יום רביעי, ט׳ תמוז תשפ״וWednesday, June 24, 2026
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Rabbi Ben-Tzion Spitz is the former Chief Rabbi of Uruguay. He is the author of over a dozen books on Torah themes, including a Biblical Fiction series. He is the publisher of a website dedicated to the exploration of classic Jewish texts, as well as TweetYomi, which publishes daily Torah tweets. Ben-Tzion is a graduate of Yeshiva University and received his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University.
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I count life just a stuff to try the soul's strength on. -Robert Browning
Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win. -Bobby Knight (all-time great college basketball coach)
Avoid popularity if you would have peace. -Abraham Lincoln
The human contribution is the essential ingredient. It is only in the giving of oneself to others that we truly live. -Ethel Percy Andrus
Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.-Jean Jacques Rousseau
Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper. -Thomas Fuller
The comfort zone takes our greatest aspirations and turns them into excuses for not bothering to aspire. -Peter McWilliams
What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man. -Edmund Burke
The most important of life's battles is the one we fight daily in the silent chambers of the soul. -David O. McKay
Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming. -Matthew Arnold
A vow is fixed and unalterable determination to do a thing, when such a determination is related to something noble which can only uplift the man who makes the resolve. -Mahatma Gandhi
The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. -Henry Ward Beecher
The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding. -Francis Bacon
A handful of pine-seed will cover mountains with the green majesty of forests. I too will set my face to the wind and throw my handful of seed on high. -Fiona Macleod
The leader can never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be. He must walk a tightrope between the consent he must win and the control he must exert. -Vince Lombardi
Opportunity dances with those who are ready on the dance floor. -H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Honor is the reward of virtue. -Marcus Tullius Cicero
For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation. -Charles Baudelaire
We falsely attribute to men a determined character -- putting together all their yesterdays -- and averaging them -- we presume we know them. -Henry David Thoreau
Who will guard the guards themselves? -Juvenal
Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things. -Alexander Hamilton
An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.-Henri Frederic Amiel
He that can work is born to be king of something. -Thomas Carlyle
Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye. -Samuel Johnson
I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day. -Abraham Lincoln
Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Celebrate what you want to see more of. -Thomas J. Peters
By two wings a man is lifted up from things earthly: by simplicity and purity. -Thomas Kempis
Enemies' promises were made to be broken. -Aesop
For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice -- no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service. -John Burroughs
Of neighborhoods, benevolence is the most beautiful. How can the man be considered wise who when he had the choice does not settle in benevolence. -Confucius
The healthy, the strong individual, is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he has an abscess on his knee or in his soul. -Rona Barrett
The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief. -George Eliot
The game is my life. It demands loyalty and responsibility, and it gives me back fulfillment and peace. -Michael Jordan
Every great person has first learned how to obey, whom to obey, and when to obey. -William Arthur Ward
The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them. -Jean Genet
All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God. -Sir Thomas Browne
It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead. -Robert G. Ingersoll
A man of courage is also full of faith. -Marcus Tullius Cicero
The most dangerous thing in the world is to try to leap a chasm in two jumps. -David Lloyd George
we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars,
Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
In helping others, we shall help ourselves, for whatever good we give out completes the circle and comes back to us. -Flora Edwards
One of life's greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn't good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world. -Yiddish Proverb
Our life is what our thoughts make it. A man will find that as he alters his thoughts toward things and other people, things and other people will alter towards him. -James Allen
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. -Plutarch
The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason. -Benjamin Franklin
Time is Too slow for those who wait, Too swift for those who fear, Too long for those who grieve, Too short for those who rejoice. But for those who love, time is not. -Henry Van Dyke
Zehut believes the truest way to attract non-observant Jews to Jewish observance is by giving them the freedom to choose.
Beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith that springs from conflict is often the strongest and the best. -R. Turnbull
Sorbet, in this case, is none other than the new ZEHUT political party that I'm a part of. What is the "milk" that all the other parties are selling to our otherwise steadfast "vegan" friends?
Israel MUST have more involvement and greater responsibility in the security of Jewish communities around the world.
The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. -Ivy Baker
It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. -Marcel Proust
The Tzadik, whenever he reaches some higher level, some spiritual accomplishment, doesn't want to forget for a moment that there's more, that he's incomplete, that there are infinite levels of progress that remain to a human being.
The quarks, atoms and molecules that make up our reality are constantly given life and existence by God. It is that divine aspect that also allows us to absorb these elements into our being and in some fashion that we have trouble comprehending, elevate the spiritual sparks of these items by consuming them.
It is time to get behind a Sheriff that will take our village where it’s meant to go; that will clean up the corruption; the senseless and preventable murders.
Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared. -Marcus Tullius Cicero
Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought. -Robert Browning
Time is not what you think. Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning. -Mitch Albom
Moses is warning us, in what was meant to be a song to be remembered throughout our history, to stay far away from all forms of idolatry--regardless of shape or ideology
Our repentance can retroactively cleanse the spiritual ledger. It can wipe the slate clean and allows us to start our spiritual accounting anew, refreshed, rejuvenated.
