The Parsha Podcast - With Rabbi Yaakov Wolbe

In the Torah’s final Parsha, and indeed, in its final words, we say goodbye to the greatest human to have ever lived. With the passing of Moshe, the Torah ends, and on Simchas Torah- the day that we finish the yearly Torah cycle – we roll the scroll back to the very beginning and begin […]

The final parsha of the Torah details the blessings that Moshe conveyed to the tribes of Israel immediately prior to his passing, and the Torah ends with the description of the death, burial, and eulogy of Moshe. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – […]

On Yom Kippur afternoon, we read the 48-verse Book of Jonah, which tells of a renegade prophet, Jonah, who defies the directive of God and refuses to castigate the people of Nineveh and instead escapes from God to Tarshish – with mixed results. A simple reading of the story reveals a tale of repentance, both of […]

On the final day of Moshe’s life, he conveys the Song of Haazinu to the nation. In this masterful prophetic Song, the Torah overviews Jewish history, past, present, future, and Messiah. In this penultimate parsha podcast we focus on what happens afterwards. After the Song, Moshe shares a few pithy words about the nature of […]

The Song of Haazinu is a richly textured tapestry with layered meaning and subtleties. Our Sages tell us that it incorporates all of Jewish History. In its 613 words, it incorporates all of Torah as well. And it is arguably the most difficult Torah portion to decipher and unpack. In this special penultimate podcast of […]

Still in the final day of Moshe’s life, he conveys to the nation a 43-verse Song predicting the contours of Jewish history, both past, present, and future. The patterns are familiar to the readers of Deuteronomy and even casual observers and students of Jewish history: The nation is recipients of tremendous divine goodness, yet they […]

On the second day of Rosh Hashana, we read the Torah section of Genesis chapter 22 that tells the very famous and quite troubling episode of the Binding of Isaac. Abraham – the same Abraham who railed against the ways of child sacrifice of the pagans – is instructed by God to take Isaac – the same Isaac […]

The Torah readings for the two days of Rosh Hashana were not arbitrarily chosen. There are very good reasons why on the first day of Rosh Hashana we read Genesis chapter 21, which tells of the conception and birth of Isaac, and the banishment of Ishmael, his brush with death, and his salvation. In this […]

On the final day of Moshe’s life, he gathers the entire nation for a parting message. After forging another covenant between the nation and God and explicating the consequences thereof, Moshe presents the nation with a choice: “Behold I have placed before you today: life and good vs. death and bad… Choose life.” There are […]

With the entire nation gathered on his final day of life, Moshe warns the people against being seduced by idolatry. The nation, Moshe reveals, is particularly vulnerable to idolatry because of the people whose land through which we have traversed. We saw the Egyptian fascination with idolatry. We saw the various other nations obsession with […]

On the final day of Moshe’s life, he gathered the entire nation – men, women, children, and according to the Talmud, all souls of future Jews – to pass them through a final covenant with God. The parsha also contains the prophetic predictions of the Messianic times, and it ends with a simple, binary choice: […]

The Torah has a surprising view on joy and how to attain it. The prevailing attitude in our society is that a person’s state of joy is contingent upon circumstance: In good days, people tend to feel a bit more joyous. On bad days, it’s more difficult to feel joy. Joy, according to society, is […]

Our parsha contains perhaps the most difficult Torah portion to read and digest: The Tochacha (Admonition). In it we are told the consequences of our deeds. If obey the Almighty and hearken to His commandments, He will reward us with bountiful blessings. Should we deviate from Him and repudiate His Torah, however, He promises to […]

As the Book of Deuteronomy draws to its conclusion, the narrative makes a transition: Moshe finishes conveying the mitzvos to the nation, and sets up his final parting message to the people. First, he commands the nation to perform several elaborate ceremonies on the very first day that they cross the Jordan River; then he […]

Our parsha begins with the unusual law of the marriage of a Jewish warrior and an enemy captive woman. When a Jewish warrior spots a prisoner of war that he desires to marry, there is a process and a protocol for how he may marry her. The Talmud (also featured by Rashi) offers a very […]

The Midrash in our parsha calculates that the Torah contains 613 mitzvos, 248 positive mitzvos, where the Torah commands us to do something proactive, and 365 negative mitzvos, where we are instructed to refrain from transgressing the Almighty’s will. These figures are not coincidental. They are precisely targeted to enable us to accomplish our life’s […]

