During the period of the Second Temple, a highly significant governing body operated: the Sanhedrin, or Council of Elders, which was composed of 71 members. The sages describe them as the “eyes of the congregation.” This means that they could…
At the very beginning, our people emerged from a collection of strangers who gathered from various nations around Abraham’s idea. This is how Maimonides explains it in The Book of Knowledge. Abraham was a Babylonian researcher who discovered that all of…
Spiritual leadership is not inherited. This is emphasized, for example, in the case of King David, who descended from Ruth the Moabite. It is a person’s qualities that make them fit to lead; royal bloodlines are not the determining factor.…
From its very foundation, the Israeli nation emerged in a uniquely special way. A collection of people from various nations gathered around an idea, as Maimonides describes in The Book of Knowledge. They learned from Abraham how to connect with one…
As we advance through life, it often seems that we move from one dead end to another. Yet these apparent dead ends are not obstacles meant to stop us. They are stages of development. Each step creates within us new…
In the story of the Tower of Babel, people wanted to reach the heavens. Indeed, this story still accompanies us today. Hidden in the story are key principles that can save humanity from tearing itself apart. Let us jump back…
The Book of Zohar with the Sulam (“Ladder”) commentary and also The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES) are two truly monumental sources of spiritual power. These are not merely books in the ordinary sense. They are foundational works that present the structure of the…
An international coalition against us, a terrible war, and ultimately the intervention of a higher force. Does the prophecy of Gog and Magog describe a nuclear war? Can catastrophe be prevented? And what about the prophecies of peace—will they ever…
The wisdom of the prophets stems from their knowledge of the network of connections that links all parts of nature. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (the Ramchal), a great Kabbalist of the 18th century, describes in his book The Way of God how…
There is one upper force called “Nature.” In Hebrew Gematria, “HaTeva” (Nature) and “Elohim” (God) both equal 86. From this force comes one all-encompassing law that embraces all of reality and advances it toward a single purpose, adhesion with the…
What lifted humanity out of the animal world was the development of the ego. Kabbalah defines the ego as a desire to enjoy for self-benefit alone at the expense of others. With an egoistic desire that steadily grew stronger, we…
Indeed, The Book of Zohar is very special. It is the book of books of the wisdom of Kabbalah. A book that speaks entirely about the correction of the human being, about a corrected society whose network of connections is called “the…