Essays

By law, the menorah stood in a chamber into which only kohanim ("priests") were permitted entry. But the law also states that an ordinary person may light the menorah. What is the point -- and lesson -- of this legal paradox?

It's probably the oldest question in the history of human thought. It's surely the most disturbing, the most frequently asked and the least satisfactorily answered. Why, oh why, do bad things happen to good people?

You can't build a lasting building out of half-baked bricks. You can't assemble an accurate timepiece unless each of its gears, springs and balance wheels has first been honed to precision. But people, says the Lubavitcher Rebbe, are not bricks

"The world," states the Psalmist, "and all it contains, is G-d's." It would seem that the Eighth Commandment is superfluous -- since in the final analysis, it's not possible to steal anything

What if someone said to you, "I love you, but I don't like your children"? You'd probably say: "You don't know anything about who and what I am, and you don't know what love is, either!"

Even if we manage to avoid saying outright untruths, there seems to be something intrinsically dishonest in the process we call "education"

I think I know why the Rebbe liked this story so much. The child's question and the grandfather's explanation express two extremes, whose contrast and synthesis are a hallmark of the Rebbe's approach to life

A presentation of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's views on the Jewish people's connection with the Holy Land, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the so-called "Land for Peace" issue