Women on the Weekly Torah Portion

Since leaving the Garden of Eden, human impulse is an admixture of both good and evil. Our task is not to squelch the impulse but to mine it, by toning down the mine aspect.

Disagreements in marriage can be a real exercise in humility and maturity and force us to transcend our subjectivity. If we embrace the discomfort of the dispute we can come out with a lot more than a wounded ego...

I'm incredibly grateful that we have food to eat, clothing to wear, and a roof over our heads. Nothing is lacking as I carefully budget, trying to maximize every penny; but I still can't stop worrying and stop the anxiety from creeping into my heart...

Despite its violent and threatening nature, the flood is not just an enemy to be overcome or obliterated. It’s the very vehicle that pushes and elevates the ark to greater heights...

One can well understand then that Noah was worried about bringing new life into the world. Why give birth, toil and work the program that living entails if all that is built could at a point in the future also be destroyed!?

I've been a renegade since kindergarten. At university, the invite was to become a card-carrying member of (shhh… shhh) the Communist Party. And in my forties, the big-wide-world beckons that I fade the rebel's stain and dip myself in dyes of the Bourgeoisie. House, stocks, retirement fund… life insurance. All that stuff...

I loved to play with my grandmother's matriyoshki, sweeping the set off the shelf and enclosing one within her mother until all that stood before me was the ancient matriarch of the set. Silent. Robust. Red. Fat and pregnant with maybe fifteen smaller versions of herself. It crosses my mind that these matriyoshki are a visual model for a secret of the universe...

As a mother, I have a responsibility to teach my sons to do the right thing. But the right thing can mean, at least ephemerally, getting along and cooperating...

Noach teaches a person a very fundamental lesson in interpersonal relationships — how to avoid saying negative things about other people, and how to avoid seeing negative things in other people.

I just received our monthly credit card bill. On it was a month's worth of food shopping, as well as my utilities and phone bills. There were no luxuries; everything was a bare necessity. I gasped when I saw the total. How are we going to make it?

Abraham's plan would effectively remove himself from Pharaoh's hit list... and make Sarah available for Pharaoh's hedonistic abuse! Talk about a lack of chivalry! Is this Abraham, the first Jewish husband and the ultimate mentch?

Each Jew must look at him or herself and ask the question, “Who am I? What do I believe?” For we are not intended to be robots, we must do, but we also must know and understand...

Does your name define you? Do you know what your name means? Would you consider it a goal to live up to the meaning of your name? My English name is Stacey, the meaning of which is not fit to print in a Jewish magazine...

I read how Lot is saved and his wife turns into a pillar of salt. And I search to see my life in these words. I'd rather not see it, of course, as the connection is too intense, too real, too true

In a final summation of Sarah's life, the Torah tells us two things—she was beautiful and had a flawless character; her two great qualities juxtaposed.

Surrounded by a group of able-bodied men, Eliezer did not appear as a helpless, weary chap begging for a drink. And Rebecca was a young woman of nobility, not a poor servant girl accustomed to lugging water from wells . . .

Be spiritual. Listen to Sarah. Listen to your body. Use it. Use your animalistic drives and earthly achievements for G-dly missions. That’s exactly what G-d wants from you.

Some of us thrive as a result of a challenging environment; our struggles refine our characters and make us even greater people. And sometimes, no matter what we do, we cannot seem to rise above the circumstances of our birth...

An understanding the evil enclination's strategy makes it clear that it's counter-productive to inspect a shameful thought and be disappointed because of it. The key is to simply let it go. In fact we can actually feel pleased by its arrival...

All Jews are well-diggers, even today. Whatever you do for your physical livelihood and your spiritual livelihood, all depends on digging lasting wells...

A woman must cultivate a relationship with her Creator and use her mind to its fullest capacity. Only then, asserts the Akeidat Yitzchak, can a woman fulfill her second role as Chava, 'mother of all life', a role which crowns the role of isha.

