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Are we walking with God? This second portion in Genesis begins with Noah, a just, wholehearted man,- תָּמִים) tamim) in his generation. Our sages explain that being righteous meant that he was less evil than other people at that time. I think that they don’t give him any credit when they say that if he […]
Bereshit 5784 Chao vs Order, Void Vs Fullness, Light Vs Darkness…Choose! In Genesis 1:2, we find a very important element in the story of creation: תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ “tohu v’vohu” translated as “unformed and void” or chaos. Not long ago, I watched a video of a group of young people whose goal was to destroy anything […]
Lighting Your Light “And the light of Israel will become fire, and the Holy One, blessed is He, will become flame.” Isaiah 10:17 Life is a continuous spiral reflected in the physical world. In fact, in the Milky Way, the constellations all contain spiral shapes as we also see on Earth in snails, storms, cyclones, […]
The Mysteries of the Moedim When I was growing up, whether those around me were religious or not, we all understood that Yom Kippur was the holiest day of the year. All we needed to do was to listen to Kol Nidre, the sounding of the shofar, to fast if we were old enough, and then […]
Returning to our Roots This week’s portion is one of the shortest portions in the Torah, but it is full of richness and although it is just one chapter, it is an extract of the human experience, summarized in a prophecy in the form of a song. This Shabbat which falls between Rosh Hashanah and […]
My Way or God’s Way? As I read Deuteronomy 29 and 30 in Parashat Nitzavim, I stood back in order to see the bigger picture, as our rabbi taught us, and it occurred to me that these verses hold the key to understanding the entire Torah. Throughout the 40 years in the wilderness, God repeated […]
“Strive, Don’t Give Up.” This portion Ki Tavo contains many treasures from which I would like to present a few central themes: The first theme: the Israelites were invited to remember His Divine protection, at all times, going from a past that they didn’t know when it says that an Aramaean wanted to kill their […]
“What has Happened to Human Rights”? This week’s haftarah portion for us is Isaiah 52:13 – 54: 10. Just as a note of interest, our sages removed chapter 53 from the weekly readings due to its controversial nature. It clearly speaks about a figure who we Jewish people have had trouble understanding because of the […]
Can we Change the World? In 1789 France, the conflict between the French Revolution and the Catholic Church resulted in the separation of church and state and the supremacy of the state prevailed. In 1863 USA, democracy was described by President Abraham Lincoln as a “Government of the people, by the people and for the […]
Do We Have Eyes? Let’s Use Them. This week’s portion, Re’eh describes various topics that are related to sight – to seeing, in other words, “perceiving and correctly interpreting the light waves that we receive”; we make decisions according to what we see. According to modern science, vision occurs when light is processed by the […]
