Parshat Shemot תשפ"ו Last week we completed the first book of the Torah, Bereshit (Genesis); this week we begin the second book, Shemot (Exodus). In his preface to sefer Shemot, Nachmanides explains that Genesis is called the book of creation,…
When we think of the Spanish galleons roaming the high seas in the 1500 and 1600, bringing gold and treasure from the colonies back to Spain, and fending off pirates and privateers, we think of massive wooden ships, with multiple…
Parshat Vayechi תשפ"ו I heard this lesson from my Rebbe, Harav Moshe Shapiro זצ"ל , who heard it from his Rebbe, Rav Elyiahu Dessler זצ"ל. Today is Rav Shapiro’s ninth yahrtzeit. This week’s portion, Vayechi, is the last chapter in…
Phil’s best friend in college was Jack. Jack Daniels that is. He would take Jack everywhere with him, in a natty little hip flask that Jack Daniels included in their holiday gift pack during Phil’s freshman year. By junior year,…
Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, had two consecutive baffling dreams, which even his wise men could not satisfactorily interpret.The situation, though, prompted Pharaoh’s butler, who had been in prison two years earlier with Yosef, to recall that Yosef had accurately…
Yesterday, I was sent to prison. Not by the judicial system, but by the Aleph Institute, a phenomenal organization that looks after the spiritual and physical needs of a number of isolated populations, most notably: the incarcerated, the military, and…
Becoming an Eagle Scout, the highest-level Boy Scout, is much like stamp collecting, except that you have to do specific tasks to collect those stamps, or merit badges as they are called in Eagle-speak. There are over a hundred different…
Rush hour used to be from 7:30-9:30AM and 4-6PM, but that rush hour is a relic of a time when Apple was a thing you ate, Google was a very big number, Amazon was a river, and mail was something…
The Ramban prefaces his commentary to the second book of the Torah, Shemot, by writing. השלים הכתוב ספר בראשית שהוא ספר היצירה בחדוש העולם ויצירת כל נוצר, ובמקרי האבות כולם שהם כעין יצירה לזרעם, מפני שכל מקריהם ציורי דברים לרמוז…
Did I ever tell you about the time I was kidnapped by a group of radical turkeys? It was definitely one of the crazier times of my life, and something I generally avoid talking about because I’m still suffering from…