I am the LORD, you shall protect My commands and do them. Rashi explains you shall protect My commands – this refers to study. The only way to safeguard God’s law is by studying it. This is what the Rabbis mean when they say our ancestors always supported yeshivot. Wherever Jews lived, they always established

Every person shall revere his mother and his father, and My Sabbaths you shall keep. There is a reason these two ideas are juxtaposed. When we teach our children to keep the Sabbath and when we build a home where her magical beauty sparkles, then our children grow into adults who revere mother and father.

And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. The Midrash connects this with a verse from Kohelet Give a share to seven and even to eight. Circumcision is part of a boy’s Jewish journey but this is not the beginning and it is not enough. In order for a child

The first half of this week’s parasha discusses the consecration of the mishkan, the Tabernacle, and in the second half of the parasha the Jewish dietary laws are presented. This suggests that kashrut is an attempt to expand the consciousness of the mishkan and its Divine service into our daily lives. While Heinrich Heine famously