Life is endowed with blessings and curses; good and evil all mixed together. It is up to each of us to choose to do good or to do evil. So begins today’s parasha.

This seems like a logical and timely message following on the heels of the High Holidays during which we prayed for forgiveness for […]

Just 7 weeks prior to the start of today’s Parsha, the Jewish people were still slaves in Egypt.  But now, As G-d is about to give B’nai Yisroel the Torah and make them his “chosen people,” Moshe’s father-in-law shows up at their encampment.  This is Yitro, the priest of Midian.  He brings with him his […]

Vayeitzei, “and he went out.”  In this Parsha, Jacob went out from Be’er Sheva to Charan.  But did he only go out geographically or on another level?  Did Jacob in his search for a wife, also go in search of a life?  Why was it necessary?  For his personal and spiritual evolution did he need […]

What makes us feel good?  What gives us joy?  In a world, seemingly tearing itself apart, how do we maintain humanity?  Some Dvar’s will speak to your mind and arouse your intellect.  Today, I wish to speak to our hearts and souls that inspire and inform our intellect and our actions.

Today’s Parsha speaks of Blessings […]

How do we know the validity of our dreams and how to interpret them:   Are they guideposts for life, signs from Hashem, or are they Freudian activities for working out the incongruities of our personality and exorcising our demons?  How do we know when they are one or the other?

For Joseph, dreams were the stuff […]

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.  The case in point is our recent deep freeze, in which many of us lost electricity and water service.  Water and electricity are some of modern life’s daily essentials that we take for granted until a new reality confronts us as we huddle for warmth and […]

In this parsha, we begin with the instructions upon entering the promised land for the Israelites to give an offering of the first fruits harvested as an expression of their gratitude for all the blessings from the life creating, life sustaining higher power, we call Hashem.  Gratitude for our blessings engenders humility.  Humility is cultivated […]

In this parshah, G-d splits the Red Sea and the Israelites are so grateful as to sing the Song by the Sea.  They lack food in the desert, albeit briefly, and complain to G-d who then provides manna and quail, yet they continue to complain.  Was it ever enough for our ancestors then?  Is it […]

Vayishlach… And he sent…     Jacob sent malachim- Angels/Messengers onto his brother Esau, and when they returned to him, they related that Esau had 400 men and flocks and more.  Jacob was to meet his brother Esau the next day and it had been 20 years since they had last seen each other after Jacob traded […]

This Parsha contains 74 of the Torah’s 613 mitzvot.  These include a wide array of laws including how to deal with the beautiful captive, inheritance rights of the first-born, how to deal with the wayward and rebellious son, burial and dignity of the dead, returning of a lost object, and the obligation to send away […]