ב"ה
We take one 365th part of time, outline it in red crayon, and call it our
"birthday". Other fractions are defined as "wedding
anniversary", "vacation" and an assortment of holidays and
remembrance days. Each is appropriately designated for happiness, relaxation,
sadness, whatever.Is that really how we are? Are we capable of relating only to bits and pieces of time, but not to its totality? Are we receptive only to "special occasions" in our life, but closed to the glory of its regularity?
Leviticus 16:1-20:27 Torah Reading for the week of April 29 - May 5, 2001 
On love, and holiness, and holiness in love, and holy loveThe Parshah in a Nutshell Full Parshah summary with commentary More on the Parshah from the Chassidic Masters
Why aren't women and men treated the same in Judaism? Am I going to burn in
Hell? How do I know I have a soul? If I’m sinning, how can I pray to G-d? How
can I stop working on Shabbat? That’s when all my business is! Answers by Tzvi
Freeman
Once he had been a brilliant Lower East Side yeshiva prodigy. The Depression
had changed that. The Party valued him. After Stalin he rethought his life and
was a watchmaker.One afternoon he asked me--a Jewish illiterate--if I wanted to hear a niggun.
Love unrequited due to cruel twists of fate,
or achieved due to good luck. These, basically, are the romantic tensions that drive
the plotlines of everything from dime novels and popular cinema to classic
literary masterpieces. Everyone either dies or
“lives happily ever after.” Life after the goal
is reached, the “happily ever after” part, is rarely dealt with.The Western mindset has a similar approach to spiritual quests: either you have blind faith in the stereotype of G-d, or you are on an often painful but dramatic, romantic search. To actually find G-d, or absolute meaning in life, is considered to be categorically impossible. |
 The Parshah in a Nutshell
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