In the parsha that contains the most mitzvos of any of the 54 Torah sections (a staggering 74 mitzvos), we read about the wayward and rebellious son, the requirement to build a fence around your roof to prevent tragedy, two episodes that we are mandated to remember, and many, many more interesting and insightful mitzvos. […]

The nation is on the doorstep of Canaan. In our Parsha, the people are instructed in how they must treat the Canaanite inhabitants of the land. It’s not pleasant. The people are told that they must engage in total war against these nations. How do we understand the requirement to be so violent and aggressive […]

Justice is a virtue that we must vigorously pursue. Our Parsha begins by instructing us to establish a court system with judges and bailiffs throughout our gates and tribes. The judge is tasked with determining the merits of every case and the bailiff is in charge of implementation. This two-tiered model is not limited to […]

This week we learn the laws governing all kinds of leaders: The parsha begins by detailing the laws of judges, the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court, and what happens to rebellious judges; we read about the unique laws related to kings; there are more laws pertaining to the Kohanim; and we find the […]

The Parsha ends with a delineation of the festivals. When discussing Passover, the verse notes that for 7 days we eat matzah because we left Egypt within great haste. The Exodus was so rapid and frantic, that the dough that we had been preparing was unable to rise and we did not have fluffy, puffy […]

Moshe begins our parsha by presenting the Nation with a choice: See, I have placed before you today blessing and curse. And he continues to state that the blessing is the steadfast observance of the commandments of the Almighty, while the curse is the repudiation of said commandments. In this special edition of the Parsha […]

This week’s parsha marks a transition in the Book of Deuteronomy: it is no longer primarily about admonishment and rebuke and warnings, instead we read a bevy of mitzvos – some repetitions and some new ones that have hitherto not been mentioned. – – – – – – – – – – – – – […]

A ubiquitous feature in Jewish homes, the Mezuzah contains a scroll with two paragraphs from the Torah, one from this week’s Parsha and one from last week’s. This mitzvah bears a distinction that it shares with no other mitzvah. In this interesting and useful podcast, we explore the secrets represented by the Mezuzah, and learn […]

The Torah contains a lot of details regarding what the Almighty expects of us. A verse in our parsha purports to get to the bottom line of what – in one sentence – does God actually want of us. But after reading the verse we emerge with more questions than answers. While ostensibly touting simplicity […]

We pick up where we left off last week amid Moshe’s speech to the nation before his passing, and as in the previous few weeks, Parshas Eikev is jam packed with insights and timeless lessons. Moshe pivots between looking back on the conduct of the nation in the preceding 40 years and admonishing them for […]

As a result of Moshe’s sin of striking the rock, he was barred from crossing over the Jordan River and entering the Land of Canaan. In Moshe’s speech to the nation, he recounts how he petitioned God to have this decree rescinded. When studying Moshe’s prayer to enter the Land, we discover several incredible insights […]

Moshe was very desirous of entering the Land. The Midrash reveals that he prayed 515 separate prayers to petition God to revoke His ban on Moshe entering the Land. But God said no. You may not enter the Land, though He allowed Moshe to visualize the Land from atop a mountain. The dialogue between Moshe […]

This week’s parsha continues Moshe’s monologue to the nation in the weeks preceding his passing. He begins by recounting his repeated efforts in trying to convince God to rescind His decree that Moshe not enter the Land; Moshe then begins the retelling of the Torah; and we read many warnings and predictions about proper behavior […]

In his speech to the Nation, Moshe revisits the episode of the Spies that occurred 39 years prior. When the nation was on the verge of entering the Land, Moshe commissioned 12 distinguished men to reconnoiter the Land and to share their findings with the nation. It was a debacle and a fiasco. As a […]

At the end of Moshe’s life, he gathers the entire nation for his parting message to the nation. The Midrash makes a remarkable contrast between Moshe’s beginning and end of his tenure: When God initially commanded Moshe to save his brethren from enslavement in Egypt, Moshe protested by saying that he is not a man […]

5 weeks before his passing, Moses gives a three-parsha-long speech to the nation, which constitutes his last will and testament. He begins with a retrospective of the history of the nation over the past 40 years since the Exodus – subtly rebuking the nation, guiding them, admonishing them, ensuring that they don’t repeat their mistakes […]

What did the nation do over the course of the 40 years in the wilderness? What was their objective? In our parsha we read that the nation stopped in 42 locations over the course of their 40-year sojourn. The Torah delineates the names of the 42 different venues where the nation encamped. What is the […]

