ב"ה

Guest Columnists

Feeling Financial Pressures
We equate money with security, success, power, comfort or self-esteem. It follows then that when we lack money, it feels like we lack everything that makes life worthwhile and meaningful.
How Did Noah’s Dove Get Its Leaf?
The story does not say where the dove found the leaf, nor how this convinced Noah that it was safe to unseal the door of the vessel that had kept him and his family safe for an entire year.
When Times Are Tough, Be Like Noah
What was Noah's plan that offered him solace, hope, and rescue?
My Tips For Minimizing Sibling Rivalry
Siblings. How do we understand the intense rivalry intertwined with unwavering loyalty
Money Matters in Relationships
What’s wrong with materialism, whose fault is it, and how can we fix it?
Torah and Mathematics: The Secret of Noah's Ark
It is not by accident that the Ark was shaped like a truncated pyramid.
What the Ark Taught Noah
This time Noah had no choice -- the world was in his ark and he, as captain, had to take care of it...
The Rainbow in the Cloud
To touch some of heaven’s radiance, then curve gracefully back towards the earth in a glorious ray of colors that are manmade reflections of G‑d’s truth and hope for mankind . . .
The Forty-Day Mikveh
The waters of the flood are like the waters of a ritualarium -- a mikveh -- where the waters spiritually cleanse the dross that accumulates in the course of our life's endeavors. The world received a spiritual cleansing, and this set the course of history on a course of hope and purpose.
An Ark of Our Own
An island of decency in a sea of depravity, was the hallmark of Noah. And so G-d despaired of Noah's generation and decided to begin anew the task of creating a human species worthy of its vaunted status.
Where Bin Laden Went Wrong
It’s a safe bet you’ve not traveled to Hadhramaut, never mind heard of the location. It is an ancient region located somewhere in the hardscrabble deserts of eastern Yemen.
The Silliness and Sedition of Stilts
The Difference between the Generation of the Flood and the Generation of the Dispersal
Theology can at times be more challenging than keeping Shabbat, avoiding non-kosher food and the other mitzvot that govern our lives. We too are challenged by our faith system...
What I Did on My Summer Vacation
Or, The Kabbalah of Boating
The souls of the masters are called the "Fish of the Sea," swimming in the Ocean of Higher Reality... that's where you find the depth of life, expanded consciousness, absolute concepts and the never-ending beauty of inner soul
A History of Love
A famous talk by the Lubavitcher Rebbe analyzes the lives of Noah, Abraham and Moses as milestones in humanity’s journey from an instinctive selfhood to a true concept of “love” for one’s fellow. We also encounter the basis of the Rebbe’s groundbreaking approach to “outreach,” and how to relate to those who are supposedly spiritually “inferior” to oneself.
The Flood Within
Parshat Noach
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 . . .
Braving a New World - Part I
Noah, the Flood, and Transformation
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!?
Braving a New World - Part II
Finding the Leader Within
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...
Braving a New World - Part III
Woman: The First Conqueror
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...
Troublemaking Together
Parshat Noach
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 . . .
To See and Not to See
Two men fall down a chimney...
Is the World Any Better Now?
Civilization was utterly corrupt, and G‑d was greatly disappointed, to the extent that He wanted to destroy everything and start again with only Noah and his family. But is the world any better now?
Why Build a Too-Small Ark?
It is absurd to think that an ark the length of a football field-and-a-half can house the nearly million species of animals that roam the Earth.
Looking Forward to a World Where All Beans Are Counted
How can it be that mere theft brought a much worse punishment than open rebellion against G‑d?
What Was Wrong With Noah?
An Essay on Noach
Ascending in holiness is not a simple matter. It involves an intrinsic danger, to which Noah fell prey. When one is occupied with a world that is entirely holy, he lives in it alone, and he is liable to forget that there are other people that exist in the world.
How Did Noah Stay Calm?
Noah understood that whenever there are tidal waves, G-d provides a lifeboat that enables us not only to survive but to ride the waves and end up on top.
Related Topics