Yitzchok Adlerstein

Parshas Chukas For good reason, the mitzvah of parah adumah has become identified as the ultimate chok . After all, it is a complete enigma

Parshas Balak No ordinary dust, this. According to Chazal, Bilaam here reacted in awe at the wilderness landscape before him.

Parshas Pinchas Rashi makes the inference: “There was no man…” of that generation who made it into the Land – but there were plenty of women.

Parshas Matos Rashi explains the significance of this “delivery.” We are told about it, he says (citing Chazal), to show the praiseworthiness of the great shepherds of Israel.

It used to be that opponents of religion depicted it as getting people to believe unreasonable things they never saw. The Paris opening flipped that. You heard the lame non-apologies. If you rejected them, as I did, it was because you trusted your eyes more than the unreasonable excuses you heard through MSM. What you saw was an attempt to take something Christians see as holy and ridicule it in the extreme. The target of that mockery was not limited to Christianity per se, but to all who manifest intense belief in a God who has normative demands on human beings. That includes Jews.

Parshas Devarim This does not sound like the story we read about in parsha s Chukas.

Parshas Vaeschanan A medrash finds the origins of the Shema in this opening pasuk of the Aseres Hadibros Hashem opened, by saying, “Hear

If the context of this line had been an undeserving Klal Yisrael to which Hashem nonetheless promises His saving grace, we would find no problem.

Chazal see in this pasuk a defense of Divine justice. “Now that HKBH announced this at Sinai, [we can appreciate that] ‘It is not from the dictate of the Most High that evils and good emerge.'

Presumably, the Kohanim were not there to check on the king's penmanship. So why does the Torah specify that he must copy his scroll in their presence?