Parsha with Rabbi David Bibi

  Shir HaMa’alot Simḥat Beit HaSho’evah This holiday Breakfast & Class became much more personal than I expected. We journey from the waters that cried at Creation, to David HaMelekh and the fifteen Songs of Ascent, from a childhood memory of hearing my neighbor hammer together his sukkah immediately after Yom Kippur, to a Holocaust survivor riding endlessly on a Madison Avenue bus—and fi...

  Step Into the Cloud   Ananei HaKavod And according to the Vilna Gaon, Sukkot does not merely celebrate the cloud that protected us in the desert. After the sin of the Golden Calf, the clouds disappeared—and after Yom Kippur, they came back. Yom Kippur tells us, “We are forgiven.” Sukkot tells us something even more intimate: HaShem still wants us close.   Sukkah Amen Or Makif sukk...

  Every Yom Kippur we are tempted to make enormous promises—to change everything, fix everything, become someone completely different. But HaShem asks us to open an opening —as small as the eye of a needle—and He promises to open the rest. Maybe this year we don’t need the twenty-dollar kabbalah that disappears a week later. Maybe we need one silver dollar: one small, specific change we can r...

  This week, Chantelle and I found ourselves climbing the narrow mountain roads into Peki’in, walking through a place where the world of our Ḥakhamim suddenly felt very close. There I was reminded of the story of Rabbi Yossi of Peki’in and the child who refused to accept that the story was over. It may be one of the most powerful lessons we can carry into Yom Kippur: as long as there can be a...

  We can fast for twenty-five hours. We can beat our chests, cry through Kol Nidrei, confess every sin and remain in synagogue until the final . But the Mishnah teaches that there is one door Yom Kippur cannot open for us: —the hurts that remain between one person and another. Before we ask HaShem to forgive us, there may be a phone call we need to make, an apology we need to offer—or perhaps...

  We all have explanations for why we are the way we are. It was our parents. It was the home we grew up in. It was our environment, our circumstances, our personality, perhaps even our DNA. And sometimes those explanations are absolutely true. But somewhere between understanding where we came from and deciding where we are going, explanation can quietly become excuse. In this morning’s Break...

  Why would anyone avoid honey on the very night when we are asking Hashem for a sweet year? The answer takes us from the ancient customs of Ashkenaz to the Kabbalists of the Sephardic world, and reveals two remarkably different ways of understanding honey, judgment, and sweetness. Along the way we discover why bee honey may actually be the perfect symbol of transforming into , why the Ben Is...

  less bad In this morning’s , we explore a remarkable teaching of Rabbi Frand built around the words Why did HaShem create us unfinished? Why does the Torah hide an allusion to inside the words “Who will ascend for us to Heaven?” And if the angels have no yetzer hara, why did want the Torah? The answers lead to a beautiful message for these final days of Elul:

  Why did become one of our great prayers for ? We say it every Sunday as we begin a new week. In Moroccan communities it is recited as Shabbat departs and we return to the working world. And on Rosh Hashanah, in the Syrian community, people will bid extraordinary sums for the privilege of opening the Heikhal as we recite this Psalm and pray for financial blessing for the coming year. But the...

When the Rebel Says Amen Can the Yetzer Hara Become the Yetzer Tov? Every morning, we wrap the tefillin shel-yad around our arm and then place the tefillin shel-rosh upon our head. We have done it thousands of times. But what if hidden inside that simple order is an entire philosophy of how we are supposed to fight—and ultimately transform—the yetzer hara? In this morning’s Breakfast & Class,...

When You Can’t See the Runway What happens when we find ourselves flying through the clouds — unable to see what lies ahead, frightened by the turbulence, and unsure whether we are even heading in the right direction? A remarkable story told by Rabbi Shlomo Landau about two young men trapped in a small airplane with an unconscious pilot gives us a powerful way to understand one of the great challe...

Breakfast & Class Why does Amalek never go away? לֹא תִּשְׁכָּח — never to forget Drawing on the insights of , we explore three remarkable approaches to Amalek: the danger of misplaced compassion, the difference between hatred that has a reason and hatred that has none, and the deeper idea that Amalek’s battle is ultimately not only against the Jewish people, but against what the Jewish people...

