The Parsha Podcast - With Rabbi Yaakov Wolbe

We are not machines. We are humans. And that’s messy. We have all sorts of struggles doing the right thing. We are influenced by a myriad of impulses, inclinations, and predispositions. We don’t operate like clockwork. There are other things that always follow a prescribed pattern: The sun always rises in the East and sets […]

On the final day of Moshe’s life, he gathered the entire nation – men, women, children, and according to the Talmud, all souls of future Jews – to pass them through a final covenant with God. The parsha also contains the prophetic predictions of the Messianic times, and it ends with a simple, binary choice: […]

Sadness and hopelessness are modern societal epidemics. Notwithstanding the fact that our time has seen more material abundance than ever before, the share of Americans, especially young Americans, who feel consistent and persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness has skyrocketed in recent years. The Torah offers salient guidance. In our Parsha, we learn how to […]

Blessings and curses. That is the dominant theme of our Parsha. We read the admonition of Deuteronomy – 98 bone-chilling curses that will befall our people in the event that we repudiate our covenant with God. Blessings and curses appear a second time: the nation is instructed to assemble at Mount Gerizim and mount Ebal […]

As the Book of Deuteronomy draws to its conclusion, the narrative makes a transition: Moshe finishes conveying the mitzvos to the nation, and sets up his final parting message to the people. First, he commands the nation to perform several elaborate ceremonies on the very first day that they cross the Jordan River; then he […]