Pesach 2003 / 5763 The Secret of Eating at the Seder by Sarah Yehudit Schneider The great Kabbalist, Rabbi Tsadok HaKohen, revealed a deep secret about how to fix the way we engage with the world. He says that humanity’s first sin was not Adam and Eve’s eating of forbidden fruit, but rather the way they ate it. The Tree of Knowledge, says he, was not a tree or a food or a thing at all. Rather it was a way of eating. Whenever a person grabs self-conscious pleasure from the

PurimBurst, 2004 / 5564Sarah Yehudit Schneider And [Mordecai] brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle’s daughter; for she had neither father nor mother. (Esther 2:7) וַיְהִי [מרדבי] אֹמֵן אֶת הֲדַסָּה הִיא אֶסְתֵּר בַּת דֹּדוֹ כִּי אֵין לָהּ אָב וָאֵם. There are two words in Hebrew that contain the same three letters, only rearranged. They are אין (ayin) and אני (ani). The first means nothing, and the second means, I and ego. The first is a name for the most transce

Pesach 2004 / 5764 A Passover Teaching, from A Still Small Voice Rabbi Isaac Luria, the master kabbalist known as the Ari, teaches that at the original Pesach sedar, in Egypt, a conception occurred. Conception is defined as the point when a soul makes contact with a body and they begin a life together, a story, and a journey. So what was conceived on that first Pesach eve in Egypt. The Ari teaches that it was the collective soul of Israel, a higher-order-unity that is gre

Sarah Yehudit Schneider Everyone knows that this pre Rosh HaShana period is a time for intensive soul searching. There are many advices about what this entails. It’s important to seize the moment, for on Rosh Hashana we receive our allocation of spiritual resources for the coming year (both individually and collectively). The great CEO (Chief Executive Officer) in the sky gives each one of us a budget of “lights,” based on our past performance, and our proposals (our praye

PurimBurst, 2005 / 5565Sarah Yehudit Schneider When Mordekhai conveyed to Esther… “If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance shall come to the Jews from another place, and you and your father’s house will perish”… Esther responded…”Very well, I will go into the king contrary to the law and if I die, I die…Esther donned royalty, and stood in the inner court of the king’s palace, opposite the king’s chamber… (Esther 4:13-5:1). Mordekhai did not follow the preced

Pesach 2005 / 5765 A Passover Teaching, from A Still Small Voice Everyone knows that on Pesach, the removal of all chametz (leavened grains) from our household mirrors the removal of inflated ego states (i.e. arrogance) from our personalities. On the night before Pesach each family turns off the lights, takes a candle and searches the nooks and crannies of their home for any crumbs that may have been overlooked. All chametz that is found in that search gets burned and nulli