Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh's blog
Posted in Parashah on Jul 12th, 2012
This week’s Torah portion is named after Pinchas whose zealous act retracted God’s anger and atoned for the Jewish people’s sins of promiscuity. The final passages of parashat Pinchas relate to the different types of animal sacrifices that we are commanded to bring to the Temple. It is well known that the name given to [...]
Posted in Balak on Jul 6th, 2012
In this week’s Torah portion we read how Balak, King of Moab, hired Balaam, an expert sorcerer, to curse the Jewish people, in an attempt to divestMoabof the threat that he felt they imposed upon them. On three attempts Balaam had Balak sacrifice seven oxen and seven rams, a total of 42 sacrifices, but every [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Aug 7th, 2011
The name of this month, Av, means “father.” This is the month to connect to our parents (father and mother) and honor them. “Honor your father and your mother…” is the fifth of the Ten Commandments. The sages teach that God placed the honor of one’s parents even before His own honor. Why is honoring [...]
Posted in Rectifying the Sense of Sight on Jul 22nd, 2011
Shabbat in relation to the weekdays is as sight to hearing. Throughout the week Divine vibrations fill my heart. On Shabbat I see Godliness. In the Zohar we learn that the word Shabbat (שבת) depicts the secret of the eye. The three branches of its first letter, shin (ש), allude to the three Patriarchs and to [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 15th, 2011
In the Torah there are many applications to the “law of similars.” One of them is that in order to kill a snake you must be like a snake. In gematria, Mashiach (משיח, 358) equals snake (נחש). As extreme opposites they are in fact similar, numerically identical. In Kabbalah, a number is defined as the [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 2nd, 2011
“Wisdom” (חכמה, 73), is equal to “misunderstanding” (אי-הבנה). The world was created with wisdom that gives rise to misunderstanding. The Torah begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The numerical value of the entire verse is 2701, the triangle of 73 (the sum of all numbers from 1 to 73). In [...]
Posted in Tweets from the year 5771 on Feb 24th, 2011
A horn is also a musical instrument, beginning with the shofar, the crown of all musical instruments in the Torah. Unicorns have one horn protruding from their forehead. They’re always turning corners, always becoming nothing, so you’ll never see one. In the Bible, the re’eim is usually translated as unicorn and is said to have [...]
Posted in Tweets from the year 5771 on Feb 24th, 2011
The Oral Torah is a living, growing organism. From generation to generation its submission and separation dimensions are ever reinterpreted. But with regard to the sweetening dimension of the Torah, truly new dimensions of it are revealed from generation to generation. The 4 major revelations are those of Moses, R. Shimon bar Yochai, the Arizal, [...]
Posted in Tweets from the year 5771 on Feb 24th, 2011
Who am I? Not my body, not my intelligence, not my desires, they were all given me. So who am I? I’m nothing, one with the Almighty. God created something from nothing, He created us to feel that we are something when in fact we are nothing. Something covers nothing. God gives us free choice, [...]
Posted in Tweets from the year 5771 on Feb 24th, 2011
God saved Jacob from his father-in-law Lavan, his brother Esau, and his “son-in-law” Shechem (his daughter’s rapist), three generations. Jacob is the all-inclusive Jewish soul. From him we learn that each of us has an enemy in the previous, this, and the next generations. The common denominator of the three enemies is that they all [...]