We are at an awesome time of year, the shabbat before Rosh Hashana, where all of a sudden, Ellul - our month of preparation - has slipped...

Yosef, Moshe and Chanukah In the thick of the Torah’s longest story, the Yosef story, there are moments of deja vu where we’d be forgiven...

The ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus' paradox, is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object (like a ship)...

Towards the end of this week’s parasha, almost forgotten between God’s epic “lech lecha” call to Avram, and the chilling “brit bein...

If I say the word “duckhouse” the adult Brits in the room know instantly what I’m talking about! We’ve had some quite entertaining...

Ki Tisa: The God of second chances I once had a colleague who used to say “I believe in the God of second chances”. If ever there was a...

This parasha was one of the first Jewish texts to come into my life - in the form of my bat mitzvah sedra. In my 1998 (indeed!) dvar...

I was 17 when my best friend told me he was gay. At the time it was a shock - I’d never (at least as far as I knew at the time) known a...

The Amida, our most iconic tefillah, known as simply “the prayer” opens with the following words: “Blessed are You, Hashem, Our God and...

We have arrived at the book of Devarim, literally “words”. Moshe, the man who we noted in parashat Chukat said לֹא אִישׁ דְּבָרִים...

It’s not always easy to find the right words. Sometimes it’s easier not to pick up the phone, or avoid a conversation. If you can relate...

I’m sure we’ve all come across clickbait headlines like “The 2 most shocking rules the royal family has to keep”. I followed one of these...

The P word - skipping or shielding? Is it too early to say the P word? It’s hard not to think about it in these weeks of reading the...

The choir practice and the packing list It’s Shabbat Shira - the parasha in which we read the Song of the Sea, Shirat HaYam - sung first...

There’s a thrill in writing about parashat Bereishit. We may have read it dozens of times before, but the epic words with which our...

Welcome to the book of Bemidbar, the story of the first wanderings in the desert of our wandering people. It’s a dark book with an...

Behar presents us with the Torah’s radical vision for society, which isn’t capitalism or socialism, but is a utopian vision of its own:...

I don’t know about your household, but there’s a certain time in the year which is “too soon” to talk about the Chagim. The Torah has no...

Parashat Toldot Divar Torah by Miriam Lorie - 24th November 2022 Our parasha is named Toldot, and begins with the words וְאֵלֶּה...

This week, Miriam Lorie is joined by her colleague Sarah Beth Neville @sarah_beth_nev this week to discuss the parasha Toldot. Isaac...