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One Day at a Time: The Spiritual Power of Counting the Omer
Listen to this article now: Rabbi Abraham Twerski points out that Yetziat Mitzrayim was filled with incredible miracles. We often focus on the dramatic events—the Ten Plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea—and in the Haggadah, we recount many of these miraculous details. But one miracle that we often overlook is perhaps the most remarkable:…
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Acharei Mot-Kedoshim: Giving and Receiving Rebuke with Grace
The pasuk (Vayikra 19:17) commands us to rebuke our fellow Jew. Rebuke, the translation of the word tochacha, does not do full justice to the term. Tochacha is not merely a lecture or nagging or criticism, it is loving, gentle and personalised guidance to serving Hashem better. It must be done only from compassion and…
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The Omer and the Spirituality of Seven
Listen to this article now: Seven is considered the number of completion and perfection, those qualities themselves inherently intertwined coming from the same Hebrew root (ש-ל-מ – also the root of “peace”). The Ibn Ezra writes that we see immense significance in seven days (Shabbat), seven months (the seventh month is Tishrei, which hosts Rosh…
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Are We Inherently Good or Bad?
In this article, we will examine the question of whether our nature is inherently good, yet we sometimes engage in wrongful actions, or if our inherent inclination is toward the bad, necessitating continuous effort to exchange our natural behaviors for better ones. To sharpen the question a bit more – in order to be a…
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Tazria-Metzora: Women Are Inherently Connected to Purity
These two parshiot centre around the theme of tuma and tahara, commonly translated as purity and impurity. The weakness of this translation is that “impurity” suggests the presence of something unfavourable, perhaps unclean – but this is far from the truth. Tuma is the absence of the flow of a life force. This is why…
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Shemini: Jewish Women, The Mashgichot of their Households
Parshat Shemini contains many of our kashrut laws: the fish, birds and animals we may and may not eat as well as the prohibition to consume bugs. As Jewish women, we are entrusted with the kashrut level of our homes. We are designated as the Mashgiach, the supervisor: ensuring that no milk splashes onto the…
