Tishah B'Av 5768 - August 10, 2008 |
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Stones with a Soul
By Mendy Herson
The Western Wall is a place of national nostalgia, a focal point for our collective pining over a lost glory. It is the symbol of our hopes for the future. But it’s also a symbol of what still exists... |
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Subliminal Advertising
By Elisha Greenbaum
I don't know if the communists or Madison Avenue ever perfected the art of subliminal suggestion, but I am sure that G-d has the requisite skill level to pull it off... |
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Kamtza and Bar Kamtza
Talmud, Gittin 55-56
It happened this way: A certain man had a friend named Kamtza and an enemy called Bar Kamtza. He once made a party and said to his servant, "Go and bring Kamtza..." |
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About Tishah B'Av
The saddest day on the Jewish calendar is the Ninth of Av, "Tisha b'Av." It is the date when both our Holy Temples were destroyed, and exile, persecution and spiritual blackness began. |
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Mind Your Business!
By Chana Weisberg
"Live and let live!" "It's not your place to mix in!" Are these tolerant voices of acceptance or words cloaking our apathy in our age of impersonalization? |
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Facing Grief
By Dr. Miriam Adahan
Any loss, especially one involving the loss of love, independence, structure or identity, causes a temporary loss of balance—physically, emotionally and spiritually. |
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Why We Yell
By Sara Chana Radcliffe
There's lots of "legitimate reasons" for why we yell at our kids. But are the consequences too high a price to pay for gaining of a little cooperation? |
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Caught in the Middle
By Tzippora Price
My wife and my mother don't get along. Both of them complain to me about the other one. I'm caught in the middle and I feel like I am balancing on a high wire. What can I do? |
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Peering From Behind the Lattice
By Valerie Farber
I surf between CNN, Fox, and the Jerusalem Post scanning photos of our soldiers: rough beards, weary postures. I squint, searching for Akiva's face among them... |
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Tanks 'n Tractors
By Shimona Tzukernik
The internet's down! And with it, the phone. It's a silence about the texture of a goose-down cushion.... |
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Never Forgive or Forget
By Shirley Coles
He pulled back his sleeve and I saw the numbers every living Jew recognizes |
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Pilgrimage
By Jill Pincus
Every prayer is a conversation with the Creator. To lose this awareness is to transform the dialogue into a monologue... |
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The Parshah in a Nutshell
For 37 days Moses talks: recalling, reminding, rebuking, warning, promising; about the revelation at Sinai and their journeys through the desert, about spies and wars and victories and the Land and what it's like to serve as a leader of G-d's chosen people |
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Words
Based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe
Why do we talk so much? Witness the endless self-explaining we engage in, the perpetual conversation we feel obliged to "make", the quadrillions of words unleashed each day in every imaginable media... |
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Know Where You Are Coming From
By Mordechai Wollenberg
Moving forward is essential, but in order to do so we must understand where we are coming from |
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The True Translation
By Tali Loewenthal
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" |
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Torah in Chinese
By Lazer Gurkow
The Talmud teaches that G-d uttered the Ten Commandments in all 70 languages, though only the Hebrew version was heard. What was the point of speaking in languages that no one understood, let alone heard? |
