The third commandment seems simple enough: לֹא תִשָּׂא אֶת־שֵׁם־ה׳ אֱלֹקיךָ לַשָּׁוְא, כִּי לֹא יְנַקֶּה ה׳ אֵת אֲשֶׁר־יִשָּׂא אֶת־שְׁמוֹ לַשָּׁוְא׃ Translated literally it means, “Do not take up the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not clear one who takes God’s name in vain.” Sounds simple, but if we look…
Tag: Zohar
Separation from Cain: Naso 5780
“When a man or a woman commits any wrong toward a fellow person, thus breaking faith with the Lord, and that person realizes their guilt, they shall confess the wrong that they have done. They shall make restitution in the principal amount and add one-fifth to it, giving it to the one who was wronged.”…
Love Your Neighbors–Plants and Animals Included: Kedoshim 5774
I’m sad to say it, but apocalypse was on my mind over Pesah. Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, took me through a few hundred million years of natural history, during which the earth has experienced five “extinction events” when a large portion of the biosphere died off. The most famous…
Rabbi Danny Nevins 