Rabbi Levin's Blog

  It’s almost Chanukah!  What a beautiful, inspiring and enlightening holiday this is!  And no, it’s not just an alternative winter holiday.  Chanukah is a uniquely Jewish celebration with a global message, marking the victory of the faithful to Torah against those who tried to secularize Jewish life, and sending a powerful message of religious freedom. The threat against the Jews from the Greeks was not a physical one, at least that was not the original intent.  They had taken control of Israel and occupied the Temple, but their goal was not to commit physical genocide like Hamas and their supporters around the world.  They wanted to show the superiority of their culture, their “moral path” and their “superior” intellectual teachings.  And like all good people who can’t win an argument, they would make the Jews accept the truth of their views by force. The Greeks did not care if the Jews studied their books along with the Greek books, or if they follo...

What happens to us in this world is a reflection of the spiritual worlds above.  This is a fundamental belief of Judaism.  Nothing is random.  Hashem is constantly creating the world, and Hashem’s energy is the life-force of everything.  It follows that whatever is happening around us is happening for a purpose.  Just as our purpose in life is to make a home for Hashem in this world by doing Mitzvot and acts of goodness and kindness, the purpose of all events that happen around us are in order for us to fulfill this purpose. This belief was evident in Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s attitude when he was arrested on suspicion of treason in Russia in the year 1798.  Here was the most revered, saintly and scholarly Jewish leader in his generation, and one of the foremost influencers of Judaism of all time, being carried away in a black wagon reserved for capital criminals. He had been slandered to the Czarist government by a fellow Jew who didn’t agree with his philoso...

Doing good is often not easy.  You would think that if you are doing the right thing, following Hashem’s will and fulfilling the Torah and observing the Mitzvot, everything should be really smooth.  How much more so when doing something that brings tremendous benefit to humankind!  Well, life is not that way.  Often doing the right thing is very challenging, requires tremendous tenacity and courage, and can even be downright dangerous. This was true of Noach, the person who just about singlehandedly saved the entire world.  Yet the Torah alludes to the fact that he was groaning and coughing up blood from the weight of the work of keeping the animals in the Ark fed.  Avraham brought monotheism to the world, and he had to face Nimrof throwing him into a fiery furnace, surviving miraculously.  In this week’s Parsha, Vayetze, we find that the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, Yaakov, the one who established the eternal Jewish dynasty, had to escape hi...

“The voice is the voice of Yaakov and the hands are the hands of Eisav.”  These were the words that our forefather Yitzchak said when he was not sure which of his sons was standing before him.  He was blind in his old age, and he had planned to bless Eisav.  Rivkah his wife recognized that this would be a mistake, and she told Yaakov to go and impersonate Eisav and get the blessings.  Yaakov was concerned that his father would suspect that it was him, so Rivkah had him wear Eisav’s clothes and she put goat skins on his hands.  Yaakov had smooth skin and Eisav was hairy, and this way if Yitzchak felt Yaakov’s skin, which in fact he did, he would believe it was Eisav.  Hence “the voice of Yaakov and the hands  of Eisav. This whole story raises many questions.  Why did Yitzchak want to bless his son Eisav, didn't he know who he was?  If Yaakov was the holy one, why did Yitzchak  favor Eisav?  How could Yaakov have “stolen” the blessing...

I’m writing this in Brooklyn. We were blessed with the bris of a grandson in Philadelphia, born to our dear children Rivkie and Rabbi Sholom Ber Brownstein, and this weekend is the International Shluchim Convention. You have probably seen the famous annual picture of over 5,000 bearded Rabbis standing in front of Chabad Headquarters. There will be another one this week. Last year I stood next to a lamppost so that I would be able to find myself in the crowd. Well the picture was so big and intricate that they had to use seven different shots and put it together, and they photoshopped the lamppost out, so I never did find myself in the picture. But yes, I was there.  This group is like no other (if I say so myself). It’s easy to think of this group as a great monolith of Chassidic rabbis, and I guess on some level it is. But while we all look similar and do similar things, each Shliach is serving a group of Jews with different needs and wants. While we represent the world, literal...

There is an interesting Talmudic style question on one of the most famous stories in the Torah.  First the story:  Three angels in the form of people came to visit Avraham. They came to heal him after his circumcision at age 99, to tell Sarah the great news that she was going to have a child at age 90, and to destroy the city of Sodom. Avraham thought they were men, and in the fulfillment of his great kindness, he ran to them to invite them into his tent.  This was especially striking since at that moment Hashem had appeared to Avraham, and, according to many interpretations of the story, Avraham asked Hashem to wait while he welcomed the guests. He gave them water to wash their feet, asked Sarah to bake bread, and prepared three tongues with mustard (a five star delicacy) for them to eat.  This is actually quite shocking. When we say Shema we cover our eyes to block the world out. When we say the Amidahstanding with our feet together, we don’t look up from the...