One of my students asked me, as a kabbalist, what is gratitude according to the wisdom of Kabbalah? Kabbalah is a serious wisdom, and so when it discusses gratitude, it means spiritual gratitude. What, then, is spiritual gratitude? Spiritual gratitude…
This week, Israel’s government collapsed, triggering (yet) another general election, the fourth in just two years. From the looks of it, this election will not be the last. As long as we don’t know the reason for the crisis, it…
Following their liberation from slavery in Babylon after King Cyrus had sent them free with “silver and gold, with goods and cattle, together with a freewill offering for the house of God which is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:4), the expats,…
Nature has a great sense of humor: Just as humanity started rolling out the vaccines, it churned up two new strains of the coronavirus, one probably in the UK and one in South Africa. Both strains are fast spreaders, and…
Morality is a clear realization of the principle, “Love your friend as yourself,” i.e., a state of absolute positive connection above the ego, where we perceive and sense a completely different reality to the one we feel in our inborn…
A week ago, Food & Wine magazine broke the story that lab-grown chicken meat will make its restaurant debut. According to the story, “Good Meat Cultured Chicken was approved for sale in Singapore. Now, it’s heading to its first commercial…
(Article No. 5 in a series) In the previous article, we discussed the rise and fall of the First Temple due to bloodshed and sins among the kings of Israel. When Israel were exiled, they were sent to Babylon, from which Abraham…
Last week, the European Union Court of Justice upheld a ban on kosher and hallal slaughter in Belgium, The Jerusalem Post reported. While Brooke Goldstein, who helped with the legal challenge, called it a “shameful ruling,” and warned that “the…
A student told me that even though Israel is headed toward its fourth general election in just two years, the government has determined that the topic of Israel’s next Independence Day, which takes place April 14, 2021, will be Israeli…
Evil is a thought that is completely aimed at benefiting oneself alone. Such a thought also acts to the detriment of others because thinking how to benefit ourselves alone while living in an interdependent and interconnected society means that we…
A dreidel is a spinning top, which has an inscription of Hebrew letters around the sides. The letters signify, “a great miracle happened here.” Spinning a dreidel is one of the Hanukkah customs. The dreidel is spun in order to…
The Menorah (lamp) symbolizes the manifestation of the spiritual light, i.e., the quality of bestowal, which illuminates in the souls, i.e., in the human ego that has become corrected with an intention to bestow. A Menorah is physically hard to make because it is…