Reflections from my trip down the memory lanes of a lost world On the surface many of them looked no different from the non-Jewish aristocracy of their time, but when they served Hashem in study and prayer, they were like angels of G-d. Their ways were the ways of pleasantness and all of their pathways were peaceful.   Straight From the Jungle Last Sunday and Monday in South Africa I was tracking leopards in the bush, parked in the middle of a herd of elephant and staring at a large male lion less than twenty feet away. Isolated from the world and immersed in the wonders of ..

  Ash and Dust – Sota and Para Travel with me on an imaginary trip forward (or backward) into a time when the Beit Hamikdash is operational. We stroll and we observe. We see two strange, seemingly unrelated practices. First, we see a Kohein fixing a drink. The scene is sad. Conflict, fear and resentment permeate the atmosphere. He is mixing sand and water for the Mey Sota (Waters of a Sota). A man requested that his wife avoid ongoing privacy with another man. After ignoring his request, he accuses her of unfaithfulness. Drinkin..

Bamidbar 19 Writing and teaching while I am traveling poses the challenge of discovering new insights with very limited resources by way ofsefarim. That’s not a bad thing: it makes me realize how dependent we are on the giants of Torah, both to stimulate our own thought processes and to verify them. When we don’t have access to the array of sefarim normally available (and I still haven’t got used to using the internet as a substitute,) we are left to our own resources. We are compelled to go deep inside ourselves to verify the truth of a thought or insight. I for one, certainly ..