Halacha:

Kriyat HaTorah 

Parsha:

Vayeilech 

Description

The penultimate Mitzvah found in the Torah is the command to assemble all of the people at the end of the Shemittah year, to hear a public reading of the Torah (התורה הזאת) - including the men, the women and the children. In a famous story recorded in Tosefta Sotah, a homily of R. Elazar b. Azariah's about Hakhel is recorded, and is followed by two more homilies which all seem unrelated. Tying R. E;lazar b. Azariah's revolutionary approach (see BT Berakhot 27b) to education, we tie these three דרשות together into a weave that forms the foundation of this astonishingly new approach to teaching and publicizing Torah - all anchored in this ancient Mitzvah.