Parsha

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach

It is unclear exactly where everything goes on the shulchan. When the two stacks of breads and two bowls of levonah are arranged on it, there is no place for anything else, let alone baking pans, bowls, pipes, etc.

Once they asked a wise man to talk about his greatest dream. He answered that he had many dreams and professional aspirations, but above...

You must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. -Andrew Jackson

Holy Tears!

Abarbanel says that the Children of Israel are not compared to grains of sand simply because they are so many. Lots of things occur in great numbers but Israel isn’t compared to them.

Our Sages expound that granting merit to the many (zikui harabbim) is inherently infinitely beneficial.

When we think this Shavuos about the revelation at Sinai, let’s remember that the Torah was given surprisingly in the midst of billowing smoke and blackness.

That HaShem forgoes His Honor for the sake of making peace between man and wife comes to teach us the importance of humbling our own egos for the sake of making our relationships work.

Even within large groups, or even within an entire nation, each individual has a special place and a unique mission. Each person is important.

The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny. -Blaise Pascal

Every mitzvah you perform heals some spiritual malaise that you might not even know you were suffering from.

It is every individual’s obligation to toil in Torah so that he can soar even higher than the angels.

We should train ourselves to look forward to doing our mitzvos. The premier example of this attitude is the mitzvah of sefira. That on a national level we demonstrate in unison an excited countdown towards Torah.

A people's army is necessary for Israel to fulfill the Divine commandment of sovereignty over our land.

Rabbi Greenblatt remembers that the rav stood in tallit and tefillin, looked him in the eyes, and gave him a blessing that he should become a talmid chacham and merit to live a long life. The second blessing materialized, he smiled, I hope the first did, too.

Statistics seemingly is the human species’ greatest defense mechanism. It allows us to live “normal” lives of stability and security.

Yirmiyahu knows that Hashem is all-powerful and that He is not limited by geopolitical and military realities. If Hashem wishes to reverse the process of conquest and cancel the exile, it is within His power to do so.

It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe. -Thomas Carlyle

The Doresh Tzion explains that Eretz Yisrael is acquired by the Jewish nation only in the merit of the Torah that was given at Har Sinai. If they abandon the ways of the Torah, then their entitlement to Eretz Yisrael is withdrawn as well.

You have two people who spent their Sunday night from 8 to 9 p.m. One administered the Heimlich maneuver and saved a person from choking and another person attended the Daf Yomi. In the scales of merit, it is the latter person who comes out on top.

If we had Har Sinai today, the contemporary form of the mitzvah of Shemittah would not apply to farmers, but to computer engineers, doctors, graphics artists, lawyers, stockbrokers and businessmen.

Man is a synthesis of his nefesh habahamis (the animal soul), which has physical needs, and his G-dly soul (nefesh haElokis). Man’s mission is to elevate his nefesh habahamis to function in the realm of his nefesh haElokis.

We are accustomed to transitioning from the sadness of Memorial Day to the joy of Independence Day, but how do we transition in the opposite direction, from independence to mourning?

The Arizal teaches that the firstborn ought to have had the priesthood by right, except that Kayin abused this privilege and it was revoked from him as a result of his grave transgression.

Parallel to the technical, scientific research I discovered many realities that are not intuitively apparent, but when you dig deeper, you begin to truly appreciate.

The pernicious difficulty of keeping self-love in check and not having it warp the way in which we see others is brought to our attention in the story of R. Elazar

Rabbi Weiss: The Hebrew word ‘leitz’ is made up of a lamed and a tzadik which means ‘learned’ and righteous’ for the scoffer thinks that he knows better and that he is really in the right.

During those years, many who came to America had no interest in continuing the sacred Torah traditions. R’ Yaakov Yosef dedicated his life to bringing back many who had fallen into a life of sin.

The fifth of Iyar marks not only Israel's victory against England but also the day we fulfilled the collective mitzvah of sovereignty over our homeland for the first time in nearly 2,000 years.