The Torah’s first verse is purposely unclear. As the Ramban (Nachmanides) points out, the deepest truths of how the universe was created are unfathomable and inscrutable, hidden, ultimately, in the realm of mysticism, not physical science.
It is intriguing, though, that the Torah’s first word, “Bereishis,” implies, as the Seforno explicitly states, that time itself is a creation – a notion that comports with traditional cosmological physics (if not with scientists who, terrified at the notion of a “beginning,” postulate a “multiverse” of universes, conveniently beyond observation).
Likewise intriguing is that, according to the Talmud, the Torah’s first word can be split into two words, “bara” and “shis.” While the Gemara sees in “shis” a hint to an Aramaic word meaning “conduit,” hinting to an underground channel into which liquid poured on the mizbe’ach, the altar, would descend (a channel created at the beginning of time – Sukkah, 49a), the word can also, and most simply, mean “six.”
As in the six types of quarks, currently believed to be the fundamental particles of which all matter is, ultimately, comprised.
“He created six”?
© 2020 Rabbi Avi Shafran
A Sukkos-themed piece of mine appears at RNS and can be read here.
Sometimes a folktale can be something more than a mere folktale. Time and context can make a difference. To read what I mean, please click here.
The Chasam Sofer notes that the Torah’s last word, “Yisrael” and its first one, “Braishis,” share the letters aleph, shin, resh and yud… spelling ashrei.
Ashrei can be translated as “praiseworthy” or “fortunate.” That latter meaning may be the key to the “bridge idea” connecting the end of the Torah and its beginning, which we seek to connect on Simchas Torah when we complete the yearly Torah-cycle and begin it anew.
Our recognition of how truly fortunate we are – to have been granted existence and the opportunity to play a role in the Divine plan, to daily receive Hashem’s gifts of life and sustenance, to be part of Klal Yisrael – should inform every Jew’s outlook and attitudes.
And the joy it yields should be front and center of our minds during z’man simchaseinu and Simchas Torah.
(c) 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran
Most commentaries understand Devarim 32:43 as “Nations! Sing the praises of His people, for He will avenge the blood of His servants; He will bring retribution upon His enemies and He will appease His land and His people.”
It would thus refer to the end of history, when the nations of the world will be dazzled by a clarity that eluded them until that point. And so harninu, “sing the praises,” is an imperative (or a prediction, in the sense of “they will sing the praises”).
Rav Hirsch and the Alshich read the pasuk differently (and perhaps in a more grammatically defensible way). In Rav Hirsch’s words (the English translation of the German original), the words refer to the ongoing present: “Therefore, nations, make the lot of His people a happy one.”
As his commentary on the pasuk expands: “The treatment accorded to the Jews becomes the graduated scale by which the allegiance accorded on earth to Hashem is measured…”
So the words, read that way, are not a prediction but rather a warning – an informing of the nations of the world that they will be eventually judged by how they treat the Jews. Rav Hirsch adds that “It was anticipated – as has actually occurred – that this Book of Hashem’s teachings would become the common property of the world, through the hands of its scattered bearers.”
And that its “principles of the equality and brotherhood of all men and the duties of respecting justice and the rights of man… [be] brought into practice.”
Even if the ultimate judgment of the nations of the world will take place only in the future, the passing into extinction of some of the world’s most Jew-oppressive regimes has already occurred. The ancient Romans and Greeks, and more recent oppressors like the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, all molder in history’s compost bin.
Today, unfortunately, there persist not only nations but also forces within otherwise benevolent countries, including our own, that seek to slander and attack Jews, both verbally and physically.
They are all warned.
© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran
It might not be known to many of us, but in the years before WWII, antisemitism of the vilest sort was a prominent part of the American scene.
According to David S. Wyman and Rafael Medoff, in their book “A Race Against Death,” a series of national public opinion polls gauging American attitudes between 1938 and 1946 showed that between one third and one half of the U.S. population saw Jews as greedy and dishonest, and that “Jews had too much power” in the country. Some 15 percent of Americans supported “a widespread campaign against the Jews in this country” and another 20 percent sympathized with such a campaign.
Then there was the infamous German-American Bund, which, on February 20, 1939, some six months before Nazi Germany invaded Poland and just as Hitler was completing construction of his sixth concentration camp, held a packed rally at Madison Square Garden, where more than 20,000 right hands shot forth in the Nazi salute as an American flag passed by. Held aloft were posters with slogans like “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America.”
Speeches at the rally referred to “job-taking Jewish refugees.” Flags borne by attendees were waved in approval. When an unarmed young Jewish man rushed onstage to protest, he was viciously beaten by attendees before police took him away.
