Rabbi Mendel's Blog.

The Torah uses numerology, a method of connecting concepts via numbers. Every Hebrew letter has a numerical value. The first letter, Aleph, has the value of one. The second letter, Beit, is two, and so on.  When the letters of two words have the same value, it indicates an inner …

Do you know the song that is sung over and over again over Rosh Hashanah: “Zachreinu Lichaim Melech Chafetz Bachayim…” Remember us G-d for life, we pray over the High Holidays. The basic meaning of it is a prayer to G-d for life in this coming year, undoubtedly a critical …

Old age is not so easy to define. For a professional football player, forty is already over the hill. On the other hand, there are budding authors in their eighties publishing their first book. So who is old? We do need a clear answer. There is a mitzvah to “rise …

If a business focuses only on cash flow, it can easily fail. The cash flow may be fine and yet the business falling off a cliff, G-d forbid. We are in the final Jewish month of the year. This month is called the month of accounting. In Judaism cash flow …

As a parent, you need to make many decisions that will impact your child’s future. Deciding whether to make a Bris is one of them. Here are the things you need to know before deciding what to do:  – A surgical circumcision is not a Bris. Apart from the missing …

The ‘bless you’ response to a sneeze was enacted by one of the popes during the bubonic plague. So it definitely has a non-Jewish whiff about it. But long before that, Jews blessed each other upon sneezing. The Talmud records that in the earlier generations, people didn’t get sick before …

I have heard many people say that if G-d would only do a miracle they would believe. After all, in the Torah we read of many miracles that G-d did on a regular basis. Why don’t we see these miracles these days? The Lubavitcher Rebbe once addressed a similar question …

In the Jerusalem Talmud when the word mitzvah is mentioned it refers to tzedakah. The Talmud in Bava Basra page 9a teaches that tzedakah is equal to all the other mitzvot combined. The power of tzedakah is self transcendence. To give away that which can be used for your own …

We all know people who as kids misbehaved terribly, but turned out to be wonderful adults. It could be that they ended up that way not in spite of their childhood cheekiness, but because of it. You see, rambunctious kids get reminded of what they should and should not be …

The days pass rather quickly and when you look back a week and then a month has flown by in the blink of an eye. In fact, as you get older time seems to pass by more quickly. One theory offered for why it seems so is because a smaller …

Are there parts of your life that make absolutely no sense? Do you see certain chapters of your story as essential because they express who you are and others as just a distraction? On Purim this story only begins a few chapters into the Megillah and yet the Mishna asks …

We are taught to be the masters of acceptance. All that G-d does is for the best, Judaism teaches us repeatedly. Yet we do not become comfortable with death, internally we do not accept it. When Jacob was faced with the tragic death of his precious son Joseph, the Torah …

It is so hard to see a loved one fade after living a vibrant and active life. How we approach this painful stage will depend on our perspective. And the Jewish perspective on the end of life differs greatly to much of mainstream thinking today. To approach life and death …