We are trained to look at the first time that the Torah expresses an idea, utilizes a word, or introduces a character, as being the Torah’s way of encapsulating and defining that person, idea or thing.

Our Parsha marks the beginning of the Torah’s mitzvos. Hitherto the content of the Torah has been exclusively stories and narratives. In our Parsha, the Torah transitions to interspersing mitzvos amid the storyline. Can we identify the essence of mitzvos by analyzing the first one given to our people?

Let’s take a look and see what we find.

“This month shall be for you the first of the months” (Exodus 12:2). The first commandment revolves around calendars. Our calendar is a hybrid of lunar months and solar years. We abide by a solar year (~365.25 days long) and thus the festivals always occur in the same season each year, but our months follow the lunar cycle (~29.5 days long).

The commandment to maintain the calendar is thus twofold: Because the lunar month is 29 and a half days long, the court must decide which day is Rosh Chodesh: Will the month skew longer and day 30 is the final day of the previous month, making day 31 Rosh Chodesh, or will the previous month end after 29 days, and day 30 marks the first day of the following month? That is the first component of this mitzvah.

The second aspect is to oversee the harmonization of the solar year with the lunar month by intercalating months. Given that a lunar month is 29.5 days long, a lunar year is 354 days, 11 days shy of the solar year. Left untouched, each year would see the same date fall out 11 days earlier in the season cycle, resulting in Passover falling out in the spring, and then in the winter, and then in the fall, and then in the summer. Without rebalancing, each 33 solar years would feature 34 Passovers. A 100 year old would look back wistfully at 103 Seder nights.

The first mitzvah requires that our calendar adjust for this by establishing adding an extra month (Adar II) every couple of years to compensate for the lost days.

If we had to think of a mitzvah to personify all mitzvos you would imagine there would be a lot of candidates vying for that job. I would imagine if we polled Jews they would give us many other mitzvos before the commandment to organize calendars. Why is the calendar the first one given to our nation, and how does it embody all the mitzvos?

Here is my speculation:

Determining the new moon requires a fair amount of astronomic calculation. The Talmud reveals to us the exact length of a lunar moon down to milliseconds. It breaks down an hour not into 60 minutes but into 1080 chalakim, meaning that each minute is 18 chalakim long, and it states that a lunar month is exactly 29 and 1/2 days and no less than 793 chalakim. Or 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes and ~3.3 seconds.

With the most advanced scientific and astronomical tools and technology at our disposal today, that precise number holds up true – and it’s featured in the Talmud, a nearly 2,000-year-old work. All other ancient calendars were notoriously haphazard and imprecise, yet the calendar system that we have been using for millennia is accurate with atomic precision. How did the Jews of antiquity know this precise formula?

Our explanation is that the Almighty revealed it to Moses who passed the secret of the precise length of a lunar moon on to us. The Creator of Heaven and Earth and all the constellations is also the Giver of the Torah and the mitzvah of the calendar intersects the two.

So perhaps the reason why this mitzvah is the first mitzvah that we’re told is to reinforce the principle that mitzvos contain precise, atomic precision. The commandments of the Torah are not arbitrary. Just as maintaining a calendar relies on astronomic precision, the rest of the Torah is also perfectly calibrated. Soon we will read about the prohibition against wearing garments of wool and linen and about the sprinkling of the red heifer – mitzvos that seem totally illogical. If we weren’t initiated into mitzvos with the calendar we may be skeptical about the importance and indispensability of those mitzvos. The calendar mitzvah is measurable evidence that the Almighty gave us correct and precise wisdom. And even when we cannot measure the precision of His wisdom, we can be comforted in knowing that it too stems from a Higher Power and we can rely on it being necessary and useful.

There is a second reason why this mitzvah was chosen to go first. The calendar is in our hands, not God’s. The Mishnah tells us that if the human court makes a mistake and assigns the wrong day as Rosh Chodesh, it nevertheless is accepted by God and the heavenly Court as being authoritative.

Which day is Rosh Chodesh? The day that the human court decides. This mitzvah teaches us about the partnership between us and the Almighty. The Almighty is in charge of all, but He yielded some decision-making power to us. Via the mitzvos we can take a seat at the table and have a say in what happens to us and to the world. The calendar thus highlights the outsized role that we must play in determining what happens to this world.

I think that if we merge these two ideas we get to the heart of mitzvos.

On one hand they are a precise, divinely-determined formula for perfection. But that’s not to say that we are locked out of any influence and have no say. Quite the contrary. With the Almighty giving us the Torah and its mitzvos He also forfeited (to a certain degree) the sole power to determine what happens in this world. He gave us the tools to control the world. As strange as it sounds, we actually agree with the anti-Semites who say that the Jews control the world. We do. Or at least we can, provided that we harness the implements that the Almighty gave us to do so.

Our nation’s sacred mission is to become a light unto the nation; to become the people that lead all of humanity back to God, back to morality, back to faith, back to universal kindness – to be the people at the vanguard of leading the world to achieve the purpose of creation. This began with Abraham and our nation was formally entrusted with this mission at Sinai. We accepted it and all its concomitant responsibility.

