cavernous-desperate

Leaving Mitzrayim in Parashat Bo

I enjoyed this dvar from the Ziegler school on [...]

Why Didn't Noah Argue With God?

It says Noah was righteous in his generation and commentators question whether this means “even in his generation” or “relative to his generation”.  A related question is, both Abraham and Moses argued with God against destroying two cities and his people respectively. Why didn’t Noah argue with God not to destroy the world? (culled from [...]

They Began to Call By Name

Genesis 4:26

כו וּלְשֵׁת גַּם-הוּא יֻלַּד-בֵּן, וַיִּקְרָא אֶת-שְׁמוֹ אֱנוֹשׁ; אָז הוּחַל, לִקְרֹא בְּשֵׁם יְ-ה-וָ-ה.  {ס}

26 And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enosh; then began men to call upon the name of the LORD. {S}

Not withstanding Exodus 3:14-15, it says here that people began to [...]

Some DH on Noah and the Flood

A source comparison of Noah and the Flood Narrative.

The Flood Story in J and P: An Example of the Documentary Hypothesis

The flood story in Genesis 6-9 is a text that can be analyzed along the lines of the Documentary Hypothesis. According to the hypothesis, the flood story is the result of weaving [...]

Bereshit 5770: The Big Taninim

Yair Zakovitch in “Lo Kakh Katuv baTanakh” writes about the Taninim created on the fifth day. These are my notes from a Dvar Torah I gave on the subject.  There are also Sumerian parallels (book) and Ugaritic.

The basic idea is that the line in Genesis 1:21 about the Taninim/Dragons referred to a well known mythology [...]

Whose Land Is It, Anyways?

Israel: In the Beginning of a Love Affair Between a Land and a People
R’ Daniel Burg writes:

One fact that has been repeatedly denied by Mr. Ahmadinejad, for example, is that the Jewish people have had a relationship with the land of Israel for thousands of years. …Why then, asks Rashi, does the Torah begin with [...]

Bereishit 5770: What is the Torah, Exactly?

Genesis 1:1-6:8

The first parashah of the Torah, Genesis, covers from God’s creation of the World, to Noah.  Its famous opening, alternatively “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” or “When God began to create the heavens and the earth”, catches some people by surprise.  If the Torah, which means teaching in Hebrew, [...]

Kashering Utensils

If [a Jew] buys [household] utensils from a non-Jew he should immerse [in water] that which it is customary to immerse, he should scald [that which it is customary] to scald and he should heat in fire [that which it is customary] to heat in fire. Spits and racks are to be heated in fire; [...]

The Missing Parsha: A Story of Amazing Hashgacha Protis

As the Sefer Torah was rolled to the correct place for laining, Parshas Beha’aloscha, the baal kriah and gabbaim were astounded when they discovered that the parsha was nowhere to be found. They looked and looked again, but to their chagrin, Parshas Naso was followed by Parshas Shelach. What was going on? No one knew.

Numerous [...]

va-Ethannan 5769 Stealing in New Jersey

In most of the money-laundering cases, Dwek approached rabbis and schemed with them to launder money through the rabbis’ religious charities, with the rabbis taking a percentage. Prosecutors say Dwek told the rabbis that the money came from illegal activities — bank fraud and the sale of counterfeit goods, including Prada and Gucci handbags. One [...]