124 Lessons

Ways of Redemption Redemption From Egypt to Redemption Today
The prophets of Israel have clearly told us that our redemption is a certainty and will occur. How this will happen was never spelled out for us in detail.

Torah and Daily Life No Opinion
In my younger days, I had great certainty about life, people, events, and the future. It soon becomes quite evident that in many circumstances, having no opinion is not only the safer path in life, but in most cases, it is also the wiser one.

Various Events Choices
As often happens when I sit down to my computer to write this weekly opinion article, I am faced with several choices as to the subject that the article should be.

Various Subjects People
It has often been stated that no individual person is indispensable. In spite of all rumors to the contrary, the world continues to go on apace even after we have departed from the scene. Yet, there is an important caveat to this corollary.

Understanding Circumstances On Becoming a Prophet
We certainly live in dangerous and uncertain times. There is no question that previous certainties in life and society, that we once took for granted and assumed would always be part of our daily existence, have now been called into great question and clouded with doubt.

Additional Lessons Secret Numbers
In our cashless credit card world, we have all been introduced to the concept and necessity for secret numbers. This presents a challenge, because it is not easy to remember different numbers, especially numbers that you do not use every day.

Various Events Email
We live in a time when written letters and even typed letters are no longer the main means of communication. Everything today is done by either mobile phone or electronic mail.

Israel and the Nations Failure
The interviewer asked Thomas Sowell if he thought that there was anything in the behavior in Jewish society that the Jewish people could themselves correct to mitigate anti-Semitism.Surprisingly, he said that he would have one piece of advice for Jewish society, “fail!”.

Current Events No News
news is really not news, but it is a great deal of opinion, bias, and bitterness that brings divisiveness amongst the listeners whom it is meant to serve.

Shlach Lecha The land of Israel
The land of Israel has always posed a problem for the Jewish people. On one hand, it is and always has been our national homeland. On the other hand, the record of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, and their behavior and attitudes, has often been a spotty one.

Family and Society Sirens
One of the many skills that those of us living here in Israel rapidly acquire is the ability to discern between the different sounds of similar-sounding sirens.

Various Subjects A Lost Custom
For most of my life, I was accustomed to visiting people in their homes and in receiving visitors in my own home. My generation communicated with each other by letter correspondence or face-to-face personal visits.

Wedding and Sheva Berachot the Book of Complaints
My wife and I labored long and hard over the invitation list and over the seating arrangements for the wedding dinner. We invested a great deal of effort and energy in trying to make sure that, to the best of our ability, everyone would be satisfied, and no one would be unduly disappointed.

Miscellaneous The Few and the Many
he Torah teaches us that our great teacher Moshe, even after writing the Torah, had ‘ink left in his quill.’ I do not, God forbid, pretend to resemble Moshe in any meaningful way, but I also have some stories left over that will not appear in the book.

Yitro A Human Justice System
One of the basic lessons learned from Parashat Yitro is that there is no perfect system of justice if it involves human beings and judges.