Category: Rabbi’s Dvrei Torah

Shalom Chaverim, The Festival of Shavuot, which begins after Shabbat this Saturday night – we begin a new book of the Torah with parashat BaMidbar on Shabbat morning – is one of the Shalosh Regalim, one of the three main pilgrimage festivals. It comes at the end of the seven-times-seven (a “week of weeks”) cycle of the Omer,…

Shalom Chaverim, This week’s Torah portion, Bechukotai, is known for its stark, black-and-white warning, called the “tochecha”: Either follow God’s laws and observe the commandments – maintaining the covenant – and receive blessings; Or… Disobey God and not observe the commandments – spurning the covenant – and receive the worst misfortune and suffering imaginable. The choice…

Shalom Chaverim, The ultimate answer to the “Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything” is… …nothing more or less than… 42. At least, it is “42” according to the book The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. This rather puzzling answer, the book suggests, will only be comprehensible if you know the correct question to…

Together with all the Torah’s great wisdom, and its system of laws for everyday life, there are only a precious few verses in the Torah that address the ultimate reality and purpose of human life and our connection to the wider universe. These are concentrated nuggets of Truth which, if you could just focus on…