FYI
Dear Cross-Current readers, I just wanted to let you know that I have started offering weekly writing on the online publishing platform Substack. What I post there are either ruminations that have not been...
Author: Avi Shafran
A Change of Locale
Dear Cross-Current reader, I won’t be posting here on C-C in the future. I don’t want to monopolize the site! I hope that Rabbi Adlerstein will continue to share occasional thoughts here — and...
Two recent pieces
My most recent Ami column, “Tunjur! Tunjur! Tunjur!,” can be read here. And a Sukkos-themed essay is at RNS, here. Chag Samei’ach!
Vizos Habrachah – The Bridge Idea
The Chasam Sofer notes that the Torah’s last word, “Yisrael” and its first one, “Braishis,” share the letters aleph, shin, resh and yud… spelling ashrei. Ashrei can be translated as “praiseworthy” or “fortunate.” That...
Vayeilech – Complementary Curses
The fact that the word tzaros in the phrase ra’os rabbos vitzaros – “many evils and troubles” (Devarim, 31:21) can mean not only “evils” but also “complementary” (for instance, as a description of the...
Nitzavim – Putting a Hold on Gold
There is idol worship and there is idol worship. As Rav Elchonon Wasserman wrote, even today, when the urge to worship literal idols is absent, there are a number of “isms” that represent still-beckoning...
Ki Savo – The Future of Wood and Stone
It is said in the name of the Vilna Gaon that the “idols of wood and stone” that Klal Yisrael will come to worship, referenced in the tochacha (Devarim 28:36 and 28:64), are hints...
Ki Seitzei – Where We Are
Chazal describe the judgment meted out to a ben sorer u’moreh, the boy who, at the tender age of 13, demonstrates indulgences and worse, as being merited because he is judged al sheim sofo,...
Shoftim – It’s Too Easy Being Green
It is explicit in the text of the Torah that those who went to war in the conquest of Cna’an knew that their lives could be lost in battle: “lest he die and another”¦.”...
Re’ei – The Matter of the Meat
“Eat to your heart’s content,” Hashem states at the end of the psukim that begin, “When Hashem enlarges your territory as promised and you say, “˜I will eat meat,’ because you have the urge...
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