I grew up in a Yiddish-speaking home in Montreal, Canada where I attended Yiddish and Hebrew day school, participated in Montreal’s Yiddish theater group and also performed in a Yiddish mandolin orchestra. My memories of the High Holidays (Rosh Hashoneh and Yom Kipper is how we pronounced them) included the traditional foods – apples dipped […]
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear even though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though its waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with its swelling…” (Psalm 46:1-3). When natural destructions surge […]
The leader of the world’s greatest superpower was awakened by a disturbing dream. Nebuchadnezzar’s “spirit was troubled and his sleep left him” (Daniel 2:1). The dream was burning with significance, but its interpretation was hidden from him. The whole matter filled the king with foreboding. Nebuchadnezzar was going through a meltdown with no one to […]
Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is once again in the headlines. On July 14 a four-man Islamist terror squad smuggled sub-machine guns and knives onto the Mountain where Solomon’s and Herod’s Temple once stood – a religious site holy to Judaism and Islam. Three of the four then attacked and murdered two Israeli police officers of Arab […]
“No reason to get excited,” the thief he kindly spoke. “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we’ve been through that and this is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely, now. The hour is getting late.” […]
Holy Spirit, ‘fake news’ and the heart of Ruth The Feast of Shavuot/Weeks is upon us (Deuteronomy 16:10). Fifty days have now passed between Pesach/Passover and Shavuot (Leviticus 23:16 – the counting of the Omer, a peck measurement and first-fruits prophetic promise of a coming full harvest). The crest of those calculations has been reached, […]