In a small village in Lithuania, a young boy named Berel received a bicycle as a gift. Berel loved his bike and drove it every day, including Shabbat. The Rabbi heard about this and announced that Berel should henceforth be referred to as Berel the goy—the non-Jew. Berel heard about …
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This week, we read about Judah’s encounter with Tamar. On the surface, it looked like an intimate rendezvous on the side of the road. On a deeper level, something historical and fundamental occurred. Judah, the leader among his brothers, fathered the ancestor of King David and Mashiach. Our sages saw …
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 …
When I visit my parents in Boston I am often struck by the adjustment in dimension from my childhood memories. Everything that I remembered as large, houses, streets, pools and yards, seem small by comparison. The only exceptions are the trees that enclose my parents’ backyard. They seemed huge back …
The Bribe
This scene has probably played out in every family home. You are going to a wedding and don’t want to be late. But your children couldn’t care less and take their merry time getting ready. At your wits end, you do what any desperate parent does; you offer a …
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 …
