Chabad Rebbes

The way a writer opens his work reveals much about his fundamental thrust and intent. This is certainly true when speaking about a Torah giant like Rashi, whose precise choice of wording has attracted the careful attention of scholars over the course of h...

Any parent who has deliberated over the choice of a name for his or her child appreciates how significant names are. As the Midrash emphasizes, the ability to give a name is a unique potential vested in mankind, a sign that man’s wisdom surpasses that of ...

Light fascinates and intrigues. Plants are drawn to light, and people also seek it out. Anyone who goes out on a sunny day after a few days of clouds and fog will tell you that the sun’s rays are inviting and invigorating. Why it has that effect we do not...

The name of the first section of the Book of Genesis is taken from its first words, “In the beginning” (Bereishit, in Hebrew), and opens with G-d’s creation of the world. Humanity was created with the ability to choose between good and evil, but the first...

Adam, the first man is featured in the narrative of creation, which we read this Sabbath. His name (אדם) is also mentioned at the beginning of the Book of Chronicles as the forebear of all mankind. There the first letterof Adam’s name is written with an o...

Once the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Lubavitch Rebbe, had to journey to Moscow to intercede with the Czarist government on behalf of the Jewish people. Because the mission was crucial and there was danger involved, on his way, he stopped in Liadi to pray at...

Shortly after the Rebbe assumed leadership of the chassidic movement, Charles Raddock, a secular Jewish historian and journalist, asked him: “How can chassidism function on the heathen soil of my America?” and “What answers does chassidism have for my own...

In the chronicling of creation, one detail strikes us with the force of mystery: Why was light created before everything else, when there was nothing to benefit from it? The Rabbinical explanation only adds to the mystery, for we are told that the light w...

The Gemara in tractate Shabbos156a. says: “He who is born on a Thursday will be a benevolent individual, for on that day, the fish and birds were created,”Bereishis 1:20ff. i.e., on that day — as Rashi explainsShabbos, ibid. — G-d created beings that are ...