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 […]
Today was a typical day: carpool pick-up, after school errands, and a trip to the local pizza store for dinner. When we got out of the car, I grabbed two quarters from my wallet for the parking meter. I handed the first quarter to my younger (four-year-old) daughter who promptly told me, “My sister can go […]
When I was studying in Israel after high school, my roommate and I had some interesting late-night conversations. One of our favorite recurring themes was a debate that, as we discovered, showed up long before our gap year – for instance, in the following Talmudic passage: Rabbi Tarfon and the Elders were reclining in the […]
The Three Weeks is upon us and sometimes the laws related to interpersonal relationships are not prioritized properly. All year round, our mindset should always be focused on treating others with the utmost respect. However, the time period of the Three Weeks and now, the nine days, serves as a reminder for us — helping […]
One of the hardest times in the Jewish calendar is the period of the three weeks, culminating in the fast of Tisha B’Av. It’s a time when we do things to actively reduce our joy, as we mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple. But as we try to connect, it can often be quite […]
As I sit here mourning the loss of the Beis Hamikdash (Holy Temple) that was burned to the ground 2000 years ago, catapulting the Jewish people into a painful exile, where we’ve been beaten and murdered, expelled and tortured in almost every land we’ve ever lived in since then, I am thinking of how we […]
