As the conquest of Israel is underway, the leaders of Reuven and Gad approach Moshe and ask him to grant them the lands already conquered for grazing (Bamidbar 32), Moshe, with uncharacteristic fury, accuses them of following in the footsteps of the original ten tribal spies who had discouraged the Jews from entering the land. "And, behold, ye are risen up in your fathers' stead, a brood of sinful men," Moshe blasted them. What's behind Moshe's anger and what's the connection to the sin of the spies? Is it merely a casual connection or is there something deeper there? The motives of Reuven and Gad are obvious, but those of the spies remain unclear. Why were influential and prominent men so driven to discourage the settlement of Israel? Rebellions by the Jews in the desert largely fell into two categories. There were mass rebellions over shortages of food and water, or general panic, and attempted coups by the powerful against Moshe. The revolts o...

In Parshas Vayeishev, Yosef's brothers refer to him as "Baal Hachalomot". Translations can range from the extravagant, "Master of  Dreams" to the derisive, "Dreamer". But Yosef is indeed defined by his dreams. The era of direct interaction with G-d has temporarily ended. Of all the sons, Yosef is the one chosen to receive messages, and they are cryptic visions filled with symbols, suns, stars, moons, birds, cows, wheat, that are ripe with potent symbolism. His father Yaakov had been the first to communicate with G-d more heavily through symbols, a ladder, animals in the field, but he had received verbal messages of plain meaning. Yosef does not appear to. Though Yosef is defined by dreams, he only receives two of his own, as a teenager. The latter two sets of dreams are those of others, Egyptian ministers and Pharaoh, interpreted by him. These dreams are divided into three pairs of two. Each dream has a counterpart. Yosef first dreams two dreams....

Parshas Lech Lecha begins with a command to Avraham to undertake a journey. The biblical patriarch's journey is not merely in space. All journeys in the Torah are also journeys of faith. The physical act of putting one foot in front of another is also a spiritual and emotional experience culminating in the journey through the desert after the redemption from Egyptian slavery and the exile of the Jewish people. The biblical patriarch is being commanded to go on a spiritual journey of faith. This is not a mere mental exercise. Nor is it a physical one. Or even a personal one. If it were, there would be no reason for us to be reviewing his story all these many thousands of years later. Instead, what Avraham finds on that journey has transformed the world and brought into being the world that we live in today. In the parsha, G-d makes one of a number of promises to Avraham, in this one, right before the Brit Bein HaBetarim, the Covenant of Parts, and after the battle with the fou...

"Haman min ha'Torah minayin?" The gemara famously asks.  Where in the Torah do we see Haman? The unexpected answer to this odd question is, "Hamin haetz". The question that G-d asks Adam and Chava. "Did you eat from the tree I forbade you to eat from?" What's the connection between the two very different parts of the Torah? Bereishis comes at the beginning of the Torah. The story of Purim comes at the end. What is the connection between the Etz HaDaat, the tree of knowledge, and Purim? Purim's most famous mitzvah is drinking ad de lo today, until you can't tell apart Haman and Mordechai. One view is that the fruit of the tree of knowledge was the grapevine. Wine is also the driving force behind Purim, Ahasverosh gets drunk, disposes of Vashti, marries Esther, gets drunk again and disposes of Haman. Wine is the classic example of the Etz HaDaat. It mixes together good and evil. It unleashes the good and t...

At the very beginning of Parshas Vayeishev, Yosef is referred to as a 'Na'ar', a lad, an immature boy, in comparison to all his older brothers. And yet, we are told in the next pasuk that his father Yaakov loved him because he was a "Ben zekunim". One of the meanings of that phrase is that Yosef was sagely, he was wise in the way that the old are. How could Yosef be both young and old? How could his brothers see him as an immature boy trying to take what was rightfully theirs while his father saw him as sagely? One of the meanings of Avrech, the name that he is hailed by in Egypt, is young in years but a father in wisdom. That's still the term we use for a young married man who learns Torah in an academic setting. How could Yosef be both old and young, wise and immature at the same time? And what can we learn from him? Why did Yosef's brothers hate him so much? It was his dreams that infuriated them. And they refer to him only sourly as the ...

Haazinu is one of the Torah's songs. And yet it's different from what we think of as a song. Consider the Shirat Al HaYam, the song after the splitting of the sea, or the song that King David sings in an alternate haftorah for the Parsha (if it wasn't read between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) in gratitude to G-d for His salvation. Haazinu is quite different. In two ways. Rosh Hashana is different from all other Yomim Tovim, holidays, in the same two ways that Haazinu is different from the Torah's other songs. Yom Tov means, literally, a good day. And that's what holidays generally are. They are days on which we celebrate G-d's goodness, His past miracles and what they mean for our lives and our religion. Rosh Hashana is rather less celebratory. It has its holiday aspect, but it is also a time of judgment when Sifrei Chayim U'Meitim, the books of life and death are open, and when our fate for the year is determined. It is a time of feasting and celebr...