HANUKKA: The blessings and prayers when lighting the candles
This year, Sunday night, December 14, 2025, corresponding to the 25th of Kislev, 5786, we will light the first candle of Hanukka.
The celebration of...
VAYISHLACH: Sexual Harassment in the Tora
(Written in Dec 2017)
THE INNOCENCE OF DINA (pronounced: Deena)
The Tora tells us about cases of sexual abuse and sexual corruption.
This week's Parasha, for example,...
THANKSGIVING: A Sepharadic Approach
Sephardic Jews, the first Jews to arrive in America in the middle of the 17th century, first settled in New York, then known as...
VAYETSE: The First Thanksgiving
A BRIEF HISTORY OF A NAME
The Jewish people were not always called by this name. In the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, three names appear...
HAGOMEL: The Jewish Thanksgiving
ארבעה חייבים להודות: יורדי הים, הולכי מדבריות, ומי שהיה חולה ונתרפא, ומי שהיה חבוש בבית האסורים – ויצא.
(ברכות נד ע"ב)
Our Rabbis taught that there...
SUMMARY OF PARASHAT VAYETSE
Jacob leaves Beer-Sheba and heads to Haran, Syria. He is fleeing from his brother Esau, who sets out to kill him. He also goes...
THANKSGIVING: A perspective from the 19th Century
Rabbi Sabato Morais (1823–1897), one of the major Orthodox figures of nineteenth-century America, saw the United States as a place where Jewish life could...
The Jewish Origins of Thanksgiving
CAN JEWS CELEBRATE THANKSGIVING?
In 1789, in response to a resolution offered by Congressman Elias Boudinot of New Jersey, President George Washington issued a proclamation...
Judaism and The Age of Disclosure
I have never had any “extraterrestrial” experiences: I was not abducted by a UFO, I did not see strange lights in the sky, and...
SUMMARY OF PARASHAT TOLEDOT
HAVING A CHILD…. OR TWO…
Parashat Toledot tells us that our second patriarch, Isaac, prayed for his wife Ribka, who was barren, to conceive. God...
