One of the most dramatic scenes in the Torah is when Moses descends Mount Sinai and sees the Jewish people dancing around the golden calf. Moses takes the two divinely-inscribed tablets he is holding in his hands and thrusts them to ground, shattering them. Whatever became of the tablets smashed by Moses? The Talmud in […]

Growing up in secular America, it was always a major event when they would broadcast The Ten Commandments on one of the major, primetime networks. Although I watched it on a television screen decades after it “played on the big screen, it still took my breath away – even as a child of the eighties, […]

  God is connected to everyone who reaches out to Him, as the Midrash (Eliyahu Rabbah, 9) teaches, “I call heaven and earth to witness that whether Jew or Gentile, man or woman, slave or maidservant, everything is according to their actions that the divine spirit rests on them.” Every place the Torah and Talmud discuss holiness […]

Beloved singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen died last week at the age of 82. Most famous for penning the hauntingly poignant ballad “Hallelujah” among other songs in the past 40 years, as well as poetry and novels, not many people were aware that Cohen was born and raised Orthodox, spent some time involved in Buddhism then returned […]

Dear Jew in the City, I’m troubled by the mitzvah of Sotah. Is there a way to understand it that’s less troubling? Why is only the woman shamed and there’s no such shaming for a man who is suspected? -Troubled Dear Troubled, People often have issues with the case of the sotah – the woman suspected of […]

Dear Jew in the City,  I am troubled by the mitzvah of seir l’azazel (the scapegoat of the Yom Kippur service). We are taught to believe and hope and pray for a redemption and a third Beis HaMikdash. If these commandments were just for ancient time, why all the daily prayers for and reminders of […]