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Miketz Chanukah 5758Volume 19 · Issue 13
In the Hands of the Weak
“How do you know it to be so,” he asked. Alexander has no faith in sages and he asked them to prove it. They took some earth and covered the eye, and it immediately returned to its natural weight.
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Behaaloscha 5765Volume 1 · Issue 15
The Light of the Menorah
The Talmud (Berachos 12a) derives from the verse, “To relate Your kindness in the morning and Your faith in the nights (Tehillim 92:3),” that when light shines in the morning, existence, the epitome of kindness, is available to us, but in the darkness of night, it is unavailable and essentially nonexistent. At night, all we have
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Miketz Chanukah 5761Volume 21 · Issue 14
My Dove
Shemos 13:16), “And from the great publicized miracles, man acknowledges the hidden miracles, which are the foundation of the whole Torah in its entirety. For man has no share in the Torah of Moshe Rabbeinu unless we have faith that all our matters and happenings are all miracles, containing nothing of nature and the routine of the world, whether communally whether individually.”
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Nitzavim-Vayelech 5760Volume 21 · Issue 4
Be Righteous
Of this, there is no doubt. It is one of the principles of faith, and the Rambam discusses it elsewhere, further on in these laws as well. It is obligatory to have faith and to know that there is judgment and Judge, and every deed is brought before Him and nothing is hidden.
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Lech Lecha 5766Volume 2 · Issue 7
Journey to Destiny
Initially, the Torah does not describe any virtue of Avraham Avinu. The good deeds that he performed, his tremendous self-sacrifice to attend to guests, his faith in the Creator, his withstanding of all ten trials, the pinnacle of which was the Akeidah—all this is what the Torah openly reveals of Avraham Avinu, but the Torah only mentions this long after Avraham Avinu was chosen.
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Bo 5768Volume 4 · Issue 18
Focus on the Future
Rambam (Hilchos Avodah Zarah 1:3) describes how Avraham Avinu contemplated the world and studied all possible human mistakes and inspected them exhaustively, and from all the errors of all the previous generations, he arrived at the conclusion of faith. Each worshipped another idol, each erring in a different facet, and from all these facets of error, he concluded the impossibility of the world existing without a Guide (cf. Bereshis Rabbah 39:1).
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Yisro 5768Volume 4 · Issue 20
Ultimate Reality
…this, it says there (Shemos 19:9), “And also in you they will have faith forever.” For when we also transmit the true replica of the matter to our children, they will know that the matter is true…
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Shemos 5769Volume 5 · Issue 14
Seeking our Identity
…am. Ishmael was also circumcised, and additionally, he holds fast to the faith of Avraham. The Rambam (Responsa 160), in a letter to R’ Ovadiah the Convert, writes that the faith of the Ishmaelite people in the Oneness…
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Bo 5769Volume 5 · Issue 16
Stride to Destiny
time surges onward and we surge along its onrushing flow. This perception of time is inherently wrong. It contradicts the concept of time expressed by the Hebrew word zeman, it precludes newness, and it causes the greatest denial of faith.
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Chukas 5769Volume 5 · Issue 30
Wellspring of Torah
“God said to Moshe and to Aaron, “Since you did not have faith in Me to sanctify Me before the eyes of the Children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly to the Land that I have given to them.” Those are the Waters of Contention over which the Children
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Vayechi 5770Volume 6 · Issue 14
Concealment of the End
those who assist them are the informants that the Talmud discusses. They are the slanderers whom we place in the same category as heretics. Those who damage property would not be mentioned together with those who deny faith. When we pray that the heretics and slanderers have no hope, we are not discussing those who burn down houses; we are discussing those who reveal our hidden treasures and innermost secrets.
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Bamidbar 5771Volume 7 · Issue 30
Of Weeks and Oaths
The rhythm of life upon which God created the world, the true form of existence, is that half the time the world is in a state of being and half nonbeing; half is kindness, and half necessitates faith: “To relate in the morning Your kindness, and Your faith in the nights” (Tehillim 92:3). During the day, everything exists; at night, we must have faith that everything exists. This is clear to anyone who has ever experienced true night
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Vayakhel-Pekudei-HaChodesh 5773Volume 9 · Issue 24
Commencement of the Festivals
As the sages tell us (Zohar 2:90a), “The Sabbath is called testimony.” Anyone who accepts the Sabbath and has faith in it declares and testifies that God created the routine course of the world and rests from it. One who denies this finds the routine course itself as an opening to deem it as the true face of reality. “Authority is given
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Miketz Chanukah 5765Volume 10 · Issue 12
The Hidden Light
Once the Greeks dominated the world and the Evil Inclination for idolatry was nullified, the new trial, the new force that places people in a quandary, is what the sages refer to as minnus, meaning atheism, denial of faith. In the words of the Ramban (Vayikra 16:8), “The Greek philosopher is the one who denied everything except for what he could sense, and he coarsened his mind to think—he and his wicked disciples—that any concept that
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Terumah 5763Volume 10 · Issue 20
Inlaid with Love
course of time that is not the course of miracles but the fixed course of nature, is nothing but miraculous. The Ramban adds, “A person has no portion in the Torah of Moshe Rabbeinu if we do not have faith that all our matters and occurrences contain nothing whatsoever of the custom of the world and the way of nature.” Everything is managed and directed by the Creator of the World.
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Emor 5774Volume 10 · Issue 30
Connective Month
Let us return to the well-known words of the Ramban (Shemos 13:16). He elaborately explains how the miracles that were revealed at the Exodus came to found, establish, and clarify true faith. When a miracle is performed, it shows that the world has a Creator, it has a Guide, it has One Who directs it to wherever He desires. “Everything that God desires, He makes in the heavens and upon the earth
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Bamidbar 5775Volume 11 · Issue 24
Who Am I
Korach and his men contested Moshe Rabbeinu; they did not accept his words. They did not fulfill what God had promised him at Sinai (Shemos 19:9), “And in you as well, they will have faith eternally.” They did not have faith; they were the ones among Israel who did not accept the Torah.
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Bo 5747Volume 12 · Issue 17
Lesson of Locusts
As for us, we are obligated to have faith in the One Elokim, “In the beginning, Elokim, the Lord, created—bara in singular—the heavens and the earth,” and not to divide the Name Elokim in two, Heaven forbid. If it is divided, what emerges is elohim acheirim, foreign deities
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Ki Seitzei 5758Volume 13 · Issue 2
Forefront of the Battle
And the verse is discussing Elul. Immediately beforehand, it says, “Had I not—lule—had faith to see the goodness of God in the land of life.” The author of the Tur notes (Devarim 30:6) that the word lule is the reverse of Elul. Reversing the word reverses the content. Thus, the verse reads, “In Elul
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Sukkos 5746Volume 13 · Issue 5
Journey to Sukkos
The Talmud states (Berachos 12a), “Anyone who did not say Emes VeYatziv, True and Firm, in the morning, and Emes Ve’Emunah, True and Faithful, in the evening, has not fulfilled his obligation, as it says (Tehillim 92:3), “To relate Your kindness in the morning and Your faithfulness in the nights.”
