Accepting Affliction (6.6.25)

Life is full of nuisances. For many – maybe all – life inevitably contains some pain, suffering, and affliction. How we approach these situations is a central element of our religion and theology. Our Sages revealed to us that accepting affliction is a means to achieve wisdom. It is one of the 48 ways to […]

Our primary responsibility as humans and as Jews is to develop and deepen our faith in the Creator. Can we have faith in man? Can we have faith in a mortal? In the 24th way to achieve and acquire wisdom, we learn about the concept of having faith in our Sages. What does it mean […]

Although the study of Torah is ostensibly a cognitive pursuit, there are many qualities that are not cognitive nature that facilitate and enable the study of Torah. In this way to acquire wisdom, way #23, we learn about what it means to have a good heart , and how that serves as a means to […]

Anger is part of the human experience. When things agitate us, we get frustrated and have a tendency to lash out, to berate, to say things that we may regret. In this ethics podcast, we learn about the virtue of being slow to anger and how it can help supercharge our pursuit of wisdom. – […]

Life is serious. Pursuit of wisdom is the pursuit of truth. Pursuit of wisdom is the pursuit of understanding the Divine (to the best of our abilities). To access wisdom, we have to be very serious. But a little bit of levity – when done properly and in the right context – can be helpful. […]

We are speaking beings. In fact, the central differentiation between humanity and animals is the capacity of verbal communication. The judgment that we face in Heaven is largely about how we deployed our superpower, our speech. The greatest mitzvos are performed with speech and some of the most grievous transgressions are also a product of […]

We all need to sleep. All humans, irrespective of their intelligence, their physical prowess, their wealth, must lay down in a comatose state for several hours a day and sleep. Sleep is also enjoyable. There’s something seductively delicious about sleep. What is the Torah’s attitude on sleep? Why did the Almighty design us that we […]

Pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain are hardwired impulses . We all want to feel good and to avoid feeling bad. Perhaps surprisingly, the Torah fully embraces this principle. The reason why we were created, we are told, is so that we can become receptacles of pleasure. Our only disagreement with other philosophies is […]

Our resources are finite. We must engage in trade-offs, deciding what pursuits to prioritize over others. This, of course, is all well known. But it’s more complicated: by design, we feel drawn to seek out and pursue goals that are potentially harmful and that can overtake your life. Balance is key. This Ethics Podcast was […]

The central conflict of our lives orients around our relationship with the physical world in which we currently inhabit: the Torah teaches us that the objective of life is to optimize for the benefit and betterment of the soul, and to prepare for Olam Haba. The Yetzer Hara is engineered to make us believe that […]