Parshas Bamidbar
8 maamarim of the tzaddikim on this week's reading, each in Hebrew and English with a takeaway.
Lehavas David
Rav Dovid Matisyohu Rabinowitz ›Lehavas David · Rav Dovid Matisyohu RabinowitzCounted with Love: Joyful Teshuvah Before the TorahTeshuvah must come before we receive the Torah or do a mitzvah, but honest self-reckoning can slide into sadness, and the Shechinah rests only where there is joy. So Hashem first…Lehavas David · Rav Dovid Matisyohu RabinowitzWilderness, Water and Fire: Humility and Raising the HeadReceiving the Torah begins with humility: making ourselves like an ownerless wilderness, ready to learn from everyone and to stand with others as one. But when humility starts to…Lehavas David · Rav Dovid Matisyohu RabinowitzFire, Water and Wilderness: Giving the Body Over to TorahThe Torah is meant to sanctify not only our minds but our bodies, and that happens only through real toil, giving ourselves over to it like an ownerless wilderness. Along with its…Lehavas David · Rav Dovid Matisyohu RabinowitzTeshuvah Before Torah: When Every Hour CountsTeshuvah is not only for those who have sinned: whoever rises higher should look back at yesterday's avodah and see how much better it could have been. When we return to Hashem as…Lehavas David · Rav Dovid Matisyohu RabinowitzLifting the Head: The Tzaddik and UnityAlone, a person can easily believe he is serving Hashem well enough; it is beside the tzaddik, and among those more devoted than he, that his heart breaks and a real longing…Lehavas David · Rav Dovid Matisyohu RabinowitzThe Book of Lineage: Measuring Ourselves Against the AvosThe Torah was given to those who, like the generation that ate the manna, still feel after much learning and many mitzvos that they have not yet begun. We keep that feeling honest…Lehavas David · Rav Dovid Matisyohu RabinowitzCleaving to Hashem: Every Person Can Be a LeviThe Levi's holiness never rested only on his work in the Beis HaMikdash; it came from his being joined to Hashem and setting aside the many calculations of this world. The Rambam…Lehavas David · Rav Dovid Matisyohu RabinowitzChildren as Guarantors: The Tzaddik Lives OnThe whole Torah endures by being passed on, and that is why the children, not the fathers, were accepted as its guarantors. A tzaddik's path stays alive when his sons carry it…