** This Dvar is dedicated to the loving memory of my beloved uncle, Cantor Moshe Schulhof, who "owned" Torah in his own unique and special way ** This Lelamed Dvar is also available in your local App Store (iTunes and Android). I hope you enjoy and share this Dvar from Dan Lifshitz... _______________________________________________ Parshat Pinchas relates the story (27:1-12) about the daughters of Tzlafchad, descendants of Yosef (Joseph). These daughters wanted and loved the Land of Israel so much that they wanted a piece of it. As Rav Moshe Feinstein asks, why do they have to have a claim in the land, just because they love it? Wouldn't entering or living in the land be fulfilling enough? Rav Moshe thus concludes that if a person truly loves something, they'd want it to be theirs, and no one else's. This is why the daughters wanted to actually own a piece of the land, rather than simply living in it. This logic applies to marriages, as well as the Torah's preference that every Jew writes their own Torah (or a portion of it). In our terms, it's not enough to borrow and read Jewish books. We need to love the Torah we read so much that we feel the need to own it. As this week's Parsha urges, we should not only seek, read and enjoy words of Torah, but we should own those books, and live those words. Shlomo Ressler _______________________________________________ Quotation of the Week: "Since you can't go back and start a new beginning, start today and make a new ending."