Rabbi Levin's Blog

I’m on an airplane again. This time, returning from a shiva visit to the family of Sandy Klugman, of blessed memory, in Seattle. Sandy and her late husband Elliot were pillars of our community for many years. Today’s Dvar Torah is dedicated to her memory. In order to get the Jews out of Egypt there was no need for ten plagues. Moshe could have just led them out while Pharaoh stood by helplessly. In order to punish the Egyptians, Hashem could have skipped the first nine and gone straight for the Killing of the Firstborns. The main purpose of all the plagues, the Torah tells us, is for the world to know that Hashem exists and that He controls every aspect of nature.  The Zohar (the foremost book of Kabbalah) states that Hashem is “above above without end and below below with no limit.”  While it appears to us that the world is separate from the Divine and runs itself, the Divine energy that is beyond all of creation is also the life-source of everything in existence.  Science tells us th

  Sometimes when you read the Torah, you scratch your head and say “what?”  At the beginning of this week’s Parsha (Exodus 6:3) ,  Hashem says to Moshe:  “I appeared to Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov with my name Kel Shakai, but with my name Havaye (yud kei vav kei) I did not make myself known to them.”   (Incidentally, if you look in the Torah, you will see that the names of G-d are different from how I just wrote them.  This is intentional.  There are seven names of Hashem that we are forbidden to destroy, or even to mention, unless it is part of a Torah verse or organized prayer.  We therefore pronounce and write them differently.  “Kel” is written alef lamed, Shakai is written shin dalet yud, and the name we call Havaye is written yud and hei and vav and hei, or yud kei vav kei.) So Hashem is saying to Moshe that until now, the name Havaye was not revealed.  Only now, that the Jews have been slaves and mistreated in Egypt, Hashem says, it is time to let them know that “I am Havaye (E

  I’m on a plane traveling from Denver to Salt Lake City. Thank G-d this trip is for two very happy events. Last night Jasmine Joshua, who lived in our house for over three years while she was going to school in Palo Alto, got married to Dovid Braslawsce. It was a beautiful wedding. Tomorrow my new grandson Zippel will with Hashem’s help have his bris in Salt Lake City. Dena and I are thrilled to share the nachas for both.  Today is the Yahrzeit of my grandmother, the holy Rebbetzin Mariasha Garelik. She must be having a lot of Nachas in Gan Eden. As I settled into my seat on the very full plane, I was thinking that we find a connection and a lesson in the weekly Parsha to every event that happens in the world, there must be some connections here.  Sure enough there are references in our Parsha to weddings, bris, and my grandmother’s yahrtzeit (well, in a more general way). Wedding: Amram, the leader of the Jewish people in Egypt, did not want to bring children into a world where all t