Month: July 2026

Ekev (עֵקֶב — “Because” / “heel”)
Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25 • Isaiah 49:14–51:3

Moses promises Israel the abundance of the land that the Eternal gives them, on condition that the people never forget, once they are satisfied^[1], that this prosperity comes from God. After describing the richness of the Land, he warns against the danger of a heart that grows proud of its success and forgets the One who is its source. Isaiah, in the haftarah, responds to Zion, who believes herself abandoned: “Can a woman forget her nursing child?” (49:15).

Deuteronomy 8:8
אֶרֶץ חִטָּה וּשְׂעֹרָה, וְגֶפֶן וּתְאֵנָה וְרִמּוֹן; אֶרֶץ־זֵית שֶׁמֶן, וּדְבָשׁ.
“A land that produces wheat and barley, grapes, figs and pomegranates, oil‑rich olives, and honey.”

In 1889, more than 130 families from Podolia^[2], driven to emigrate by anti‑Jewish persecutions, arrived in Buenos Aires aboard the SS Weser^[3]. The lands promised near La Plata proved unavailable; Pedro Palacios, a landowner, sold them land in the province of Santa Fe^[4]. The families settled there, but faced typhus, hunger, and severe hardship.

On 11 September 1891, Baron Maurice de Hirsch^[5] founded the JCA to support and develop existing Jewish agricultural colonies^[6]. Under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi Aharon Halevi Goldman^[7], the village took the name Moisés Ville^[8], in reference to Moses our Teacher, who led his people from a land of oppression to a land of refuge.

The Barón Hirsch Synagogue^[9], the only one still active, was built shortly after the settlers’ arrival and rebuilt in 1927: the side rooms reserved for women were demolished in favor of an upper balcony integrated into the main hall. Its bimah, made of wood by the first cattle‑raisers, evokes a pampa corral, symbolizing the encounter between Jewish tradition and local culture. The Jewish population declined sharply during the 20th century, many descendants of the settlers having moved to the major cities. Their epic is immortalized by the Argentine writer Alberto Gerchunoff in Los Gauchos Judíos (1910).

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^[1] Birkat Hamazon
Deuteronomy 8:10: “You shall eat, you shall be satisfied, and you shall bless the Eternal your God for the good land He has given you.” This verse is the rabbinic source of Birkat Hamazon (Tosefta Berakhot 6:1; see also Sefer HaHinnoukh, mitzvah 430).
^[2] Podolia
A region of the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), Podolia was an important center of Jewish emigration, driven by pogroms and antisemitic violence, toward the Americas at the end of the 19th century.
^[3] Voyage of the SS Weser
The families left Kamenetz‑Podolsk, in Podolia, reached Bremerhaven in Germany, where they boarded the SS Weser. They landed in Buenos Aires on 14 August 1889.
^[4] Hernández and Palacios land contracts
The Podolians suffered a double deception. The first settlement project, concluded in Paris with landowner Rafael Hernández for land near La Plata, failed when he withdrew from the sale after a sharp rise in land prices. Redirected to Pedro Palacios, the families entered a new contract under unfavorable conditions: the land was sold to them at a price far above market value (4 to 10 times the usual rate), and the housing, tools, and seeds promised in the contract were never delivered.
^[5] Maurice de Hirsch (1831–1896)
Born in Munich into an ennobled Bavarian Jewish family, he made his fortune in railways and banking before devoting himself to Jewish philanthropy. The death of his only son, Lucien de Hirsch de Gereuth (1856–1887), left him without an heir; following this bereavement, he declared that he wished to make humanity his heir and dedicated most of his fortune to the creation of Jewish agricultural colonies. His wife, Baroness Clara de Hirsch, built the Lucien‑de‑Hirsch School in Paris in 1901, originally intended for the integration of immigrant Jewish children, in memory of their son. Maurice de Hirsch died in Hungary in April 1896 and was buried in Paris at the Montmartre Cemetery.
^[6] Jewish Colonization Association (JCA)
The JCA acquired over the years more than 600,000 hectares of pampa in Argentina, consolidating and financing on a larger scale colonies already in existence, including Moisés Ville.
^[7] Rabbi Aharon Halevi Goldman (1853–1932)
Considered the first rabbi to settle permanently in Argentina. Arriving aboard the SS Weser, he founded the main religious and educational institutions of the colony. He maintained correspondence with several rabbinic authorities of his time; his responsa were published under the title Divrei Aharon (Jerusalem, 1981). He is buried in the historic cemetery of Moisés Ville.
^[8] Origin of the name Moisés Ville
According to local tradition, Rabbi Goldman, at the request of Pedro Palacios, proposed the name Kiriat Moshé, explicitly referring to Moses our Teacher leading his people toward the Promised Land. An agent named Horovich, who did not speak Spanish, is said to have translated this name into French as “Moïse ville”; it was then transcribed into Spanish as “Moisés Ville.”
^[9] Jewish communal buildings of Moisés Ville
In addition to the Barón Hirsch Synagogue (1920), the community includes the Brener / Beit Midrash Agadol Synagogue (1905), the Lituana Synagogue (1915), and the Obrera / Arbeter Shoul Synagogue (1916), as well as cultural and educational institutions: the Barón Hirsch Popular Library (1913), the Kadima Cultural Center and Theater (1909), the Iahaduth Jewish School (early 20th century), and the Museum of Jewish Colonization and Local History (20th century). The Jewish cemetery (1891) is the oldest Jewish cemetery in Argentina.

