Yeshiva
Beit Midrash
- Torah Portion and Tanach
- Bereshit
- Bereshit
The great gift of God to humans - the Shabat - is part of this week’s parsha. Shabat is the ultimate renewal, the weapon of resilience and freshness. It allows us on a weekly basis to make a new start and to shake off the disappointments and defeats of the past week. It is therefore no wonder that the Midrash assigns to Adam the authorship of the great psalm that begins "a song of melody to the day of the Shabat". For Adam now becomes the human example of psychological resilience, of raising one’s self somehow from the depths of guilt and depression and regaining purpose and focus and hope in life. Shabat is the symbol of the new week and of new opportunity and further accomplishment. Without the day of rest that renews us we are always destined to be jaded, tired and ultimately sad. The mantra of Judaism is the verse in Mishlei/Proverbs "the righteous may fall seven times but they always arise thereafter." The difference between righteousness and wickedness is apparently not in falling but in arising thereafter. Adam should therefore be remembered not as the forlorn and tragic figure as he is usually portrayed but rather as the first human to taste the beauty and renewing vitality of Shabat. Unfortunately but realistically, the past cannot be undone. But the future still awaits our creative efforts and talents to shape it and bring it to reality.
Rabbis in Midrash
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Hosha'ana Rabba FLYDUBAI & HOSHANA RABBA- ANI VAHU HOSHIA NA- I & HIM SAVE US
"Ani vaHu Hoshia Na", "I and Him, Save Us". We don't just pray to Him, but we also pray to and for ourselves that we should emulate and educate our children to have that instinctive altruism with which He created the world. President Trump seemed amused about Yaniv Hayon, our PLUMBER who confidently worked with G-d like Superman (he learned from a pilot on a TV show!) to save 174 lives on the Dubai hijacking, but we in Israel are totally accustomed already 78 years to our plumbers, teachers, garbage-men, rabbis, farmers & doctors being Hashem's shlichim! This is what Zionism is about.
Moreshet Shaul Hashem Is your Shadow – part I
Based on Siach Shaul, Pirkei Machshava V’Hadracha p. 420 – an address from 1941
