by Raffi Levi
Posted on November 10, 2022
What can we do to easily create intentional motivation in our lives? I often find that when I have trouble beginning an important and challenging task, the simple transition of taking a deep breath helps make the whole process much easier.…
by Dvir Cahana
Posted on November 3, 2022
My grandmother, Alice Lok Cahana, Hinda Aliza bat Yehuda, was thrown into the gas chamber. Though she was crunched between 200 terrified people, at that moment she was completely and utterly alone. Staring death in the face, she contemplated her 15 years on earth.…
by Dvir Cahana
Posted on October 20, 2022
In the opaque smoke of battered trust and unrelinquished uncertainty through the void of the pandemic, the upcoming 2022 midterm election serves as a momentary relief, suspending us outside of our worn pessimism. The ability to have a say in future outcomes seems like such a scarce resource these days and restores us with a sense of empowerment.…
by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on October 28, 2021
That question is, of course, anachronistic. A close reading of this week’s parsha and later parashot, however, reveals that Rivka’s marriage to Yitzchak—as well as Rachel and Leah’s marriages to Yaakov, and most likely Sarah’s marriage to Avraham—brought into the Jewish family a woman’s voice and role that might otherwise have been absent.…
by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on October 14, 2021
The Amidah prayer opens with a blessing about the forefathers. It begins like this: “Blessed are you God, Our God, God of our forefathers,” and it then continues to name those forefathers explicitly: “God of Avraham, God of Yitzchak, God of Yaakov.”…
by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on August 5, 2016
Two major figures in the Torah – Moshe and Avraham – act in ways to protect others who are being oppressed, even those who are not their own people. In this way, that can serve as a model for a religious leadership that incorporates a vision of a universalist social justice.…
by Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot
Posted on May 25, 2016
At the opening of our parsha, Abraham, our founding father, leaves his homeland and birthplace on the journey towards finding the promised land. In truth, however, this is not the first journey that the Torah has presented to us in relation to Abraham and his father.…
by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on November 4, 2011
After two failed attempts at directing humanity to a life of holiness and goodness, God, in Lekh Lekha, begins the grand experiment that will be the narrative of the entire Torah and the story of the People of Israel. With the generations of Adam, God stepped back to see if human beings, having chosen to “know good and evil,” to think and choose for themselves, could choose for themselves a life of holiness. …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on October 15, 2010
Avraham bursts onto the scene in the opening of Parshat Lekh Lekha. He follows God’s command, goes to the Land of Canaan, and everywhere is calling out in the name of God, and bringing monotheism to the world. Late in the parsha, God appears to Avraham and commands him in the brit milah. …
by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on November 6, 2009
Parshat Va’Yera has many powerful stories and images, but perhaps the two most powerful are the story of Avraham arguing with God to save Sodom and Amora, and the story that is climax of the parsha, Avraham offering Yitzchak up as a sacrifice.…
by Rabbi Dov Linzer
Posted on October 30, 2009
We are told that Avraham was given 10 tests and withstood all of them. There is no doubt that in Lekh Lekha Avraham has many trials, but it is somewhat of a question of whether he withstood them all or not.…
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