Articles in Concepts
Lech L’cha: True Faith
True faith is not easy to come by. Abraham possessed true faith, but most people in his generation were incapable of true faith until a particular event occurred that made it possible to achieve true faith.
Let me tell you two stories about Abraham:[1]
The first story: At the age of three, …
Noach: Public Policy
Public policy must be established on principle, not empathy, says Paul Bloom, a psychology professor at Yale and author of Against Empathy: The Case For Rational Compassion. Empathy plays a role when deciding how or how much we should personally help another in need, but public policy should never be …
Bereshit: Human Centric
For millennia it was believed that the world is human centric, but science has slowly chipped away at this assumption.
From the day the first astronomer focused his gaze on the distant stars, humans postulated that our planet sits at the center of the universe and serves as the focal point …
Simchat Torah: No Break
On Simchat Torah we read the last passage of the Torah, but we don’t stop for even a moment when we finish reading the Torah. Instead, we turn around and start over immediately from the first verse. There are many celebrations on Simchat Torah, but they come before we read …
Ki Tavo: The Enduring Soul
The enduring soul is our secret weapon.
If you were Abraham, a lonely man of faith, surrounded by powerful pagan nations who opposed your every effort to teach monotheism, would you believe that you would change the world? If you were alive in 069 and watched the powerful Roman army burn …
Ki Teze: The Size of a Mitzvah
G-d did not disclose the nature of the reward that we receive for performing a Mitzvah so that we would not give preference to any ne Mitzvah over another. However, lest we assume that difficult-to-perform-mitzvot are more important than those that come easily, the Torah presents us with two mitzvot …
Re’e: The Cellphone Problem
Cellphone, a word my grandmother never heard, is a huge part of my life. People, the world over, communicate via cell phone to the extent that landlines are being phased out and snail mail is a thing of the past. But the convenience comes with a price. In fact, many …
Ekev: Why We Eat
We eat because we must live, but according to the Torah, eating is even more important than life.
One of the most profound messages in the Torah is captured in this verse. “Man does not live on bread alone, but on the word of G-d.” There are many layers of meaning …
