Carry the Basket Yourself
Bikkurim required the farmer to bring the first fruits personally and say the words aloud. Gratitude delegated to someone else stops being gratitude.
Devarim 26:1-11 · Parshas Ki Savo
Torah For The Table does more than collect and share Torah publications each week. Our team creates original educational material designed specifically for the Shabbos table — including Short Vorts, source-based stories, and Parsha questions and answers for children. All materials are provided free of charge in furtherance of our religious and educational mission.
Brief, focused divrei Torah written in-house each week. Each vort is drawn from a classical source — Rashi, Midrash, or Chazal — and rewritten in a few sentences so it can be said over at the table without preparation.
Bikkurim required the farmer to bring the first fruits personally and say the words aloud. Gratitude delegated to someone else stops being gratitude.
Devarim 26:1-11 · Parshas Ki Savo
The tochachah's stated cause is not sin but serving "without joy and gladness of heart." Doing the right thing bitterly is its own kind of failure.
Devarim 28:47 · Parshas Ki Savo
Source-based stories from Chazal and Tanach, retold for the table. Each story opens with the original Hebrew pasuk or maamar Chazal and its translation, followed by a retelling in plain English and a “For the Table” discussion question meant to draw everyone into the conversation.
מִי שֶׁאָמַר לְשֶׁמֶן וְיִדְלוֹק, הוּא יֹאמַר לַחוֹמֶץ וְיִדְלוֹק
“The One who told oil to burn will tell vinegar to burn.” — Taanis 25a
R’ Chanina ben Dosa lived in deep poverty, yet his home was known for its quiet faith. One Erev Shabbos his daughter came to him distressed: she had mistakenly filled the Shabbos lamps with vinegar instead of oil, and there was nothing left to replace it. The lights would go out, and the house would sit dark through Shabbos.
Her father answered her without alarm: “The One who told oil to burn will tell vinegar to burn.” The lamps were lit, and Chazal tell us they burned all through Shabbos — long enough that the flame was still used for the Havdalah candle at the end of the day.
The point of the story is not the miracle itself. It is that R’ Chanina saw no difference between oil and vinegar: neither one burns on its own. What we call ordinary is simply the miracle we have grown used to.
For the Table
What is something in our week that we treat as ordinary but is really a gift we could not produce ourselves?
A weekly piece that uses parashah insights to discuss communication and positive speech. Each installment takes a moment from the parsha where words shape an outcome — a blessing, a rebuke, a report — and draws out a practical point about how we speak to family, friends, and neighbors.
Daniel: please confirm this description is accurate before we treat it as final.
Twenty Rashi-sourced questions and answers on the parsha each week, written for learning together at the table. Every set is accompanied by a Kids’ Corner page with riddles and picture puzzles so younger children have their own way in.
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