by Rabbi Daniel Travis | Dec 9, 2009 | Intermediate
“You are eternally mighty my Master, the Resuscitator of the dead are You, abundantly to save. He provides for the living with kindness, resuscitates the dead with great mercy, supports the fallen, heals the sick, frees the confined, and sustains His faith to...
by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman | Dec 4, 2009 | Beginner
“The point is this,” Ramchal says, “since everything in this world is potentially gravely threatening” to your spiritual well-being when misused, then “how can you not praise someone who wants to escape from or avoid all that?” That...
by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman | Nov 30, 2009 | Beginner
Everything but everything is a mix of good and bad, right and wrong; even ostensibly clear-cut things like certain moral values and spiritual practices have their bad side, the truth be known. (That all goes back to Adam and Eve having eaten from the Tree of the...
by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman | Nov 16, 2009 | Beginner
There are three sorts of abstinence, actually: the kind that the Torah itself requires of us (when it charges us to avoid this or that); the kind that the sages added onto those, known as “safeguards”, to make sure we don’t come close to doing...
by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman | Nov 6, 2009 | Beginner
We’re told ironically enough that “abstinence”, our next trait, “is the beginning of piety”, which is a trait further down the line. What’s Ramchal’s point? For one thing, he means to underscore the fact that...
