Keeping Torah and Values in Focus
But as for me, where I get all messianic and hopeful is when I see pictures of Chareidim making tzitzis for soldiers. … We have taken a huge step forward towards the messianic ideal. I gave but one illustrative example of how much this disaster has prodded us forward. Maybe…
Is that a donkey’s hoofbeats I am hearing?
The Jewish Tribune, “The Voice of Ango-Jewish Orthodoxy since 1962” ran an excerpt of Widen Your Tent in this week’s (10th August, 2002) issue. The excerpt includes the majority of section i.2. Here’s a...
This week’s parashah (Lekh Likha), Bereishis 16:13, describes Hagar’s prayer to Hashem … Before praying one has to think about how one is relating to Hashem in that moment. …
Dear R Dr Bryode (Cc: Avodah),
Over Shabbos, I read your article about getting ChatGPT to discuss whether a kohein in a same-sex marriage may go up to duchen….
First, a large language model isn’t an AI in the sense of having a good representation of what it is talking about. Words are assigned strings of numbers, vectors, that do correlate to the word’s usage. So that king minus male will bring you to a similar vector as queen minus female. And GPT has a system for using context to distinguish the uses of the word “flies” in
“Time flies like an arrow, but
fruit flies like bananas.”
The chaburah at Zelmele’s Kloiz is now learning Derashos haRan, the third derashah. I wanted to continue a conversation we had there, in light of today being Tish’ah beAv. The following is based on...
The chaburah at Zelmele’s Kloiz started the Ran’s third derashah Thursday, June 8th, 2023. It is now ongoing at our usual time, 8pm Eastern Daylight Time.
In this derashah, the Ran discusses Moshe, Aharon, the nature of nevu’ah, Moshe’s special kind of nevu’ah, the urim vetumim, and the first mitzvos given to the Jewish People — counting months from Nissan and of Pesach.
The Medrash about Qorach rhetorically asking of Moshe why a tallis that is made of tekheiles would need one more tekheiles thread for tzitzis ties the mitzvah of tzitzis to the next story in the Chumash – Qorach. The words of the parashah about tzitzis tie it to a slightly earlier story – the meraglim. ,,,
The chaburah at Zelmele’s Kloiz finished the Ran’s second derashah… The Yaaqov – Eisav conflict plays out three times … Meanwhile the Ran continued the theme he introduced in the first derashah about Maaseh Bereishis, and the interface between the spiritual world and our physical one….
There is something I wanted to check today in Chovos haLvavos, Shaar haBitachon. … My question revolved around specific wording.
And this is only a couple of days after losing the rebbe-chaver who would have explained the original Judeo-Arabic Al Hidayah ila Faraid al-Qulub, the word Rabbeinu Bachyah ibn Pequdah actually used!
R Dr Seth Mandel not only held a PhS in Linguistics from Harvared, specializing in Semitic Languages. He is a Rav I am sure pasqened for you personally. If you ever ate meat with OU shechitah, you relied on his decision as the OU’s Rabbinic Coordinator for all of Shechitah.
We met some 44 years ago….
[A] custom arose, as recorded by the Radvaz, to come to Nabi Samwil, the traditionally identified location of his gravesite, tonight, on his yahrzeit. A bit north of Yerushalayim. And there children would get their first haircuts. When Shemu’el was weened, he was sent to the Mishkan to live. And he was a nazir, who did not cut his hair his entire life. So there is a logical connection between Shemu’el haNavi and haircuts. Also moved into the Mishkan after he was weened and he grew up there, thus giving the navi a connection to toddlers turning into boys, as well.
There are three pesuqim in which our rabbis find a source for the duty of imatatio Dei, emulating G-d, or at least — emulating the examples He shows us….
Recent Comments