POSNACK SCHOOL

Each morning before we begin our prayers, we recite a well-known Mishna that lists many mitzvot including honoring parents, visiting the sick, providing for a bride, attending to the dead, and other acts of kindness. However the Mishna concludes with, “… and the study of Torah is equivalent to all of them.” What did the Sages intend in concluding the Mishna in this way?

In this week’s Torah portion, the parasha makes clear that our righteousness is not a factor in our inheritance of the promised land. Yet it is unclear whether the wickedness of the other nations is a factor.

Excluding the fast of Yom Kippur, which is a separate mitzvah in the Torah, all of the other fast days on the Jewish calendar revolve in some way around the destruction of our Holy Temple, the בית המקדש, in Jerusalem. Click to read more.

Precise legal definitions of the contemporary “sanctuary city” are illusive. Whatever the case, the Torah’s idea of “cities of refuge,” mentioned in this week’s combined Torah portion, Matot-Masei, has specific objectives.