Shavuot is called a harvest festival in the Torah, since it happens at the beginning of the harvest of the most precious grain: wheat (Exodus 23:16; 34:22). ...

Celebrating Passover and Easter during a Pandemic Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations, Saint Joseph´s University, Philadelphia, PA In recent months, a si...

One of the most important moments of the Jewish tradition is the ritual supper that every family must observe on the night of the first day of Passover, and On the other hand, this disease does not respect social classes, ethnicity, age, religion, or national boundaries. It pierces all the barriers that human beings have built against each other. It has exposed the futility of petty rivalries and factionalism. From one day to the next, humanity has been united in the global

In November 2019, Pope Francis and Rabbi Abraham Skorka (University Professor at Saint Joseph's University) discussed the significance of the upcoming Hanukk...

A reunion 10 years after the publication of "On Heaven And Earth" In this recently recorded video, Pope Francis and Rabbi Abraham Skorka reminisce about thei...

Stockholm Meeting on Interreligious and Cultural Dialogue: “Walk Together” Civilizations prosper only when people are able to overcome the multiple conflic...

In Leviticus 26:44, after describing the hardships that the people would suffer while fulfilling the precepts that God had given them, the text says that eve...

The faith of the people on the occasion of their departure from Egypt, the foundational event of Israel, has two aspects. On the one hand, the biblical text ...

This parashah contains a song of Moses, which follows the Torah’s traditional pattern of poetry by being written in equal couplets (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Dea...

On the one hand, the Torah refers to Yom Kippur as a day of self-denial (Leviticus 16:29,31; 23:27,32; Numbers 29:7), and, on the other hand, as the day on w...

In this parashah the last two precepts appear that, through Moses, God declares to the people of Israel. Both refer to the importance and centrality of the T...

There are two essential concepts at the heart of the holyday of Rosh Hashana: Judgment and Re-creation. At the beginning of each new year, according to Jewis...

This parashah begins by describing how the new generation, the one born in the desert, renewed the covenant with God that Abraham had made for himself and hi...

This parasha begins by presenting the prayer that the Hebrew farmer should say when offering to God the first fruits (bikurim) that were grown in his field (...

This parashah is characterized by being entirely composed of general laws and, in particular, family laws. They include legislation about the causes of and p...

This parashah begins with the command to establish a judicial and policing power in the society that the Israelites are going to build in their land. The bib...

The twentieth century can be described as the time when totalitarianism spread. Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin are just some names on the long list of demagog...

In this parashah there is a verse (10:12) that, like Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 from last week, expresses fundamental elements of Israel's faith. The verse says: “An...

This parashah presents two passages that define Israel's faith: the Ten Commandments and the first paragraph of Keriat Shema, the prayer that should be recit...

According to Jewish tradition, the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem, like the second, occurred on the same day, the ninth of the month of Av (Mis...