Why Faith isn’t Enough. Part III – The Mitzvahs! — By Ben
To finish up the Faith trilogy, I’m going to talk about Mitzvahs. Where some religions just require you believe or have faith to participate in the religion, Judaism asks for more. […]
Author Archives: eltram
Why Faith isn’t Enough. Part II – Emunah and Bitachon — By Ben
After painstakingly defining belief last week, I’m going to toss aside that definition to go a little deeper. So that being said… Belief! It’s easy enough to say one believes in […]
Why Faith Isn’t Enough. — by Ben
“The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there is a Primary Being who brought all existence into being. “ —Rambam, opening line of […]
The Forbidden Tree of Knowledge. God wanted us to be mindless followers? — By Ben
In case you’re not familiar with the Bible’s story of creation: God makes the universe in 6 days. On that 6th day, God makes man (Adam and Eve) and tells […]
Oral Tradition Part II. Uhhh… Telephone? — By Ben
Kosher piggy backing off my recent post, I established necessity for the Oral Tradition. But a major problem presents itself. How can hundreds of years of orally communicated material not […]
Fearing God? That’s A Christian Thing. Right? — by Ben
I remember when I first started studying Torah more seriously, I showed my father the book Mesillas Yesharim (mentioned in my last post). The minute he read that a Jew […]
What does it take to REALLY learn something? — By Ben
Once again my co-writer on this blog, Marc brought up a topic that I’d like to talk a little about. In his post on Studying Torah he writes, “To study something […]
Oral Torah? Isn’t that just Commentary? — By Ben
My partner in crime, Marc wrote a post on Tuesday in which he used the term Oral Torah. That term is one of the most misunderstood concepts outside the observant world. […]
Unity. The most powerful force in the world. And the most destructive. — By Ben
Both the flood of Noah and the tower of Babel appear in the same Torah portion. You’re probably familiar with the flood, but if you’re not familiar with the tower […]
No War ≠ Peace – By Ben
The Hebrew word shalom, שָׁלוֹם, has a few meanings. It can mean hello, goodbye, it’s a popular boy’s name, and it’s even one of the names of G-d. But the […]
Six Degrees Of Kosher Bacon 