There is an aspect this month - the month of Sivan - that deals with the concept of bribes. Kabbalists explain that we frequently bribe ourselves. How? When we do something negative we say, “True, I’ve done a negative action, but look at all the positive actions I have also done,” as though somehow they cancel each other out. But whenever we allow our Light to overshadow our consciousness of our own darkness, we are bribing ourselves. We are buying ourselves off and allowing ourselves to compromise. In the commentaries on the Torah about Sivan and its sign of Gemini, there is a very interesting story regarding Rebecca, the wife of Isaac and the mother of the twins, Jacob and Esau. When Rebecca was pregnant, whenever she walked past a place of positive energy, one of the twins would want to jump out of her womb. And whenever she passed a negative place, the other child wanted to.... read more

This week’s portion begins with a discussion of what’s called shmittah, the seventh year when no work of the land is supposed to be done. You can work for six years, but on the seventh, you must stop. In those days almost everyone’s food came from the fields they worked; most people were farmers and sold whatever extra they had to other people. Essentially, if they didn’t work their fields, they would not eat. But the Creator tells them, even though this is how you make your livelihood, you cannot work on the seventh year. This could be quite a problem for them, because if you do not work in the seventh year, you certainly don't have food in the eighth year, and then the food won’t come until the ninth year because you’ll have to work the whole eighth year… but the Creator tells them not to worry, because miraculously, they will have food. Relating it to our lives today, it would be... read more