We are not helpless in our pursuit. The Almighty gave us the precise formulas to do it. The ones that we can measure mathematically such as the calendar are astonishingly exact. Through this mitzvah we can be assured that the instructions to achieve our destiny are precise. But this mitzvah also reminds us that the ball is in our court. In this critical mission the Almighty yielded some degree of control of the world’s destiny to us. The destiny of the world is in our hands. Our free will is indeed quite vast. Should we choose to exercise it, we will become the nation and the people to bring the world to its perfection.

Moses was the greatest leader of our history, and arguably the greatest leader of any people’s history. But he had a very unusual backstory: He was raised not amongst his Jewish brethren, but in the king’s palace as the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, reared on the lap of one of our people’s most heinous enemies. How did Moses become the leader and savior of the Jewish people despite being raised in a completely Egyptian environment? More specifically, what was the pivotal moment that made Moses the person he became?

Here’s my speculation.

The very first episode that the Torah relates to us about Moses is that he went out and saw the suffering of his brethren and he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man. The verse (Ex. 2:12) describes how Moses reacted: “he turned to and fro and saw that there was no man and he struck the Egyptian and buried him in the sand.” On a simple level this means that Moses killed the Egyptian man who was perpetrating a crime against the defenseless Hebrew slave after ascertaining that there were no witnesses to the crime.

Many years ago I heard a novel interpretation of this verse:

Moses was a conflicted man. His pedigree was Jewish, he was, after all, the grandson of Levi and the great-grandson of Jacob. But his upbringing was entirely Egyptian. Moses had dual identities. He was half Hebrew and half Egyptian and he straddled these two worlds.

The first thing the Torah tells us about Moses is the time where he has to choose between these two identities: He turned to the right and he turned to the left, he looked at his Jewish identity and he looked at his Egyptian identity, and he saw that there is no man. You cannot be both an Egyptian and a Hebrew. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. You must make a choice.

What did Moses do? He struck the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. He slayed his internal Egyptian identity and buried it in the sand. And he paid a heavy price: He had to face trial, he had to flee, and he forfeited the trappings of luxury and power as a prince in Pharaoh’s court. Moses made a choice. He chose to forever be a Hebrew come what may. He vacillated no longer.

There are many aspects of Moses’s storyline that can be informative and relevant to us. But this first episode of Moses’s life, this pivotal inflection point where he had to make a choice which identity to embrace, is something that all of us must make.

We all live at the crossroads of our existing self and our idealized self. Each one of us knows how great we can become; how powerful our latent abilities are, and how vast our potential is. That idealized self is something that we theoretically want and really hope we could get one day.

Moses shows us how to actually get it. You look to and fro, you look at your dual conflicting identities and you make a choice. It’s only if we seize our destiny and make that tough choice that we can unlock our greatness. Wanting it is wonderful but wanting something will not actualize it. You have to choose which version of yourself you want and then you slay the Egyptian, bury it in the sand, and forget about it forever.

With that choice Moses began a trajectory that led him to the top of Mount Sinai and to the greatest heights ever reached by a man. If we want to access our own Sinai and achieve our own potential we must make the choice.

I view the generous people who support our work at TORCH as our partners and investors in our spiritual enterprise. In this final email newsletter of 2020, I want to present you with your Investor Report so you know that your charity investment dollars are being well spent.

If you have yet to join the world’s most lucrative spiritual investment club, think of this email as a prospectus. To update your investor status, visit https://www.torchweb.org/support.php

This email will focus exclusively on my podcasts, and the reader is encouraged to visit our website to see all the other amazing projects that TORCH does.

At a Glance

Over the course of 2020 I have been fortunate to have released 162 podcast episodes across six podcast channels (The Parsha Podcast, The Jewish History Podcast, TORAH 101, This Jewish Life, The Ethics Podcast, The Mitzvah Podcast).

With the help of the Almighty, the response from the audience has been incredible. Several of the shows have perennially ranked on the top ten on iTunes in the category of Judaism, and the download numbers have seen consistent growth.

And the numbers are truly staggering.

In the 12 months from January 1, 2020, until December 30, 2020, the podcasts have been downloaded 437,927 times, a more than 60% increase over the 273,280 downloads in 2019.

In addition, in 2020 the podcasts have been added to Spotify and have accumulated 45,387 “starts” (the metric that Spotify tracks) on that platform. It should be noted that “starts” on Spotify are not aggregated as server-side downloads, but downloads and streams from all other podcast apps (Apple Podcasts, Google podcasts, etc.) are included.

This is a long way of saying that the people who have supported TORCH on this initiative have partnered with us in spreading Torah and Jewish knowledge on a scale never before seen in history.

Impact of the Pandemic

The pandemic had a mixed effect on our podcasting efforts. In the immediate months following the pandemic our numbers dipped (see the graph below) as people’s commutes and routines were disrupted. But as people began to adjust to the new realities the growth that we have experienced over the past couple of years resumed.

The full impact of the pandemic on the world of Jewish outreach, education, and learning is still unknown. Many believe that when the pandemic ends everything will go back to the way they always were.

I disagree. In my opinion, the impact of the pandemic on our industry will be far-reaching and permanent as the epicenter of Jewish education and outreach transitions from brick-and-mortar to digital. This transition was already afoot and the pandemic accelerated and amplified it.

