Mark H. Levin

We are about to welcome shabbat. Shabbat customs have four components:
prayer (tefillah), study (limud), enjoyment (oneg), and rest (m'nuchah).

This weeks limud, Torah study, focuses on the first 5 chapters of Leviticus, regarding sacrifices. The Hebrew word for sacrifi...

Our world, our political leaders, our thinkers, our artists, all seem to be focused on the Coronavirus threat. It's united us worldwide. All are threatened medically, suddenly, from out of nowhere. We are almost equally unprepared, and many feel set upon and attacked.

B...

The Spirituality of Washing:

Traditionally, we wash our hands three times during the seder. The first, right after the first kiddush, without a blessing, called urchatz.

The second time, right before the meal, with the traditional hand blessing, "... who has commanded...

Does FAIR matter? Does shame matter? Does hypocrisy matter?

Jonah Goldberg wrote a column this past week about the death of shame and hypocrisy. Turns out, civilization rests on established norms and values that civilized people observe. Without those, civilization col...

Alone among the creatures, as far as we know, human beings need meaning to survive. Added to air, food, water and reproduction, we humans need to know why we exist: the meaning (reflection on the past) and purpose (direction in the future) of our lives.

My belief, my re...

Separation of Church and State, the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution, presents inexhaustible complexities. On the one hand, our Founders sought to separate political control of the new country from a State religion, having seen the corrup...

Sitting alone in my sukkah this evening, without the family who joined us last night, I enumerated family whose presence I felt even though I never met them: my personal Ushpizin. The grandparents and great grandparents I never met but whose real or imaginary pictures...