliot Whoever speaks with an evil speech- lashon hara – is as if he denied G-d . . . Evil speech kills three people – the one who says it, the one who accepts it, and the one about whom it is said. (Maimonides Hilkhot Deot 7:3) A philosopher once said, “If a man finds himself, he has a mansion in which he can live for the rest of his life.” I would like to add: If a man does not find himself he can build mansion after mansion and try to compensate for the loss of self, but huge as his mansion may be, it won’t do the trick. The real...

Is there a point past which a person can no longer change; can no longer be forgiven? On the one hand, Jewish law clearly teaches that for some transgressions, such as murder, a person is put to death, suggesting that such a person can no longer redeem him or herself in this world. On the other hand our tradition also teaches us in the name of Rabbi Eliezer (Avot 2:10) “repent the day before you die “ and in the Talmud (Shabbat 153) he explains this to mean that a person should always repent as he never knows when he might die, the clear implication being everyone can repent. Rav Ephraim Oshry one of the last rabbis of the Kovno Ghetto, in his powerful responsum from the holocaust, Mima’amakim, shares that a fellow came over to him in the DP camp, after the war, with an intense question. He had been a Chazan (cantor) before the war, and some of his fellow former...

Sick Minds, Sick Bodies The power of our beliefs to heal or harm The Jewish Sages gave a spiritual rather than physiological explanation for the disease tsara'as (generally translated as "leprosy") which affected not only the body but also clothing and the walls of houses. According to one source several sins could possible be the cause: R. Shmuel bar Nachmani said in the name of R. Yochanan: Because of seven things the plague of leprosy is incurred, namely, slander, the shedding of blood, a vain oath, incest, arrogance, robbery and envy. (Arakhin 16a) However, most Sages concur that the main cause for tsara'as was slander and gossip. HOW CAN WE UNDERSTAND THE PHYSICAL IMPACT OF OUR MORAL AND SPIRITUAL ACTIONS? The Kabbalah teaches that the world you and I live in is a product of our perception of reality. The philosopher Immanuel Kant probed this concept. He asked: Do we see reality or do we see our perception of reality? Kant's answer is that we do...

In 1948, things did not look promising for the Jews.  The Arab armies of Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and forces from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria prepared to attack the newly declared State of Israel as soon as the British pulled out in May of 1948, vowing to push the Jews into the sea.  In Tzfat, where 80,000 Arabs surrounded approximately 3,000 Jews living in the Jewish quarter, the Jews were braced for the worst. One night, a few weeks before the pullout, the British told the Jewish community they were leaving Tzfat in the morning and had reliable intelligence that the Arabs were planning a massive attack immediately following their departure. Predicting a massacre, they urged the Jews to leave the city, even making room for them in the convoy. With eight hours’ notice, they assumed the Jews would panic, but not a single Jew left the city.  Sure enough, as the empty British trucks pulled out of Tzfat, thousands of Arabs armed...

Why Eat Kosher? The Talmud tells a story about the famed author of the Mishna, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. The rabbi was walking down the street one day, when a little calf ran up to him and hid under his cloak. Apparently, the calf had run away from the slaughterhouse. The rabbi said to the calf, “Go back to be slaughtered, for this you have been created.” At this point, a Divine decree was made against him because he had not shown pity on the creature. As a result he become sick and suffered for many years, until one day he showed pity on a family of young rats and was suddenly healed. We know that Judaism permits us to eat meat as long as the animal was slaughtered properly, so what did Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi do that was so wrong? He incorrectly said, “for this you were created.” The Talmud is teaching us that, contrary to his declaration, animals were not created for...

How important is it that we listen to our rabbis and teachers? On the one hand, there is something beautiful about a leadership that encourages its students to think for themselves, rather than relying completely on their rabbis and teachers’ opinions. As an example, I distinctly recall my Roshei Yeshiva, Rav Lichtenstein & Rav Amital’s strong reaction to students in the yeshiva who opposed their political views; stating unequivocally that such opposition was healthy, especially as they both felt Halacha (Jewish law) did not mandate a specific political opinion. In fact, this seemed so refreshingly different from the ‘Chareidi’ world whose rabbinic leaders seemed to regularly demand fealty to every political and administrative decision. And yet, the Torah nonetheless clearly commands us to follow our Torah leaders’ rulings as stated clearly in the Torah: “You shall do according to what they tell you…and keep it according to all which they teach you. According to the Torah they will teach you … you...

Human beings are like no other animal, in that we will sometimes go against every natural instinct for reasons that often cannot be explained. We will give away our food, despite being hungry, when others are in need. We will give another our coat, in the midst of winter, despite the bitter cold, because someone else is suffering. And sometimes, we will sacrifice everything for something greater than ourselves. Half an hour’s walk from the gates of the old city of Jerusalem lays a hill which today sits in the heart of the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood of Jerusalem.  Situated overlooking the main road from the Damascus gate, the average visitor will miss this little hill, unless he knows what he is looking for. Even from the air, this small hill can easily be missed. But to any Israeli paratrooper, and for that matter any Israeli who knows the story of the six-day war, this strategic bump on the topography of the map,...

Bonding or Bondage Why Serve the Divine? “For unto Me the children of Israel are servants; they are My servants who I took out of the land of Egypt; I am the Lord G- d.” ~~ Leviticus 25:55 There is an Eastern teaching that proclaims, “Be here and now.” Torah however would say, “Serve G-d here and now.” Indeed, this is the fullest experience of life. The Kabbalah teaches that G-d wants to be present in the here and now, and our job is to serve G-d in that desire. Therefore, to serve G-d means to infuse each moment with the presence of G-d. In other words, I must always ask myself, “How can I serve G- d right now?” If right now I am with my friend, spouse or child, I should see this moment as an opportunity to show him/her love and thus serve G-d, who is the source of all love. It’s not my love. I didn’t invent love. I didn’t...

Many years ago, at a parlor meeting of the Coalition for the Israeli Soldiers Missing in Action, someone stood up to share a few words about a close friend of his with whom he had both studied and gone to war: Yehuda Katz.  Yehuda Katz, a soldier who, along with Zack Baumel and Tzvi Feldman, has been missing in action since the battle of Sultan Yaakov in June of 1982, studied in Yeshivat Kerem Be’Yavneh.  At the beginning of the Lebanon War on the first Sunday night in June of 1982, they received word in the Yeshiva that buses would be coming to take the boys up North to fight. Kerem Be’Yavneh is one of a number of very special Yeshivot (Academies for higher Jewish learning) whose boys combine their yeshiva studies with army service in Israeli Combat units. In addition to their regular reserve duty and studies in yeshiva, whenever the army is in a tight spot, this is naturally one...