The Internet, The Smartphone and my Deepening Connection to Rabbi Uziel Milevsky zt”l

The first time I heard Rabbi Uziel Milevsky zt”l speak was at a Rosh Hoshana program close to 30 years ago. Over the years I have read his two published works: “The Ohr Someach Haggadah” and “Ner Uziel – Perspectives on the Parsha”, a number of times. Rabbi Milevsky received smicha from Ner Yisrael, served as Chief Rabbi of Mexico and taught Torah at Ohr Somayach in Yerushalayim and Toronto. Unfortunately he passed away at the young age of 50 on December 31, 1992.

These days I feel fortune to feel more connected to Rabbi Milevsky due to the following set of circumstances:
1) Ohr Somayach taped his lectures from his Chumash classes over 30 years ago,
2) Ohr Somayach converted the tapes to mp3 and offered them for sale on the Internet.
3) Ohr Somayach made its entire audio library available for free.
4) I now download his available Chumash classes every week and since my phone is also a mp3 player, I have Rabbi Milevsky teaching me Torah where ever I go.

What I appreciate the most about Rabbi Milevsky’s parsha classes is that he is looking to say pshat on a posuk, a Rashi, a Ramban or other commentator. He will often say a chiddush but it is always based on sources and is well grounded. Give him a listen to at https://audio.ohr.edu/showperson/id=5 .

I want to also thank Ohr Somayach for freeing up their library which was a source of revenue at some point.

In 1984, at the first Hackers Conference, Stewart Brand told Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak: “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”

If this is true of secular knowledge, how much more so for Torah, which has can changed so many of our lives. There really is no reason we can’t be listening to Torah an hour or two a day thanks to our Smartphones, the Internet, and the proliferation of free Torah sites.

So please make your way to
https://www.simpletoremember.com/media/ or
https://audio.ohr.edu or
https://torahanytime.com or
https://www.yutorah.org or
http://www.mp3shiur.com or
http://torahdownloads.com/
and load up your phone. It’s also appropriate to donate to the sites from which you benefit.