Simchas Torah! Surely near the top of everyone’s list for Most Joyous Holiday, vying only with Purim as serious competition. And that starts when we are very young, too small to understand, but caught up in the excitement of the singing and dancing, each child in turn being given his or her moments in the […]

When we check the weekly sedrah reading for Shabbas Chanukah (ie the narrative of the sale of Yosef, in the weekly Parshios of Vayeishev, Mikeitz or Vayigash) looking for some prophetic hint or link to the holiday, we find to our surprise a whole host of phrases that sound familiar to us, not related to […]

To briefly review, in Part I of this article we introduced the concept that the yearly roster of the special holy-days listed in Vayikra chapter 23 within Parshas Emor might serve as an ‘organizer’ for the kepitlach of Hallel. The seven special times of Emor are: (1) Shabbos; (2) Pesach; (3) Shavuos; (4) Rosh Hashanah; […]

Everybody knows Hallel. They know it in their sleep. And everybody knows what it means. “Praise”. Every siddur translates it that way. But did you ever notice how different the kepitlach are from each other? For instance look at 113. Just as we would expect, it is full of general praise for HaShem– how He […]

It’s about time. Megillas Esther is all about time. It’s all over the entire sefer, the whole book is chock-full of times. Everywhere you look in the Megillah, there is another referent to time. A gala extravaganza planned for the third year of the reign of King Achashverosh (1:3) 180 days from the start of the festivities until the slamdunk grand […]