TORAH 101 - With Rabbi Yaakov Wolbe

The great medieval sage my Maimonides – Rambam – has been guiding us throughout our studies of the 13th principles of faith. This transcendental scholar, who’s magisterial writings are authoritatively accepted amongst the entirety of the Jewish people, was one of our people’s greatest personalities. His writings are enormously influential and authoritative in matters of […]

In our pursuit of understanding of the subject of resurrection, many questions remain. In the previous episode we talked about the two types of resurrection, there is still a lack of clarity in the similarities and the differences between the two types of resurrection. Furthermore, the Talmud says that the righteous are alive even when […]

One of me hallmarks of the Messianic times is the resurrection of the righteous. With Messiah comes the reemergence of the righteous. Those buried in the land will precede those buried outside of it, but all the righteous will come back. This is well established in the Literature. In this podcast we discussed the two […]

The subject of resurrection was hotly debated in times of yore. The Talmud records a series of debates between great rabbis and their Roman contemporaries about the this subject. When we probe the matter more deeply, we discover that the Roman disbelievers of resurrection have a very good argument. Reasonable people can come to the […]

We stridently disagree with the oft-repeated statement: “You only live once.” #YOLO is a sentiment that violates our beliefs. A central principle of our religion is the concept of resurrection. Death is not permanent. The dead will rise again. Life will be extended to the bodies of the deceased. Abraham will once again grace this […]

We have studied the subject of Messiah in its length and breadth. In the 16th and final installment of our study of the 12th of Rambam’s Thirteen Principles of Faith, we briefly survey a potpourri of subjects that are tangential to the main subject of Messiah. We explore six different topics: Messiah Ben Joseph; the […]

Messiah is something that we anticipate and yearn for and await, but it is also something that we must prepare for. The consequences of being unprepared for Messiah are grave. How can we prepare for Messiah? What, specifically, do the sources focus on when it comes to getting in shape for Messiah? In this podcast […]

Our Nation has been yearning for Messiah for a very long time. And for good cause: Messiah is associated with wonderful things. Messiah is the state of the world when the mission that Abraham began gets actualized. Messiah is when the knowledge that our nation personified for millennia finally becomes ubiquitous. Messiah is a time […]

King Messiah will spearhead the spiritual movement that will reverberate the world over. This King will bear a grand and lofty stature exceeding that of the greatest exemplars of our history. In this podcast we explore King Messiah further: what are the indicators of the real messiah? What are the means by which we can […]

The world will undergo immense changes in the times of Messiah. Those changes will be so transformative and so comprehensive that our current world and our current values are scarcely similar to those of the world of Messiah. When Messiah will come is a question that we cannot answer. Trying to do so is prohibited, […]

When will Messiah come? We are all curious to know the answer. What if we can find evidence or proof in Scripture to know when the redemption will happen? Isn’t that a tantalizing notion? In this podcast we survey the prohibition, futility, and peril of Messianic prognostication. – – – – – – – – […]

What will happen in the times of Messiah? For us, that is an unanswerable question. Our Sages tell us that unless you are a prophet, it is not possible for you to know ahead of time how the Messianic transformation will unfold. That said, our Sages do provide us with descriptions and accounts and hints […]

We have been awaiting and anticipating Messiah for millennia. Messianic yearning has been a hallmark of Jewish life ever since we were exiled from our land with the destruction of the Second Temple. Messiah, we have learned, will definitely happen. It is inevitable. But the type of Messiah depends upon the path that we choose […]

The sources all agree: Messiah is not a possibility that we can potentially achieve; it is an inevitability. It will definitely happen. Under no circumstances will Messiah and not come before the year 6,000 since Adam. The inevitability of Messiah raises a fundamental question, though: if something is inevitable, it cannot be linked to frail, […]

The Messianic era will unleash seismic changes to our nation and to all of humanity. In this podcast we talk about the ultimate catalyst of Messiah: Repentance. The sources agree that it is only via repentance that Messiah can arrive. When our nation returns to the Almighty, the world is ready to transition to the […]

Messiah is not an isolated, discrete, transformation that occurs in a vacuum. Messiah is the ultimate redemption. Our nation has experienced redemption before. The pattern of exile and redemption has been constant feature of our nation’s history. It began in Egypt. Our nation enslaved, tormented, and oppressed in Egypt for centuries until the Almighty redeemed […]

Messiah will not be an ordinary person. He will be a towering figure who’s impact reverberates the world over. In this podcast we study what our Sages tell us about who Messiah is and what his stature will be, and talk about the wide-ranging and far reaching implications that he will have. – – – […]

Messiah will be an era of seismic changes for the Jewish people and for the world. Knowledge of God will be ubiquitous. The primacy of the Jewish people as God’s chosen Nation will be universally accepted. The pursuit of wisdom will supersede all other pursuits. The world will begin it’s a rapid progress towards perfection. […]

The sources depicting Messiah and the Messianic Era paint a very different picture of the world than the one we are accustomed to. Knowledge of God will be universal, on that day God will be One and His Name will be One. The pursuit of knowledge will dominate. The Jewish Nation will be heralded. King […]

The subject of the Messiah is notoriously confusing. What is Messiah? How will Messiah change our lives?  What will be different in the Messianic era? The answers to these questions are not ubiquitously known. In this podcast we proceed in our studies of the Twelfth Principle of Rambam’s Thirteen Principles of Faith by addressing the […]

Our nation has been anticipating and longing for the Messiah, Moshiach (משיח) in Hebrew, for millennia. We are awaiting his arrival, which can come any day. The Messianic era is a utopian world that we yearn for. But what exactly is the Messiah? What are the qualifications to be Messiah? What is the Messianic era […]

The term “Olam Haba” refers the world after the Resurrection, the world where there’s life with no death, where there is the dispensing of reward for those who adhere to the word of God. If we were to distill our life mission to one sentence it would be this sentence: our mission in this world […]

What is Olam Haba like? Our sages describe this future world as the world of ultimate reward. Paradise in the Afterlife is a very wonderful and pleasurable experience, but even Paradise is not the ultimate reward. That is reserved for Olam Haba. But what is it like? What does it feel like? In this podcast […]

After a person dies, the Heavenly tribunal determines the fate of their Soul. If the Soul is pristinely pure, the person having accomplished everything that was expected of them and they are also lacking any blemishes borne about by sin, the Soul is ushered to Paradise. If the Soul needs some cleansing, it can be […]

What happens after we die is an endlessly fascinating – or terrifying – topic. In our exploration of the Afterlife we have covered vast grounds: We’ve spoken about death and the various types of death; we’ve spoken about the reckoning and accounting that a person must submit before the Heavenly tribunal; we have been made […]