Month: November 2024

Author’s note: This week’s D’Var Torah is dedicated with love to my twin sons, Baruch Zev and Shmuel Yehuda. This week’s Torah portion is about twins and, as it turns out, it was their Bar Mitzvah portion too.

As always, all textual Hebrew quoted along with their translations are taken from Sefaria.org unless otherwise noted.

One of the greatest things about studying history is you uncover seminal moments on which the story of the world shifts. In my lifetime, there have been several such moments. When you find that moment, you can trace the effects of that moment through history and see patterns, causes, and effects that bring great meaning to the story of our world.

Author’s note: Hebrew quotations and translations, unless otherwise stated, come from Sefaria.org.

This week’s D’var Torah is written and published in memory of my beloved mother Shirley Bazian (Shoshke Bas R’ Idel Leib) on the occasion of her 42nd yahrtzeit.

We continue to plumb the depths of this great Sefer Bereishis to see what lessons we can learn from the stories.

In this week’s portion of Chayei Sarah, the Torah tells a great deal of a father’s responsibility to his son and how to go about it.

Author’s note: Hebrew text and translations, unless otherwise stated, come from Sefaria.org.

My theme for this year is the behavioral lessons we can learn from the book of Bereishis (Genesis). The rules within the Torah that we call Mitzvos cannot exist nor perform their proper role within us if we do not have a solid moral foundation. That moral foundation begins with the book of Bereishis.

Author’s note: Hebrew text and translations, unless otherwise stated, come from Sefaria.org.

Our sages have told us many times that מעשה אבות סימן לבנים, “that which happened with our forefathers is a portend for their children.” In this week’s Parsha (Torah portion), we learn of the story of the four kings who rebelled against the five. As the Torah tells us (Gen 14:1):

We now come back to the question we should be asking about all these stories: Why do we need to know this? Why does the Torah, which is not a storybook, tell us this?