A Deeper Reason Why Ya’akov Adopted Yosef’s Two Sons If we’re not careful, the Torah can appear to us as a collection of unrelated events with no connectivity between them – this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and so on. Further compounding the problem is that the Torah rarely explains what…
How a Secret Message in Lecha Dodi Can Transform Your Life Have you ever felt like your life was a complete mess, that everything you relied upon to create stability and order in your world had been turned completely upside down, overturned in some type of cataclysmic upheaval? You know what we’re talking about, chas…
The Deep Purpose for Suffering Why is it that when someone begins to do teshuvah and starts walking in Hashem’s ways, he frequently encounters difficulties and experiences suffering? If the purpose of suffering is to motivate a person to do teshuvah, why should he have to suffer at all? After all, he’s already doing teshuvah….
Yehoshua’s Merit in the Valley of Ayalon What does the prophecy of Eldad and Meidad have to do with Yehoshua bin Nun telling the sun to be silent? This past Tuesday, the 3rd of Tammuz, was the anniversary of a decisive and strategically important victory for Yehoshua and B’nei Yisrael as part of their southern…
The Laws of Nature vs. Divine Providence: It’s Our Choice Near the beginning of the first berachah before reciting the Shema in the morning, we praise Hashem by saying the following: וּבְטוּבוֹ מְחַדֵּשׁ בְּכָל יוֹם תָּמִיד מַעֲשֵׂה בְרֵאשִׁית (and in His goodness, He renews [mechadesh] every day, constantly, the work of creation). Further, toward the…
Following in the Footsteps of R’ Akiva and Nachman Ish Gamzu In our last article entitled Rabbi Akiva’s Night in the Field which we published just prior to the start of the Festival of Succot, we learned how to face life, build and live by true emunah even in the midst of difficult or even…
Orach Chaim 230:5 and the Meaning of Real Emunah We often talk about the importance of having faith [emunah] but do we really understand what it means? Pause for a few moments and ask yourself. Don’t just think about an answer, put your understanding into actual words. Speak it aloud, and try to use simple…
How do we ensure that in spite of aging physically, we never really get old? R’ Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk was one of the early leaders in the Chasidic movement. He was the primary talmid of R’ Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch. And after the Maggid’s passing, R’ Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder…
We discovered from our last article entitled Learning to Shoot Straight that perfect, whole tefillah is acquired through personal purity and tzedakah, i.e. the giving of charity.Therefore, if we want to remove the impediments that inhibit or limit our tefillot, we should learn how to purify ourselves and how to reduce our craving for money….
From where do novel insights of the Torah [חדושי תורה, chidushei Torah] come? On the one hand, there are those of us who merit to study Torah day and night yet rarely come up with (or ‘are given’) chidushim. On the other hand, there are those of us who even though we may not merit…
We are in the seven weeks of comfort and consolation leading up to Rosh Hashanah. During the first Shabbat of these weeks, we read the haftarah of Nachamu which begins with the quintessential verse of comfort (Yeshaya 40:1): נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ עַמִּי יֹאמַר אֱלֹקֵיכֶם (Comfort, comfort my people, says your G d). It’s worthwhile asking two relevant…
In the previous issue of The Shoemaker Report, in the article entitled The Primordial Criminal Mastermind we explored the essence of the sin of Adam ha-Rishon [אדם הראשון, Primordial Man] and discovered that he relied on his “superior” intellectual prowess to try to out-think Hashem. Instead of obeying the explicit command not to eat from…