Vaet’hanan (ואתחנן — “I pleaded”)
Shabbat Naḥamu (שבת נחמו — Shabbat of Consolation)
Deuteronomy 3:23–7:11 — Isaiah 40:1–26

Despite his supplications, Moses is not granted permission to enter the Land of Israel. He reminds the people of the Ten Utterances and proclaims the central Jewish profession of faith, the Shema Israel. The haftarah from Isaiah opens the seven haftarot of consolation that follow Tisha BeAv: even in dispersion, God never abandons His people.

Deuteronomy 3:25
אֶעְבְּרָה־נָּא וְאֶרְאֶה אֶת־הָאָרֶץ הַטּוֹבָה
“Let me cross over, I pray, and see the good land.”

The Jews were denied access to the Land of Israel by the British government^[1]. Between August 1946 and February 1949, the Royal Navy intercepted at sea the ships carrying more than 52,000 Jews^[2], most of them survivors of the Shoah. They were interned in camps^[3], housed depending on the site either in Nissen huts^[4] or in tents, behind double electrified fences watched by guard towers spaced roughly one hundred meters apart, on the island of Cyprus.

One of these Nissen huts, later converted into an agricultural shed, was identified during a visit to the Famagusta region by the Chief Rabbi of Cyprus, Arie Zeev Raskin^[5], as one of the few preserved remnants of the Jewish internment in Cyprus. It was subsequently acquired, dismantled, restored, and reassembled at the Jewish Museum of Cyprus in Larnaca in 2021. Today it stands as an exceptional material witness to this episode, and its preservation is part of the development of an expanded museum complex^[6], currently under construction.

“Consolation arises from the very place of suffering: where Israel was broken, God begins to raise it up.” (Midrash Tanḥuma, Vaet’hanan 6)

