Why Civilizations Die In the book, The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking our way out of extinction, Rebecca Costa delivers a fascinating account of how civilizations die. Their problems become too complex. Societies reach what she calls a cognitive threshold. They simply can’t chart a path from the present to the future. The example she gives is the […]
Someone once summarized all Jewish holidays: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat, and this seems to be the case in the Purim story. A plan (between King Achashverosh and his advisor Haman) was made to annihilate the Jews, the plan was thwarted, Jews defeated their enemies, and since then we have made […]
Lessons from Dunkin Donuts And they brought the Mishkan (Tabernacle) to Moses… When all the parts of the Mishkan (Tabernacle) had been made, they were brought to Moses, who actually stood the walls up and erected the Mishkan. Rashi quoting the Midrash explains that due to the massive weight of the materials, none of the people were able to raise it up, so […]
Choosing a Day of FreedomThere is an interesting idea discussed in the laws of how to write a Torah scroll. The one who writes it must have in mind specifically that he is writing it for the purpose of a Torah scroll. If he was just practicing his script writing or felt like writing biblical […]
The Power of Experience After being liberated from Egypt and participating the Sinai experience, the Jews build a Golden Calf. Now it came to pass when he (Moses) drew closer to the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, that Moses became angry, and he threw down the tablets… (Ex. 32:19) Moses had spent 40 days and […]
