Monday, June 5th 2023 |
By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB
“A SECOND CHANCE”
I was in a total fog during my first year in high school. I am convinced that my experience then was not unique. I entered a strange school, much larger than the one I had attended previously, and was not given the benefit of any orientation to the new environment. I did not know what to expect, and I was...
By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB
I am sure that you have a most favorite activity. I know that I do.
I am also sure that you have a least favorite activity, as I do.
My most favorite activity is visiting Israel. One of the experiences I especially cherish during my visits to Israel is the opportunity to hear the Priestly Blessing every single day. Outside the Land of Israel, the...
By RABBI DAVID WOLPE
Thirty years ago, I began publishing 200-word columns, first in print in the NY Jewish Week and then online. In 2004, an early collection of them was published by Behrman House called “Floating Takes Faith.” Now as I step down as senior rabbi of Sinai, it is time to bring this column, having written some 1,500 of them, to an end.
From the beginning, I aimed at...
By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB
“A MESSAGE FOR THE ENTIRE TEAM“
All beginning students of Torah face this obstacle: in their original, the primary texts of our Jewish tradition have no punctuation. There are neither commas nor periods in the Torah scroll, the Sefer Torah. There are no question marks, nor are there indications of where one paragraph ends and another begins in standard...
By RABBI DAVID WOLPE
Right before Moses strikes the rock, the sin that will prevent him from entering the land of Israel, he yells at the people: “Listen now, rebels (hamorim)” [Num. 20:10]. Yet that same word, morim, can mean “teachers.”
Our antagonists can also be our teachers. The Rabbis have long taught what psychologists advise as well: When someone irritates you, annoys you, infuriates you, there is a lesson in...
By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB
“AN ODE TO THE DESERT”
We were exhausted, burned out. We felt that we needed a break.
There were just two of us: me and my study partner, Yisrael. We were both not quite twenty years old, students in the post high school program in our yeshiva, committed to a morning and an afternoon...
By RABBI DAVID WOLPE
“Our thoughts and prayers are with you.” What can this mean in the wake of something horrible? If prayer is a way of changing the world, it is too late. What good can prayers do the victims now?
The 17th-century Rabbi Leon de Modena asked us to imagine watching a man pull his boat to shore. If you were confused, you might think that he was...
By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB
“BULLYING”
It is an old word, and it describes a behavior that has been around since the very beginning of history. Yet the word seems to me to be used more and more frequently these days, and the behavior it describes has gotten out of control.
The word is “bullying,” and it refers to a behavior that...
By RABBI DAVID WOLPE
I spent my junior year of college at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. There I studied English and Scottish literature and wrote a letter home to my parents about how I had fallen in love with the poetry of Byron and Burns and Wordsworth and the canon of literature I was learning.
My father wrote back a beautiful letter that I have sadly lost. But I...
By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB
“BECOMING A KOHEN”
In every group, there is one person who stands out as special. In childhood, it is often the kid with the greatest athletic prowess. Later in life, different attributes begin to qualify a person to become the group’s star.
In my post-high school peer group, many years ago on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, we...