Perhaps most famous of all of the Jew-haters of the time was the Catholic priest Father Charles E. Coughlin. His weekly broadcasts garnered an estimated quarter of the U.S. population at the time. His periodical, “Social Justice,” even printed weekly installments from “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
“Yonder comes Father Coughlin wearing the silver chain,” sang folk singer Woody Guthrie, “cash on his stomach and Hitler on the brain.”
Coughlin’s vitriol was so objectionable that he was censured by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, and the federal government barred his publication “because it mirrored the Axis propoganda line.”
Although he was Canadian-born, by 1926, Coughlin had settled in Detroit, on the order of his superior and avid supporter Bishop Michael J. Gallagher. There he established a parish in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, known as the Shrine of the Little Flower. It was from that edifice that he broadcast his views.
In a 1938 speech, he threatened that “When we get through with the Jews of America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.”
When, on December 5, 1938, Coughlin plagiarized a 1935 speech by Nazi Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels, quipsters were quick to refer to Coughlin’s church as “the Shrine of the Little Führer.”
Coughlin died in 1979. He is buried in a Catholic cemetery in Southfield, Michigan.
Southfield is well-known to me. My wife and I have visited the city, and its adjacent city Oak Park, several times. West Bloomfield is another adjacent locale. Two of our dear daughters and their wonderful mishpachos live in that “Greater Detroit” area.
It is a vibrantly Jewish area. Shuls, large and small, abound. There are several kollelim for full time learning including the Kollel Institute of Greater Detroit and Yeshiva Beis Yehuda Kollel.
The city has a respected Vaad HaRabbonim and it operates the local beis din and a kashrus hashgacha division.
There are a number of mosdei chinuch in the area, including the renowned Yeshiva Gedolah of Greater Detroit. There is also Yeshiva Beth Yehudah and its affiliated Bais Yaakov, Yeshiva Darchei Torah, Mesivta of West Bloomfield, the recently opened Yeshivas Ohel Torah-Detroit and others.
And, of course, there is a kosher supermarket and bakeries and eateries. Not to mention Judaica stores and clothing stores aimed at frum clientele. In short, the Orthodox community in “Detroit” (although Southfield, West Bloomfield and Oak Park are really independent cities) is dynamic, strong and growing.
Not far down the road in Southfield lie Coughlin’s bones. Musing on that fact during our most recent visit, I had to smile, imagining what the reverend would have to say about the neighborhood he once called home.
(C) 2025 Ami Magazine
The fact that the word tzaros in the phrase ra’os rabbos vitzaros – “many evils and troubles” (Devarim, 31:21) can mean not only “evils” but also “complementary” (for instance, as a description of the relationship of two wives of the same man – who are called tzaros) is seen as meaningful by Rav, in Chagiga 5a.
He explained that the Torah is predicting a time when some evils can be “complementary,” in the sense that addressing one will exacerbate the other, and vice versa.
The metaphor he cites is someone stung in the same place by both a hornet and a scorpion. The former sting’s pain is alleviated by a cold compress and intensified by a hot one; the latter’s, alleviated by a hot compress and intensified by a cold one. What can the stung person do? Whatever he chooses to do will leave him in greater pain.
To our anguish, we live in such times. The mortal danger that is Hamas, which is pledged to destroy the Jewish presence in our land, can only be “treated” by its utter destruction. And yet, seeing that goal to fruition is impossible without attacking the genocidal group’s forces, which are routinely embedded in hospitals and mosques, and among civilians.
Which means exacerbating world opinion, which chooses to see only the tragic but necessary wages of the war against Hamas and to ignore the terrorists’ declared goal.
We Jews in the U.S. are experiencing hornet and scorpion stings of our own. The polarization of American society leaves us with the impossible choice of supporting a political movement that largely has embraced us and Israel, which choice brands us as adversaries in the eyes of those who oppose that movement’s antidemocratic tendencies. And if we declare our fealty to the democratic institutions that have undergirded our security and prosperity for so long, we alienate those who have most strongly championed our rights and Israel’s.
To Americans who value respect for the rule of law and political propriety, the MAGA world is a dire threat. To the MAGA world, those upholders of law and liberal (in the best sense of the word) values are the hazard.
And Jews, who have always actively participated in the democratic system and who seek both security and respect for law and propriety, are viewed suspiciously by both camps. And utterly despised by the fringe of each.
We pray for the Divine intervention that alone can alleviate the pain born of galus.
© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran
The most comical reactions to Israel’s airstrike earlier this month on a building in Qatar’s capital Doha came from the group whose leaders were the strike’s targets.
That would be Hamas, which called the attack “a heinous crime, a blatant aggression, and a flagrant violation of all international norms and laws.” Words that nicely describe the goals and daily diet of the lynch mob itself.
