Making Up for Lost Time
That life gave them all the time in the world to study the Torah free from the worries of a livelihood. Now, however, they were about to enter the real world, where the physical and spiritual juggle and compete for space.
Test Yourself: Who Is Telling You the Story?
Our Sages ask us to note that most of the time during our journey through the desert, the problem is not an external enemy but our internal state: our unity, our faith, our motivation. When these are absent, it is impossible to keep moving forward.
Our Nation’s Niggun
I wonder how many stood there, opening up their hearts and souls. How many knew that this would be their final prayer and yet they called out to Avinu Shebashamayim, ‘bring us home to Yerushalayim!’
Q & A: Relative Sanctity of Various Holy Books (Part I)
Question: Is it prohibited to place a siddur or some other sefer on top of a Chumash?
Menachem Kooper
Via email
Beha’alot’cha: When Leadership Leans Toward the Center
The Menorah teaches that outward illumination is the last step, not the first. That leadership begins with the quiet work of tending your own inner flame.
The Faith to Keep Walking
We are all living through a period of profound uncertainty, both globally and within the Jewish world. On a global level, it often feels as if we are living in the calm before a storm.
The Two Trumpets
In this week’s parsha, we receive the command to raise up its candles, and of course on Shabbat Chanukah we are very involved with the mitzvah of lighting candles.
Using Our Heads in Shul
The study of Pirkei Avos contains lesson after lesson on how we can improve our daily behavior.
A Lesson in Humility
It is explained that before we received the Torah, we were comparable to animals, so we bring the offering from barley.
A Distressful Date, Gratuitous Gripes, and Precious Second Chances
Let me make it clear that G-d does not get angry, nor does He have any other human emotion. However, the Torah speaks in language we can relate to. The Torah anthropomorphizes G-d so that we can understand things better.
Spiraling Through the Cosmic Symphony of Life (Part III)
When a circle is merely cyclical, detached from growth, it represents spiritual death. This is the circle of routine, of habit, of endless repetition with no forward progress.
You Are What You Eat: Kashrus, Humanity, and Rambam’s Blunt Truth
A person who constantly succumbs to his needs and urges without any intellectual thought or consideration is no better than an animal.
Prying Open
There isn’t an educator in any of our schools who isn’t a hero. Teaching is the most valuable and integral profession we have, despite the fact that teachers are often underpaid and underappreciated.
Parshas Beha’aloscha: Bringing Kedusha Home
When complaints become constant, there is usually something deeper taking place. The words people use are not always the whole story. Sometimes the frustration we hear is only the outer layer of a more painful sense of loss.
Jewelry Remedy
Does buying jewelry now count for the mitzvah of simchas Yom Tov?
Daf Yomi
The Jew as a Gentile’s “Kashrus Certificate”
“We Do Not Give Innards to a Gentile”
(Chullin 33a)
Making Peace
f you just stated the details of the korban once, with Nachshon ben Aminadav, and then said that the others brought the exact same korban (without listing the elements), this could arouse jealousy between the tribes.
Q & A: Three Steps Back After Chazarat HaShatz?
Question: Why do we take three steps back at the conclusion of the Amidah, and yet the chazzan is not required to do so when he concludes the Repetition of the Amidah – Chazarat HaShatz?
Sam (Shnayur) Weiss
Via email
Parshas Naso: The Torah’s Architecture of Repair
It begins with counting. Order. Structure. Arrangement. But almost immediately the parsha shifts into the unpredictable terrain of human emotion.
What Can We Take Away from Shavuot?
On Shavuot it is customary to make a new commitment to Torah study. Our Sages explain that Shavuot is considered a “Rosh Hashanah” for the Torah, and that a new year of Torah study is about to begin.
The Day That Heaven Touched My Soul
At that moment, surrounded by song and holiness, Israel no longer felt like merely a country. It felt like destiny fulfilled.
Neither Indulgence Nor Withdrawal
Does Hashem desire that we sever ourselves entirely from the physical world, surviving on as little pleasure and comfort as possible? According to the Rambam, the answer is no. The Torah demands calibration rather than withdrawal.
Manifesting the Priestly Blessing
The Aish Kodesh explains that in this world, a Jew can be identified by virtue of his rootedness in the supernal wisdom, but all the wisdom that reaches his consciousness comes through an extension of the Divine spirit into this material world.
The Great Treasure of Pirkei Avos
When we follow their advice and pay attention to their criticism, they actually give us life in the World to Come.
Let There Be Peace
When we fulfill the mitzvah of hachnosas orchim it doesn’t make a difference who the guests are. The halacha is to treat them like royalty.
Out of Sync Readings & Ritual Repercussions
Parshiyot come in two flavors: p’tuchot and s’tumot, open and closed. A parsha p’tucha begins on its own line, with a blank space on the line above from the end of the previous parsha to the end of the line. A parsha s’tuma begins after a blank space on the same line on which the previous parsha ended.
Spiraling Through the Cosmic Symphony of Life (Part II)
Time does not move along a continuous, straight line; it circles around in a repeating yearly cycle. As the Ramchal explains, Hashem created thematic cycles of time, and each point in the year contains unique spiritual energy.
Better Together: When the Group Speaks with One Voice
The ability to collaborate, connect, and negotiate between the built-in masculine and feminine traits and perspectives is what allows creation to occur, literally and figuratively.
The Forgotten Winter
If a father embarrasses his son in shul because the latter was talking during davening, he may get his son to stop talking in the moment, but in the long term he has not taught him anything about kavod ha’tefillah