Olive Seedlings - שתילי זיתים

My recent post on Parshas Acharei Mos , The Laws of Sexual Morality: When a Mishpat Appears to be a Chok , elicited a few interesting chall...

The latter portion of parshas Acharei Mos  is a list of the various sexual prohibitions. Before it begins the list, the Torah provides an i...

The main subject in the parshios  of  Tazria-Metzora  is tzaraas , in its various forms. ( Tzaraas  is often mistranslated as leprosy, howe...

The Sefas Emes , R' Yehuda Aryeh Leib of Gur, d.1905, taught in the name of his grandfather, the Chiddushei HaRim : כי עשר מכות נגד ...

The Hagada tells us, “Anyone that speaks abundantly about Yetzias Mitzraim  (the Exodus from Egypt) is praiseworthy.” Rav Shlomo Kluger (d....

In the introductory paragraph of the maggid  section of the Hagada,  “ הא לחמא עניא ”, we find an apparently unconnected sequence of statem...

What is the unique significance of wine that we use it for the arba kosos  - the four cups of wine? Indeed, why do we use wine for kiddush ...

The Talmud ( שבת ל"א ) tells us that when a person passes away and comes before the Heavenly Court, one of the first questions he is a...

Parshas Tzav begins with a discussion of the laws involving the removal of the ash from the altar. There were two aspects to this service (...

In Parshas Vayikra  we begin to read of the korbanos  (sacrificial service). As we have discussed previously , the korbanos  are an express...