Beshalach D'var Torah

After the Israelites had been let go by Pharaoh, God made Pharaoh have a change of heart and decide to pursue the Israelites. As the Egyptians approached, God gave Moses the power to part the Red Sea, and he made the Egyptians more stubborn at the same time so they would continue to follow the Israelites. The Israelites successfully crossed the sea, and the water closed on the Egyptians so they drowned. The Israelites sang a few songs, and then continued their journey. At one stop, God made it so that throwing wood into water made it good to drink, and God also promised to prevent the Israelites from getting diseases as long as they were faithful to him. At another stop, the people were hungry, so God made it rain food from the sky every morning (and a double portion on Friday so the people wouldn’t have to gather any on Shabbat). The food was named manna, and the Israelites ate it for forty years.

Vaera D'var Torah

Vaera

God sent Moses to talk to Pharaoh, and he sent Aaron with him because Moses had impeded speech. When they got there, they used God’s powers to prove that God had sent them, by turning Aaron’s staff into a snake. Then, God told Moses and Aaron to go and ask Pharaoh to free the Israelites, and if he didn’t listen they should use the staff to turn all of the water in the Nile into blood. They asked Pharaoh, he said no, and they turned the water to blood. The same process happened with the following plagues of frogs, lice, insects, cattle disease, boils, and hail. After the hail, Pharaoh finally said that the Israelites could leave, so Moses made the hail and thunder stop. However, since it stopped, Pharaoh changed his mind and made the Israelites stay.

Israel Affairs January 2021

January 2021

    Unlike America, Israel is a Jewish state and many people in Israel follow the rules of the Torah. One of those rules is not to eat leavened bread on Passover. Some orthodox Jews think that hospitals should not let hametz in during passover. On Sunday, the 10th, the high court of Israel decided not to hold a new hearing about the problem of bringing hametz into hospitals during Passover. The court had ruled that they would not restrict what foods people could bring into hospitals during Passover. There are many different conflicting opinions on this topic. Some believe that there should be no hametz allowed in hospitals during Passover, some believe that it should be the hospitals choice and some believe there should be more compromise on both sides.

Shemot D'var Torah

 Shemot

After Jacob and his sons came to live in Egypt with Joseph, they started having kids and so their numbers multiplied and increased significantly. After Joseph and his brothers died, there was a new king in charge of Egypt, and he decided to enslave them because there were too many Israelites. Pharaoh then told two Hebrew midwives to kill all of the Hebrew boys born, to stop the Israelites from growing. They failed at this, because the women giving birth wouldn’t let them. So instead, Pharaoh told his people to throw all of the baby boys into the Nile. 

A Levite man and woman had a baby, and when the woman saw how beautiful her baby boy was, she hid him for three months. When she couldn’t hide him any longer, she made a basket for the baby, put him in it, and sent it floating down the Nile. His sister followed him to see what would happen. Pharaoh’s daughter was bathing in the Nile, and she found the basket. She opened it and saw a baby, and realized that he was a Hebrew child. The baby’s sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter if she needed help finding someone to care for him, and she said yes, so the sister went to get the mother of the baby. Once the baby grew up, his sister brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who named him Moses. 

When Moses was grown up, one day he saw an Egyptian man beating up a Hebrew man. So, once the Egyptian was alone, Moses killed him and hid him in the sand. The next day, he saw two Hebrews fighting and asked one why he hit the other. He replied, “Who made you chief and ruler over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” This alerted Moses that people had found out about what he did. When Pharaoh heard what happened, he wanted to kill Moses, but Moses ran away, to the land of Midian.

The priest of Midian had seven daughters, who went to a well to get water for their fathers’ sheep. When they got there, some shepherds tried to stop them from getting water, but Moses defended them and helped them get water. Because of this, the priest invited Moses to stay with them, and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses as his wife. A long time after that, the Egyptian Pharaoh died, and the Israelites were suffering a lot and cried for help to God. God heard them, and remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so he watched over the Israelites.

An angel from God appeared to Moses from a burning bush, but even though it was on fire, it wasn’t consumed. God called to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

Moses replied, “Here I am.” God then explained to Moses that he needed to help free the Israelites from slavery im Egypt.  God told him to go talk to the Pharaoh and tell him to free the Israelites, because God said so. Additionally, in order to make them believe that God had really sent Moses, Moses’ rod would turn into a snake when he tapped it on the ground, because God made it do that. He also gave Moses two more impossible things to help convince the Egyptians that God was with Moses. After this, Moses told God that he is slow of speech and he’s probably not the right person, so God sent Aaron, Moses’ brother, along with Moses so Aaron could do the talking.

At a camp at night on the way to Egypt, God wanted to kill Moses. Zipporah (his wife) circumcised his son, and apparently that made God happy and not want to kill Moses.

Moses and Aaron met together and gathered the Israelite elders so that they could explain what God had said.

After all this, Moses and Aaron finally made their way to Egypt to talk to Pharaoh. They asked Pharaoh to let their people go so that they could celebrate a festival for God for three days in the woods. But the Pharaoh didn’t believe in God, and said, “Moses and Aaron, why do you distract the people from their tasks? Get to your labors!”