© Rabbi David Lapin, 2014 What the Midrash Means Series - 1:6 Something strange has been happening to me. It’s been going on for a few years but I only identified it now: More and more people seem to be ready to accept the things I say with a quality of acquiescence that is new to me. I prepare heavily before I present a workshop to a client, a speech to an audience, a shiur to students, or even suggest a potentially unpopular idea to a grandchild. I prepare to make sure that the other will understand my thoughts, accept them and integrate them. I think of intellectual proofs and co..

    Even very great leaders have had downfalls because they were not conscious of their own blind spots. But only very occasionally is a leader's blind spot the result of his spiritual purity rather than his frailty. Impaired vision How is it possible that a giant of Yitzchak's stature with all his wisdom, ruach hakodesh and insight, was hoodwinked by his son Eisav and daughter-in-law, Yehudis? And if he was not hoodwinked by their idol worshipping (Rashi 26:35 and Midrash Rabba 65:4), why did he not intervene to stop it? The Torah's suggested answer (27:1) ..

Breishit, 27:4 Health and Spirituality Eating, exercise and caring for our other physical needs are so much more than the nourishment of our bodies. They are an avodah (a spiritual practice), a religious responsibility, a mitzvah. The connection of our souls to our bodies is the most fragile aspect of human life. When our bodies lose their connection to our souls, death results. Spiritual activities nourish our souls, but it is our physical health that keeps our bodies connected to our souls and keeps us alive. Physical health is a Mitzvah; that is why we sayBera..

How to unlock spiritual energy Recovering from a bout of flu (yes, I did get the shot,) I found myself asking for energy and thinking about it a lot. I thought of the different forms of energy, and how most of these different energy forms are encased in matter and need to be released. There is thermal energy in fuel, kinetic energy in movement, caloric energy in food, emotional energy in the human heart and spiritual energy in our souls and the souls of everything around us. I thought of the Nefesh Hachaim's understanding of the term for G-d,Ellokim, as the source of all energy..

"It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else and still unknown to himself."[1] Inside the wrapping A relationship with our own identity sounds easy. As one who is struggling with this, and has been for years, I can assure you though, that this is not the case. To me at least, my relationship with my own identity has been the most challenging relationship of all. The reason for its complexity is the difficulty we often experience in confronting our deeper selves in truth, and the ease with which we confuse our identities and images. Most of us have several images;..

Nature vs. Nurture….or neither?   Who is this man Ya'acov, later renamed Israel a name we see in almost every newspaper and newscast almost every day? His story begins with a mother perplexed by the almost schizophrenic nature of her fetus that is equally stimulated by the energy of divine sanctity and the negative force of idolatry.  According to some, she knew she had twins, in which case she must have thought of the possibility that each child is stimulated by a different force, one by kedusha, the other by avodah zara (idolatry). Why is she so perpl..