יום שני, כ״ט חשוון תשפ״זMonday, November 9, 2026
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Avraham Levitt is a poet and philosopher living in Samaria. He has written extensively on Jewish and Israeli art, music, and spirituality. He is particularly focused on Hebrew philology and the magic of late antiquity. He can be contacted at avraham@thegeula.com.
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The navi tells us that when Hashem decides to act to redeem Israel, He will do it in a way that all of the nations of the world will be forced to take notice.
For this reason money is compared to the wisdom of the nations of the world without Torah. It is merely a collection of shiny things.
As Malbim explains, the Land will be expanded in order to accommodate all those who return from the long exile. There will be room enough for everyone.
If a father has to punish his son, he always holds back a measure of what the boy deserves because he loves him. After the punishment he still worries that maybe it was too harsh.
We mourn because upon the return of the spies from the Land, the people of Israel mourned and we have still not recovered from that moral failure, and because in the times of the second Beit HaMikdash people couldn’t treat one another with simple kindness.
Shlomo also said, I praised the dead who had already died (Kohelet 4:2). Because there is no understanding among the living.
One thing worthy of note in our haftara is that the entirety of the first chapter is read, but the haftara continues three verses into the second.
The salient point of the navi Micha – in contrast to the message of Bilaam – is that when the time comes for Hashem to redeem His people, all of the historical forces and all of the races and cultures of humanity will fall into line as part of the divine plan.
Unfortunately, Yiftach would become a key participant in perhaps the bloodiest and most infamous civil war in Israel: that between Menashe and Ephraim.
It is worth understanding why Korach’s argument against Moshe was found to be utterly without merit while Shmuel’s is held up as the apogee of righteousness.
Shimshon is a tragic, and ultimately tragically flawed, character.
Abarbanel says that the Children of Israel are not compared to grains of sand simply because they are so many. Lots of things occur in great numbers but Israel isn’t compared to them.
Every mitzvah you perform heals some spiritual malaise that you might not even know you were suffering from.
Yirmiyahu knows that Hashem is all-powerful and that He is not limited by geopolitical and military realities. If Hashem wishes to reverse the process of conquest and cancel the exile, it is within His power to do so.
The Arizal teaches that the firstborn ought to have had the priesthood by right, except that Kayin abused this privilege and it was revoked from him as a result of his grave transgression.
Again and again Yechezkel recounts all of the miracles Hashem has performed throughout history for His people and all of the ways in which they betrayed Him.
Rabbeinu Bechaye points out there that there are a few instances in Tanach where chodesh, the month, is synonymous with the new moon at the beginning of the month.
This is the true meaning of Pesach – to restore the unique relationship between ourselves and our Creator, as individuals and as a collective.
Why is this Shabbos different from all other Shabboses? On this Shabbos, Israel became a nation unified in our service of Hashem, as was anticipated two weeks ago on Shabbat HaChodesh.
The Gemara explains the discrepancy in the offerings in a beautiful way, to the effect that Israel will bring what they have available and Hashem will accept it.
When our haftara was designated for a week such as this, thousands of years ago, the sages saw fit to add another couple of verses to the end, spoken by Yirmiyahu almost a thousand years before that.
On the stage of history, we have been taught that Hashem often uses the wicked to destroy the wicked. One evil nation will conquer another, only in due course to be conquered by the next to arise.
In our haftara, we find Shlomo HaMelech completing the construction and initiating the dedication of the First Beit HaMikdash. In Shlomo we find a unique synthesis of the attributes of Moshe and of Betzalel.
The wickedness of men and women can live long after they are gone.
Baal and his prophets are not worth the time or the energy of the last remaining prophet to Hashem. His mission is to the people of Israel who have abandoned the service of Hashem.
When the navi Yechezel is given a vision of the third Beit HaMikdash, he is commanded to teach its measurements and dimensions to the people of Israel. The people to whom he delivers this prophecy have yet to build the second Beit HaMikdash, so it's a bit incongruous to be speaking of a third.
