ב"ה

Chukat-Balak 5763 - July 11, 2003

Land for Peace?

There's actually a clear ruling in Shulchan Aruch, the Torah's "Code of Law." This law does not even speak about the land of Israel -- it applies equally to Jerusalem and to Wellington, New Zealand
Parshah
Chukat-Balak in a Nutshell
Ashes and water; death, anger and war; a talking ass, curses transformed into blessings, and prophecies of the end of days; a noxious idol, promiscuous prince and a zealot; and what has been said about them all by sages and mystics through the ages
Fantasy

In each moment of life, a door opens through which we can step out of the fantasy and plug our world into the realm of reality. Eventually, we create the ultimate interactive game (that’s right, we’re still in beta).
On Inspiration

This past Monday morning I awoke, like every day, except that on this morning I was uninspired...
Story
The Obstinate Rabbi

The Rabbi sighed. "You don't know what a difficult time I've been having with the stubborn people here. Ever since I got back, they've been under the delusion that Shabbat is a day later, and I can't seem to convince them"
The Heroic Struggle

A personal account of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn's arrest and imprisonment, and subsequent liberation from Soviet prisons in 1927.
Not only myself did G-d redeem on this day... but also every one who goes by the name "Israel"
— The sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, in a letter written for the first anniversary of his release from Soviet imprisonment in 1927
Print Magazine

More than 1,700 years in advance, the author of the Zohar predicted a revolution of science and technology around the year 1840. There he describes the fountains of wisdom bursting forth from the ground and flooding the earth—all in preparation for an era when the world shall be filled with wisdom and knowledge of the One...