Elul is known as the period when “the King is in the field.” Both in our tefillot (prayers) and mitzvot (commandments), Hashem is tangibly closer to us. The Shechina (God’s presence) is stronger, the kedusha (holiness) is more intense. God is more accessible at this time.   The layers of camouflage which normally mask reality and make […]

I’m pretty sure that there’s a place in hell where the really bad people are trapped in a shoe store with hordes of short people who whine “Mommy” at them – forever.  There is a certain dread that fills my being at the end of every summer as we begin our back to school shopping. The […]

  This Sunday begins the joyful minor holiday of Tu b’Av, the fifteenth of the month of Av. The Talmud says besides Yom Kippur, there was no other holy day as happy for the Jews as Tu b’Av. In the times of the Temple, unmarried Jewish women would dress in white and dance in the vineyards, […]

Tisha B’Av – the ninth day of the month of Av – is usually the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, a day of fasting and mourning the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem, among other tragedies. But last year, our family’s Tisha B’Av was far from solemn. Late in June, my husband, Daniel, received […]

This Shabbos, the one preceding Tisha b’Av, is known as “Shabbos Chazon” – the Shabbos of the vision. Whose vision? The prophet Isaiah, who saw the destruction that would befall the Jewish people because of the way we baselessly hated one another. The great Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev would say: On the Shabbos of […]

The culmination of the Three Weeks, an annual time of mourning the destruction of The Beis HaMikdash (Holy Temple) is Tisha b’Av. It is the saddest day of the Jewish year and the most calamitous in our history. So great was our pain on this day as a nation, that each year we commemorate it […]