Finding Spirituality
R’ Rich Wolpoe shared with us on Avodah this challenge: My friend’s thesis is that Judaism w/o Qabbalah or Hassidus is mechanical and lifeless. And so he challenged me as follows: To List aspects...
Aspaqlaria Blog
TiDE and Slabodka
(The previous post was off topic, but on the blog. This post is on topic, but posted elsewhere.) Rabbi Rich Wolpoe posted to the Nishma blog an exchange we had by email. Here are...
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...
1984, NewSpeak and the Holy Language
A long while back I wrote some thoughts on the dispute between the Ramban and the Rambam about what makes Hebrew the holy language, in the context of a general dispute over the context...
How Great Are Your Works
Not my usual speed for a blog entry, but I saw this and was nispael (awed). It’s a video of what does on within a cell. How much Divine Wisdom there is in just...
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...
Halakhah and Phenomenology – Chazaqah
At this point we’re so far mid-stream, that unlike the previous post, I’m not going to summarize the basic thesis or even pretend to try to translate terms already used. Instead, I will just...
Aggadic Stories, History and Halakhah
Someone raised on Avodah the following question (see the posts listed here under two different subject lines, “Kinyan on Shabbos??” and “Kinyan on Shabbos? (Har Sinai)” ). The first Shavuos was on a Shabbos....
Of Qorbanos and Flowers
I’m curious to know how many of us who believe we’re supposed to want a restoration of the sacrifices actually anticipate it. I must confess that I’m too 21st cent for that, and generally...
Halakhah and Phenomenology – The Unperceived
Back on April 6th, I posted my previous entry to this series. The notion I’m exploring here is that: (1) Halakhah is about changing the one who performs it (as the Chinukh puts it...
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