The Torah is our blueprint and life map, there to direct us through the darkest of days. In Parshat Yitro we read about the experience of Bnei Yisrael as they received the Torah, a transformative ...

Shavuot is the festival when Jews eat cheesecake and celebrate “matan Torah,” literally, “the giving of the Torah” at Mount Sinai. It conjures up images of the tablets being handed to Moses in the ...

Moshe wrote the first portion of the Torah (from Bereishit until Matan Torah) and awoke early to build an altar at the foot of the mountain, together with twelve stone monuments, one for each tribe.

Approaching Shavuot, the time of matan Torah, the giving of the Torah, I have heard the song of the new Torah reader in a storefront minyan, and the song of the Jew by choice; the singing of Torah in ...

Hashem created every one of the world’s eight billion people with a yearning for meaning. Although we all know that we are merely one of billions, we want to feel that our lives matter, that we mean ...

It is a sad week for women’s Torah study, with the news that the Advanced Talmudic Institute at Matan — founded 24 years ago by Rabbanit Malke Bina — is closing its doors. Matan did not confirm its ...

Kohelet is a meditation on the magnetic allure, and ultimate limitedness, of things. Shlomo HaMelech identifies what we crave in this world: wealth, possessions, physical pleasure, knowledge, fame, ...

So much of Torah is metaphor. Indeed, if we read this classic Jewish text only according to its plane meaning we miss the greater truths and the richer opportunities for understanding and ...