by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Nov 18, 2014
“Show Your truth to Ya’akov (fulfill Your truthful promise to Ya’akov that his descendants will be as multifold as the soil, in the merit of Ya’akov’s quality of truth) and show compassion to Abraham (in the merit of Avraham’s quality of compassion) as you pledged on oath to our ancestors (to Yitzchak at Mount Moriah) in days long ago.”
Micha is informing us that Avraham was the master of compassion and Ya’akov the master of truth. However, the reality of Avraham’s and Ya’akov’s lives, as recorded in the few incidences in the Torah, seemingly does not substantiate this assessment.
by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Nov 12, 2014
Our rabbis have taught that Hashem put Avraham Avinu through ten challenging, painful and formidable tests. The ninth was the “binding of Yitzchak” (akeidat Yitzchak) and the tenth, the negotiations between Avraham and the Hittite Council of Elders for the purchase of Ma’arat Ha’machpela as a burial site for Sarah.
Logic dictates that every succeeding test increased in difficulty, so what was the focus of this last test set before Avraham which caused it to be more demanding than any of the previous nine?
by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Nov 5, 2014
It was Shaul’s misguided pity on Agag, King of Amalek, by sparing his life when the Torah commands the total annihilation of Amalekite, which as a nation had breached all the norms of civilized humanity, that led the world in hatred of Am Yisrael.
What caused the nation to rally together an army of 400,000 fighters against 26,000 of Binyamin, reducing the tribe to 600 men?
What does these episodes and that of Sedom have in common? And how does this all apply to our current society and world?
by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Oct 30, 2014
Avram and his entourage returned safely from Egypt where they accumulated incredible wealth. And as it has been from time immemorial, to this day, and well into the foreseeable future, great wealth most often invigorates even the most dormant ego (the difference between a pane of glass which permits one to see out to others and a mirror where one sees only himself is the thin veneer of silver on one side of the mirror).
by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Oct 22, 2014
Two factors in the parsha are puzzling: Why was there not even one person who was affected by Noach’s warning of the pending annihilation of humanity? Why did HaShem have to promise Noach that He would never again flood the world?
I suggest… Conceptual Challenges
by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Oct 5, 2014
Two excerpts from my book “With All Your Might” dealing with the holiday of Sukkot
1- An allegory relating to Jewish life in the galut when the gate to Eretz Yisrael is open.
2- The testimony of this incident that occurred during the Shoah was brought to the attention of Dr. Shlomo Zalman Kahana, who established the Holocaust Museum on Mount Zion, by a survivor of one of the extermination camps.
