Rabbi’s Blog
A weekly message from Rabbi Cantor Menachem Mirski, Ph.D.

Tag Sermon

To encourage or to punish, that is the question.

Thoughts on parashat Ki Teitzei.

Human beings are more prone to be preoccupied with the negative aspects of our existence and tend to ruminate more about unpleasant events. In general, there is not much we can do about this: that’s how our brains have evolved throughout millions of years of evolution – this Continue Reading

A Manual for the Elimination of Evil and Injustice

Thoughts on Parashat Shoftim. 

Is it possible to eliminate crime completely? How about at least eliminating the worse crime, murder? It probably is possible. Here is a scenario:  We lock all the people in individual prison cells and we construct our societies that way. It would require three social castes: prisoners Continue Reading

Where’s the Justice?

Thoughts of Parashat Re’eh

How do you know if those you think are wicked are really wicked? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that there is no absolutely evil person in the world and no one who is absolutely good either (paraphrasing his famous saying which I quoted in my drasha a few weeks ago). Similarly, the Continue Reading

An atheist’s guide to prayer

Thoughts on parashat Devarim.

Prayer is the salient expression of religious emotion and of man’s relationship with God. Presumably every religious person has asked themselves this question: how much prayer do I need in my life and does it make my connection to God stronger? There may be many answers to this Continue Reading

Can’t we all just get along?

Thoughts on parashat Mattot-Masei.

Recently I re-watched an American classic “Saving Private Ryan”. The main character of the story, Captain John H. Miller, played by Tom Hanks, (spoiler alert) was killed by a German soldier whose life was spared earlier by captain Miller himself, in an act of benevolence and mercy. Continue Reading

Focus on things within your sphere of influence – not on your feelings regarding things.

Thoughts on Parashat Balak. 

Technological progress and the speed of information exchange in the modern world has many advantages. We have at hand basically whatever we need: we can buy almost anything we want within minutes and have it in our hand the next day, we can order tickets to visit countries we have never been and book hotel rooms, we Continue Reading

Religiousness in a Dialogue with Reason

Thoughts on Parashat Yitro

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In this week’s Torah portion we find the story of Moses’ father-in-law, Yitro, who after having heard about everything that God has done for Moses and the Israelites by bringing them out of Egypt decides to join Moses and the people of Israel. So he comes to the desert along with Continue Reading

The Duty of Shabbat

Thoughts on Parasha Bo

It happened in the spring of 1997 or 1998. Back then I was a student at one of the technical secondary schools in Przemyśl. In the summer semester we had a so called “vocational apprenticeship”: instead of going to school, we’d spend one month in one of the local production plants. The production plant we had our apprenticeship in hired several Continue Reading

A Few Words About Hierarchy

Thoughts on Parashat Miketz

In last week’s Torah portion we read about the dramatic events of Joseph’s life. After he was sold by his brothers to Egypt as a slave he became a servant of Pharaoh’s official – Potiphar. He made Joseph the administrator of his home, entrusting him with all his property. Soon after, Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him. When he refused, Continue Reading

The Humiliation of Joseph

Thoughts on Parashat Vayeshev

The Torah portion for this week starts with the story of Jacob settling in Hebron with his twelve sons. His favorite son is seventeen-year-old Joseph, with whom his brothers are jealous for the preferential treatment he receives from his father. To make matters worse, Joseph relates to his brothers two of his dreams which foretell that he is destined Continue Reading