(Printable PDF below) Scroll through any podcast app and a single cultural promise dominates. Mel Robbins, host of the world’s most-listened-to self-improvement podcast, frames her show in a single line: “You can change your life and Mel Robbins will show you how.” Jay Shetty’s On Purpose, the world’s most-listened-to mental health podcast, invites you to “live life today on purpose” — to uncover the best version of yourself. The content may vary but the message does not: The

Shabbat friendly printable PDF at the bottom of the page "This was not punishment. And it was not a mistake." "You don't have to like it. I hate that Hersh is not here…" I haven't stopped thinking about Rachel Goldberg-Polin's words. They are so human. And they are also, quietly, theologically profound. She is saying that suffering is not punishment. That tragedy is not goodness in disguise. That not every terrible thing has a hidden reason waiting to be uncovered. And yet —

For the full artcile click here: On the Omer and Orchids | My Jewish Learning To Watch the conversation on Matan Torah Podcast: Episode 266 - Parshat Emor: On Counting the Omer in Unprecedented Times To listen: Episode 266 - Parshat Emor: On Counting the Omer in Unprecedented Times - Matan: One on One Parsha Podcast | Podcast on Spotify 🎦Watch the reel: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXsATp6iFo6/?igsh=bmxkamZrb2hjZmlo

For a Shabbat Friendly Printable PDF scroll to the bottom. Every few weeks another story surfaces about cyberbullying — a teenager, sometimes younger, who took their own life. Words weaponised to minimise another's humanity, that in instances such as these, literally kill. The Talmud, centuries before the internet existed, had a term for this: kol hamalbim pnei chavero b'rabim — one who shames another in public, it is as though they have shed their blood ( Bava Metzia 58b).

Pesach is not a story of simple redemption. It is a story told in the language of the bittersweet. The women of the Exodus, in whose merit we were redeemed, understood this intuitively. Miriam — mar yam — carries bitterness in her very name. And yet she is the one who picks up the timbrel and teaches the women to anticipate redemption before it arrives. She is the one who teaches the nation how to put words to unimaginable pain through song. Redemption, in the Torah, is nev

A Shabbat Friendly printable version attached at end of the page. A student came to see me recently, visibly overwhelmed. She was bright, capable, the world genuinely open before her — and completely stuck. Every path felt like a loss. "I have so many options," she said, "but every time I choose one thing, I'm giving up everything else. How do I choose?" I found myself pointing her to a word. In Hebrew, the word for choice is bechirah — ב-ח-י-ר-ה. Hiding inside it, if you l

The Lion There is nothing normal about the life we are living. There is the veneer, of course. We still shop, work, order takeaway and track its arrival. We still think about Pesach and the cleaning. We still wake up, brush our teeth, drink our coffee, and get on with our day. And in between, we duck for cover from an incoming missile. We check where the latest one has fallen. We run to the nearest shelter, count the ten minutes, and then continue — to work, to zooms, to erra

Shabbat friendly pdf at bottom of the page. In the last two years I have witnessed something extraordinary. Despite war, loss, devastation, and a hatred so raw it has shaken the foundations of everything we thought we understood about the world — the Jewish people have not given up. I don't want to romanticise this. We are broken. There are families who will never be the same again, wounds that will not close, absences that will never be filled. I have watched my own children

I’ve said before that Purim is the chag of our age. Because it asks the defining question of our time: How do you find God in a world that declared Him dead? How do you recognise meaning in an age of הסתר פנים — when the Divine seems absent, silent, hidden? Can we still see the dots? And more importantly— can we dare to connect them? But this year, that question is no longer philosophical. It is no longer abstract theology. It is the air we are breathing. Mordechai’s words ec

