• Did Abraham Fail his Final Test?

    Over Rosh Hashanah I thought a lot about the akedah, the binding of Isaac, since the story is so central to Rosh Hashanah.  I contemplated some of the central questions that are asked out it. What gave Abraham the right to offer his child with out asking Sara since Isaac is her child also, as…

  • The Importance and Value of Creativity in Talmud Study

    I and my family are living in Israel for the next 5 months on sabbatical.  Though we are living in Jerusalem I commute each day to the city of Lod to learn torah in the kollel of Rabbi Israel Samet.  It is a small group of mostly young married men who have finished their army…

  • Torah Alone does not Make a Mench

    A congregant of mine was confounded by the reports of Rabbis who were arrested for illegally trafficking in human organs. One person in the group said that some might justify their acts claiming the money would be used for yeshivahs and other important Jewish organizations. They turned to me and demanded to know if there…

  • The Central Temple Service of Yom Kippur

    This month of Elul leads up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  It is a time of reflection and tishuvah, return, but with what should we emerge from this process?   Elul, Rosh Hashanah, the 10 Days of Tishuvah and Yom Kippur culminates in a service performed once a year on Yom Kippur itself, on the…

  • A King Who Does Not Know Joseph: Lessons on Jewish Loyalty and Persecution

    In the preceding Torah portions we have seen Joseph exercise his power with great loyalty on behalf of Pharaoh and Egypt.  He not only saves everyone from famine, but in the process makes Pharaoh even richer by using the stored grain to bring all agricultural land under the ownership of Pharaoh and render all of…

  • Yom Kippur

    Two Goats that Teach the Central Lesson of Yom Kippur In ancient times Yom Kippur was quite a different experience than it is for us today.  The entire Jewish people would gather at the Temple in Jerusalem to watch and listen as the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, performed the Temple service, and on this…

  • Rosh Hashanah

    The Talmud states:  “We anoint kings next to a spring of water so that their kingship should continue to give forth like a spring…Rabbi Ammi said, “If one is about to engage in business and wishes to know whether he will succeed or not, let him get a rooster and feed it; if it grows…

  • How Each Generation Contributes to the Rebuilding

    The Talmud says, “ Any generation for which the Temple is not rebuilt, it is as if it was destroyed in their days.” The Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, asks how this could be so?  There have been many generations in which there were very righteous people, is the Talmud saying that…

  • The Sanctification of the Firstborn

    In this week’s parsha, Bamidbar, the Jewsih people are counted in preparation for war and entering the Land of Israel.  The Levites are then counted and exchanged for the first born:  “I hereby take the Levites from among the Israelites in place of all the first-born, the first issue of the womb among the Israelites:…

  • The Transformational Leadership of Miriam

    This past Saturday night I had the privilege of learning about the Torah portion with the children of Kesher Israel at our monthly Parent-Child learning program.   We looked at leadership in this week’s parsha.  Moshe is one kind of leader -0his character of leadership seems to be concern for individuals and sticking up for…

  • Connecting to Our Ancestors in Challenging Times

    We have been here before,- on the seder night of the first Pesach, in Egypt, the Jewish people could not leave their houses for fear of the threat on the outside.  Though it’s true that they had each other in groups that first Pesach, how many times in Jewish history were Jews eating matzah hiding…

  • Tisha B’Av as a Path to Redemption

    This week we begin the nine days, an intensive time of mourning for the destruction of the Temple and the exile from Israel.   Rabbi Solovetchik pointed out that this process of national mourning proceeds in the opposite direction to personal mourning.   Personal mourning of the passing of a loved one begins with very…

  • Using the Pandemic to Reconnect with What Truly Matters

    Using the Pandemic to Reconnect with What Truly Matters

    We are surrounded by mortality -here in the country we considered safely above epidemics, and in the world at large.  This kind of widespread death shocks us from the comfort of our everyday denial of death.  The human being’s constant background denial of their own mortality allows them to go on day to day, to…

  • The Transformative Role of Counting in the Torah

    In the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Bamidbar, the Torah relates that on the first day of the second month, God tells Moses to count the Jewish people.  This is the third time in the Torah that the Jewish people are counted, as Rashi (Rabbi Shlomoh Isaac, 11century French Torah commentator) says, “They are…

  • Tefillin on Chol HaMoed and the Unity of the Jewish People

    With regard to wearing tefillin on chol hamoed (intermediate days of the festivals) the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) states (OC 31:2): “On Chol HaMoed it is prohibited to wear tefillin for the same reason as on shabbat or a holiday, namely that Chol HaMoed is an ot, a “sign” (rendering tefillin, which is also…

  • Learning from the Bene Israel of India

    “Rabbi, what will you do about the rain?” Exhausted and in shock from my first exposure to the realities of the swarming, squalid city of Mumbai, then called Bombay, I stared back, perplexed and concerned. “Don’t you know, Rabbi, there is a drought here in Maharashtra.” Their thoughts, though unsaid, were loud and clear: “We…

  • Elevating the Physical Through Shabbat

    “Noah is Shabbat” – Tikuney Zohar, 138b The seventh Rebbe of Lubavitch, the great Tzadik, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson taught (in Maamar Bati L’gani) that the place of God’s most intense dwelling in this world is the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, and the beams which hold up the Mishkan are called in Hebrew, “kerashim.” He said…

  • The Power of Prayer

    This week’s Torah portion is Noah.  Many of the commentaries on this portion focus on Prayer.  But what does prayer have to do with Noah and the flood?  The answer I think lies in a question that is often asked about Noah: Was he really a righteous man compared to Abraham, or only righteous compared…

  • From Sinai to the Tabernacle

    In this week’s torah portion, Tzav, the torah continues its description from last week of the sacrifices and their rituals.   For us who live in the current period of time in the Western world animal sacrifice is fairly foreign and seems in many respects barbaric.   To us perhaps reading about the sacrifices in…

  • Bridging the Divide

    We have just finished the High Holidays, culminating with Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret. Over the course of the holiday of Sukkot, we offer 70 bulls in the Temple, corresponding to the 70 nations. On the 8th day, Shemini Atzeret, we bring one bull for the Jewish people. Jews are not xenophobic. We believe that the…