Torah Thoughts, Stories, and Inspiration on the weekly Parsha
“And he arrived at the place…” (28:11) In this week’s Parsha, we are told that our patriarch Yaakov was traveling. He laid down to go to sleep and he had a dream. When Yaakov awoke from his dream he was immediately spurred to action. He recognized the holiness of the place and the importance of…
And the children struggled within her…” (25:22) Rashi cites the sages who say that when Rivkah passed by the Torah study halls of Shaim, and Aiver, Yaakov tried to come out. When she passed by places of idol worship Eisav tried to get out. The question arises: We can understand why Eisav tried to go to…
“Now Avraham was old, he came with his days”(24:1) “Now Avraham was old, he came with his days” (24:1) There is an idea here expressed by many commentaries that when the verse says that Avraham came with all his days, we learn that not one day in Avraham’s life was wasted. Each and every day he accomplished something. (Maayanah Shel…
“Hashem appeared to him in the plains of Mamre…” (18:1) Rashi cites the Medrash that Hashem appeared to Avraham on the territory of Mamre because Mamre gave Avraham the advice to perform the circumcision. Rav Yeruchim Levovitz zt”l stated that from here we see the great merit of giving people good advice. When Hashem commanded Avraham to…
…לך-לך מארצך “Go forth from your land…” (12:1) There is a tremendous anomaly in the first Pasuk in this week’s Parsha. It contains six final Chof letters (ך), almost in succession. What is the deeper message? I heard from Rav Yitzchok Fingerer shlit”a that the gematria (numerical value) of a Chof is 20. The total…
מן הבהמה “Of the pure animal, and of the animal that is not pure.” (7:8) The Gemara (Pesachim 3) learns from this passuk that the Torah is particular to choose only untainted words. When Noach was commanded to take two of each type of non-clean animal into the ark, Hashem used five words, “u’min habeheimah…
בראשית ברא… “In the beginning of Hashem’s creating the heavens and earth …” (1:1) I heard from Rav Yitzchok Fingerer that the first letters in the opening Pasuk stress the fact that the building blocks for the creation of the universe were the twenty-two letters of the Aleph Beis. The first letters of each word,…