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^[1] The 1939 White Paper, issued by the British government of Neville Chamberlain (May 1937–May 1940), marked a major reversal, contradicting earlier commitments, notably the 1917 Balfour Declaration promising a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Adopted on 17 May 1939, it sought to quell the Arab revolt (1936–1939) and ensure stability in territories under British influence in the Middle East on the eve of World War II. The text limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 people over five years, prohibited further immigration without Arab consent, and restricted Jewish land purchases. Maintained by Clement Attlee’s government (1945–1951) after the Shoah, it led to the turning back of Jewish survivors and their internment in the British camps in Cyprus.
^[2] Between 1946 and 1949, sources place the number of internees between 52,000 and 53,500. Nearly 80% of the internees were between 13 and 35 years old. More than 2,000 children were born in the camps; around 400 people died there. The last internees left the island in February 1949.
^[3] The British established twelve detention camps across three sites: Dhekelia and Xylotymbou, near Larnaca, equipped mainly with Nissen huts, and Karaolos, near Famagusta, consisting mostly of tents.
^[4] Nissen huts are standardized military structures: curved corrugated steel sheets on a metal frame, without insulation — scorching in summer, freezing in winter. They were invented in 1916 by British engineer Peter Norman Nissen (1871–1930).
^[5] Rabbi Arie Zeev Raskin has been Chief Rabbi of Cyprus since 2003 and is the Chabad-Lubavitch emissary on the island. He initiated the Jewish Museum of Cyprus in Larnaca and the project to preserve the Nissen hut, in order to safeguard and transmit the memory of the internment of Jewish refugees in Cyprus after the Shoah.
^[6] The Jewish Museum of Cyprus was conceived by Rabbi Raskin notably to honor the solidarity of Cypriots who brought food, water, and medicine to the internees. Skevi Philippou is a Cypriot artist. She is the project director and said in the Cyprus Mail (3 July 2021) that the rabbi saw this initiative as a way to honour people he considers true heroes.

Devarim (דְּבָרִים — Words)
Shabbat Chazon (שַׁבָּת חֲזוֹן – Shabbat of the Vision)
Deut. 1:1–3:22 • Isaiah 1:1–27

Before entering Canaan, Moses recounts Israel’s journey through the desert and transmits the Torah to the new generation. In the haftarah, Isaiah opens his book with a vision in which God denounces the sins of Jerusalem and announces the judgment that threatens it — a prelude to purification and renewal.

Deut. 1:5
הוֹאִיל מֹשֶׁה בֵּאֵר אֶת הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת
“Moses set out to explain this Torah.”

To explain the Torah, to make it intelligible: this is also the aim of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin^[1] when he founded the Etz Chaim yeshiva^[2] in 1803. He developed a method of study that emphasizes the plain meaning (peshat)^[3] of the text and its rigorous analysis.

In the 1880s–1890s, Tsar Alexander III imposed a policy of Russification and new state‑imposed requirements for the curriculum^[4]. Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin^[5], then head of the yeshiva, refused to comply. After nearly a century of activity, the institution closed in 1892. It reopened in 1899 on a smaller scale and continued operating until the destruction of the Jewish community^[6] by Nazi Germany during the Shoah.

Returned to the Jewish community in 1989 and entrusted in 2000 to the Union of Religious Jewish Communities of Belarus, the building was restored beginning in 2008 thanks to support from several organizations^[7]. Now open as a museum dedicated to the memory of Litvak (Lithuanian) Jewry, it is part of the Belarus Jewish Heritage Trail, a heritage route highlighting major Jewish memory sites in the country.

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^[1] Rabbi Chaim ben Yitzchak of Volozhin (1749–1821) studied under the Shaagas Aryeh and then under Raphael ha‑Kohen Hamburger (1722–1803), chief rabbi of Vilna. At twenty‑five, he became the principal disciple of the Vilna Gaon (1720–1797), whom he accompanied until his death. His major work, Nefesh ha‑Chaim, presents a structured theology of Torah, prayer, and the fear of God.
^[2] When the yeshiva opened, Rabbi Chaim supported about ten students from his own funds. In 1804, he launched an appeal for donations to help the school grow. Within twenty years, enrollment rose from a handful to several hundred students, and the institution became the “mother of Lithuanian yeshivot,” a model for Mir, Slobodka, Telz, Kelm, and Ponevezh.
^[3] Peshat, the plain meaning, is the first of the four traditional levels of interpretation, along with remez (allusion), derash (homiletical reading), and sod (hidden dimension). This initial focus on peshat characterizes the Volozhin method, which prioritizes analytical study of the text before homiletical or mystical readings.
^[4] In 1891, Minister of Education Ivan Delyanov imposed new conditions on the curriculum: secular studies had to take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., teachers had to hold state diplomas, and nighttime study in the yeshiva was forbidden. These measures effectively eliminated the time available for religious study.
^[5] Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (1816–1893), known as the Netziv (נצי״ב), led the Volozhin yeshiva during the second half of the 19th century. He married Rayna Batya Volozhiner, granddaughter of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin. His leadership left a lasting mark on the institution, and Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak ha‑Cohen Kook, a student in Volozhin in the 1880s, acknowledged the decisive influence of the Netziv on his formation.
^[6] Before the war, about half of Volozhin’s population was Jewish — nearly 3,000 people on the eve of the Shoah. During the German occupation in 1941, a ghetto was established, followed by mass executions and the near‑total liquidation of the community in 1942.
^[7] World Monuments Fund (WMF): an international organization based in New York specializing in the preservation of endangered historic sites. Yad Yisroel: an Orthodox Jewish organization active in Eastern Europe, particularly Belarus and Ukraine. Agudath Israel: an American Orthodox Jewish organization involved in education and community support. The Union of Religious Jewish Communities of Belarus (URJCB) is the official body managing synagogues, memorial sites, and Jewish religious institutions in Belarus.

