According to medical researchers, healthy adults need between seven to nine hours of sleep each night. People who sleep six hours or less are subject to the effects of sleep deprivation. Those who miss out on the requisite hours can make up the difference by tactical...
One of the classic television programs of the 1950’s featured a typical rural, mid-Western American family with a loving and intelligent collie named Lassie. Lassie was particularly adept at communicating where his boy-master Timmy could be found whenever he was in...
Unlike Abraham who, though old and childless, had faith that God’s promise would be fulfilled and that he would father a multitudinous nation (Genesis 15:6), Moses is punished by God because he failed to believe that God could cause water to flow from a stone (Numbers...
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote his masterpiece, The Prince, as a guide to political leaders who desired to attain power and retain it. Ever the realist, Machiavelli asserts that with power comes authority. Moreover, goodness and right are not sufficient...
Profs. Derek Penslar and Judith Bleich have documented how Jews serving in non-Jewish armies greatly divided rabbinic scholars. Some figures, including German scholars Rabbis Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) and Moshe Glasner (1856-1924), were enthusiastic supporters...
As is typically the case, the nomination of cabinet members comes with a ceremony hosted by the American president in the White House rose garden. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter took the podium to introduce four Jewish nominees, including Phillip Klutznick for the...
In the listing of the gifts presented by the leaders of each tribe on the day of the consecration of the Tabernacle, the gift of Netan-el ben Zuar of the tribe of Issakhar stands out from all the others. What makes this gift exceptional is not its content, for all...
The fourth book of the Torah, Bemidbar, best translated as “in the wilderness,” is a relatively detailed account of the variegated experiences of the Israelites over the thirty-eight-year period beginning after the exodus from Egypt and continuing until they are about...
In his book Mi-sinai Ba, Rabbi Yehudah Shaviv notes that the book of Numbers consistently incorporates the tribal chieftains in decision-making. When, for example, the tribes of Reuven and Gad (along with half the tribe of Menashe) request a special dispensation to...
Buoying the spirits of the Israelites is the knowledge that very soon they would enter into the Promised Land. When it comes to dividing up the land of Israel the Torah says the land shall be apportioned “as shares, according to the listed names: with larger groups...