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LECH LECHA What's Your Legacy? We call him "Abraham our Father." What is so honorable about that? What is special about being "our father"?Abraham was the first to think about continuity. The most important enterprise Abraham created was not that he was a great person in his own right, but that he established a movement that would continue to flourish long after him.

NOACHWho's flaw is it? The painful ending to Noah's life. When we notice a problem in another person, does it really exist in him, or is it coming from within us, as the Gemara says, "he disqualifies others with his own blemish?" Is our job to rebuke the other, or is the other a mirror, sent from Above to remind us what needs fixing in ourselves? This week the Torah gives a clear answer through the sons of Noach. But first we must face the great puzzle of the parsha: Noach begins higher than anyone in all of Tanach, the only person the Torah ever calls a "tzaddik,"; yet his story ends in the most painful way of all.

BEREISHIS Forbidden Fruit are Always the Sweetest Parshas Bereishis reads like an indictment of humanity. On every day of Creation the Torah declares"tov" that it was good, yet after the creation of man those words are conspicuously missing, and by the end of the parsha man is described as "only evil all day long," leading to the decree of the Flood. But after the Flood, when Noach offers his korbanos, Hashem swears never again to destroy the world, using almost the very same reason: "for the inclination of man's heart is evil from his youth" What is man, at his core, good or evil?

ROSH HASHANA The Silent Shofar Is it a good sign that Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos? This year and next (5787-5788) bring a once-in-fifty-year occurrence: two consecutive Rosh Hashanahs both falling on Shabbos. Historically, both the worst national tragedies (the destruction of both Batei Mikdash) and the greatest triumphs (forgiveness for the Golden Calf, the building of the Mishkan, entry into Eretz Yisrael) took place in years when Rosh Hashanah fell on Shabbos. The omen cuts both ways, so the question becomes: what actually determines which direction it goes? The Sages suspended the blowing of the shofar whenever Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos, out of concern that someone might carry the shofar to an expert to learn from him, violating the Shabbos prohibition against carrying in a public domain. How can the sages suspend a biblically given commandment?

NITZAVIM _ VAYEILECH The Half Hour Challenge We must climb another rung in spiritual work by absorbing a revolutionary idea from the "Alter Rebbe" (the first Chabad rebbe) about how to relate to the evil inclination (yetzer hara). Quoting King Solomon, The evil inclination as an "old and foolish king", experienced, confident, and able to stir up overwhelming emotions. But ultimately it's "foolish": it preaches nonsense and pointless "solutions" leading nowhere good. As long as we treat it as a legitimate opponent, we'll collapse before its emotional force, since positive intentions alone can't match its intensity. Only by stripping away its disguise, exposing the underlying panic, like an unthinking bully causing a reckless accident , can we shift from fear to compassion, which causes it to collapse. A practical exercise: the "Half-Hour Challenge." When the urge demands instant reaction, deliberately delay response for thirty minutes. In that pause, the emotional "short circuit" fades, reason returns, and the urge is revealed as irrational and unworthy of fear, better met with pity than dread.

TAVO Are They Really Curses? It's hard to believe that the one who loved Israel most parted from them with curses double those God gave. Moses stood at his life's end, knowing this was his last chance to speak. A parent saying final goodbyes doesn't soften hard truths, he says everything, in full detail, to arm his children with every tool possible. This multiplication of warnings is love's price when time runs out. Earlier, Moshe pleads with to save Israel physically; now, unable to save them with his body, he saves them with words. Crucially, both rebukes are immediately followed by unbreakable promises of restoration, the rebuke never stands alone. Read this way, it isn't a stern face opposing a loving one; it's the same love, refusing to look away even from painful truths.

KI TEITZEI Beyond the Conflict Don't fight the yetzer hara (evil inclination) head-on, it's exhausting. Instead, rise above it by setting fixed times for Torah study for its own sake. The pleasure of Torah naturally eclipses cheap desires, so the battle never even starts. This is the answer to why the fight against the yetzer hara is hinted at through an optional war, because once you transcend the battlefield, the fight becomes unnecessary, "optional" rather than mandatory.

