Meaningful Jewish Ethics

Manna, Work, and Bitachon: What Your Livelihood Says About You

Heavenly Bread? You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet! Feel like you missed out on the manna in the desert? Just wait until you hear about the grand feast G-d has in store when Moshiach comes—manna from Moshe, pickled Leviathan, and smoked Behemoth! In this class, discover the deeper spiritual meaning behind these miraculous foods, what they reveal about our inner work, trust in G-d (bitachon), and how our daily livelihood mirrors our soul's level. Learn how Chassidus sees food not just as sustenance—but as a symbol of our relationship with G-d, our personal growth, and the future redemption.

Three Wells: Three Batei HaMikdash

Yitzchak’s digging wells allude to the three Holy Temples his descendants would build. Learn from our father Yitzchak how to uncover the wellsprings within. This Torah study is dedicated in loving memory of Rabbi Zvi Kogen HY”D

The Longer Shorter Way

Discover a path of Divine service that enables us to reorient our way of thinking and appreciate the inherent G‑dly nature we all possess, the oneness of G‑d with all existence, and the potential that the Torah and mitzvos grant to reveal this G‑dliness.

Making G‑d’s Dwelling Luminous

Leadership is a crucial issue throughout society today. In all walks of life – be it business, politics, or social relations – we are looking for leaders, people of vision who can motivate others to focus their energies on a goal and work to attain it. Who is a leader and what type of leadership he promises is the core of the issue that motivated the rebellion which Korach fomented against Moshe described in our Torah reading. Korach came to Moshe with a genuine question,1 [javascript:doFootnote('1a5853362');] “The entire congregation is holy and G‑d is among them, so why do you raise yourself up above the congregation of G‑d?” He was saying that within every Jew is a G‑dly spark, an actual part of G‑d’s Divinity. Given that, how can one person be placed above another? The G‑dly potential we possess is the fundamental equalizer. Once it is accepted that every Jew possesses such a potential, then, seemingly, there is no place for a hierarchy. Moshe did not deny the core of Korach’s argument. Indeed, highlighting the Divine potential that every Jew possesses was fundamental to Moshe’s leadership. However, Moshe recognized that, together with that Divine potential, we all possess natural drives and tendencies which divert our attention and distract us from focusing on that Divine gift. Yes, we are all innately holy. But we also have other innate, natural drives. Because we live in this material world and are confronted with its everyday realities, it is a challenge to bring our inner Divine potential into expression. That is the purpose of Moshe’s leadership – to express our G‑dly potential in the world where G‑dliness is not evident. Coming into contact with a Moshe, a person who has realized his spiritual potential, inspires us to develop our own. Like a burning candle that ignites other combustible material, when the light of one person’s Divine potential shines forth, it will naturally arouse the latent Divinity that exists within others. This is not merely a story of the past. The Zohar, the fundamental text of Jewish mysticism, speaks of “the extension of Moshe in all generations,” explaining that, at all times, there are Jewish leaders who fulfill the function of Moshe and inspire their followers to tap the inner spiritual potential they possess. By developing a connection with such “Moshes,” we are empowered to rise above our individual personalities and cause our innate G‑dly potential to surface.

Mossad's first mission

There is a classic Jewish adage: It took one moment to take the Jews out of Egypt but 40 years to take Egypt out of the Jews. Developing a free man’s mentality takes time.The story of the spies sent by Moshe to survey the Land of Israel shows how true this is. The spies reported, “We cannot ascend… we saw the giants… the descendants of the giants…. and we were like grasshoppers in our eyes.” Reverting to their slave mentality, the Jews accepted their words and cried in fear; the hundreds of years of bondage had robbed them of their inner pride and strength, and left them feeling helpless.We can understand their reaction, but still – it was only a short time after the Exodus. Moreover, throughout their time in the desert, they had witnessed G‑d’s wonders. He had miraculously provided them with manna to eat and water from Miriam’s well. Why did they not believe that just as G‑d split the sea before them and destroyed the Egyptians, He could – and would – defeat the Canaanite nations?Moreover, they were “a generation of knowledge.” What place did such material fears have in their life?In Chassidus, it is explained that it is precisely because of the Jews’ spiritual involvement that they desired to remain in the desert. They realized that entering Eretz Yisrael would involve a radical transition. In the desert, they were removed from all worldly concerns; as stated above, throughout that time, G‑d had maintained their existence in a miraculous manner. When they entered Eretz Yisrael, all this would change. There would no longer be manna from heaven. Instead, they would have to work the land and derive their sustenance from “bread from the earth.” This troubled them; they complained that Eretz Yisrael was “a land that devours its inhabitants” – i.e., that they would be consumed by earthly concerns and lose their spiritual sensitivity.For similar reasons, they did not draw a lesson from the miracles that G‑d worked for them in the desert, maintaining that these miracles could not serve as indicators regarding the conquest of Eretz Yisrael. They saw the miraculous and the mundane as two unrelated planes and were afraid of battles that would have to conform to nature’s laws and the world’s ordinary pattern.The sichah that follows teaches an alternative to that approach, a mindset that enables us to unite nature and that which is above nature. In this way, it instructs us how to transform our lives so that we can “know [G‑d] in all our ways,” maintaining spiritual awareness within the context of our material existence.