Chinuch explains that if one is allowed to defend their physical property to the fullest extent of the law, for sure when facing verbal abuse and threats to one’s emotional and spiritual health one can respond in kind.
While the practice of Molech is no longer en vogue in today’s world, the metaphoric pillars of fire that youngsters pass would through in worship of this barbaric deity still burn strong in the halls of 'prestigious' universities.
It appears that the ability of the Jews to take the pagan representation of the Egyptian society in full view, and prepare it for sacrifice 4 days later, may have been a greater miracle than anything that had occurred up until that moment.
For while we have fought for and earned the Land of Israel, and the practice of Jewish life has returned to Zion, we cannot say that our Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel are truly free.
Aharon's sin with the Golden Calf was not in its creation but in forcing G-d to judge the Jews as willful sinners.
Yaakov did not cease his studies of the 613 Mitzvot, and when one learns about a Mitzvah, credit is given for actually fulfilling that commandment!
R’ Moshe Feinstein asks the obvious – if G-d’s voice was to be heard by Moshe alone, why does the Torah allude to the might and majesty of G-d’s communications? What purpose was served by this miracle?
Gur Aryeh [a supercommentary on Rashi written circa. 1550] asks the obvious–the Torah has just spent hundreds of Pesukim describing the building of the Mishkan, and all that went in to it, and finally, at the culmination of the process, when the last details and accountings are being presented to the Jews–the Torah chooses to allude to the eventual destruction of it all.
After thousands of years of no homeland, no Beit Hamikdash, exile and persecution, our National Identity in the metaphysical sense has been the mitzvah of Shabbat – it warms the heart and soul of the Jewish people like no other.
Ultimately, the spirit of sacrifice for Am Yisrael that Moshe represented was baked into the national identity of the Nation of Israel.
The High Priest, as the messenger of the united force of the Jewish People, bore these two stones on his shoulders, to highlight that when Jews are united in their service to G-d, they cannot be defeated.
Rabbi Saadyah Gaon wrote: "The Jewish nation is a nation only by virtue of the Torah."
Rabbeinu Bachye explicitly writes that had the Jews not sinned with the golden calf, we would have reached humanity’s perfection.
Moshe understood that there would have been no significance to his being saved from the sword of Pharaoh if he would land up assimilating and losing his connection to the burgeoning religion of his ancestors.
In this week's Parshah, the open war with the ancient arch-enemy of the Jewish People, Amaleik, begins
