rabbisakhai

Behar/Bechukotai-May 15, 2020

This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 7:31 PM
Shabbat Ends: 8:31 PM

Torah Message:

Holy Crop Rotation!

“For six years you may sow your field” (25:3)

I still remember learning at school about crop rotation. One year the field would be planted with wheat, the next year with barley or some other crop, and the third it would be left to lie fallow. And then the cycle would begin again.

When reading this week’s Torah portion, one could think that the mitzvah of Shemitta, the prohibition of working the fields in the seventh year, is some kind of holy crop rotation. The difference being that in the Torah it says you should work the field for six years and leave it for a seventh.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

First, there is evidence that working a field for six straight years and then leaving it for one year does nothing to improve its yield and may even have a negative effect. Second, the Torah prescribes dire punishments for the non-observance of Shemitta. The seventy years of the Babylonian exile were a punishment for seventy non-observed Shemitta years during the 430 years that the Jewish People dwelled in the Land of Israel. We know that G-d’s punishment is always measure for measure. If Shemitta was a matter of crop husbandry, how is exile an appropriate punishment? What does exile have to do with the cessation of agriculture in the seventh year? Furthermore, from an agricultural point of view, seventy years without husbandry can have had no possible benefit for the land. Seventy years of weeds and neglect in no way contribute to the lands rejuvenation, so how is this punishment an appropriate restitution?

Emor-May 8, 2020

This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 7:25 PM
Shabbat Ends: 8:25 PM

Torah Message:

Staying awake all night may not sound “religious,” but there are several times during the Jewish year when the custom is to burn the midnight oil until the sun peeps through the blinds.

Many people stay up after the Seder on Pesach until the time of the morning prayers in order to recount and analyze the great miracles of the Exodus. As the Haggadah says: Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria and Rabbi Akiva stayed up all night talking about the Exodus until their talmidim (students) came to tell them that it was time to recite the morning Shema Yisrael.

On Yom Kippur, those with sufficient strength stay up all night in prayer and supplication, atoning for their sins. On Hoshanah Rabbah, the time when the decrees of Yom Kippur are given over to those agents who will carry them out, there is a tradition to learn all night.

On the night of Shavuot there is also a widely observed custom to stay up all night. The Sages of the Kabbala formulated an order of study call a tikkun (lit. “fixing”) for the night of Shavuot. This includes passages from the written Torah, the oral Torah, the mystical Zohar, as well as a list of all 613 mitzvahs.

The Zohar commends those who stay awake in anticipation of receiving the Torah. The giving of the Torah was, as it were, the wedding of the Jewish People and the Torah, and so it is fitting that we should be engaged in preparing the ornaments of the bride the previous night.

Ki Tisa-March 13, 2020

This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 6:42 PM
Shabbat Ends: 7:38 PM

Torah Message:

A Work of Craft

“See, I have proclaimed by name Betzalel, son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Yehuda. I have filled him with a G-dly spirit, with wisdom, insight, and knowledge, and with every craft … to perform every craft of design.” (31:2-3)

In Hebrew, there is no word for Art.

There is a Hebrew word, “melacha,” that means “craft,” but no word meaning Art.

What’s the difference between Art and craft?

An artist can think he is G-d.

He starts off with a blank piece of paper and creates a universe. Being an artist is the closest a person can get to creation ex nihilo — creation from nothing. The universe of the artist is entirely at the whim of its creator. He can draw and he can erase. He can form and he can fold. He can “create worlds” and he can “destroy them.” The sky can be blue or gray. The next note could go up or down. And who says that all this has to be the way it is? Me, the artist.

For the past two and a half thousand years there has raged a global-historical conflict over the place of art in the world. The ancient Greeks, who invented Art with a capital “A”, claimed that Art is a doorway to ultimate truth. This Weltanschauung says that through art and artifice you can reach the elemental truths of existence. Celebrating the surface, the way things look, claimed the ancient Greek, leads to the essence of things themselves.

Tetzaveh-March 6, 2020

This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 5:37 PM
Shabbat Ends: 6:33 PM

Torah Message:

The Surgeon General Has Determined

“You shall make the robe of the Ephod… on its hem all around… a gold bell and a pomegranate…” (28:31-33)

It first started on my Coca Cola can. I didn’t notice it at first, but when I glanced instead at a Coke Zero can, something out of the corner of my brain twigged that it wasn’t there. Then I saw it again on a packet of cinnamon rogelach. Yes, it was definitely spreading. The next day I took a good look at it on the Coke can — a red circle with a graphic of a spoon and the legend underneath it saying “high sugar content.” Next time I passed the rogelach package, I saw it had two red roundels: High Sugar Content and High Trans Fat Content. The Israeli Packaging Standards people had finally managed to get companies manufacturing high-risk foods to apply the equivalent of a “Government Health Warning” that already existed for cigarettes. It was almost like, “Warning! Food can seriously damage your health!”

