PARSHA POSTS: BEHAR

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Jul 1, 2024, 8:41 PM

Modern-Day Maccabees

Forget the Deer. Be the Lion. Attack your Fear. Jews are feeling ever more isolated. It seems like the patients are running the asylum. Respectable nations of the world are unilaterally gifting Hamas its own country—an unequivocal message to terrorists everywhere...

Jonathan Weinkle

May 28, 2024, 8:10 AM

I grew up watching Happy Days on TV. In one episode, Arnold’s, the drive-in “greasy spoon” where the characters all hang out, burns to the ground. When the gang tours the wreckage after the fire, Fonzie (played by Henry...

William Hamilton

May 24, 2024, 6:31 PM

“The world was created on the merit of three things: the First Fruits offering, Tithes, and Challah,” say the sages (Yalkut Gen. 1:2). Why these three? Because each of them is a reminder that human beings ultimately own nothing....

May 24, 2024, 6:24 PM

Slaves for all Time—In Perpetuity: Parshat Behar

Years ago, a colleague of mine, asked me to write a paper together with her on the topic of sexual trafficking in women. We published an article together and I then went on to write another article without her...

Sharona Margolin Halickman

May 24, 2024, 3:42 PM

Avoiding fraud when buying and selling property

The Talmud in Bava Metzia 56a teaches that the sale of land is not subject to price fraud. This is derived from Parsha Behar, Vayikra 25:14: If you sell anything to your neighbor, or purchase something from the hand of your...

May 23, 2024, 10:57 AM

Israel-Hamas War 5784: Home again, to stay

Pioneers build a new settlement in 1949. (Courtesy KKL-JNF/Avraham Malovsky)

Israel is simply not an imperialist settler colonial state, for 19th-century Zionists first purchased, and then settled and worked their homeland (Behar)

Mordechai Silverstein

May 23, 2024, 10:49 AM

Watch Your Tongue

The sages were careful readers of Scripture, taking note of any unusual expression or seeming redundancy to cull something new regarding God’s will. The parasha opens with a discussion of the Yovel (the Jubilee year), the fiftieth year, following...

May 23, 2024, 10:48 AM

The “total victory” conundrum—lessons from Shemita

From the very beginning of the war and until this very day, Prime Minister Netanyahu has declared that the war against Hamas will not end until Israel has achieved “total victory”. Now, aside from the difficulty of defining what...

Ben-Tzion Spitz

May 22, 2024, 11:06 PM

The Snake’s Illusion (Behar)

"Snake's Illusion" (AI image by author)

A banker is a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. -Mark Twain The Torah assigns two descriptions to the sin of lending or borrowing with interest...

May 22, 2024, 1:11 AM

‘The Cardinals’ Parashat Behar 5784

The number seven plays a prominent role in Judaism. On the second night of the seven-day festival of Passover, we begin counting the “Omer”. Each night we count, until forty nine days later, after seven weeks of seven days...

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