A Nation Of Nonbelievers

Devir Kahan
Machshavah, Parsha, God

Amongst the most preeminent themes of Parshas Beshalach is without question that of emunah, belief in God. The stories of the parsha all seem to focus around the Jewish people finding their faith in the Divine. And yet, it is just as much a parsha of non-belief, and a lack of faith in God...

The Reason Why Men Shouldn’t Wear Tefillin (Sometimes)

Devir Kahan
Halacha, Machshavah, Parsha

As the Jewish people leave Egypt in this week's parsha, they are given the mitzvah of tefillin as a commemoration and memorial of the leaving of Egypt. It used to be that people wore tefillin all day long, but as it became more difficult to keep a clean body the whole day, the amount of time people wore tefillin was reduced to just shacharis. What is important to understand, however, is that tefillin and praying are not really connected...

A Divine Name & The Unlikeliness Of The Universe

Devir Kahan
Parsha, Science, God

It is well known that the Torah uses different names to refer to God at different points in the narrative so as to convey different aspects of God’s manifestation and interaction with the world. Each name is specifically chosen in each context, and each has its own unique meaning. This is all quite a topic unto itself — especially given modern Biblical scholarship — and we shall thusly save it for another time. Nonetheless, herein we shall focus on one of the Divine names in particular and discover something truly astonishing...

Common Misconceptions: Saying “The Rambam”

Devir Kahan
Language

It is common in modern Rabbinic (and just generally Jewish) parlance to refer to certain scholars with the word “the” preceding the name. For instance: “the Rambam”, “the Ramban”, “the Rashba”, and on and on. Many are careful, though, to refrain from doing this as it is grammatically incorrect, and instead say simply “Rambam” or “Ramban”...

Justifying The Murder Of A Nation?: A Study Of The Morality Of Shimon And Levi

Moshe Bochner
Machshavah, History

After the Allied bombing of the German city of Dresden at the end of World War II, resulting in the death of an estimated 25,000 civilians and destroying much of the city, there was much controversy as to the moral justification and legal basis for the attacks. Ever ready for sensational propaganda, the German government seized the opportunity, exaggerating the number of civilian deaths nearly tenfold, while using the attacks as a pretext for abandoning previously signed agreements on humanitarian rights, and claiming that the city of Dresden had no war industries and was solely a cultural center...

Perspectives On New Year’s Day

Devir Kahan
Rosh HaShanah, Holidays, New Year's Day

The history of New Year’s Day is a complicated and most interesting one. The short version of it all goes essentially as follows: In ancient Rome, as the calendar was being formed and reformed, it was decided that a month should be named after the Roman God Janus who represented transitions, doors, gates, and beginnings. This month came to be known as January. Given the God that it represented, the first day of the month became the start of the new year, and was a day of festivities in celebration of new beginnings...

Candle Of Suburbia

Eliezer Berger
Machshavah, Editorial

In Jewish circles, there is a huge upper-middle-class contingent (if not the majority) that resides in suburban America (like many other Americans). Despite being incomparable to the European shtetl, suburbia still manages to give the exilic Jewish psyche room to wander while providing communal insulation. In America, those features act in very different ways than they might have in Europe. The openness and breadth of possibility, combined with cozy separation, has well-nourished the ambiguous creature known as “Modern Orthodoxy”...

Common Misconceptions: Gesticulation During Tefillah

Devir Kahan
Misconceptions

Many have the practice — conscious or not — to raise their hands, or otherwise gesticulate, whilst in the midst of praying. This is most common during the Amidah, more commonly known as Shemoneh Esrei. While for many this comes out of a deep concentration and a genuine emotional state during tefillah, there may be a number of problems with praying in such a manner...

Hashgacha Pratis (Part 6): Ramban’s Position On The Matter

Devir Kahan
Hashgacha

Thus far in our studies of Hashgacha Pratis we have seen the very basics, and then moved on to Rambam in order to explain the  concept at length, in its various details. Being the “supreme rationalist” that Rambam is often painted as, some might write his position off as being just that — merely a “rationalist” perspective on the matter; sterile and devoid of all emotion. The fact of the matter is, however, that far from being unique in his approach to Hashgacha Pratis, Rambam is in fact quite normative amongst the Rishonim. Indeed, we shall now examine the perspective of Ramban (Nachmanides), the “supreme Kabbalist”, on the topic of Hashgacha Pratis so as to compare his perspective on the matter to Rambam’s. After all, Rambam and Ramban are two of the absolute greatest and most revered of our sages. If both the “rationalist” and the “Kabbalist” giants of the Rishonim agree on the matter, it is safe to assume that such is the proper Jewish tradition and view of the matter...

Why We Remember

Eliezer Berger
Machshavah

Human consciousness expresses itself in many functions. One of these is the faculty of memory. When we remember things, we consider this useful in some pragmatic way (e.g. remembering your phone, the math you studied, or the pie in the oven). This allows us to be productive. Emotional memories provide an emotional stimulation that makes us feel a certain way. Sensory memory is almost instinctual, were it not for our ability to think about our associations and make choices. And yet, with all the marvelous feats that memory displays (which have certainly not been summarized adequately here), we find it hard to relate to our own memories. When we remember childhood interests, we may have sensory and emotional memory, but no usefulness; no concept is attached to this, because we have changed since the time of the experience. When we get an ice cream craving, it’s a distraction, albeit a vivid and forceful one. When we daydream, we go nowhere other than into the messy recesses of the mind. And don’t even ask about “remembering” things like Yetzi’as Mitzrayim or Creation. It seems like a category error to call that “memory”...

Amos 5:1-17: It’s All In The Past

Yaacov Bronstein
Amos

This following section serves as a convenient methodological demonstration of establishing the perspective and chronological contours of a prophetic speech. We have already dealt with the challenges of establishing a chronology between different speeches, but it sometimes occurs that even within a single speech the chronological perspective of different material is difficult to discern and bifurcate, as the Navi shifts the spoken scene to accommodate his rhetorical needs...

Love, Brotherhood, & The Botanist: A Reading Of Haftaras Vayigash

Devir Kahan
Parsha

Most people consider there to be two parts of Neviim — there are the interesting bits, and then there are the actual prophecies contained in sections like Trei Asar and so forth that most people never learn. This is an understandable phenomena. The prophecies contained in most of Neviim are esoteric and fantastical, redundant, and can easily be summarized with one of the following proclamations: “Do good or you’ll be punished”; “Good things will come after the darkness”. In this essay we shall study the Haftarah of Vayigash in an attempt to show the deeper meanings and insights contained therein, with the hopes of emerging with a greater appreciation for all of Tanach...

Why Didn’t Yosef Contact His Father?

Devir Kahan
Parsha

There is an interesting moral dilemma that arrises in the parshios at the end of Bereishis. The issue that confronts us is as follows: How could Yosef not have contacted his grieving father to let him know that he was still alive? Once Yosef rose to power, surely he was capable of sending a messenger to his distraught father — yet he does not do so. How could he possibly act in this way? Why wouldn’t he have gotten word to his father that he was, in fact, alive and ruling a country? Indeed, Ramban poses the question quite well...

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