Shemot, 5778   Suffering and Success Why does every major accomplishment of the Jewish People seem to come at a terrible cost? Freedom came at the cost of centuries in slavery. Nationhood came at the cost of forty years of desert wandering, the death of a generation of Jews and uninvited battles with powerful tribes. Even in our times, the Jewish State seems to have been made possible by the horrors of the holocaust and it is kept viable through the constant sacrifices of beautiful young men and women to terror and war. Is suffering inherent particularly to Jewish success or i..

The right to welcome in the new must be earned by the courage to challenge the old. Shemos 5775 © Rabbi David Lapin, 2015 What the Midrash Means Series - 1:13 _________________________________   Context Notice a glaring omission in the Parsha: In setting up Moshe’s confrontation with the king of Egypt, Hashem clearly includes the zekeinim (elders) in the Jewish delegation (Shemot 3:18). However when the meeting actually happens, the zekeinim are conspicuously excluded from mention. There must be a relevant lesson in this, what is it? Our Midrash explores. Midrash ..

Parshat Shemot, 1:1-7 Stars or Insects? Shared responsibility means that each party carries 100% of that responsibility, not that each carries 50%.  So, when I suggest, as I do, that the Jewish nation was partly responsible for Egypt’s virulent anti-Semitism, that does not release the Egyptians from one iota of their responsibility. The Torah recounts a radical deterioration in the stature of the Jewish people in the first seven sentences of the Book of Shemot.  This deterioration began only after the passing on of Yaacov and his sons. The deterioration is clear from th..

Even in our dark hours, we have the capacity for Emunah, a quality that is indelibly embedded in the fabric of every Jewish soul. Dignity - in Life and in Death Browsing through some old books, I opened a holocaust work to a photograph of a row of Jews facing a trench soon to be their grave. The trench was half-filled with bodies. Behind each Jew was a smirking Nazi officer holding a gun to the back of his helpless victim's head. There was an inspiring beauty in this disturbing picture that contrasted with the sickening agony and cruelty of the scene: The uprightness and dignit..