It is written: “Sarah died in Kiryat-Arba, which is Hebron” [Chayei Sarah 23:2]
Rabbeinu Bechaye explained why the text mentions two names for the same place [Kiryat-Arba and Hebron].
Kiryat-Arba is called Hebron because the soul of anyone buried there unites [mithaberet] on high in the city of G-d with the four [arba] camps of the Shechinah.
This is why the Patriarchs sought to be buried in this place, namely that from there, souls merit to be reunited [leit’haber] with their source, which is the Throne of Glory.
Hence the meaning of “Kiryat-Arba, which is Hebron.”
Avraham sent Eliezer to fetch Rivkah at the earliest opportunity, as soon as she had reached marriageable age.
Eliezer's miracle - where his journey was miraculously shortened, allowing him to complete a 17 day journey in one day - thus spared Rivkah from spending an additional 17 days in an atmosphere of idol worship.
From this we can be assured of the speed with which G-d will send Moshiach, saving the Jewish people from even an additional moment in Exile.
Shortly before his marriage, Yitzchak had reached a remarkable degree of spiritual perfection. Right at the beginning of his life he was the first Jew to be circumcised at eight days. He was then educated by Avraham our father, and later showed an eagerness to sacrifice his life to G-d, at the Akeida, from which point on he attained the sanctity of a burnt offering [an olah temimah].
Rivkah, on the other hand, was ''a rose amongst the thorns'', born into a wicked, idol-worshipping family.
The union of Yitzchak and Rivkah was thus a meeting of extremes, and for this very reason it is recorded in the Torah, since Torah itself is a guide to uniting extremes. For when any mitzvah is observed, a mundane physical object becomes infused with Godliness and holiness.
Thus, the marriage of Yitzchak and Rivkah represents the marriage of the spiritual and the physical. And this explains why the Parshaspends so much time discussing their story, since it was the basis of everything that was to follow.
Source: Lubavitcher Rebbe: Based on Likutei Sochos vol 20 p 95-96
What is the meaning, asked the Dubno Maggid, of the expression "alien and resident"? An alien is a person who resides in a land temporarily, while a resident's status is a permanent one. An alien, therefore, is not a resident, nor is a resident an alien.
The answer, said the Maggid, is as follows: Chazal comment on the verse "For you are aliens and residents with Me" [Vayikra 25:23] - "This world is like a lobby before the World to Come; prepare yourself in the lobby so that you may enter the banquet hall." [Avos 4:21]
Each individual is required to prepare himself for his eternal residence in the World to Come by performing mitzvos and good deeds in this world, his temporary dwelling. Thus Avraham Avinu was saying "I am both an alien and a resident; I am an alien temporarily living in the world before I will become a permanent resident of the World to Come."
The Chofetz Chaim illustrated this idea by way of the following parable: There was a very wealthy man who wished to build himself a luxurious house. He contracted an architect who began to draw blueprints for the future home.
"It is very important to me" said the wealthy man to the architect, "that the living room be spacious and comfortable. Yet it is also important that the hallway leading to the living room be very large as well."
The architect took the necessary measurements and began to tell the man what he thought. "There is most certainly not going to be enough space for both the living room and the hallway to be large and roomy. You are going to have to make a decision - do you want a spacious living room or a spacious hallway?"
"I'll give you a bit of advice." continued the architect. "Being that the prevailing custom is to make the living room as large as possible and not to invest very much in the hallway, I'd suggest that you do the same. It would be ridiculous to do the opposite and make the hallway larger than the living room. After all, you don't want people to laugh at you."
So it is with us, said the Chofetz Chaim. Our duty in this world is to prepare ourselves for the eternal life, so that our portion in the World to Come will be as great as possible. How are we supposed to do this? By living our lives according to the Torah and by performing the mitzvos.
How foolish is the man whose sole concern is to ensure himself a comfortable life in this world. He is comparable to the wealthy man who requests a large hallway but a small living room. When he arrives in the World to Come everyone will laugh at him!
''There's a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in.'' [Leonard Cohen]
...actually I would say that's how the light gets out.... because every single thing in this world contains a Divine spark, and when we utilize that object in a good way, as part of a mitzvah, we redeem the sparks. This is called birurim.
Sitting in his hotel room in New York, Rabbi Sacks suddenly had a thought about a connection between the late Leonard Cohen's final song "You Want It Darker", the current state of the world and the week's parsha of Vayera.
The following is written by Zvi Hershcovich
Leonard Cohen was given a Halachic Jewish burial in a quiet ceremony before the media was notified of the poet and musician's passing.
