By Rabbi Sam Yolen, Congregation Beth Israel (Lebanon)
On average, I receive about two or three calls a week from people seeking answers.
“Rabbi!” the person on the other line cries, “With all the suffering going on around the world - where is God?”
This is a very legitimate quest…
By Rabbi Sam Yolen, Congregation Beth Israel (Lebanon)
“History may not repeat itself,” the Mark Twain adage goes, “but it often rhymes.” And for the last few years, many researchers and scholars have debated as to which historic time period this era most clearly rhymes with. Here…
By Rabbi Sam Yolen, Congregation Beth Israel (Lebanon)
Every society has cultural norms upon which common behavior is built. Times and standards may have changed, but along the way we enforce legal codes. In public we wear clothes, in cars we buckle our seatbelts, and with respect to halakh…
By Rabbi Sam Yolen, Congregation Beth Israel (Lebanon)
For our ancestors who lived in Christian lands during the Middle Ages, there were few scarier moments in time than when Jewish leaders were summoned for public disputations. These were semi-regularly scheduled debates where the entire J…
By Rabbi Sam Yolen, Congregation Beth Israel, Lebanon
After seeing too many “Baby Yoda” plushies to count, and hearing many rave reviews of Disney Plus’ The Mandalorian, I decided to watch the first two seasons of the hit show. I found the mythology of the “Mandalore,” to be paral…
