Back in 1996, Rabbi Finman was asked to speak to the niece of one of his students. After spending many hours answering her questions, the woman gave Rabbi Finman her e-mail address. Rabbi Finman wrote the woman a note and included in it a short insight into that week's Parsha and a short Chasidic story.
Realizing that this was something no one was yet doing,, Rabbi Finman sent the missive to his mailing list of about 30 people. Requests from recipients friends came pouring in. The next week Rabbi Finman sent the e-Parsha to 100 people. Within a year more than 2000 people were receiving it. Today, more than 14,000 receive the e-Parsha weekly and the requests keep coming in.
Vayikra 5785
Pekudei 5785
Vayakhell 5785
Ki Sissa - Purim 5785
Titsaveh 5785
Vayakhell 5785
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This week's YouParsha - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSZLqgAJ9Fc Too Successful a Building Campaign
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Parshas Vayakhel - Exodus 35-38, features the placing of the various utensils in the sanctuary. The middle branch of the menorah was placed opposite the table that stored the Cohan/Priests' lechem hapanim - Shabbos bread. That branch represented the Shabbos. Candles four, five and six represented Wednesday, Thursday and Friday; days of preparation for the Shabbos while candles one, two and three represented Sunday, Monday and Tuesday; the days in which the effects of the previous Shabbos are still felt.
The G'dly influence for the entire week is directed through the Shabbos. We begin the Shabbos with wine for Kiddush, bread for hamotzi and oil for the candles. These form the basis of a person's physical sustenance. It is for this reason that the center candle of the menorah, representing Shabbos, was opposite the table. The Menorah drew G'dly spiritual light into the world which directed the table's G'dly physical provisions into the world.
The physical needs of the Jewish people are drawn through the Shabbos. "By the blessings of G'd does man live," refers to the Shabbos. Greater G'dliness is brought into the world the more one is involved with the Shabbos.
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Rabbi Schneerson looked into his eyes”
By Rabbi Samuel Adelman
From the B.M.H. Bulletin, Denver CO, September 20, 1960:
In the summer of 1956, after our return from the Soviet Union, I made a visit to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, better known as the Lubavitcher Rabbi. The purpose of my visit was more than idle curiosity. Somehow, as a result of what we had seen in Russia, I felt that I could find the answer to a most perplexing problem-how to captivate the hearts and hands of our people for G'd and His Torah-how to cause commitment to His Truth. But, why the Lubavitcher Rabbi? For this, I will have to go back to our visit in the Soviet Union.
It would be trite to repeat the oft-heard story of spiritual decay in this hell-on-earth-where Satan rules and the god of materialism holds sway. Yet it was in the midst of this modern Egypt and its forty-nine degrees of spiritual impurity that my colleagues and I discovered the only meaningful resistance among our people. For, to our amazement, we found scattered groups of Lubavitcher Chassidim that had somehow managed, not only to survive, but to continue to find strength and to transmit it to their children.
Upon my return to America, I hastened to 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, expecting to find an imposing building as would befit this gigantic challenge to Russian Communism and the god of Moloch. I looked for severe security measures-secret chambers-and a hard dynamic leader of international movement.
I suppose that I was a little disappointed to find, instead, a ramshackle old building, badly in need of paint and repair, the lusty voices of young men hard at a folio of Talmud-and a soft spoken and gentle middle-aged rabbi, who seemed hardly to be a match for the Khrushchev I had met in Moscow. But, that was until I started to speak to Rabbi Schneerson and looked into his eyes. Slowly, it began to dawn on me why we had met Lubavitcher Chassidim in Russia, even after they had been cut off from their source of strength for over thirty years. The former Lubavitcher Rabbi had been expelled in the mid-twenties, but more importantly, I began to see the answer to many questions that had been giving me no peace. For here, I saw strength of a different kind-the strength of spirit.
The answer was obvious. To overcome material giganticism, one does not have to meet it on its own level. Synagogues need not be turned into a kind of religious nightclub or replica of Las Vegas to draw on the hearts of its people.
The simple answer to material giganticism is in being spiritually gigantic; no more, no less. The power of truth is overwhelming and its obvious asset is that it is Truth. This is the great discovery that is beginning to turn American Jews back to the synagogue. We are beginning to realize, in the words of the Lubavitcher Rabbi: “Far dem emes muzen alle fahlen! Before the truth, all must prostrate themselves."
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