Lubavitcher Rebbe; adapted by Yanki Tauber

The prophet Jeremiah proclaims: “From the Supernal One’s word there cannot emerge both evil and good” (Lamentations 3:38). Indeed, if G‑d is the essence of good, can there be evil in His work?

An important component of the Torah reading of Eikev is the nine verses (Deuteronomy 11:13–21) which constitute the second parshah (“section” or “chapter”) of the Shema. Last week’s reading of Va’etchanan included the six verses that make up the Shema’s f...

If Moses would have crossed the Jordan, that would have been the end: the end of the struggle, the end of history . . .

On whose initiative were the spies sent? The way the story is told in Numbers 13, it was by divine command. But when Moses recounts these events 40 years later, he tells the people of Israel that it was their idea. The contradiction describes a watershed ...

Why content ourselves with the perfection of the individual self, when we have been empowered to transform the world?

Who has not fallen prey to the oh-so-human tendency to compare his life to the lives of others? “If only I had So-and-So’s mind (or talent, or money), then I’d be able to make a difference and have some impact on the world!″

"One cannot banish a life for the sake of a life'' is a major principle of Torah law. A human life is of immeasurable, unqualifiable, infinite value.

When the Torah instructs us to "follow the majority,"1 it seems to simply reiterate a most basic fact of life. Yet every so often we are confronted with a defiant exception to this rule. How does a single split atom radically transform an innumerable quan...

How can a unit of time be defined as a day of rest, the very antithesis of time?

Light travels through time and space to ever duskier vistas, to increasingly alien environments. A journey from midday in Jerusalem to the darkest reaches of a world awaiting redemption.