Jack Kustanowitz
Parshat Pekudei: Walkthrough
Posted by Jack Kustanowitz | Tags: Pekudei
[This is largely a recapping of Parshat Tetzaveh, again with repetitive details omitted here. Interestingly, as in Vayakhel last week, it starts with some new material, and then settles into the itemizations. This time, however, differently from Vayakhel, note the plural “they made”, as well as...
Parshat Vayakhel: Walkthrough
Posted by Jack Kustanowitz | Tags: Vayakhel
[This is largely a recapping of Parshat Teruma. Rather than repeat all the detail, readers are encouraged to flip back to the description there, and consult a word-by-word translation to explore any differences between the two versions.] Moses got the Israelites together and told them: “These...
Parshat Ki Tisa Walkthrough
Posted by Jack Kustanowitz | Tags: Ki Tisah
God continued speaking to Moses: When you take a census of the Israelites, and each one redeems his soul from God, lest He smite them – [what an opening] Everyone 20 years or older should give a half a shekel donation to God. The same amount, rich or poor, and it should go towards running the...
Parshat Tetzaveh: Walkthrough
Posted by Jack Kustanowitz | Tags: Tetzaveh
[God continues His soliloquy. Quotes are implied in every paragraph.] Now you go tell the Israelites to get pure olive oil to light the menorah. They should set it up in the Tent, outside the Curtain which was on the Covenant, set up there before God all night long, for all time, on behalf of...
Parshat Terumah: Walkthrough
Posted by Jack Kustanowitz | Tags: Terumah
God continues with more instructions for Moses to tell the Israelites. They should bring donations, from whoever is feeling generous: gold, silver, fine materials, animal skins, oil, precious stones, etc. – so that they can build me a Temple and I can dwell among them. Build the sanctuary...
Parshat Mishpatim: Walkthrough
Posted by Jack Kustanowitz | Tags: Mishpatim
[Almost this whole parsha is a divine soliloquy. Start God quotes now:] Here are the laws that you should establish: When you buy a Hebrew slave, he works for six years, and then goes free in the seventh. He leaves with whatever he came in with, and if he was married his wife goes free as...
Parshat Yitro: Walkthrough
Posted by Jack Kustanowitz | Tags: Yitro
Meanwhile, Jethro (Moses’father-in-law, the Midianite priest) heard about how God had taken the Israelites out of Egypt. He took Moses’ wife and sons (whom Moses had sent away) [!!], and brought them to the desert where Moses was camped, near the mountain of God. [Recall, this is where Moses had...
Parshat Beshalach: Walkthrough
Posted by Jack Kustanowitz | Tags: Beshalach
And so it was, when Pharaoh [finally] let the people go, God pointedly did not take them on the Phillistine Highway (which would have been the fastest way into Canaan), because he thought that the minute they had any kind of confrontation, they would hightail it back to Egypt. So instead, God...
Parshat Bo: Walkthrough
Posted by Jack Kustanowitz | Tags:
Now God says to Moses, “Come to Pharaoh, because it was I who has been making him stubborn, in order for you to be able to tell your children and grandchildren the story of all that’s happened here.” So Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh and asked him, “How long are you going to keep this up? Let...
Parshat Vaera: Walkthrough
Posted by Jack Kustanowitz | Tags: Va'era
Then God spoke to Moses, reintroducing Himself as the God of Avraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom He had promised the last [apparently, He was still trying to sound out the best answer to Moses’s question of what to tell the Israelites when they ask who sent him]. “Tell the Israelites”, God says,...
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