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March 25, 2024 – 8:50 pm | Comments Off on Why We Must Resist The Cease Fire Resolution47 views

Tzav: Fighting Evil
We are surrounded by evil; every so often, it rears its ugly head as it did on Simchat Torah—the October 7 massacre. Pure evil raped Jewish mothers, burned Jewish babies alive, mutilated their fathers, and beheaded their neighbors. Pure evil burned loving couples clinging to each other, to …

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Articles by Lazer Gurkow

Freedom of Thought

October 1, 2022 – 10:43 pm | Comments Off on Freedom of Thought750 views
freedom-of-thought-innerstream.ca

Freedom of thought is a G-d given right. In communist and socialist countries, the individual is made to cede to the collective. In dictatorships the collective is compelled to cede to the dictator. But this is not what G-d intended for us humans. G-d intended for us to have freedom …

Shabbat Shuvah: The Loving Exam

September 28, 2022 – 10:37 pm | Comments Off on Shabbat Shuvah: The Loving Exam626 views
loving-exam-innerstream.ca

The days of reckoning are here, and it is time for the loving exam. Most exams are associated with tension and trepidation. Irrespective of how well we know the material, proctors do their best to make it stressful. Fear of failure, fear of getting caught cheating, and fear of falling …

Prove It Or Know It

September 17, 2022 – 10:18 pm | Comments Off on Prove It Or Know It622 views
know-it-innerstream.ca

To prove it or to know it, which is better? Most people would say that being able to prove something is better. Proof is the holy grail. If you have incontrovertible proof, you know it is true. If all you can say is, “I know it is true,” you may …

Unity With Differences

September 10, 2022 – 11:34 pm | Comments Off on Unity With Differences697 views
unity-with-differences-innerstream.ca

Which is better, unity with differences or unity without differences? Most people would say unity without differences is better, but Judaism underlines unity with differences.
An ancient Jewish ritual called bikurim, saw Jews bring an annual basket of fruit from their homesteads to Jerusalem. These baskets were placed before the altar …

With G-d’s Help

August 31, 2022 – 5:01 pm | Comments Off on With G-d’s Help1,036 views
With G-d's Help

The Torah tells us to appoint judges and guardians at the gates of our cities. The city’s gathering place was usually at the gates, making it the fitting place for the courthouse and police station. However, Jewish scholarship has long maintained that there is a parallel teaching here. We are …

A Month of Refuge

August 20, 2022 – 10:48 pm | Comments Off on A Month of Refuge1,735 views
refuge-innerstream.ca

Refuge is discussed often in the Torah. When a Jew killed another inadvertently, he was required to flee to a city of refuge, where he was given asylum from the victim’s relatives.  These cities were established throughout the land of Israel to ensure that inadvertent killers had sufficient and easy …

A Life of Seasons

August 14, 2022 – 12:52 am | Comments Off on A Life of Seasons801 views
seasons-innerstream.ca

When I lived in California people complained that they missed the seasons. I always wondered about that. Having come from the East Coast, I often told them that if they were looking seasons, I could tell them exactly where to find it. They came to California for sunshine so why …

My Shabbat

August 7, 2022 – 11:08 pm | Comments Off on My Shabbat922 views
shabbos - innerstream

Today we have Myoffice, Mydrive, my-everything, so why not My-Shabbat?
At first blush, it ought to be our Shabbat, or most appropriately G-d’s Shabbat. How can we claim Shabbat for ourselves?
The answer is that we each have the capacity to enhance our Shabbat. Our sages wrote that only he who toils …