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From: gth@erc3ba.UUCP (A.Y.Feldblum)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Dvar Torah Project returns
Message-ID: <148@erc3ba.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 5-Aug-85 16:57:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: erc3ba.148
Posted: Mon Aug  5 16:57:59 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Aug-85 10:47:30 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Engineering Research Center   Princeton, NJ
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The Dvar Torah project will be returning to net.religion.jewish. After a
summer vacation (not mine, just people in general), I hope to get the
Dvar Torah project back up and running in the next few weeks. For those
new to n.r.j or those who missed it the first time around, this is an
effort by several people to post a weekly comment on the Torah Reading
for that week. I have been co-ordinating the effort, which consists
mainly in trying to make sure we have someone posting something each
week. There is no moderation involved, each person posts whatever they
wish. If there are any people out there that are interested in joining
the effort, or any comments or questions, please feel free to contact me
at :	{allegra, ihnp4}!pruxa!ayf (or pruxc!ayf). The return path of
this message (erc3ba!gth) is also forwarded to me. 

Avi Feldblum
AT&T Tech. - ERC
uucp: {allegra, ihnp4}!{pruxa, pruxc}!ayf   or
		      !erc3ba!gth

Just to make sure it starts up again, here's a short Dvar Torah on last
weeks Parsha.

	Last week's Parsha(portion) contains the chapter of Shema, one
of the few portions of the Torah (Five Books of the Torah) to be
incorporated into the daily prayer. It is a central part of the
Tfilah(prayer), recited twice a day. During periods of persecution, it
was often the last words spoken by many of our martyred brethren. What
is so central about these verses? The first verse is:
	Hear, Oh Israel, Hashem is our God, Hashem is One.
In a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll), the last letters of the first word
(Ayin in Shema) and last word (Daled in Echod) are written larger than
the rest of the letters in the Torah. These two letters spell the word
"Aid", which means witness. We are the witnesses for Hashem, as He
tells us in Isaiah 43,10 - You are My witnesses. We as a people stand as
witness that there is one true God in the world. It is for this
statement that we have suffered for generations. 
	But there is also a hope for the future in the verse. Rashi
explains the repetition of the name of Hashem as follows: Hashem who is
now our God, and not the God of the nations of the world, He will be in
the future- Hashem is One. There is a promise that the time will come
when all nations and people will acknowledge His kingship. Other
commentators (Klai Yakar, Ketav Sofer) explain that now we see things
happening in the world that appears to either good or evil, and we
cannot see how it is all part of a divine whole, but in the time of the
world to come, we will see that 'Hashem is One' - all actions are part
of his divine will.
	Thus in just this one verse, we have a mirror to both the ages
od persecution and thousands who have died as witnesses to the truth of
Hashem, as well as an assurance that sometime in the future the Oneness
of Hashem will be known in the world.