Galut (Exile)

Exile is a crucible; the challenges and difficulties of thriving in a hostile world provide the optimal setting for personal and national growth. However, if we become comfortable in our exile and feel that we are in a “home away from home,” we become vul...

Our Parshah describes the beginning of a new stage in the history of the Jewish people. Jacob and all his children and grandchildren, numbering altogether seventy people, had been living in the land which was going to be the Land of Israel. Due to the har...

Surely the greatest miracle of our generation is that after Auschwitz Jews still wanted to be Jewish. What has kept us going? What has convinced us that there's a point to rebuilding our families, our communities and our homeland?

A borderline birth

Sometimes, I feel that if only G‑d would speak to me, as he did to Jacob, it would be so much easier to deal with the pain and suffering of living with ALS. But then I remind myself that everything in Torah is G‑d talking to me. It’s not easy to see it th...

The purpose of the exercise was to move Jacob and family from Hebron to Egypt, about 200 miles as the crow flies across the Sinai Peninsula. But what a convoluted route this exercise took!

If there is anything to fear, it is that we may make peace with all that is bad and ugly in this world.