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Mrs. Michal Horowitz is a Torah teacher whose shiurim reach audiences worldwide. She teaches weekly in her Five Towns, NY, community and lectures nationally and internationally. A longtime presenter for the OU Women’s Initiative, she inaugurated the Torat Imecha Nach Yomi program. In September 2023, she was invited by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis to serve as the first female scholar to keynote the Annual Pre-Yamim Noraim Conference for the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. She is the author of Abled: Living With a Disability, a Torah View (Mosaica Press, 2025) and lives in Woodmere, NY, with her family.
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Dvar Haftorah
OU Women's Initiative
Founding Director
Rebbetzin Dr.
Adina Shmidman
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Navigating the Spiritual Bends
Yeshayahu 66:1-24
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This haftorah, read on Shabbos Rosh Chodesh, draws our attention to the rhythm of sacred time — the meeting point of Shabbat and the renewal of the month. It offers a vision of ongoing return, where time itself becomes a pathway to connection.
After a month at spiritual heights, we may feel something like the “spiritual bends.” Re-entry can be challenging post-Chag. Nissan lifts us — with ימים טובים, with heightened tefillah, with days that are structured and full. And then, almost abruptly, we return to weekday life. The matzah is put away. The intensity softens. We step into Iyar.
How do we reorient ourselves without the same clearly defined spiritual anchors?
The closing vision of this week’s haftorah offers direction: מִדֵּי חֹדֶשׁ בְּחָדְשׁוֹ וּמִדֵּי שַׁבָּת בְּשַׁבַּתּוֹ, month by month, Shabbat by Shabbat — these words capture the rhythm that carries us forward.
The Me’am Loez understands the “pilgrimage” of the new month as a reference to Nissan, the month of miracles, while Shabbat reflects creation, the steady awareness of Hashem within the natural order. We are presented with two modes of connection: revelation, and continuity. The Radak frames this vision as one of ongoing return where each appointed time becomes an opportunity to come before Hashem anew.
Nissan may be behind us, but we are not stepping away from it. We are carrying it forward. Iyar, through Sefirat HaOmer, replaces peaks with progression. Day by day. Step by step. מִדֵּי… מִדֵּי — again and again.
This is the avodah of these weeks: to take the clarity of Nissan and translate it into continuity, to bring Hashem into our each and every day until יבוא כל בשר להשתחות לפני, until all humankind will come to prostrate themselves before Me, says Hashem.
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