Second place in risibility went to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which condemned the strike as a “blatant criminal act.” This, from a group whose dozens of terrorist attacks include detonating a bomb in a Hadera market in 2005, killing seven people and injuring 55; another one the following year in a Tel Aviv eatery that killed eleven and injured 70; and a suicide bombing at an Eilat bakery that killed three.
Then, of course, were the expected words of condemnation from the usual pack of wolves, like Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, Sudan, Kuwait, Egypt, Algeria, Oman, Turkey, the UAE and Libya. And let’s not slight Kazakhstan, Mauritania and the Maldives.
Joining the clamoring canines were Jordan, Spain, Italy, Germany, the European Union, the United Kingdom and France.
And, at least perfunctorily, the U.S. too. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” (We’ll leave the highly debatable description of the country unaddressed for now, due to space limitations.)
Ms. Leavitt did add, though, that “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”
Nevertheless, the U.S. did join the other members of the United Nations Security Council in condemning the strike.
Ah, such short memories some have. Does no one recall how, on May 2, 2011, the Obama administration violated the territorial integrity of Pakistan, in Operation Neptune Spear, when SEAL Team Six members shot and killed a man named Osama bin Laden? You know, the founder of al-Qaeda and orchestrator of the recently commemorated September 11, 2001 attacks? Three other men and a woman in the attacked compound were also killed in that operation.
Or the first Trump administration’s violation of Iran’s space on January 3, 2020, when an American drone strike took out Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani, the second most powerful person in Iran at the time?
The world tut-tutting Israel for actions it has taken is, of course, nothing new. In fact, it’s become something of a new normal. But it goes back quite a long way, at least to 1960, when Mossad agents captured Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. (He was spirited to Israel, tried and found guilty of war crimes and executed in 1962.)
At the time, The Washington Post huffed that “anything connected with the indictment of Eichmann is tainted with lawlessness.” And The New York Times wrote that “No immoral or illegal act justifies another.”
And when, in 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad, cries of woe were heard around the world (though Iran was gratified, having tried, and failed, to destroy the same facility a year earlier).
The New York Times called the attack “an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression.” The Los Angeles Times referred to it as “state sponsored terrorism.” The United Nations passed two resolutions rebuking Israel for its chutzpah.
The Reagan administration, too, voted in support of a U.N. Security Council resolution that strongly condemned the raid, and the president suspended the delivery of six F-16 fighter jets to Israel.
There are those who maintain that, justification aside, Israel’s attack on a perceived ally of the U.S. was a strategic mistake. Others claim that, in the end, the net result will be positive. I don’t claim the geopolitical savvy to make any judgment in the matter.
What I do claim, in light of history, is the right to point out that Western powers’ condemnations of the Israeli strike against Hamas members in Doha are somewhat (to employ a less charged word than the one that first occurs)… inconsistent.
© 2025 Ami Magazine
There is idol worship and there is idol worship.
As Rav Elchonon Wasserman wrote, even today, when the urge to worship literal idols is absent, there are a number of “isms” that represent still–beckoning idolatries of the modern era.
In warning against assimilating other nations’ idolatries, Moshe Rabbeinu tells our ancestors that
“You saw their abominations and their detestable idols, of wood and stone; of silver and gold that were with them” (Devarim, 29:16).
Rashi explains the separation (reflected in the cantillation notes) of the phrases “of wood and stone” and “of silver and gold” by noting the latter’s proximity to “that were with them.” He explains that the idolators of old had no compunctions about exposing their wood and stone statues to public view but took pains to protect their valuable metal ones by keeping them “with them,” under lock and key.
I wonder if there may be another way of reading the pasuk’s separation of the phrases.
The “silver and gold” phrase doesn’t explicitly mention idols, although it’s certainly reasonable to assume that the early reference to “abominations and… detestable idols” refers as well to the final phrase of the pasuk.
But maybe that last phrase can also be read as a discrete reference, not to idols per se but, rather, to literal “silver and gold” – in other words, to other nations’ infatuation with precious metals, with amassing wealth.
With, in other words, one of the modern idolatries, one of the “isms” that would tempt Jews in the future: materialism.
The Midrash in Koheles Rabbah (1:13) observes that: “One who has one hundred [units of currency]wants two hundred”; and implies that the progression only continues on from there.
Aspiring to being able to provide for one’s family’s needs is obviously proper, as is aiming for wealth to support good causes. So, in the modern economic system, is saving for the future.
But aspiring, when one has “100,” to attain “200” simply for the sake of having more – and billionaires have no need to double their wealth – is something else. It may reflect the aspiration of societies around us, but it should have no place among Jews. We are not to imitate others in either their literal idolatries or in their addiction to “silver and gold.”
© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran