What a great first two weeks of school! After a summer of major renovation, MHA opened with a Chanukat Beit Sefer program in which we inaugurated the school by affixing new mezuzot on the main entrance and on other doorposts in the school. Teachers, parents, students and community rabbis attended this special program. That same day MHA hosted a well-attended Back-to-School Barbecue for all of our families. The students have quickly adjusted to the school routine – it is such a pleasure to walk the MHA halls to see students learning and teachers teaching! In this week’s parsha, Ki Tetze, the Torah outlines the mitzvah of shiluach haken – sending away the mother bird before taking its chicks or eggs from the nest. The Torah writes, “When you will happen upon a bird’s nest on the way in any tree or on the ground – with chicks or eggs – and the mother is sitting on the chicks or on the eggs, do not take the mother with ...
Rabbi Benjy Owen, Dean, Margolin Hebrew Academy-Feinstone Yeshiva of the South, Memphis, TN