Torah Tidbit Archives

Haazinu (Deuteronomy 32:1–52)

September 17, 2021/in Torah Tidbit /by Temple Web

This Week’s Torah Portion: Haazinu – הַאֲזִינוּ (Deuteronomy 32:1–52)

Who is this Moses?

This week’s Torah Portion, Haazinu, presents “The Song of Moses”, a poem of incredible beauty and power, delivered by Moses to the Children of Israel as his final instructions before they set forth into the Promised Land. So striking are its poetic tones that it is written uniquely in the Torah scroll, separated into two small columns of text which flow down the page like the running rhythms of the song.

Who is this Moses?

Wasn’t it Moses who said, when God first called him to lead the People of Israel on this 40 year journey from slavery to freedom: “I have never been a man of words… I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” Surely, the Song of Moses cannot have been written by the same man who needed the help of his brother Aaron to even speak God’s words. Unless, of course, Moses has grown immensely over the course of these forty years, learning and growing from the experience of raising a new generation of Israel, now ready to enter the Promised Land.
Who are we?

What a wonderful lesson this would be, as we emerge from these High Holy Days. This is the same Moses, he has just grown over time and through experience… and so can we. Now, the question is no longer “Who is this Moses?” but “Who are we?” And who can we yet become?

May these High Holy Days inspire us to become the better self which resides within us all.

Vayeilech (Deuteronomy 31:1–30)

September 10, 2021/in Torah Tidbit /by Temple Web

This Week’s Torah Portion: Vayeilech – וַיֵּלֶךְ (Deuteronomy 31:1–30)

“Moses wrote down this Torah and gave it to the priests, sons of Levi, who carried the Ark of God’s Covenant, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses instructed them…you shall read this Torah aloud in the presence of all Israel.” (Deuteronomy 31:9)

This week’s Torah Portion, Vayeilech, contains it’s own D’var Torah. It contains the actual commandment for the Children of Israel to read the words of Torah for all to hear. This is the reason we are here still today. For all our wandering, for all we have lost and all we have learned over these three thousand years and more since Moses spoke these words, the Torah has abided within us and its teachings have kept us strong.

We are today a much different people than our ancestors who stood on the banks of the Jordan river receiving these words of Torah, and yet our values, our culture, and our faith remain – because we have carried the Torah, heard its words and made them our own, in every generation of our people. L’dor vaDor, from generation to generation, may these words of Torah live on – in our lives, and the justice we bring to our world.

Nitzavim (Deuteronomy 29:9–30:20)

September 3, 2021/in Torah Tidbit /by Temple Web

This Week’s Torah Portion: Nitzavim – נִצָּבִים (Deuteronomy 29:9–30:20)

This week’s Torah Portion, Atem Nitzavim, begins:

You stand here this day before Adonai your God: you, your leaders, your tribal chiefs, your elders, your magistrates, every man of Israel, your children, your women, and the converts in your camp – from your woodcutters to your drawers of water. All of you have entered into this covenant before Adonai your God… And it is not with you alone that I am making this covenant. I am making it both with those who are standing here with us today before Adonai our God, and with those who are not here with us today.

Having listed every possible member of the community of Israel, the Torah tells us that all had a part in the making of God’s covenant, even those who were not there that day. So, who could the Torah be referring to? Who were the Children of Israel who were “not here today”? The midrash teaches us that the Torah refers here to the generations of Israel yet to come. In other words, the Torah refers here to us.

We, all of us, stood at Sinai that awesome day. We, all of us and the generations yet to come, stood there – along with every generation of our people – as we set our feet upon the path of Torah which has carried us forward even unto this day. We relive this moment each High Holy Days when again we read these words and stand together as one, just as we did once long ago at Sinai, to begin again on the path of Torah, to begin again on the path to the building of a better world.

This year we may not all be able to physically stand together as we read these words, within the sacred walls of our congregation, but this year, as we do every year, all of us, we stand together as one.

Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8)

August 27, 2021/in Torah Tidbit /by Temple Web

This Week’s Torah Portion: Ki Tavo – כִּי-תָבוֹא (Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8)

This week’s Torah Portion, Ki Tavo, contains within it these most mystical of commands:

“Moses and the levitical priests spoke to all Israel, saying: Silence! Hear, O Israel! Today you have become the people of the Eternal your God. Listen to the voice of the Eternal your God and do God’s commandments and laws, which I command you this day. (Deuteronomy 27:9-10)

Israel is command to be silent so that we can listen to the words of God.

There is a midrash, a legend of our people, that God’s voice has spoken the Ten Commandments from the heights of Mount Sinai continually from the first moment of Creation. The miracle of the moment of receiving the Ten Commandments was not that God spoke, but that the People of Israel heard. At that moment of moments, God silenced all the noise. No bird chirped, no cow mooed, God silenced even the sounds within them, so that they could hear the words which had been waiting for them there since the beginning.

Rabbi Arthur Green once taught:
Torah is Eternal, it has existed even before the written word.
So what was Torah before there was language?
A Book filled with silence. A story waiting to be told.

We are a people who, once upon a time, wrote that story we now call Torah.
We are that people still, and with every intention and every deed, we tell that story continually, every day.

Ki Teitzei (Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19)

August 20, 2021/in Torah Tidbit /by Temple Web

This Week’s Torah Portion: Ki Teitzei – כִּי-תֵצֵא (Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19)

And so too shall you do with anything that your fellow loses, and you find: you must not remain indifferent. If you see your fellow’s donkey or ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it; you must help him raise it. (Deuteronomy 22:3-4)

The Torah is trying to help us become who we ought to be: people that do not refrain from helping others. People who do not ignore the messiness of our world!

