We have seen the essentiality of yiras Hashem (fear of G-d), the sheer fundamentality of that crucial middah (part one). We have seen how Chazal realized that if only we would internalize Hashem’s “keeping tabs” on us the way we would fear “WebChaver,” we would be way ahead of the game; and we learned the [...]
As we creep closer and closer to Rosh Hashana… over the halfway mark… we are looking, searching, for some formula which will pull us out of the quicksand of habit, the morass of the status quo. True, there is no quick fix for easy change, but perhaps there is something that can jolt us into [...]
We have seen that fear of G-d, yiras Hashem, seems to be a most pervasive and ubiquitous quality throughout Torah. Fear of G-d is what is cited as Avrohom Avinu's salient middah (Bereishis 22:12); fear of Heaven is the level Moshe Rabbeinu extols as the point of the light-and-sound show at Mattan Torah (Shmos 20:16); [...]
I am writing these lines as the hours dwindle down to the month of Elul. And you are reading them in these first days of that month. Elul is, of course, the traditional preparation time for the upcoming Yomim Nora’im, days of teshuvah and judgment – Rosh Hashana, the Ten Days of teshuvah, and of [...]
We are working on appreciating kedushas Eretz Yisroel in a deep, fundamental way, to somehow create a tikun of the sin of the lack of recognition, and worse, exhibited by the meraglim (“…and they despised the desirable Land…” Tehillim 106:24). We saw the Ramban in Vayikra (18:25) discuss how Hakadosh Baruch Hu directs and is [...]
