The Library

Dov's Desperados is starting a new cycle next week, be'H, The call meets every Thursday and Sunday with the topics and work continuing from one call into the next. We will start with an intro to the Problem and Solution, an overview of the 12 steps, and will then go ri...

It was the week before Rosh HaShanah and I decided I will try to hold out from porn and masturbation the whole week. I was having a hard time but I kept pushing through. Then, a couple of days before the Yom HaDin, I was doing work in a place and there were some triggers ...

Sometimes it is difficult to determine if someone is dealing with a sexual addiction. A man who views pornography a couple times a year may be acting inappropriately and hurting intimacy between him and his wife, but it doesn’t mean he is a sex addict. A sexual addiction...

Many times in my life I have lasted long times without any falls. The issue was that they were always post-fall and then I'd feel guilty and say "never again!" It would last a while but then I'd have another fall. I always looked at it as "forever." This time, I took it l...

Technology is a tool; it is not inherently good or bad. To keep it in a healthy place in our lives requires skillful use. Unlike passing trends that scared parents over the years, research shows poorly monitored screen time bluntly impacts kids for the worse. (Rock and ro...

Your phone’s slick, minimalist shell betrays a cacophony of alerts from apps, notifications from non-humans, and icons your fingers barely intended to graze. Yet there you are, ten minutes later, not even using the toilet at that point. Tristan Harris, a former design eth...

What if the biggest problem with our relationship to our phones wasn’t that we rely on them constantly—the “lazy brain” argument—but that we have a genuinely unhealthy, addictive relationship to them? .... From the narrator, philosopher Alain de Botton: To say we are addi...

Remember where you came from! "Yichus" - For those of us with sons and daughters ready to be married off, don't we as parents want their so-called B'sheret to have the best Yichus possible?! We get calls from Shadchanim - we look at the prospective Chasan or Kallah - we ...

Avraham Avinu is instructed by Hakadosh Baruch Hu to go up to the mountain and to bring Yitzchok as a Korban. R' Moishe Rosenstein gives a very beautiful and powerful insight as to why this was such a difficult test. He says, that when someone has a test and it's in fron...

One Shabbat, there was a man who came to the synagogue of Rabbi Berel Wein, in the Rechavia section of Jerusalem, accompanied by his three young sons, whom it turned out were of the ages 9, 7 and 5. Even with their long peiyot, they didn’t look Jewish with their stunning ...

Breathing, Counting, and a Memory… This very simple brain exercise has changed my life. I struggled with porn addiction for a very long time, and I use many tools to prevent going back to that life but this is something that never fails me. Internet porn addiction is argu...

The Gemara Sanhedrin (107a) says that Dovid Hamelech requested a Nisayon, and Hashem notified him that he would be tested in matters of immorality. The Gemara learns that David had relations with his wife at that point, as a way of ensuring that he could withstand the tem...

I had had an amazing episode I would like to share with you. I had a big fall (again), and I was feeling terrible about life. Basically, I just had a baby boy born on Erev Succos, with Down syndrome and a few other complications, so it's been stressful, to say the least, ...

Realizing my biggest issue was probably self-esteem was monumental. As a human being and definitely as a Jew, one shouldn't waste their potential. Wasting seed and time over computerized false garbage is a sign of not admiring myself, and not realizing my potential. Thing...

For a struggler, lust is the problem.For an addict, lust has become the solution to all problems. For a struggler, lust is a temptation.For an addict, lust became a necessity. A struggler needs to win.An addict needs to surrender. A struggler needs to guard his eyes...

Avraham – the First Man to LAUGH in the Torah! ויפל אברהם על פניו - ויצחק "And Avraham threw himself upon his face - and laughed (Lech Lecha 17:17) ותצחק שרה בקרבה "And Sarah laughed at herself (Vayeira 18:12) It just doesn't make sense - it must have been a "MIRACLE!" Ho...

I have been struggling with unwanted same-ses attraction (SSA) since before my bar mitzvah and have experienced the struggle in different ways over the years of my journey. I find my anger seems to come out when seeing other younger guys (I'm kind of stuck as an older bac...

רבי אומר, הסתכל בשלושה דברים, ואין אתה בא לידי עבירה 1 דע מה למעלה ממך, 2 עין רואה, ואוזן שומעת, 3 וכל מעשיך בספר נכתבין. We see in this משנה, that רבי says that when we look at those three things, then we won't get to an עבירה. Before we go any further, we have...