Pesach 5778 / 2018 Sarah Yehudit Schneider Kadesh. Urchatz We start the seder by pronouncing the fifteen steps that will comprise our evening’s ritual which (among other things) marks the birthday of our peoplehood. Kenesset Yisrael (the mystical Body of Israel) was conceived by Avraham and Sarah, floated through the fallopian tube with Yitzchok and Rivka and implanted in the dark womb of Egypt when Yakov descended there with his clan of seventy souls. They gestated “like a

Shavuot 5778 / 2018 Sarah Yehudit Schneider “And you shall know the soul of a convert // because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” [Ex 23:9] All HaShem’s secrets are buried in the Torah, though they’re concealed behind many obscuring garments. The wise, who are full of eyes, can find the secrets hidden there.…In numerous places the Holy One cautions us to not oppress the convert…In one of those places a great secret emerges from its sheath in the first half of the ver

A Tisha B’Av Talk and Suggestion for Elul Work Sarah Yehudit Schneider My question is: how can it be, that for two thousand years we’ve known that Baseless Hatred is what caused our exile, which means that that, corrected, is the key to our redemption. And yet, for two thousand years we haven’t managed to fix it, or even to make significant headway. We’ve made so many resolutions …launched so many campaigns. Whenever tragedy strikes and we try to make the best of it by upgra

Rosh HaShana 5779 / 2018 [1] Sarah Yehudit Schneider Divine perfection, in order for it to be infinite, must include the possibility of perfecting…a never-ending process by which perfection becomes even more perfect (without implying that its previous state was ever less than perfect). It’s a paradox and we’ll leave it at that.[2] The mechanism HaShem devised to accomplish this perfecting is called teshuva, a term that means literally, return. The Talmud reports that HaShem c

https://s3.amazonaws.com/SSV_Downloads/Videos/Free.Will_1.wmv A kabbalistic exploration of Choice vs Fate based on a teaching of the Ari (R. Isaac Luria) that illuminates a particularly relevant feature of Quantum Mechanics. This is the first of a three-part series. Each subsequent video will add a richness and subtlty to the subject. A PDF file of the script is available through the pdf link above.

Chanukka 5779 / 2018 Sarah Yehudit Schneider It can happen that when something is deeply true, it transcends itself and enters the category of archetype. Its lessons then apply to things that have nothing (apparently) to do with its story, yet it provides the template for making sense of those other things because, beneath the surface, they actually do share a common root. So it goes for Chanukka which celebrates our Maccabean victory and the miracle of oil that enshrined ou