Off the Pulpit Archives

In Judaism, learning is part of piety. While the ideal of the simple righteous person exists in Judaism, far more common is the person whose reverence flows from erudition. A Talmid Chacham, a learned individual, is also assumed to be...

If you serve God in the same fashion as you did yesterday it is regression, taught the Hasidic master, the ‘Yehudi’ (Jacob Isaac ben Asher). “For a person is always in the aspect of becoming, and not standing.” Much of...

The first chapter in the bible in which God’s name does not appear is the 23rd chapter of Genesis. The chapter recounts the negotiations that Abraham strikes with Ephron to buy Me’arat haMachpela, the land on which Sarah and Abraham...

Our sages speak of both love of God and fear of God. Fear is more akin to awe. Think of the way people respond in a movie when they first see Godzilla or an alien: they are paralyzed for a...

As the Israelites prepare to leave Egypt, Moses remembers the promise to carry Joseph’s bones to the land of Israel (Ex. 13:9). The Rabbis note Joseph’s original double phrasing to his family: “Hashbeah Hishbiah” — ‘you shall surely promise’ —...

“You shall arise as a lion each morning to do the will of your Creator.” That stirring sentence opens the Shulchan Aruch, the Jewish code of law. It reminds us that at the heart of the Jewish tradition is the...

The word describing the basket in which Moses is placed as an infant is “tevah,” the same word used to describe Noah’s ark. Many commentators draw the parallel between the man who saved the world and the man who saved...

The sages of our tradition were very wary of anger. Rabbah, son of R. Huna, said: “When one loses his temper, even the Divine Presence is unimportant in his eyes” [Nedarim 22b]. While not denying the possibility that righteous anger can exist, repeatedly the Rabbis...