G-d created the world through speech, and the words with which He created us are very much like flames. “Behold, my words are like flames” (Jeremiah 23:29). Flames don’t burn unless they have fuel to consume. The same is true of G-d’s words. “For G-d your G-d is a consuming …
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Kindness is something that is usually given out of generosity. We don’t usually think of kindness as a debt. Yet, sometimes it is a debt. For example, if someone treats you kindly, they deserve to be treated kindly in return; you owe them a debt of kindness. If you owe …
G-d did not disclose the nature of the reward that we receive for performing a Mitzvah so that we would not give preference to any ne Mitzvah over another. However, lest we assume that difficult-to-perform-mitzvot are more important than those that come easily, the Torah presents us with two mitzvot …
Refuge is discussed often in the Torah. When a Jew killed another inadvertently, he was required to flee to a city of refuge, where he was given asylum from the victim’s relatives. These cities were established throughout the land of Israel to ensure that inadvertent killers had sufficient and easy …
What do the seventeenth of Tamuz, the ninth of Av, and the first day of Passover have in common? They always fall on the same day of the week.
How does that make any sense? The first day of Passover represents the redemption of our ancestors from Egypt that sparked their …
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 …
