ב"ה

Shemini 5763 - March 28, 2003

Current
Home Front

Remember those black-and-white WWII photos of heavy hearts, last goodbyes, care packages, crackly radio reports, and that hovering, ominous cloud of uncertainty? With my wife's brother in the 101st Airborne, now I'm it
Parshah
Shemini in a Nutshell
G-d specifies which animals are kosher and which are not, as well as the laws of ritual purity. The priests begin their service, but two of Aaron’s sons die while offering incense.
Food: An Anthology

Thirty essays and stories on the cosmology and geometry, wonder and whimsy, guilt and desire, politics and economics, history and future, the Talmud and the Kabbalah of food
The Oil of Wisdom

Become very aware of this circuit -- wax, wick, flame, and light. Internalize this sequence into your life: wisdom, body, consciousness, and enlightenment
Story
The Rabbi and the Ox

One day, the neighborhood butcher came to the study of Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz (1730-1805), the famed rabbi of Frankfurt, with an halachic query...
Parenting
Be Careful with your Words

We cannot always control what our children hear from others; but we should at least be careful with what they hear from the most important people in their lives -- their parents and teachers
When the Holy Temple was in existence, the Altar atoned for Israel; today, a person's table atones for him
— Talmud, Berachot 55a
Print Magazine

We Jews are a diverse people. We speak many languages. We live in every part of the world. We have different cultures, foods, political views.

But when a Jew’s mind is absorbed within Torah, it is the same Torah within which another Jew is absorbed. And another Jew. And yet another.

We discuss and debate and share and...