This morning’s Breakfast & Class begins with a few simple words from Parashat Ki Tavo: וְהָיָה אִם־שָׁמוֹעַ תִּשְׁמַע בְּקוֹל ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ — “If we will surely listen to the voice of HaShem.” Before the Torah promises all of its extraordinary blessings, it gives us a strategy for everything that follows: begin with emunah . There is a God. He is our God. There is no other. And perhaps every ti...

Breakfast & Class “Ki tetze la-milchamah al oyevekha” Eglah Arufah We discovered that the Torah may actually be describing : the war against the enemy outside us, the far more personal war against the enemy within us, and the obligation never to forget the person struggling behind us. And that brings us to the final words of the parashah — . Amalek specifically attacks the tired, the weak and...

What can one small mitzvah possibly accomplish? We say Tehillim for a refuah, give tzedakah in someone’s zechut, dedicate Torah learning to someone who is ill—and yet the question remains: how can something so small affect something so large? This class begins with the Zera Shimshon on Shiluach HaKen , who teaches that the problem may be in the question itself. What looks small to us may carry eno...

  This morning’s Breakfast & Class begins with a troubling question in Parashat Ki Tetze. Why does the Torah judge Ammon and Moav so harshly? Their crime was not simply that they failed to offer bread and water, nor even that they hired Bilaam. Rabbi Yissocher Frand, drawing on the Dubno Maggid, the Kli Yakar and the Tolner Rebbe, points us toward something deeper: They studied our vulner...

  begins with the opening words of Parashat Ki Tetzeh: — when we go out to war against our enemies. The Zohar and the Or HaḤaim reveal that the Torah may also be describing a much more personal battle: the war against the yetzer hara, and the beautiful captive as our own neshamah.  

  , based on insight of Rabbi Frand, we look at a remarkable Gemara in and Rav Pam’s powerful insight into three seemingly insignificant favors — a hand offered on a bridge, a feather brushed away, and a little unpleasantness quietly covered over. The great Amoraim teach us that begins long before we say “thank you.” It begins with learning to notice.   — and a very personal reflection o...

  You Don’t Need to Know How the Book Ends — A Birthday, Rosh Hodesh Elul & Parashat Shoftim   , we used that unusual convergence to ask a question that becomes more meaningful with every passing year: What are we supposed to do with the time HaShem gives us? We remembered my dear friend David Golden, who passed away last year the day after his 110th birthday, and the remarkable way...

  We then turn to the Torah’s remarkable warning that שֹׁחַד — a bribe — “blinds the eyes of the wise.”

Elul: A Refuge in Time — What Are We Doing With the Time Hashem Has Given Us?   , the city of refuge—a place designed not simply for exile, but for reflection, rehabilitation, and ultimately return. Rabbi Yissocher Frand points to a remarkable allusion from the Arizal: the words אִנָּה לְיָדוֹ וְשַׂמְתִּי לְךָ . An Ir Miklat is a refuge in space; Elul is a refuge in time This week we enter Ro...

  , we explored one of the most remarkable verses in the Torah: “בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַה׳ אֱלֹקֵיכֶם” — “You are children of HaShem your G-d.” Along the way, we explored what it truly means to be “children of the King”—maintaining our dignity in times of pain, recognizing that our worth comes from HaShem and not from our circumstances, and remembering that no Jew ever loses the privilege of return...

  But what does that really mean? After all, HaShem did sustain the Jewish people in the desert with the manna—a miraculous form of bread. The lesson is not that we do not need physical sustenance. We do. The lesson is that the bread is never the true source. The food, the doctor, the paycheck, the customer and the opportunity are all vessels through which HaShem sends His blessing.  

At this morning's Breakfast & a Class , we explored one of the most surprising openings in the Torah. As the Jewish people stood ready to enter Eretz Yisrael after forty years in the wilderness, Moshe Rabbeinu told them not to think they were inheriting the Land because of their righteousness. If not because they were perfect, then why did Hashem continue to believe in them? More importantly,...

This morning at Breakfast & a Class , we explored one of the Torah’s most challenging mitzvot—not simply giving tzedakah, but learning how to give with an open heart. Beginning with the powerful verses in Parashat Re’eh , we examined the Torah’s remarkable order: first, “Do not harden your heart,” and only afterward, “Do not close your hand.” Through the teachings of Chazal and the wisdom of R...