The Zohar, the great Kabbalistic work of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, makes a fascinating comment. It states that two great Jewish women, Tamar and Ruth, merited having the Messiah, Mashiach, come through their lineage because they both did kindness with those that had deceased. What did Tamar and Ruth both do that merited them to…

Did you ever wonder why the holiday of Shavuos doesn’t have any special mitzvah for the masses to do on it? On Pesach we eat matzah, on Sukkos we sit in the sukkah and shake the lulav and esrog, yet on shavuos there’s only customs, no biblical commandment for us? Why is that? Join me…

Did you ever wonder why there are 7 colors in a rainbow? Why didn’t G-d create it with 8? or 6? Ever wonder why G-d created the world in 6 days and then rested on the 7th? Why not in 5 and rest on the 6th? In Judaism, numbers are more than a quantification. Each…

What exactly is holiness? G-d defines the role of the Jewish nation as (Exodus 19:6), “A kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Clearly, holiness is not some elusive concept intended only for the greatest leaders of the generation. Holiness is a way of life that is attainable for each and every Jew. So what…

What’s so special about blessings?  Why do we have to make so many of them? Why do we have to bless before eating or drinking anything? The Talmud (Menachos 43b) teaches us that we’re supposed to make 100 blessings each day! If you assume the average person is awake 14-16 hours a day, that’s averages…

If you look at any mitzvah as it’s described in the Torah, it’s impossible to understand all the nuance and details necessary to fulfil it properly from the text alone. The Oral law (Torah She’ba’al Peh), also given from G-d to Moses at Mount Sinai, fills in all the missing details. The power of interpretation…

The counting of the Omer is a 50 day period connecting the holiday of Passover to the holiday of Shavuos. If you look in the Torah, the Omer actually seems completely disconnected from both holidays. It was just a barley offering that happens to be brought on the second day of Passover. So, what’s the…

We all associate Passover with feelings of freedom and royalty. We sit at our seders like kings and queens, discussing our liberation from Egyptian bondage. In reality, there’s much more to Passover than just freedom. Join me as we take a deeper look at what themes G-d tells us really drove the whole exodus experience,…

Why do you suppose the Rabbis titled the Passover night ritual a seder? Do you know that the word seder means order? Why commemorate a miraculous, beyond natural order event with an “order”? Join me as we take a deeper look at the Seder; uncovering topics such as the Jews matzah not rising, the birth…

In this episode I go through the process of preparing your kitchen for Passover, as well as some other relevant Jewish laws regarding preparing for the upcoming holiday. Although in general the discussion is more philosophical and kabbalistic, due to the complexity of the laws of Pesach, I wanted to provide a clear overview of…