Matot–Massé (מַטּוֹת–מַסְעֵי — Tribes – Journeys)
Numbers 30:2–36:13 • Irmyahou (Jeremiah) 2:4–28; 3:4

Matot deals with vows, then with the war against Madyan and the division of the territories located east of the Jordan. Massé recounts the forty‑two stages of the wilderness journey, sets the boundaries of Canaan, establishes the cities of refuge, and concludes with the inheritance of the daughters of Tselof’had. In the haftara^[1], the prophet Irmyahu calls Israel to return to God and denounces the breach of the Covenant that has weakened the people.

Numbers 31:2^[2]
 נְקֹם נִקְמַת בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל מֵאֵת הַמִּדְיָנִים
“Carry out the vengeance of the children of Israel upon the Madyanites.”

Ancient sources^[3] place the territory of the Madyanites in the northwest of present‑day Saudi Arabia, around the Wadi al‑Qurā (Valley of the Villages). It was in the heart of this region that, in 2019, Franco‑Saudi excavations^[4] uncovered, in the city of Al‑‘Ula (The Sublime), a settlement occupied between the 3rd and 7th centuries CE. Domestic refuse pits yielded sheep and goat bones, but no camel remains^[5], despite the animal’s omnipresence in the region. Nabatæan inscriptions bearing Jewish names^[6] corroborate the existence of a Jewish community established in this valley. The site was abandoned at the beginning of the 7th century, but a new settlement was immediately built nearby. Medieval Hebrew inscriptions — distinct from the earlier Nabatæan inscriptions — attest to a Jewish presence^[7] still documented there until the 10th century.

^[1] The haftara belongs to the cycle of tlata de‑puranuta (תלתא דפורענותא), an Aramaic expression meaning “the three admonitions.” This cycle designates the three haftarot read on the three Sabbaths preceding Tisha be‑Av (Irmyahu 1–2; Irmyahu 2–3; Yeshayahu 1), independently of the content of the parasha.
^[2] נִקְמַת בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל (nikmat bene Israel), “the vengeance of the children of Israel.” In the following verse (Numbers 31:3), when Moshe conveys this command to the people, the expression becomes נִקְמַת־ה׳ (nikmat Hashem), “the vengeance of the Eternal.” Rashi explains this shift: whoever attacks Israel attacks the Holy One, blessed be He; the vengeance of Israel and that of God are therefore inseparable.
^[3] Madyan is identified in Jewish sources — Onkelos (Targum, 2nd century) and Flavius Josephus (Jewish Antiquities, 1st century) — in Greek sources — Ptolemy (Geography, 2nd century) and Strabo (Geography, 1st century BCE) — as well as in medieval Arabic sources — al‑Ya‘qūbī (Kitāb al‑Buldan – Book of the Lands, 9th century), al‑Muqaddasī (Aḥsan al‑Taqāsīm – The Best Division of the Provinces, 10th century), and Yāqūt al‑Ḥamawī (Mu‘jam al‑Buldan – Dictionary of Places, 13th century). All locate Madyan in the northwest of Arabia, around Tabūk, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Wadi al‑Qurā — corresponding to the present‑day region of Al‑‘Ula.
^[4] Excavations conducted by archaeologists Jérôme Rohmer (France) and Abdulrahman Alsuhaibani (Saudi Arabia), in collaboration with teams from the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), AFALULA (French Agency for the Development of Al‑‘Ula), and the RCU (Royal Commission for AlUla). The results were published in Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, 2025.
^[5] The dromedary and the camel are classified among impure animals (Leviticus 11:4; Deuteronomy 14:7). Their presence in the region is massive from antiquity onward, but their absence from the refuse pits of Al‑‘Ula suggests dietary practices consistent with biblical prescriptions.
^[6] The Nabatæan inscriptions discovered on ostraca and architectural blocks — written from right to left — bear Jewish anthroponyms such as ʾnny bn ywsf (ענני בן יוסף, Anani ben Yosef) or nhmy bn ydy (נחמי בן ידי, Neḥami ben Yadi), corroborating other evidence of a Jewish community established in the valley of the Wadi al‑Qurā.
^[7] Medieval Arabic geographers — notably al‑Ya‘qūbī — preserve the memory of an ancient Jewish presence in the region of the Wadi al‑Qurā. Medieval Hebrew inscriptions, found at a nearby site in Al‑‘Ula and distinct from the earlier Nabatæan inscriptions, attest to a Jewish presence in this region until the 10th century.