Leonard Cohen
Leonard [Eliezer Ben Nissan HaKohen] was born in Montreal on the 12th of Tishrei, 5695 [September 12, 1934]. His great-uncle, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Cohen, a pious graduate of the Volozhin Yeshiva, had been the chief rabbi of Montreal and Canada.
Born in Westmount, both his grandparents were prominent Orthodox Jews. His mother's father was Rabbi Shlomo Kolnitsky-Kline, a graduate of the Kovno Yeshiva. He was called the Sar HaDikduki (master of grammarians), and he wrote important Sefarim, including a thesaurus on Talmudic interpretation. His father's father was Lyon Cohen, one of the founders of the Shaar Hashomayim Shul, of which Leonard was a member.
In an interview with Jeff Burger, he told the biographer that he often reads Tehillim to find inspiration for his music and poetry. "When they lift up the Torah and say ‘Etz chayim hi l’mah chazikim bah,’ that kind of thing sent a chill down my back," he said. "I wanted to be that one who lifted up the Torah."
He also recalled his pride at being a Kohen. "I wanted to wear white clothes, go into the Holy of Holies, and negotiate with the deepest resources of my soul," he told Burger. "That was poetry to me."
As Cohen's fame grew, he took public stands for Jewish causes and openly displayed his Judaism with pride, singing in Yiddish and going on a tour in Israel where he performed the Birkas Kohanim. During the Yom Kippur war in 1973, he flew to Israel to perform and raise the morale of Jewish soldiers. Cohen's father had fought in World War I, and he rushed to Israel, because as he later told the media, "I am committed to the survival of the Jewish people."
According to the New York Times, he was Shabbos observant on tour and wore Tefillin. He described inheriting his grandfather's Tefillin, gazing at them and trying to make sense of them. "I saw I really could use this material, how exquisite and skillful these prayers were, how they had been designed by minds that you have to incline your heads towards," he said. "These minds who designed these prayers or received the inspiration to design these prayers–these are incredibly subtle and exquisite prayers for lifting the soul."
Just before Rosh Hashana, Cohen released a single which he worked on together with Cantor Gideon Zelermyer of the Shaar Hashomayim and his choir. The song quotes directly from the mourner's Kaddish.
Cohen passed away on Monday, the 6th of Cheshvan [November 7] and was buried quietly in the Orthodox Jewish tradition near the entrance of the Shaar Hashomayim cemetery on Mont Royal.
The media was notified of his passing on Thursday when the Shaar Hashomayim issued a release which noted that, "Leonard’s wish was to be laid to rest in a traditional Jewish rite beside his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents."
Rabbi Adam Scheier shared in a post on social media, that the community had taken great pride in Cohen. "Our pride was not simply that a child of the congregation grew up to be successful and famous; rather, it was that Leonard took the Jewish themes and concepts that he learned at The Shaar and gave them new and inspired expression in his poetry and his songs," wrote Rabbi Scheier. "It was at The Shaar that Leonard first encountered the liturgy of Who By Fire, the praise of Hallelujah, and the reverence of Hineni, I’m ready, my Lord."
Shlomo Carlebach's ancestors comprised one of the oldest rabbinical dynasties in pre-Holocaust Germany. He was born January 14, 1925 in Berlin, where his father, Rabbi Hartwig Naftali Carlebach (1889-1967), was an Orthodox rabbi. The family fled the Nazis in 1931 and lived in Baden bei Wien, Austria and by 1933 in Switzerland before coming to New York City.
Carlebach emigrated to Lithuania in 1938 where he studied at a yeshiva. In 1938 his father became the rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jacob, a small synagogue on West 79th Street in New York's Upper West Side. Carlebach came to New York in 1939 via Great Britain. He and his twin brother Eli Chaim took over the rabbinate of the synagogue after their father's death in 1967.
Carlebach studied at several high-level Orthodox yeshivos, including Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn, New York, and Bais Medrash Gevoha in Lakewood, New Jersey. His voice and musical talents were recognized quite early during his days in yeshiva, when he was often chosen to lead the services as a popular Chazan ("cantor") for Jewish holidays.
As is engraved on his tombstone, he became a devoted hasid of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, the sixth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch. From 1951-1954, he subsequently worked as one of the first emissaries (shluchim) of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, until he departed to form his successful model for outreach, reaching hundreds of thousands of Jews worldwide.
In 1972 he married Elaine Neila Glick, a teacher. They had two daughters, Nedara (Dari) and Neshama. Neshama Carlebach is a songwriter and singer with a substantial following who has written and sung many songs in her father's style.
Carlebach died suddenly of a heart attack on 20 October 1994 while traveling on an airplane to relatives in Canada. Seated next to him was the Skverer Rebbe's gabbai; they were singing the Rebbe's favorite melody, Chasdei Hashem ki lo Samnu ["G-d's lovingkindness does not end"].
