Podcasts about Midrash

Chazal tell us that when Mashiach arrives there will be a magnificent seudah known as the Seudat HaLeviathan. At that great meal will be present all the righteous who ever lived—Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, Moshe and Aharon, together with the great leaders and tzaddikim of all generations. At that seudah, David HaMelech will rise and lead Birkat HaMazon. Afterward, the Ramami Pano writes that Mashiach Tzidkeinu will come out and distribute dessert to everyone present. Those desserts will consist of the fruits that have been growing in Gan Eden since the creation of the world. Originally, Hashem commanded Adam HaRishon to eat from the fruits of Gan Eden, but he was banished before he had the opportunity to do so. Since that time, fruits have been growing in the lower Gan Eden that exists in this world, and they will be distributed to all of Klal Yisrael after Birkat HaMazon at that seudah. Then Mashiach will take out almonds that had been growing on the staff of Aharon HaKohen in the Kodesh HaKodashim and he will make the berachah of boreh peri ha'etz upon them. It is known that almonds have the ability to calm a person from anger. At that moment, all the tension and pain that accumulated during the long exile will instantly disappear. Then Moshe Rabbeinu will appear holding the original Luchot that we were meant to receive. In their merit the knowledge of Torah will reach an unprecedented level. Torah will never again be forgotten. The yetzer hara will be nullified and the malach hamavet will be driven away forever. Those will be the most glorious days in the history of the world. After a period of time living in the era of Mashiach, the next stage—Olam Haba—will begin. The Gemara in Masechet Berachot teaches that in that world there will be no eating and no drinking. Rather, the tzaddikim will sit and derive pleasure from the radiance of the Shechinah. The Or HaChayim writes in Shemot that there is no pleasure in this world that can compare to the pleasure of seeing the Shechinah in the next world. Every Jew longs to merit that experience. Our rabbis explain that just as in order to enjoy food in this world our mouth and throat must function properly, so too in order to experience the spiritual pleasure of the Shechinah, the part of the body through which that pleasure is received must also be spiritually refined. That part of the body is the eyes—the windows to the neshamah. The pasuk in Yeshayahu says: עֹצֵם עֵינָיו מֵרְאוֹת בְּרָע מֶלֶךְ בְּיָפְיוֹ תֶּחֱזֶינָה עֵינֶיךָ "One who closes his eyes from seeing evil—his eyes will behold the King in His beauty." The Midrash explains that this pasuk means that whoever guards his eyes from looking at improper things will merit to see the beauty of the Shechinah. The Gemara in Masechet Kallah teaches that someone who turns away from such aveirot—even if he is an ordinary Yisrael—becomes worthy like a Kohen Gadol offering a korban olah on the mizbeach, and he will merit to benefit from the radiance of the Shechinah like the malachei hasharet. One of the ways of Hashem is that when He wishes to elevate a person to an especially high level, He first gives him a very great test to overcome. For nearly two thousand years the world has been waiting for the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash. For generations we have waited for the coming of Mashiach. Now, as we approach the month of Nisan—the time most auspicious for redemption—we are being tested with our eyes more than ever before. Perhaps this is Hashem's call for us to elevate ourselves to greatness and to make our eyes worthy of receiving the ultimate pleasure of basking in the radiance of the Shechinah. Now is our opportunity to shine. If we can guard our own eyes and guide our children away from seeing things they should not see, we can become elevated to the level of the Kohen Gadol. With Hashem's help we will then merit the ultimate reward—our eyes beholding the radiance of the Shechinah for all eternity.

This teaching argues that modern rabbinic Judaism is fundamentally different from the faith revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures and rejected by Jesus and the apostles, grounding its claims in Revelation 2:9, where Jesus speaks of those who claim to be Jews but are not, linking this to the inward definition of true Jewish identity found in Romans 2 and echoed by the prophets such as Jeremiah; it further appeals to 1 John 2:22 to define denial of Jesus as the Messiah as the spirit of antichrist, connects messianic fulfillment and the timing of the Second Temple's destruction to Daniel 9, and aligns Jesus' own warnings in Luke 21 and Matthew 24 with that prophecy, while using Jewish rabbinic sources to argue that the failure of atonement rituals after the crucifixion confirms Isaiah's teaching that sins require divine cleansing (Isaiah 1:18) and that human righteousness is insufficient (Isaiah 64:6); additional references such as Leviticus 19:16 and Leviticus 19:18 are cited to critique rabbinic ethical interpretations, and Acts 5 is used to highlight early rabbinic acknowledgment that opposition to Jesus could amount to opposing God Himself. You can connect with Moriel in more locations than just YouTube! Check out all our official links on the About page: https://www.youtube.com/c/MorielTVministries/about.

Welcome to Daily Bitachon on our Friday afternoon special Shabbat edition. The Sefer Yereim , written by one of the Rishonim, Rabbi Eliezer of Metz (Volume 2, Siman 410), teaches us that just as there is a mitzvah to fear the Beit HaMikdash , there is also a mitzvah to fear Shabbat. Now, as we know, there is no single definitive list of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah; while the Gemara tells us the total number is 613, many Rishonim count them differently. The Yereim specifically chooses to include the "Fear of Shabbat" on his list. What is his source? The Gemara in Yevamot 6a points to a comparison between Shabbat and the Beit HaMikdash , as it says in Vayikra 19:30 : " את שבתותי תשמורו ומקדשי תיראו " —"You shall keep My Sabbaths and fear My Sanctuary." Just as there is a mitzvah to fear the Sanctuary, so too there is a mitzvah to fear Shabbat. The Gemara continues by clarifying: " לא משבת אתה מתיירא " —"It is not Shabbat itself that you fear," " אלא ממי שהזהיר על השבת " —"but rather the One who commanded the Shabbat." This means there is a specific responsibility for Yirat Shamayim (fear of Heaven) on Shabbat, just as there is when one enters the Beit HaMikdash . Holiness in Three Dimensions The question arises: What is so unique about Shabbat that it warrants this special mitzvah? We have many commandments—like Tefillin—that God also commanded. Why is "fear" attached to this one? The answer, as we have mentioned many times, is that holiness ( kedusha ) manifests in three dimensions: Person, Place, and Time. The Kohen Gadol was the holiest person. The Beit HaMikdash is the holiest place. The Shabbat is the holiest time. In a sense, the Beit HaMikdash is our "Shabbat in space," and Shabbat is our "Sanctuary in time." We see this connection even in people; the Gemara says a Talmid Chacham is like the Beit HaMikdash . The Zohar even suggests that for a Talmid Chacham —who is immersed in Torah constantly—all seven days of the week are like Shabbat. Regarding the verse " את ה' אלהיך תירא " ("Fear Hashem your God"), the Sages teach lerabbot talmidei chachamim —this includes fearing the Torah scholar, who acts as a sanctuary where God dwells. God dwells in people, He dwells in places, and He dwells in time. The Atmosphere of the Day Once we understand this, the mitzvah to fear Shabbat becomes obvious. Just as you feel a sense of respect, sanctity, and decorum when you stand by the Kotel HaMa'aravi or enter a Shul, Shabbat demands the same. We must approach the day with dignity because its essence is kedusha . Entering Shabbat should feel like walking into the Holy Temple or into the presence of a great Gadol . I remember the sense of trepidation and awe when walking in to see the Steipler Gaon or Rav Shach. That same Yirat Shamayim is intrinsically woven into Shabbat. The Zohar even notes that the word "Bereishit" (In the beginning), when re-scrambled, spells "Yarei Shabbat" (Fear of Shabbat). This awe is the foundation of our entire Torah. A Gift from the Treasure House One commentary explains the famous Midrash where God says: " מתנה טובה יש לי בבית גנזי "—"I have a good gift in My treasure house [and its name is Shabbat]." What exactly is kept in God's treasure house? The Gemara says that the only thing Hashem keeps in His "storehouse" is Yirat Shamayim . Why? Because a person's treasure house usually contains the things most precious to them, often things they don't "possess" naturally. God "owns" everything, but there is one thing He doesn't "have" unless we give it to Him: " הכל בידי שמים חוץ מיראת שמים "—"Everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven." That fear is God's treasure. Every Shabbat, He gives us a "dose" of it from His private collection. He builds that awe into the very fabric of the day. The Natural Fear of the Day The Yerushalmi (cited by the Rambam in Hilchot Ma'aser ) brings down a fascinating concept regarding Terumot and Ma'asrot (tithes). Generally, the Sages did not trust an Am HaAretz (an unlearned person) regarding whether their produce was tithed. However, on Shabbat, if an Am HaAretz claimed the food was tithed, we believed him. Why? " אימת שבת על עמי הארץ "—"The awe of Shabbat is upon even the unlearned." The holiness of the day was so palpable that it would stop a person from lying or committing a transgression. While we may not feel that "natural" fear as instinctively today, it is something we are meant to work on. According to the Yereim , it is a direct commandment to maintain an extra sense of awareness and reverence for the sanctity of Shabbat

Study Guide The Mishna discusses the classification of the various meal offerings based on their components, examining which offerings require both oil and frankincense, which require only one of them, and which require neither. To clarify the source of these laws, the Gemara cites a braita that derives the various cases where oil, frankincense, or both are excluded from the verses concerning the Omer offering (the meal offering of the first fruits). During the analysis of the braita, the Gemara analyzes the choice of exclusions and questions why the Midrash focused specifically on the cases mentioned in the braita rather than excluding the law of the Priestly meal offering (minchat kohanim) instead. The Mishna rules that one who adds both oil and frankincense to a sinner's meal offering transgresses two negative prohibitions. However, there is a difference between adding oil and frankincense. If one adds oil, the offering is disqualified as it cannot be removed, but if one adds frankincense, it is not disqualified as it can be removed. Rav bar Rav Huna asks about frankincense that is crushed into small pieces that cannot be removed: is the offering disqualified, as it would be with oil, or is the issue with oil specifically that it is absorbed, whereas this frankincense is not absorbed into the mincha? Three attempts are brought to answer the question. After rejecting the first two, the third leads to the conclusion that it is disqualified.

The Torah is incredibly strict about what goes into its holiest sanctuary, which is why one bizarre detail in Exodus chapter 38 makes absolutely no sense. In the inventory of materials used to build the Mishkan, the Torah accounts for the weight and value of all the gold, silver, copper, wood, and linen material used. It's very clinical, with no reference to significance or context. There is one striking exception. Exodus 38:8 tells us that the priestly washing basin was made "from the mirrors of the women who gathered at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting." Why does the Torah suddenly reveal the provenance of this one object? Who were these women—and what were they doing there? In this episode of Madlik Disruptive Torah, Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz explore how a single enigmatic verse sparked generations of interpretation. Key Takeaways The Holiest Objects May Come from the Least Holy Places A Tiny Detail Can Create a Whole Tradition A Mirror Is the Perfect Metaphor for Interpretation Timestamps [00:00] Mirrors in the Mishkan [00:56] Meet the Hosts [01:36] Podcast Intro [02:51] Reading Exodus 38 [04:48] Women at the Tent [07:40] Rashi's Famous Midrash [13:01] Word Study on Mirrors [14:32] Sponsor Break [15:45] Eli's Sons and Innuendo [19:22] Scholars Offer Explanations [22:43] Egyptian Mirrors and Fertility [26:02] Repurposing Pagan Objects [26:42] Cassuto and Poetic Memory [29:39] Found Object Theology [31:26] Modern Fertility Sculpture [32:52] Wrap Up and Farewell Links & Learnings Sign up for free and get more from our weekly newsletter https://madlik.com/ Sefaria Source Sheet: https://voices.sefaria.org/sheets/713285 Transcript here: https://madlik.substack.com/  

In this week's double portion, Vayakhel-Pekude, Rabbi Joseph Dweck explores the profound concept of Nedib Leb—the "willing heart". As the Israelites begin the physical construction of the Mishkan (Tabernacle), we learn that the most essential building material isn't gold or silver, but the voluntary spirit of the people.Rabbi Dweck delves into the spiritual anatomy of the heart, contrasting the open, faithful heart of Sinai with the "sealed" heart that emerged during the crisis of the Golden Calf. By examining the teachings of the Rishonim and a powerful Midrash about the destruction of the Temple, he reveals how the "core self" of the Jewish person remains fundamentally connected to a desire for relationship with God, even in times of fear and uncertainty.Rabbi Dweck has held rabbinic leadership roles in the US and the UK. He is the Rosh Bet Midrash of TheHabura.com and the Rabbi Levy Chair of Jewish Wisdom at the London School of Jewish Studies.For more, check out rabbijosephdweck.com.Instagram: https://instagram.com/rabbidweckTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rabbidweckYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RabbiJosephDweck

Study Guide The Mishna discusses the classification of the various meal offerings based on their components, examining which offerings require both oil and frankincense, which require only one of them, and which require neither. To clarify the source of these laws, the Gemara cites a braita that derives the various cases where oil, frankincense, or both are excluded from the verses concerning the Omer offering (the meal offering of the first fruits). During the analysis of the braita, the Gemara analyzes the choice of exclusions and questions why the Midrash focused specifically on the cases mentioned in the braita rather than excluding the law of the Priestly meal offering (minchat kohanim) instead. The Mishna rules that one who adds both oil and frankincense to a sinner's meal offering transgresses two negative prohibitions. However, there is a difference between adding oil and frankincense. If one adds oil, the offering is disqualified as it cannot be removed, but if one adds frankincense, it is not disqualified as it can be removed. Rav bar Rav Huna asks about frankincense that is crushed into small pieces that cannot be removed: is the offering disqualified, as it would be with oil, or is the issue with oil specifically that it is absorbed, whereas this frankincense is not absorbed into the mincha? Three attempts are brought to answer the question. After rejecting the first two, the third leads to the conclusion that it is disqualified.

The Zohar HaKadosh writes in Parashat Vayakhel that people do not realize how powerful tefillah really is. Tefillah has the ability to pierce through the heavens and open gates that previously could not be opened. Rabbeinu Bachya writes in Parashat Ekev that tefillah has the ability to change nature, to save a person from danger, and to nullify harsh decrees. The Maharsha writes in Masechet Shabbat ( דף קנ״א ע״ב ) that even though Chazal say a person's lifespan, number of children, and parnasah depend on mazal, tefillah has the power to change mazal. When a person prays during an et ratzon, a time of divine favor, the tefillah becomes even more powerful. David HaMelech asked Hashem that his prayers should reach Him during such a time, as it says: ואני תפילתי לך ה׳ עת רצון . The Midrash asks regarding the pasuk that says Eliezer ran toward Rivka: why was he running so quickly? It answers that once Eliezer realized he was experiencing an et ratzon, because Hashem had already performed a miracle for him by shortening the journey, he hurried to take advantage of that special moment and seek even more heavenly assistance. Rashi writes in Parashat Ki Tisa that when Moshe Rabbeinu saw that his requests were being answered, he understood that it was an et ratzon. He therefore continued asking for more in order to gain the greatest benefit from that special time. The Bnei Yissaschar writes that there are angels appointed in Shamayim to bring our tefillot upward, and they examine the prayers to determine if they are worthy. However, during an et ratzon the tefillot do not require their assistance. They ascend directly without scrutiny. The Mashgiach, Rav Yechezkel Levenstein, said that there is no greater et ratzon in Shamayim than when a person overcomes his yetzer hara. This means a person can actually create his own et ratzon and then use it to ask Hashem for whatever he needs. For example, if a person feels a strong yetzer hara to look at something inappropriate and overcomes it, he should realize that at that moment he has created an et ratzon. We have heard many stories about people who were publicly humiliated but chose not to respond and instead gave a blessing to a person in need of salvation. And those blessings brought about salvations. Why does this work? One explanation is that when a person is humiliated, the yetzer hara strongly pushes him to respond with anger. If he overcomes that impulse, he creates such a powerful et ratzon that his tefillot and blessings become especially potent. People are constantly tested—through anger, jealousy, and many other challenges. If we can motivate ourselves to overcome those tests, we can create moments of divine favor that we can then use to pray for what we need. The Keter Shem Tov brings from the Baal Shem Tov that when a person truly feels pain for another person's suffering, that creates an et ratzon. Even greater than that is when a person can genuinely feel happy when another person experiences success. And even greater still is when two people both need a salvation and one receives it while the other does not. If instead of complaining and asking why he was not helped, the person can feel sincere happiness for the other's simchah, that creates an extremely powerful et ratzon. At that moment he can pour out his heart to Hashem and ask for what he needs. Tefillah is always powerful, but during an et ratzon it becomes even more powerful.

Can self-reflection become a path to holiness? In this episode, Zvi Hirschfield and Rabbanit Nechama Goldman Barash explore Parshat Vayakhel–Pekudei through a striking detail of the Mishkan: the women's mirrors used to create the basin for the priests. Drawing on Midrash and interpretation, they reflect on how mirrors symbolize self-awareness and identity—reminding us that serving God begins with knowing who we are. The conversation asks how self-reflection, relationships, and moral intention can transform ordinary human awareness into sacred service.

