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PARSHA POSTS: VAETCHANAN

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Aug 2, 2026, 9:43 AM

Babel in the Nine Days

The Sanhedrin's written ruling is dated 6 Menachem Av. Hold that date for a moment before anything else. Three days before Tisha B'Av. Inside the nine days when we do not build, do not celebrate, do not so much as...

Jul 30, 2026, 6:50 PM

Rediscovering Earth, Wind and Fire

One of the popular groups of my teenage years was Earth, Wind and Fire. I never heard anyone call them their favorite group, but they were a group everybody liked. In my searching twenties, water got added to the mix...

Jul 30, 2026, 4:03 AM

A Court Cannot Summon the Messiah: On the Limits of the Sanhedrin’s Authority

A reconstituted Sanhedrin has issued a ruling asking Heaven to reveal the Mashiach and rebuild the Temple. But the classical sources draw a sharp line the court has crossed. When a reconstituted Sanhedrin issues a formal ruling that asks Heaven...

Jul 28, 2026, 10:23 AM

Finding My Way Home: Parashat Va’etchanan Through the Eyes of the Husiatyn Rebbe

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Dedicated to my father, Alexander ben Rachel, with a prayer for his complete and speedy recovery—a refuah shleimah. Part I. The Prayer That Changed the Future Every year, as I read Parashat Va’etchanan, I return to the same question. Why did Hashem...

Jul 26, 2026, 6:24 AM

No One Else Can Define Our Greatness

Thursday afternoon, a Jew walking home from Tisha B’Av services was stabbed a few blocks from here. By itself, an act like that is so disturbing and infuriating. But more than that, there is the fact that it happened...

Jul 26, 2026, 6:24 AM

What Does Your Soul Eat?

We all take for granted that food nourishes the body and keeps us alive. But let me ask a simpleton’s question: why does physical food keeps the spiritual soul, our spark of life, in the body? The soul is spiritual....

Talyah Ginsberg

Jul 25, 2026, 9:32 AM

With All Your Heart…

This week’s parashah, Va’etchanan, contains one of the best-known instructions in Judaism and, on close inspection, one of the most unreasonable. “You shall love Hashem your G‑D with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.” All...

Steven C. Wernick

Jul 24, 2026, 7:34 PM

A Mourning Text Became a Morning Prayer

Robert Brym and Rhonda Lenton open their new study with a sentence that should stop every Canadian Jew cold: the golden age of Canadian Jewry ran from the early 1960s to the early 2020s, and it is over. Their Canadian...

Jul 24, 2026, 7:30 PM

Parashat Vaetchanan

The Listening That Unites the Soul There is a different silence in Vaetchanan. It is not the silence of the desert nor the silence before battle. It is the silence of a plea that will not be answered as expected....

William Hamilton

Jul 24, 2026, 6:13 PM

Last, Lasting Words

“I’m writing this down because I realize that the deadly battle we just got through isn’t the last.” This, from one of forty-nine final letters from soldiers who fell in the war Hamas started with Israel on October 7th....

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