Insights

They opened a skylight in the study hall and dropped a snare; when someone walked into the study hall, they would yank on the rope so that the snare fastened itself around him, and pull him up to the roof...

Though I tried to summon some platitudes of comfort, he was having nothing of it. "I started off with nothing," he declared, "G‑d blessed me till now, and this is just a temporary setback..."

When you're feeling sad, do you go to your father or to your mother? Is it transcendence that you seek, or the solacing embrace that assures us that nothing is meaningless, that everything we are and feel can be borne, inhabited and redeemed?

"Why have they stopped crying?" wondered the villager. "Are they no longer hungry?" Then he remembered the cholent

According to a law set forth in our Parshah, which is counted by the Halachic authorities as one of the 613 diviner commandments (mitzvot) of the Torah, G-d's destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was not just a tragic event -- it also may have been illegal

Do good. Don’t wait for others to start. Be an initiator, the others will respond. It’s impossible that they won’t. Some will react sooner; for others, the process will take more time. Ultimately, the heart opens to the heart.

Despite its tragic associations, this period is characterized by strong positive spiritual influences. On the temporal plane, this is reflected in the fact that the period of Bein HaMetzarim falls in the summer...

If galut is a time of estrangement between G-d and Israel, why were the two keruvim embracing at the time of the Temple’s destruction? Wouldn’t the destruction of the Holy Temple mark a nadir in our relationship with the Almighty?