Why did Moses smash the tablets and why were the broken pieces placed in the Holy of Holies alongside the whole ones? In this heart-open class, Rabbi Yisroel Bernath explores one of the most powerful and surprising teachings in Torah: that brokenness is not the opposite of holiness, it can be its doorway. Drawing on the story of the Golden Calf, the teachings of the Talmud, Midrash, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, this class reveals how Judaism embraces both the “whole tablets” and the “broken tablets” of our lives. Together we explore how pain, setbacks, doubt, and struggle can become catalysts for deeper connection, compassion, and spiritual growth. The message is both radical and comforting: the fragments of our lives may contain the deepest light.Key TakeawaysHoliness is not limited to moments of perfection; it can emerge from our struggles and broken experiences.The broken tablets in the Ark teach that failure and fracture still belong in the sacred space of our lives.Sometimes our deepest connection to G-d happens not when we feel strong, but when we feel vulnerable and searching.Brokenness can soften our hearts and deepen our compassion for others.The Torah teaches that new wisdom and deeper growth often emerge after moments of spiritual collapse.Our lives contain both “whole tablets” and “broken tablets” and both are part of the sacred journey.#Judaism #Kabbalah #Jewish #BrokenTablets #Moses #GoldenCalf #JewishWisdom #spiritualgrowth #JewishInspiration #FaithInStruggle #TorahInsights #chassidus #personalgrowth #healing #resilience #MeaningInSuffering #RabbiBernath #JewishNDG #TorahClass Available now:Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Forgiveness-Experiment-What-Would-Your/dp/1069217638Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FR2QNJL6Audiobook: https://bit.ly/4tPFZhVSupport the showGot your own question for Rabbi Bernath? He can be reached at rabbi@jewishndg.com or http://www.theloverabbi.comSingle? You can make a profile on www.JMontreal.com and Rabbi Bernath will help you find that special someone.Donate and support Rabbi Bernath's work http://www.jewishndg.com/donateFollow Rabbi Bernath's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ybernathAccess Rabbi Bernath's Articles on Relationships https://medium.com/@loverabbi

Send a textWhy did Moses smash the tablets and why were the broken pieces placed in the Holy of Holies alongside the whole ones? In this heart-open class, Rabbi Yisroel Bernath explores one of the most powerful and surprising teachings in Torah: that brokenness is not the opposite of holiness, it can be its doorway. Drawing on the story of the Golden Calf, the teachings of the Talmud, Midrash, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, this class reveals how Judaism embraces both the “whole tablets” and the “broken tablets” of our lives. Together we explore how pain, setbacks, doubt, and struggle can become catalysts for deeper connection, compassion, and spiritual growth. The message is both radical and comforting: the fragments of our lives may contain the deepest light.Key TakeawaysHoliness is not limited to moments of perfection; it can emerge from our struggles and broken experiences.The broken tablets in the Ark teach that failure and fracture still belong in the sacred space of our lives.Sometimes our deepest connection to G-d happens not when we feel strong, but when we feel vulnerable and searching.Brokenness can soften our hearts and deepen our compassion for others.The Torah teaches that new wisdom and deeper growth often emerge after moments of spiritual collapse.Our lives contain both “whole tablets” and “broken tablets” and both are part of the sacred journey.#Judaism #Kabbalah #Jewish #BrokenTablets #Moses #GoldenCalf #JewishWisdom #spiritualgrowth #JewishInspiration #FaithInStruggle #TorahInsights #chassidus #personalgrowth #healing #resilience #MeaningInSuffering #RabbiBernath #JewishNDG #TorahClass Available now:Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Forgiveness-Experiment-What-Would-Your/dp/1069217638Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FR2QNJL6Audiobook: https://bit.ly/4tPFZhV Support the showGot your own question for Rabbi Bernath? He can be reached at rabbi@jewishndg.com or http://www.theloverabbi.comSingle? You can make a profile on www.JMontreal.com and Rabbi Bernath will help you find that special someone.Donate and support Rabbi Bernath's work http://www.jewishndg.com/donateFollow Rabbi Bernath's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ybernathAccess Rabbi Bernath's Articles on Relationships https://medium.com/@loverabbi

