Thoughts on Parashat Tetzaveh

Within the last few days The Jerusalem Post, as well as several other media outlets, covered a report, presented by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, that analyzes confidential and public testimonies, eye-witness accounts, and interviews with victims, first responders and witnesses. It was sent to “decision-makers” in the United Nations to leave “no room for denial or disregard”. The report analyzes numerous testimonies from the October 7 massacre specifically relating to Hamas’s sexual violence revealed that families and friends were forced by Hamas terrorists to watch their loved ones be raped and sexually assaulted at gunpoint. […] “The terrorist organization Hamas chose to harm Israel strategically in two clear[…]

Thoughts on Parashat Mishpatim

Humans are social animals. Society is not just a group of atomized human individuals, it is also, if not primarily, a deep structure of relationships between these individuals – biological, social, political and cultural relationships. If this structure is harmed (which can happen for many, often unforeseen, reasons) human societies go through crisis, if it’s destroyed – societies fall apart.[…]

Thoughts on Parashat Beshalach

Our tradition does not see the essence of miracles in their supernatural character. This is a Greek-Christian concept that is debated (which does not mean “accepted”) in the rabbinical literature of the Middle Ages, in the writings of philosophers such as Maimonides and Rabbeinu Bachya. It happened due to the reception of Greek philosophy that occurred through the works of Arab philosophers of the 10th-12th centuries and Arabic translations of the works of ancient philosophers. It is so because neither the Hebrew Bible nor the Talmud knows the concept of ‘nature’ or[…]

Thoughts on Parashat Bo

This week’s parasha talks about the last Egyptian plague, which is at the same time that marks the beginning of our Exodus from Egypt:

Moses said, “Thus says the LORD: Toward midnight I will go forth among the Egyptians, and every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the first-born of the slave girl who is behind the millstones; and all the first-born of the cattle. And there shall be a loud cry in all the land of Egypt, such as has never been or will ever be again; but not a dog shall snarl at any of the[…]