Conditions for Actualizing the Divine Ideal

by Rav Moshe Kaplan, meirtv.com/en

Rav Moshe Kaplan outlines the three conditions for revealing the Divine Ideal in this world, and explains why and how Exile is the antithesis to this ideal.

[6-minute video]

Parshat Yitro: The Mission That Gives Context to the Mitzvot

by Yehuda HaKohen, visionmag.org

Receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai

The Torah is not a “religion” relegated to the houses of study or prayer. Nor is it a set of rules meant to coercively modify human behavior.

Rav Kaplan: The World is One Soul

by Rav Moshe Kaplan, meirtv.com/en

"The world, humanity, all of history, seems like scattered separate events, people, separate forces, that's how the senses perceive, they pick up each thing individually... when the truth we saw is that the world is one body, one organism, with one life source, one ideal, one neshama [soul], that transcends the particulars that is revealed through them..."

[6-minute video]

Parshat Beshalach: The Holiest Most Heavenly Food on Earth

by Baruch Gordon

In this week's email, Baruch Gordon looks at the holiest, mostly heavenly food that the Israelites ate while in the wilderness. He asks the question: why did they not receive this special food after they entered the Land of Israel?

[2-minute video]

Parshat Beshalach: the Modern Slave Mentality and the New Generation of Israel

by Rav Yehuda HaKohen, visionmag.org

Splitting of the Sea

“Pharaoh approached; the Children of Israel raised their eyes and behold! – Egypt was journeying after them, and they were very frightened; the Children of Israel cried out to HaShem. They said to Moshe, ‘Were there no graves in Egypt that you took us to die in the Wilderness? What is this that you have done to us to take us out of Egypt? Is this not the statement that we made to you in Egypt, saying, Let us be and we will serve Egypt? – For it is better that we should serve Egypt than that we should die in the Wilderness!’ Moshe said to the people, ‘Do not fear! Stand fast and see the salvation of HaShem that He will perform for you today; for as you have seen Egypt today, you shall not see them ever again! HaShem shall make war for you, and you shall remain silent’” (Sh’mot 14:10- 14).

Acknowledging that Israel greatly outnumbered the Egyptian military at the Sea of Reeds, the Ibn Ezra provides a remarkable explanation of these verses.