In this week’s parsha, Hashem tells Avraham and Sarah to pack their stuff and go to Eretz Canaan. Hashem promises Avraham that his descendants will be as many as the sand and stars. This week we’ll be making sugar cookies in the shape of stars—so make sure to have a star cookie cutter.

On the day following Simchat Torah, the most joyous celebration in the Jewish calendar, the world heard the devastating news that one of Jewry’s greatest 20th-century talmidei chachamim, who combined his exceptional Torah scholarship with a stellar career in microbiology, had passed from this world.

Over the recent Sukkot holiday I read an article titled “Halakhic Issues Related to Synthetic Biology” by Rabbi Dr. Moshe D. Tendler, zt”l, (co-authored with John Loike and Ira Bedzow and published in the most recent issue of Hakirah). Synthetic biology is a new interdisciplinary area involving the application of

We are here today to mourn the loss and reflect on the life and legacy of Rabbi Moshe Dovid Tendler, a senior rosh yeshiva at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, professor of biology and former chair of the biology department in Yeshiva College, the Rabbi Isaac and Bella Tendler Professor of Jewish Medical Ethics.

In Rav Tendlers’s long teaching career, I was among his last students. I didn’t know Rav Tendler for long but the zman I spent in his shiur four years ago was very impactful. He said a lot of things that had a strong influence on me. Here’s a few of them:

Glatt kosher: Rav Tendler was very strong about glatt kosher being a chumra and how it was terrible

( www.Collive.com) Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a rav in Monsey who was a professor of Jewish medical ethics and a professor of biology as well as a rosh yeshiva at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University, passed away on Shemini Atzeret 5782.

Excerpted from the original, which can be found at rabbisacks.org, along with footnotes.

Are we naturally good or naturally bad? On this, great minds have argued for a very long time indeed. In Judaism, according to the Sages, this was the argument between the angels when God consulted them as

This article was first published in TABC’s Kol Torah and is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

Stunning! Just stunning! The parallels between the haftarah for Parshat Chukat and our current situation in Israel send shudders down our spines! The lessons that emerge are crucial and

Parshat Noach

Years ago, in my shul in the Bronx, New York, my father, a”h, would stand by the bimah during the Torah reading and, as gabbai, he would recite the MiSheberach for the sick. Generally, he was prepared with a list of names of those who were ill, but, invariably, there were those who

In this week’s parsha, a relatively famous Gemara mentioned by Rashi prompts additional thought and consideration.

Commenting on the Torah’s description of Noach as a righteous man “b’dorotav,” “in his generation,” Rashi cites the Gemara Sanhedrin 108a, which notes two ways to understand

The first Mishna (Rosh Hashanah 2a) states that the first of Nisan is the Rosh Hashanah for kings, and Rav Chisda (a third-generation Amora, head of Sura academy, lived 217-309 CE) explains that the practical import is for the dating of Jewish legal contracts. He further clarifies (3b) that this refers only to the Jewish kings of Israel,

Perhaps the most under-appreciated honor one can receive in shul is to do hagbaha, raising the Torah for the entire congregation to see.

Some people don’t appreciate being honored with hagbaha, because, unlike being called up for an aliyah, hagbaha is not a “talking part.” Some young men, however,