Category Archives: english

Between (Biblical) Egypt and (Today’s) Australia: Stubbornness and narrow-mindedness / Discover Who Pharaoh Really is! #Va’era

This week I watched the news coming from Australia: golf-ball-size hail and massive dust storms hitting rural and urban areas alike. It’s been a rough couple of weeks weather-wise. Now it’s hail and dust but Australia isn’t done yet with the terrible fires that have lashed its territory, killing more than 30 people, tens of thousands of animals, and destroying

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Shemot: The Secret Power of the Biblical Women Who Beat Milgram’s experiment

  When we look retrospectively at the book of Genesis, which we just finished reading a week ago, there are two key concepts that keep coming to my mind. The first one is ethical monotheism, which appears at first by the statement that man and woman were created in the image of God, and of course is deepened in the

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Your Head Above the Water is good but not nearly enough

Ki Tetzeh (Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19) is the Torah portion with the highest amount of Mitzvot in the entire Torah: 74 Mitzvot. Maimonides explains that the function of the Mitzvot is to help us sharpen our humanity, or in other words, to bring more “human” to our beings. I want to start by exploring the first 3 Mitzvot in this Torah portion.

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It’s not what you think! But it is! #Parashat Re’eh

Deuteronomy 11: 26-28 רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃אֶֽת־הַבְּרָכָ֑ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּשְׁמְע֗וּ אֶל־מִצְוֺת֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם הַיּֽוֹם׃ וְהַקְּלָלָ֗ה אִם־לֹ֤א תִשְׁמְעוּ֙ אֶל־מִצְוֺת֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם וְסַרְתֶּ֣ם מִן־הַדֶּ֔רֶךְ אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם… See, this day I set before you, blessing and curse: blessing, that you listen to the commandments of Adonai your God that I enjoin upon you this

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Returning From Spiritual Exile

Jerusalem isn’t just the physical entity of a city. Jerusalem is a concept that evokes our spiritual aspiration for unity. In Tisha B’Av, as we commemorate the destruction of the Earthly Jerusalem, we also recognize the beginning of a spiritual exile. Through the text we connect with the tears of our ancestors, weeping by the waters of Babylon and yearning

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You Shall Forget! My Take on parashat Ki Tisa

How many of you complain about forgetting things? We usually think about memory as a purely positive value and forgetfulness as a negative one. It turns out that in Jewish tradition these two values are a bit more nuanced. In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat “Ki Tisa”,  we learn about Moses descending from Mt Sinai with the tablets of the

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“They Spoke the Same Words” – Uniformity is not unity!

The story of the Tower of Babel is one of the most famous and in my opinion misinterpreted stories in the bible.   Genesis 11:1-9 וַֽיְהִ֥י כָל־הָאָ֖רֶץ שָׂפָ֣ה אֶחָ֑ת וּדְבָרִ֖ים אֲחָדִֽים׃ Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and

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