By Shlomo Riskin ‘May the renewal of the moon be for you [the Festival of] the first day of each month; this month being for you the first of the… Read more »

By Shlomo Riskin “Take thy rod, and cast it down before Pharaoh, that it become a serpent” (Exodus 7:9) This is one of the most difficult texts to understand in… Read more »

By Rabbi Shlomo Riskin “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1: 8) Why is Joseph, the towering personality of the last four portions of… Read more »

By Shlomo Riskin The Festival of Chanukah celebrates two momentous and fateful victories of Judea over Greco-Syria in the second century before the Common Era, during the period of the… Read more »

By Shlomo Riskin Jacob has left Laban and Laban-land behind and – after more than two decades of living in exile – returned to his ancestral land of Israel. He… Read more »

By Shlomo Riskin This week’s Biblical portion of Vayetze records Jacob’s flight to Laban – land of Aram-Naharayim, where he spends 22 years with his wily and deceptive uncle. Jacob… Read more »

By Shlomo Riskin One of the most innovative and fascinating creations of religious Zionism is the educational institution known as “yeshivat hesder.” This refers to yeshivot which have an “arrangement”… Read more »

One major personality of the first Hebrew family, Mother Sarah, seems strangely absent in the awesome and traumatic story of the akedah about which we read last week.  After all,… Read more »