Rabbi Claude's Scribbles

 What kind of man was this week's cover star, Noach?  This is the question that I am posing today as the first verse in the Parasha appears to be very complimentary of our protagonist. This is the story of Noach - Noach was a righteous man; a person of integrity in his generation; Noach walked with Gd. Rashi, as usual, enables us to look beyond the simple translation to glance at another view of Noach and how the Rabbis understood the term 'in his generation' : Some of our Rabbis explain it (this word) to his credit: he was righteous even in his generation; it follows that had he lived in a generation of righteous people he would have been even more righteous owing to the force of good example.   Others, however, explain it to his discredit: in comparison with his own generation, he was accounted righteous, but had he lived in the generation of Abraham he would have been accounted as of no importance (cf.   Sanhedrin 108a). Before the flood, it appears as th

  Dedicated to my grandfather R’ Yechezkel Shraga ben R’ Moshe zl, whose Yartzheit is today I wrote this Drasha on Isru Chag, the day following Simchat Torah.   A new year has begun and we are returning, as I wrote last year, ‘to our roots’. You might be interested to note some technical details about the production of this sermon.   I am using Windows 10 Version 22H2 which is the brand-spanking-new update to the Operating System.   The edition of Microsoft Word I am utilising is Version 2209 which is the very latest one available to the non-beta-testing public.   Do you remember the early versions of Windows and Word? They were very different, weren’t they?   I still recall my first computer which my parents purchased for me to complete assignments for my Undergraduate Degree at the start of the 1990s.   It ran Windows 3.1 alongside the Disk Operating System (otherwise known as DOS).   It was only with the introduction of Windows 95, if you recall, that the entire operating

 On Yom Kippur, exactly forty-nine years ago, corresponding with the Gregorian date of 6 th October, an event took place that would forever become ingrained in Jewish history.  At exactly 2.00 pm local time, the armies of Egypt and Syria launched devastating surprise attacks on the State of Israel.  Thus, was born the Yom Kippur War.  When it ended, three weeks later, 2,691 Israelis had been killed, the second highest number of deaths after the War of Independence.  On the Arab side, the body count from the war lay at 19,000 1 One of my earliest childhood memories was catching a sight of our boys on the Golan Heights in the midst of the war, in glorious black and white, on our not particularly glorious ancient television set.  I remember the expression of worry and fear on the faces of my parents as my mother carried me upstairs to my bedroom.  One doesn’t forget moments like that.  Whilst trawling through my parents’ books recently, following the sale of our family home last Septem