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The Torah Learning Library of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah

Archive: July 2022

Bring Your B-Game

by Eliezer Weinbach
Posted on July 7, 2022

Your community is running a fundraiser but you’ve never made fundraising calls before. Your synagogue needs a minyan but you are often late. A sick person down the block needs a visitor but you don’t know what to say. What if you mess up?…

Why Doesn’t Yom Kippur Come Before Rosh HaShana?

by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on September 25, 2016

The relationship between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is both obvious and complex. Obvious, in that Divine judgment and forgiveness are closely connected – we recognize that there is no one who can justify him or herself to their Creator, and thus a day of judgment requires a day of forgiveness which brings with it the Divine gift of atonement.…

How Humankind Became Adults: The Challenges of Knowing Good and Evil

by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on October 28, 2011

It is just a few hundred years since the world has been created, and everything has gone to pot. When the world was freshly minted and created, we heard the refrain with each act of creation, “And God saw that it was good,” and that the world as a whole was “exceedingly good.”…

‘To Her he Shall Become Impure’ – Serving God by Leaving the Temple

by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on May 1, 1998

The parsha of Emor centers on the sanctity of the Kohanim: their obligation not to become impure, restrictions on whom they can marry, and the conditions under which they can serve in the Temple and eat its sacrifices. The end of the parsha enumerates all the festivals of the year and the special sacrifices brought on each.…

Faith in God, Not Playing God

by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on December 15, 1997

Parsha Vayigash opens with the climactic moment in the Joseph saga. After having forced his brothers to bring down Benjamin by holding Simeon captive, Joseph plants his silver chalice in Benjamin’s bags and demands that Benjamin remain in Egypt as his slave.…