Vayechi
Dear Friend,
As I walked my daughter to school this Friday morning, we chatted about the pre-Shabbat party for which she was bringing the grape juice. I started singing a song I used to sing in kindergarten, and asked her if they sing it in her class as well. She told me they do. Pretty cool how some things stay the same.
Contrast that with the ever-evolving work environment. When my grandfather was my age, he typed his longer letters, and sent telegrams to convey shorter messages. When my father was his age, he sometimes used a state-of-the-art word processor to compose letters he could fax for the price of a phone call. I spend the lion’s share of my waking hours tapping on keyboard wirelessly connected to an oversized flat screen, on which I can do pretty much anything (besides for changing diapers).
Our work mode is changing faster than we realize.
Yet Shabbat remains a constant. Every seven days we go off the grid and spend quality time with our souls, our families and our tradition. In three cities, I, my father, and my grandfather sing the same exact songs. (And yes, we all sing off-key.)
Join us. It’s the timeless gift of time.
Menachem Posner,
on behalf of the Chabad.org Editorial Team
The deeper significance of the course of events which led to the burial of “Esau’s head in the bosom of Isaac.”
Joseph had in double measure one of the necessary gifts of a leader: the ability to keep going despite opposition, envy, false accusation and repeated setbacks.
Why didn’t Jacob take the time to bury his beloved wife in the Cave of Machpelah?
Jacob blesses each of his sons before his passing. He is buried in the Cave of Machpelah in the Holy Land. Joseph dies at age 110, and asks his descendants to bury his remains in the Holy Land. This comes to pass only years later, upon the exodus from Egypt.
Why did G‑d give the Torah to the Jews? What does G‑d want from humanity as a whole? Why did He communicate with the Jewish people in a different way?
On Asarah B'Tevet, the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tevet, in the year 3336 from Creation (425 BCE), the armies of the Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem. Asarah B'Tevet is observed as a day of fasting, mourning and repentance.
In the park next to her school, my daughter found a child’s lone glove. She’s insisting that we take it home and post signs to publicize it so that the owner might retrieve it.
This is the only Jewish fast that is observed on Friday, which means that we fast all the way up until we make kiddush.
To produce a wunderkind, mothers and fathers will put themselves and their child through a rigorous schedule of classes, concerts, museum visits . . . But parenting is as much about who you are as about what you do.
Genetics is a family matter, whether we like it or not.
Do all questions need to be asked? Do parents really need to know all the information all the time?
I had been there before on the tour, but this was different. It was late at night, and I was about to partake in an ancient ritual considered one of the three most important mitzvahs for Jewish women.
A Chabad center and art gallery in commercial space in the heart of Philadelphia exclusively shows the works of Jewish students from local arts and music colleges, and is a place where they can meet with their peers.
Since its start, the Jewish Relief Agency has delivered a bit more than 4.6 million pounds of food with the help of 82,000 volunteers, and is continuing to grow.
Five years after the devastating terror attacks that claimed the lives of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, Chabad of Mumbai continues to rebuild.
All the world’s problems stem from light being withheld.
Our job then, is to correct this. Wherever we find light, we must rip away its casings, exposing it to all, letting it shine forth to the darkest ends of the earth.
Beginning with the light you yourself hold.
