Category: Baha’alotcha
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Baha’alotcha 5785: The Only Certainty is Uncertainty
There are words that I know from Talmudic discourse which are really helpful. I wish they had simple English translations. How do you say “kal va’homer” in English? A kal va’homer is a logical inference known…
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Baha’alotcha 5783: “Crisis & Insight”
While packing up our apartment last week I found these handwritten notes which are my father’s notes from the speech he delivered at my bar mitzvah. I don’t remember much of the speech itself because, as…
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Baha’alotcha 5782: “Nostalgia”
The best peach I ever ate was back in July of 1991. It was an absolutely perfect peach; I never expect to meet its equal. But even though there are exceptional meals, perfectly ripe fruit, exquisite…
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Baha’alotcha 5781: “Burnout”
There have been a lot of complaints recently about the postal service and so I assumed they were to blame when I received three weeks worth of New Yorker magazines in the mail all within three…
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Baha’alotcha 5779: “Egyptian Cucumbers”
When I was a child I would often cry on the first day of school. It wasn’t because I hated school or didn’t like my teachers. It wasn’t because I was upset about the classmates assigned…
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Baha’alotcha 5778: “The Menorah and Holistic Enlightenment”
Rabbi Aryeh Leib Steinman was the last living Lithuanian Talmudic scholar and rosh yeshiva whose education primarily took place in pre-War Europe. At the time of his death last winter, he was recognized as perhaps the most influential…
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Baha’alotcha 5776: “How to Be a Mensch and Why”
In 2007 an anonymous Jewish blogger attempted to classify all 613 mitzvot of the Torah into those that were likely to be supported by Democrats and those that would be supported by Republicans. He went through…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 