Shof’tim (Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9)

August 13, 2021/in Torah Tidbit /by Temple Web

This Week’s Torah Portion: Shof’tim – שֹׁפְטִים (Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9)

When you approach a town to attack it, you shall offer it terms of Shalom. (Deuteronomy 20:10)

When engaging war, armies always want to surprise the enemy, attack when the enemy is not ready. However, the value of Shalom is much more important than war tactics, we are commended to lose the element of surprise, and to always offer Shalom instead of war.

R’eih (Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17)

August 6, 2021/in Torah Tidbit /by Temple Web

This Week’s Torah Portion: R’eih – רְאֵה (Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17)

If, however, there is a needy person among you, …Rather, you must open your hand and lend him sufficient help for whatever he needs. (Deuteronomy 15:7-8)

The hardest part of helping a person in need is to provide them with sufficient help for their needs, it is the greatest level of Tzedakah when we are able to see the person in need, understand their needs, and provide them with enough to meet their needs, not what we consider as their needs, but their true needs.

Eikev (Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25)

July 30, 2021/in Torah Tidbit /by Temple Web

This Week’s Torah Portion: Eikev – עֵקֶב (Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25)

Why did God choose the people of Israel? Are we special? Better? Wiser? Mightier?

The answer is NO. We are not better than any other Nation, as God explains it to Moses:

“Yet it was to your ancestors that Adonai our God was drawn (Lusted in the original Hebrew) in love for them, so that God chose you, their lineal descendants, from among all peoples—as is now the case” (Deuteronomy 10:15).

God fell in love with our ancestors, and love is a mystery, it does not always make sense. God explains that Israel is smaller than other Nations, and not that great, however, God has a crush on us, so we are chosen.

Va-et’chanan (Deuteronomy 3:23-25)

July 23, 2021/in Torah Tidbit /by Temple Web

This Week’s Torah Portion: Va-et’chanan – וָאֶתְחַנַּן (Deuteronomy 3:23-25)

The most important section of this week’s Torah Portion, Va-et’chanan, are the words of the Shema:

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהֹוָה אֶחָד׃
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.
“Hear O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One.”

That the Shema would contain the most important words in any Torah Portion which it might appear should come as no surprise. These are the watchwords of our faith, the self-defining, single most important value for our people over these past 3500 years. We are the people who worship the One God of Heaven and Earth. What other collection of words might be more precious to us or have had more impact on the world.

And yet, this week’s portion also includes the Ten Commandments, a code of justice and righteousness known the world over and adopted by people of many faiths as their own. But there is a reason why we recite the Shema in our services everyday; why we say the Shema in the morning and at night; why we roll slips of parchment with these words into boxes on the doorpost of our homes; why these are the last words we are meant to say.

There was once a time, more than 2000 years ago, when the Ten Commandments played that central role in the life of our people. Replacing them with the Shema was a thoughtful choice, based on the belief that no list of commandments, however short or long, could answer the question why we should follow these rules.

Choosing the Shema as the watchword of our faith meant directing ourselves toward our relationship with God, as partners in the building of a better world. Shema Yisrael – One commandment that encompasses them all.

D’varim (Deuteronomy 1:1−3:22)

July 16, 2021/in Torah Tidbit /by Temple Web

This Week’s Torah Portion: D’varim – דְבָרִים (Deuteronomy 1:1−3:22)

The distance from Mount Sinai to the banks of the Jordan River where Moses spoke to the Children of Israel overlooking the Promised Land is about an eleven day march on foot. And yet, it took 40 years before we would finally arrive!

The story of that long journey, our wanderings through the wilderness, recounted in this week’s Torah Portion D’varim, teaches us that the journey from slavery to freedom was not one of distance, but of time. The generation who followed after Moses, through fear and plagues, through walls of waters; who stood in awe and terror at the foot of Mount Sinai as Moses brought down God’s Ten Commandments – they had learned to follow their faith. But when they were called to become the creators of their own destiny, they stepped back in doubt and in fear.

This new generation who had never known slavery, who were raised in the wilderness, who had fought their way home, stand now again within sight of the Promised Land – and this time they choose to be the makers of their long awaited destiny. Moses speaks these words of D’varim to a people united by their journey.

This is what we mean when we pray:

“Standing on the parted shores of history, we still believe what we were taught before ever we stood at Sinai’s foot; that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt, that there is a better place, a Promised Land; that the winding way to that promise passes through the wilderness. That there is no way to get from here to there except by joining hands, marching together.”

That journey of our people continues still today, that promise of our future is still waiting to be redeemed, and the lesson of that journey remain with us as well. That there is no way to get from here to there except by joining hands, and marching together.

Haazinu (Deuteronomy 32:1–52)

Parsha Haazinu Torah Summary:

Vayeilech (Deuteronomy 31:1–30)

Parsha Vayeilech Torah Summary:

Nitzavim (Deuteronomy 29:9–30:20)

Parsha Nitzavim Torah Summary:

Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8)

Parsha Ki Tavo Torah Summary:

Ki Teitzei (Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19)

Parsha Ki Teitzei Torah Summary:

Shof’tim (Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9)

Parsha Shof’tim Torah Summary:

R’eih (Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17)

Parsha R’eih Torah Summary:

Eikev (Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25)

Parsha Eikev Torah Summary:

Va-et’chanan (Deuteronomy 3:23-25)

Parsha Va-et’chanan Torah Summary:

D’varim (Deuteronomy 1:1−3:22)

Parsha D’varim Torah Summary:

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