Nissan 4
May goodness and kindness pursue me all the days of my life (Psalms 23:1).
What a strange expression! Goodness and kindness should pursue me, as though I was fleeing from them?!
Perhaps the Psalmist had in mind the verse: "You shall pursue righteousness, only righteousness" (Deuteronomy 16:20). Many people have things re versed. They pursue goodness and kindness for themselves, but leave righteousness to somehow catch up with them. The Torah dictates a different order. A person should pursue righteousness and allow goodness and kindness to catch up.
If we asked people for their goal for life, many would say, "to achieve happiness." While this answer is certainly understandable, happiness is not the primary goal of creation of man. Indeed, the Scripture states very clearly: "Man was created in order to toil" (Job 5:7). And the Talmud explains that this means to work on the Divine mission, to fulfill the Divine will. If our primary goal is happiness, we are certain to be frustrated. The average person's life is abundant in distressful happenings. If the primary goal is to do th Divine will, then those times of happiness that do occur can be enjoyed, and the times of ...   more »

by Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf
Putting the Seder into perspective.

The holiday of Passover marks the anniversary of the birth of the Jewish nation. The story of the Jewish nation is one of individuals who became a family who became a people. The great individuals who laid the spiritual foundation of Jewish peoplehood were Abraham and Sarah, their son and daughter-in-law Isaac and Rebecca, and their son and daughters-in-law Jacob, Rachel, and Leah.
From Jacob, Rachel, and Leah came a family of 70 people who, due to a famine in Israel, were forced to migrate to Egypt. In Egypt this family grew and prospered to such an extent that they eventually came to be seen as a threat by their Egyptian hosts. Respect and admiration turned to contempt, and finally to an organized program of enslavement and oppression. After 210 years, and a series of unheeded warnings by Moses to Pharaoh which resulted in the Ten Plagues, God liberated a nation which had grown from the original family of 70 people. Seven weeks later this newly conceived nation received the Torah at Mount Sinai.
The Haggadah is the story of the birth of the Jews as a people. It deals primarily ...   more »

by Sara Yoheved Rigler
A lost diamond, a gaping black hole, and an inspiring Passover realization.
The diamond ring I inherited from my mother, of blessed memory, is -- or should I say was -- my most beautiful possession. My father, o.b.m., had given the ring, a band of 16 perfect diamonds, to my mother shortly after their wedding in 1944. As precious to me emotionally as materially, the ring adorned my hand every Shabbat. Every time I looked at its glistening perfection, my Shabbat joy soared.
Then, sitting at the Shabbat table six weeks ago, I glanced down at my ring and was horrified to see a gaping, black hole. A prong of the white gold setting had broken, and one diamond had fallen out. My horror gave way to a frantic search, with all members of the family on hands and knees searching the floors in the kitchen and living room, then sweeping, and finally giving up. The diamond was gone.
Every time I looked at my ring, all I saw was the gaping, black hole, like a beautiful woman smiling to reveal a missing front tooth. My gorgeous ring had become a toothless hag. Bitterly, I took ...   more »

Caroline Glick,
In Israel, as in the rest of the free world, we are witnessing the death by a thousand cuts of free thought.
Last month, two students at Cambridge University's Clare College became victims of this state of affairs. The students dedicated an edition of their satire magazine to the one-year anniversary of the global Muslim riots which followed the publication of caricatures of Muhammad in the Danish Jyllands Posten newspaper. As the students recalled, those riots led to the deaths of more than a hundred people.
Although the British media refused to republish the caricatures, British Muslims held terrifying protests throughout the country where they called for the destruction of Britain, the US, Denmark and Israel and for the murder of all who refuse to accept the global domination of Islam.
In their magazine, the students published some of the caricatures and mocked the Muslims for their hypocrisy in accusing British society of racial prejudice while calling for its violent destruction.
The Muslim reaction was apparently swift. Fearing for their lives, the students were forced into hiding.
But the Muslims were not alone in their anger. Clare College set up a special disciplinary court to consider action against ...   more »