The prerequisite to understanding any story is answering the question: What is its genre? This might seem like an easy task, but it’s really not. Let’s say that someone gets offended by a joke. The ...

The Torah teaches us to revere our mother and father (Lev. 19:3). This mitzvah is embedded within the Holiness Code. In observing it, we achieve holiness, as well as the wholeness of learning from the ...

What does it mean to love our children equally? It’s a question that many families wrestle with, especially when each parent’s and child’s personality, needs, and circumstance vary so widely.

Of all the Festivals in our calendar, Shavuot can easily seem like the “unloved child”. Each of the other Festivals has its own special mitzvot: dwelling in the Sukkah and waving the Four Species on ...

Many of us find it hard to relate to the Torah portion of Vayikra. It focuses on a practice that is no longer in use today. We learn of various types of sacrifices and how they were to be fulfilled on ...

NITZAVIM-VA’YALECH, this m’chubar (double) portion is also the final weekly Torah portion of 5780. When the rest of the community was requited to quarantine in response to the COVID 19 virus, health ...

After repeatedly denouncing and prohibiting the creation of statues, portrayals of the human form, or anything resembling idols—on pain of death—God issues an unusual command. In the construction of ...

Every weekly Torah portion is related in some way to the Land of Israel. There are a plethora of midrashic treasures related to the Holy Land. Learn to love Eretz Yisrael through Jewish sources by ...

One of my most memorable Torah lessons from elementary school was the one about the manna. This was the magical food that the Jews ate while traveling through the desert. It was some kind of amorphous ...

A Torah lesson from Biden shows grasp of Judaism’s quirky calendar US president quotes from the Balak portion while in Israel, noting subtle difference between dates it is read for American Jews and ...