Torah

In 1970, Rabbi Dr. Ivan Lerner was recruited to become the first director of NCSY’s Central East Region. The region’s borders stretched east to west, from western Pennsylvania to Indiana, and north to south, from southern Ontario to northern Kentucky. Rabbi Pinchos Stolper, a”h, the founding director of NCSY, insisted that the regional office needed to be in Cleveland.

It is well known that when people visited R’ Chaim Kanievsky, zt”l, to receive a berachah or ask a shailah, he would often tell them to either cut their hair short or grow their beard. He also instructed people to wear their payos out, rather than tucked behind their ears.

If someone hits his neighbor, causing him to lose an eye, he is “owed” an eye. The Torah seems to suggest that the consequence for the attacker or negligent damager is that he must forfeit his own eye. Chazal explain, however (Bava Kama 83b), that we are dealing with monetary value and not an actual eye, as it was difficult back in biblical times to ensure that the removal of an eye did not kill a person, and what would one do if the attacker was already blind, and so on.

It was the winter of 5716 (1956), immediately following the Sinai Campaign, when Israel took control of the Sinai Peninsula from imperialistic Egyptian advances. Poland and the Soviet Union had just signed a treaty allowing all Polish citizens who had fled to Russia during World War II to return to Poland. Jewish or not, they had the right to return, as long as they were Polish citizens on September 1, 1939, the day the Second World War broke out. As a result of this treaty, thousands of Jews throughout Russia returned to Poland, and the majority of them subsequently immigrated to Israel.

The posuk refers to one who “slaughters outside the camp.” Homiletically, if a person speaks negatively of others, destroying his character and “slaughtering” the reputation and honor of another person, he will have to answer for this misdeed.

R’ Matisyahu Salomon, shlit’a, says that one cannot be a believer (ma’amin) unless he is first faithful (ne’eman). One cannot believe in the Torah and the word of Hashem unless he himself is a person who values a word. If it means nothing when I say something, then when Hashem says something, why should I believe it? The more trustworthy a person is and the more meticulous he is about his own words, the more he will be faithful to the word of the Almighty.