Sivan Rahav-Meir

This is the skyline of Sderot today. We are building and winning and being renewed.

Rav Kook's gift for the days of Elul.

What was Adam missing? After all, he had everything – a female companion, food, a Garden of Eden surrounding him. What was lacking?

What motivates Chabad emissaries? Yitzchak's work is also our work – to dig wells. To believe that under the dirt and dust and all the layers, there is clear, sweet water. Even if someone seems indifferent, distant, and cynical – even wicked – that is just an outer shell. Inside there is a soul, there is life.

Wishing you a great start to a great new year. Shana Tova!

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

We need to pay attention to our bodies. We speak about values and Torah but ignore the fact that the body is the tool upon which values and Torah depend.

After the presentation, I heard the latest news from Israel. But it seemed that in Italy tonight, we had somehow covered the current situation.

Wishing that everyone will be remembered for life.

What makes someone great, really great? Many commentators say the answer to this question is hidden in the following verses from this week's parshah

A message both particular and universal...

It appears that our mission this Shabbat is to bring the holiness of the synagogue - now standing empty - into the living room and the kitchen.

The high priest is alone. It is forbidden for anyone to be with him, but it is precisely because of this restriction that his power is so great.

Moshe (which means "drawn out”) was drawn out of the water and he in turn drew the people out of the depths of slavery and ignorance into a life of freedom and Torah.

These three years are meant to atone for Adam's sin – the sin of impatience.

The most important question in life is how do we manage time, particularly the two months of vacation.

In the Torah portions that we are currently reading, it is noted time and again that as soon as the people arrived at a new place, they immediately erected the Mishkan, the people's spiritual center and beating heart.

Make a portion of your Torah a part of me so that I do not waste my time reading articles and hearing analysis based on guesses and futile evaluations that pop up all of a sudden and are just as quickly proven wrong.

"Starting today, every child to us is like one thousand children." These words were said by Rabbi Herzog to the Pope after the Holocaust when he went out on a journey to find Jewish children who were transferred to convents and monasteries to avoid deportation to Nazi concentration camps, and were baptized to Christianity there. Rav Herzog wound up returning many children to their faith, people, and homeland.

Vast amounts of information compete for our attention. Every day we are subjected to a glut of news, but how many of us are moved by any of it to do something?

At some point, I stopped and said to myself: 'Wait a minute, what is going on with me?' I felt a sense of obligation and began thinking: I represent something, but I know nothing about what I represent.

You must tell yourselves: I am not my pain. I feel pain, but it alone does not define who I am.

It is the easiest to only praise, to be "all smiles and hearts," but if you truly care about someone, you do not flatter him. You help him become better.

Don't say the holiday is over and done, but that the holiday has given us something more.

“All of us are presently learning a course in ‘How to live with uncertainty.’ From my experience, to succeed in this course you need to open your heart to embrace the unexpected.

The story of the Exodus from Egypt teaches us to be alert and attentive to “windows of opportunity” that appear in our lives – so seize them.

Lean back but be active

Have you ever thought about the hobby of the guy who cleans your street? Or his dreams? The city of Akko – as reported by journalist Yair Kraus – has put up new signs which make its sanitation workers into stars.

Rashi explains that the Torah coupled these two incidents together on purpose, in order for us to notice that the spies saw what happened to Miriam, but did not learn a lesson from it. In his words: "And these wicked people witnessed it, but did not learn their lesson."

The highlight of Prince William's visit to Israel is he merited to be the first British royal to make an official visit to Israel.