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...

  One of the things, our Sages said, that helped the Jews in Egypt merit the Exodus from Egypt, was Shabbat observance. This merit will also help bring the redemption from our current exile. In honor of the Parsha Vaera, where we read about the beginning of the process of redemption, I would like to reprint a story that was published today by Rabbi Mordechai Lipskier.  He wrote that he heard the story from Rabbi Moshe Raitport, who heard it first hand. A few years ago, a woman called the Shomrei Hadas Funeral Chapels in Brooklyn to arrange her husband’s funeral. “Before going ahead with the arrangements, I have a request to make. May I tell you a story?” This woman had gotten married in the early 1940s in Brooklyn. It was difficult for a Shabbat observer to hold down a job, so like many other Jews, her husband was pink-slipped from one job after the next. (They would often take a job on Monday, and when they refused to come on Shabbat, they were fired.) Their struggle worsened...

Our forefather, Jacob, passed away and was buried in Israel, as he had requested. Time passed, the Jews settled into Egypt, and then Yosef passed away. He did not get to be buried in Israel like his father. He was “placed in a coffin in Egypt.” This is the final verse in the Parsha Vayechi and the final verse in the book of Bereshit.  Not a very happy ending.  This is perplexing, especially in light of the teaching of our Sages that we should always end on a positive note.  The Parshiyot are divided so that we always end on a positive note, and if this is ever not the case, there has to be a good reason.  For example, when we read the Parsha of Ha’azinu. Some of the breaks are at a negative point, and there is a large discussion as to why that is.  Another example is when we read the Parsha of the “tochacha” – the curses that are foretold in the Torah, we don’t break in the middle.  We read all the way through with no break until the final, positive verse....

  People are faced with challenges every day, and the way we deal with them can have very small consequences or sometimes can be life-altering.  A community leader’s decisions in the face of adversity can often have a major impact on the community, and a world leader’s actions can impact the entire world.   Our history is rich with great leaders whose strength and tenacity, and unwillingness to allow anything to stop them from leading the Jewish people forward, brought Jewish life back to its full strength after very difficult times.   Such a leader was Rabbi Dovber of Lubavitch.  His birthday and his Yahrzeit are both on the ninth of Kislev, which we will celebrate this Shabbat.  On the tenth of Kislev, he was released from prison.  He was arrested, as was his father Rabbi Schneur Zalman and just about every major Chabad leader, due to false accusations made against him by people trying to stop him from his work of building the Jewish community and mo...

Friday is the first day of the month filled with light - Kislev!   At the end of the month we have Chanukah,  the beautiful “Festival of Lights,” with its message of increasing light.  There are also two celebrations of redemption relating to this Chanukah message.  The “Alter Rebbe,” Rabbi Schneur Zalman, first Rebbe and founder of Chabad, brought a new light of Torah to the world.  He enabled us to deeply understand the mystical secrets of Torah, thereby combatting the darkness that enveloped the Jewish world and preparing the way for the revelation of Moshiach.  This light was almost extinguished when he was falsely accused of rebellion against the Czar and arrested on capital charges.  On the 19 th of Kislev he was released with great honor, and the light expanded much more than it had before.   His son Rabbi Dov Ber continued to spread this light after his passing,  who was also falsely accused of rebellion and arrested.  He was re...

There are always questions that come up when we study Torah.  Every word of Torah, including the stories, teaches us how to live as Jews and fulfill our mission on earth.  There are many layers of meaning to each word, and asking questions is an important part of learning.  There are some questions that I like to call head-scratchers.  We read something and wonder what on earth it means, what the purpose is and what we can learn from it.  Or we read a story and scratch our heads and wonder why the story happened and what it is teaching us.  One such example is the story of Avraham in relation to the city of Sedom.    The people of Sedom and the surrounding four cities were so wicked and corrupt that Hashem decided to destroy them.  There are many stories told about the cruelty of those people, the way they mistreated any visitor and their horribly corrupt system of “justice.”  The last straw, the Torah teaches us, was when they caught a ...