Elijah announces that the Messiah is coming. What is the Messiah? The Messiah is a force that pulls us our of our egoistic desires. In Hebrew, the word for “Messiah” (“Moshiach”) comes from the same linguistic root as the word…
Like Moses brought us the Torah, the Ari brought us the wisdom of Kabbalah. The Torah and Kabbalah both discuss the revelation of the Creator—the quality of love and bestowal—to the created beings. At Moses’ time, the revelation was through…
In an attempt to counter rapidly growing antisemitism in the country, the French government updated its plan to combat antisemitism to include training teachers and requiring students to visit sites of antisemitic or racist incidents. The problem of rising antisemitism…
The construction of the Tower of Babel represents humanity’s first level of egoistic development that took place around 4,000 years ago. The story of the Tower of Babel describes people who, out of increased egoism, aspired to reach the governing…
Possibly the key measurement of one’s religious devoutness is the extent to which one observes the commandments of one’s denomination. In orthodox Judaism, this might mean observing certain dietary rules, or saying certain graces at certain times or situations during…
Today, October 7, sixty-eight years ago, Rav Yehuda Ashlag, the greatest kabbalist and thinker of our time, and one of the greatest of all time, passed away. He became known as Baal HaSulam (author of the Sulam [ladder]) after his…
Thirty-one years ago today, my teacher and mentor RABASH passed away. This post is dedicated to him because everything I know, everything I understand, everything I teach, and everything I do I learned from him, and my life’s goal is…
After publishing The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, I felt that while the explanations in it covered the history of the Jewish people, the book did not address current expressions of the oldest hatred. In light of the exponential rise…
After many years of learning about the spiritual meaning of the Jewish holidays according to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we thought it was judicious to bind together selected source excerpts on the topic from the greatest kabbalists throughout the ages,…
As the battles in Ukraine escalate and the pressure on civilians intensifies, it is becoming clear that a compromise or a “reasonable” solution are both out of reach. Not only is the misery on the ground escalating, but the enmity…
Recently, Daniel Gordis’ latest publication, We Stand Divided: The Rift Between American Jews and Israel, has been translated into Hebrew and published in Israel. Much has happened since it was published, two and a half years ago, but the nadir,…
Of all the people who were not his disciples, and with very few other exceptions, no one has written with greater admiration and appreciation about the work of Baal HaSulam than Prof. Eliezer Schweid, who passed away last week. Rav…