Here in Israel, we are currently embroiled in an especially troubling situation. A few weeks ago, Israeli soldiers in Gaza shot and killed a young Palestinian girl - I have seen her age given as both 10 and 13. The girl was walking in an extremely dangerous area, where there is almost constant shooting. She was suspected of either carrying a bomb or acting as a decoy for someone who was, and was shot at from a distance.

Then I came back/ From where I'd been/ My room it looked the same/ But there was nothing left between/ The nameless and the named. Love Itself; Leonard Cohen In this week's Torah portion, Noach, we read, after the story of the flood, about the Tower of Babel. Noach and his family have emerged from the ark, had children, and these children have all settled down together very nicely. As the Torah puts it: "And the whole earth had one language and one set of words.

This Thursday, in Israel, we will celebrate Simchat Torah, the completion of the yearly cycle of reading the Torah (in the Diaspora it's on Friday). We read Zot Ha'bracha, the last portion of Deuteronomy, and, to symbolize that it's never over, we read the beginning of the first portion of Genesis. On Shabbat, we will actually start the yearly cycle again, with the full reading of the first portion of Genesis, Bereshit. I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss something that I am asked about all the time.

As I'm sure many of you know, this year we go straight from two days of Rosh Hashanah on Thursday and Friday to Shabbat. I would like to discuss both the parsha of Haazinu, which we will read on Shabbat, together with some aspects of Rosh Hashanah. Parshat Haazinu (which means "listen") is the penultimate portion of the Torah. Together with the final parsha, Zot Habracha (This is the Blessing), it contains Moshe's last words to the Jewish people before dying. Both portions are poems, and are written in a difficult, highly literary, often obscure style.

Nitzavim, the first of the two portions we read this week, contains one of the most stirring yet enigmatic passages in the Torah. Moshe, continuing his valedictory address to the Jewish people, once again exhorts them, on the eve of his death, to do the right thing: "For this Mitzvah which I command you today is not beyond you, it is not far away. It is not in the heavens, for you to say: 'who will go up into the heavens to get it for us and have us hear it, that we may observe it?'.

This week's parsha, Ki Tavo (When you enter into the Land), is one of the last parshas of Deuteronomy, in which Moshe, during the final days of his life, gives the Israelites a last batch of Mitzvot, advice, exhortation, and blessing, before leaving them for good. In Ki Tavo, as in other portions in this group, Moshe makes reference to a specific day, who's identity and character is unclear.

Parshat Ki Teitzei - When you go out (to war) - is full of a very wide range of laws. One of them is rarely practiced today - the law of sending away the mother bird. The Torah says: "When you happen upon a bird's nest before you on the road, in any tree, or on the ground, chicks or eggs, and the mother is sitting on the chicks or the eggs; do not take the mother with the children. Surely you shall send the mother away, and the children you shall take for yourself, in order that it may go well with you and you will prolong your days."

This week's parsha tells the interesting story of the pagan prophet, Bil'am. Frightened by the approach of the Jewish people as they near the Land of Israel, Balak and the other Kings of Moav and Midian hire Bil'am to curse the Jewish people - "Now, please go and curse for me this nation, for it is too mighty for me; perhaps I will prevail, smite them, and drive them from the land...".