How do you build a creative life that spans music, writing, film, and spiritual practice? Alicia Jo Rabins talks about weaving multiple creative strands into a sustainable career and why the best advice for any creator might simply be: just make the thing. In the intro, backlist promotion strategy [Written Word Media]; Successful author business [Novel Marketing Podcast]; Alliance of Independent Authors Indie Author Bookstore; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Alicia Jo Rabins is an award-winning writer, musician, performer, as well as a Torah teacher and ritualist. She's the creator of Girls In Trouble, a feminist indie-folk song cycle about biblical women, and the award-winning film, A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff. Her latest book is a memoir, When We Are Born We Forget Everything. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights, and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Building a sustainable multi-disciplinary creative career through teaching, performance, grants, and donations Trusting instinct in the early generative stages of creativity and separating generation from editing Adapting and reimagining religious and cultural source material through music, writing, and performance The challenges of transitioning from poetry to long-form prose memoir, including choosing a lens for your story Making an independent film on a shoestring budget without waiting for Hollywood's permission Finding your creative voice and building confidence by leaning into vulnerability and returning to the practice of making You can find Alicia at AliciaJo.com. Transcript of the interview with Alicia Jo Rabins Joanna: Alicia Jo Rabins is an award-winning writer, musician, performer, as well as a Torah teacher and ritualist. She's the creator of Girls In Trouble, a feminist indie-folk song cycle about biblical women, and the award-winning film, A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff. Her latest book is a memoir, When We Are Born We Forget Everything. So welcome to the show, Alicia. Alicia: Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here. Joanna: There is so much we could talk about. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you've woven so many strands of creativity into your life and career. Alicia: Yes, well, I am a maximalist. What happened in terms of my early life is that I started writing on my own, just extremely young. I'm one of those people who always loved writing, always processed the world and managed my emotions and came to understand myself through writing. So from a very young age, I felt really committed to writing. Then I had the good fortune that my mother saw a talk show about the Suzuki method of learning violin—when you start really young and learn by ear, which is modelled after language learning. It's so much less intellectual and much more instinctual, learning by copying. She was like, that looks like a cool thing. I was three years old at the time and she found out that there was a little local branch of our music conservatory that had a Suzuki violin programme. So when I was three and a half, getting close to four, she took me down and I started playing an extremely tiny violin. Joanna: Oh, cute! Alicia: Yes, and because it was part of this conservatory that was downtown, and we were just starting at the suburban branch where we lived, there was this path that I was able to follow. As I got more and more interested in violin, I could continue basically up through the conservatory level during high school. So I had a really fantastic music education without any pressure, without any expectations or professional goals. I just kept taking these classes and one thing led to another. I grew up being very immersed in both creative writing and music, and I think just having the gift of those two parts of my brain trained and stimulated and delighted so young really changed my brain in some ways. I'll always see the world through this creative lens, which I think I'm also just set up to do personally. Then the last step of my multi-practice career is that in college I got very interested in Jewish spirituality. I'm Jewish, but I didn't grow up very religious. I didn't grow up in a Jewish community really. So I knew some basics, but not a ton. In college I started to study it and also informally learned from other people I met. I ended up going on a pretty intense spiritual quest, going to Jerusalem and immersing myself after college for two years in traditional Jewish study and practice. So that became the third strand of the braid that had already been started with music and writing. Torah study, spiritual study, and teaching became the third, and they all interweave. The last thing I'll say is that because I work in both words and music, and naturally performance because of music, it began to branch a little bit into plays, theatre, and film, just because that's where the intersection of words, performance, and music is. So that's really what brought me into that, as opposed to any specific desire to work in film. It all happened very organically. Joanna: I love this. This is so cool. We are going to circle back to a lot of this, but I have to ask you— What about work for money at any point? How did this turn into more than just hobbies and lifestyle? Alicia: Yes, absolutely. Well, I'm very fortunate that I did not graduate college with loans because my parents were able to pay for college. That was a big privilege that I just want to name, because in the States that's often not the case. So that allowed me to need to support myself, but not also pay loans, which was a real gift. What happened was I went straight from college to that school in Jerusalem, and there I was on loans and scholarship, so I didn't have to worry yet about supporting myself. Then when I came back to the States, I actually found on Craigslist a job teaching remedial Hebrew. It was essentially teaching kids at a Jewish elementary school who either had learning differences or had just entered the school late and needed to be in a different Hebrew class than the other kids in their grade. That was my first experience of really teaching, and I just absolutely fell in love with it. Although in the end, my passion is much more for teaching the text and rituals and the wrestling with the concepts, as opposed to teaching language. So all these years, while doing performance and writing and all these things, I have been teaching Jewish studies. That has essentially supported me, I would say, between 50 and 70 per cent. Then the rest has been paid gigs as a musician, whether as a front person leading a project or as what we call a sideman, playing in someone else's band. Sometimes doing theatre performances, sometimes teaching workshops. That's how I've cobbled it together. I have not had a full-time job all these years and I have supported myself through both earned income and also grants and donations. I've really tried to cultivate a little bit of a donor base, and I took some workshops early on about how to welcome donations. So I definitely try to always welcome that as well. Joanna: That is so interesting that you took a workshop on how to welcome donations. Way back in, I think 2013, I said on this show, I just don't know if I can accept people giving to support the show. Then someone on the podcast challenged me and said, but people want to support creatives. That's when I started Patreon in 2014. It was when The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer came out and— It was this realisation that people do want to support people. So I love that you said that. Alicia: It's not easy. It's still not easy for me, and I have to grit my teeth every time I even put in my end-of-year newsletter. I just say, just a reminder that part of what makes this possible is your generous donations, and I'm so grateful to you. It's not easy. I think some people enjoy fundraising. I certainly don't instinctively enjoy it, but I have learned to think of it exactly the way that you're saying. I mean, I love donating to support other people's projects. Sometimes it's the highlight of my day. If I'm having a bad day and someone asks for help, either to feed a family or to complete a creative project, I just feel like, okay, at least I can give $36 or $25 and feel like I did something positive in the last hour, even if my project is going terribly and I'm in a fight with my kid or something. So I have to keep in mind that it is actually a privilege to give as well as a privilege to receive. Joanna: Absolutely. So let's get back into your various creative projects. The first thing I wanted to ask you, because you do have so many different formats and forms of your creativity—how do you know when an idea that comes to you should be a song, or something you want to do as a performance, or written, or a film? Tell us a bit about your creative process. Because a lot of your projects are also longer-term. Alicia: Yes. It's funny, I love planning and in some ways I'm an extreme planner. I really drive people in my family bonkers with planning, like family vacations a year in advance. In terms of my creativity, I'm very planful towards goals, but in that early generative state, I am actually pure instinct. I don't think I ever sit down and say, “I have this idea, which genre would it match with?” It's more like I sit on my bed and pick up my guitar, which is where I love to do songwriting, just sitting on my bed cross-legged, and I pick up my guitar and something starts coming out. Then I just work with that kernel. So it's very nebulous at first, very innate, and I just follow that creative spirit. Often I don't even know what a project is, sometimes if it's a larger project, until a year or two in. Once things emerge and take shape, then my planning brain and my strategy brain can jump on it and say, “Okay, we need three more songs to fill out the album, and we need to plan the fundraising and the scheduling.” Then I might take more of an outside-in approach. At the beginning it's just all instinct. Joanna: So if you pick up your guitar, does that mean it always starts in music and then goes into writing? Or is that you only pick up a guitar if it's going to be musical? Alicia: I think I'm responding to what's inside me. It's almost like a need, as opposed to, “I'm going to sit down and work.” I mean, obviously I sit down and work a lot, but I think in that early stage of anything, it's more like my fingers are itching to play something, and so I sit down and pick up my guitar. Sometimes nothing comes out and sometimes the kernel of a song comes out. Or I'm at a café, and I often like to write when I'm feeling a little bit discombobulated, just to go into the complexity of things or use challenging emotions as fuel. I really do use it as a—I don't know if therapeutic is the word, but I think it maybe is. I write often, as I always have, as I said before, to understand what I'm thinking. Like Joan Didion said—to process difficult emotions, to let go of stuck places. So I think I create almost more out of a sense of just what I need in the moment. Sometimes it's just for fun. Sometimes picking up a guitar, I just have a moment so I sit down and mess around. Sometimes it's to help me struggle with something. It doesn't always start in music. That was a random example. I might sit down to write because I have an hour and I think, I haven't written in a while. Or I do have an informal daily writing thing where I'll try to generate one loose draft of something a day, even if it's only ten pages. I mean, sorry, ten words. Joanna: I was going to say! Alicia: No, no. Ten words. I'm sorry. It's often poetry, so it feels like a lot when it's ten words. I'll just sit down with no pressure, no goal, no intention to make anything specific. Just open the floodgates and see what comes out. That's where every single project of mine has started. Joanna: Yes, I do love that. Obviously, I'm a discovery writer and intuitive, same as you. I think very much this idea of, especially when you said you feel discombobulated, that's when you write. I almost feel like I need that. I'm not someone who writes every day. I don't do ten lines or whatever. It's that I'll feel that sense of pressure building up into “this is going to be something.” I will really only write or journal when that spills over into— “I now need to write and figure out what this is.” Alicia: Yes. It's almost a form of hunger. It feels to me similar to when you eat a great meal and then you're good for a while. You're not really thinking of it, and then it builds up, like you said, and then there's a need—at least the first half of creativity. I really separate my generation and my editing. So my generative practice is all openness, no critique, just this maybe therapeutic, maybe curious, wandering and seeing what happens. Then once I have a draft, my incisive editing mind is welcome back in, which has been shut out from that early process. So that's a really different experience. Those early stages of creativity are almost out of need more than obligation. Joanna: Well, just staying with that generative practice. Obviously you've mentioned your study of and practice of Jewish tradition and Jewish spirituality. Steven Pressfield in his books has talked about his prayer to the muse, and I've got on my wall here—I don't talk about this very often, actually — I have a muse picture, a painting of what I think of as a muse spirit in some form. So do you have any spiritual practices around your generative practice and that phase of coming up with ideas? Alicia: I love that question, and I wish I had a beautiful, intentional answer. My answer is no. I think I experience creativity as its own spiritual practice itself. I do love individual prayer and meditation and things like that, but for me those are more to address my specifically spiritual health and happiness and connectedness. I'm just a dive-in kind of person. As a musician, I have friends who have elaborate backstage rituals. I have to do certain things to take care of my voice, but even that, it's mostly vocal rest as opposed to actively doing things. There's a bit of an on/off switch for me. Joanna: That's interesting. Well, I do want to ask you about one of your projects, this collaboration with a high school on a musical performance, I Was a Desert: Songs of the Matriarchs, and also your Girls in Trouble songs about women in the Torah. On your website, I had a look at the school, the high school, and the musical performance. It was extraordinary. I was watching you in the school there and it's just such extraordinary work. It very much inspired me—not to do it myself, but it was just so wonderful. I do urge people to go to your website and just watch a few minutes of it. I'm inspired by elements of religion, Christian and Jewish, but I wondered if you've come up against any issues with adaptation—respecting your heritage but also reinventing it. How has this gone for you. Any advice for people who want to incorporate aspects of religion they love but are worried about responses? Alicia: Well, I have to say, coming from the Jewish tradition, that is a core practice of Judaism—reinterpreting our texts and traditions, wrestling with them, arguing with them, reimagining them. I don't know if you're familiar with Midrash, but just in case some of your listeners aren't sure I'll explain it. There's essentially an ancient form of fanfic called Midrash, which was the ancient rabbis, and we still do it today, taking a biblical story that seems to have some kind of gap or inconsistency or question in it and writing a story to fill that gap or recast the story in an interestingly different light. So we have this whole body of literature over thousands of years that are these alternate or added-on adventures, side quests of the biblical characters. What I'm doing from a Jewish perspective is very much in line with a traditional way of interacting with text. I've certainly never gotten any pushback, especially as I work in progressive Jewish communities. I think if I were in an extremely fundamentalist community, there would be a lot of different issues around gender and things like that. The interpretive process, even in those communities, is part of how we show respect for the text. When I was working with the high school—and I just want to call out the choir director, Ethan Chen, who has an incredible project where he brings in a different artist every two years to work with the choir, and they tend to have a different cultural focus each time. He invited me specifically to integrate my songwriting about biblical women with his amazing high school choir. I was really worried at first because most of them are not Jewish—very few of them, if any. I wanted to respect their spiritual paths and their religious heritages and not impose mine on them. So I spent a lot of time at the beginning saying, this project has religious source material, but essentially it is a creative reinterpretive project. I am not coming to you to bring the religious material to you. I'm coming to take the shared Hebrew Bible myths and then reinterpret those myths through a lens of how they might reflect our own personal struggles, because that's always my approach to these ancient stories. I wanted to really make that clear to the students. It was such a joy to work with them. Joanna: It's such an interesting project. Also, I find with musicians in general this idea of performance. You've written this thing—or this thing specifically with the school—and it doesn't exist again, right? You're not selling CDs of that, I presume. Whereas compared to a book, when we write a book, we can sell it forever. It doesn't exist as a performance generally for an author of a memoir or a novel. It carries on existing. So how does that feel, the performance idea versus the longer-lasting thing? I mean, I guess the video's there, but the performance itself happened. Alicia: I do know what you mean. Absolutely. We did, for that reason, record it professionally. We had the sound person record it and mix it, so it is available to stream. I'm not selling CDs, but it's out there on all the streaming services, if people want to listen. I do also have the scores, so if a choir wanted to sing it. The main point that you're making is so true. I think there's actually something very sacred about live performance—that we're all in the moment together and then the moment is over. I love the artefacts of the writing life. I love writing books. I love buying and reading books and having them around, and there's piles of them everywhere in this room I'm standing in. I feel like being on stage, or even teaching, is a very spiritual practice for me, because it's in some ways the most in-the-moment I ever am. The only thing that matters is what's happening right then in that room. It's fleeting as it goes. I'm working with the energy in the room while we're there. It's different every time because I'm different, the atmosphere is different, the people are different. There's no way to plan it. The kind of micro precision that we all try to bring to our editing—you can't do that. You can practice all you want and you should, but in the moment, who knows? A string breaks or there's loud sound coming from the other room. It is just one of those things. I love being reminded over and over again of the truth that we really don't control what happens. The best that we can do is ride it, surf it, be in it, appreciate it, and then let it go. Joanna: I think maybe I get a glimpse of that when I speak professionally, but I'm far more in control in that situation than I guess you were with—I don't know how many—was it a hundred kids in that choir? It looked pretty big. Alicia: It was amazing. It was 130 kids. Yes. Joanna: 130 kids! I mean, it was magic listening to it. And yes, of course, showing my age there with buying a CD, aren't I? Alicia: Well, I do still sell some CDs of Girls in Trouble on tour, because I have a bunch of them and people still buy them. I'm always so grateful because it was an easier life for touring musicians when we could just bring CDs. Now we have to be very creative about our merch. Joanna: Yes, that's a good point because people are like, “Oh yes, I'll scan your QR code and stream it,” but you might not get the money for that for ages, and it might just be five cents or whatever. Alicia: Streaming is terrible for live musicians. I mean, I don't know if you know the site Bandcamp, but it's essentially self-publishing for musicians. Bandcamp is a great way around that, and a lot of independent musicians use it because that's a place you can upload your music and people can pay $8 for an album. They can stream it on there if they want, or they can download it and have it. But, yes, it's hard out there for touring musicians. Joanna: Yes, for sure. Well, let's come to the book then. Your memoir, When We Are Born We Forget Everything. Tell us about some of the challenges of a book as opposed to these other types of performances. Alicia: Well, I come out of poetry, so that was my first love. That's what I majored in in college. That's what my MFA is in. Poetry is famously short, and I'm not one of those long-form poets. I have been trained for many years to think in terms of a one-page arc, if at all. Arc isn't even really a word that we use in poetry. So to write a full-length prose book was really an incredible education. Writing it basically took ten years from writing to publication, so probably seven years of writing and editing. I felt like there was an MFA-equivalent process in the number of classes I took, books I read, and work that went into it. So that was one of my main joys and challenges, really learning on the job to write long-form prose coming out of poetry. How to keep the engine going, how to think about ending one chapter in a way that leaves you with some torque or momentum so that you want to go into the next chapter. How many characters is too many? Who gets names and who doesn't? Some of these things that are probably pretty basic for fiction writers were all very new to me. That was a big part of my process. Then, of course, poets don't usually have agents. So once it was done, I began to query agents. It was the normal sort of 39 rejections and then one agent who really understood what I was trying to do. She's incredible, and she was able to sell the book. The longevity of just working on something for that long—I have a lot of joy in that longevity—but it does sometimes feel like, is this ever going to happen, or am I on a fool's errand? Joanna: I guess, again, the difference with performance is you have a date for the performance and it's done then. I suppose once you get a contract, then for sure it has to be done. But memoir in particular, you do have to set boundaries, because of course your life continues, doesn't it? So what were the challenges in curating what went into the book? Because many people listening know memoir is very challenging in terms of how personal it can be. Alicia: Yes, and one thing I think is so fascinating about memoir is choosing which lens to put on your story, on your own story. I heard early on that the difference between autobiography and memoir is that autobiography tries to give a really comprehensive view of a life, and memoir is choosing one lens and telling the story of a life through that lens, which is such a beautiful creative concept. I knew early on that I wanted this to be primarily a spiritual memoir, and also somewhat of an artistic memoir, because my creativity and my spirituality are so intertwined. It started off being spiritual, and also about my musical life, and also about my writing life. In the end, I edited out the part about my writing life, because writing about writing was just too navel-gazing. So there's nothing in there about me coming of age as a writer, which used to be in there, but that whole thing got taken out. Now it's spiritual and musical. For me, it really helped to start with those focuses, because I knew there may be things that were hugely important in my life, absolutely foundational, that were not really going to be either mentioned or gone deeply into in the book. For example, my husband teases me a lot about how few pages and words he gets. He's very important in my life, but I actually met him when I was 29, and this book really mainly takes place in the years leading up to that. There's a little bit of winding down in the first few years of my thirties, but this is not a book about my life with him. He is mentioned in it. That story is in there. Having those kinds of limitations around the canvas—there's a quote, I forget if it was Miranda July, but somebody said something like, basically when you put a limitation on your project, that's when it starts to be a work of art. Whatever it is, if you say, “I'm taking this canvas and I'm using these colours,” that's when it really begins, that initial limitation. That was very helpful. Joanna: It's also the beauty of memoir, because of course you can write different memoirs at different times. You can write something about your writing life. You can write something else about your marriage and your family later on. That doesn't all have to be in one book. I think that's actually something I found interesting. And I would also say in my memoir, Pilgrimage, my husband is barely mentioned either. Alicia: Does he tease you too? Joanna: No, I think he's grateful. He is grateful for the privacy. Alicia: That's why I keep saying, you should be grateful! Joanna: Yes. You really should. Like, maybe stop talking now. Alicia: Yes, exactly. I know. Marriage, memoir—those words should strike fear into his heart. Joanna: They definitely should. But let's just come back. When I look at your career— You just seem such an independent creative, and so I wondered why you decided to work with a traditional publisher instead of being an independent. How are you finding it as someone who's not in charge of everything? Alicia: It's a great question. The origin story for this memoir is that I was actually reading poetry at a writing conference called Bread Loaf in the States. This was 16 years ago or something. I was giving a poetry reading and afterwards an agent, not my agent, came up to me and said, you know, you have a voice. You should try writing nonfiction because you could probably sell it. Back to your question about how I support myself, I am always really hustling to make a living. It's not like I have some separate well-paying job and the writing has no pressure on it. So my ears kind of perked up. I thought, wait, getting paid for writing? Because poetry is literally not in the world. It's just not a concept for poets. That's not why we write and it's not a possibility. So a little light turned on in my brain. I thought, wow, that could be a really interesting element to add to my income stream, and it would be flexible and it would be meaningful. For a few years I thought, what nonfiction could I write? And I came up with the idea of writing a book about biblical women from a more scholarly perspective, because I teach that material and I've studied it. I went to speak to another agent and she said, well, you could do that, but if you actually want to sell a book, it's going to have to be more of a trade book. So if you don't want an academic press, which wouldn't pay very much, you would have to have some kind of memoir-like stories in there to just sweeten it so it doesn't feel academic. So then I began writing a little bit of spiritual memoir. I thought, okay, well, I'll write about a few moments. Then once I started writing, I couldn't stop. The floodgates really opened. That's how it ended up being a spiritual memoir with interwoven stories of biblical women. It became a hybrid in that sense. I knew from the beginning that this project—for all my saying earlier that I never plan anything and only work on instinct, I was thinking as I said that, that cannot be true. This time, I actually thought, what if, instead of coming from this pure, heart-focused place of poetry, I began writing with the intention of potentially selling a book? The way my fiction writer friends talked about selling their books. So that was always in my mind. I knew I would continue writing poetry, continue publishing with small presses, continue putting my own music out there independently, but this was a bit of an experiment. What if I try to interface with the publishing world, in part for financial sustainability? And because I had a full draft before I queried, I never felt like anyone was telling me what to write. I can't imagine personally selling a book on proposal, because I do need that full capacity to just swerve, change directions, be responsive to what the project is teaching me. I can't imagine promising that I'll write something, because I never know what I'll write. But writing at least a very solid draft first, I'm always delighted to get notes and make polish and rewrite and make things better. I took care of that freedom in the first seven years of writing and then I interfaced with the agent and publisher. Joanna: I was going to say, given that it's taken you seven to ten years to do this and I can't imagine that you're suddenly a multimillionaire from this book. It probably hasn't fulfilled the hourly rate that perhaps you were thinking of in terms of being paid for your work. I think some people think that everyone's going to end up with the massive book deal that pays for the rest of their life. I guess this book does just fit into the rest of your portfolio career. Alicia: Yes. One of the benefits of these long arcs that I like to work on is, one of them—and probably the primary one—is that the project gets to unfold on its own time. I don't think I could have rushed it if I wanted. The other is that it never really stopped me from doing any of my other work. Joanna: Mm-hmm. Alicia: So it's not like, oh, I gave up months of my life and all I got was this advance or something. It's like, I was living my life and then when I had a little bit of writing time—and I will say, it impacted my poetry. I haven't written as much poetry because I was working on this. So it wasn't like I just added it on top of everything I was already doing, but it was a pleasure to just switch to prose for a while. It was just woven into my life. I appreciated having this side project where no one was waiting for it. There were no deadlines, there was no stress around it, because I always have performances to promote and due dates for all kinds of work. It was just this really lovely arena of slow growth and play. When I wanted a reader, I could do a swap with a writer friend, but no one was ever waiting for it on deadline. So there's actually a lot of pleasure in that. Then I will say, I think I've made more from selling this than my poetry. Probably close to ten times more than I've ever made from any of my poetry. So on a poetry scale, it's certainly not going to pay for my life, but it actually does make a true financial difference in a way that much of my other work is a little more bit by bit by bit. It's actually a different scale. Joanna: Well, that's really good. I'm glad to hear that. I also want to ask you, because you've done so many things, and— I'm fascinated by your independent film, A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff. I have only watched the trailer. You are in it, you wrote it, directed it, and it's also obviously got other people in, and it's fascinating. It's about this particular point in history. I've written quite a lot of screenplay adaptations of my novels, and I've had some various amounts of interest, but the whole film industry to me is just a complete nightmare, far bigger nightmare than the book industry. So I wonder if you could maybe talk about this, because it just seems like you made a film, which is so cool. Alicia: Oh yes, thank you. Joanna: And it won awards, yes, we should say. Alicia: Did we win awards? Yes. It really, for an extremely low-budget indie film, went far further than my team and I could ever have imagined. I will say I never intended to make a film. Like most of the best things in my life, it really happened by accident. When I was living in New York— I lived there for many years—the 2008 financial collapse happened and I happened to have an arts grant that gave a bunch of artists workspace, studio space, in essentially an abandoned building in the financial district. It was an empty floor of a building. The floor had been left by the previous tenant, and there's a nonprofit that takes unused real estate in the financial district and lets artists work in it for a while. So I was on Wall Street, which was very rare for me, but for this year I was working on Wall Street. Even though I was working on poems, the financial collapse happened around me, and I did get inspired by that to create a one-woman show, which was more of a theatre show. That was already a huge leap for me because I had no real theatre experience, but it was experimental and growing out of my poetry practice and my music. It was a musical one-woman show about the financial collapse from a spiritual perspective, apparently. So I performed that. I documented it, and then a friend who lives in Portland, Oregon, where I now live, said, “I'm a theatre producer, I'd like to produce it here.” So then I rewrote it and did a run here in Portland of that show. Essentially, I started to tour it a little bit, but I got tired of it. It was too much work and it never really paid very much, and I thought, this is impacting my life negatively. I just want to do a really good documentation of the show. So I wanted to hire a theatre documentarian to just document the show so that it didn't disappear, like you were saying before about live performance. But one of the people I talked to actually ended up being an artistic filmmaker, as opposed to a documentarian. She watched the archival footage, just a single camera of the show, and said, “I don't think you should do this again and film it with three cameras. I think you should make it into a feature film. And in fact, I think maybe I should direct it, because there's all this music in it and I also direct music videos.” We had this kind of mind meld. Joanna: Mm. Alicia: I never intended to make a film, but she is a visionary director and I had this piece of IP essentially, and all the music and the writing. We adapted it together. We did it here in Portland. We did all the fundraising ourselves. We did not interface with Hollywood really. I think that would be, I just can't imagine. I love Hollywood, but I'm not really connected, and I can't imagine waiting for someone to give us permission or a green light to make this. It was experimental and indie, so we just really did it on the cheap. We had an amazing producer who helped us figure out how to do it with the budget that we had. We worked really hard fundraising, crowdfunding, asking for donations, having parties to raise money, and then we just did it and put it out there. I think my main advice—and I hear this a lot on screenwriting podcasts—is just make the thing. Make something, as opposed to trying to get permission to make something. Because unless you're already in that system, it's going to be really hard to get permission to make it. Once you make something, that leads to something else, which leads to something else. So even if it's a very short thing, or even if it's filmed on your phone, just actually make the thing. That turned out to be the right thing for us. Joanna: Yes, I mean, I feel like that is what underpins us as independent creatives in general. As an independent author, I feel the same way. I'm never asking permission to put a book in the world. No, thank you. Alicia: Exactly. We have a vision and we do it. It's harder in some ways, but that liberation of being able to really fully create our vision without having to compromise it or wait for permission, I think it's such a beautiful thing. Joanna: Well, we're almost out of time, but I do want to ask you about creative confidence. Alicia: Hmm. Joanna: I feel I'm getting a lot of sense about this at the moment, with all the AI stuff that's happening. When you've been creating a long time, like you and I have, we know our voice and we can lean into our voice. We are creatively confident. We'll fail a lot, but we'll just push on and try things and see what happens. Newer creators are struggling with this kind of confidence. How do I know what is my voice? How do I know what I like? How do I lean into this? So give us some thoughts about how to find your voice and how to find that creative confidence if you don't feel you have it. Alicia: I love that. One thing I will say is that I always think whatever is arising is powerful material to create from. So if a lack of confidence is arising, that's a really powerful feeling to directly explore and not just try to ignore. Although sometimes one has to just ignore those feelings. But to actually explore that feeling, because AI can't have that, right? AI can't really feel a crisis of confidence, and humans can. So that's a gift that we have, those kinds of sensitivities. I think to go really deep into whatever is arising, including the sense that we don't have the right to be creating, or we're not good enough, or whatever it is. Then I always do come back to a quote. I think it might have been John Berryman, but I'm forgetting which poet said it. A younger poet said, “How will I ever know if I'm any good?” And this famous poet said something like—I'm paraphrasing—”You'll never know if you're any good. If you have to know, don't write.” That has been really liberating to me, actually. It sounds a little harsh, but it's been really liberating to just let go of a sense of “good enough.” There is no good enough. The great writers never know if they're good enough. Coming back to this idea of just making without permission—the practice of doing the thing is being a writer. Caring and trying to improve our craft, that's the best that we can have. There's never going to be a moment where we're like, yes, I've nailed this. I am truly a hundred per cent a writer and I have found my voice. Everything's always changing anyway. I would say, either go into those feelings or let those feelings be there. Give them a little tea. Tell them, okay, you're welcome to be here, but you don't get to drive the boat. And then return to the practice of making. Joanna: Absolutely. Great. So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Alicia: Everything is on my website, which is AliciaJo.com, and also on Instagram at @ohaliciajo. I'd love to say hello to anyone who's interested in similar topics. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Alicia. That was great. Alicia: Thank you. I love your podcast. I'm so grateful for all that you've given the writing world, Jo.The post Creative Confidence, Portfolio Careers, And Making Without Permission with Alicia Jo Rabins first appeared on The Creative Penn.

התוכן ביטול גזירת המן היתה ע"י קיום בקשת אסתר "לך כנוס את כל היהודים וצומו עלי שלשת ימים". ובזה מצינו חידוש מיוחד שגם הטף השתתפו בצום. וזה לא הי' מצד חינוך, כי: 1) התחלת החינוך בכלל, ובפרט – לתענית, הוא בגיל מאוחר יותר, וגם אז – רק לשעות, ולא "שלשת ימים"! 2) מלשון המדרש משמע שביטול הגזירה הי' בעיקר בזכות הטף, דמזה משמע שזה לא הי' אצלם רק בתור חינוך. 3) ענין החינוך בכלל הוא כדי להרגיל אותו לזמן החיוב, אבל צום זה הי' חיוב חד פעמי! ומכ"ז מוכח שהכוונה ב"וצומו עלי וגו'" היתה לכתחילה גם לקטנים. והביאור: גם אצל הגדולים לא הי' ביטול הגזירה בזכות השכל שלהם אלא מצד קטנות (וביטול) השכל שלהם – מסירות הנפש להקב"ה באופן ד"עד דלא ידע". ההוראה ממ"ש במדרש שמתי שאמותיהם של התינוקות רצו להביא להם אוכל – סירבו, והמשיכו בתעניתם: מצד א' צ"ל לאמא רגש מיוחד של רחמנות על ילדיהן. אבל מצד שני – מיד כאשר שומעת שמרדכי אומר להם לצום – נופלות השאלות ונותנת לילדים לקיים הוראותיו! ב' חלקים מהתוועדות פורים ה'תשכ"ח ל"הנחה פרטית" או התרגום ללה"ק של השיחה: https://thedailysicha.com/?date=02-03-2026 Synopsis Haman's decree was annulled when the Jewish people fulfilled Esther's request to “Go, assemble all the Jews and fast on my behalf…do not eat and do not drink for three days…” Here we find something unparalleled – that even the children fasted. And it wasn't for purposes of chinuch because: (1) Children are not trained to fast until an older age, and even then, only for a few hours, not for three days. (2) The Midrash implies that Haman's decree was annulled primarily in the merit of the children fasting, which indicates that their fasting was an integral part of the fast, not just for purposes of chinuch. (3) The purpose of chinuch is to train a child to do something that he will later be obligated to do, whereas this was a one-time fast that the children would not have to observe in the future. rather, the explanation is as follows: Even for the adults, the decree was annulled not because of their intellect, but because of the childlike property within them (and the bitul of their intellect), namely, their mesirus nefesh in the manner of ad d'lo yada (“until one does not know…”). The Midrash says that when the mothers wanted to bring food to their children, the children refused and insisted on continuing to fast with Mordechai. The lesson is that while it is true that a mother must have a sense of compassion, especially for her children, nevertheless, the moment she hears that Mordechai instructed the children to fast, all her questions fall away and she allows the children to fulfill his directive.2 excerpts from farbrengen of Purim 5728 For a transcript in English of the Sicha: https://thedailysicha.com/?date=02-03-2026 לזכות אהרן דוד הלוי בן הדרה שי' ליום ההולדת שלו י"ג אדרלשנת ברכה והצלחה, ואריכות ימים ושנים טובות‏*לזכות הת' חיים שי' יוניק ליום ההולדת שלו י"ג אדר - לשנת ברכה והצלחה, ואריכות ימים ושנים טובותנדבת הוריו ר' דוד וזוגתו מרת חנה שיחיו יוניק

