Yisro – Experience Required
When I was a teenager, I wrote a short poem that went: All could be lies For we see with our eyes. Descartes, as I later discovered, beat me by some three centuries at...
When I was a teenager, I wrote a short poem that went: All could be lies For we see with our eyes. Descartes, as I later discovered, beat me by some three centuries at...
Our ancestors’ wondering “Is Hashem in our midst or not?” is followed immediately in the Torah by Amalek’s attack (Shemos 17: 7-8). The word expressing Klal Yisrael’s existential doubt – “or not?” – is...
That Yaakov’s descendants are commanded by Hashem to place the blood of the korban Pesach on the doorposts and lintels of their homes’ doors (Shemos 12:7) is certainly intriguing. Considering that the Gemara on...
Last week, Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch, the co-Rosh Yeshiva of Slabodka in Bnei Brak, issued what appears to be an extremely significant mid-course correction for the charedi yeshiva world in Israel. With Rav Dov...
To the Editor: Re “For Gaza’s Babies, War’s Effects Will Never End,” by Alice Rothchild (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 11): The effect of the Israel-Hamas conflict on expectant mothers and on babies is horrific,...
It’s intriguing that when Moshe and Aharon are sent to present themselves to Par’oh and to demonstrate the miracle of a staff turning into a snake, Moshe is commanded by Hashem to tell Aharon...
Each of us lives at the center of a series of concentric circles, the closest one encompassing our immediate family members; the next, friends and neighbors; beyond that, co-religionists or fellow citizens of one’s...
All the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are found in the bracha that Yehudah is given by his father Yaakov – with one exception: the zayin. That fact is pointed out by Rabbeinu Bachya,...
The books considered holy by other religions present their heroes as flawless. One of the indications that the Torah, by contrast, is divine in nature is its recording of flaws of action or attitude...
Many years ago, a wise rebbe of mine, addressing instances of financial finagling by some members of the tribe, explained that the forefathers of us Jews whom we revere are Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov,...