Save-the-Date: Purim Night • February 25 • 8:00pm Purim Comedy Night Join us for a Purim Comedy Night with community member Eli Lebowicz.
Eli Lebowicz started performing standup comedy while at YU, where he won the Last Comic Standing contest in 2009. He now lives in Riverdale and performs at communities all over the country, but these days pretty much from his apartment over Zoom. Click here or dial-in audio at +1 646 558 8656; Meeting ID: 613 613 3703
Today's Way to Help If you would like to suggest a way to help please email yael@thebayit.org.
NYC Hunter College - Food Policy Center Presents: Food, Cities and Climate Wednesday February 24 9:30am - 11:00am Food, Cities and Climate. This event will explore food's impact on climate change in urban centers and what cities can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food. To register click here.
Closing Message - Rav Steven
This is the week in which I sometimes struggle to stay with the parsha for the first time since Creation.
Slaves. Pits. Oxen. Guidelines for court rulings. For me, it's less familiar, harder to understand, and it sometimes feels archaic. It takes pages of Rashi to try to clarify a single verse and its halakhic and practical application.
וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙ הַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר תָּשִׂ֖ים לִפְנֵיהֶֽם׃ These are the rules that you shall set before them:
Rav Bunim of Peshischa comments on this opening verse: the mishpatim, the statutes, these tort laws that guide interpersonal interactions and build respect for property and a sense of responsibility and create order in the human realm, these mishpatim must be lifneihem - before everything.
This parsha, says Rav Bunim, is actually ground zero of the Torah. Before anything - any story, any relationship with God - come mishpatim. His idea echoes the dictate of the Sages, "one who wants to be pious (hasid) must follow the laws of nezikin (property damages). (Talmud Bava Kama 30a)
So I renew my commitment this week - to delve deeper into the laws. To understand their practical implications. To excavate their underlying ethical principles. To surface the system of interpersonal ethics they envision. To be attentive to my interaction with others' property, personhood, and a system of justice and fairness for all. This is the bedrock of our Torah.
Reminder to all to take good care of ourselves and each other. Try to do something specific today that strengthens you, and something else that strengthens someone else.
Hebrew Institute of Riverdale - The Bayit 3700 Henry Hudson Parkway Bronx, NY 10463
