Monthly Archives: August 2015

אל אחד יחיד ומיוחד (El Echad Yachid U’M’Yuchad) One, Unique and Unifying God, may my efforts free the purest tones I can produce with this simple Shofar, the horn of the smallest, most insignificant of beasts, to rise straight to You, drawing with them the … Continue reading →

Life isn’t fair. We’re not all graced with the same skills and talents. Only some of us received the Bracha (blessing) of a strong lip and good lung capacity, giving us the ability to coax a sound out of, and thus elevate to a … Continue reading →

Between last year’s Gaza war (complete with US diplomatic pressure on Israel to capitulate), ever-reaching incursions of BDS into American campuses and other attempts to infiltrate everyday life, the Iran Nuclear Surrender and the Obama Administration’s increasingly vocal antisemitism, I can’t not lend … Continue reading →

Although it should have been immediately obvious, it took me a number of years, reading Tefilla (Prayer) 33 (from תקט”ו תפילות (Taktu Tefillot) “515 Prayers” of the Ramchal) many times, until my eye caught his point that מקוה (Mikvah), a gathering … Continue reading →

As a Torah-observing, orthodox rabbi, it pains me to say that the greatest obstacle to Torah observance in today’s world does not come from antisemitism and it does not come from assimilation. Rather it’s the result of a usually well-meaning, … Continue reading →

If you read the previous post, “Can This Be Love”, you might easily conclude that all God wants from us is to “follow the rule book”. After all, if He expresses His Love by giving us “Torah, commandments, rules and … Continue reading →