
More than 45 years ago, I left the Soviet Union for Israel. Back in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), I once witnessed a brutal attack on a Jewish man. When I stepped in to help, the police explained that they punished…
More than 45 years ago, I left the Soviet Union for Israel. Back in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), I once witnessed a brutal attack on a Jewish man. When I stepped in to help, the police explained that they punished…
For decades, America has stood as a symbol of liberty, opportunity, and freedom. Jews who immigrated to its shores believed they had found refuge, a land where they could prosper and contribute to society without fear of persecution. But the…
The meaning of Lag B’Omer is generally not well understood. Its historical background and the sequence of events leading up to the holiday are unfamiliar, not to mention its spiritual significance, which has all but vanished from the public’s view.…
The First and Second Temples were built from above. A spiritual force came down and united us. They were not the work of people, or in other words, they were states of unity that we did not achieve by ourselves.…
The connection to the source of life, the force of love, bestowal, and connection, goes through Israel. Israel here is meant in the spiritual sense (“Israel” from the words, “Yashar-El” [straight to the upper force]), not as a geographic location…
Every year, Holocaust Remembrance Day compels us to pause and confront the unbearable pain etched into the Jewish people. Today, as memory fades into history, we must not only mourn but reflect deeply on the causes and lessons of that…
To understand what is truly going on in the story of the Exodus from Egypt, we must first free ourselves from the constraints of time and place. “Egypt” is a code name for a particular social state, a system of…
The story of the parting of the Red Sea is one of the most well-known and debated events in history. For over 3,000 years, people have argued over whether it actually happened. However, from a Kabbalistic perspective, we do not…
The spiritual meaning of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is that it represents a crucial pause in the inner battle for becoming as loving, giving, and united to one another through such qualities as the laws of nature themselves—a “rest…