This wasn't just another Shabbat. This was the kind of Shabbat that reminds you history isn't something we read, it's something we walk into.At Chabad NDG in Montreal, a Persian-themed Shabbat table became something deeper: a meeting point between ancient Persia and modern Iran. Between the story of Haman and the voices of real Iranian activists fighting for freedom today. Between fear… and courage.Then came the moment no one planned.Walking to synagogue the next morning, before even hearing the news, the streets began to speak. Neighbors stopped, embraced, thanked. By the afternoon, the entire area around Chabad NDG filled with music, celebration, life. And suddenly, an ancient custom, making noise for Haman felt different.Because this isn't just about a villain from 2,500 years ago.From medieval children smashing stones with his name, to the teachings of the Rebbe, to a Midrash where noise literally drives away darkness—this episode explores a powerful idea:Sometimes holiness isn't quiet. Sometimes, the most spiritual thing you can do… is make noise. Not noise of chaos. Noise of clarity. Noise that says: Didan Natzach. We are still here.Key TakeawaysHaman is not just a character, he's a pattern. Every generation meets its version of Amalek. The question isn't if, it's how we respond.Noise can be holy. From ancient Jewish customs to Midrashic stories, making noise isn't childish, it's spiritual resistance. It's the soul refusing to be silent in the face of darkness.Joy is not denial, it's defiance. The celebrations outside weren't ignoring reality. They were transforming it. That's the deepest Purim energy: turning fear into song.The street became a synagogue. When neighbors hug you, when music fills the air, when gratitude replaces tension, you realize holiness doesn't only live inside walls.Children understand something we forget. They bang, they stomp, they erase Haman without overthinking it. There's a purity in that. A clarity adults sometimes lose.“Didan Natzach” is not just a phrase, it's a posture. It means: we don't wait for darkness to pass. We confront it. Together. Loudly. Joyfully.Available now:Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Forgiveness-Experiment-What-Would-Your/dp/1069217638Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FR2QNJL6Audiobook: https://bit.ly/4tPFZhVSupport the showGot your own question for Rabbi Bernath? He can be reached at rabbi@jewishndg.com or http://www.theloverabbi.comSingle? You can make a profile on www.JMontreal.com and Rabbi Bernath will help you find that special someone.Donate and support Rabbi Bernath's work http://www.jewishndg.com/donateFollow Rabbi Bernath's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ybernathAccess Rabbi Bernath's Articles on Relationships https://medium.com/@loverabbi

Send a textThis wasn't just another Shabbat. This was the kind of Shabbat that reminds you history isn't something we read, it's something we walk into.At Chabad NDG in Montreal, a Persian-themed Shabbat table became something deeper: a meeting point between ancient Persia and modern Iran. Between the story of Haman and the voices of real Iranian activists fighting for freedom today. Between fear… and courage.Then came the moment no one planned.Walking to synagogue the next morning, before even hearing the news, the streets began to speak. Neighbors stopped, embraced, thanked. By the afternoon, the entire area around Chabad NDG filled with music, celebration, life. And suddenly, an ancient custom, making noise for Haman felt different.Because this isn't just about a villain from 2,500 years ago.From medieval children smashing stones with his name, to the teachings of the Rebbe, to a Midrash where noise literally drives away darkness—this episode explores a powerful idea:Sometimes holiness isn't quiet. Sometimes, the most spiritual thing you can do… is make noise. Not noise of chaos. Noise of clarity. Noise that says: Didan Natzach. We are still here.Key TakeawaysHaman is not just a character, he's a pattern. Every generation meets its version of Amalek. The question isn't if, it's how we respond.Noise can be holy. From ancient Jewish customs to Midrashic stories, making noise isn't childish, it's spiritual resistance. It's the soul refusing to be silent in the face of darkness.Joy is not denial, it's defiance. The celebrations outside weren't ignoring reality. They were transforming it. That's the deepest Purim energy: turning fear into song.The street became a synagogue. When neighbors hug you, when music fills the air, when gratitude replaces tension, you realize holiness doesn't only live inside walls.Children understand something we forget. They bang, they stomp, they erase Haman without overthinking it. There's a purity in that. A clarity adults sometimes lose.“Didan Natzach” is not just a phrase, it's a posture. It means: we don't wait for darkness to pass. We confront it. Together. Loudly. Joyfully.Available now:Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Forgiveness-Experiment-What-Would-Your/dp/1069217638Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FR2QNJL6Audiobook: https://bit.ly/4tPFZhV Support the showGot your own question for Rabbi Bernath? He can be reached at rabbi@jewishndg.com or http://www.theloverabbi.comSingle? You can make a profile on www.JMontreal.com and Rabbi Bernath will help you find that special someone.Donate and support Rabbi Bernath's work http://www.jewishndg.com/donateFollow Rabbi Bernath's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ybernathAccess Rabbi Bernath's Articles on Relationships https://medium.com/@loverabbi

התוכן את הענין היחידי (עיקרי) שעמלק עשה לבנ"י שמסופר עליו בתורה בפרשת עמלק הוא "אשר קרך בדרך וגו'", וע"ז מזהירה התורה "זכור" ו"אל תשכח"! והביאור עפמ"ש במדרש ש"אשר קרך" הוא מלשון קרירות – "צננך והפשירך מרתיחתך, שהיו העכו"ם יראים להלחם בכם, ובא זה והתחיל והראה מקום לאחרים, משל לאמבטי רותחת וכו'", ובעבודה: בשעה שיהודי רואה השגחה פרטית או נס כמו זה שהקב"ה מציל אותנו מאלו העומדים עלינו לכלותנו, בא עמלק ומנסה לקררו ולהטיל בו ספיקות שאולי אי"ז נס אלא "כחי ועוצם ידי" וכו', הנה עליו לדעת באופן של "זכור" ו"אל תשכח" שענין הקרירות שייך לעמלק ויצה"ר שבו ולא ליהודי! וזהו הדרך ל"מלחמה לה' בעמלק" ולנצח את עמלק!משיחת פורים ה'תשכ"ז ל"הנחה פרטית" או התרגום ללה"ק של השיחה: https://thedailysicha.com/?date=27-02-2026 Synopsis The only thing recounted in the Torah that Amalek did to the Jewish people is “how he encountered you (asher karcha) on the way…”, and of this the Torah commands to “Remember” and “do not forget.” This can be understood based on the teaching of the Midrash that that “asher karcha” comes from the word kerirus (coldness), “he cooled you off and tempered your boiling heat, for the nations had been afraid to attack you, and this one came first and provided the possibility for others. This can be compared to a boiling bath…” In terms of a Jew's Divine service: when a Jew observes a miracle or hashgacha protis, such as when we are saved from those who rise up against us to destroy us, “Amalek” comes and tries to cool him down and cast doubts: maybe it wasn't a miracle, but “my strength and the might of my hand” etc. One must remember and not forget that this coldness belongs to Amalek and to the yetzer hara – not to a Jew. In this way, “Hashem will wage war against Amalek” and Amalek will be defeated.Excerpt from sichah of Purim 5727 For a transcript in English of the Sicha: https://thedailysicha.com/?date=27-02-2026 לזכות חנה שתחי' סלונים לרגל היכנסה לגיל המצוות י' אדר ה'תשפ"ונדבת הורי' ר' יהודה ליב וחיה מושקא שיחיו סלונים

Welcome to our daily Bitachon and our weekly Shabbat message. As Purim approaches, we'll discuss our second class on the connection between Shabbat and Purim. The Megillah says bayamim hahem ("in those days") regarding the story of Esther. The Midrash Esther points out that this same phrase appears in Nechemia 13 , discussing chilul Shabbat (desecration of Shabbat), where Nechemia saw people pressing grapes on the holy day. The Midrash explains that during Achashverosh's party, the angels argued before God: "The Beis HaMikdash is destroyed, and this rasha (wicked man) is partying!" Hashem responded that the days of the party corresponded to the days the Jewish people had desecrated Shabbat. We see here that a root cause of the Megillah story was a weakness in Shabbat observance. The Shield of Shabbat It is interesting to note that when Amalek first attacked— Vayavo Amalek —the Gemara ( Shabbat 118b ) tells us that if the Jewish people had not desecrated Shabbat by attempting to gather the mann (manna), Amalek never would have come. Haman and Amalek are only empowered when the Jewish people falter in Shabbat. The Sefer Hago'os Vechidushim notes that on the seventh day of his party—which was Shabbat—Achashverosh intentionally brought out promiscuous topics. He wanted the Jewish people to sin specifically on Shabbat because he knew that is where their power lies. However, the Jewish people passed the test; while the Persians were acting lewdly, the Jews were busy with Divrei Torah and Divrei Tishbachos (words of praise). Esther's Seven Maidens The Gemara in Megillah 13a asks why Esther had seven maidens. Rava explains it was so she could keep track of the days of the week to ensure she never forgot Shabbat. Each maiden had a name representing a day—for argument's sake, we'll call Sunday's maiden "Sunny" and Monday's "Moonie." This allowed Esther to count, "Today is day one to the Sabbath... today is day two..." until the seventh maiden arrived on Shabbat. The Sefer Rei'ach Dudaim (from the Bnei Yissaschar) explains that Esther was so meticulous because she knew that if the Jewish people kept Shabbat, it would lead to the destruction of Amalek. This is why we read Parashat Zachor —the command to remember to wipe out Amalek—specifically on a Shabbat. Measure for Measure On that same Shabbat, Vashti was executed. The Gemara ( Megillah 12b ) notes this was mida keneged mida (measure for measure). Because Vashti forced Jewish girls to work on Shabbat while unclothed, she was ordered to appear before the King in the same manner, leading to her death. The Siftei Chachamim adds that both Achashverosh and Vashti were engaged in a "tug of war" to make the Jews sin on Shabbat. We fought back then—and we fight back now—by keeping Shabbat properly with Kiddush, Torah, and song. The Root of Emunah In Shemot 17 , we see the sequence: the people gathered manna on Shabbat, then they arrived at Rephidim and complained about water, asking: "Is Hashem among us or not?" Immediately after this question, Amalek attacked. Rashi famously compares this to a child on a father's shoulders asking, "Where is my father?" The father puts the child down, and a dog bites him. So, did Amalek come because they lacked Emunah (faith), or because they broke Shabbat? The answer is: both . If they had kept Shabbat, their Emunah would have been so fortified that they never would have doubted God's presence. The Navi Yechezkel ( Chapter 20 ) says God wanted to destroy the Jews in the desert because they desecrated His Sabbaths. Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetsky asks: wasn't it the Golden Calf or the Spies that caused that decree? He answers that the weakness in Shabbat was the "gateway" sin. Without the shield of Shabbat, their Emunah crumbled, leading to the Golden Calf, the Spies, and eventually the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash . Turning it Around To turn everything around, we need a chizuk (strengthening) in Shabbat. This is the opportunity of Shabbat Zachor . By strengthening our Shabbat, we provide the spiritual power to finally wipe out Amalek.

The Zohar HaKadosh (Vayikra ק״ד ) teaches that because Hashem is so loving and merciful, when a harsh decree hangs over a person, Hashem sends him a precious gift that can help annul it. That gift often comes in the form of a mitzvah opportunity. The example the Zohar gives is when a poor person comes asking for charity. If the person seizes the opportunity and gives with generosity and a good heart, he draws upon himself a special protection that can ward off the decree. The Midrash in Vayikra Rabbah teaches: יותר ממה שבעל הבית עושה עם העני — העני עושה עם בעל הבית — more than the giver does for the poor man, the poor man does for the giver. The poor man grants the giver life, livelihood, and success. A giver may feel the poor person is indebted to him, but in truth, it is often the other way around. Rabbi Sneer Guetta related a story he heard from someone who knew it firsthand. It took place about forty years ago in Israel. One day a man named Avi was arranging the bins in front of his vegetable store when he noticed an infant lying in a broken carriage, covered with a dirty blanket, with no adult nearby. He began asking the people around if the baby belonged to them, but they all said no. Avi waited several minutes and still no one came. Finally he saw a woman searching through a garbage pail and went over to ask her. She said the baby was hers and apologized for worrying him. Avi immediately understood that she was in desperate financial straits and told her that he wanted to take upon himself the responsibility of supporting her child. He instructed her to come once a month to pick up an envelope with money, and that whenever she needed, she could simply come to the store and take whatever food the baby required. The woman burst into tears and thanked him from the depths of her heart. And indeed, every month she came for the envelope, and often she came for food. This arrangement continued not for one year, not for two years, but for more than twenty years. Avi never told her "enough already." He never limited what she could take. Then one day he received a call from a young man who told him, "You are an angel sent from Heaven." Avi did not understand what he meant. The young man introduced himself as Shimon and said he was engaged to Emily — the girl Avi had been supporting for the past twenty years. Avi was overjoyed to hear she was engaged. Shimon continued that his own family was well-established and from now on he himself would support Emily, so Avi could stop preparing the monthly envelopes. To Shimon's surprise, Avi pleaded with him to allow him to continue supporting her. Shimon could not understand. She no longer needed the money. Why insist? Avi then told him the story. Twenty years earlier, Avi had become entangled with dangerous criminals. One day they came to his store armed with guns and attempted to kill him. Miraculously he escaped. Shaken, he went to a great rabbi to ask what he should do — whether he should flee the country or change his identity. The rabbi told him he was certain that Hashem operates by the principle of מדה כנגד מדה so that if he would give life to another, Hashem would give life to him. He advised Avi to find someone whose life he could sustain. Avi answered that he did not know of anyone. The rabbi told him to pray that Hashem would send him the opportunity. The very next day Avi found that abandoned baby outside his store. From that day forward, he understood that supporting her was the mission that was sustaining his own life. Now he begged to be allowed to continue. Shimon listened, but he still felt that once Emily no longer needed the support, it would not be proper tzedakah. He asked Avi to hold off on sending the next envelope while he considered the matter. That very week, the criminals returned — and this time they took Avi's life. It was clear that his allotted time had come, and that the twenty years Hashem had granted him through that mitzvah had reached their end. The man who told Rabbi Guetta this story had been at Avi's funeral and personally confirmed the details. Most of the time, the effects of giving are not so dramatic or visible. But the lesson remains the same: whenever we help another person or give charity, we must realize that it is we who are gaining the most.

We come to the end of chapter 28 in Exodus but there's a few more things that need to be covered in this chapter.  One is we need to study the Ureem and Thummeem in more detail.  The reason being is there is teaching from the orthodox rabbis that turns the Ureem and Thummeem into objects that are more related to science fiction that reality.  So what did those rabbis teach?  What was it based upon?  Once we see that there teaching is their view, their opinion, not based upon fact, we see their views are more fantasy than something that we'd say is real.  A popular rabbinc view is that the Ureem and Thummeem were related to the stones on the breast piece of the High priest.  It seems possible that this comes from the rabbinic view that the Ureem for instance are lights since they said Ureem is nothing more than the plural for the Hebrew word for light.  See the pictures below. These are summaries of the two Hebrew words.  The top picture is for the word Ureem and the one below is for the Hebrew word Or.  The word Ureeem is masculine and the Hebrew word Or, meaning light, is feminine!  This is just one problem with saying that Ureem is the Hebrew word for lights or the plural of Or.  The second issue is the spelling.  The top picture sows that Ureem's first two letters are אוּ and notice the location of the "dot" or what is known as a dagesh - וּ.  The picture below shows the first two letters of the Hebrew word Or and notice the position of the dagesh אוֹ.  The dagesh is in a different location as one can see - וֹ.  The difference is the first gives the sound UR and the second gives the sound OR.  The spelling is different and the pronunciation is different.  Ureem is NOT the plural of the Hebrew word OR meaning light.  The letters are the same in both words but the dagesh, the "dot" used for specific vowel sounds is different.  It seems that the rabbis dismissed these galring differences, concluded that Ureeem was the plural of Or, and then seemed to say the stones were used as "lights" on the breastpiece.  Understanding the Hebrew shows that is likely fantasy and can not be the truth. The Ureem and Thummeem were real.  They were put in the pocket of the linen breast piece of the High Priest.  The wording implies they were physical objects.  The Torah and the words given to Moses to write down about the Ureem and Thummeem seem to contradict what the orthodox rabbis came up with.  It is part of their midrasheem (what they got from study); it is views and ideas made up by these rabbis to try and explain something that is enigmatic, something hidden, something difficult to understand and know.  I urge you to listen to the podcast I did on Rabbinic Midrasheem or the man made views and ideas the rabbis came up with that in many cases are unbiblical and not based upon reason or fact.  It was their attempt to try and make sense of those things in Torah and seemingly have no answers or are totally beyond our understanding.  Here's the link to that podcast -  https://lightofmenorah.podbean.com/e/the-gospel-according-to-moses-genesis-lesson-47-special-what-is-rabbinc-midrash/ Another issue is to discuss another rabbinic fantasy that the rabbis made up.  "There is a mystical Jewish tradition (in other words a MIDRASH or something a mna made up to explain something) that the high priest of Israel would enter the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle or temple with a rope tied to his foot. The purpose of the rope, according to the tradition, was to retrieve the high priest's body in case he died in the course of his duties within the Holy of Holies."  (See the article, "Did the high priest have a rope tied to him when he entered the Holy of Holies?" found at the Bible study website www.GotQuestions.org or https://www.gotquestions.org/high-priest-rope.html) This is totally false and it is something that the rabbis made up and has stuck with us ever since.  We need to see that this "tradition" is antibiblical and refutes THE VERY WORDS OF GOD as to how the High Priest is to dress when he enters the Holy of Holies once per year on Yom Kippur.  I found it amazing as to how many Christians believe this to be true.  It is clear that most Christians are poorly trained in the Bible.  It is even taught in the Creation and Earth History Museum just outside of San Diego.  The false tradition is portrayed as true and in their description they even go against the Bible and God's word and instruction.   Here's an awesome scholary article on this issue that I believe will only add to your study - "That Rope around the High Priest's Ankle," by Todd Bolen at this link https://www.bibleplaces.com/blog/2009/01/that-rope-around-high-priests-ankle/ Rev. Ferret - who is this guy?  (Ferret - on the Pergamum acropolis in Turkey) What's his background?  Why should I listen to him?  Check his background at this link - https://www.dropbox.com/s/ortnret3oxcicu4/BackgrndTeacher%20mar%2025%202020.pdf?dl=0

