On Friday, May 16, Jews around the world will celebrate Lag Ba’omer. Lag Ba’omer is a joyous day. In Israel, thousands flock to Miron, the burial site of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the second-century Talmudic sage who passed away on this day.
Rabbi Shimon was the first to publicize and record …
First Month
The Jewish calendar is confusing. The Hebrew months have names, but they are Persian in origin. Why do Hebrew months have Persian names? Another question: These names are not employed by the Five Books of Moses or the Books of the Prophets, when were they adopted into our culture?
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Selfish Man
Have you ever received a backhanded compliment? The kind that acknowledges your achievement while smoothly sliding in a zinger? A particularly good zinger comes to mind when I think of Candidate Barak Obama responding to a wailing Hillary Clinton in a 2007 Democratic Primary Candidate debate. Clinton complained that …
Haman wasn’t the first villain in his family. He came from an illustrious line of Jew haters. He was a descendant of the infamous Amalek, the first to advise Pharaoh to enslave us and the first to make war against us after the exodus.
The Torah describes the dramatic war that …
This essay is not related to the Parsha of the week but is posted here
because the subject has recently become a household topic of discussion
[Part Three of Three]
Same Sex Marriage
Part Three
A Question of Definition
The debate on same sex
marriage has focused in part on the distinction between same sex
marriage and same …
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 …
