Rabbi Levin's Blog

  “Sure, I’d like to help.  Let me know after you have run your campaign or project, and what you still need, and then I’ll step in.”  I think that it is very common for people involved in planning and running community programs to hear this.  People like to be a “knight in shining armor” and to come in and save the day when there is something missing.  It sounds wonderful, but is it the right thing to do?  Is that better than the person who steps up to help as soon as they see a need, not knowing how crucial their support will be and how many others are willing to help? Well the leaders of our people, in the early days of the formation of the nation, took the first approach.  Hashem told Moshe to build a sanctuary in the desert, and to have all the people contribute the materials necessary.  As related in this week’s Parsha, Vayakhel, the leaders of the tribes, holy people wanting to behave like leaders, decided to allow the people to bring what ...

Let’s talk about cheeseburgers and salami and cheese sandwiches.  Anyone who knows anything about kosher laws knows that they are both not kosher.  But is there a difference between them? Of course they are both forbidden to us to eat, but there are indeed some differences.  This is a classic case of the interaction between the Written and Oral Torahs.  (This is a huge subject which would take several pages, or actually a book, to explain fully, but I’m going to take a crack at a brief, simplified and easy to understand discussion of the issues involved.)   As an introduction, the written Torah cannot be understood without the oral Torah.  They were both given to Moshe by Hashem at Sinai, and are intended to be studied together. In the oral Torah there are three major avenues of study.  There is the “received” oral Torah – teachings and explanations of the written word that were passed down directly by Moshe. There is the “derived” oral Torah.  In...