Listen to an audio version This Shabbat marks three weeks into the New Year in accord with the western secular calendar, the one by which a majority of Jewish people worldwide attempt to conduct their normal life’s business. Many have…
Author: Rabbi Paul
Light Over Might
Listen to an audio version Hanukah is perhaps the most cherished Jewish holidays, celebrated by both religious and secular Jews. While much of the Western world celebrates Christmas, Hanukah has become the Jewish alternative, replete with gift-giving, “heart-unfriendly” holiday foods,…
Vayetze – Finding Our Rosebud
Listen to an audio version The movie Citizen Kane has been voted by many film academies and publications to be the greatest American movie of all time. Though the film’s cinematography was cutting edge in 1941, it is certainly not…
Vayera – A Rock Feels No Joy
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel once sang, I am a rock, I am an island. And a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries. In those few lines, they captured something hauntingly prophetic — the isolation of…
Ki Tetze – Compassion In An Unjust World
Listen to an audio version There’s a park not far from my home that’s well known for its beautifully groomed tulip and rose gardens. My wife and I often go there, and sometimes we’ll sit at the little outdoor café…
VaEtchanan – How Do You Spell Relief?
Do you like to make choices? Whether you do or not, it seems as though for each of us there is a never-ending stream of options that place demands upon our time and threaten the normal and easy flow of…
Balak – Blessed and The Source of Blessing
Listen to an audio version Every year we read Parashat Balak and I am utterly amazed. What a remarkably different approach to a reoccurring theme. Many have understood Torah as love letters between Hashem and Israel. In fact the focus…
Bechukotai – Peace Within and Without
Listen to an audio version “…you will dwell securely in your land. I will provide peace in the land…” (Vayikra 26:5-6) After the Torah guarantees that we will dwell in our land safely if we observe the mitzvot, it states…
Tazria – Doctors of the Soul
Listen to an audio version The kohen shall look at the affliction on the skin of the flesh: If the hair in the affliction has changed to white, and the affliction’s appearance is deeper than the skin of the flesh—it…
Pekudei – The Future Is Now
Listen to an audio version When I was a boy in the 60’s my two favorite cartoons were the popular Flintstones and Jetsons. While Hanna-Barbera Studios produced both, the Flintstones was “the modern stone-age family” while the Jetsons was the…