The trebled height of the Beit HaMikdash the Malbim associates with greater ambition that Shlomo has for the spiritual purpose of the Sanctuary that he has built.
We have heard and not understood. We have seen and not known. Now we are those holy seeds lying in the ground waiting to sprout so that the decrees of Hashem might at last be heeded and carried out.
What nation has ever returned from exile, or even been remembered after a thousand years or more?
Our true salvation and our joy doesn’t come from the downfall of the wicked.
The Sefardim and Ashkenazim read different portions for the haftara this week. These portions seemingly have little to do with each other or with the parsha.
What is the way of all the world? Naturally, we live and then, after a while, we die, leaving this world behind.
Rav Amiel invokes the verse from our haftara in a discussion of the nature of chosenness, which he understands as a unique burden placed upon the people of Israel. A set of responsibilities as opposed to privilege.
There’s a temptation for earthly leaders to believe that events unfold as a result of their decisions, the exercise of their power.
This wanton disregard for the welfare of others is the epitome of chamas for which the world was already destroyed once and, the navi is warning, for which Israel will yet be exiled from her land.
Esav is the last of all the nations to come into the world. He is a pretender. He uses his strength and deception to humiliate and to conquer others, but in the end he is just a bully.
Just as Yaakov tended the sheep of Lavan, guiding and guarding them so he could win the hand of Rachel, so Hashem protects his offspring until the end of time.
Abarbanel describes some of the spiritual depths to which the inhabitants of Yerushalayim had sunk at this twilight of prophecy. Those who should have been the leaders, the best among us, had become the worst.
Of Sarah we know that her beauty, as legendary as it was, was only one small fragment of her greatness.
A story is told in the Gemara (Shabbat 53b) of a man whose wife died, leaving him an infant son. The man was too poor to afford a wet nurse to feed his baby, so he miraculously grew breasts and nursed the baby himself.
Yeshayahu is anticipating the future destruction and exile and is trying fruitlessly to inspire the people of his generation to return to Hashem before it’s too late.
The first thing to understand in encountering our haftara is that there is no belief in millennial destruction that is axiomatic to Judaism.
There are unfortunately many people of Jewish extraction who believe the election of the Jews, our “chosenness,” to be a birthright or a guarantee of a sort of superiority over other nations.
In Jewish tradition, noga tends to be ambiguous – it is a great demonstration of superficial beauty with a tendency to obscure what is essential.
It’s interesting to note here that in the West, the dove of Noach has come to represent peace, although this was neither the promise to Noach nor the sign of the promise.
The Ishbitzer teaches that everyone comes into this world with Torah in his heart, cloaked in a disguise. We all have some special lesson to impart, some perspective that is uniquely our own, but is the opposite of what is readily apparent in our nature.
If their weapons do not suffice to destroy us, then they will turn to the treachery of falsehood and hateful speech to overcome us.
Hashem is our go'el, our redeemer. The congregation of Israel was banished from the marital home because she had betrayed her Divine husband, but He never severed from her and He has been waiting for her repentance so that she could return.
The Esh Kodesh teaches that each of us has an aspect of the Divine in us when we make moral choices to act or refrain from acting in certain ways.
It is sometimes difficult to understand, but when Hashem is “angry” at us or punishing us, He is acting out of love for us because He knows that we have to improve.
It is a consolation to Yirmiyahu, although perhaps a small one, that he is also given many of the most explicit and moving visions of the ultimate redemption.
For Everything There Is A Time And A Moment
How can I curse, says Bil’am, that which G-d did not curse? What rage can I bring against those whom Hashem will not rage against?
The Ammonites are not interested in learning the truth - they only want to destroy Israel.
We believe in nonsense and promote ridiculous ideas that can’t be rationally defended and refute themselves as quickly as we utter them.
In the case of Yaakov, there was already a covenant with Hashem and mutual expectations.
November 6, 2026 
