In Parshat Va’era, God begins to inflict the ten plagues on Pharaoh and on Egypt. Our Sages teach that each plague has ...

This is where Parshat Vaeira stops being a metaphor and starts sounding a warning. Pharaoh does not dismiss Moses because the ...

We’re all familiar with the narrative: in Parshat Shemot we’re told how Pharaoh, King of Egypt, declared that every baby boy ...

The verb va-yach (“he struck”) is also significant. It shares its root with makot, the plagues. Moses strikes first; God ...

While reading Parshat Vayishlach this year, I was struck by the imbalance between speech and silence and what it suggests about power and action. On one hand, we see Jacob’s detailed plans and spoken ...

In parshat Shemini: Following the seven days of their inauguration, Aaron and his sons begin to officiate as kohanim (priests). Aaron’s two elder sons, Nadav and Avihu, offer a “strange fire before ...

This year’s reading of Parshat Noah is on October 21. The tradition is to celebrate by baking and enjoying rainbow treats. “I love the rainbow monkey bread babka because not only is it unique, ...

Moshe wrote the first portion of the Torah (from Bereishit until Matan Torah) and awoke early to build an altar at the foot of the mountain, together with twelve stone monuments, one for each tribe.

The deeper lesson of the Torah’s teaching is not that one must have tragedy at the very moment of triumph, but that everything contains its opposite. Classic love stories often have tragedies at their ...

Nearly every foreign land that Jews have settled in throughout history was initially a safe refuge or land of opportunity. And in almost every instance, our false sense of security was shattered.