The Weekly Mission- Torah Portion by Isaiah Rothstein

In the world we live in, it is very hard to distinguish between good and bad, between light and darkness. The Baal Shemtov says that the evil inclination is at its finest when one believes that bad is truly good and that bad is in fact a mitzvah. For an example, if I say to myself “It’s okay to sleep late today; in fact it’s a mitzvah! Not only will I be more rested, but I will learn more Torah!” This is the yetzer hara at its best. Sometimes in the world, it’s hard to differentiate between black and white and everything in between. Sometimes things fall into shades of grey. Confusion and lack of motivation lead us to struggle with everything that we know is real and true because our yetzer hara is trying to overpower us. One Avraham Avinu’s character traits was the power to distinguish between the bad and good. Any bad that surrounded him, he stamped out or turned away from. We learn this important lesson many times in the parsha. One example is with Avraham and Lot’s herdsman. Avraha...

Parshat Noach The Sages teach us that every world calamity is a continuation of the destruction of the Holy Temple (lo aleinu – may we not experience any world calamities). Regarding the Sages’ statement, I think the same is true concerning the sin of Adam and Eve. After they ate from the tree, everything got worse. Adam not only neglected to repair their mistake (I say “their” because man plus woman equals man, i.e. man is not man without woman), but he even went the opposite direction. In this week’s Torah portion, we read the famous story of Noach and the ark. We might even regard this story fondly as the tale of a man who guided his family, along with giraffes, zebras and other animals onto a huge “boat-like” structure. We think of rainbows, floodwaters and everything in between. But this story is serious. And a common problem in modern-day Judaism is that, when it comes to the Torah; its stories, laws and customs, we seem to only know bits and pieces. “And all flesh perished that ...

Parshat Berieshit In High school me and my friends always had the one kid we would blame for everything. Even if we knew we were wrong we would always jokingly say “J.E did it”, he would acknowledge it as funny and show his indifference in the joke. Whether we are 16 in high school, twenty-one in college or sixty with grand children, the blame game has been in existence since the beginning of time. It’s amazing that it’s been around so long; maybe because the rules are simple, you’re never wrong. We read the Torah over and over in order to know HaShems will to the fullest, but also to improve ourselves. We read these portions every week and yet we must realize by human tendency that sometimes it’s more important to focus on the matter at hand and not the whole picture. We focus in on portions, week in and week out to learn with quality and not quantity. The more and more one reads the verses, there are always more lessons to learn and uncover in the Torah, but it is our goal to make t...