By Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Co-Director of the Jewish Leaning Initiative on Campus at UCLA This week’s Torah portion, Behar, introduces us to a most fascinating commandment: Shemitah, the Sabbatical year. The mitzvah of Shemitah mandates that Jews in Israel cease and desist of all labor to fields for the entire seventh…
Taste of Torah: Not shying away
This week’s Taste of Torah is written by staff writer Daniel Levine. It would be very easy to write a nice Devar Torah about all of the nice things this week’s Torah portion teaches. The job of the Kohanim, the idea of Kidush Hashem,…
Taste of Torah: A lover’s eyes
This week’s Taste of Torah is written by Micah Hyman, a sophomore at Yeshiva University, studying computer science. Hyman spent two years at Yeshivat Sha’alvim in Nof Ayalon, Israel, studying Torah. One morning, as Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berdetchiv was…
Taste of Torah: Making it count
Written by Sharona Kaplan; Co-Director of Jewish Learning Initiative at UCLA “Teach us to count our days, that we may acquire a heart of wisdom” (Psalms 90:12) is a beautiful prayer acknowledging the art of counting time and the tremendous…
Taste of Torah: Make Passover meaningful
Written by Rabbi David Eliezrie of Chabad of Yorba Linda It’s Passover night, and we are wondering to ourselves, “Haven’t we heard this story already?” We all know the basic narrative. The Jews were enslaved in Egypt. Moses confronts Pharaoh,…
Taste of Torah: “So you think you understand what’s pure and impure?”
As we continue our trek through the book of Leviticus, we are continuously confronted with laws of tumah (purity) and tahara (impurity). These laws, which for some time in history made up the majority of Jewish practice, seem almost completely archaic and meaningless in…
Taste of Torah: Beware of words
By Rabbi Dr. Tal Sessler of Sephardic Temple In Judaism, words are holy and sacred. The opening chapter of the Torah teaches us that the world was created by Divine speech. Words are powerful in Jewish spirituality. So much so,…
Let My People Know: the historical reality of the Exodus
“You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21) This aforementioned moral obligation, influenced by the events of Exodus, has arguably had one of the most positive effects on…
Urban Dictionary: Yiddish Edition
Suffering threats of persecution during the First Crusade, many Jews migrated to Eastern Europe beginning in the 10th century. As such, various Jewish communities settled in Germany and other Slavic countries, and the continuous oppression they endured by virtue of their…
Bar and Bat Mitzvahs: Different traditions same rite of passage
– The Bar Mitzvah – The bar mitzvah is an incredibly significant event as it is the first public demonstration of a boy’s new role as a full-fledged member of the community. He can now participate in a minyan and…