Vayera-Dec 6, 2019

This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 4:26 pm
Shabbat Ends: 5:25 pm

Torah Message:

Understanding the Times

“And he named him Yissaschar…” (30:18)

When you close your eyes and think of Chanuka, what comes to mind? The lights of the menorah; the dreidel spinning; the aroma of latkes and donuts.

And of course, the sound of “Maoz Tzur.”

In that beautiful stirring Chanuka song, we sing of the Bnei Bina, the “Children of Understanding.” Who were those children and what was it that they understood?

On the festival of Lag B’Omer there is a widespread custom to shoot arrows from a bow and arrow. The symbol of the month of Kislev, the current month, is the bow (Sagittarius, The Archer). What is the connection between the bow of Lag B’Omer and the bow of Kislev?

Vayera-Nov. 15, 2019

This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 4:32 pm
Shabbat Ends: 5:29 pm

Torah Message:

Here Today

“…For I have loved him (Avraham) because he commands his children and his household after him that they may keep the way of Hashem, doing charity and justice…” (18:19)

Walking through Ohr Somayach last week, I had a couple of moments of reflection. There’s a major building project which, please G-d, will give us a beautiful new Beit Midrash and classrooms. The whole front of what used to be the staircase leading up to the Beit Midrash from Shimon HaTzadik Street is no longer there and in its place is a vast hole. The door that used to lead to that staircase is securely locked, but locked doors can be unlocked and so that door is also barred by two serious cross beams, but there’s still a small crack under the door that you can peak through and see a vast chasm of nothing where there used to be a place.

That place exists now in the minds of those who remember it. I went to daven in the Conference Room. It’s been a long time since I was in there and as I walked in I looked at the long table and its two ends and remembered two Torah giants who used to sit there, at different times, at its two ends. At the end further from the window, Rav Dov Schwartzman, zatzal, used to give shiur.

Lech Lecha-Nov. 8, 2019

This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 4:37 pm
Shabbat Ends: 5:33 pm

Torah Message:

Maxing the Moxy

“Go for yourself” (12:1)

One of the dominant genes of the Sinclair family is auto-didactism. Hashem has blessed us that we seem to be able to ‘just pick things up’ as we go along. I never had a photography lesson in my life but I was able to put publish a book of fine art black and white photographs to some critical acclaim. (Mind you it’s just as well I didn’t choose to be a brain surgeon.)

One of my sons also has this ability. He opened a gourmet pizza shop called “La Piedra” here in Jerusalem, which has been featured in the national media and, Baruch Hashem, is packed out most nights. Someone asked him where in Italy he had apprenticed. I believe his greatest Italian learning experience was a guided tour of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He never had a formal lesson in cuisine in his life. He has a natural talent. He did a lot of research online and his commitment was total. He ended up importing an authentic stone oven from Italy. I asked him if he was nervous in the beginning about succeeding.

Noach-Nov. 1, 2019

This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 5:43 pm
Shabbat Ends: 6:38 pm

Torah Message:

Of Men and Mice

“Behold I am about to bring the flood waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which there is a breath of life under the heavens.” (6:17)

The prophet Yeshayahu (Isaiah) refers to the flood as the “waters of Noach,” implying that Noach bears at least partial responsibility for the flood. For, if Noach had taught his generation to know G-d by instructing them to emulate G-d’s midot (character traits), they surely would have repented.

A story is told about a rabbi who had a dispute with a philosopher as to whether instinct or behavioral training governs the behavior of an animal. The philosopher held that an animal can be trained so completely that it can be made to do almost anything.

Bereishet-Oct 25, 2019

This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 5:43 pm
Shabbat Ends: 6:38 pm

Torah Message:

De-Construction

“In the beginning of G-d’s creating the heavens and the earth…” (1:1)

You drive up to your dream home. It’s been two years in the planning, and three to build it. You usher your guests up to the top of the west wing and proudly fling open the doors to the guest suite. The doors bang against their stops. Then a small shudder shakes the house. What sounds like a distant groan starts to get louder and louder and then, before your eyes, the entire west wing parts company with the house and falls away, crashing to the ground like some slow-motion movie. You and your guests are left wide-eyed in horror and disbelief, gazing into fifty feet of nothingness two inches from the ends of your toes.

Oct 18, 2019

This Shabbat:

Friday Candle Lighting: 5:58 pm
Shabbat Ends: 6:52 pm

Shemini Atzeret

Sunday October 20th

Light Holiday Candles: 5:56 pm

Monday October 21st 

Light Holiday Candles after: 6:50 pm

Tuesday October 22nd

Holiday ends at 6:49 pm

Torah Message: