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The Festival of Sukkot-Joy or Discomfort? By Rabbi David Greenstein The festival of Sukkot is traditionally called "Z'man Simchatenu - The Season of Our Joy." This follows from the Biblical injunction that specifically emphasizes the mitzvah of rejoicing whenever this holiday is mentioned, whether in Leviticus - "And you shall rejoice before the Eternal One, Read More >

Seeing Our Choices More Clearly By Rabbi Regina L. Sandler-Phillips "In the market, the blind cry out to the one-eyed as clear-sighted." (Genesis Rabbah 30:9) These are the words of Rabbi Yehudah in a rabbinic dispute concerning Genesis 6:9, which declares that "Noah was a righteous man, unblemished in his generations." Rabbi Yehudah is among Read More >

Famine in the Land of Canaan - A Test of Abraham By Jaron Matlow Our Sages, of blessed memory, stated that God tested Abram ten times to ensure that Abram truly was a righteous person. According to Midrash Tanhuma (Lekh Lekha 5) one of those tests was the famine in the Land of Canaan (Bereshit Read More >

To Begin at the Beginning . . . By Hazzan Marcia Lane I have an affinity for stationery stores. I love the smell of new paper. I am constantly buying new notebooks, trying to find the perfect form of paper, lines, binding, cover that will inspire me to greater heights of insight and literary brilliance. Read More >

By Rabbi Katy Z. Allen Yom Kippur means "the Day of Atonement," but we can also think of this day as "the Day of Truth-Telling." Our major spiritual task in life is to access our personal truths and connect them to universal truths, and then to have the courage to speak these truths with enough Read More >

By Laurie Levy The verb reish-aleph-hey occurs three times in the first two verses of this week's parashah. I think this points to a lesson about what it means to see - really see. Last week we ended with Abraham circumcising himself and his household and so this week, when we read that Abraham is Read More >

By Molly Karp Hayyei Sarah, while not the only parashah named for a person, is the only one named for a woman. It is not surprising that it is named for Sarah; what is surprising, however, is that this parashah seems not to be about Sarah Imeinu - Sarah Our Mother - at all! What Read More >

By Doug Alpert How do we define greatness? And moreover, by what criteria do we establish those who we believe possess qualities of greatness as our leaders? I pose these questions as a means to understanding our patriarch-Yitzhak Avinu/Isaac. If one can suggest with a straight face that any one of our patriarchs is a Read More >

Parashat Vayetze begins and ends with Yaakov encountering angels; first in a dream, and then, presumably, in a vision or daydream of some sort. A commentary in the Etz Chaim Chumash suggests that these encounters serve as bookends, or parentheses, bracketing Yaakov's 20 years in Laban's home. I will return to that thought. But we Read More >

The courage to say "I'm sorry." By Irwin Huberman There are two short phrases which are among the most powerful in our tradition. They are "I'm sorry," and "I forgive you," and they both come into play in this week's parashah, Vayishlah, as our forefather Jacob comes to grips with two enemies who have haunted Read More >