This week's parsha

Unless otherwise noted, "This week's Parsha" comprises articles taken from contributors to the Chabad.org website. We show the original author's name here, so that proper attribution is given. For the sake of brevity, footnotes cited in the original author's writings are omitted from this website. If you need to see the citations, please refer to the original articles on the Chabad.org website.

Transforming Our Desert

Published: 11 August 2014 | Written by Lazer Gurkow

Miraculous Oasis

The desert that our ancestors traveled was arid and infertile, inhospitable to all forms of life. Despite their forty-year sojourn in the desert, our ancestors survived and even thrived. G-d provided manna, fresh water and a protective canopy of clouds, thus creating a miraculous oasis, a rare climate for life.

Two Questions

Transforming the desert climate to create a climate hospitable to life was a deliberate miracle. It is an axiom of Jewish faith that G-d does not perform a miracle in vain. Was this forty-year transformation of the natural order really necessary, when G-d could have simply led our ancestors directly into the Promised Land and thus obviated the need for a miracle?

Why is the Jewish People So Small

Published: 04 August 2014 | Written by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Near the end of Va'etchanan, so inconspicuously that we can sometimes miss it, is a statement with such far-reaching implications that it challenges the impression that has prevailed thus far in the Torah, giving an entirely new complexion to the biblical image of the people of Israel:

The L-rd did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you are the fewest of all peoples.

This is not what we have heard thus far. In Genesis, G-d promises the patriarchs that their descendants will be like the stars of the heaven, the sand on the seashore and the dust of the earth, uncountable. Abraham will be the father not just of one nation, but of many. At the beginning of Exodus we read of how the covenantal family, numbering a mere seventy when they went down to Egypt, were "fertile and prolific, and their population increased. They became so numerous that the land was filled with them."

Tell Us Your Story

Published: 28 July 2014 | Written by Levi Avtzon

Attention grandparents, parents, and anyone who has memories to share: Please write your memoir. Please tell us your story.

Once upon a time, when the world used to change in slow-motion, memoirs didn't play the role they must today. Children identified with the world their parents grew up in -- for the most part, it was the same world.

Today the world is evolving at such a rapid pace. Children are educating their moms and dads, teaching them how to maneuver in the book-less, mail-less, cord-less (respect-less?) era we live in. The children are the teachers; their parents are the under-average students ("Um, how do I use this gadget, son?"). A topsy-turvy society.