Dear Friends,
Imagine trying to view a piece of art with smudged sunglasses. This is what so many of us experience when we view life. The art we are looking at is life, and the glasses we are seeing it through is our own feelings about ourselves. In other words, so often how we feel is what we see! In this week’s talk we see just how far this concept goes, especially as we look into how to view the future.
Dear Friends,
Who’s world are you living in? Are you living in your own world, or are you living in G-d’s world? On the surface they may seem like one and the same. But imagine for a moment someone is collecting funds. One person gives a dollar, while the second person gives his last dollar. Ah, a world of difference! How we view things cuts to the core of our existence and of who we are. As a very wise person once put it, “99% of life is in your head”!
Dear Friends,
This is a time of fixing, of knocking down walls we’ve put up without even knowing it, of ridding ourselves of contradictions and manifesting on the outside what we truly are on the inside. We also discuss transforming the letter Bais into the letter Aleph, and what the “Apocalypse” is according to the Torah and how we can avoid it.
Dear Friends,
When we enter into Shabbos, we literally transport ourselves into another dimension. It is simultaneously both the journey and the destination — transcendence itself. In this week’s talk, we explore the two names of Shabbos, to try and unlock the mystery of why it is so much more than just another day of the week.
Dear Friends,
Tisha B’Av has a duel nature. On the one hand, it is the saddest day of the year. On the other hand, our Sages teach that there is light contained within it that is of the Messianic level. How are we to react? And what does it tell us about living as Jews in general? G-d willing this year we will all celebrate together in the Holy City of Yerushalyim!
Dear Friends,
Our Sages teach that all the righteous people of the world, and every Jew has a place in heaven. But what is heaven? It is a place? A state of mind, a physical reality? Do you remain you there? Or is it is some ethereal realm where we cease to be us and disappear into the infinity of G-d? In this week’s talk, we answer these questions and show how practical this information can be to our everyday lives.
Dear Friends,
Judaism believes in happy endings. In modern times this can be seen everywhere from the creation of the “Hollywood Ending”, to good triumphing over evil in comic books. (Superheroes from Superman to Spiderman were the creation of Jews) This optimism is so deeply entrenched that when the words of the Prophets from the Haftorah ends on a sad note, the Sages instituted we go back and repeat the last happy thought and end with that! In this week’s talk, we look at the subject of happy endings, worry, belief and how to put them all together.
Dear Friends,
The question is, are you fighting a battle you’ve already won? So many of us find ourselves addicted to struggle. We can’t take “yes” for an answer! Sometimes we have to work hard to achieve, other times we have to recognize that we can’t have it all, no matter what the guy holding the beer bottle with the nice tan in the commercial is saying. The key is knowing when to strive, and when to be samay’ach b’chelco, happy with our lot. We look at Korach, the spies, and ourselves, to try to map out some of the keys to human nature and figure out what is normal.
Spiritual Anatomy - Understanding Ourselves from the Inside Out [45:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadDear Friends,
We explore the inevitability of questioning yourself in life and how to stay connected to your roots even as you become your own person. Also, more teachings this week from Reb Shlomo Carlebach on what it means to light a fire in your heart, and the Ishbitzer Rebbe on what we were really asking for when we wanted meat in the desert.
Dear Friends,
Is the Torah a book? A scroll? A set of instructions? All of the above, none of the above? Deeper still what does it mean when the Talmud teaches us that the Torah existed 974 generations before the world was created?! Further still, what does it mean when it says that G-d looked into the Torah and created the world? What did He look into exactly?? We can’t really begin to understand our own lives or what the grandness of history is all about until we arrive at a deeper understanding of these questions. In this talk we address what the true giantness of the Torah is all about.