SHOFTIM Judge Thyself Parshas Shoftim coincides with the beginning of the month of Elul and opens with the command to appoint judges and officers "in all your gates" and the emphasis on the singular (lecha) points inward: the real courtroom is a person's own mind, and the real gates are sight, hearing, smell, and speech, the points where the outside world first makes contact with the self. Another lesson that is gleaned from this mitzvah is as a call to judge oneself before judging others, since most conflict comes from holding one standard for our own behavior and a stricter one for everyone else's. The central idea, though, is that self-control works best as prevention rather than as a fight fought after the fact: once a trigger has already reached awareness and stirred up desire, willpower rarely wins, so the wiser move is to keep the trigger from entering in the first place, whether that means what a person looks at, listens to, or even allows himself to dwell on in thought.

REEAH BREAKING OLD HABITS Parshat Re'eh explores why Moses uses the singular "See" and present-tense "I give," arguing this teaches that free choice never disappears, no one is ever too old or too "stuck" to change, unlike Bilaam, who believed he could only find purity in death. Drawing on Tanya's model of the "animal soul" (heart, instant gratification) versus the "Godly soul" (mind, long-term truth), truth naturally overpowers desire once genuinely engaged.

EIKEV Your Protector and Gaurdian As Moshe continues his conversation with the Jewish people entering the Land of Israel, he reminds them of many mitzvot they will need to observe. Mezuzah is the one mitzvah mentioned twice, once last week and once this week, each time paired with the reward of long life. But what exactly is a mezuzah? Is it an amulet? A good luck charm? And what about the idea that a mezuzah gives us a better connection to God and protects us from harm? If you would like to purchase, check or have your mezuzah placed please reach out to me at [email protected] or 631-698-4000

VAESCHANAN Are My Prayers Being Answered? Why did Moshe pray 515 times to enter the Land of Israel when it was clear Hashem was not answering him - and where did all those unanswered prayers go? Why continue praying for redemption after two thousand years of silence?

DEVARIM Who Are You, To Criticize? Moses, after forty years of loving, patient leadership over Israel, suddenly delivers harsh rebukes in his final speeches in Deuteronomy, something he never did before, even when the people sinned gravely (the Golden Calf, the spies, constant complaints) and were sentenced to wander the desert for forty years. Normally partings involve reconciliation, not harsh words, and if Moses had these grievances all along, why did he wait forty years to voice them? Five weeks before his death, Moses gathered all Israel and revealed a new side of himself: no longer just "the one who loved Israel" who never rebuked them, but now the one who remembers everything, reproves them, and warns them, about the human weaknesses that led to their past failures, so they can avoid repeating them.

MATOS- MASEI Can't We All Get Along? This weeks Torah reading contains a striking anomaly: the Torah records the precise date of Aharon's death - the first of Av -even though his passing was already described in Parashas Chukas without any date. The Rebbe explains this is deliberate: the Torah wants us to encounter Aharon's yahrtzeit at the moment we read this parashah, which always falls around Rosh Chodesh Av. The message is urgent -because the cause of the Beis Hamikdash’s destruction, baseless hatred, is the exact disease that Aharon's life was the cure for. Aharon was defined by a relentless, boundary-crossing pursuit of unity. He would visit quarreling parties separately, tell each one that the other was heartbroken and ashamed, and dissolve the hatred between them. More strikingly, he would greet known sinners warmly and publicly -well beyond what halacha requires -because he understood that a person is always greater than his worst behavior. As the Tanya puts it: both responses are simultaneously true -hatred toward the evil in a person, and love toward the divine spark that remains within him.

PINCHUS The Mystery of Elijah the Prophet Pinchas and Elijah the Prophet are the same person - the only individual in history to conquer death and live forever in this world. The Torah's promise of a "covenant of peace" to Pinchas is understood by our Sages on multiple levels, the deepest being that Pinchas himself became Elijah, the eternal herald of the Redemption reading supported by his otherwise-possible lifespan across hundreds of years in Tanach.

CHUKAS - BALAKAnger Management The Torah portion deals with two central themes: the sin of "Water of Complaint" and the Red Heifer. The central message is that anger reflects a lack of faith, one who truly believes in Divine Providence does not lose control, knowing that everything is guided from Above toward a good purpose. Moses's sin, according to Maimonides, was anger itself, while the Maharal teaches that anger and lack of faith are essentially one and the same thing. The portion of the Red Heifer appears before the deaths of Miriam and Aaron as a comforting introduction, teaching that the deaths of the righteous bring atonement and that life continues in a different form, just as the heifer's ashes mix with living waters.