Time of Year

In honor of Lag Ba'Omer, we will bring some excerpts from the Holy Zohar of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. (Tanslations taken from www.jewishsexuality.com) Zohar, Bereshit 94a Another began his exposition by referring to the verse, "Unless the L-rd had been my help, my soul w...

The Seder is not just a memorial to events of the distant past - it is a dynamic process of freedom from the challenges of the present. We are slaves. Slaves to our own addictions, habits, inhibitions, fears, cynicism and prejudices. These self-appointed pharaohs are laye...

Excerpts below taken from an article on www.jewishsexuality.com Our Sages tell us that we were redeemed from Egypt due to the merit of the two mitzvot (commandments) which G-d commanded us to perform on the eve of our departure - the Paschal sacrifice and the brit milah. ...

The Israelites had to rush out of Egypt so fast, they didn't have time for their bread to rise. Why? Does that make sense? What was the rush exactly? The Egyptians had just been blasted with ten plagues as divine punishment for holding the Israelites captive, they were mo...

Pesach cleaning is underway in all Jewish households around the world. As we toil to clean our houses from leaven, we are in parallel also cleansing ourselves from the evil inclination, which is symbolized by the leaven. We are toiling to break free of the evil one, in an...

If there is any time of the year to get help from Hashem to break free it is Purim, when all who ask are given. One case in point is our Feature Story where the writer writes as follows: One Purim, some eight years into our marriage, I got drunk. I was reading Psalms and ...

In the merit of the Yartzeit of the holy Ariza"l today, may we all be strengthened in areas of Kedusha. And as one member pointed out, Bein Hametzarim (the 3 weeks) is a time of Teshuva as it says in Aicha: "Kol Rodfeha Hisuguha Bain Hametzarim" and the Holy Books (see Oh...

One way or another, we are here to work. Our sages say "adam le'amal yulad" - "a man was born to toil". There's no escaping it, and there are no two ways about it. As the Torah makes clear many times, and as we remember all the more so during the three weeks, if the Jewis...

In the begining of this weeks Parsha, it is written: "And the name of the Israelite man who was smitten, who was smitten with the Midyanite, was Zimri Ben Salu the head of the tribe of Shimon". The holy Ohr Hachaim Hakadosh, whose Yartzeit is today, asks why the Torah wro...

The word "Shavuos" is a double meaning, it translates both as "Weeks" and "Vows". Chaza"l say that on Shavuos there was a double vow; 1) the Jewish people vowed never to leave G-d, and 2) G-d vowed never to leave the Jewish people. We spoke last time about the power of vo...