I didn't watch the horrific footage from October 7th. But my 18-year-old daughter did. When I questioned why she would expose herself to such horror, she replied, "I never want to forget. I want it to be imprinted in my memory. My brothers and sisters endured it - I have to carry the weight of that trauma in my mind." I was awed by her maturity and ethical clarity, yet also ambivalent about her exposure to such traumatic images. Her response touched on that complex inheritanc

Articles and Video's to accompany you this 9 B'Av: WATCH: With thanks to Matan Hasharon for sharing the recording. When God Is Silent: Confronting Evil. English Hebrew LISTEN: A conversation with Rabbanit Racheli Sprecher Fraenkel exploring the literal and existential concept of comfort when relating to the Jewish people and to God Himself. What does it look like to have hope after tragedy? What comforts the weary? Listen here: https://www.matan.org.il/en/online/episode-278-

On my way to London recently I bought two books. The first was Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus. The second was Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s When We See You Again. On the face of it they could not be more different. Harari is sociological, theoretical, civilisational in scope. Goldberg-Polin is personal, intimate and raw. She opens her book as if she is telling a fairytale come nightmare: “Once upon a time I was meandering down the road of life with my husband Jon. It was a regular beige

Link to the article: Yes, I Am My Brother’s Keeper | My Jewish Learning Link to the Instagram reel: Yes, I AM my brothers keeper. The only answer we need to hear right now. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DakEhBkId6q/?igsh=YXY5NG5rc3I1bHpi

“Without me,” Trump declared recently, “you wouldn’t be here.” There is no doubt a hefty dose of self-aggrandisement in that statement — it is unlikely Trump was thinking about the theological or historical context of his words. But it is worth pausing for a moment, if only to help us realign our own self-perception and internal orientation in the world right now. Iran is not the first, nor will it be the last, enemy to threaten Jews with extinction. The Amalekites, the G

(For a printable PDF scroll to bottom) לעילוי נשמת גיטל פאשע בת מאשה רחל In memory of an extraordinary human being who gifted those who knew her with love, inspiration and hope. Her love of life, torah and HKBH knew no bounds. May her memory be a blessing for am Yisrael and the world. The World As It Could Be Can the world be other than it is? I have spent a year teaching that it can. But honestly — there are moments when I have doubted it. Yesterday was one of those moments.

The Inverse Meraglim Story Today There is a somewhat surprising pattern in Jewish history. When external forces try to diminish us, something in us grows. The "October 8th Jews" — diaspora Jews who woke up the morning after and discovered a Jewish pride they had never felt. Noam Bettan on the Eurovision stage in Vienna, singing louder than the boos and finishing with Am Yisrael Chai. The hostages who returned emaciated and broken from the tunnels and said, almost in unison, n

Printable PDF link at bottom of page The Crisis: Looking Back When life breaks apart, we rarely look forward. We look back. Back to the relationship we knew was wrong. Back to the job that hollowed us out. Back to the pattern that nearly destroyed us. When the future feels terrifying, even a painful past begins to look appealing. Fear paints the narrow place gold. The Torah warns against this impulse again and again — most famously in Lot’s wife, who looks back against God’s

(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