by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Jan 31, 2017
Our rabbis enacted the Pesach seder with its 15 functions and halachot to ensure that the memory of the miracles which HaShem performed for Am Yisrael in Egypt would not be forgotten.
HaShem, via Moshe, commanded that the Jews at the first seder eat matzah and marror, and continue to do so at every subsequent seder.
Our rabbis ordained that we drink four cups of wine corresponding to the four stages of freedom which HaShem led us during the exodus.
However, there is a major element of that time which neither the Torah nor the rabbis included in the future sedarim or in its preparation – daubing blood on the mezuzot (door posts) and the lintels.
Why was this initial act of national emancipation not included in the pre-Seder ritual?
by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Jan 24, 2017
President Trump sincerely seeks to make America great again. He has plans, programs, ideas, proposal, propositions, projects, procedures, strategy, stratagems etc., on how to go about realizing his dream. But however ambitious and diverse these objectives might be, they are all contingent on one factor – patriotism. For if there is no love of country and willingness to sacrifice for its security and economic advancement nothing will change.
For the millions who attended the inauguration ceremony in person or saw it through the media it was a time for patriotic love for their country, as they viewed the pomp and circumstance. Pride in being citizens in the most free, most powerful and most prosperous of the family of nations.
by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Jan 17, 2017
As we depart from the weekly Torah readings of Beraishiet, one would not be adverse to feeling akin to post-partum depression due to the frustrating imbalance between the book’s beginning and its last chapters. The Torah begins with the overwhelming, mind-challenging phenomena of creation and closes with the death and internment of Yosef, signaling the beginning of Am Yisrael’s subjugation.
by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Jan 11, 2017
That a thief’s hand is amputated is the legally accepted law in Saudi Arabia and other Moslem fundamentalist societies. However, every decent human being knows that It is immoral to amputate a hungry man’s hand for stealing a piece of bread; but the law is the law!
The law in the Soviet Union sent Jews to Siberia, or worse, for practicing Yidishkeit (Judaism); it was lawful but totally immoral.
In this article, Rabbi Kahana teaches us how to discern who is the guilty party and who is the true victim.
by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Jan 3, 2017
In this week’s parasha, Ya’akov and his family begin an imposed galut experience that was to last hundreds of years when we returned home with Yehoshua Bin Nun.
We were again sent into galut with the destruction of the First Bet Hamikdash, which ended 70 years later when Ezra and his generation returned.
The third galut experience began when the Romans destroyed the second Bet Hamikdash and has lasted for nearly 2000 years, terminating on the 5th of Iyar 5708.
Where are we – Am Yisrael – in this last galut experience when so many Jews are still in foreign lands?
by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Dec 27, 2016
A Letter to our Prime Minister
Honorable Prime Minister of Israel Mr. Binyamin Natanyahu:
The UN Security Council has voted that our presence in Shomron, Yehuda, the Golan, the Kotel and the Old City where I live, in short all of Eretz Yisrael beyond the 1967 “green line” is in violation of international law.
But that should not disturb us because the Torah was in violation of all the laws of international idolatry which were the accepted norms by the nations. Those nations have all vanished, except as exhibitions in our museums, while our Torah gains strength and momentum with every passing generation. So, too, will secular international law and the UN fade out of world history, as the Jewish nation grows and prospers within all the biblical boundaries – most of which we have yet to liberate.
In actuality, the vote is not the real story here.
