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Successful People are Unaccomplished Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy day, a sabbath of solemn rest to the Lord. (Exodus 35:2) During the forty years that the Israelites wandered in the desert they carried with them a portable temple referred to as the Tabernacle or the Mishkan. The creative acts that are forbidden on Shabbat are those acts similar to the skills that went into building or assembling the Mishkan. The Talmud outlines 39 different categories of such creative acts that are forbidden to do on Shabbat. They represent our ultimate power of creativity which is to build a temple that accommodates the presence of G-d on earth. Of course we know that G-d does not literally dwell in the Mishkan, however, the Mishkan symbolizes our ability to serve G-d and infuse every moment and every place with the presence of G-d. In other words the greatest accomplishment of a...

There are sounds that you hear and things that you see that will always make you stop whatever you are doing. People yelling, the sound of an ambulance racing down a Jerusalem street, or even the backfire of a car, if you...

In this week...

Sometimes, the experiences that impact us the most are the ones we almost miss. After finishing my regular army service, I was back in Yeshiva (An institute of higher learning), having recently begun my studies for the Israeli Rabbinate. I was on my way up the stairs to the Beit Midrash (study hall) when I noticed a student whose face I did not recognize coming out of one of the telephone booths in the hall. He appeared to be upset, and looked as though he had been crying. I asked him if he was OK, and he nodded in the affirmative, and as I didn...