In this Parshas Terumah review, Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe focuses on the practical meaning of the Tabernacle (Mishkan) command: “Make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell in them” (Exodus 25:8)—not “in it,” but “in them” (the people). God doesn't need a house; the Mishkan is for building intimate closeness between Hashem and the Jewish people. The Temple (and today synagogues/study halls) is a place of relationship, security, and nurturing divine connection—not a distant monument.Key lessons & practical applications:The Mishkan's purpose — God wants to reside within us (V'shachanti b'tocham). The Holy of Holies had two cherubim facing each other (God & Israel); when Jews follow Torah, they face; when not, they turn away. The home/temple is for private, intimate time with God.Gratitude for seeing descendants — Sarah, Rivka, and Rachel never saw grandchildren; Leah likely saw Asenat. Today's privilege of seeing grandchildren/great-grandchildren is enormous—grandparents must influence positively without interfering (e.g., no naming veto; parents alone decide).Naming & prophecy — Parents receive prophetic guidance at birth/bris (alleged Midrash). Adding a second name (e.g., after deceased relative) is common. Spontaneous additions (like Rabbi's son Yehuda-Noach at bris) reflect divine inspiration.Jealousy vs. knowledge of Hashem — First commandment (“Anochi Hashem…”) and last (“Lo tachmod”) connect: coveting denies Hashem's perfect plan for you. Compare only to your own potential.Modern miracles & awe — Technology (smartphones, Neuralink) reveals Hashem's wonders—don't let them become routine. Israeli survival despite missiles is ongoing splitting of the sea.The rabbi urges bold Jewish pride (yarmulke/tzitzit/tefillin in public), relentless self-improvement, and living with awe: see daily yesh me'ayin (creation from nothing) and thank Hashem constantly._____________This episode of the Parsha Review Podcast is dedicated in honor of Lenny & Teresa FriedmanDownload & Print the Parsha Review Notes:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ncaRyoH5iJmGGoMZs9y82Hz2ofViVouv?usp=sharingRecorded at TORCH Meyerland in the Levin Family Studios (B) to a live audience on February 20, 2026, in Houston, Texas.Released as Podcast on February 22, 2026_____________Subscribe: Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/parsha-review-podcast-rabbi-aryeh-wolbe/id1651930083)Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/22lv1kXJob5ZNLaAl6CHTQ) to stay inspired! Share your questions at awolbe@torchweb.org or visit torchweb.org for more Torah content.  _____________About the Host:Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH in Houston, brings decades of Torah scholarship to guide listeners in applying Jewish wisdom to daily life.  To directly send your questions, comments, and feedback: awolbe@torchweb.org_____________Support Our Mission:Help us share Jewish wisdom globally by sponsoring an episode at torchweb.org. Your support makes a difference!_____________Subscribe and Listen to other podcasts by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe: NEW!! Hey Rabbi! Podcast: https://heyrabbi.transistor.fm/episodesPrayer Podcast: https://prayerpodcast.transistor.fm/episodesJewish Inspiration Podcast: https://inspiration.transistor.fm/episodesParsha Review Podcast: https://parsha.transistor.fm/episodesLiving Jewishly Podcast: https://jewishly.transistor.fm/episodesThinking Talmudist Podcast: https://talmud.transistor.fm/episodesUnboxing Judaism Podcast: https://unboxing.transistor.fm/episodesRabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection: https://collection.transistor.fm/episodesFor a full listing of podcasts available by TORCH at http://podcast.torchweb.org_____________Keywords:#Torah, #Parsha, #Exodus, #Shemos, #Terumah, #Mishkan, #Dwell, #JewishPride, #HashemWithin ★ Support this podcast ★

In this Parshas Terumah review, Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe focuses on the practical meaning of the Tabernacle (Mishkan) command: “Make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell in them” (Exodus 25:8)—not “in it,” but “in them” (the people). God doesn't need a house; the Mishkan is for building intimate closeness between Hashem and the Jewish people. The Temple (and today synagogues/study halls) is a place of relationship, security, and nurturing divine connection—not a distant monument.Key lessons & practical applications:The Mishkan's purpose — God wants to reside within us (V'shachanti b'tocham). The Holy of Holies had two cherubim facing each other (God & Israel); when Jews follow Torah, they face; when not, they turn away. The home/temple is for private, intimate time with God.Gratitude for seeing descendants — Sarah, Rivka, and Rachel never saw grandchildren; Leah likely saw Asenat. Today's privilege of seeing grandchildren/great-grandchildren is enormous—grandparents must influence positively without interfering (e.g., no naming veto; parents alone decide).Naming & prophecy — Parents receive prophetic guidance at birth/bris (alleged Midrash). Adding a second name (e.g., after deceased relative) is common. Spontaneous additions (like Rabbi's son Yehuda-Noach at bris) reflect divine inspiration.Jealousy vs. knowledge of Hashem — First commandment (“Anochi Hashem…”) and last (“Lo tachmod”) connect: coveting denies Hashem's perfect plan for you. Compare only to your own potential.Modern miracles & awe — Technology (smartphones, Neuralink) reveals Hashem's wonders—don't let them become routine. Israeli survival despite missiles is ongoing splitting of the sea.The rabbi urges bold Jewish pride (yarmulke/tzitzit/tefillin in public), relentless self-improvement, and living with awe: see daily yesh me'ayin (creation from nothing) and thank Hashem constantly._____________This episode of the Parsha Review Podcast is dedicated in honor of Lenny & Teresa FriedmanDownload & Print the Parsha Review Notes:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ncaRyoH5iJmGGoMZs9y82Hz2ofViVouv?usp=sharingRecorded at TORCH Meyerland in the Levin Family Studios (B) to a live audience on February 20, 2026, in Houston, Texas.Released as Podcast on February 22, 2026_____________Subscribe: Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/parsha-review-podcast-rabbi-aryeh-wolbe/id1651930083)Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/22lv1kXJob5ZNLaAl6CHTQ) to stay inspired! Share your questions at awolbe@torchweb.org or visit torchweb.org for more Torah content.  _____________About the Host:Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH in Houston, brings decades of Torah scholarship to guide listeners in applying Jewish wisdom to daily life.  To directly send your questions, comments, and feedback: awolbe@torchweb.org_____________Support Our Mission:Help us share Jewish wisdom globally by sponsoring an episode at torchweb.org. Your support makes a difference!_____________Subscribe and Listen to other podcasts by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe: NEW!! Hey Rabbi! Podcast: https://heyrabbi.transistor.fm/episodesPrayer Podcast: https://prayerpodcast.transistor.fm/episodesJewish Inspiration Podcast: https://inspiration.transistor.fm/episodesParsha Review Podcast: https://parsha.transistor.fm/episodesLiving Jewishly Podcast: https://jewishly.transistor.fm/episodesThinking Talmudist Podcast: https://talmud.transistor.fm/episodesUnboxing Judaism Podcast: https://unboxing.transistor.fm/episodesRabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection: https://collection.transistor.fm/episodesFor a full listing of podcasts available by TORCH at http://podcast.torchweb.org_____________Keywords:#Torah, #Parsha, #Exodus, #Shemos, #Terumah, #Mishkan, #Dwell, #JewishPride, #HashemWithin ★ Support this podcast ★

Purim & The Shabbat Connection Welcome to our daily Bitachon series, and specifically to our special Erev Shabbat edition where we discuss the holiness of the day. As Purim approaches, it is the perfect time to explore the deep connection between Shabbat and the miracle of Purim. The Megillah tells us: "On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was good with wine..." (Esther 1:10). The Gemara is immediately bothered by this. This was the seventh day of the elite Shushan party, which followed 180 days of worldwide celebration. Why, only on day 187, was Achashverosh finally "content" with his wine? The King of the World The Gemara explains a fundamental rule of the Megillah: Whenever it says the word Hamelech (The King) without the name Achashverosh, it can be understood as a reference to God, the King of the World. We even see this in "Hamelech Megillot," where the top of every column begins with that word. Another famous example is "On that night, the sleep of the King was disturbed" (Esther 6:1). This doesn't just mean Achashverosh couldn't sleep; it means the King of the World "awoke," so to speak. Does God Sleep? The Midrash points out a contradiction in Tehillim. One verse says: "Behold, the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps." Yet another verse cries out: "Awake! Why do You sleep, O Lord?" The Gemara explains that this "sleep" depends on us. When we aren't keeping the mitzvot, God is kavyachol (as it were) asleep; He hides His face. This is why Haman said of the Jews, "Yeshno am echad" —there is a certain nation. The word Yeshno can be read as Yashen (sleeping). When we sleep spiritually, God remains in Hester (hiddenness)—the root of the name Esther . But when we awaken ourselves through Teshuvah , God "awakes" for us. Through the repentance of the Jewish people in Shushan, the King's "sleep" was disturbed, and the salvation began. The Contrast of the Seventh Day The Gemara in Masechet Megilla explains that "the seventh day" refers to Shabbat . On that day, the King of the World was "happy with wine." Which wine? The wine of the Jewish Kiddush . God looked at the contrast. The Midrash says that when the Persians celebrated, they spent their time in drunken, crude arguments about whose women were more beautiful. Achashverosh eventually said, "Bring Vashti to show everyone." The rest is history: she refused, she was executed, and the door opened for Esther. The salvation of Purim was birthed on Shabbat because God saw how we celebrate versus how the world celebrates. He saw us sanctifying the day with Kiddush while others were descending into debauchery. The "Et Ratzon" of Shabbat This isn't just a Purim story; it happens every week. The Tur explains that during Shabbat Mincha, we say: "As for me, may my prayer to You, Hashem, be at an auspicious time (Et Ratzon)..." Why is Mincha time on Shabbat so auspicious? The preceding verse in Tehillim mentions those who "sit and drink beer." King David is highlighting a contrast: What do other nations do on their day off? They are in the bars or rolling in the gutters. But what do the Jewish people do? Yes, we ate; yes, we drank; yes, we slept—but here we are, back in Shul for Mincha. When God sees us turn a "day off" into a "holy day," it creates a massive Et Ratzon in Heaven. That is the secret of Purim and the power of every Shabbat. By choosing to use our rest for praise and holiness, we arouse God's presence and bring about our own salvation.

What if the most “frum” thing you can do at work… is simply doing your job well?In this episode, I'm joined by Rav Dovid Gottlieb for a sharp, practical conversation built around a powerful piece from Rav Shlomo Wolbe (Alei Shur)—with guidance that every working Ben Torah needs.Soon after, we take these ideas into one of the hottest and most real-life arenas right now: religious soldiers in the IDF, and the tension of doing what's right while still missing the beis medrash, the minyan, and the Yom Tov experience. The takeaway applies to soldiers and professionals: avoid guilt, stay honest about what you're missing, and keep striving.In this episode:The Midrash about Chanuch the cobbler: how “every stitch” can be holy when your goal is to help peopleRav Wolbe's big idea: there's no such thing as truly “secular” work when you bring the right kavanaThe “Do Your Job” principle: why learning/davening at the wrong time can become a mitzvah haba'ah b'aveirahThe soldier/workforce parallel: no guilt when you're doing what Hashem needs from you now—while still feeling the loss of what you're missingBalancing the three jobs: family, parnassah, and Torah (and why there's no one-size-fits-all formula)A powerful closing charge from Rav Wolbe: Hashem hasn't given up on you—keep striving to grow in Torah“Latent awareness”: how Torah stays with you even when you're fully focused on your missionTo support Religous IDF soliers click here and support Tzalash.If you want to help us grow Shtark Tank, make sure to hit subscribe and leave a 5 star review, thanks!

Different views exist regarding the congregation's "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" response during Kaddish. All agree that this response is associated with the number 28, but there is a disagreement as to how this association is to be expressed. The significance of this number in the context of the "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" response is indicated by the Gemara, which speaks of the great rewards for reciting this response "Bechol Koho" – with all one's strength. The word "Koah" ("strength") in Gematria equals 28, and so we associate this response with the number 28. The Abudarham (Spain, 14 th century) maintained that the congregation should respond with 28 letters – "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" through "Almaya." This response consists of seven words and 28 letters. Rav Yishak Abuhab (Spain, 14 th century), cited by the Bet Yosef, ruled that one should recite 28 words – from "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" through "Da'amiran Be'alma." The Bet Yosef writes that the first view is incorrect, as one may not end the response after the word "Almaya." He brings a Midrash warning of grave punishment for those who make a separation between this word and the next word, "Yitbarach." This point is emphasized also by the great Kabbalist Rav Yosef Gikatilla (Spain, 13th century), who writes of the importance of not separating between these two words. Accordingly, the Shulhan Aruch writes that those who end their response with the word "Almaya" act incorrectly. The Magen Abraham (Rav Abraham Gombiner, Poland, 1635-1682) understood the Shulhan Aruch to mean that one should continue his response through the word "Be'alma," though the Magen Abraham himself maintained that one should respond only through "Almaya." Regardless, we generally follow the customs of the Arizal, who taught that one should respond through "Da'amiran Be'alma." There are some who respond through "De'Kudsha Berich Hu," but this practice has no halachic basis and is incorrect. Those who are accustomed to doing so should discontinue this practice. Among the Ashkenazim, many have the custom to respond only through "Almaya." This was the view of the Gaon of Vilna (1720-1797). He disputed the view that "Yitbarach" must be recited immediately after the word "Almaya," arguing that "Yitbarach" begins the next sentence. Nevertheless, some Ashkenazim add "Yitbarach" and conclude their response at that point. The Aruch Ha'shulhan (Rav Yechiel Michel Epstein, 1829-1908) observed that this was the prevalent practice among Lithuanian communities, despite the view of the Vilna Gaon. It is worth adding further insight into the connection between Kaddish and the number 28 – which, as mentioned, is the Gematria of the word "Koah." Rashi, in his opening comments to the Humash, writes that the Torah begins with the story of the world's creation in order to establish that the entire world belongs to G-d, as it is He who created it, and He thus had the authority to give Eretz Yisrael to the Jewish People. If the gentiles challenge our rights to our homeland – which they of course do, especially in our day and age – we must know that Hashem created the world and distributed it as He saw fit, and He decided to give us the Land of Israel. Rashi cites the verse in Tehillim (111:6), "Koah Ma'asav Higid Le'amo, La'tet Lahem Nahalat Goyim" – "He told His nation the power of His deeds, in order to give them the nations' territory." The story of G-d's "power," the creation of the world, is our response when nations challenge our right to the territory that we seized from the people of Canaan. Not coincidentally, the opening verse of the Torah ("Bereshit Bara Elokim…") consists of seven words and 28 letters – just like "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba…" – and Rashi links this verse to the verse "Koah Ma'asav Higid Le'amo," which begins with the word "Koah." Through our response to Kaddish, then, we access Hashem's unlimited power, expressed most strikingly through the act of creation, and this gives us the ability to withstand any challenge from our adversaries. It is worth noting in this context the famous Midrashic tradition that Moshe Rabbenu recited 515 prayers asking for the privilege of entering Eretz Yisrael (the numerical value of the word "Va'et'hanan"), and if he would have recited a 516 th prayer, Hashem would have had to grant his request. The commentaries explain that this 516 th prayer that Moshe would have recited was Kaddish, which begins with the words "Yitgadal Ve'yitkadash Shemeh Rabba." The first letters of these words (Yod, Vav, Shin, Resh) have a combined numerical value of 516 (10+6+300+200). This sheds additional light on the connection between Kaddish and Eretz Yisrael. When we recite and respond to Kaddish, we are asking that Hashem's Name should be glorified through our nation living in the land with the Bet Ha'mikdash under the reign of Mashiah, and this prayer has special power and significance. In light of this association between "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" and the number 28, it is critically important to enunciate each word. If one responds too quickly, he might likely fail to pronounce the word "Min" in the phrase ("Le'ela Min Kol Birchata"), and will thus recite fewer than 28 words. The Poskim write that one should respond "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" slowly and carefully, ensuring to properly pronounce each word. Summary: Our custom is to respond during Kaddish from "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" through "Da'amiran Be'alma" – a total of 28 words. This number is very significant, and therefore one must ensure to respond slowly and properly pronounce all the words.