Rabbeinu Bechaye (on Deuteronomy 11:13 Ekev) explains that to serve God with all of our heart is nothing other than prayer, elaborating that there are 3 particular powers to prayer: the power to change nature. the power to save one from danger, the power to annul negative divine decrees
The fifth and final book of the Torah, Dvarim, is filled with history, laws, articles of faith, as well as a vision for the future. Moses describes, among a plethora of items, the creation and comportment of a judiciary.
The tribes of Ruben and Gad by being more concerned with their animals than with their own families, doomed themselves, eventually being left with neither. Indeed, the tribes to the east of the Jordan would be the first to be exiled and, seemingly, lost to Jewish history.
What would it mean to the world to suddenly have hundreds of millions of people, perhaps over a billion souls, identify themselves as Jewish, and show solidarity with Israel?
When one taps into the forces and elements around us, to free ourselves of extraneous masters, we are able to acquire the wisdom, the insight, the light, the well-being and the strength that the Torah can impart.
why is gossiping worse than all three of the cardinal sins put together? Because a gossiper destroys all of these bonds, and more
Many commentators point at this command as the unspoken reason why Nadav and Avihu were killed: They entered the Tabernacle drunk.
May we each brighten the world in our own way and may we merit having and seeing children whose light will both burn brightly as well as kindle the light of others. Shabbat Shalom
Pharaoh's stubbornness dooms Egypt. Had he let the Jews go at the first request, Egypt would have been spared from all the pain, death and destruction--the blame is his, neither Israel's nor G-d's
The second gathering will be that of the ten tribes during the final redemption, bringing together all the tribes of Israel after millennia of separation, something that we see unfolding before our very eyes.
There is no better way to inflame a situation than by answering anger with anger; and there is no better way to forestall a fight than to answer anger with calm.
The Torah tells stories of people who heard the voice of God and risked it all, However, for those of us who have not heard the voice of God, our sages suggest a more nuanced approach to risk.
A dog that barks much is never a good hunter. -Proverb
God doesn’t owe us anything, not even the breath we take.
The ideal Jewish leadership is predicated on a steadfast commitment to the Torah and a resolute determination to enact the principles of the Torah in our lives.
The Torah reveals to us, the good, the bad and the ugly of those who seek power and those who ultimately wield power.
Charity should begin at home, but should not stay there.
Why is gluttony in one so young deserving of a death sentence? Rabbi Hirsch answers if the priority is the taste and quality of a meal and not the values and ethics instilled in the next generation, oblivion is the likely outcome:
Our attitude, how we see the world, how we perceive things, how we react, how we internalize the reality around us, that will determine whether we are blessed or cursed. It is completely in our hands.
To give Diaspora Jewry a disproportional role in Israeli elections would be inappropriate. But to give them no role whatsoever misses the point of the connection and the dependence we have to each other.
Zehut is proposing, for the first time in the history of the State of Israel, that Jews from the Diaspora are given a voice to determine potential Knesset members.
Sovereignty over any foreign land is insecure. -Seneca the Elder
Clothes make the human: "Modesty is the conscience of the body." Honore de Balzac
Commentators differ as to what exactly was the sin of Nadav and Avihu and why they deserved what on the surface appears to be a wildly disproportional punishment for their 'minor' infraction
We cannot rest on the educational and religious laurels of our fathers. Every generation must forge ahead, not only to maintain or continue, but to expand our knowledge of and the faithfulness to God.
Before Jacob, animal sacrifices were completely consumed by fire. When he learned Yosef was alive, he offered a different type of sacrifice, the Shelamim, which is partially burnt and partially eaten
A balanced economic policy seems to have been exactly what Egypt needed and Joseph's policies insured that Egypt survived the famine.
Rabbi Hirsch: "The goal of history is not that Jacob should be forced to merge into the mass of nations, but the reverse. The nations must come to understand that..."
Rav Hirsch claims had Isaac and Rebecca developed a unique curriculum that took into account Esau's love of nature, strength, skills and courage, it may have directed him to become a mighty man of God
Abraham was not an isolationist concerned solely with his own interests. Regardless of how despicable the Sodomites were, Abraham started a surreal negotiation with G-d to save them.
Abraham is a model of the Individual, of the non-conformist, of the person who will take a stand for what is right though it is unpopular. Indeed, Abraham carved his own path.
Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking. -Kahlil Gibran
The new prayer, titled "Al Hanisim le'Yom Haatzamaut" (For the Miracles for the Day of Independence), was composed by Chief Rabbi Ben-Tzion Spitz, and Dr. Avi Shmidman
What shall we be free of this Pesach? It is the holiday of Freedom, isn’t it?
What our body manages to do in this world together with its soul will determine our ethereal world
The Sfat Emet explains that reality is malleable, and that the shaper of reality is...Humanity
June 19, 2026 
