Mishpatim 5764-2004
"The Al-mighty's Concern for the Dignity of the Human Being" by Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald As we have previously noted, Parashat Mishpatim essentially establishes the structure of…
Terumah 5766-2006
"Make for Me a Sanctuary, And I Shall Dwell in Their Midst" by Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald In this week's parasha, parashat Terumah, G-d tells Moses to instruct the Jewish people to…
Naso 5763-2003
"The Hypocrite as Exemplar" by Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald In this coming week's parasha, parashat Naso, we encounter a very strange order in the topics of the text. The Torah in Numbers…
Pinchas 5761-2001
"The Pain of Giving Reproof" by Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald On Sunday, July 8th, Jews the world over observed the fast of Shivah Asar B'Tamuz, the Seventeenth day of Tamuz. The fast marks…
Sukkot 5763-2002
"A Sukkah Memory" by Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald Growing up as one of the few Yeshiva students in the East Bronx in the early 1950s was not easy. My non-religious Jewish friends mocked my…
Yom Kippur 5771-2010
"When Yom Kippur Occurs on Shabbat" by Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald The Hebrew calendar is designed so that Yom Kippur can never fall on Friday or Sunday. To prevent Yom Kippur from…
Yitro 5777-2017
“The Earthen Altar: Reaching up to Heaven" by Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald At the very end of this week’s parasha, parashat Yitro, immediately following the Ten Commandments, the…
Fast of Esther
"Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day; I and my maidens will also fast in like manner; and so…
Completing the Cycle of Talmud
In August 1923, weeks before the High Holidays, Rabbi Meir Shapiro, dean of the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva in Poland, proposed that the entire Jewish world study a daily folio of Talmud (a…
The Sino-Jewish Axis
During Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s 2010 confirmation hearings, she was asked where she had spent the previous Christmas. With a broad smile, Ms. Kagan responded,…