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This week’s parshah basically consists of an array of commandments. The parshah starts off with negative commandments; divine commands concerning actions we must stay away from. The bulk of these commandments relate primarily to idolatry, and to staying away from forbidden foods. The next half of the parshah then deals with positive commandments; divine commands concerning actions we must cling to in order to serve God. These include tithes, the sabbatical year etc. (more…)

This week’s parshah basically consists of an array of commandments. The parshah starts off with negative commandments; divine commands concerning actions we must stay away from. The bulk of these commandments relate primarily to idolatry, and to staying away from forbidden foods. The next half of the parshah then deals with positive commandments; divine commands concerning actions we must cling to in order to serve God. These include tithes, the sabbatical year etc.

In this second half of the parshah lies an important question whose answer contains an important value in Jewish practice.

These commandments (of this second half) begin with our obligation to bring certain gifts towards a sacred purpose. The first commandment is that of the second tithe: Basically, we are commanded to separate 10 percent of all our crops and eat them by the Holy Temple in Jerusalem (See 14:22-29). (more…)

אני ואתה נשנה את העולם,
אני ואתה ויבואו כבר כולם,
אמרו את זה קודם לפני,
לא משנה – אני ואתה נשנה את העולם.

Anyone with a solid Zionist education has, no doubt, sang this feel-good Israeli song in Hebrew class, yet as I learned it in Ulpan I began to question its legitimacy. “Me and you will change the world”, it claims. That’s a pretty hefty statement, in my opinion. It assumes two axioms that need to be further developed. The first, that the world is indeed changeable. That we are not destined to live in the same world tomorrow that we live in today. And the second, that it is we who have the power to change it. That the entire world can be affected by small things – by individuals, by ideas. We, in a modern day North American culture, are certainly familiar with these empowering and optimistic ideals, but I sometimes wonder how deeply we truly understand them. More often than not, they remain cliché statements repeated during “Awareness Week” at school and “Yom Chessed” at camp, instead of becoming integrated values that we understand, never mind truths that we actually live by. (more…)