The Rebbe responds to a Tu BiShvat letter, urging him to explain to a poor but G-d-fearing individual the Midrash on the poor person's offering. Drawing on Chassidus and the Zohar, he stresses that the prayer of the poor comes first and encourages speaking from the heart to inspire commitment to Chumash, Tehillim, and Tanya study. https://www.torahrecordings.com/rebbe/igroskodesh/016/005/6054

The Rebbe affirms that involvement with women is not new but deeply rooted in Torah and Midrash, highlighting their precedence even over the angels in song. He blesses this work with great success, especially by expanding both those influenced and those who influence others. https://www.torahrecordings.com/rebbe/igroskodesh/016/005/6053

In Ask Away #29 of the Everyday Judaism podcast, Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe answers a wide range of live and emailed questions on practical halacha, Jewish identity, and intentional living:Seven-grain bread — Still hamotzi (bread) because it is made from the five grains + water with bread-like consistency, texture, and taste—even with added grains/flavors.Pretzel bagels/pretzel buns — Treated as bread (hamotzi) due to consistency; the pretzel topping/flavor doesn't change the halachic status.Matzah — Hamotzi (considered bread, just unleavened); crackers generally fall into mezonot (pas haba b'kisnin/snack category).Matriarchs & grandchildren — No specific tradition explains why Sarah, Rivka, and Rachel never saw grandchildren (Isaac married after Sarah's death; Rivka died before grandchildren returned; Rachel died en route to Bethlehem). Leah likely saw at least Asenat (Dina's daughter). Rabbi emphasizes the privilege of seeing grandchildren/great-grandchildren today and grandparents' responsibility to influence positively without overstepping (e.g., no interference in naming).Naming customs — Parents alone decide children's names (no parental/grandparental veto); alleged Midrash says parents receive prophetic guidance at birth/bris. Adding a second name (e.g., after a deceased relative) is common when appropriate.God/Hashem in English — Many poskim consider “God” (G-O-D) equivalent to writing/saying Hashem's name in English—avoid casual use (“oh my God”); say “Hashem,” “Almighty,” or “Creator” instead. In blessings (e.g., Amidah in English), use “Hashem” with same kavana (focus/intent) as Ado-nai.Public Hamotzi & children — Educational (teaches brachot), but ideally includes hand-washing and actual bread-eating; without these, it's not proper netilat yadayim/hamotzi.Gluten-free bread — If made from five grains + water and bread-like, hamotzi; pure potato starch “bread” is not hamotzi (mezonot or shehakol depending on form).The rabbi stresses halachic precision (e.g., bread vs. snack distinctions), gratitude for seeing grandchildren, and avoiding casual use of God's name in English.Please submit your questions at askaway@torchweb.org_____________The Everyday Judaism Podcast is dedicated to learning, understanding and appreciating the greatness of Jewish heritage and the Torah through the simplified, concise study of Halacha, Jewish Law, thereby enhancing our understanding of how Hashem wants us to live our daily lives in a Jewish way._____________This Podcast Series is Generously Underwritten by Marshall & Doreen LernerDownload & Print the Everyday Judaism Halacha Notes:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1RL-PideM42B_LFn6pbrk8MMU5-zqlLG5This episode (Ep. #86) of the Everyday Judaism Podcast by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH is dedicated to my dearest friends, Marshall & Doreen Lerner! May Hashem bless you and always lovingly accept your prayer for good health, success and true happiness!!!Recorded in the TORCH Centre - Levin Family Studio (B) to a live audience on January 11, 2026, in Houston, Texas.Released as Podcast on February 4, 2026_____________Connect with Us:Subscribe to the Everyday Judaism PodcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/everyday-judaism-rabbi-aryeh-wolbe/id1600622789Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3AXCNcyKSVsaOLsLQsCN1CShare your questions at askaway@torchweb.org or visit torchweb.org for more Torah content.  _____________About the Host:Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH in Houston, brings decades of Torah scholarship to guide listeners in applying Jewish wisdom to daily life.  To directly send your questions, comments, and feedback: awolbe@torchweb.org_____________Support Our Mission:Help us share Jewish wisdom globally by sponsoring an episode at torchweb.org. Your support makes a difference!_____________Subscribe and Listen to other podcasts by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe: NEW!! Hey Rabbi! Podcast: https://heyrabbi.transistor.fm/episodesPrayer Podcast: https://prayerpodcast.transistor.fm/episodesJewish Inspiration Podcast: https://inspiration.transistor.fm/episodesParsha Review Podcast: https://parsha.transistor.fm/episodesLiving Jewishly Podcast: https://jewishly.transistor.fm/episodesThinking Talmudist Podcast: https://talmud.transistor.fm/episodesUnboxing Judaism Podcast: https://unboxing.transistor.fm/episodesRabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection: https://collection.transistor.fm/episodesFor a full listing of podcasts available by TORCH at http://podcast.torchweb.org_____________Keywords:#AskAway, #Torah, #Halacha, #Q&A, #Jewish, #Halacha, #Hamotzi, #Bread, #Blessings, #Matzah, #Pretzel, #Bagel, #NamingChildren, #God ★ Support this podcast ★

In Ask Away #29 of the Everyday Judaism podcast, Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe answers a wide range of live and emailed questions on practical halacha, Jewish identity, and intentional living:Seven-grain bread — Still hamotzi (bread) because it is made from the five grains + water with bread-like consistency, texture, and taste—even with added grains/flavors.Pretzel bagels/pretzel buns — Treated as bread (hamotzi) due to consistency; the pretzel topping/flavor doesn't change the halachic status.Matzah — Hamotzi (considered bread, just unleavened); crackers generally fall into mezonot (pas haba b'kisnin/snack category).Matriarchs & grandchildren — No specific tradition explains why Sarah, Rivka, and Rachel never saw grandchildren (Isaac married after Sarah's death; Rivka died before grandchildren returned; Rachel died en route to Bethlehem). Leah likely saw at least Asenat (Dina's daughter). Rabbi emphasizes the privilege of seeing grandchildren/great-grandchildren today and grandparents' responsibility to influence positively without overstepping (e.g., no interference in naming).Naming customs — Parents alone decide children's names (no parental/grandparental veto); alleged Midrash says parents receive prophetic guidance at birth/bris. Adding a second name (e.g., after a deceased relative) is common when appropriate.God/Hashem in English — Many poskim consider “God” (G-O-D) equivalent to writing/saying Hashem's name in English—avoid casual use (“oh my God”); say “Hashem,” “Almighty,” or “Creator” instead. In blessings (e.g., Amidah in English), use “Hashem” with same kavana (focus/intent) as Ado-nai.Public Hamotzi & children — Educational (teaches brachot), but ideally includes hand-washing and actual bread-eating; without these, it's not proper netilat yadayim/hamotzi.Gluten-free bread — If made from five grains + water and bread-like, hamotzi; pure potato starch “bread” is not hamotzi (mezonot or shehakol depending on form).The rabbi stresses halachic precision (e.g., bread vs. snack distinctions), gratitude for seeing grandchildren, and avoiding casual use of God's name in English.Please submit your questions at askaway@torchweb.org_____________The Everyday Judaism Podcast is dedicated to learning, understanding and appreciating the greatness of Jewish heritage and the Torah through the simplified, concise study of Halacha, Jewish Law, thereby enhancing our understanding of how Hashem wants us to live our daily lives in a Jewish way._____________This Podcast Series is Generously Underwritten by Marshall & Doreen LernerDownload & Print the Everyday Judaism Halacha Notes:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1RL-PideM42B_LFn6pbrk8MMU5-zqlLG5This episode (Ep. #86) of the Everyday Judaism Podcast by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH is dedicated to my dearest friends, Marshall & Doreen Lerner! May Hashem bless you and always lovingly accept your prayer for good health, success and true happiness!!!Recorded in the TORCH Centre - Levin Family Studio (B) to a live audience on January 11, 2026, in Houston, Texas.Released as Podcast on February 4, 2026_____________Connect with Us:Subscribe to the Everyday Judaism PodcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/everyday-judaism-rabbi-aryeh-wolbe/id1600622789Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3AXCNcyKSVsaOLsLQsCN1CShare your questions at askaway@torchweb.org or visit torchweb.org for more Torah content.  _____________About the Host:Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH in Houston, brings decades of Torah scholarship to guide listeners in applying Jewish wisdom to daily life.  To directly send your questions, comments, and feedback: awolbe@torchweb.org_____________Support Our Mission:Help us share Jewish wisdom globally by sponsoring an episode at torchweb.org. Your support makes a difference!_____________Subscribe and Listen to other podcasts by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe: NEW!! Hey Rabbi! Podcast: https://heyrabbi.transistor.fm/episodesPrayer Podcast: https://prayerpodcast.transistor.fm/episodesJewish Inspiration Podcast: https://inspiration.transistor.fm/episodesParsha Review Podcast: https://parsha.transistor.fm/episodesLiving Jewishly Podcast: https://jewishly.transistor.fm/episodesThinking Talmudist Podcast: https://talmud.transistor.fm/episodesUnboxing Judaism Podcast: https://unboxing.transistor.fm/episodesRabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection: https://collection.transistor.fm/episodesFor a full listing of podcasts available by TORCH at http://podcast.torchweb.org_____________Keywords:#AskAway, #Torah, #Halacha, #Q&A, #Jewish, #Halacha, #Hamotzi, #Bread, #Blessings, #Matzah, #Pretzel, #Bagel, #NamingChildren, #God ★ Support this podcast ★

Numerous sources emphasize the great importance and value of answering to Kaddish. In Masechet Berachot (6b), the Gemara teaches that when Hashem comes into the synagogue and sees that there are fewer than ten men present, "Miyad Hu Ko'es" – He immediately becomes angry. The Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Baghdad, 1833-1909) raised the question of why the Gemara adds the word "Miyad" – "immediately." What is added by telling us that G-d's anger is aroused instantly? The Ben Ish Hai answers by suggesting that "Miyad Hu Ko'es" means that Hashem grows angry because of "Yad" – the letters Yod and Dalet. The letter Yod equals 10, alluding to the minimum of ten Kaddishim which one should hear and respond to each day, and Dalet equals 4 – referring to the four recitations of Nakdishach which a person should hear and respond to each day. When people do not come to the Minyan, Hashem becomes angry – even though the people can pray privately, because they cannot respond to Kaddish or Nakdishach. The Gemara in Masechet Sota (49a) states that although the world's condition has been worsening progressively since the Bet Ha'mikdash was destroyed, it is sustained in the merit of the "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" response to Kaddish, and of the recitation of the Kidusha De'sidra (a section of the U'ba Le'sion prayer). Moreover, the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat (119b, according to one version of the text) teaches that if a person was deemed worthy of seventy years of suffering, he can have the decree rescinded in the merit of responding "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" with all his strength. The Gemara further states that the merit of this response can bring a person atonement even for the sin of idolatry. Another passage there in the Gemara teaches that if a person responds "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" with all his strength, the gates of Gan Eden are opened for him. Similarly, the Sefer Hasidim (Rabbenu Yehuda Ha'hasid, Germany, 1150-1217) writes that one who regularly responds "Amen" in this world earns the privilege of doing so also in the world to come. This is alluded to in the verse in Tehillim (89:53), "Baruch Hashem Le'olam Amen Ve'amen" ("Blessed is G-d forever, Amen and Amen"). The phrase "Amen Ve'amen" alludes to the response of "Amen" both in this world and the next. Another important source is the Gemara's teaching in Masechet Berachot (3a) that when Jews gather in the synagogue and declare, "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba," Hashem exclaims, "Fortunate is the king whose subjects praise him this way!" The Bet Yosef cites the Zohar as explaining that Kaddish is recited in Aramaic, instead of Hebrew, because it has the unique power to oppose the Kelipot ("shells," the harmful spiritual forces). We use the inferior language, Aramaic, so we can attack the Kelipot in their language, as it were, and this has the effect of eliminating the forces of evil from the world. Tosafot (Shabbat 119b) cite a story from the Midrash about Rabbi Yishmael Kohen Gadol, who was shown how the dreadful punishments that are decreed upon Beneh Yisrael are avoided in the merit of the response of "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba." And the Zohar states that the sign of a great Torah scholar is if he fervently looks for opportunities to respond to Kaddish. If a person rushes out of the synagogue before the final Kaddish, then even if he is a scholar, he cannot be considered a true Talmid Hacham. The Gaon of Vilna (1720-1797) writes that those who answer "Yeheh Shemeh Rabba" will be spared the suffering from the upheavals that will occur before the arrival of Mashiah. The Mishna Berura cites a passage from the Midrash describing Hashem's reaction when Jews assemble to learn Torah and then recite Kaddish – He turns to angels and exclaims, "See how My children praise me!" Importantly, however, Rav Moshe Zakuta (1625-1697) writes that one must respond "Amen" with Kavana (concentration). If a person answers mindlessly, without paying attention, then he is included, Heaven forbid, in G-d's warning, "U'bozai Yekalu" – that those who disgrace Him will be shamed (Shemuel I 2:30). It is told that Rav Mordechai Gifter (1915-2001), the esteemed Rosh Yeshiva of Telz in Cleveland, once traveled with eight students to Toronto for a wedding. They were altogether nine men, and thus could not form a Minyan, but they assumed that they would have time upon arriving in Toronto to join a Minyan for Minha. As it happened, however, the plane made an emergency landing in some small town between Cleveland and Toronto. The group needed to recite Minha there, despite not having a Minyan. To their astonishment, a worker in the airport approached them as they were starting to pray and informed them that he was Jewish and wished to join them. He could not even read Hebrew, but he told the group that he wanted to recite Kaddish, and he needed their help. They made a Minyan, and helped him recite Kaddish. Afterward, Rav Gifter spoke to him and asked why he, a Jew without any religious background, wished to pray and recite Kaddish. The man explained that his father passed away several days earlier. The night before he met this group in the airport, his father came to him in a dream and told him he needed him to recite Kaddish for him. The man asked his father how he could recite Kaddish, as he lived in a town without a Jewish community. "Don't' worry," his father said, "tomorrow I'll send you a Minyan so you can recite Kaddish." This story demonstrates how everything happens for a purpose, and that nothing is random – but additionally, it teaches us the importance of Kaddish, and the great benefit it brings to the soul of the deceased when the children recite Kaddish.

There are several different kinds of Kaddish, the first of which is commonly known as "Hasi Kaddish" – "half-Kaddish." The term "Hasi Kaddish" is actually a misnomer, as the text of this Kaddish is in fact the complete original text, composed either by the Ansheh Kenesset Ha'gedola (Men of the Great Assembly) at the beginning of the Second Commonwealth, or several generations later, by the Tanna'im. The prayers added to the other Kaddish texts were introduced later, during the period of the Geonim or the period of the Rishonim. These other texts are known to us as "Kaddish Titkabal," "Kaddish Yeheh Shelama," and "Kaddish Al Yisrael" (which is also referred to as "Kaddish De'Rabbanan"). "Kaddish Titkabal" includes a request that our prayers be answered, and it is recited after the Amida prayer, and after Shelihot. "Kaddish Yeheh Shelama" is said after the recitation of a text of Torah She'bi'chtab (Tanach), such as following an Arayat. Finally, "Kaddish Al Yisrael" is recited after a session of studying Torah She'be'al Peh (the oral Torah), such as Mishna or Gemara. This text contains a prayer for the wellbeing of the Torah scholars and their students (which is why this Kaddish is also known as "Kaddish De'Rabbanan" – the Rabbis' Kaddish). We recite this Kaddish in the morning after the Korbanot section, which includes the Mishnayot of "Ezehu Mekoman" and the Berayta of Rabbi Yishmael. It is recited again at the end of the prayer service, following the recitation of the Ketoret text which includes passages from the Gemara. This final "Kaddish Al Yisrael" after the Ketoret is known as "Kaddish Yatom" – the mourner's Kaddish, as it is recited by those in mourning for a parent. The Arizal taught that the recitation of this Kaddish by a mourner has the ability to extricate the parent from Gehinnom and bring him or her to Gan Eden. These final three Kaddish texts conclude with a prayer for peace and material blessings. The Rabbis explain that we first pray that "Yitgadal Ve'yitkadash Shemeh Rabba" – that G-d's Name should be glorified and become known throughout the world, before proceeding to ask for our personal needs. This is based on the concept that we must first pray for G-d's sake, so-to-speak, for the glory of His Name, and in this merit our personal requests will be granted. The Tur (Rabbenu Yaakob Ben Asher, Germany-Spain, 1269-1343) brings a teaching of the Midrash that if a person includes in his prayers the plea that Hashem should act for the sake of His Name ("Aseh Lema'an Shemecha, Aseh Lema'an Yeminecha…"), then he will be given the merit to greet the Shechina. We should pray not only for our own benefit, but also for the sake of the glorification of G-d's Name. This notion is alluded to in the first four words of Kaddish – "Yitgadal Ve'yitkadash Shemeh Rabba." These words begin with the letters Yod, Vav, Shin and Resh, which have the combined numerical value of 516. The Sages teach that Moshe Rabbenu prayed 515 times for the privilege of entering the Land of Israel, whereupon G-d commanded him to stop praying. Some commentators explain that Moshe was told to stop because if he had recited a 516 th prayer, then his prayer would have been accepted (and it was decreed that Moshe must not go into the land). Moshe prayed solely for the purpose of "Yitgadal Ve'yitkadash Shemeh Rabba," for the sake of the glorification of the divine Name, and not for his personal benefit, and his prayer therefore would have deserved to be accepted. When our intentions are sincere, when we pray for our needs so we can succeed in our mission in the world, the mission of bringing honor to the Almighty, then we are worthy of having our prayers answered.

