KEEP IT SIMPLE “He (Moshe) said: The Lord came from Sinai, and shone from Se’ir for them. He appeared from Mount Paran, and He came with some of the holy myriads. From His right [He brought] a fiery law to them.” (Devarim 33:2) In the opening verses...

THE TIME OF OUR REJOICING “You shall take for you on the first day the fruit of a pleasant tree, branches of date palms, a bough of a leafy tree and willows of the brook. You shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.” (Vayikrah...

“Yom Kippur does not atone for sins between man and his fellow until the [perpetrator] appeases [the victim].” (Yoma 85b) The process of returning to God involves two steps: teshuva, repentance and kappara, atonement. The first is performed by man and the second, by God. Teshuva...

THEY HEAL MY WEARY BONES “For this commandment [the Torah –see Rashi 30:14] that I command you today, it is not obscured from you and it is not distant. It is not in the heavens, to say: Who will ascend for us to the heavens and...

I GIVE YOU MY FULL SUPPORT “It shall be when you will come into the Land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you take possession of it, and live in it. You shall take from the first of all the...

TYING THE KNOT “When a man takes a wife and engages in intercourse with her, it shall be that if she does not find favour in his eyes, because he found in her an indecent matter, and he wrote her a bill of divorce, and he...

THE KING AND THE SCROLL “It shall be upon his sitting on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this Torah in a scroll, from that which is before the priests, the Levites. It shall be with him, and he...

A BAND OF BROTHERS   Judaism has a complex and detailed ritual of mourning that serves to acclimatise the surviving relatives to their loss, as well as offering them support and consolation. The Torah, however, prohibits certain mourning rituals that it views as destructive and counter-productive. One...

SACRED OBJECTS   “At that time the Lord said to me: Carve for yourself two tablets of stone like the first and ascend to Me to the mountain; and make for yourself a wooden ark. I will inscribe on the tablets the statements that were on the...

SUPPLICATION   “I pleaded with the Lord at that time, saying: My Lord God, You began to show Your servant Your greatness and Your mighty hand, that who is a god in the heavens or on the earth, who can perform like Your actions, and like Your...