What is the mystery of the spiritual qualities represented by these two sisters? What was the secret cosmic schism that would span centuries of history?

I know what she wants; she wants me to nurse her, she wants me to kiss her and comfort her...It's like her way of "checking in" to make sure that I'm still there and that I love her...

A man with tens of millions, the owner of several homes around the world and a private jet, related wistfully of a colleague who built his own landing strip...

What is the key to graciously accepting blessings in life while not growing callous because of them? Rabbi Schneur Zalman offers the answer, through a study of the words of Jacob, the archetypal beneficiary.

Imagine if we, as busy women, were able to take a half an hour out of our day and just sit and relax, completely guilt free. And yet, for eight straight days this is exactly what we are commanded to do...

Nancy called my father, complaining that the school van never came to pick up her kids. It didn't take long for my father to realize what I had done...

When Jacob was about to die, he called his twelve sons to his side. They gathered around him, and the twelve individuals became one unified soul . . .

In an age of instant messaging, instant coffee and instant soup, how long would you wait for a return on a favor before you wrote it off? Patience may be considered a virtue but for many, we are too impatient to be that virtuous...

As the mother of young children, the peaks and valleys of parenting make it easy to lose perspective. It will be years before I will see the fruits of my labor...

I appreciated the empowering message of The Secret, but I also had some questions. Firstly, is “the universe” a new-age, neutral-sounding pseudo-name for G‑d . . . ?

Determining right from wrong is something that we are constantly challenged with throughout our lives. Yet nothing is harder to face and acknowledge than when the "wrong" is happening in our own homes...

You could take the Jew out of Egypt, but could you take Egypt out of the Jew? It was Moses’ job to facilitate this transition. One therapeutic technique that he used at G‑d’s behest was orchestrating the ten plagues . . .

The very concept of Egypt denotes limitation, a sense of entrapment, blockage and slavery. And we have a directive to escape this reality every day. We don't need to physically live in the land of Egypt under Pharaoh's rule to feel enslaved...

The Jewish nation seems small and weak, but this is actually the key to our greatness. It allows us to reflect G‑d’s quintessential light to the world.

Do we dismiss our child's issues as insignificant? Do we reassure him that this "little" incident will pass, without validating what he is experiencing, in this moment?

When confronted with pain, we have three choices...

A preemptory dose of pain can bring a lot of long-term pleasure. This pain/pleasure principle played itself out vividly in the life of Miriam and her soul-sisters...

“My children are constantly fighting with each other,” laments Susan, a mother of three. “Will there ever be peace in my home?”

Torah does not support asceticism, the closed walls of a monastery and a life apart from the bones of the body. We are asked to eat the cookie—or kasha—but to ever remain the master of that act . . .

My dark, curly hair was a constant reminder of my minority status. I never saw this as a negative aspect to my identity. On the contrary, I relished my membership in a global club of Jewish people all over the world...

My daughter is always complaining that “all the other mothers” always do their children’s projects and homework for them . . .

It isn't mere coincidence that every totalitarian regime in history, as the first step in cementing its hold on the people under its rule, has first exerted control over their memory...

When we understand the root and essence of terrorism, we also understand how despite its awful power we can fight it, each and every one of us, until it is absolutely destroyed.

Moses’ task of nurturing his flock’s faith expresses itself in its fullest at those times when we are “crushed.” For it is then that the essential faith kicks into highest gear and activates incredible luminescent displays of commitment to G‑d.

The lesson that I needed to learn was that of responsibility. As long as my mother “owned” the results of my actions, I didn’t have to. It was only when I was the one who had to deal with the consequences that something shifted . . .

What others think of us is relevant only if it reflects what we stand for and the way we honor their dignity. The secret is that we attain the favor of others precisely when we free ourselves of kowtowing to public opinion...

When the Jewish nation was still very, very young, we began setting aside materials for our own marital home. Our wedding was still hundreds of years, and hundreds of miles, away . . .

