Columns

What have you achieved this past year with the help of God, and what would you like to achieve with His help next year?

How does Yom Kippur help us focus on the future and on making a change?

Shlomo rushed off to pay the seller and return home happily with his prize...only to find that the stall was empty. Obviously the lulav seller had packed up and gone home as yom tov was fast approaching.

Worldly pleasures are like sunbeams in a dark room. They may actually seem solid, but he who tries to grasp a sunbeam finds nothing in his hand. The same is true of all worldly desires.

As we approach Yom Kippur, we recognize that it is unquestionably one of the most important days of the year. And yet, in many ways, it is a mystery.

The decisive points of the narrative alone are emphasized, what lies between is non-existent; time and place are undefined and call for interpretation...

There weren't many people out that night because of the weather but Rabbi Palach continued to approach whoever he saw and asked the same question, offering the same warm invitation to come hear a Torah class.

Nowadays, there is no Jewish king, and there is no Beis HaMikdash. But the essence of this mitzvah, gathering together with fellow Jews for Torah study and inspiration, is something each and every one of us can do.

How did debate emerge? According to the Geonim, every detail of every law was given at Sinai. Debate emerged from the forgetting of those details. Talmudic analysis is an attempt to retrieve that which was forgotten.

Choose life. No religion, no civilization, has insisted so strenuously and consistently that we can choose.

At root, all of Klal Yisrael is one, an interconnected self. Each of our individual neshamos are part of a bigger whole, like individual cells that make up a single human body.

The more you want to serve G-d, the more the Evil Inclination strives against you (Likutey Moharan I, 72). If you realize this, you can fight him with strategy (Proverbs 20:18, 24:6) and continually defeat him. With G-d’s help, you will be worthy of emerging victorious.

When monies are invested into a potential endeavor, the undertaking can go in one of two possible directions – the principal can be lost, or it can produce profit.

Miriam married at 31, and she and Shlomo had seven kids, including a set of twins. But Miriam wanted more children – not hers, other people’s. She wanted a house full of unwanted children.

Today, Chai Elul, one can fill one’s buckets generously.

When a person wants to pray, they encounter many distractions. Still, they should give themselves over entirely to the task, exerting every effort to pray properly.

There is a common misconception that lashon hara refers only to sharing false information about another person. People claim that if something is true, however, there is nothing wrong with sharing it.

When we focus on the moment, allowing ourselves to dance, sing, and give thanks, when we do things for their own sake not for any other reward, when we let go of our separateness and become a voice in the holy city's choir, then there is joy.

According to Rabbi Bedersi, klimah is the most intense type of embarrassment: it results from somebody doing something that he was not supposed to do, or somebody being called out for his misdeeds.

Since it was a fairly last-minute decision, (again my dear husband, being my dear husband), he was kind enough to do the shopping for that meal on his way home from work on Thursday.

There is always a chochom deep inside our child, our student or our friend, but sometimes we have to extract it from its concealment into reality.

There are commandments and customs that involve morality. These are a way of life.

When we perform an action, we act as an extension and manifestation of the one who willed and commanded it.

Academy of the Hebrew Language and another article by Dr. Moshe Raanan of Herzog College explain that even though in earlier times the terms efroach and gozal were indeed synonymous, in Modern Hebrew there is a difference between these terms based on a zoological distinction.

What is at stake is the deep understanding of the scope of responsibility we bear if we take seriously our roles as parents, neighbors, townspeople, citizens and children of the covenant.

During the time leading up to this very special day we must look within ourselves, how do we want to enter the courtroom? How are we going to enter this very awesome day?

To my utter amazement, he did have the required part with him! He gave me that astounding news as he re-entered my house with the box, and told me that that was the last one of those particular parts that he had with him!

David told Yossi about his loss and the two of them began searching in the river. Talk about a needle in a haystack!

The art and position of chinuch in our generation, explained the Rebbe, is greater even than the position of rabbonus, because we are talking about educating the new generation.

Where one can do something immediately, they should certainly act swiftly. Something holy – such as a mitzvah – should never be delayed even for a moment.