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Messages from April 2025

Rabbi O’s Weekly Parsha: Shmini (Leviticus 9-11)

A New Pair of Glasses There is a non-kosher bird mentioned in the Torah called the Ra’ah. Scholars are not certain exactly which bird it is; many think it’s a buzzard or vulture. It is called Ra’ah (literally to see) because it can see very far and can spot a carcass from an incredible distance. Rav Meir Shapiro (1887-1933) […]

Rabbi O’s Weekly Parsha: Shvi’i Shel Pesach/The Final Days of Passover

The Sea Didn’t Just Drown the Egyptians, it Drowned Their Power Over Our MindsImmediately after the Jews walked through the Red Sea, they reacted in a peculiar way.  And on that day, G-d saved Israel from the hand of Egypt, and Israel saw Egypt dead on the seashore. (Exodus 14:30)But wait a second—weren’t the Israelites already […]

Passover 5785-2025

Kintsugi Judaism: Honoring the Breaks, Celebrating the Repair This morning, I ran into a friend who is a collector of fine art. He mentioned his interest in Kintsugi, the Japanese art of reassembling broken ceramic vessels and sealing the cracks with gold. Two central ideas emerge from this: don’t discard something just because it’s broken, […]

Rabbi O’s Weekly Parsha: Vayikra (Leviticus 1-5)

The Call Your Didn’t ExpectIf you’ve ever looked closely at a Torah scroll, even if you can’t read Hebrew, you’ll notice that every letter is carefully written—but, in this week’s Parsha, something surprising jumps out; the last letter of the first word is an aleph, but it’s written smaller than all the other letters. Why?The small […]