Our parsha contains the laws regarding a person who murders someone accidentally. We are told that the accidental murderer must flee to the city of refuge and remain there until the passing of the High Priest. Although we have neither a High Priest nor a Jewish court of laws that adjudicates as per the laws […]

This year, the Book of Numbers ends with a double parsha – Mattos and Masei. We learn about the laws of vows and oaths; the miraculous war with Midian; the unusual request of the tribes of Gad and Reuben; the Torah delineates the 42 different places that the Nation encamped for their 40 year sojourn; […]

Korach’s rebellion claimed many victims: Some of the perpetrators were swallowed up in a miraculous sinkhole; some were consumed by a divine fire; and some were killed in a plague. In our Parsha, we discover that the sons of Korach did not die. Although they were participants in the rebellion initially, at the very last […]

Over the course of the 40 years since the Exodus, the Nation was lead by Moshe and Aaron, the King and High Priest respectively. In our Parsha, successors are designated for both posts. Due to his valiant heroism of the end of last week’s portion, Pinchas is promoted to being a kohein. He would go […]

Pinchas was a man of action, a zealot who avenged God’s vengeance and was handsomely rewarded for it. In this parsha we read about his reward, Moses’ succession plan, the methods through which the Land will be divided, and another census is done. – – – – – – – – – – – – […]

In the first of this week’s double parsha, we read about the death of two giants: Miriam and Aaron, Moshe’s older sister and brother, pass away. Our sages tell us that the death of the righteous serves as an atonement in a way similar to sacrifices. Just as sacrifices atone, so too does the death […]

Our parsha contains an attempted genocide. Bilaam, the prophet of the idolaters, a man of prodigious ability an skill, dedicates himself with tenacity and persistence to curse and destroy the people. Although his three attempts at cursing the nation backfire when he is compelled by God to bless the nation instead, the parsha ends with […]

The red cow is the Torah’s most mysterious mitzvah. We are told to take a completely red cow and slaughter it, and burn it’s body together with a concoction of other ingredients, the ashes of which become the potion to purify people who have come into contact with dead people. If that doesn’t make sense […]

In Parshas Chukas, we read about a highly unusual mitzvah: The Red Heifer, when an entirely red cow is burned together with a motley concoction of ingredients, and the resultant ashes are used to sprinkle on people that came into contact with dead people in order to purify them from their spiritual contamination. We also […]

Korach was immensely talented. He was enormously rich, he was clever, and he was devilishly persuasive. His rebellion, however, was doomed from the start. What are the roots of Korach’s rebellion? Why was Jacob dead-set on not having his name associated with Korach? In this Parsha Podcast we engage in a profound study of the […]

Korach was a very talented man with a sterling pedigree. He was wise and clever and even had a degree of prophetic clairvoyance. Yet he blundered egregiously by launching a revolt on Moshe and Aaron. When we study what triggered this rebellion we find that Korach has a seemingly legitimate grievance. He believed – and […]

In this week’s parsha, Moshe and Aaron’s first cousin, a man named Korach, launches a rebellion claiming that Moshe is guilty of nepotism in appointing his brother as High Priest. What ensued should give one serious pause before engaging in any similar sort of divisive activities. – – – – – – – – – […]

The nation was on the cusp of entering the Land. After about a year at Sinai, the nation was ready to conquer Canaan. The invasion and war of conquest was imminent. Then catastrophe struck. Moshe sent 12 spies to reconnoiter the Land and report the back with their findings. Their report completely deflated the spirit […]

The final five verses of our Parsha contain the third paragraph of the Shema. In it, we are instructed to place tzitzis strings wrapped with a string of blue techeiles wool on the corner of our garments. Why? “And you shall see them and remember all the mitzvos of Hashem and you shall do them, […]

The Jewish people were on the cusp of entering the Land of Canaan, and made a prudent, but ultimately tragic, decision: To send a contingent of scouts to reconnoiter the Land, to examine its vulnerabilities and weaknesses in order to best plan the conquest. Unfortunately, the report of the scouts sent the nation into a […]

After a year at Sinai, the nation is finally on the move. Following the precise protocol of disassembly and decampment, the nation marches off from Sinai. Destination: Land of Canaan. At least that was the plan. More about that next week. In this week’s podcast we explore the events surrounding the Nation’s journey from Sinai. […]

Aaron the High Priest held a critical leadership role in the nation. A partial list of his jobs: he offered sacrifices, he did the Yom Kippur services which included the annual trip to the Holy of Holies, and he blessed the people. But there was one job that he was excluded for: When the princes […]