Same Time, Next Year We are familiar with the story of Jews and Egyptian oppression:  The suffering slaves flee their bondage and escape to the desert where God speaks to them and makes them a great nation. This story also appears in the Torah reading of Rosh...

Not by Punishment For our annual Father’s Day outing this June I asked my sons if I could take them to the Kingston Penitentiary.  They agreed, but only after my assurance that they would be returning with me to Montreal afterward, and that the prison has been...

In antiquity, the passing of years was numbered by the reign of the living monarch, thus we find in the Bible, “In the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel (1 Kings 15:9),” or “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia (Ezra 1:1).”  The death of a sovereign meant...

Any child who has been called a troublemaker can take comfort in being the victim of the same accusation that was hurled against Elijah the Prophet (Eliyahu HaNavi).  Ahab, the wicked King of Israel, dubbed Elijah the “Troubler of Israel” for opposing his policies of...