Stars, Sand… and Silence Abraham’s blessings sparkle with cosmic imagery—stars above, dust below. But when God blesses Isaac, the patriarch of gevurah, something extraordinary happens:
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
Neither from a thread to a sandal-strap, nor will I take from whatever is yours… (Genesis 14:23) After defeating five kings, Abraham (then called Abram)
When Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he mustered his trained men… and went in pursuit. (Genesis 14:14) Abraham just separated from
And the Lord said to Avram, after Lot had separated from him… “I will make your seed like the dust of the earth.” (Genesis 13:14–16)
Yesterday we spoke about traveling into the self; today, Abraham is told to step outside: And He took him outside, and He said, “Please look
And the Lord said to Abram: Lech lecha—go forth from your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house, to the land that I will show
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
Like most Jewish families worldwide, last Shabbat, the conversation revolved around the situation in the Middle East and the war in Gaza. The question was,
And Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his ass. Geneses 22:3 And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon
And these are the chronicles of Isaac… (Genesis 25:19) So Esau went unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives that he had Mahalath the daughter
And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah (Genesis 25:1) As I discussed in the earlier essay, “Yom Kippur – Disentangling the
So Abram went, as the Eternal had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him… And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s
In the previous post “Physics of Tzimtzum I—The Quantum Leap”, we gave a general overview of the mystical doctrine of tzimtzum—the cornerstone of Lurianic Kabbalah.
And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre, as he sat in the entrance of the tent in the heat of the
And Abraham drew near, and said: ‘Wilt Thou indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Perhaps there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the children of Israel and you shall say to them that they shall make for themselves fringes
And the life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years… (Gen. 23:1) Why did Esther merit to rule over 127
And he [Abraham] lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood over against him… (Genesis 18:2) On this blog, we often discuss
And these are the years of the life of Ishmael: one hundred years and thirty years and seven years (Gen. 25,17) You might say the
The blessings and the admonitions of Bechukotai (Leviticus 26:3–27:34) are viewed as the result of entanglement and disentanglement with G‑d respectively.
And he took him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each half over against the other… And it came to pass, that,
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
In this Torah portion, Devarim (Deuteronomy 1-3), Moses recalls the travels through the Sinai desert when G‑d told him: Be not at enmity with Moab,
On Seder night we drink four cups of wine and eat three matzoth. Why four cups and not three? Why three matzoth and not four?
It is unsurprising, then, that spiritual phenomena have never been experimentally detected in a laboratory setting. Spirituality, by definition, is non-physical. Consequently, no physical laboratory
Reading the Torah, sometimes, can give a false impression of reading a story, albeit the greatest story ever written. This Divine drama involves colorful characters,
Give me the Machpelah (double) Cave Genesis 23:9 The first legal acquisition of land in Israel takes place in this Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, when Abraham