Thoughts on Parashat Terumah The Torah portion of this week is entirely devoted to the structure of Mishkan. Mishkan comes from the Hebrew root meaning shachan which means “to dwell”; the tabernacle was considered to be the earthly dwelling place or residence of God. God instructs Moses with words: Tell the Israelite people to get […]

The Torah portion for this week begins with a code of law which regulates social relations. The first part of this code (Ex 21:1-11) deals with slavery. As we know, this institution existed in ancient Israel, just like in other ancient states and cultures.

Thoughts on Parasha Yitro In this week’s Torah portion we find the story of Moses’ father-in-law, Yitro, who after having heard about everything that God has done for Moses and the Israelites by bringing them out of Egypt decides to join Moses and the people of Israel. So he comes to the desert along with […]

7th. February 2020, Beit Warszawa – ”Fog in Channel. Continent Cut Off!” This was one of the most famous headlines in British newspaper history, some say dating from the 1930’s, and it is, by many accounts, at least to some extent a true story. Rather than Britain, an island in the North Sea, being cut off, it was the European Mainland that could not be reached due to the poor weather conditions. Some versions state this was printed in ‘The Times’ after some heavy storms, or after a communications cable was damaged….

It happened in the spring of 1997 or 1998. Back then I was a student at one of the technical secondary schools in Przemyśl. In the summer semester we had a so called “vocational apprenticeship”: instead of going to school, we’d spend one month in one of the local production plants. The production plant we had our apprenticeship in hired several hundred workers. The concept underlying having such an apprenticeship as part of the curriculum of a technical secondary school was (and still is) undoubtedly commendable and appropriate…