Category: Middos

Rights, Duties and Covenants 0

Rights, Duties and Covenants

אמר רבא: כל המעביר על מדותיו מעבירין לו על כל פשעיו Rava said: Whomever is “maavir al midosav“, they [the heavenly court] passes [ma’avirin] over all his sins for him. — Shabbos 17b What...

Letter to RCA Membership – Glatt Yosher 0

Letter to RCA Membership – Glatt Yosher

The following letter was sent to RCA member rabbis: Dear Rabbonim Chashuvim, We know that, like us, you were sickened and embarrassed by the recent scenes of religious Jews being led off in handcuffs,...

How Should I Respond? — Part II: Email from Agudah 0

How Should I Respond? — Part II: Email from Agudah

I received the following in my email box. I am heartened to see that we as a community are seeking constructive response. I am writing to friends and supporters of Agudath Israel to call...

How Should I Respond? 0

How Should I Respond?

When they gossip in Vilna, they desecrate Shabbos in Paris. – Rav Yisrael Salanter Some take Rav Yisrael Salanter’s causality to be metaphysical. I don’t think that fits R’ Yisrael’s general approach to life....

Natural Morality and Halakhah 0

Natural Morality and Halakhah

What’s the relationship between a human’s intuitive sense of what’s moral and halachic mandate? There is a tendency in some circles to describe the Torah as though halakhah was the sum total of the...

Emergency Doors 0

Emergency Doors

My current employer is meticulous about hanging mezuzos. He hired a rav who is an expert in this particular mitzvah, and he went around identifying every doorway. (Some of which are non-obvious, like where...

The Pursuit of Happiness 0

The Pursuit of Happiness

Rabbi Noah Weinberger of Aish haTorah, in the summary of his 48 Ways to Wisdom (an elaboration of the 48 steps to acquiring Torah listed in Avos, beraisa 6:6) on aish.com, writes: Did you...

More on Finance and Bitachon 0

More on Finance and Bitachon

In an earlier post, I mentioned R’ Elchanan Wasserman’s essay on the Great Depression. ) Despite the past couple of days looking promising, it is still too early to rest comfortably. The markets are...

Bitachon and Melukhah 0

Bitachon and Melukhah

Perhaps it is just that we have been exploring these two topics simultanously, but I think there is an interesting relationship between them. I wrote about bitachon that Bitachon is awareness that the A-lmighty...

Bitachon: Trust that …? 0

Bitachon: Trust that …?

There are three basic models of bitachon: 1- Bitachon is the belief that everything will turn out okay. This message is taught in an entire genre of stories which create the image that if...