Tetzaveh: The Gift of a Birthday
Moses’ birthday was on the seventh of Adar. The Shabbat before Purim is almost always in the week of Moses’ birthday so let’s use this opportunity to discuss what it means to be born. Many think of birth as the beginning of our story, but …
Are we G-d’s children or G-d’s chosen?
On the face of it, one be both, but when you think about it, you see that we must choose. Choices can only be made between two equal options. When the options are unequal, there is no real choice—you obviously opt for the superior …
Inadvertent Slide
Purim celebrates the reversal of assimilation. The Talmud teaches that well before Haman, Jews in Persia had begun a slide into assimilation. There were Jews in the highest enclaves of commerce and government.[1] They were admitted into the most exclusive social clubs. And when the Persian king, Achashverosh, gave …
Loving talk is not only G-d’s preferred language; it is built into the very fabric of creation.
“In the beginning, G-d created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was astonishingly empty . . . And G-d said, let there be light. G-d saw that the light was good and …
These past two days have been the most difficult for our people in the last fifty years. It was Simchat Torah, a time for rejoicing, yet it was a time of horror. Nearly a thousand members of our family were brutally murdered, more than a hundred were taken hostage, and …
