It looks like these tragic days everyone is thinking about time and age. Time that we live, hopefully in peace, and age that our children learn about war. Time that flies away, and age that deepens the scars. To me, the concept of one’s age is a changing one depending on my mood, experience, and…
Category: Torah
On Jewish Women in Antiquity and Today. Different times, different tactics
Many women regardless of their life or career choices experience challenges that are unique to their gender. To be sure, men have their own unique challenges, but over the history of mankind women’s challenges were largely overlooked, or at least were not detailed in stories or historic accounts just because the majority of learned and…
Thoughts about Purim this Year – The Origins of Love and Hate
When we talk about the villain of the Purim story, Haman, we most often go to the origins of his ancestor, Amalek, noting how he (his nation) waged war on those of the children of Israel that were week and lingering at the end of the procession on their way out of Egypt: וַיָּבֹ֖א עֲמָלֵ֑ק…
Rosh haShana Yearning for PEACE
This erev Rosh haShana as every year I find myself in the kitchen listening to Selichot at the Kotel making my babushka’s Lekach (honey cake) thinking about her life hoping to become one day as good a cook as she was.My grandmother’s life was not easy at all. She had to run from pogroms from…
Gd for Us, or We for Gd?
Some thoughts about Chanukah: History is not something one can run away from even if one is not comfortable with it. Jewish history is complicated to say the least. In the days of Hanukah, things were very complicated. Consequently, we have very different texts speaking to us about the events of that time with different…
Was that the Longest Year of Your Life?
Everyone seems to be talking, writing, praying, whining, crying and obsessing about COVID-19. As we say – by now only the lazy one didn’t say anything about it. I guess, I am that lazy one. It’s been over a month since Rosh haShana, and only now did I get the guts to address something that…
New Endeavors
Summer is coming to an end. This means that we have been living in this strange world limbo for half a year. Some of us got sick, and recovered. Some lost their loved ones, some lost their jobs, and all of us lost our ways of life that each once of us deemed sacred in…
Will This Pesach Be Different Than Any Other Pesach?
So many things happening, so many thoughts in my head, so many feelings in my heart, and so little ability in me to express it all. Pesach is coming, and the Israeli elections seem to be fitting into a timing that is supposed to be of reflection, self-cleansing and preparing for a better, free future….
פקודי
It’s been a while since I posted D’var Torah hear, but today I read a short beautiful d’var from a long-distant Rabbi, Ben-Tzion Spitz. Here it is for your pre-Shabbat pleasure: God is shadowing us (Pekudei) Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.-Robert Louis Stevenson The main architect,…
Parshat ha Shavuah Verses –Trumah
Originally posted on Noshing Across the Nation:
Once in the desert and having received the 10 Commandments, the Jews are told to start building a “dwelling place” for Divine Presence. To start the process everyone (every man to be precise) is asked to bring an offering, but only if they wish. ב דַּבֵּר אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְיִקְחוּ-לִי תְּרוּמָה: …
From the End to the Beginning
It may be strangely fitting that the first Parshah of the Book of Exodus (Shmot) is coming on the last Shabbat of the calendar year this time. Thinking about it, I was struck by this phrase: כד וַיִּשְׁמַע אֱלֹהִים, אֶת-נַאֲקָתָם; וַיִּזְכֹּר אֱלֹהִים אֶת-בְּרִיתוֹ, אֶת-אַבְרָהָם אֶת-יִצְחָק וְאֶת-יַעֲקֹב. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant…
Parshat ha Shavuah Verses –Chayei Sarah
Originally posted on Noshing Across the Nation:
There are not too many women whose stories are told in detail in the Torah. Sarah is one of these unique women that merits this validation from the Rabbis:”Avraham was secondary to Sarah in prophecy” (Shemot Raba 1:1). This woman was outstandingly beautiful, wise, modest and strong-willed at…
Noshing Across the Nation 