News

Question: Must a father teach his young child to refrain from eating in part on Yom Kippur?

Short Answer: Yes. According to the Rambam, there is a chinuch obligation to teach a child to refrain from violating prohibitions, even if the child will not fully refrain from violating the prohibition.

v’al t’vi’einu lo liydei cheit, v’lo liydei aveirah v’avon…

Do not bring us into the power of error, nor into the power of transgression and sin…

Question: May you fulfill your mitzvah of daled minim with a dry lulav?

Short Answer: A dry lulav is pasul, even b’dieved. There is a dispute as to why a dry lulav is pasul. Nevertheless, we allow a dry lulav bish’as ha’d’chak.

We will now begin a five-to-six-part series on Birkas HaMazon. We will be presenting a masterpiece written by Rabbi Shlomo Goldfinger, who has also authored very insightful s’farim on tefilah.

It is very helpful to spend a few seconds before each tefilah thinking about the precious gift of being able to speak directly to Hashem (“Atah”): that He is listening to what we are about to say and think, and to remind ourselves of what Tefilah is really about.

Expressing Our Relationships with Hashem Through Birkas HaMazon

Part 2

Miracles Hidden and Open

We may acquire a better understanding of the first blessing based on the words of the Ramban at the end of Parshas Bo. There he writes that, from the experience of the clearly obvious miracles that the Jewish people experienced in the Exodus and in their sojourn in the wilderness, we may discern the nature of hidden miracles, as well: namely, that everything is in fact miraculous, and represents the hand of Hashem guiding the world. For the most part, the miracles that occur in our experience are couched in the natural order, to the extent that one can come to rationalize and justify these occurrences as “the way of the world.” However, Hashem chose for a period of time to perform certain clearly miraculous acts, to facilitate our ability to see through the cover, to perceive various other phenomena as equally miraculous, even though their inner miraculous nature has been camouflaged.