Parashat Vaera – 5785
January 20, 2025
Rabbi Cantor Inna Serebro-Litvak ('16)
Let me ask you this: “As a child, what did you most associate with Christmas? What about Hanukkah? Easter? Passover?”
Think about the images you associated with these holidays. Then think about what an evergreen tree has to do with the birth of Jesus; or why eight gifts represent Hanukkah. And how about connecting jelly donuts with the victory of Maccabees over Assyrian King Antiochus and the Hellenistic influence over the Israelites. Better yet, what does a bunny and chocolate eggs have to do with the crucifixion of Jesus? And even more interesting, how does the happy tune of the “Frog” song reflect on the horrifying experience of the one of 10 plagues – which caused so much suffering among Egyptians?
Parashat Vayeira 5785
November 12, 2024
Hazzan Rabbi Luis Cattan ('20)
As Abraham reached the final stage of implementing God’s request — ready to make the ultimate sacrifice of his own son — he suddenly saw a ram caught in the bushes. At the angel’s direction, he lifted the ram and placed it on the altar in place of Isaac, offering it as the sacrifice. For Abraham, this resolved the “test” and maintained the life of his son. But what of the ram, the being that had no choice but to be sacrificed? Besides serving as a substitute for Isaac, what meaning can we derive by looking at the Akeidah from the ram’s perspective?
Parashat Vayeira 5783
November 7, 2022
How Do you Make a Well or a Ram Disappear?
By Rabbi Rob Scheinberg
Twenty years ago, two experimental psychologists at Harvard, named Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, created what has become one of the most famous experiments in the behavioral sciences.
The participants in this study were given a simple task. They just had to watch a brief video that included several people passing basketballs back and forth to each other. Three of these players were wearing white shirts, and three were wearing black shirts. The task was simple: watch the ball that was being passed among the players with the white shirts, and count how many times the basketball was passed. This is not difficult – most people came up with the right number.
Parashat Vayeira 5782
October 22, 2021
This past Sunday I visited our third grade class. One of the students asked me a question – How many letters are there in a Torah? In rabbinic school we learn that although we “Rabbis to be” will not be able to answer every question put to us, we will be able to know where to go and look for the answer to any question we cannot answer immediately. I immediately knew exactly where to go to answer this question. As the students looked on, I whipped out my cell phone and googled it! There were, I told the students, 304,805 letters in the Torah. In addition, there were 79,847 words in a Torah scroll. In fact, the Talmud tells us that the early Sages were called “soferim”, or “counters” because, so dear was the Torah to them, that they counted every letter and word. To this day, a person...
Parashat Vayeira 5780
November 15, 2019
A D’var Torah for Parashat Vayeira By Rabbi Heidi Hoover (’11) At the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Vayeira, Abraham is sitting outside his tent at the hottest part of the day. God visits him. Our rabbis tell us that this is an act of compassion on God’s part. The reason Abraham is sitting isn’t just that it’s the hottest part of the day—too hot to work or do anything, really—but also because he’s recovering from having circumcised himself, as God had commanded him to do at the end of last week’s Torah portion. This is where we derive the duty to visit the sick—we are emulating God, who visits Abraham when he is recovering from surgery. God, who is so much more important than Abraham, takes the time to come see him when he isn’t feeling well. And look at the effect it has on Abraham, who must...