Dvar Torah

Professor Ze’ev Maghen, chairperson of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University, in his book: John Lennon and the Jews (2011) imagines a scene of two lovers about to be [...]

While in rabbinical school, I spent a year as the student rabbi at Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf in Arleta, CA. It was a deliberate choice on the part of the rabbi in charge of student [...]

When my children were born, they each represented perfection to me: ten fingers and ten toes, good APGAR scores and a wail that was music to my ears. However, it did not take long for the initial [...]

Until I was six or seven, I assumed that Albuquerque, New Mexico was the epicenter of the Jewish world. I was only obliquely aware of the existence of the holy city of Jerusalem. Both sets of my [...]

If you want a spiritual high, watch someone take a leap of faith. Again and again, I have watched students—adults and children alike—step forward and push far beyond anyone’s expectations for [...]

Several years ago when I was with colleagues on an Israel seminar we went to Na Laga’at (http://nalagaat.org.il/en/) (“Please Touch”), a center that, as their website explains, “is a meeting [...]

For children, the plagues of Egypt have been turned into song. We all know the tune about Pharaoh waking up to “frogs in his bed and frogs on his head”. Many seder tables at Passover are [...]

A woman sits on the couch in my office explaining why she doesn’t feel comfortable speaking in class. A man, suffering from past traumas, tries to understand why it is so hard to connect with his [...]

Fair is not getting what everyone else gets; it is getting what you need. This phrase, once the screen saver of Solomon Schechter of Manhattan’s Head of School, Benjamin Mann, is an extremely [...]

Joseph, as Pharaoh’s right-hand man, lived as a prince in Egypt, managing the Pharaoh’s response to the all-pervasive famine. He commanded legions of Egyptian workers, oversaw the storehouses and [...]