Parsha with Rabbi David Bibi

This is an amazing and eye opening class .... What begins with the fire of Korban Pesaḥ carries us back to Gan Eden, through the Cheit Eitz HaDa’at, the contamination introduced by the nachash, and the long furnace of Egypt that refined it. From there, the journey brings us home — to a woman’s kitchen on Erev Shabbat, to flour sifted by hand, dough kneaded slowly, challah separated, bread baked in...

Rosh Ḥodesh Shevat is not about starting something new. It is about stopping something old. In this morning's class, we explore a quiet but demanding avodah rooted directly in the Torah itself: the discipline of not switching. Through the laws of Temurah—where the Torah forbids reconsideration after a sacred designation—we uncover the inner work of Shevat: learning how to decide, and then allowing...

 The opening Parshiot of Sefer Shemot confront one of the oldest human assumptions: that God may have created the world, but does not involve Himself in the individual. Paro can accept Elokim — a force, a power — but he cannot accept Hashem: a G-d who knows names, intervenes in lives, and directs events with precision. Through the plagues, through history, and through the words of the Neviim,...

Thanking Water and Dust – The Hidden Torah of Hakarat HaTov . Today’s shiur is לְעִילּוּי נִשְׁמַת שַׁעְיָא אַבִּיטָן ע״ה, four years since his פְטִירָה. Last night we stood together with the family as they brought a new Sefer Torah into the world. Not just any Torah — a tiny, magnificent scroll, about six and three-quarter inches high. Exquisite כתיבה, a jewel of a Torah. You almost feel you shou...

THE NECK THAT WON’T TURN — AND THE TORAH THAT WON’T LEAVE - Am K’shei Oref - Ani HaShem and the War Over Timing    This morning’s Va’era class asks a deceptively simple question: if Bnei Yisrael believed in HaShem, cried out to Him, and were promised redemption—why does the Torah describe them as Am K’shei Oref, a stiff-necked people? We follow a powerful framework that emerged from a Fr...

 What does it mean to trust HaShem when things are getting worse, not better? In Parashat Va’era, Moshe is sent back to Pharaoh again and again—only to see the burden on the Jewish people increase. This morning’s breakfast class explores a deeper, more demanding definition of bitachon: not blind optimism, but the courage to believe that even hidden, delayed, or painful processes are purposefu...

short story for Friday night Table 

This morning’s episode of Breakfast & a Class opens Sefer Shemot with an unsettling question:  How does slavery return without chains? The Torah’s answer is not violence first, but language, reframing, and selective forgetting. Drawing from Chazal, Midrash, Zohar, and the Maharal, this shiur explores how exile begins when names turn into categories, when gratitude becomes historical footn...

 Who really owns the Land of Israel — and why does that question never seem to go away?  In today’s class, we step back from slogans and soundbites and return to the Torah itself. From Avraham Avinu walking the land without owning it, to Moshe Rabbeinu being told at the burning bush that the time for inheritance has finally arrived, we trace how the Torah understands land not as somethin...

Not brilliance. Not charisma. Not even miracles. In this episode, we return to the opening parashiyot of Sefer Shemot and read Moshe Rabbenu’s “résumé” the way the Torah actually presents it — not as a list of achievements, but as a pattern of burden-bearing. From Moshe walking out of the palace to see the suffering of his brothers, to carrying a runaway lamb on his shoulders, to sitting on a ston...

Koh va’Koh is a short phrase in Shemot 2:12, but it opens a whole way of seeing. In this Breakfast & a Class, we follow Moshe Rabbeinu’s moment of decision — “Vayifen koh va’koh… vayar ki ein ish” — and build, step by step, from the simplest peshat into a deeper understanding of why “koh” keeps showing up at moments of transmission in the Torah. We explore the hidden structure behind the numbe...

 In this week’s EJSNY 11AM class, we open Parashat Vayechi with one of the strangest questions Ya‘aqob Avinu ever asks: “מִי אֵלֶּה?” — “Who are these?” He’s looking at Ephraim and Menasheh — and yet Chazal insist this isn’t a grandfather forgetting faces. It’s a question of absence. Because Yosef was meant to father twelve shevatim, and only two stand before him. From there we enter the hidd...

