Topic
Parsha and Yom Tov
The weekly parshah, and the pieces that belong to the Yamim Tovim.
Parsha and Yom Tov
Every piece in this topic
The Side Door
20 September 2026Then he went up to the bimah, put on his own tallis and his chazan’s hat, and began Kol Nidrei — a full day late, in an empty shul, for one man.
The Job He Didn’t Get
10 September 2026Rabbi Yoel Gold tells the story of a boy who spent one summer night making the worst decision of his life.
Seven Ordinary Things That Aren’t
8 September 2026The shivas haminim are so familiar they have turned into wallpaper. Slow down and look at what is actually going on inside a kernel of wheat, a grape, a fig, an olive or a pomegranate, and…
The Happiest Man on the Plane
3 September 2026Two men on the same plane, the same flight — one crammed into the bathroom, one reclining in first class.
The Signature You Never Saw
27 August 2026Hardly anybody is making a second list – what went right… what we have to be thankful for.
The Sheaf You Left Behind
20 August 2026The Man on the Ash Heap He lost his money. Then he lost his children. Then he lost his health, and by the end he was sitting on a public ash heap outside of town, scraping at his own…
The Court That Was Never Built
13 August 2026The Man Who Couldn’t Sleep Picture a man standing in a street in Tzfas in the year 1538. He is somewhere around fifty years old. For most of his adult life he lived in Spain as a Christian.
Parshas Re’eh: Seven Hundred, Either Way
6 August 2026On Rosh Hashanah, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai saw in a dream that his nephews would lose seven hundred dinars in the coming year (Bava Basra 10a). He didn’t tell them.
Parshas Eikev: The Things We Step On
31 July 2026The Things We Step On A Slab of Watermelon Rav Avigdor Miller used to ask why Rosh Hashanah comes at the end of the summer.
Parshas Va’eschanan: The Bronze Medalist’s Secret
24 July 2026The Bronze Medalist’s Secret The Faces on the Podium In 1995, a team of psychologists at Cornell University published a study that has since become famous.
Auschwitz: An Audio-Visual Presentation
23 July 2026On Tisha B’Av, revisit one of Yaakov Astor’s most powerful presentations: Auschwitz — An Audio-Visual Presentation.
Fire and Silence — Now Live on TorahAnytime
23 July 2026It’s live. Fire and Silence: Titus, the Vatican, and the Jews of Rome is now up on TorahAnytime.
Fire and Silence — Tomorrow on TorahAnytime
22 July 2026In 70 CE, Titus destroyed the Beis HaMikdash and carried the Menorah through the streets of Rome.
Parshas Devarim: Between the Walls
16 July 2026Between the Walls Picture a harbor in Spain, August 1492. Ships everywhere — some carrying Jews into exile, others preparing for a voyage into the unknown.
Parshas Matos-Masei: The Warning Labels on Money
8 July 2026The Warning Labels on Money Crystal and Silver on the Shore of Lake Michigan Spring 1923, Chicago. A banquet at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, right on the shore of Lake Michigan.
Parshas Pinchas: Your Destined Portion
1 July 2026Do you ever get the sense that you’re in the wrong life? Not dramatically wrong — not a crisis — but just… off.
Parshas Chukas-Balak: The Flag You Carry
24 June 2026By Yaakov Astor Mr. Wallerstein ran a bagging company. It was a solid business, but not a glamorous one.
Parshas Korach: When the Smartest Man in the Room Fools Himself
24 June 2026The Murky Psychology of Self-Deception By Yaakov Astor A Dairy Restaurant and a Movement The Alter of Slabodka once offered a sharp little mashal — half joke, half diagnosis of human…
What the Eyes Did Wrong
10 June 2026Two Bookends Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov, in his classic Sefer HaParshios, makes a quiet observation about Parshas Shelach. The parsha opens with twelve men sent to see the Land of Israel.
Parshas Beha’aloscha: The Millionaire Who Had Nothing
4 June 2026Yaakov Astor The Man Who Already Had Enough Jack Whittaker didn’t need the money. He was already worth $17 million—a construction company president in West Virginia who had built his…
The Silent Crown
27 May 2026Noch a Bissel Two merchants traveling to Memel found themselves sharing the road with a quiet, simply dressed Jew.
The Bridge He Never Saw
19 May 2026R’ Shmuel Berenbaum stayed at his Gemara while the other Mir bochurim rushed to see the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—or was it?
The Man Who Didn’t Know What He Was Worth
13 May 2026Parshas Bamidbar: Ketia Bar Shalom, the Netziv who almost became a blacksmith, and why Hashem counts every Jew individually — because each one carries a unique, irreplaceable role.
Parshas Behar
7 May 2026Yaakov Astor Six Cents Rav Fishel Schachter tells of a family that was very wealthy — but you would never know it.
Parshas Emor
30 April 2026Parshas Emor opens with the special laws governing the kohanim. They must maintain a higher standard of sanctity — restrictions on whom they can marry, how they relate to the dead, their…
Passover & Pandemic
8 April 2020The nature of coronavirus contradicts everything we know and do as a community. It pushes us to be individuals. We’re restricted from davening with a minyan.
My Mother-in-Law: Jewish Heroine and Nazi Killer
4 July 2016This was published on Aish.com It was a daunting assignment: speaking to 120 eighth grade girls about the Holocaust in the last hour of the last day of their school year.
Warriors of a Different Breed
6 December 2012Light Makes Might The story of Chanukah is made up of two radically different components. One is the war, the battles of the Chashmonayim and their ultimate victory over the Syrian/Greek…
Light in the Kingdom of Darkness
1 September 2011Last month, I joined a group of 24 educators visiting the concentration camps in Poland. It was the culminating leg of a year-long fellowship program sponsored by Zechor Yemos Olam, the…
