Torah

Encased behind glass near the entrance to Temple Beth El, 1836 Rohrerstown Road, is a Torah scroll. It is opened to Deuteronomy 25:17 — a passage that begins with the word “Remember.” It is a poignant verse. While all synagogues have Torah scrolls — Temple Beth El has five — which are read and ...

One was a sheepskin scroll parchment dated to around 1360, while the other was a codex – a book – from the 15th century. They were both written in the ancient Samaritan script; the Samaritans trace their roots to the tribes of Ephraim and Menashe and practice a Torah-based religion similar to Judaism.

“We had been widely teaching the messages of both negiah (literally touch, referring to the Torah idea of restricting physical contact between individuals from opposite sexes) and yichud (literally seclusion, referring to the Torah idea that a man and a woman not married to each other should not be alone ...

The Talmud records the conversation between a non-Jew and the great rabbi Hillel in which he challenged Hillel to teach him the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Hillel replied by paraphrasing this principle and saying that it is the essence of all Torah: “What is hateful to you, do not do to others.

There is a story, both delightful and profound, about Rabbi Joseph Karo (1488-1575), the author of the Code of Jewish Law and surely one of the towering masters of Torah in the last 500 years. He was passing by a schoolyard where the kids were playing and tossing around questions raised in their class.

Study it, the Torah itself, he said, not books about the Torah. Get the real thing: the original. Become your own authority. Rabbi Besdin pressed us to compile Hebrew vocabulary lists, to master the roots forms of Hebrew verbs, to piece together sentences of Jewish sacred texts (such as the Hebrew Bible) ...

Rabbi Kevin Hale uses a quill to write in the final letters of a newly restored torah during a ceremony at Dartmouth College's Roth Center for Jewish Life in Hanover, N.H., on March 23, 2018. Hale is one of about 10 rabbis in the United States trained as torah scribes. (Valley News - Carly Geraci) Copyright ...

From left is Leominster Sky View Middle School eighth grader Owen Santos, second place winner, Homeschooler Torah Smith from Fitchburg, who was the winners, and Leominster North West Elementary School fifth grader William Vasquezi, third place winner, of the 2018 North Central Massachusetts ...

For those who attended last year's Torah in the City sponsored by the Orthodox Union, the memories of the day still linger. The Citi Field venue with its impressively large open spaces, the illustrious roster of speakers and the enthusiasm of the attendees made 2017's event quite memorable. Through the ...

Scheck Hillel dedicated the new Sefer Torah to honor the life and legacy of Yuval Miara, who was the school's director of Judaic studies and Hebrew language for its Juda and Maria Diener Lower School. The celebration followed the school's recent 2018 Annual Event that featured Rabbi Lord Jonathan ...

Hashem commanded Moshe (25:16) to place in the Ark the “testimony” which Hashem would give him. Rashi explains that this is a reference to the Torah and the Tablets, which bear witness to the fact that Hashem commanded us regarding the mitzvos which are contained therein. Harav Zalman Sorotzkin ...

“Torah for Frenchies” is a unique opportunity for students who have a preference to speak French to join together to learn Torah and discuss relevant and timely topics in French; standing at Sinai, sitting in L.A, and transporting themselves to France all thought the words of Dr. Chekroun or occasionally his ...

Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach grew up in a time of great poverty in Yerushalayim. As a child and bochur, his family was so poor that Rav Shlomo Zalman would often go to learn in yeshiva without have eaten anything at all because he wanted to leave the little bit of food in the house for his younger siblings ...

Just the last in the sequence, this week, was of Rabbi Sadan suggesting that the Holocaust may have happened, because "in the 20th century most of the Jewish people desecrated the Shabbat, fornicated and forsook the Torah." In fairness to Sadan, the quote was from a lecture he gave nearly five years ...

Senator Chuck Schumer, arguably the top ranking democrat in the United States right now, believes that there is no peace between Israel and Palestine because — well, because the Palestinians don't believe in the Torah. Speaking at the AIPAC Policy Conference earlier this week, Senator Schumer ...

Our Torah reading this week, the double parasha of Vayak'hel-Pekudei, describes the construction of the mishkan (the Israelites' desert sanctuary) and offers an inventory of the materials used to build it. Credit is given to the chief craftsmen, Betzalel and Oholiav, who were experts in metalwork, woodwork, ...

Simsbury's Farmington Valley Jewish Congregation - Emek Shalom will be restoring a Torah from the Holocaust. The scroll came to the community in 1973 and is one of three Torahs in the country from the Klaus Synagogue in Prague. It dates back to the mid-1700s and in 1942 was sent to the Central ...

WEST LAFAYETTE - Each week, Rabbi Michael Harvey removes the Torah from its sacred space and reads from it, sharing the words of the Hebrew Old Testament during services at Temple Israel. Yet all that handling of the Torah comes at a cost, with the Torah showing signs of wear and tear.

More than 400 members of the local Jewish community recently joined local dignitaries and two-dozen rabbis from across Northern California to commemorate the completion of the new Torah Scroll at the Chabad of the Tri-Valley's Center for Jewish Life on Hopyard Road. The Torah is a 3,300-year-old ...

In 2015, Rabbi Shlomo Einhorn, dean of school at Yeshivat Yavneh in Los Angeles, held a live video shiur, or teaching session, on Lag B'Omer, when he taught for 18 hours straight. This year, he'll try to go even longer. On Lag B'Omer — from 11 p.m. May 2 through 6 p.m. May 3 — Einhorn plans to conduct ...

The Library of Congress recently acquired a fragment of a Torah scroll dating to around the year 1000 CE. While it is not ... The scroll was found in the Torah niche of the Ein Gedi synagogue during excavations in 1970, so we may conclude that it was used for the liturgical reading of the Torah. Then, as now ...

The Torah tells how G-d created the earth and the heavens, although the stories that follow tell us more about the former than the latter. A new exhibit doesn't quite answer theological questions about space, but it does show the ways in which Jews have looked at, written about and traveled into the final ...

We expect the Torah to require another person to do the dirty work, so that the lofty clergy could focus exclusively on holy priestly business. Instead, the Torah requires the priests to get their hands dirty. But why do we expect that? Perhaps because all too often, in our culture, manual labor is considered ...