התוכן עה"פ בחמישי דפ' בשלח "הנני ממטיר לכם מן מן השמים.. למען אנסנו הילך בתורתי או לא", איתא במדרש "מכאן שלא ניתנה תורה [לידרוש] אלא לאוכלי המן"! וצ"ל: הענין ד"אוכלי המן" בזמננו קאי על אלו שאין להם טירדת הפרנסה, בדוגמת אוכלי המן שראו כל יום איך שה' ממלא צרכיהם וכו', והרי כאו"א מחוייב בתלמוד תורה?! ויובן זה עפמ"ש בגמ' [ע"ז יט.] עה"פ "בתורת ה' חפצו ובתורתו יהגה יומם ולילה" - "בתחילה נקראת על שמו של הקב"ה ולבסוף נקראת על שמו". והיינו, שלימוד התורה יכול להיות באופן שלומדים תורתו של ה' או באופן, נעלה יותר, שהתורה נעשית "תורתו" של האדם. וזהו דיוק הלשון "לא ניתנה תורה אלא לאוכלי המן": למי ניתנת התורה (כי "נותן התורה" לשון הווה - כל פעם שלומד תורה ה"ז נתינת התורה כבתחילה) באופן שתקרא "על שמו", "ובתורתו יהגה", ה"ז דוקא ל"אוכלי המן" - למי שבשעה שמתיישב ללמוד תורה אין לו שום מחשבות המבלבלות (גם לא מחשבות בנוגע לפרנסה שמחוייב בזה)! וזהו לימוד התורה בשלימותו!ב' חלקים משיחת י' שבט ה'תשכ"ז ל"הנחה פרטית" או התרגום ללה"ק של השיחה: https://thedailysicha.com/?date=30-01-2026 Synopsis On the verse (in chamishi of parashas Beshalach), “…I am going to rain down bread for you from the sky…to test them as to whether or not they will follow My Torah,” the Midrash states: “From here we learn that the Torah was given (to be expounded) only to those who ate the mann.” Seemingly, “those who eat the mann” these days refers to those who are free from worries about earning a livelihood (similar to those who ate the mann in the desert, who saw clearly that Hashem fulfilled their needs every day etc.). But seemingly, everyone is obligated in the mitzvah of Torah study? This can be understood based on the Gemara's explanation of the verse, “His desire is in Hashem's Torah, and in his Torah he meditates day and night” – “At first it is called by the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, but in the end it is called by one's own name.” Meaning, one can learn Torah as Hashem's Torah, or in a higher manner, where it becomes the person's Torah – “his Torah.” This is why it says, “The Torah was given only to those who ate the mann”: to whom is the Torah “given” (and every time one learns Torah, it is given anew, which is why we call Hashem the “Giver of the Torah” in the present tense), in such a way that it becomes his – only to those who “eat the mann” – those who sit down to learn without any distracting thoughts (not even thoughts about earning a livelihood, which is an obligation of the Torah). This is the ultimate form of Torah study.2 excerpts from sichah of 10 Shevat 5727 For a transcript in English of the Sicha: https://thedailysicha.com/?date=30-01-2026 לזכות הרה"ת ר' יהושע בן עטא דבורה שי' ליום ההולדת שלו י"ב שבט לשנת ברכה והצלחה, ואריכות ימים ושנים טובות*לזכות מרת שרה ברכה בת חנה רבקה שתחי' ליום ההולדת שלה י"ג שבטלשנת ברכה והצלחה, ואריכות ימים ושנים טובות

Hashem wants us to learn about Him from the way He revealed Himself at Yetziat Mitzrayim. The pesukim tell us again and again how we are meant to see that Hashem is the only One who controls everything that happens in this world. There are people who believe that everything that happens to them is from Hashem, yet when they go through prolonged difficulties, they have complaints, feeling that they are being dealt with unfairly. To know that Hashem controls everything is not enough. We also need to know how loving and merciful He is. When Moshe Rabbeinu asked Hashem, "Why are You dealing so harshly with the Jewish people?" Hashem answered him that He is Hashem. The Targum Yonatan explains that Hashem told him, "I am the Hashem who appeared to you at the burning bush." How do we understand this response? How does this explain why He was dealing with the Jewish people so harshly? The Maharal writes that there are different levels of love between people. When it comes to true friends, each one will participate in the happy occasions of the other. But the greatest expression of love is when one friend is in pain because the other one is hurting. It is much easier to celebrate with a friend than to feel hurt when he is hurt. When a person is in pain because his friend is in pain, that shows that his life is not a life without his friend. He cannot enjoy his own life knowing that his friend is in trouble. When Hashem appeared to Moshe at the burning bush, one of the reasons He came to him in a thorn bush was to show Moshe that He was in pain because of the pain that the Jewish people were experiencing. The Midrash says, look at how much Hashem loves us. He calls us His daughter and His sister and His mother. The Maharal says, if it didn't say it, we wouldn't be allowed to say it ourselves. But everyone knows that a child cannot exist without first having a mother. Although Hashem does not need anyone or anything, He calls us His mother to tell us that because of His great love for us, He makes Himself feel as if He needs us to exist. This love is shown most clearly by Hashem feeling the pain of every single Jew when he is in pain. So when Moshe Rabbeinu asked Hashem, "Why are You treating the Jewish people so harshly in Mitzrayim?" Hashem replied to him by reminding him immediately about the vision he had at the burning bush. If a doctor were operating on a patient and causing the patient pain, a relative of that patient might question the doctor and ask why he was operating in such a painful way when perhaps there was a less painful method. But if the doctor were operating on his own child, no one would ask any questions, because they would know that he is doing the surgery in the best possible way. Hashem was telling Moshe that the question of "Why am I hurting My nation?" is invalid, because I am their loving Father. I am treating them in the best possible way for them. When they are hurting, I am hurting. We must understand how much Hashem loves us. The Midrash asks, why did Hashem appear to Moshe in a thorn bush? One of the answers it gives is because a thorn bush is the lowest of all trees in terms of humility. There is no apparent purpose to it. It does not seem to provide any benefit. So too, that is how the Jewish nation looked in Mitzrayim, like people with nothing going for them. They had fallen almost to the forty-ninth level of tumah. They were idol worshippers. They had no zechuyot to be redeemed. Yet Hashem came and showed Moshe that if He could rest His presence in a thorn bush, He could redeem a nation that looked like a thorn bush. Because Hashem's love for us does not depend on our deeds. He loves us more than a parent could ever love a child. Even though Hashem gave us the mitzvah of Milah and Pesach before we left Mitzrayim, that was after He had already performed nine makkot and had everything set for the geulah. He did not first require us to have zechuyot to be saved. He saved us because He loves us. The Shem mishmuel said on the words "raoh raeety" that Hashem told Moshe, even though I see them after Matan Torah worshipping the Eigel, I am still going to redeem them. Hashem's love for us is unfathomable. If a person asks, "Why is Hashem doing bad to me?" it just means that he has not yet comprehended the love that Hashem has for him. Hashem feels his pain more than he does. He is only doing the best possible thing for him. If we could feel even a small part of the true love that Hashem has for us, we would be able to live more happily no matter what we are going through.

התוכן ברביעי דפ' בשלח מסופר אודות קריעת ים סוף. מסופר במדרש דזה מ"ש הקב"ה "דבר אל בנ"י ויסעו" הוא כי רצה הקב"ה שיהודי יקפוץ לים רק בגלל שכך צוה הקב"ה, ורק לאחר שנחשון בן עמינדב קפץ לים – נבקע הים, ובנ"י ניצלו ממצרים והלכו לקבלת התורה וכו' עד לכניסתם לא"י. וההוראה: גם אם רואים מסביב מניעות ועיכובים ללימוד התורה בהתמדה ושקידה ולקיום רצונו ית' בהידור, הנה כאשר מראים שמ"מ מוסרים נפש כדי לקיים את רצונו ית', אז מתבטלים בדרך ממילא כל המניעות ועיכובים. ובפרט בנוגע לתלמידי הישיבה, שכל ענינם הוא לימוד התורה וקיום מצוותי', ולפעמים נדמה להם שיש להם מניעות קשים ביותר (ובפרט מצד חבריהם הלא-טובים), ועאכו"כ לנצל גם את זמנם הפנוי מסדרי הישיבה ללימוד התורה – הנה כאשר הבחור לא נבהל מכל המניעות אלא "קופץ לים" – "נקרע הים" ומתבטלות המניעות ועיכובים, ולא עוד – אלא שרואה הצלחה בכל עניניו. משיחת אור ליום ד' פ' בשלח, י"ב שבט ה'תשכ"ו, ב"יחידות" להתלמידים שיחיו דישיבת תות"ל במאָנטרעאַל ל"הנחה פרטית" או התרגום ללה"ק של השיחה: https://thedailysicha.com/?date=26-01-2026 Synopsis Revi'i of parashas Beshalach recounts the events of Kerias Yam Suf. The Midrash says that when Hashem says, “Speak to the Jewish people and let them travel,” it is because Hashem wanted a Jew to jump into the sea simply because that is what Hashem commanded. It was only after Nachshon ben Aminadav jumped into the sea that the sea split, saving the Jewish people from Egypt and enabling them to receive the Torah and build the Mishkan etc., and eventually to enter Eretz Yisroel. The lesson is that even if one sees that there are obstacles to learning Torah constantly and diligently, and to fulfilling Hashem's will behidur, when one demonstrates that he is nevertheless prepared to have mesiras nefesh to fulfill Hashem's will, all the obstacles and hindrances fall away automatically. This is especially true for yeshivah students, whose entire function is Torah study and doing mitzvos. While it may sometimes seem to them that they face very difficult obstacles (particularly from not-good friends), and even more so when it comes to using even their free time for Torah study – nevertheless, when a bochur is not fazed by the obstacles and instead “jumps into the sea,” then “the sea splits” – the obstacles will cease to exist, and he will see success in all his endeavors.Sichah of Tuesday night, parashas Beshalach, 12 Shevat 5726 – in Yechidus for the students of Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch Montreal For a transcript in English of the Sicha: https://thedailysicha.com/?date=26-01-2026 לע"נ מרת רבקה רחל בת ר' חיים דוב ע"ה שנור ליום היארצייט שלה ח' שבט. ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.*לזכות רבקה בת שושנה שתחי' ליום ההולדת שלה ט' שבט - לשנת ברכה והצלחה, ואריכות ימים ושנים טובות

What does it take to truly cross from survival into freedom? In this episode, Zvi Hirschfield and Yiscah Smith explore Parshat Beshalach through the lens of trauma, freedom, and spiritual courage. They examine why the Israelites are not ready for battle, why song only emerges after the splitting of the sea, and how freedom requires more than escape—it demands inner transformation. Moving between text, Midrash, and lived experience, the conversation invites listeners to see the crossing of the sea as both a national liberation and a personal call to “jump in” to the unknown on the path to becoming truly free.

0:00 What is Judaism all about?2:00 Did the forefathers know the Name of Hashem or not?4:00 Exodus initiated two seemingly different things: knowledge of Hashem and freedom from bondage5:55 Where does the Torah fit into Exodus?9:00 "Nobody is free but for he who studies Torah" – how does the Torah make a person free?13:15 The prophets' opposition to sacrifices, in contradiction to the Torah18:45 Midrash is the insistence to read verses closely and exactly21:30 The focus of the prophets on da'as Hashem25:45 The response to "I am Hashem" is da'as Hashem29:30 Summary of the points made thus far32:00 Moshe asked to know Hashem, and his request was denied36:30 The contradiction between the Torah and the Prophets about whether Hashem can be seen38:30 Two meanings of "seeing" and two meanings of "knowing"43:00 A creature of super-human intelligence once visited earth and revealed that the totality of human knowledge is folly46:15 It's easy to see Hashem – but then you die48:00 Why sacrifices and da'as Hashem are mutually exclusive50:30 Why suicide is the root problem of philosophy1:02:00 Law is for those who don't have da'as Hashem1:13:00 Moshe thought that his mission was one of bringing da'as Hashem to the people, just like all the prophets1:18:45 Hashem told Moshe that the impossibility of da'as Hashem is also a fundamental component of the Torah1:20:30 The one who has da'as Hashem is truly free, since his mind is the mind of Hashem1:25:15 Judaism is fundamentally about freedom1:28:45 "They did not listen to Moshe because of shortness of spirit and because of hard labor" – they refused to embrace da'as Hashem1:31:30 You cannot understand anything about the Torah without realizing that there are two contradictory paths throughout the Torah1:33:30 Is it impossible to be completely free; human beings cannot allow themselves to be completely free1:36:30 In order to being thinking freely, there must be guardrails beyond which one wouldn't think1:41:45 How the Torah is a function of the servitude in Egypt1:43:30 True da'as Hashem is the hypothetical ideal 1:45:45 How the Torah supports the convincing illusion of da'as Hashem1:47:30 Many people make the mistake of trying to make the Torah make sense and have it replace da'as Hashem1:49:20 The stronger your da'as Hashem, the stronger your Torah needs to be

Women of the BibleIn this study we will take a look at the women within the Bible. We will look at each one of them and see how their story influences our lives today.In this first study we will start with Eve.Eve was the first woman. Independent and curious, she disobeyed Yahweh's commands. She ate the forbidden fruit, (more on this later) setting forth major change in the Garden of Eden - and human history.Although man and woman have different roles to play within marriage, as far as our standing with Yahweh is concerned, we are equal. We are both created in the image of Yahweh. We were both called to subdue the earth. In our last study we began with the story on Eve. We discovered that Eve WAS NOT taken from one of Adam's ribs, but from the image of his side as the Hebrew word for our English word “rib” is “tsay-law'”. We finish up our study in Genesis 3 where we were reading about the Serpent deceiving the woman, Eve. I will begin in Chapter 3 verse 3.So far in this Chapter 3 we seen the serpent (nachash – shining one) talking with Eve. What we have seen here is that Satan's method of operation. Twisting Yahweh's Words! Just as he tried to do in Matthew 4. In our last study I have read to you how Satan comes and goes between heaven and earth as documented in Job Chapters 1 and 2. We also learned how beautiful Satan was in Ezekiel Chapter 28 until sin was found within him. Paul informs us that in 2 Corin. 11:14 Satan can transform into an angel of light.3   tree = from Strongs 6086, “ates” from 6095; now 6086 is tree, from it's firmness, 6095 is “as-tsaw” a prime root, properly to fasten (to make firm) that is, to close (the eyes). The spine [as giving] firmness to the body] backbone.Eat = “aw-kal” a prime root; to eat [literally or figurally] at all, burn up, consume, devour, dine, eat, food, meat.Neither…it = notice, these words are added by the women, check 2:16, 17. There was no word concerning “touching '' in the original prohibition. This exaggeration on the part of the woman, says the Midrash, was the cause of her fall.Touch = “naw-ga”, lay the hand upon for any purpose, to lie with a woman]Compare 2 Corin. 11:3; beguiled = “ex-ap-at-ah-o” wholly seduceLest ye die = misquoted from 2:16, 17, by not repeating the emphatic figure “polyptoton”, thus changing the emphasizes preserved in the word “surely”! Other words, Eve modified the phrase to take away the importance from Yahweh 5     Note, the reason Satan tells Eve that they would be like Eliohim, is Satan himself is trying to be like Elohim. Ezek. 28:13Ye shall be as eliohims = Satan's 2nd lie!6   The woman saw = though the tempter did not tell the woman to eat the fruit, he had woven the spell.good = This is the lust of the flesh.Pleasant = ‘chamad' To desire, to covet, to take pleasure in, to delight in, to be desirable, to delight greatly, to desire greatly, desirableness, preciousness. lust of the eyes [read 1 John 2:16] of a beautiful color, and very inviting to the taste.Desired = (tah-av-aw'); to yearn for, to lust after (used of bodily appetites) a longing; by implication, a delight (subjectively, satisfaction, objectively, a charm): a desire, a wish, longings of one's heart; lust, an appetite, covetousness (in a bad sense)Took = (law-kakh'); to take (in the widest variety of applications): to take, to lay hold of, to receive, to marry, to take a wife, to take to or for a person, to get, to take possession of, to select, to choose, to take in marriage, to receive, to acceptJoin me as we go Chapter by Chapter, Verse by Verse, Unraveling the Words of Yahweh!Have any questions? Feel free to email me; keitner2024@outlook.com

"The Eighth Day" is the day "that God will appear" to the nation. It is purported to be the day in which the Tabernacle/Mishkan reaches its climax - God's fire will descend to the nation.But we reach into the silent gaps in this story through Midrash and Rashi and speak of the hidden drama in this narrative; one of apprehension, guilt and brotherhood.

