Category Archives: Uncategorized

Leaning against the stone railing of my balcony, I saw him disappear into the crowded streets beneath me, his head still slightly stooped, but his step lighter as if planted with renewed hope. I held my hand up to shadow … Continue reading →

The House of the Rising Sun You might recall this famous folk song sung by its most successful commercial version, recorded in 1964 by the English rock group The Animals. The song was a number one hit in the United … Continue reading →

There is no good way to say it: most of the Book of Leviticus should be skipped. Yes, it includes “love your neighbor as yourself, but much of it makes for hard, unpleasant reading which is mostly irrelevant anyway. All … Continue reading →

My teary friend told me that while helping her husband find a document on his laptop, she came across more than 850 porn clips. Yes, she knew he “is a man” and might have watched “one or two here and … Continue reading →

Disconnecting to Connect: Vayakhel 1 Finally, the biggest miracle is in this week’s Torah portion! Not the Exodus and not the Splitting of the Sea; not the Manna raining from the Heavens and not even the Giving of the Torah. … Continue reading →

The sounds of a party reached Moses’ ears, descending from Mt Sinai. Approaching, he caught a glimpse of a Golden Calf glistening in the sun but after 40 days up there, learning Torah with G-d Himself and harmonizing with the … Continue reading →

“And you shall command the Children of Israel…” this is how this week’s reading begins, rather than in the usual “and G-d spoke to Moses saying”… This is the only portion throughout the Torah since Moses’s birth where his name … Continue reading →

We are offered zero transition from the amazing experience of revelation at Mt. Sinai to a lot, A LOT! of laws, commandments, legal rulings… We will discover that we’re actually not here for the special effects, drama love stories, miracles … Continue reading →

“If God indeed created everything, that means that God created evil; and if we hold that our works define who we are, then God would also be evil?!” This is a challenge posed by a professor to his students, “proving” … Continue reading →

How many of us sing in the shower? What is it about the shower that makes us sing?? Maybe we inherited the combination of water and singing straight from this Torah portion, B’shalach, where we find the grand song, sung … Continue reading →