“And you shall take for yourselves on the first day, the fruit of the hadar tree, date palm fronds, a branch of a braided tree, and willows of the…
“For the sin we sinned before You, b’ones u’beratzon, under duress and willingly. So begins the litany of al chets, the double acrostic listing of…
“Ubechen, Please G-d instill pachdecha, terror upon all Your works and eimatecha, Your dread upon all that You have created”. So begins the Amidah on…
Our holidays form natural units, as none truly stand alone. The 49 days of the omer link Pesach to Shavuot. We begin the holiday cycle by celebrating…
“Rav Yochanan said: Jerusalem was destroyed only because they followed the laws of the Torah” (Bava Metzia 30b). The Talmud is incredulous at such an…
It is the omer, a measure of barley, that unites the Biblical holidays of Pesach and Sukkot. With no calenderic date Shavuot occurs on the day after…
A legal system by its very nature is detail oriented. While laws represent the values of any given society, a law once established takes on an…
“Go out and learn what Lavan the Aramean sought to do to Yaakov, our father. Pharaoh only decreed on the males but Lavan sought to uproot everything…
Ask any child – or adult for that matter – how we celebrate Chanukah and chances are beyond pretty good that the answer will be by lighting the…
Holidays are a most opportune time to instill in our children the values and character traits that personify a Jewish lifestyle. At first glance…
When studying literature we must study not only its content, but also its form. This is especially true in the study of poetry, where the words…
Holidays are a most opportune time to instill in our children the values and character traits that personify a Jewish lifestyle. At first glance…
“How majestic was the kohen gadol as he left the Holy of Holies in peace, without injury…like the kindness that is placed on the bridegroom’s face…
One does not have to look very hard to find sources within our tradition that allow, encourage, or even demand that we “hate” others. While the…
This year, Shavuot falls on a Sunday. This rather unremarkable observation is of little import today; but had we been living in Temple times, or even…
Lag BaOmer is a mysterious holiday. There is no mention of it in the Gemara, a fact that led the Chatam Sofer to object to the many practices of the…
Four, seven, ten, eighteen, forty, seventy, for Jews around the world have an immediate and reflective association(s). The four questions, seven days…
“Could it be from Rosh Chodesh?” the authors of the Hagadah ask, raising the possibility that one might celebrate the Pesach[1] and tell the story of…
Rav Soloveitchik argued that there is no independent field of Jewish philosophy. Rather, this master of Jewish philosophy—with a Ph.D. in neo-Kantian…
I write these words as I sit looking out the window at the absolutely beautiful snow that adorns our streets, homes, trees and all else outdoors. If…
Unlike our other holidays, the holiday of Sukkot does not celebrate a particular historical event at a particular moment in time. Rather it…
It is hard to imagine a more impactful ritual than that of our weekly Torah reading. While its origins date to Moshe Rabbeinu—acting in his capacity…
"On the first day, you must take for yourself a fruit of the citron tree, an opened palm frond, myrtle branches, and willows of the brook, and you…
“With the approval of Hamakom, the Omnipresent, and with the approval of the congregation, in the convocation of the court above, and in the…