“Please God; Save us! Please God; Make us successful!” (Psalms 118:25) We sing the first half, “Please God; Save us,” as we approach our service with prayers that God will empower our actions and service so that His Presence will rest upon our efforts. We sing,...
“God is with me, I have no fear; what can people do to me?” (Psalms 118:6) The ‘people’ mentioned refer to the ‘man’ described in Daniel’s vision of the Four Beasts,when he says, “I was watching in night visions and behold! with the clouds of...
“Give thanks to God Who is good, for His kindness is forever! Let Israel declare that His Kindness is forever! Let the House of Aaron declare that His kindness is forever! Let those who are in awe of God declare that His kindness if forever! “ (Psalms 118:1-4) Rav...
“For His kindness has overwhelmed us, and the truth of God is eternal, Halleluyah!” (Psalms 117:2) Rabbi Baruch Ber Leibovitz, Rosh Yeshiva of Kaminetz, shared the following story with my grandfather, Rav Ruderman zt”l, when my grandfather was a young teenager: The Vilna Gaon went...
“I will raise the cup of salvations and the Name of God I will invoke.” (Psalms 116:13) The Talmud (Pesachim 119b) offers a remarkable explanation of this verse: R. ‘Avira lectured, Sometimes stating it in R. Ammi's, Sometimes in R. Assi's name: What is meant...
“May God increase upon you, upon you and upon your children!” (Psalms 115:3) Rav Chaim Kanievsky (Ta’ama Dikra) points out that the increase mentioned cannot refer to children as the verse also says, “upon your children.” Therefore, the increase is in terms of what the...
“Who turns the rock into a pond of water, the flint into a flowing mountain.” (Psalms 114:8) The water that issued forth from the rock is far beyond the rules of nature. Generally, God desires to minimize the miraculous. It would have been sufficient for...
We derive the appellation for God’s Name, used in the Rosh Chodesh Mussaf – Additional Prayer – from the combination of letters and vowels of the following verse: “And it will be a Tzedaka for us if we are careful to perform this entire commandment before...
I’m feeling vulnerable! Just when we thought the worst was over and moved everything back outside, the wind began to really blow! A huge tree just in front of our home blew down pulling the electrical cables with it, and put the entire neighborhood into...
Irene was not my first hurricane. That was Agnes in 1971. One story went around the Jewish community about the Shamash of the synagogue in Wilkes-Barrie, PA, a Holocaust survivor, who, despite being a very old man, rather than evacuate as did everyone else, ran...
“Moshivi akeret Habayiy, eim habanim semeicha, Halleluyah!” “He transforms the barren wife into a glad mother of children, Halleluyah!” (Psalms 113:9) Sitting, as in Yeshibah: The first meaning given to this term in our language was that of being seated. Thus, “Now Eli the priest sat...