Vaera | The Makkot Curriculum, by Rav Yitzchak Etshalom A paideia for Pharaoh. How many Makkot were there? We inevitably approach our study of Parashat Va'era with an assumption of 10 Makkot (plagues) with which Hashem smote and 'judged" the Egyptians. However, that number does not appear in the Torah's record of the events and other presentations of the Exodus story in Tanakh highlight only some of these plagues, ending up with a smaller number - and the Midrash famously expands this number by a factor of up to 50, seeing 5 sub-plagues within each one. We look back at the structure of the plagues, following Hashem's directives to Moshe regarding warning - or not warning - Pharaoh before each one and discern a clear pattern which opens up an additional perspective on the purpose of these plagues and their role as didactic, beyond the punitive. Source sheet >>

The pasuk says in this week's parashat Shemot, וַתֵּתַצַּב אֲחֹתוֹ מֵרָחֹק לְדֵעָה מַה־יֵּעָשֶׂה -לוֹ Simply, this refers to Miriam, Moshe's older sister, who was standing by watching what would happen to him when he was put into the Nile River. Rabbi Menashe Reizman quoted the Midrash which explains that this pasuk is referring to the Shechinah, standing there watching from afar. The Midrash proves from other pesukim how every word in that pasuk is a reference to the Shechinah. The Maharsha, Masechet Sotah, explains the Midrash is teaching us that although Moshe being thrown into the river seemed like an act of destruction, the ways of Hashem are very far from us. Miriam had a prophecy that the savior was going to be born, and this looked like a nullification of that prophecy. However, this was actually the way in which the prophecy became fulfilled. It was through this that Moshe was raised safely in the palace by the daughter of Pharoah. It also teaches us that although this took place when the harshest slavery began, it appeared that Hashem was so distant, but He was right there standing with them. During their darkest time, Hashem was making the greatest miracles—causing the daughter of Pharoah to go down to the Nile at the exact time Moshe was placed there, and then making the miracle of her arm stretching out to reach him. Rabbi Reizman pointed out that the Torah only devotes six pesukim to discussing all of the slavery in Mitzrayim. Right after that, begins the story of the redemption—how Moshe was born and how he became the go'el. Even the pesukim that speak about the throwing of the babies into the Nile mention Miryam and Yocheved, the mother and sister of the go'el. Perhaps one explanation of this is that we are not meant to dwell too much on the difficulties that we are given. It is hard for us to comprehend how pain and suffering could possibly be good for us, and therefore it is incumbent upon us not to analyze the details too deeply, but rather to trust in Hashem. When Hashem called to Moshe from the burning bush, the pasuk says that Moshe was afraid to look. Hashem appeared to Moshe in a thorn bush, symbolizing עִמּוֹ אָנֹכִי בְצָרָה -He was with us during that hard time. Moshe did not see all the harsh slave labor because he was in Midyan. The Mefarshim explain that here Hashem began showing Moshe the suffering that the Jewish people were going through, but Moshe was afraid to look because he did not want to lower his level of emunah and potentially have questions on the way Hashem was dealing with them. One of the harshest decrees was that Pharoah was killing 150 babies every morning and another 150 every evening, bathing in their blood because he had tzara'at. When Moshe heard about this, along with the fact that Jewish babies were being built into the walls as bricks, he asked Hashem what they did to deserve this. Hashem told Moshe that all of those babies were from previous generations and were receiving their tikkun. It was all chesed, meant to purify them. Hashem told Moshe that if he really wanted, he could save one—and Moshe did. That one baby-Micha- brought about the worst destruction. He was the one who took the Shem Hashem that Moshe used to bring Yosef's aron out of the sea, threw it into the fire when the Jews were waiting for Moshe to come down from Har Sinai, and caused the Egel(golden calf) to emerge alive. Until today, we are still suffering from the effects of the Egel. He later made an idol when they entered Eretz Yisrael, causing countless tragedies to befall the Jewish people. He was also known as Nevat, the father of Yeravam, who caused the exile of the Ten Tribes. That destruction came from just one of those babies. The Lev Aryeh writes that all those who perished in Mitzrayim were neshamot from earlier generations that returned for a tikkun—the generations of the Mabul, Dor HaPelagah, and the people of Sedom. The Mishnah says in Pirkei Avot, אַל תִּסְתַּכֵּל בַּקַּנְקָן אֶלָּא בְּמַה שֶּׁיֵּשׁ בּוֹ (Avot 4:20) The Lev Aryeh explains homiletically that this also refers to the tragedies in Mitzrayim. The word קן has the numerical value of 150. Do not look at what happened to the 150 babies in the morning and the 150 babies in the evening; rather, look at who those people really were—resha'im who needed a tikkun. Hashem is always standing near us, but He appears to be afar because His ways are so far beyond our understanding. Everything He does is chesed. We do not have the ability to comprehend His ways in this world, but we do have the ability to trust in Him. We should not dwell excessively on the difficulties; rather, we should believe that everything is chesed done out of love. And if we have that emunah, then we will be considered people who are truly loyal. Shabbat Shalom

Moses had every reason to stay comfortable: palace roots, a peaceful life in Midyan, and an age where most people stop reinventing themselves. Then a bush burned and refused to go away.In this class, Rabbi Yisroel Bernath explores the moment that changes everything: not charging forward, not fixing the world, but simply turning your head. Through the burning bush, the Midrashic debate, and Moses' three objections, we uncover how purpose actually shows up, why resistance is part of the calling, and how your deepest struggles may be the doorway to your greatest contribution.This isn't about becoming someone else. It's about finally noticing what's been calling you all along.Key TakeawaysCalling begins with attention, not action. G-d speaks when we notice, not when we're ready.Purpose doesn't consume you; it sustains you. A real mission burns without burning out.You don't need five steps, sometimes a turned head is enough.Insecurity, blame, and perfectionism are spiritual disguises for fear.Your thorn bush is not your weakness, it's your credential.Redemption starts when someone says “Hineni” before knowing how it ends.#Jewish #Judaism #Torah #TorahPortion #Bible #BibleStudy #Moses #moshe #mosesleadership #BurningBush #purpose #calling #hineni #Midrash #destiny #perfectionism #insecurity #Responsibility #soulmission Support the showGot your own question for Rabbi Bernath? He can be reached at rabbi@jewishndg.com or http://www.theloverabbi.comSingle? You can make a profile on www.JMontreal.com and Rabbi Bernath will help you find that special someone.Donate and support Rabbi Bernath's work http://www.jewishndg.com/donateFollow Rabbi Bernath's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ybernathAccess Rabbi Bernath's Articles on Relationships https://medium.com/@loverabbi

Send us a textMoses had every reason to stay comfortable: palace roots, a peaceful life in Midyan, and an age where most people stop reinventing themselves. Then a bush burned and refused to go away.In this class, Rabbi Yisroel Bernath explores the moment that changes everything: not charging forward, not fixing the world, but simply turning your head. Through the burning bush, the Midrashic debate, and Moses' three objections, we uncover how purpose actually shows up, why resistance is part of the calling, and how your deepest struggles may be the doorway to your greatest contribution.This isn't about becoming someone else. It's about finally noticing what's been calling you all along.Key TakeawaysCalling begins with attention, not action. G-d speaks when we notice, not when we're ready.Purpose doesn't consume you; it sustains you. A real mission burns without burning out.You don't need five steps, sometimes a turned head is enough.Insecurity, blame, and perfectionism are spiritual disguises for fear.Your thorn bush is not your weakness, it's your credential.Redemption starts when someone says “Hineni” before knowing how it ends.#Jewish #Judaism #Torah #TorahPortion #Bible #BibleStudy #Moses #moshe #mosesleadership #BurningBush #purpose #calling #hineni #Midrash #destiny #perfectionism #insecurity #Responsibility #soulmission Support the showGot your own question for Rabbi Bernath? He can be reached at rabbi@jewishndg.com or http://www.theloverabbi.comSingle? You can make a profile on www.JMontreal.com and Rabbi Bernath will help you find that special someone.Donate and support Rabbi Bernath's work http://www.jewishndg.com/donateFollow Rabbi Bernath's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ybernathAccess Rabbi Bernath's Articles on Relationships https://medium.com/@loverabbi

JTS Torah Commentary for Parashat Shemot by Rabbi Naomi Kalish, Harold and Carole Wolfe Director of the Center for Pastoral Education; Assistant Professor of Pastoral EducationMusic provided by JJReinhold / Pond

The blessings of Asher teach that Kabbalas Ol (subservience/action, represented by the "foot") is not merely a stepping stone to Intellect (oil), but is actually the foundation that supports and surpasses it, granting the unique power to "gather lost souls" that the holier tribes cannot reach. The Midrash stating that Asher's "beautiful daughters married High Priests" teaches that through the humble "foot-work" of Kabbalas Ol (Asher), a parent merits to raise children of such spiritual caliber that—like the "one child" Isaac—a single one of them provides more Nachas and spiritual impact than a multitude. This class, taught by Rabbi Shais Taub, is based on Parshas Vayechi in Likkutei Sichos Vol. 1.

The air is tight with silence, the court of Yosef unmoving, and then Yehuda steps forward. That one act—crossing an invisible line of protocol—opens a masterclass on courage, responsibility, and the kind of reasoning that can thaw a heart guarded by power. We trace the moment Binyamin's fate hangs by a thread and watch how Yehuda weaves threads into a rope: memory, duty, empathy, and personal guarantee, each linked to the next until justice can breathe.We walk you through the Midrash on “deep waters are counsel in the heart of man,” turning a vivid parable into a practical tool. Imagine a well of ice-cold water no hand can reach; now imagine building a rope, thread by thread, until the bucket touches what lies beneath. That's the framework here—rope-to-rope reasoning—steady, disciplined, and exact. We explore how this method shows up in Yehuda's speech and why it works: it respects truth, invites empathy, and keeps going until the right argument lands.The Malbim adds dimension by distinguishing knowledge you're taught from insight you derive. We connect that to real scenarios—improving prayer and focus, making a case in court, navigating a tough real estate market—showing how to ask better questions, follow causes upstream, and iterate without ego. The takeaway is as simple as it is demanding: don't quit before the well. If the first approach fails, add another rope. Adjust with humility, test with clarity, and keep your hands steady until the bucket rises with something cold, clear, and unmistakably true.If this resonated, subscribe, share the episode with someone who's one step from a breakthrough, and leave a review telling us the next “rope” you'll tie.Support the showJoin The Motivation Congregation WhatsApp community for daily motivational Torah content!------------------Check out our other Torah Podcasts and content! SUBSCRIBE to The Motivation Congregation Podcast for daily motivational Mussar! Listen on Spotify or 24six! Find all Torah talks and listen to featured episodes on our website, themotivationcongregation.org Questions or Comments? Please email me @ michaelbrooke97@gmail.com

In this special episode, Steven sits down with one of his very first disciples from 30 years ago, Phil Ronsley.  Enjoy this heartfelt conversation about long-term discipleship, building deep relationships with children, forming a strong family identity, and why your local community matters now more than ever. Tune in to be encouraged and challenged by what really matters in life. About Abraham's Wallet: Abraham's Wallet exists to inspire and equip Biblical family leaders. Please partner with us in inspiring and equipping multi-gen families at https://abrahamswallet.com/support AW website Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Facebook LinkedIn Instagram Chapters (00:00:00) - The Biblical Blueprint for Family(00:00:21) - Abraham's Wallet: A Conversation With Phil Ronsley(00:02:10) - Philip on His discipleship(00:07:08) - Marriage and the Christian disciple(00:11:58) - Steve Kerr on criticism from his children(00:16:23) - Daddy Daughter Dates(00:20:40) - Abraham's Wallet(00:25:50) - A Jewish girl's transformation(00:30:45) - Sukkot: Coming Out of the Culture(00:33:43) - The Rawnsley Family Vision Statement(00:38:59) - "A Midrash in the Fall?"(00:40:11) - Adam Lozzi on the Cincinnati trip(00:44:06) - Midrash and the YAM(00:49:33) - Be faithful with your family

The moment Joseph reveals himself to his brothers is not just a family reunion, it is a soul disclosure. In this class, Rabbi Yisroel Bernath explores why Joseph repeats himself, why he asks his brothers to come closer, and why he insists on reminding them that they sold him into Egypt. Drawing from Torah, Midrash, and Kabbalah, we discover that Joseph's greatest holiness was not forged in comfort, but in confrontation with darkness. His life teaches us that our deepest light often emerges not despite our struggles, but because of them. This is a class about identity, resilience, and the sacred fire hidden within every human journey.Key PointsLight isn't proven in comfort. It is revealed in contrast. Joseph's greatness emerged not in his father's home, but in Egypt's darkness.Your story is not a detour. The very chapters you wish you could erase are often the ones that unlock your deepest purpose.What looks like a mask may be protection. Joseph wasn't hiding his soul, he was carrying it through hostile terrain until it was safe to reveal.Stop living in “if only.” Joseph teaches us that spiritual greatness is not about ideal circumstances, but about faithfulness where you are.Darkness can be a catalyst, not a contradiction. The pit, the prison, and the palace were all part of one divine choreography.You are more than how you appear. Others may misread you, but your soul is not confused about who you are.True brotherhood begins with seeing. Healing starts when we learn to recognize the divine light in one another, even when it's hidden.Your struggle did not weaken you, it refined you. Fire doesn't destroy the coal; it reveals what was already burning inside.#LightOverDarkness #chabad #Torah #TorahPortion #Bible #BibleStudy #Joseph #LightFromDarkness #TheFireInTheCoal #HiddenLight #Kabbalah #chassidus #PurposeThroughPain #NoIfOnly  #SpiritualResilience #SoulIdentity #FromPitToPalace #DarknessToLight #InnerFire #GrowthThroughStruggle #torahwisdom #SeeingTheSoul #RedemptiveJourney Support the showGot your own question for Rabbi Bernath? He can be reached at rabbi@jewishndg.com or http://www.theloverabbi.comSingle? You can make a profile on www.JMontreal.com and Rabbi Bernath will help you find that special someone.Donate and support Rabbi Bernath's work http://www.jewishndg.com/donateFollow Rabbi Bernath's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ybernathAccess Rabbi Bernath's Articles on Relationships https://medium.com/@loverabbi

Amy is joined by authors and educators Gloria and Bob Rees to discuss midrash --stories we write to interpret scripture and create meaning -- exploring the endless possibilities of imagination and the radical power that women hold to write our own midrash and change the spiritual landscape.Donate to Breaking Down PatriarchyGloria Gardner Rees has taught English in the US, China, India, and Nepal. Her studies include nutrition, gerontology and adult development. Currently, she is involved in interfaith, humanitarian, and environmental work. In addition to writing midrash, she is co-editing a collection of essays by Latter-day Saints titled Pillars of my Faith.Robert A. Rees is a scholar, poet, and humanitarian. He is the author of “Toward a Mormon Feminist Midrash: Mormon Women and the Imaginative Reading of Scripture,” Sunstone (2012) and “The Midrashic Imagination and the Book of Mormon,” Dialogue (Fall 2011). His most recent book is Imagining and Reimagining the Restoration (Kofford Books, 2025).

The jar of oil was located under the altar. Had they not torn down the existing altar (as an act of piety, to replace it with a new, unblemished altar), they would not have found the famous פַּךְ שֶׁמֶן https://thechesedfund.com/rabbikatz/support-rabbi-katzz-podcast

Living Emunah 2867 The Perfect Measure of Hishtadlut The Midrash at the beginning of this week's parashah says: אַשְׁרֵי הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר שָׂם ה' מִבְטַחוֹ "Fortunate is the man who places his trust in Hashem." This refers to Yosef, who wholeheartedly trusted in Hashem. The Midrash continues: וְלֹא פָנָה אֶל רְהָבִים — "and he did not turn to the arrogant," which also refers to Yosef, who did not rely on the Sar HaMashkim for help when he was in jail. Yet it also says that because Yosef told the Sar HaMashkim, זְכַרְתַּנִי — "remember me," נִתוֹסַף לוֹ שְׁתֵּי שָׁנִים — two more years were added to his sentence. The mefarshim ask: the Midrash seems to contradict itself. On one hand, it praises Yosef for relying only on Hashem and not on the Sar HaMashkim; on the other hand, it says he was punished for asking the Sar HaMashkim to remember him. Furthermore, the word נִתוֹסַף sounds positive — like תּוֹסֶפֶת כְּתֻבָּה — as if staying longer in prison was somehow beneficial. Rav Leib Diskin explained the following. There is a pasuk in Mishlei: בְּטַח אֶל ה' בְּכָל לִבֶּךָ וְאֶל בִּינָתְךָ אַל־תִּשָּׁעֵן "Trust in Hashem with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding." (Mishlei 3:5) The Gaon explains that this pasuk refers to the highest form of bitachon — when a person needs no hishtadlut at all, like Chizkiyahu HaMelekh, when Hashem wiped out 185,000 soldiers while Chizkiyahu slept in his bed. But there is another pasuk: וּבֵרַכְתִּיךָ בְּכֹל אֲשֶׁר תַּעֲשֶׂה "I will bless you in all that you do." (Devarim 15:18) From here we learn that we must act , and then Hashem will bless our efforts. This sounds like full hishtadlut is always required, contradicting the pasuk in Mishlei. Then there is a third pasuk in Tehillim that reconciles the two: גּוֹל אֶל־ה' דַּרְכֶּךָ וּבְטַח עָלָיו וְהוּא יַעֲשֶׂה "Roll your way upon Hashem, and trust in Him, and He will do." (Tehillim 37:5) The word גּוֹל — roll — is the key.: משל למה הדבר דומה ? If someone wants to roll a barrel down a hill, all he must do is give it the initial push — and then it rolls on its own. This is how our hishtadlut must be viewed. We give the minimal beginning effort, showing that we know Hashem is the One accomplishing everything afterward. But if a person keeps checking every second to ensure the barrel rolls exactly as he wants, then he believes that his push is what makes everything happen, and he thinks he must constantly control the outcome. Proper hishtadlut means giving an effort that demonstrates that we recognize that Hashem is the One accomplishing.. That was Yosef's level. It was clear hashgachah that the Sar HaMashkim was placed with Yosef in jail, that Hashem gave him a dream, and that Yosef could interpret it. Yosef did not feel on the level of Chizkiyahu to do nothing, but he also did not want to engage in full hishtadlut. Therefore, he did not plead with the Sar HaMashkim. Instead, he minimally said כי אם זְכַרְתַּנִי — "If you happen to remember this episode, then mention me to Par'oh." He remained calm, composed, and made the smallest gesture that showed he believed his role was merely to begin the process — and Hashem would handle the rest. The Maharil Diskin says: Had Yosef done too much hishtadlut — pushing, begging, strategizing — he might have been released immediately. And perhaps he would have returned to his family. But then Ya'akov and the Shevatim would have had to come to Mitzrayim in chains. Because Yosef made the correct hishtadlut, Hashem allowed him to remain the extra two years — until Par'oh would have the dream that would elevate Yosef to become the viceroy of Egypt. Thus, the Midrash fully praises Yosef for the quality of his hishtadlut. The lesson for us is clear. We must be careful never to overdo our hishtadlut in ways that make us believe we control outcomes. If someone pleads for help in a desperate, panicked tone, he is showing that he thinks the results depend on him. If someone constantly emails a buyer until he gets a response, he thinks it is his pressure that will determine the sale. He may indeed get the response — but had he simply begun the process in the right way, he would have gotten the same outcome without the excess hishtadlut that is against Hashem's will. May Hashem help us realize always that He is the One who accomplishes everything, enabling us to make only the hishtadlut that He desires from us. Shabbat Shalom.