-
If your mind won’t shut off…if you wake up already behind…if you feel pressure even on “good” days… It’s probably not because your life is hard.It’s because you’re carrying a belief that turns life into a weight. Here it is:“It’s all on me.” That sentence sounds responsible.It sounds mature.It sounds like adulthood. But it’s also…
-
Two “New Pharaohs” There are two “new Pharaohs” in Parshat Shemot. The first is obvious: a new king rises who “doesn’t know Yosef,” and the darkness begins. But the second is quieter: Pharaoh dies… and the slavery still doesn’t loosen its grip. Bnei Yisrael cry out again, and this time Hashem “hears,” “remembers,” and redemption…
-
Parshat Vayechi opens with Yaakov Avinu doing something deeply personal. Before he dies, he gathers his sons and gives each one a different bracha. Not because he loved some more than others, but because he knew each one. He saw their nature, their struggles, and what each one would need to fulfill his unique mission.…
-
When I was growing up, my family and my out-of-town cousins would always spend Pesach and the Seder at my grandparents’ home. It was tradition, but it was more than that. One house. One table. One shared world of jokes and songs that belonged to all of us. We looked forward to it all year.…
-
There’s a quiet moment that happens at the end of the year. There’s a quiet moment that happens at the end of the year.Not when you look at the calendar…but when you look at yourself. You remember how this year started.The excitement.The plans you genuinely believed in.The sense that this time things would move. And…
-
Yaakov hears the impossible: Yosef is alive. Not only alive, but ruler of Mitzrayim. If we were there, we’d ask one question immediately: How? Who did this? What happened to my son? But the Rashbam points out something shocking: the brothers never told Yaakov how Yosef ended up in Mitzrayim, and Yaakov doesn’t force it…
-
Why Geulah Is Hard to Believe — Until It Isn’t At every moment of redemption in Jewish history, the pattern is strikingly consistent: first disbelief, and only afterward recognition. Not because the facts are unclear, but because the heart cannot absorb hope so quickly. When Yosef’s brothers returned and told Yaakov the impossible — that…
-
In Parshat Miketz, Yosef tests his brothers one final time. He sends them home with food and secretly places his silver goblet in Binyamin’s bag. When the goblet is discovered, everything collapses. From Yehuda’s perspective, this is the end. Binyamin is about to be taken, his promise to Yaakov is broken, and there is no…
-
What I Found When I Opened a Letter I Wrote to Hashem Last Year On the first night of Chanuka this year, I opened a sealed envelope that had been sitting in my living room for a full year. I wrote it on the last night of Chanuka last year. I honestly didn’t remember what…
-
Vayeshev opens like a world falling apart. A boy torn from his father. A pit. A sale. A shattered family. A righteous soul imprisoned. It looks like collapse. But the Midrash reveals the opposite: “Everything that happened to Yosef happened to Tzion.” Yosef’s descent isn’t random pain — it’s the pattern of every exile we’ve…