Thankfully, TORCH is well positioned to be at the vanguard of the new world of Jewish outreach and education thanks to our expertise in creating unique digital products in this space and to our robust catalog of evergreen content (more than 1,000 podcast episodes and 1,000 YouTube videos).

Many of the people in the Jewish education and outreach space decry the proliferation of smartphones and Internet devices, saying that it shortens people’s attention span and makes them focus on more ephemeral pursuits in lieu of immersion in Torah and the wisdom of our glorious heritage.

Of course there is legitimacy to that claim, but history teaches us that every curse is accompanied with opportunity. What we can accomplish today thanks to the internet and smartphones exceeds anything we could have possibly done in Jewish outreach and education in a brick and mortar world. Instead of shunning technology, at TORCH we seek to harness it to its fullest extent. Our success in podcasting is a reflection of this perspective. If you want to partner with us on this mission we’d love to have your support.

Highlights of 2020

Beyond the big picture, I want to share some of the highlights of this past year in podcasting and some of my favorite episodes.

A&Q

When we began the fifth year of The Parsha Podcast after Simchat Torah, we launched a new segment called A&Q: at the end of every episode I present the audience with a question on the parsha for them to mull over and if they like, email me responses. The best answers are revealed in the following week’s episode. We are now 12 weeks into the new cycle and the audience has responded very enthusiastically.

Moreover it is a step in the direction that we hope to take the entire ecosystem towards. Podcasts are consumed passively. With A&Q, the audience is encouraged to become active: to think about the questions on their own, to discuss it around the Shabbat table, and to submit answers. Activating the audience is something that we’re thinking about a lot at TORCH and we hope to continue moving in that direction.

The Shabbat Gift

In August, I released an episode on the This Jewish Life Podcast titled, “The Shabbat Gift”. This episode has an interesting backstory: In the previous Yom Kippur I made, as is customary, a resolution to God in order to lobby Him to give me a favorable judgment. At the conclusion of the Neilah services I promised God to record a podcast over the course of the upcoming Jewish calendar year where I would share with the audience the transformative power and meaning of Shabbat. I had optimistically assumed that by Chanukah it would be done. But Chanukah came and went, and Purim came and went and I had not yet produced this episode. Then the pandemic hit and my children were home from school and everyone’s lives were upended. During our family’s annual drive back from Canada at the end of the summer I resolved to fulfill my pledge pronto, and in August, barely a month before the end of the Jewish year, I finally recorded and released this episode. I’m very happy with how it came out, and I hope the Almighty believes that I kept my part if the deal.

Pandemic Podcasts

When the pandemic hit, everyone was scrambling to deal with this new terrifying virus. In three episodes (this, this, and that) I shared what I thought was a Torah perspective on the pandemic. Afterwards I felt that there was so much discussion about COVID in the news and it was dominating people’s lives so completely that it would be more helpful for me to make the podcast a refuge from all the COVID stuff, and therefore I stopped making it a focus of the podcasts.

Other Noteworthy Podcasts of 2020

I am very proud of all the episodes of 2020, but here are a few that I am particularly fond of:

Thanks a Million – When my podcasts cumulatively reached a million downloads, I recorded a special episode in which I told some of my personal story and outlined the surprising twists and turns in the journey to accomplishing this feat.

600,000 Letters of the Torah – Our Sages tell us that the Torah contains 600k letters, matching the number of Jewish souls. There is only one problem: It doesn’t. In this podcast I proposed a novel reconciliation that results in the total vindication of our Sages.

Age of the Universe: Reconciling Torah and Science – Science reports that the universe is ~13.8-15.4 billion years old. Our tradition teaches that we are in the year 5781. That is more than a slight rounding error. In this podcast I shared a mind-blowing answer.

A Grandson Remembers – Longtime podcast listeners know how much I revere my late grandfather, Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe zt”l. In this episode I share personal stories and reflections about the life and legacy of my grandfather.

Esau’s Fatal Flaw – Choosing which Parsha Podcast episode to appear on this list is hard because I am so fond of all of them. But this one is unique because it was conceived in a miraculous fashion. It was the night before I needed to record a new podcast on Parshas Toldos and I had nothing to say. I had read the Parsha and tried to gain an insight but I had nothing. I sat down by my desk at 11 PM and I started thinking about the Parsha. Within 20 minutes I had a complete podcast. What was so strange about it was that I felt like the Almighty deposited an entire podcast with a novel insight and a valuable lesson into my head like manna from Heaven. It popped into my head, fully formed, and ready for prime time. My takeaway from this story is that the Almighty is pleased with our work at TORCH and every once in a while He will wink at us and remind us that He’s got our back.

Chazon Ish, R’ Avraham Grozinsky, and Chacham Ovadia – On the Jewish History Podcast, I spent much of the year telling the stories of Torah giants of the 20th Century. Listening to the stories of these veritable giants inspires us to seek greatness ourselves.

A History of Oral Torah – The Jewish bookshelf is bursting with volumes ostensibly from the “Oral” Torah. In a series of episodes on the TORAH 101 Podcast channel, I traced the history of Oral Torah from Moses to Modernity. This series shatters the fiction of “Rabbinic Judaism”.

Akiva and Yehoshua Wolbe interview – This is a podcast that I did not record, but one that appears on my colleague Dan Kullman, President of the Board of TORCH’s, excellent podcast, The Shema Podcast. He interviewed my two oldest sons, Akiva and Yehoshua, about what it’s like to be a young boy in a Jewish community. It’s fair to say that if I have any podcasting ability, it was transmitted to my sons.

