Calendar, The Jewish

The “Second Passover” is observed on the fourteenth of Iyar. The origin of this semi-holiday is quite fascinating . . .

Why is this passage, which was said “on the first month” (9:1), recorded after Parshas Bamidbar, which was said “on the first day of the second month” (1:1)?

We may become strangers to Judaism, wandering on distant pathst. We may become spiritually defective, Jewishly impure, insensitive to the values and beauties of our faith. But we are not doomed to living apart from Judaism.

You can be physically close, yet detached and distant in attitude—here in body, elsewhere in mind.

A group of Jews had found themselves in a state which, by divine decree, absolved them from the duty to bring the Passover offering. Yet they refused to reconcile themselves to this.

Nowadays we commemorate the Second Passover by making sure to indulge in some matzah, but simultaneously we are permitted bread and other chametz on the table.

Some might think it odd when they hear an alcoholic in recovery say something like “Being an alcoholic is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”

When a person’s contact with death evokes in him a striving for life he would never have mustered without that experience, then the contact with death is transformed into a more intense involvement with life.

The rabbi asked, “Do you want to learn?” Shmuel replied, “No. But I want to want to learn.”