Carlebach was very close with many famous hasidic rebbes, including the Amshinover Rebbe and Bobover Rebbe. He is regarded as one of the most successful kiruv personalities of the 20th century, reaching many Jewish souls through his music, storytelling, and teaching.
From the teachings of Reb Shlomo:
REBUKE YOUR FELLOW MAN IF YOU SEE HIM DOING WRONG
If you see someone doing wrong, you have to tell him. You have to tell him. You have no right to remain silent. If someone sees his friend walking in the wrong path, it is a mitzva to talk to him, tell him he is doing wrong, but it has to be done in private. Don't tell someone in public that he did wrong, because if you do, you are transgressing about fifteen laws. The G'mora says it's very easy to keep Shabbos, very easy to put on t'fillin, but Rabbi Akiva says the hardest thing is to tell someone when he is doing wrong. Rabbi Akiva was very holy, and he said, "I don't know if there is anyone in my generation who would know how to rebuke." You have to do it in a way that he listens to. Rabbi Tarphon said there is no one who knows how to receive rebuke either.
Both are really hard things to do. Before you tell him what he did wrong you have to tell him, "I am saying it to you because I am really your friend, I am concerned. It is not that I can't stand sin, like a missionary, that I want to abolish sin in the world. I really care for you, and it hurts me that you did wrong." Say to the person, "I don't want to change you. I'm not putting you down on a couch and analyzing you. I care for you, and it seems to me that you did wrong, so can you tell me why?"
Then he can tell you, "I know I did wrong. I'm sorry, and I probably won't do it again." Or he can tell you, "I didn't do wrong. You are wrong, because you don't know the whole story."
In any case, there has to be communication. What is communication for? Why did G-d give us the power of speech? The Torah is very strong on communication. I have the right to hate someone who did wrong, but if I didn't tell him, I'm transgressing. If the person accepts what you tell him, it is good; if not, tell him a few times. If he says, "I don't want to hear you; I don't want you to talk about it to me anymore,"then you don't have to grab him, tie him to a chair; you don't have to be drastic. Talk to him like a human being.
The Torah wasn't given to the angels. G-d gave the Torah to human beings. There is such a thing as hating; what can we do? Moishe Rabbenu came up to Sinai, and the angels were complaining to G-d, "Why are You giving the Torah to Moishe? Why aren't You giving it to us?" G-d said to them, "There is no hatred between you, so you don't need the Torah. They need the Torah below, because there is hatred in the world." So the Torah says if you hate someone, you have to talk to him. Imagine, if every anti-Semite took the time to talk to one Jew there would be less killing in the world. If everyone followed this one thing: if you hate somebody, talk with him, make contact with him, it would be a different world. If you want it to work, it will work.
The G'mora and Maimonides both say that if I see someone doing wrong and I don't tell him, then I become a partner in the sin. The G'mora says if I see the people of my house are doing wrong, and I don't tell them, I become a partner. If I see the people of my city doing wrong and I'm not raising my voice, I'm becoming a partner in what the city is doing. If the whole world is doing wrong, and I'm not speaking up, then I'm becoming a partner in the sin of the whole world.
This is one of my favorite stories. Once I was visiting my cousins in Belgium, and when they invited me for dinner, they said because of me they would eat kosher. So I come to see what is going on there, what they are going to be feeding me. "Because of you it will be really strictly kosher. We know you don't eat ham, so we bought horsemeat." What if I take out a bible, because you have to tell people when they do wrong. "Sit down you dirty sinners. You know horsemeat isn't. . ." Naturally this does not go. It says to rebuke, and that is not the level of rebuking. They don't know anything, so you can't rebuke them. It says you have to tell them in such a way that they know you care for them. If I say, "I am here for Shabbos, and it makes me uncomfortable that you don't keep Shabbos,"that means I don't give a damn about their Shabbos, just about my own. It is a very delicate thing.
The truth is, most of the time people know when they do wrong, they just don't have the strength not to do it. When you tell people they are doing wrong in a good way, it gives them strength not to do it again. The Mittler Rebbe says it suddenly becomes like two souls against one evil. If I'm too weak to overcome my evil, the minute someone tells me it is like two fires against one darkness. But it is hard to know how to tell people in a good way.
A Niggun is a Chassidic melody, often wordless and repeated several times, which is intended to express and stir one’s soul. Considered a path to higher consciousness and transformation of being.
Rabbi Efraim Palvanov What is the significance of recent seismic events in Syria and Damascus? What might we expect for the region in light ...
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"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad." "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
