Do you peddle in relative truths, or are you a stickler for the absolute truth? This essay examines the two types of truth and posits that G-d’s truth is absolute.
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A Year on Credit?
Everyone knows that the last festival of the High Holidays season is Simchat Torah when we dance around the Bimah with the Torah in a ceremony called Hakafot. But did you know that hakafot is not only the mark Simchat Torah, the last holiday of the High …
Sunday: Three-Fifty-Four
Why are we obligated to let our fields lie fallow once every seven years? Rabbi Yonasan Eibshitz offered the following explanation. There are fifty-two Shabbats in a year, amounting to 312 Shabbats over the course of six years. Seven annual Biblical holidays, the first and last of Pesach, the …
The Gardens
Seeking an escape from the fast pace of the big city, I used to visit the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. Strolling along quiet lanes, I would breathe in the fragrance and enjoy the scenic beauty. Sitting peacefully by the pond, I would close my eyes and try to leave the city …
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 …
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 …
