Articles in Life Is Beautiful
Vayeshev: At Home
Where We Feel At Home
The story is told of a Chassid who would travel on business to St Petersburg and return home to his Rebbe’s court. In St. Petersburg he would don modern attire and mingle with his business colleagues, at home he reverted to the Chassid’s garb.
Feeling uncomfortable with …
Chayei Sarah: The Joys of Hard Work
No Break
Abraham seems to have been in love with hard work. The frenetic pace of his life was unusual. In his youth, he organized and gave mass lectures on Monotheism all across Mesopotamia. He wrote four hundred books on the subject.
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Vayera: The Final Journey
Accompaniment
Today I want to share a reflection for life’s final journey.
Abraham planted an Eshel[1] and our sages had two different explanations for what that was. Some said it was an orchard, others said it was an inn. Some name their inn, The Red Roof Inn, others name their inn, The …
Re’e: The Lonely Sock
Just A Half
Have you ever lost socks in the wash? It’s bad enough to lose a pair, but losing a single sock really frustrates me. You search in vain for its match and are left holding a useless sock. My son coined his own term for the single socks in …
Dvarim: The Power Of Words
The other day, my nephew Yisrolik Zalmanov was reading a book, when my son asked,
“Isn’t it boring to sit around all day and read? Books are just words.”
“Yes,” replied my nephew, “but words tell stories and stories are interesting. For example, you enjoy listening to story tapes and those too …
Naso: Self Imposed Confinement
Isolation
We live in self-imposed confinement. Our world is confined to ourselves and to the people we love. Tell us about a tragedy elsewhere in the world, we cluck our tongues and move on. For some, the world is even smaller. It extends only to themselves. At every turn they ask …
Passover: You Are Unique
You Are One
Ezekiel famously said, “Echad Hayah Avraham,” Abraham was one.[1] Ezekiel was speaking to the fact that Abraham was promised the land of Israel on his own merit because he stood utterly and completely alone in defiance of contemporary culture. Abraham was willing to be unique.
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Ki Tisa: Family
Two Subjects
The instruction to keep Shabbat appears in the Torah[1] immediately before the story of the golden Calf. On the face of it the two subjects are unrelated, Shabbat is a celebration of G-d and worship of the Golden Calf was an act of apostasy. Yet their juxtaposition must be …