Split hooves, cud chewing, fins and scales, a tradition of edible birds—as lessons in parenting.

Isn’t marriage between man and woman a violation of the laws of kilayim, which prohibit the intermixing of divergent species?

When G‑d communicates with us from a place closer to His essence, we don’t understand Him clearly. Was that a hug? ’Cause it felt like a slap in the face . . .

The husband and wife paradigm is often used to depict the relationship between G-d and the Jewish people. This is because no other relationship exemplifies the cultivation of such deep and dynamic growth...

When the Torah tells us who lived near whom, it’s telling us about the power of proximal influence. There’s the influence of a rebel rouser and of the scholar...

There are times when we must wage an external battle, and there are times when we must safeguard our internal treasures . . .

I would like to be an intellectually honest spiritual seeker, a warm, loving and dynamic wife and mother, a supportive friend; but at the end of the day I look in the mirror and see an annoyed, tired dishrag, and all I want to do is have a cup of coffee and a bar of chocolate...

You are married, or intensely committed, to a vision, a goal, a dream. Then along comes life...

Their job was to bring up the rear and gather up any objects left behind--missing socks, perhaps, or lost children... It's not a very glorious role

What were the calculations of ten spies that caused them to err so profoundly? And what did the women of Israel intuitively understand that these great “men of distinction” failed to comprehend?

Two women played a prominent role in Korach's revolt. Their different approaches in dealing with the material reality lead to two opposite outcomes...

One day, Sara tried a different approach. "Honey," she said to her husband. "I know you this isn't the way you see it. But please, do it just for me!"

At each of their stops over their forty-year trek, the people made sure to erect their tents in a modest arrangement. Apparently it was this exceptionally sensitive quality amongst them that made it impossible for Balaam to harm them.

Leadership is one of those qualities that, as soon as a person begins describing his or her own mastery of it, you can’t help but feel that, in fact, they don’t have it . . .

Traditionally, the linear, male method of "conquering the land" has been perceived as superior and more effective. But the daughters of Tzelafchad realized that there will come a time when humanity will evolve to a more feminine mode of conquest...

Personal journeys. Relationship journeys. Our national cosmic journey....

The second level emerges when Torah becomes not just an acquisition of knowledge and a subject-object encounter—an “I” facing “it”—but a personal meeting place, an “I” facing “you,” or better yet, a “we” relationship . . .

Home in the womb, on the road of life, lying down in the grave, and waking up in the World to Come...

A surge of adrenaline and willpower, combined with a large dose of Divine intervention, gives us the strength to overcome the monsters which appear in our lives...

Why would anyone feel euphoric just because they can see where the floor in their kids' room is? Men might chalk it up to insanity, or to simply being one of those girl things, but I prefer to attribute it to spiritual sensitivity...

G-d has given two signs which differentiate between kosher animals and non-kosher animals. These signs are guides by which we can try to keep our lives on a level that will make us kosher, and even holy...

We spend our youth building up cynicism, then we come to our twenties and thirties and are suddenly expected to make all those big life changes, like marriage and kids, that require faith in our fellow human beings, not to mention ourselves...

Here was a nation that had experienced the greatest miracles of all time: the ten plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea and the manna. And yet they were not impervious to the plague of doubt...

If you chance upon a bird's nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs, and the mother is sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go and take only the young...<

Naomi is married to a very busy, goal-oriented individual. She often laments how due to his overloaded schedule, they rarely spend quality time with each other...

Although the monetary value of the meal offering can not be compared to that of an animal sacrifice, the amount of physical and spiritual effort that went into this act for this particular person is priceless...

The vision which we see on Shabbat Chazon is to inspire a change so fundamental that we will turn that vision of the Third Temple into actual physical reality...

He knows we are not angels, because He didn't create us to be perfect. But He did create us with the ability to connect with others and become better people...