The Bottom Line

Our organization, TORCH, subsists solely thanks to the generosity of our friends and donors – our partners and investors. When you invest in TORCH, you can be confident that you will be partnering with an organization that is working tirelessly to produce the highest quality Torah education to the Jewish masses.

In 2020, 192 different people whose connection with TORCH was created over podcasts chose to donate to support the cause. These are the people who were personally impacted by our organization and chose to partner with us. Were you impacted by TORCH? Do you want to invest in our organization? If yes, please visit https://www.torchweb.org/support.php.

This past week I was studying the parsha with a dear friend of mine and the conversation segued to talking about reincarnation, a subject that I don’t profess to be an expert in and avoid talking about on the podcast. The person I was studying with expressed incredulity and skepticism about the idea of reincarnation in general. Reincarnation sounds like such a spooky and strange subject that rational, free-thinking, intelligent people tend to view it with skepticism. Jewish sources maintain that reincarnation does exist. What is the best way to reconcile our justifiable skepticism surrounding this subject?

My solution is what I call the Demystify and Deconstruct Heuristic:

Suppose we accept the following principles:

1. God exists and He is good
2. We have free will
3. The Afterlife exists

These principles are a lot less controversial than the question of reincarnation. I would imagine that most believers would accept these principles as true. I think it’s logical for someone who accepts these principles as true to also accept the notion of reincarnation. Here’s why: God gives us free will. We get to choose if we favor our body or our soul. The choice to prioritize the physical or the spiritual is in our hands. In the event that a person chose to neglect their spiritual life, after they pass and their soul is untethered from their body, their soul is incomplete. It’s mission has not been fulfilled. How would we imagine that God in His benevolence would treat such a person? Isn’t it logical to say that the Almighty will afford such a person a second chance? Would we really consider that God wouldn’t give a person another opportunity to accomplish their mission? Of course the Almighty believes in second chances! By deconstructing the subject, it becomes much easier to swallow.

This subject also benefits from a useful Russell Conjugation. “Reincarnation” sounds scary and spooky. “Second Chances” is warm and fuzzy and makes us smile.

Animal Sacrifices

Another Torah concept that becomes more palatable when reframed in this fashion is animal sacrifices. The Book of Leviticus is replete with descriptions of all different kinds of sacrifices that must be done on regular intervals in the Temple. We don’t have a Temple, but we pray every day for its restoration and the concomitant resumption of animal sacrifices. There is no subject that I have encountered as much incredulity as the question of animal sacrifices. “Rabbi, do you actually believe that the Temple is going to be rebuilt on Temple Mount in Jerusalem and we’re going to resume doing animal sacrifices?!” To modern sensibilities, animal sacrifice feels barbaric. It seems so foreign and distant from the world that we live in. Yet tradition tells us that the Messiah will come and the Temple will be rebuilt and once again we will offer animal sacrifices.

This subject as well can be helped via this process.

Animal sacrifice sounds barbaric but beef is what’s for dinner. Those of us who are part of the 94% of Americans who are not vegetarian are obviously comfortable with the concept of killing an animal and eating its flesh. What’s the difference between animal sacrifices and steak dinners? One is delicious and the other is delicious and a mitzvah. Instead of thinking about animal sacrifices as barbaric ceremonies, when we reframe it to be steak dinners with a mitzvah it becomes palatable and even desirable.

This is not to suggest that there aren’t deep spiritual and Kabbalistic secrets in sacrifices (or reincarnation for that matter), but for someone who struggles with the notion of these foreign concepts and mitzvos, a simple reframing goes a long way in making them more palatable.

Where else do you think such a heuristic is helpful?

The Parsha begins with Joseph languishing in prison. It’s been 2 years since he correctly interpreted the dreams of his two cellmates, and the newly reinstated Royal butler forgot Joseph, and his situation was dire.

That all changed when Pharaoh had frightening dreams of 7 fat cows being consumed by 7 frail cows and 7 robust ears of grain being swallowed by 7 pitiful ones. These dreams caused Pharaoh to seek Joseph’s dream-interpretation services and when Joseph skillfully interpreted the dreams he was promoted to viceroy of Egypt.

The Ohr HaChaim makes a very precise and critical reading of the first verse. He notes that the verse does not say that after two years Pharaoh dreamt. Rather the verse indicates that for 2 years Pharaoh was dreaming. He explains that Pharaoh had the identical dreams each night for two years, which he promptly forgot upon awakening. And now, 2 years after the butler was reinstated, Pharaoh finally remembered the dreams and was desperate to seek an interpretation.

This seems like a very strange suggestion. If Pharaoh forgot the dreams each night anyhow, why was it necessary for him to have these recurring nightmares? If Joseph was destined to languish in prison for two more years it doesn’t make sense to subject Pharaoh to the dreams that were not needed. Why did Pharaoh dream about cows and grain each night for two years only to forget them upon awakening?

