Weekly Email by Rabbi Moss

Had Enough of Waiting?

Monday, October 30, 2017 - 9:41 PM

Question of the Week:

I make Kiddush over wine every Friday night, but I would like to know a deeper meaning behind it. Is there some mystical ideas you can share that I can meditate on when I say the Kiddush?

Answer:

It all goes back to the very first Friday of history. Adam and Eve were created on Friday afternoon, the time when all last minute things get done, like making humanity.

On that first day, they were told not to eat from the fruit of one tree, the Tree of Knowledge. The mystics teach that this fruit was a grape vine, a fruit that contains the potential for great good and great evil. Over a glass of wine friendships are made and lost, lives are enhanced and destroyed, hopes are created an… Read More »

Do You Know How to Embrace Change?

Monday, October 23, 2017 - 11:50 PM

Question of the Week:

I am confused. The shul has moved? Where to? What does this mean? I liked the shul as it was.....

Answer:

Change can be confronting. The human is a habit forming being, and breaking our habits is unsettling and scary and makes us feel vulnerable. And that's great.

Growth comes through shattering our old ways. Only by breaking ourselves and our mould can we become greater. I must at times step out of whatever defined me and find a new self-definition. Even G-d did that.

Before creating the world, G-d contracted His infinite light to make space for existence. He hid away is infinite self to make way for our finite world. From that moment on, the rule is this: if you… Read More »

Raining in the Sukkah

Monday, October 9, 2017 - 3:44 AM

Question of the Week:

If it rains during Sukkos, we don't have to sit in the Sukkah, correct? So why have I seen people who continue to sit in the Sukkah, even when it is pouring?

Answer:

Sitting in the Sukkah is the only mitzvah that if you're bothered by it, you're exempt from it. Usually, even if a mitzvah is hard, you have to do it. Like fasting on Yom Kippur. Some people are bothered by not eating or drinking for 25 hours. But you still have to do it. And yet if sitting in the Sukkah bothers you, like in wet weather, you can leave the Sukkah and eat inside the house.