Nemesis is lame; but she is of colossal stature, like the gods, and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim.
The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch.
[George Eliot; Scenes of Clerical Life]
I’ve always been struck by the choice [...]

One of my favorite parts of the Haggadah is the part that isn’t there: Moshe’s role in redeeming Israel, an appropriate message for groups gathered for the Seder:
In the 12th Century poem, The Conference of the Birds, the birds of the world gather to decide who is to be their king, as they have none. [...]

“When you have entered the land God your Lord is giving you as an inheritance and have taken possession of it and settled in it, take some of the first-fruits of all that you produce from the soil of the land God your Lord is giving you and put them in a basket. Then go [...]

“Your words have been harsh against Me, says God. Yet you say, what have we spoken against You? You have said, it is useless to serve God; what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance and that we have walked as mourners before the Lord of Hosts? So now we call the proud [...]

The verse in Malachi immediately preceding the beginning of this week’s Haftarah reads, “But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the [...]

“Hope is related to the very feeling that life has meaning, and as long as it does, we have reason to live.” (Vaclav Havel)
When the rabbis teach that Egypt had an iron wall from which no person ever escaped they are telling us that the slaves in Egypt lived with absolutely no hope of a [...]

I once posted an article, “There is a school in Monsey,” describing the great achievements, awareness, sensitivity and Chesed of Ateres Bais Yaakov in Monsey, NY. They’ve done it again:
While thinking of a nice winter vacation, most of us would come up with destinations such as Florida, or any other sunny place on the globe.
Many of my [...]

No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear,
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.
John Greenleaf Whittier 1859
These words struck me as I was reflecting on the Haggadah. Much of the Pesach Seder is either looking forward or behind. We look forward as we prepare for Pesach; even when [...]

The 20th of Adar is the Yahrtzeit of Rav Yoel (ben Shmuel) Sirkes of Cracow, (the Bach) (1561-1641), author of Bayis Chadash on the Tur, in which he traced each law to its source in the gemarah. In his youth, he studied under Rav Shlomo Leibush of Lublin and Rav Meshulam Feivush in Brisk. He [...]