All My Teachers

The portion of Ekev starts off with “If only you listen..” The first word Vhayah (VHYH) is an obvious permutation of the Tetragrammaton YHVH, and the second word Ekev of numerical value 172 is the also the word for heel, which the sages equate with the heel of Adam,...

The Chosen Ones! Who Me?

We are the Chosen Ones. What does it mean to be chosen? My wife wasn’t feeling well the other day and when I left to drop my son off at a play date, I told my daughter she was in charge while I was gone. She immediately said, “Then I’m the boss,” so I explained to her...

The Journeys of our Lives

These are the journey(s) of our lives. In the Torah portion Masei, we encounter the list of the 42 journeys the Israelites took during their 40 years in the desert including exiting the exile in Egypt at Pi-Haratha to entering the Promised Land. The tzaddikim,...

It's a Beautiful Thing!

Last night I was meditating on the simple structure of the Torah, and as readers of the The Genesis Prayer and The Divine Calendar already know the quantitative sum of the Words, Letters, and Verses in the Torah equals 58 (5x5x5x5x5x5x5x5) exactly, which is an amazing...