In Mizmor Lisoda, a part of our daily morning prayers, we say a passage from Tehillim (psalms): “Ivdu es Hashem bisimcha, bo’u lifanav birnana – serve Hashem with joy, come […]
In this week’s Torah reading we have an interesting mitzvah (commandment). The Torah instructs us (30:19) to choose life. What does it mean to choose life? By nature, every human […]
Improving Our Character: A Fundamental of Judaism The verse in this week’s Torah reading says (28:9), “And you shall go in His [God’s] ways.” The Sefer Hachinuch (Mitzvah 611) says […]
Warming Food on Shabbos < Lesson 4: Putting Up Cholent In a Crockpot Lesson 5: Friday Night Cholent In this fifth lesson about warming food on Shabbos (or Shabbat), Rabbi […]
I Have Nothing To Wear! I am a father of girls. I think there’s just two of them, but you’d never guess it from their closets. Clearly, I don’t understand […]
Dip the apple in the honey. What’s the message to take in? The apples are ripe blessings, With sweetness, may our year begin. But the honey is even sweeter, Though […]
Opportunities, Not Rights In this week’s Torah reading, we have a mitzvah (commandment) to refrain from muzzling an ox while it is threshing. Why does one owe his ox to […]
There’s an anecdote in my wife’s family about how her uncle tried to give his father-in-law, her Zeidy Shmelka, directions to the Catskills that might avoid traffic. This was in […]
At the end of this week’s Torah reading, the Torah discusses the subject of Eglah Arufah. If a corpse of a person is found on the road and it is […]
One of my favorite stories from Chovos HaLevavos is that of a certain chassid (as in close to Hashem, since it was written centuries before the Baal Shem Tov, founder […]
