We live in an age of radical autonomy. Each individual zealously guards their own independence from everyone else. We resent when someone presumes to tell us what is right or wrong, seeks to impose external limitations to our discretion or…
Wrap Your Head Around This: Women Can Wear Tefillin, Too!
If you were to visit the Western Wall today, you would see public stalls for men to wrap tefillin, a set of leather straps and small boxes meant to be worn during prayer. You would not see any stalls for…
Kabbalah: An Offshoot or a Staple of Judaism?
An often mentioned but little explored concept in Judaism is mysticism, or as Jews refer to it, Kabbalah. Literally translated as “tradition,” this school of thought builds its theology off an ancient prolific text called the Zohar, which focuses entirely…
On the Topic of Free Will
One of the topics that the majority of people find difficult to understand – is the topic of “Free Will.” Non-Jewish Astrologers always debated whether there is Free Will or not. If indeed there is, as most of them admit,…
Parashat Beshalach: Building the Relationship with God
One of the most unfathomable instances and awkward transitions in the entire Torah takes place right in the middle of this week’s parsha. The people had just spent months seeing God’s power firsthand, experiencing grand miracles, watching what God had…
Makkat Bechorot and the Great Cry in Egypt
In the climax of the ten plagues visited upon Egypt, Hashem commands Moses to tell the Israelites to sacrifice the Paschal lamb and smear its blood on the doorposts of their houses, in order to save themselves from Makkat Bechorot,…
Power and Responsibility: An Application of Genesis
First, God made light: day and night. Then, the sky and the earth. God next made vegetation, then the living creatures, and finally humankind. Genesis 1:28 reads: God blessed [humankind], and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and…
Justice in Memory
Past injustices can never be undone. For millennia, the Jewish people have been persecuted, exiled, confined to the margins of society. None of that can ever be changed. But, it would be wrong to think that we can only strive…
What is Justice?
What is justice? Most definitions of justice are circular. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as, “the quality of being just, impartial, or fair.” When you try to figure out what it means to be just, impartial or fair, you get more…
Do the Clothes Make the Man?
Clothing is a leitmotif in the Joseph narrative. His father gifts him the coat of many colors; his brothers rip it off his back and dip it in blood; Potiphar’s wife grabs his shirt as he flees from her advances;…