Portions Library

A collection of essays on the weekly Torah Portions, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, adapted from Torah Club.

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One Law and the Gentiles

Most Gentile Christians do not keep the Torah’s ritual laws: Sabbaths, festivals, dietary laws, and ritual symbols like wearing tassels, phylacteries, or putting up a mezuzah scroll on the doorpost. This does not mean that Gentile Christians are godless or even lawless.

A Different Spirit

There is nothing special about having a realist-attitude. Anyone can point out problems. Everyone can criticize. It takes no talent to be a naysayer. Such a person is usually not very realistic at all. Instead a person like that demonstrates a marked tendency to emphasize the negative, ignore the positive and disregard miracles.

The Sabbath, the Land and the World to Come

So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:9-11)

The Complainer and the Atheist

God said He heard the grumbling and the complaints of the children of Israel. He hears our complaints too. The sin of grumbling is related to the sin of gossip. Both are forms of evil speech; both result from a critical spirit. Grumbling destroys your quality of life and that of those around you.