Ruth Yael
Be as careful with a minor commandment as with a major one, since you do not know the reward for the commandments. Assess the loss incurred in a good deed against its reward and the gain in sin against its loss. (Mishnah Avos 2, 1) R. Sa’adia Gaon writes: We...
Sampson was a Jew – therefore not a idiot. The Jews have the best average brain of any folks in the world. The Jews are the only race who work wholly with their brains and never with their hands. There are no Jewish beggars, no Jewish tramps, no Jewish...
From a memoir of Rabbi Reuven Agushewitz (1897-1950) on life in the Lithuanian shtetl: The night before a wedding there was a custom to assemble a dinner for the poor – a dinner which was certainly no worse, and sometimes even better, than the dinner...
On Chanukah and Purim we insert prayers of thanksgiving specifically for the miracles of those holidays in the berakhos of hoda’ah, thanksgiving, in the Shemoneh Esreh and the birkas ha’mazon, grace after meals. The story of Chanukah in ‘al hanissim...
The Alshich once delivered a derashah on parshas va’yetzei, and the Ari zal was among the listeners. The Alshich explained Yaakov’s comment to his wives, “And your father cheated me and changed my salary aseres monim, which the Midrash understands...