One of the Hasidic Masters suggested an answer that radically reshapes how we think about Divine intervention and Divine providence. The Midrash states that Joseph underwent a lapse in his reliance on God when he asked the Butler to bring his case before Pharaoh. A man of Joseph’s stature he should have relied on God totally and not sought the help of the Butler. As a result of his insufficient faith, Joseph was penalized with two more years of incarceration. After 2 years Joseph ceased to rely on the Butler helping him, and restored his complete reliance on God, and right away the Almighty sprung the plan into action and Pharaoh dreamt.

But what would have happened had Joseph restored his total reliance on God earlier? That is what the Ohr HaChaim is telling us: Every single night of those two years, Pharaoh had the precise dreams that would have resulted in Joseph’s freedom and ascent to monarchy. Everything was in place; everything was ready; all that was needed was for Joseph to get ready. And each night because Joseph was not quite there yet Pharaoh forgot the dreams. But once Joseph restored his total reliance on God, Pharaoh remembered his dreams, and that very same day Joseph received Pharaoh’s ring, was bedecked in the garments of royalty, had a triumphal cavalcade throughout the city, and became the king he was destined to become.

We know that we must earn our Divine intervention and providence, but we have it backwards. We assume that the Almighty is waiting for us to pray or to become spiritually worthy and then He will begin the process of giving us our salvation. Here we learn that it’s the other way around: everything is already in place. Everything is ready to go. The almighty is anticipating us to make the move, to submit the prayer, to spiritually earn the merit – and once we become worthy the Divine salvation was there, waiting for us.

The recently approved COVID vaccine is an example of this model. Under normal conditions, when an experimental drug is being tested the process follows a certain sequence: There are various rounds of experimentation and trials where the safety and the efficacy of the given drug is tested. Once the tests seem promising then it’s submitted for approval by various agencies, and after approval, production and distribution begin. With the vaccine currently being rolled out everything was done concurrently in order to speed up the timeline. Even before efficacy and safety were established, production and distribution plans were already underway. With God, it’s always Operation Warp Speed. The Divine intervention, the Divine salvation is already in place pending approval.

In 2015, then Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was interviewed on one of the late night shows about the company’s new business, Uber Eats. When asked to explain how it works, Kalanick explained how with other online delivery companies, the process is that you order, then they make the food, it’s put in a car and delivered it to you. Uber Eats is different: “We make the food, we put it in a car, and then you order it and we deliver it to you.” I don’t know if this is the way Uber Eats still works, but at the time they were trying to eliminate the most annoying part about ordering food – the wait. You’re hungry and you want food now and you don’t want to wait. With this system you wouldn’t need to wait. The food is ready, all you need to do is order and then it is delivered.

Uber Eats and the COVID vaccine are metaphors for this deep and wonderfully inspiring insight into how the Almighty intervenes and aids people. Just like Joseph, the Almighty has a plan for how each one of us can achieve our destiny and fulfill our purpose. He wants to give us salvation, He wants to answer our prayers, He wants to shower us with blessings and goodness, He wants us to accomplish the mission that we were sent here to do. He wants to help us, but we need to earn it. We need to become spiritually worthy of that Divine blessing. I find it deeply comforting and inspiring to know that our salvation is already extant; its all lined up and ready to go pending Divine approval. The vaccines are made and are ready to be shipped. The food is fresh and delicious and in the car ready to be delivered. Pharaoh has a standing dream of cows and grain being swallowed – everything is in place. We submit the order, we become worthy of the salvation, and it is promptly unlocked. Everything is ready to go. Are you?

During Chanukah last year, I was invited to give a lecture at Aish Toronto (we had gone to visit family in Canada during winter break).

The talk began with a comparison of the two mitzvos that relate to lighting candles: Each Friday afternoon, of course, we light the Shabbos candles, and during Chanukah, we light the Menorah and its candles for the duration of the Festival’s eight days.

Both of these mitzvos require us to light candles, but upon examination they appear to be radically different, almost opposite mitzvos. By my count, there are at least 6 differences between the Shabbos candles and the Chanukah candles:

1. Utility: We are not allowed to benefit from the Chanukah lights (which is why a Shamash is added). By contrast, the whole purpose of the Shabbos candles is to benefit from them
2. Nature: The mitzvah of the Chanukah candles is the kindling (if the candles get extinguished, you have already fulfilled your duty and don’t need to tend to it). Shabbos candles are not about the action, but about the result: having the light in the home
3. Timing: Shabbos candles must be lit before darkness, by contrast, Chanukah candles can only be lit after darkness
4. Positioning: The Chanukah candles must be facing outside for public exhibition; Shabbos candles are only meant for the people inside the house
5. Variability: The Chanukah lights are dynamic: The Talmud teaches us that there are three levels of the mitzvah: at a minimum, one candle for everyone in the home. The righteous who seek mitzvos have one candle per person in the home. And the super-duper-uber committed successively add another candle each night, culminating in eight candles on the eighth and final night of Chanukah. The Shabbos candles don’t have these different levels.
6. Primacy: Halacha teaches us that both mitzvos are so important that if you don’t have candles, you even need to knock on doors and beg to be able to acquire them. But regarding Chanukah candles the sources add that should you find no other way to acquire Chanukah candles, you must even sell your clothing to purchase them. The Shabbos candles do not make that requirement.

These two mitzvos are obviously very different.

