This week’s parsha, Divarim, is always read on the shabbat  before Tisha B’av.    Its title is “Divarim”, “Words”, since it begins:  “These are the words which Moshe spoke…”   After which Moshe commences an almost book length speech.  It is ironic that the Torah ends with a book of words spoken by the law…

The Talmud says, “ Any generation for which the Temple is not rebuilt, it is as if it was destroyed in their days.” The Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, asks how this could be so?  There have been many generations in which there were very righteous people, is the Talmud saying that…

This week we begin the nine days, an intensive time of mourning for the destruction of the Temple and the exile from Israel.   Rabbi Solovetchik pointed out that this process of national mourning proceeds in the opposite direction to personal mourning.   Personal mourning of the passing of a loved one begins with very…