This Blog is about many different things. My readers should understand that my writings on Torah based topics are not meant to be authoritative. Indeed in the community in which I live there are people who never seek to enlarge upon a theme which has not been previously documented by mefarshim (commentaries) or chazal. In traditional discussion of Jewish Law, you will often see people speak of what Chazal says about a matter. Chazal is not a single person; the term refers collectively to the consensus of authoritative opinion, in much the same way that we might speak of what Congress says or what the Supreme Court says. Chazal is an acronym of the Hebrew phrase Chachameinu Zichronam Liv’racha, which means “our sages of blessed memory” or “our sages, may their memory be a blessing.” In its strictest sense, Chazal refers to the final opinion expressed in the Talmud, but the term is sometimes used more loosely to refer to the generally accepted opinion of any of the wise people who have contributed to Jewish law. Source of explanation above from: www.jewfaq.org Judaism 101, click here to go there. Followers of this blog may have noticed that that only the newest topic would

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Before I open this discourse, I want to inform my readers that it is my understanding that the entire “University System” is based on the Greek model of education. The Socratic method, where the teacher focuses the discussion by asking a series of questions, and then seeks to elicit the answers is all but mandated in most in most public schools throughout the country. At least in theory the idea makes a great deal of sense, you seek to involve the student in the material by asking questions that are designed to pull them into the subject, to get them involved. In practice however I would say like so many things that are mandated, it becomes a great failure partially , because it becomes more of a game of “guess what I am thinking” so that now I can write it on the board, and you can then copy it down in your notes. Chanukah, Did we win the battle, but lose the war. in order to answer the question we need to ask ourselves what were we fighting for. When I type the well known spelling of the word Chanukah (a proper noun I believe) it is underlined in

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I have been avoiding writing original material directly on the Torah Parsha (the weekly portion of Torah which is publicly read in shul each shabbos) for some very specific reasons. One simple reason has to do with the fact that there is always a great deal of written information from various sources which can readily be found on the web which highlight different things. An additional reason is that if I lead with my strongest ideas; which are uniquely my own personal take and understanding of any given Torah portion, then there is always the possibility that I may have understood something incorrectly. By understanding something incorrectly and then actually publishing the piece right here on this web site, then I may run the risk of misleading someone. There is a prohibition in the Torah  which states that one may not throw stumbling blocks in front of the blind. This prohibition can be both understood literally as well as extended into areas where one could mislead someone even in such things as learning. At the place where I have been doing the most of my Torah learning during the week, we have been learning form a sefer called Siftei Chaim by Rabbi Chaim Friedlander.

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