Wordle is a site that forms word clouds out of text. If you want to know what the most common words are in a passage, a good way is to paste the text into Wordle and see what comes out. The one above shows the most common words from my Hope of John series. This wordle cloud combines the passages I u...

Normal 0 Last week we developed the idea that the law of establishing the new month is meant to be a calling for us to internalize what changes may be necessary to make in our lives. But once we decide to undergo these changes, what’s the first step we must take? The answer is hinted at in the law...

  Did you ever wonder why, according to the Jewish calendar, a Jewish “day� begins at night time? (That’s why the weekly Sabbath and every Jewish holiday begins at night, not the next morning) Why is that, unlike the non-Jewish nations, our day begins with the coming of the moon and not the c...

David Suissa writes: There I was poolside, on day three of our vacation, fumbling with four water glasses I was bringing to my dehydrated kids, and who do I run into? The one guy I see most Friday mornings on Pico Boulevard when I pick up challahs for Shabbat: my friend Julien Bohbot, owner of Delic...

Who was to participate in the Passover meal? According to God’s instructions, it was everyone who was a member of the congregation of Israel. He was very detailed in who was, and who was not, allowed to participate. Consider what God tells Moses and Aaron in Exodus 12 concerning how to determi...

Something hit me this morning at Mass. I was listening to the first reading -- from Acts -- and here is what I heard described (Acts 12:1-8 [RSV]): About that time Herod the king laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword; and when he ...

One of the best reasons i can think of for blogging is to help me think. I'm meeting up with Lorenzo tomorrow for some 1 Corinthians 5 action, and i'm not sure i'm really there yet...so maybe this will help. These thoughts owe a lot to Joel Edwards. 1-5 The Corinthian church didn't care about sexual...

The rabbi is back. He wants to see you in his office. The rabbi is back. He’ll see you now. The rabbi is back. "Do you mind dropping your trousers?" The rabbi is back. "I’ve never done a hatafatdam before." The rabbi is back. "Here’s some tefillin. Good luc...

by Reb Akiva at Mystical Paths This Chol HaMoed Passover, I was blessed to be in Israel and together with my family. We had an opportunity to visit some of the fun sites, and some of the holy sites. Here's a few we visited, how about you? What did you do this Chol HaMoed? The religious beach, separa...

Rabbi Daniel Pressman of Saratoga, CA, tells Slate: "People always e-mail me stuff like, ‘Oh, Rabbi, you should see this article,’ or, ‘Click on this YouTube link, there’s a funny Passover video.’ The job itself provides opportunities for wasting time. Personally, ...