I don’t want to spoil it for you but if you have the time to listen to the entire talk you will discover that the candles are representative of our Soul, which has a long and dramatic and even spine-tingling history. The essence of Chanukah is to take that candle that is submerged within us and to make it surface and shine forth brightly. Shabbat represents something very different.

If you don’t have the time to listen to it, I hope you find these differences intriguing and thought-provoking.

Question of the week

Since the beginning of the Jewish calendar year, the Parsha Podcast has featured a recurring segment at the end of each episode called A&Q. A&Q is the opposite of Q&A. Q&A is when the audience asks the presenter a question and the presenter offers a (hopefully satisfactory) answer. In A&Q the audience is presented with a question and they must supply the answer. At the end of each week’s episode, I provide a question on that week’s Parsha, and solicit answers from the audience.

The response to this segment has been off the charts!

Every week the incredible and indefatigable Parsha Podcast audience offer wonderful and diverse answers, many of which are featured in the following week’s episode.

My friend Paul suggested that I include the question of the week in the newsletter. I’m not promising to give any answers, but it’s a good thing to cogitate upon if you missed this week’s episode, and hopefully it will encourage non-listeners to join the Parsha Podcast community or at least to sample it.

So here it goes: Joseph undergoes many transformations in his narrative in the Torah, and all of them are initiated by dreams.

He has dreams of grandeur that amplify the enmity of his brothers. As a result of his seemingly megalomaniacal dreams, they hate him and want to kill him, ultimately settling for selling him as a slave.
In Egypt, Joseph is imprisoned, seemingly without any hope, and when he correctly interprets the dreams of two of Pharaoh’s aides his bona fides as a gifted dream interpreter are established.
In next week’s Parsha, Pharaoh has two bothersome dreams and when he is desperately seeking for an interpretation Joseph is ushered out of his incarceration. After he skillfully interprets the dreams, Pharaoh installs him as viceroy of Egypt.

it’s clearly not a coincidence that every transition in Joseph’s life is precipitated by a dream.

Moreover, the dreams come in pairs: he has two dreams that spark his brother’s hatred, the Butler and the Baker have a dream apiece, and Pharaoh has two dreams that spur him to find an explanation. Seemingly every step in Joseph’s development could have been effectuated by a single dream: He has one dream that causes the brothers to hate him; the Butler’s dream is correctly interpreted, and Pharaoh’s single dream is resolved by Joseph.

So here’s the question of the week: Why is every stage in Joseph’s progression caused by dreams, and why are the dreams all doubled? if you have any answers. email them to me rabbiwolbe@gmail.com

When people thank me for producing my podcasts, I always feel that I should be thanking them! It has been a true blessing of a lifetime and immensely gratifying for me to be able to teach Torah on a global scale and to become friends with so many incredible and talented and amazing people. Our nation is composed of such wonderful people, and it is the greatest honor that I get to witness a slice of some of this brilliance and genius and wonderfulness firsthand.

This joy and delight reached a fever pitch this past week when I was honored to officiate at the wedding of David and Chana Borowsky.

David was a listener of my podcasts when he, together with other members of his community in Harrisburg, PA, invited me to deliver a series of lectures in December of 2017. Over the course of my 24 hour visit, I gave three lectures (you can listen to them here, here, and here), and David and I really became close friends. We maintained our relationship afterwards, and began studying together over Skype. David is a brilliant young man, and I proposed to him to consider spending some time in yeshiva in Israel for a couple of months, explaining that the marriage between his incredible brain and advanced Talmud study would be absolutely symphonic. David ended up at Machon Shlomo, a yeshiva for the best and the brightest young minds of our nation. After spending a few months there, he emailed me and told me how there were a bunch of the students there who were also listeners of my podcasts (the yeshiva is full of bright and talented students, after all) and asked if I would be willing to give them a lecture over FaceTime. I agreed, of course, and we had a great discussion in which I shared with them reflections, stories, and lessons of my grandfather, Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe. (it can be found here). After the discussion, I snapped a screenshot from my iPad.

Fast forward a couple of months. COVID hits, David returns to the States, he gets engaged to Chana, and invites me to officiate at the wedding.

People who know me know that I have an unfortunate weakness for microphones. When I saw that gorgeous microphone under the Chuppah, I just couldn’t stop talking! I hope I didn’t pontificate and drone on for too long! Thank you so much for inviting me to your wedding and for asking me to officiate. It was a true honor!

Mazal Tov David and Chana! May you share a wonderful life together and experience only happiness and joy and harmony and prosperity, and may you build a beautiful Jewish home together!

I always view the podcast audience as a big, globally distributed family. When there is a celebration in the lives of one of us, it is a joyous occasion for us all!

In addition to David and Chana, more podcast listeners got married this past week: Mazal Tov Michael and Daniella Rosen! May you share a life of nothing but joy and happiness together!

Things I am thinking about – Modern Insights in the Ancient Literature

One of the things that always intrigues me is when scientists, sociologists, and scholars in the greater world discover truths that are found in the Torah and ancient Jewish literature and have been part of the collective knowledge of our people for many centuries.

We believe that the Torah is the Almighty’s wisdom and the rules of nature and physics are His handiwork. Both the Torah and the world originate in the same source and it should come as no surprise, therefore, that they are going to mirror each other in all kinds of ways.