Not when a people are enslaved—but when they become comfortable. In this mornings class on Parashat Vayechi , this class reframes galut not as geography, but as an inner condition that slowly erodes clarity.      It is a class about memory, identity, and the small, quiet choices that protect a soul. Not inspirational fluff—clear Torah, carefully sourced, and painfully relevant. &nbs...

From Babylon to Broadway: The Siege Then, the Siege Now Most people think destruction begins with fire. With shattered walls. With exile. This class argues otherwise. Asarah B’Tevet marks the moment before everything collapses — the day the siege began, when nothing was burning yet and everything was still reversible. Drawing from Tanakh, Chazal, and the haunting words of the prophets, this episod...

This Sunday’s breakfast class wasn’t prepared in an office or a study hall. It was spoken after to a berit milah in Yerushalayim — a Jewish child entering the fold, blessed like Ephraim and Menashe, carrying the name of a man whose quiet integrity shaped lives long after he was gone. Parshat VaYechi stops being history when blessing meets loss, when memory becomes continuity, and when responsibili...

 A great story anchors today’s special edition of “Breakfast & a Class” on Parashat Vayigash, dedicated le‘iluy nishmat Adele bat Victoria—a woman of clear vision and honest realism. At the center is Yosef’s thunderclap moment: “אֲנִי יוֹסֵף”—not a reunion scene, but a preview of the day when our own narratives collapse and truth stands in the room. Why were the brothers struck silent eve...

This morning’s class was recorded in Jeruslem, at 7:00 in the morning, in a synagogue where “Breakfast and a Class” meant something very different. The coffee was finished. Instead there was arak. It was a yahrzeit morning, and the setting was Zecher le-Avraham — a domed synagogue built in memory of Avraham Picciotto, just off the old railway line where tracks once carried people away and life has...

Vayigash opens like a courtroom hanging over a cliff: Binyamin is “caught,” the goblet is the evidence, and the verdict is already on the table. But then Yehudah steps forward — not with clever legal arguments, and not with polite diplomacy — but with a different kind of power: responsibility. In this episode, we follow Yehudah’s fierce approach to Yosef, the moment he abandons “policy” and pleads...

  Set against the convergence of Chanukah, Shabbat, and Rosh Ḥodesh Tevet, this episode reveals why the darkest month of the year is not a verdict — but an invitation. Through hidden light, candlelight placed at the threshold, and Torah that reaches beneath nature itself, we learn how channels can be sweetened, redirected, and illuminated. This is not about escaping your path. It is about car...

 Why do we embrace truth when it benefits us — and resist it when it costs us? In this powerful Breakfast & a Class, we explore one of the most unsettling patterns in human nature: how the same facts can lead to completely opposite moral judgments depending on comfort, self-interest, and perspective. From Pharaoh’s embrace of Yosef to his rejection of Moshe, the Torah exposes a hypocrisy...

 From the stones of the Kotel at sunrise to the darkness of Yosef’s prison cell, this episode is about the kind of power we forget words carry. Parashat Miketz opens with “Vayehi miketz shenatayim yamim” — two years that Chazal trace back to two phrases Yosef says: “zekhartani… ve-hizkartani.” How can Yosef—Mr. Bitachon—be “punished” for a simple request? We unpack Midrash Tanchuma’s sharp la...

This morning’s podcast explores the quiet but demanding avodah of bitachon—trust in Hashem—through the life of Yosef HaTzaddik. Drawing on the teachings of our Rabbi and mentor, Rabbi Abittan זצ״ל, a תלמיד of the Ḥazon Ish, we examine his powerful lesson that bitachon is the greatest test of our generation. Yosef’s journey—from the pit, to prison, to the palace—reveals what true trust looks like w...

  We all love candlelight. It softens a room. It quiets a home. It makes everything feel spiritual. But the Torah never treats light as ambiance. From the very beginning of Creation, light is so much more: Vayomer Elokim yehi or — vayehi or - “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”      Or she’adam tsofeh bo misof ha’olam ve‘ad sofo - “A light with which one...

What if your dreams are more than scattered images of the night? This morning’s Breakfast & a Class Podcast takes you deep into the world of Yosef HaTzaddik and the hidden architecture of dreams in the Torah. From prophetic visions to frightening nightmares, from Yosef’s rise in Egypt to the terrifying power of interpretation described by Chazal, this episode reveals how dreams can shape desti...