Faculties and Talents

Those Jews standing around him all understood Hebrew, and I seriously doubt that any one of them would have been comforted or impressed to hear it over again in Outer Mongolian or Swahili...

The goal of the Torah is to unite all people with the one G‑d. The 70 languages, by contrast, are a source of division.

Translation is a sensitive and possibly dangerous process. Our sages commented that the day the Torah was translated into Greek “was as difficult for the Jewish people as the day when the Golden Calf was made.”

What is the symbolism of the most tragic month of the year being called Av, which means Father? The message is that we all have one Father. The strength of the Jewish people is that we are one big family. This week’s story is with two Jewish mothers who n...

We now enter the fifth book of the Torah named Devarim—meaning Words. This is a very significant phase in the life of Moses, when he is not only transmitting the words of G-d, but actually internalizes it and “owns” them. This week's story is about a youn...

The Midrash tells us that Moses taught the Torah in Seventy languages, the seventy primary languages of the world. The Talmud relates that when King Talmi asked the sages to translate the Torah into Greek it was deemed a tragedy. What is the tragedy Moses...