When we look at this week’s Parsha and the encounter between Jacob and his brother Esau, we find some examples of this. When Jacob sent his gifts to his brother as a bribe to quell his violent plans, he didn’t send them all at once. Instead, he divided the gift into many parts and spaced them out. Rashi explains that he did that in order to maximize the impact that it would have on Esau. You receive a gift, and it seems like that’s it, but then something else comes! And then something else and then something else! The way it is processed psychologically, Rashi tells us, is that the impact of the spaced out gift is amplified because each part of the gift creates a new excitement.

Whenever I read this I think of the study that was made recently with respect to waiters. Waiters of course always try to maximize the tips that they receive. They are thus incentivized to treat the patrons well in order to elicit a larger gratuity. So someone made a study that showed that when the waiter delivered a mint or a candy with the bill it raised the average tip size by 3% over the control group. When there were multiple mints or candies then the tip size grew on average by 14%. But here is what garnered the largest tips: when the waiter gave one mint and then left and then came back with a second one – when the gift was spaced out. Apparently, Jacob already knew the results of this study when he gave his gift to Esau organized in a way that’s most likely to bring about positive reciprocity

When Jacob prepares for conflict, he splits his people into two camps, saying that if Esau decimates one the other will survive. To me the sounds like the principle that we used in modern times called diversification. You don’t want to expose all of your assets to risk. Interestingly, the Talmud (Bava Metzia 42a) describes the ideal asset allocation of a diversified portfolio that is still today used by money managers the world over.

Obviously, these examples are two relatively minor ones, but something I am thinking about is how Torah is much more than ancient wisdom; it contains all the secrets of the world. We can discover truths about the world both from the Almighty’s mind and His handiwork.

Suppose you have two children: One is a star. Bright, precocious, gifted in every way – clearly has a bright future ahead of them. The other is struggling. There are all sorts of challenges and difficulties hampering their ability to succeed. Now imagine that you have the resources to help only one of them. You cannot help both of them, you can only help one. Which do you choose to boost? Do you try to supercharge the precocious child to give them the best chance to catapult to the next level, or do you help the struggling child not fall behind their peers?

Maybe we can speculate that Isaac and Rebecca disagreed on how to navigate this quandary. They had twin boys, Jacob and Esav. Jacob was a star. He was studious and diligent and talented in every way, and certainly had a bright future ahead of him. Esav was a challenge. He had violent tendencies, he had promiscuous proclivities, he loathed studying, he was a loafer – he was at severe risk. Isaac had a blessing that he could give to only one of his sons. Isaac wanted to direct that blessing to Esav; Rebecca thought that Jacob deserved it. Perhaps their disagreement was that Isaac wanted to boost the weaker son, and Rebecca wanted to supercharge the stronger one. Ultimately, Rebecca subverted Isaac’s will and orchestrated a usurpation of the blessings.

In his own dealings with his descendants, Jacob followed Rebecca’s lead. In the end of Genesis, Joseph presents his two sons, Ephraim and Menashe, to Jacob to receive deathbed blessings. Despite Menashe being older, Jacob does a dramatic switcheroo, and crisscrosses his hands, and places his dominant right hand on Ephraim and his weaker left hand on Menashe. His reasoning: Ephraim deserved a stronger blessing because he is destined for a brighter future than Menashe. Again, with only one dominant blessing to offer, Jacob chooses to supercharge the more gifted in lieu of balancing things out – of creating equality – by lifting the weaker to parity with the stronger.

The greatest pedagogue of the 20th century, the Alter of Slabodka, R’ Nosson Tzvi Finkel, said that the sole purpose of his institution was to develop one prodigy, R’ Ahron Kotler, into a giant Torah scholar. Someone questioned him, “but your yeshiva has 400 other students. If R’ Kotler is the whole goal, your yeshiva could be much smaller!” The Alter responded, “R’ Kotler needs to study in the right kind of environment in order to flourish. And that’s why we need the 400 other students.” In the Alter’s eyes, creating an army of well-educated foot soldiers is not as important as creating the one general who can influence the masses.

Benjamin Franklin is a secular example of the impact a single person can have. One man can essentially found a republic, negotiate peace for that republic, invent the bifocals and lightning rods and all kinds of other things, and found a world-class university. It’s tempting to try to calculate how many ordinary citizens would you need to put on the other side of the scale to equal the accomplishments of one Benjamin Franklin.

I also think that the Jewish concept of Messiah fits in with this idea. We believe that a single transformational person will emerge who will succeed in getting the entire world to adjust its outlook and perspective. In effect, the idea of Messiah highlights the potential power of a single solitary person.

There is a pedagogical approach that argues that we ought to do whatever we can to create the next R’ Kotler, the next Benjamin Franklin, the next Steve Jobs, and who knows, maybe even the Messiah. Clearly, this is not the only legitimate approach to this dilemma. According to our insight, Isaac believed otherwise. As a parent, my instinct is to follow the Isaacian approach and to dedicate the lion’s share of my time and thought to the weaker children. But nevertheless I think the other side of the equation is definitely something worth pondering. There is an argument to be made that we should “put all our eggs in one basket”, we should go “all-in”, we should shoot for the stars with the best candidate for superstardom.

