Torah

God created this world for us to enjoy it. We are charged to go out into the world, find the beauty in it and realize that this beauty is an expression of God’s awesomeness. It is an inherently Jewish concept to appreciate the beauty and awesomeness in the world, not regard it as evil and

The Torah teaches us many life lessons, many of them are big things, like “honor your mother and father” or “don’t kill” but there are also some, seemingly, small lessons the Torah has to teach us about our day-to-day actions. Now, as I said, these things are only seemingly small, in reality they are HUGE.

For the past two weeks on Fridays we have been discussing shabbat and the 4 pillars of celebrating it. So far we have discussed enjoying shabbat and making it great. This week I want to discuss the 3rd pillar, Zchirat Shabbat – Remembering Shabbat. The Torah tells us (Exodus 20:7), “זָכוֹר אֶת-יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת, לְקַדְּשׁוֹ – Remember shabbat so that you can connect to it” we learn

Yesterday was Pesach Sheni, a sort-of make up day for Pesach (in the temple times if someone missed out on bringing the Passover Offering they could make it up on Pesach Sheni), so let’s do a little Pesach make-up ourselves! The Torah tells us (Exodus 12:15), “שִׁבְעַת יָמִים, מַצּוֹת תֹּאכֵלוּ–אַךְ בַּיּוֹם הָרִאשׁוֹן, תַּשְׁבִּיתוּ שְּׂאֹר מִבָּתֵּיכֶם

Everyday as we go about our business, we pass countless people that could use our help. Do we stop to help them? Or even just throw them a smile to brighten up their day? Chances are we don’t and this is a big problem. It says something about who we are and how we look

Midnight. Most of us think of it as 12am, but Judaism looks at it differently. Judaism views midnight as the exact midpoint between sunrise and sunset. It is a very spiritual and holy time. King David used to get up every night at midnight in order to connect with God. But what is it that

As we have discussed in the past few posts, each one of us is unique, we are all part of a bigger picture and we are all unified with and through God and Judaism. Today, I want us to actualize this concept. A big part of understanding being unified and being awesome is realizing that when we act

Yesterday, we discussed the importance of being awesome. But we also mentioned the flip side of that, and the fact that Parshat Shlach and Parshat Korach are juxtaposed. In Parshat Shlach, as we mentioned yesterday, we are told the story of the spies, who mistakenly think that they are too small and insignificant to accomplish their mission, whereas in Parshat Korach we are

Part of being a Jew means being a part of the chosen people, and this means that we are all special and unique. We all have a task that only we can accomplish and a set of tools that is unique to us. Each and every one of us is amazing and no one can

Last week we talked about the 4 categories of shabbat, all of which are required to fully experience and be uplifted by shabbat, not to mention connect with God and our Judaism. Last week we talked about the importance of enjoying shabbat, this week I would like to talk about Kavod Shabbat or making shabbat great. But how can we make shabbat great? Yishayahu (Isaiah 58:13) tells