In this parashah Moses bids farewell to the people, saying to them: “Today I am one hundred and twenty years old; I can neither come nor go, for God has said to me: ‘You shall not pass over the Jordan River. God will pass before you; He will destroy the nations before you and you […]

In this parashah God says: “This precept which I command you today is not difficult for you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, and cause us to hear it, that we may do it? […]

One of the verses of this parashah says: “God will put you at the head and not at the tail, you will always be above and you will never be below, if you listen to God’s commandments, and fulfill them carefully”. Hence the custom we perform at the Rosh Hashanah table in the evening, when […]

This parashah begins by saying: Judges and officers you shall place in all your gates. The Kabbalist R. Chaim Vital explains that each person has several “gates”: sight, hearing, speech, smell, and touch in which we must place “judges and officers” to guard them. Once upon a time there was a king who was very […]

And God made every tree sprout out of the earth, and the Tree of Life in the middle of the garden and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil… and ordered Adam, saying: “From every tree in the garden you will eat, but from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil […]

In this parashah Moshe encourages Bnei Yisrael in the fulfillment of the mitzvot, clarifying to them that the Torah must be kept intact, without adding or subtracting any precept, and reminding them of the sad end of those who participated in the sin of idolatry and promiscuity of “Bal Peor”, as opposed to those who […]

We begin the book of Devarim, in which Moses, before his death, tells his disciple Yehoshua that he must lead Bnei Yisrael to the Promised Land with courage: “Do not be afraid, for Hashem will fight for you”, for just as He annihilated the two “Amorite” kings, He will also destroy the other peoples. But […]

In our parashah, masaei, with which we end the fourth book of Bamidvar, God commands Am Yisrael that before entering the Promised Land they must expel their enemies and destroy their idols, otherwise, as time goes by, they will plot to annihilate them or incite them to Idolatry. But wasn’t it a better idea to […]

In this week’s Parashah, God orders Moshe before his death to take revenge on the people of Midian for inciting Am Israel to engage in idolatry and promiscuity, which led to the death of 24,000 members of Am Israel. The Midianim and their cities were destroyed. Subsequently, God orders Moshe to divide the spoils, one […]

In this parashah, God allows Moses to contemplate the Land of Israel from a mountain before dying, since He had forbidden him to enter it for disobeying His orders by striking the stone so that it would give water instead of speaking to it. However, the Sage Rashi explains that initially Moshe did speak to […]

King Balak, upon learning that Am Israel was defeating his enemies, feared that he would be next on the list, and allied himself with his arch enemy Midian, hiring the evil sorcerer Bilam to curse Am Israel. However, even though God warns Bilam not to go and curse Am Israel, he does not resist Balak’s […]

One of the laws of this parshah consisted in the cohen throwing the ashes of a red cow on people in a state of impurity. Surprisingly, they were purified, but the cohen remained impure! Within the precepts of the Torah, we find “statutes” (such as that of the red cow), which at first glance we […]

In this parashah, Korach, a person of great hierarchy and wealth, convinces 250 heads of Am Israel to rise up against Moshe and Aaron, claiming to them: They have gone too far, all the people are holy and God is among them, why do they exalt themselves over God’s congregation? I would like to analyze […]

We come to the famous parashah of the “spies”, in which Moses chooses 12 princes of the Tribes of Israel to inspect the Promised Land. Sadly, when they return, 10 of them slander the nature of Eretz Israel and that entire generation dies in the desert. There are many concerns that arise, but I would […]

WHAT IS the only festival that is repeated twice on different dates of the year? This parashah reveals that it is the festival of Pesach. An interesting and even surprising point is that the repetition of this festival arose at the request of a group of people who were impure during the first Pesach, (the […]

One of the laws mentioned in this Parashah is that of the “Nazir”, a person who promises not to drink wine for at least 30 days. In addition, he is prohibited from any grape derivative, and must let his hair grow long and not become impure. But what led him to deprive himself of one […]

We begin the reading of the fourth book of the Torah, BAMIDVAR, which recounts the wanderings of Am Israel during the forty years in the wilderness. Something interesting that we can appreciate is that when God ordered the people to break camp to go to another place, each tribe was located in a specific place, […]

“If you follow my statutes and keep my precepts, then I will give you rain in its season”… What is the difference between statutes and precepts? Thousands of years ago, our Sages already explained the difference: statutes are acts criticized by the people, since they apparently have no obvious logic, such as the consumption of […]