Shalom,

This is the inaugural edition of my email newsletter, tentatively titled, “Wolbe Weekly”. I hope, please God, to send a new email each Thursday. The weekly email newsletters will consist of the following five segments:

1. Things I am thinking about and working on
2. Podcast outtakes – raw, unedited ideas tidbits, and potpourri that did not make the final cut of the podcast
3. Podcast feedback and conversation
4. Snapshot of the week’s podcasts and related episodes
5. Partner and investor reports

What I want to accomplish with this newsletter:

My #1 goal of this newsletter is to make this newsletter interesting and valuable to you. I will strive not to bore you and not to waste your time. This is the very beginning and I will be experimenting and tinkering with different ideas. I am not pledging to include each of these five segments in every email, but this is my current framework and I hope you enjoy it.

This email is going out to all my contacts and podcast listeners whose email address I know. If you are not interested in receiving these emails please unsubscribe from this list. I am desperately worried about causing people undue pain and clutter. I will not hold it against you if you leave.

I am still looking for a catchy title for this newsletter. It seems like convention is to have some sort of alliteration in the title, so right now I’m vacillating between “Wolbe Weekly” and “Thursday Thoughts”. Let me know if you have any preference or any other good ideas.

With that done, let’s get to this week’s content:

What I am thinking about – Bridging the Divide between the various strands of the Jewish world

I am opposed to thinking about the Jewish people in terms of denominations, as if to say that a “Reform” Jew and a “Conservative” Jew and an “Orthodox” Jew are not part of the same family. I have been trained to view the Jewish Nation as a single people, one family, as indivisible as a single human body. The notion of compartmentalizing our people into different boxes is anathema to me. Consequently, I think one of my missions in life is to try to bring as much unity amongst the various different strands and strata of our people.

That said, I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine this week. We were discussing the various kinds of Jewish communities and their relationships with each other. What I found so fascinating about our conversation is how this polarization and partisanship affects people on all sides of the religious strata.

My friend was telling me how people who were raised Reform are often terrified of Orthodox and overtly religious people. They are scared of making mistakes and not knowing what to do and not knowing proper protocol; there is a dread of “what if they asked me questions and I don’t know the answer.” It would be really scary, says my friend, for someone who grew up attending a Reform synagogue to go to an Orthodox one.

He also mentioned that going to a Shabbos meal in the Orthodox home may be a very nerve-wracking experience. You don’t know what to do, what to talk about, and how to behave. You are on edge. In his words, many people have a “phobia” of Orthodox Jews.

What I found so fascinating about this is that I have seen the identical sentiment from the other side. I was raised in a totally observant world, in a totally observant community, and was fortunate enough to spend many years in yeshiva, and I have found that people who grow up in an Orthodox community are often terrified of people who are less observant.

What makes it so ironic is that the same fears that the less observant people have the more observant people have. “What if they ask me questions and I don’t know the answer? What if they asked me to prove the veracity of Torah?” What if they asked me about complicated theological and religious questions that I myself don’t really know the answer to?”

I feel like I have visibility into both sides of this divide. I have many friends who hail from every kind of Jewish background: spanning from people who have absolutely no traditional background in Jewish learning or practice to people who speak fluent Yiddish, and study Talmud all day long, and know the whole Torah by heart, and who are totally immersed in the observant, religious, pious way of life.

So one of the things I am thinking about is various ways that we can reunite our people. I can assure you that at Sinai, the nation was not denominationally segregated. For us to once again achieve our peak, we must be reunited as one. Indeed one of the hallmarks of the Messianic era is the reunification of our people.

To a large extent, I think it’s happening already. The polemics and the ideological battles of the 19th century are over, and in my opinion, things are trending towards consolidation. But this is definitely something to work on.

I’ve been thinking about maybe doing a podcast for people who are going to their first traditional Shabbos meal: What to expect, what they need to do, what the process is going to look like, etc. And also the flip side, I have been toying with doing a podcast for my more traditional brethren to teach them how to engage and interact with Jews who don’t have the same traditional background in Jewish learning and practice.

What are your thoughts on this subject?

Podcast Outtakes – Sodom Sodium

Some quick thoughts on Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt. Click HERE for the audio –

Parsha Point to Ponder – Not a Laughing Matter

There are four instances of laughter in this week’s Parsha, Parshas Vayeira. Upon careful examination it seems that each instance connotes a different type of laughter:

1. When Sarah hears the angels masquerading as travelers foretelling that she and her husband Abraham, both nonagenarians long past fertility, will bear a child, she laughs. This is an INCREDULOUS laughter. (Genesis 18:12-15)
2. When Lot tries to hustle his family out of Sodom before the angels overturn the city, his sons-in-law laugh at his ridiculous suggestion. This is a mocking, SARDONIC, deriding laughter (Genesis 19:14)
3. When Isaac is born, Sarah exclaims that God has made a laughter to me, and all that hear it will also laugh. This was a delightful, EXUBERANT laughter that permeated the whole world. (Genesis 21:6)
4. When Sarah sees Ishmael behaving in a sinful way, the verse describes Ishmael as laughing. The commentaries explain that this laughter refers to either idolatry, promiscuity, or murder. This was a SINFUL and corrupt laughter. (Genesis 21:9)

Apparently there are at least four different kinds of laughter. Ain’t that funny? What does it mean? I don’t know. This is a point to ponder

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Have an amazing Shabbos,

With warmth and friendship,

Yaakov