Torah

By Sam Glaser 

When New Year’s rolls around, I review the things I promised I would change from the previous year. Sadly, the platitudes of my resolutions could be better described as my New Year’s Delusions. My grandiose ideas about integrating growth and discipline into my life remain just that: ideas. Judaism gives us incredible tools to get lofty concepts into day-to-day practice. This crucial journey toward personal mastery is called Tikun Midos, the healing of our character traits. We’re lucky that countless sages have given us powerful techniques to set goals and actually reach them.

Klal Yisrael is magnificent! In the chaos of the Covid 19 mageifah they are showing their love of Hashem and His Torah, in unprecedented ways.

In last week’s parshah, we learned, “When you build a new home you are to make a fence for your roof; and do not place blood liability in your house for someone who should fall may fall from it.” Rashi explains: “He deserves to fall, but still let his death not come through you, as benefit is brought about through the meritorious and injury through the guilty.”

I stared at the charred piece of parchment, hung and well-framed, on the wall of the library; four columns of a Torah scroll, full of holes and blackened with age and dirt, the thoughts racing through my mind: “How is this here!? How many people have stared at this, not knowing what it is? What am I supposed to do?” And most jarringly, “How can I get it the right way up again!?”

Living in the era of the debilitating COVID-19 virus, we, unfortunately, hear and read many overused clichés, and commonplace vocabulary is becoming stale and superfluous. Within the Jewish community, one of these idioms is “chesed.”

Metivta Tiferet Torah of Monsey is hosting their Open House on Sunday January 19 in Brooklyn featuring an address by Rabbi David Ozeirey.

For over a decade the kol torah of Yeshivat Tiferet Torah’s top-notch overwhelmingly successful and active bet midrash and kollel programs has permeating its walls forming a new generation of talmidei chachamim all under the leadership of Rosh HaYeshiva Rabbi Nissan Hakakian. Metivta Tiferet Torah seemed the next logical step for an already bustling beacon of torah thought in Monsey. Established at the behest of many gedolei yisrael the high school was developed to enrich the Sephardic mesorah in each talmid that passes through its doors. The yeshiva’s exquisite campus and on-campus dormitory provides a serene environment for the bachurim to thrive and grow as a family into bnei torah while maintaining immense pride in their distinct Sephardic lineage.