Although this coming Shabbat we will read parshat Noach, we will focus here on an earth-changing event that occurred in last week’s parsha, Bereshit, viz, the cold-blooded murder of Hevel by his brother Kayin. The Midrash Rabba (Esther 10) records…
The historical information in this essay is mostly culled from Bill Bryson’s book on human anatomy and physiology, The Body. For most of human history, scratching your arm on a rusty nail could be a death sentence. The scratch wasn’t the…
Yaakov Avinu, the last of the Patriarchs, is at the end of his life. Yet before he leaves this world, he must charge the next generation with their mission to carry forward their illustrious family’s legacy, that of, Avraham, Yitzchak,…
The three part series we are embarking on, The Story of Money, is a repeat, it first came out in 2020. While it is a fascinating story, we certainly can’t cover it all in one week, so we’re going to…
lonely adjectivelone·ly | \ˈlōn-lē \ Definition of lonely 1a: being without company 1b: cut off from others 2: not frequented by human beings 3: sad from being alone 4: producing a feeling of bleakness or desolation From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary…
The story of Yosef and his brothers is one of the Torah’s most difficult stories to understand. How could the brothers’ jealousy towards Yosef have been so great that they wanted to kill him because of it? And, after they…
April 17, 2005 John Brisbane came home from work exhausted. A full day of meeting with clients and cajoling them into taking out mortgages far larger than they could afford was more tiring than most people could ever imagine. As…
This week’s Parsha details the encounter between the world’s two opposing forces: good and evil, as manifest in Yaakov and his brother Esav. These two players are still center stage in today’s world in the form of the Jewish people…
There are two types of people in the world, those who like their chocolate chip cookies crispy, and those who like them chewy. There are rumors that there exists a third type of human, the one who likes chocolate chip…
Esav has vowed to kill Yaakov for stealing his blessing from Yitzchak, so Rivka and Yitzchak decided to send Yaakov to Rivka’s brother, Lavan. This would both protect Yaakov from his brother’s wrath and find him a wife. On Yaakov’s…