Let's talk about tzniut (modesty). Not the way it's usually discussed — as a conversation about hemlines and necklines, aimed almost exclusively at women and girls. Somewhere along the way, the holistic idea of modesty got reduced to a measuring tape. Because tzniut, at its core, is not primarily about sexuality. It is a posture toward the world. It is the question: how do I define myself? What do I reveal, and what do I hold back — not out of shame, but out of dignity? Wha

Click here to read article: The Blogs: The inward focus of the selfie culture goes too far | Tanya White | The Times of Israel

A Shabbat friendly PDF attached at end of the page. Part of a collaboration with The Simchat Torah challenge ( Simchat Torah Challenge ) (In the Zechut of Refua Sheleima for גיטל פעשא בת מאשע רחל) Every day that passes, another headline reminds us of the battle being waged by radical ideologues on both left and right — what has become popularly known as the phenomenon of the "useful idiot." We witnessed the sheer double standards when these same voices refused to cry outra

A shabbat friendly pdf for printing can be found at the bottom of the page. Protesting Happy endings I don’t really know what to do with the language of “happy endings” anymore—though if I’m honest, I was never much of a happy-ending kind of girl. By temperament I’m an optimist; in my soul I’m more of an existentialist. I identify with stripey people: the ones who can live between things rather than retreating into solidified, compartmentalised ways of being. There is somet

For a Shabbat friendly printable pdf scroll to bottom of page. Narrating in an Age of Fragments Last week, tucked inside the Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon , was a small pamphlet with a quietly audacious title: Megillat HaTekuma — The Scroll of Rebirth . https://www.sulamot.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/%D7%97%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%AA-%D7%97%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%9B%D7%94-%D7%A6%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%93%D7%99%D7%92%D7%99%D7%98%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%AA.pdf?srsltid=AfmBOootA4Rt4BM-KVymqxloD

Find attached various articles and shiurim/lectures for Chanukah: Since Chanukah is the festival of light, I wanted to share a few small offerings of Torah light — sparks to illuminate these winter days: 1. Chanukah Class Hashmonaim, Hannah Arendt and Bialik: Fighting Darkness with Light, Spirit, and Might (With gratitude to Rabbanit Oshra and Matan Hasharon for permission to share.) Source sheet attached. 🔗 https://youtu.be/7OH9MtGYPD4?si=UC-i51OYkFcOJPSW 2. My Latest Artic

(Shabbat friendly printable PDF at the bottom of the page) What is a hero? Over the past two years we have witnessed heroism in forms we never imagined: the soldiers who dropped everything to defend their country — many making the ultimate sacrifice; the wives of miluimnikim navigating months, even hundreds of days, of absence; the hostages who endured unimaginable darkness and somehow emerged alive, resilient, even radiant; the survivors of Nova, of the kibbutzim, of the sou

I have had many conversations with friends about the unhealthy levels of anxiety so many of us are carrying in post–October 7th Israel. PTSD is a reality many soldiers are confronting after battle, and while it is not comparable, civilians too are experiencing the long-term psychological strain of living in a war zone. Some fear terrorists may invade their homes; others jump at every unexpected noise. A few weeks after October 7th, I caught myself imagining terrorists enterin

The Blogs: An escape escalator to heaven or the divine call to earth? | Tanya White | The Times of Israel

There are images that will remain etched in our national consciousness for generations. One of them is Evyatar David: emaciated and starving, digging his own grave in a tiny cage—an image reminiscent of the graves Holocaust victims were forced to dig before being shot. We need no reminder of the depths of evil to which our enemies will sink, and indeed, they have succeeded in traumatizing us. This time, however, we were granted a redemptive image: Evyatar reunited with his fa

For a Shabbat Printable version click here: “Even if there are innocent people in Gaza, they don’t deserve to live,” he said to me. “I never used to think this way. I believed we had partners for peace. But after October 7, after witnessing the barbarity and hearing the hostages’ testimonies about the cruelty of ordinary Gazans, I no longer believe we can take any chances. We need to wipe Gaza off the map. ”This was a recent conversation with a secular Israeli friend. It was