The Fertility of Letters
When G‑d promises great wealth to Abram, after Abram refuses the spoils of war offered by the King of Sodom, Abram retorts: What can You
October 31, 2025 / 9 Heshvan 5786
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Husband and wife
Noah’s Ark and the Architecture of Creation
The Waters Above and Below Introduction At first glance, the Flood narrative reads like a stark morality tale: humanity sins; G‑d decrees destruction; one righteous
October 24, 2025 / 2 Heshvan 5786
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Sarah in a State of Superposition
And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife: “Behold now, I know
November 10, 2024 / 9 Heshvan 5785
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Creation—Destruction—Reconstruction
Structurally identical biblical accounts of creation, destruction, and restoration are viewed as a manifestation of dialectic triad thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
November 11, 2022 / 17 Heshvan 5783
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Sefirat HaOmer—A Study in Klal u’Prat
The forty-nine days between Passover and Shavuot are called the days of Sefira or the days of counting Omer—Sefirat HaOmer—when Jews count every day as
May 27, 2022 / 26 Iyyar 5782
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Keturah—an Allegory of Entanglement
And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah (Genesis 25:1) As I discussed in the earlier essay, “Yom Kippur – Disentangling the
November 12, 2020 / 25 Heshvan 5781
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The Land We Married
And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying: ‘Command the children of Israel, and say unto them: When ye come into the land of Canaan, this
August 4, 2019 / 3 Av 5779
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Adultery and Monogamy of Entanglement
And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid, designated for a man, and not at all redeemed, nor was freedom given her;
May 12, 2019 / 7 Iyyar 5779
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Vectors, Spins, and Gender
Vectors, Spins, and Gender Speak to the children of Israel, and have them take for Me an offering; from every person whose heart inspires him
February 10, 2019 / 5 Adar I 5779
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Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll
And the Eternal spoke unto Moses, after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they drew near before the Eternal and died. (Leviticus
May 8, 2017 / 12 Iyyar 5777
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Joseph’s Sons
And now thy two sons, who were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine; Ephraim
January 15, 2017 / 17 Tevet 5777
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Shabbat in Numbers
Last week Torah portion, Emor, speaks about the prohibition of working on Shabbat. In fact, the Talmud enumerates precisely 39 categories of labor forbidden on
May 22, 2016 / 14 Iyyar 5776
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Joseph and His Brothers
I grew up in Russia and was raised on the metric system based on decimal arithmetic. When we immigrated to the U.S., I had to
December 14, 2014 / 22 Kislev 5775
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A Girl in a State of Superposition
In my essay “Secrets of the Talking Ass,” I discussed the phenomenon of Bein HaShmashot (twilight or dusk), which is neither day, nor night, nor
July 18, 2014 / 20 Tammuz 5774
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G‑d Collapses Sotah’s Wave Function
The story of Sotah, a suspected adulteress, is very troubling on the first blush. Why would a woman be subjected to such humiliation? The Lubavitcher
June 1, 2014 / 3 Sivan 5774
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Suspected Adulteress as a Schrödinger Cat
In quantum mechanics, the state of a physical system is described by the so-called wave function (or the “wavefunction”). All attempts by Schrödinger, who first
May 30, 2014 / 1 Sivan 5774
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Matos-Massei – Annulment of Vows
A story is told about a bachur (an unmarried young man) who came in the 60s to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for the yechidus (private audience)
July 23, 2012 / 4 Av 5772
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