Those who live in a religious neighborhood in Israel can enjoy the daily sight of many rabbis walking through the streets and speaking about the Torah. My neighbors here in Bet Shemesh are elderly Indian Jews whose daughter married a Briton who, in turn, is a great scholar who not only speaks about the Torah but actually prints out his interpretations and distributes them to everyone he meets on the street.
Rabbi Yehonasan Geffen also pressed a sheet of his “Dvar Torah – a word about the Torah” into my hand, and I would like to summarize his thoughts here.
This Shabbat we read the last portion of the Torah, Vezot Habracha, in which Moses blesses the tribes of Israel and then dies.
The Torah closes its annual cycle with a moving eulogy for Moshe Rabbeinu (we call him “Moses our Teacher”), which ends with praise for “the strong hand and the mighty power that Moses performed before the eyes of all Israel.” Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki (“Rashi”), an eleventh-century scholar, cites a Midrash (interpretation of religious texts)...
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