Before New Year’s Day, 2000, the New York Times created a mock front page for New Year’s Day, 2100. They concocted all kinds of news stories for the front page, and since New Year’s will fall on Friday that year, the editors added the time for Shabbat candle lighting. At …
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A Kind Suffering
The Hebrew word Chessed, kindness, has a numeric value of seventy-two. Kabbalah teaches that the last seventy-two days of the Hebrew calendar year are permeated with Chessed, divine benevolence. This period begins on the seventeenth day of the Hebrew month, Tamuz.
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The secret alef is the mystery of this week’s Torah portion. Alef is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Hebrew letters also serve as numbers. Thus, alef is one; it represents G-d, who exists alone. He is one, and there is no other. By that, we mean not only …
High Holiday Greetings
We embark on a new year with excitement and trepidation. What does the new year hold for us, will it be good or bad, healthy or ill, happy or sad?
We look back to years past and know that life is a mixed bag, some years were better than …
The old conversation has reared its head again. When Shalom Mordechai Rubashkin was first charged with employing illegal and underage workers and with operating an unsafe work environment, I argued that we must give a fellow Jew the benefit of the doubt and assume innocence until proven guilty. When the …
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 …
