The Talmud advises that when Adar comes in, we increase in joy. But how can we celebrate when our brothers and sisters in Israel are in danger, displaced, fighting for their lives, besieged and … more

O ur parasha begins with Moshe Rabbeinu gathering the entire Jewish people before him, at which point we would expect some sort of listing of “the things that Hashem commanded to make.” … more

T he Yalkut Shimoni’s opening comment in his Midrashic exposition on Parshas Vayakhel is translated as follows: Vayakhel Moshe, and Moshe gathered: Our Rabbis, the master Aggadists, said … more

Q uite a few years ago, I spent almost every Sunday afternoon in one of the great museums of the city where we then lived. I no longer remember what first stimulated my interest in art, and … more

Melanie Reid, a journalist with The Times of London, is a quadriplegic who, with a wry lack of self-pity, calls her weekly essay Spinal Column. She told how she, her husband, and others in their … more

In 1860, a relatively unknown one-term congressman named Abraham Lincoln stunned the country by prevailing over three prominent rivals — William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates — … more

People are motivated by many things. The search for pleasure is certainly one of the great motivators of human beings. So is the search for power and the search for riches. There are also those among … more

One of the most important Jewish contributions to our understanding of leadership is its early insistence of what, in the eighteenth century, Montesquieu called “the separation of … more

T he best-known pasuk in our parasha, Terumah, is this: “And they shall make Me a sanctuary (mikdash) and I will dwell in their midst.” It is followed by many verses that specify every … more

In one of the opening statements of his essay “The Lonely Man of Faith,” Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik writes, “The nature of the dilemma can be stated in a three-word sentence. I am … more