Pinchas (פִּינְחָס)
Numbers 25:10–30:1 • 1 Kings 18:46–19:21

The parasha recounts how Pinchas acts with a zeal that earns him the covenant of an everlasting priesthood, passed down to his descendants, while the haftarah shows Elijah, exhausted yet likewise filled with fervent zeal, receiving from God the strength to continue his mission and appoint Elisha as his successor.

1 Kings 19:16
 … וְאֶת־אֱלִישָׁע בֶּן־שָׁפָט מֵאָבֵל מְחוֹלָה, תִּמְשַׁח לְנָבִיא תַּחְתֶּיךָ.
“And Elisha son of Shaphat, from Avel‑Meholah, you shall anoint as prophet in your stead.”

In 1978, Isaac Samuels, guardian of the Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue (משמיע ישועה – “He Who Makes Salvation Heard”), in the heart of old Rangoon (Yangon), in Burma (Myanmar), entrusted his son Moses with the responsibility of watching over the synagogue and made him promise never to abandon it. Moses kept this promise, and upon his death in 2015, his son Sammy naturally assumed the stewardship of the place ^[1], together with his sisters Dina and Kaznah.

It is the only synagogue^[2] in the country , inaugurated in 1896. Its style blends British colonial architecture with Sephardi tradition, featuring rattan benches suited to the tropical climate and a dome painted in blue and white. It once served a prosperous Jewish community ^[3], which owned 126 Torah scrolls, of which only two remain today.

Following the Japanese invasion, and later with the establishment of the military regime ^[4], the community gradually dispersed, family by family, until only about twenty Jews remain in the country today.

^[1] Testimonies from the Samuels family, collected in reports devoted to the Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue (notably Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, as well as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) dispatch of April 29, 2015 announcing the death of Moses Samuels). The story is also documented in the film The Last Synagogue of Yangon, directed by Maya Ben‑Dor, and in the work of Ruth Levy, historian of Jewish communities in Southeast Asia, and Graham Harvey, British anthropologist specializing in religious minorities.
^[2] An earlier wooden synagogue was built in 1854.
^[3] The Jewish community of Burma numbered around 2,500 people in 1940, making it one of the largest in Southeast Asia. It consisted mainly of Baghdadi Jews who had arrived from Iraq in the 18th–19th centuries and settled in Calcutta and Bombay, along with several Bene Israel families — a very old community from the Konkan coast (Bombay), combining Middle Eastern Jewish and Indian ancestry — as well as Jews from Cochin, established since the 15th century in Kerala, bearers of Sephardi and Yemenite traditions.
^[4] The Japanese invasion of 1942 led to the evacuation of most of Rangoon’s Jews to British India. Later, the establishment of the military regime in 1962 brought political and economic isolation that accelerated the exodus of the Jewish community and other minorities. The country remains today under the authority of a military junta, the result of yet another coup d’État (2021), maintaining an authoritarian regime and strict control over political life.