Deeper Themes

Beauty and the Greeks

by Rabbi Doniel Baron

What was the underlying conflict between Jewish and Greek philosophy?

The Chanukah Question

by Sara Yoheved Rigler

Is it a Jewish value to yield or to resist?

The Beauty Wars

by Sara Yoheved Rigler

The Chanukah battle isn't over yet.

Taking Up Arms

by Chana Graj

What you and I today would have written off as an act of insanity, was in fact one of the greatest deeds in Jewish history.

The Nature of Nature

by Rabbi Avi Shafran

What's the difference between nature and the miraculous?

Chanukah: Seeing in the Darkness

by Sherri Lederman Mandell

Chanukah and the murder of my son taught me a new way of seeing.

Chanukah: The Prequel

by Rabbi Doniel Baron

The astonishing connection between Alexander the Great and the Jewish high priest.

Natural is Supernatural, Naturally

by Rabbi Baruch Beyer

Miracles don't happen anymore, do they?

Spinning the Dreidel

by Rabbi Eytan Feiner

The discrepancy in how the Chanukah dreidel and Purim gragger are spun reflect a profound lesson in the nature of the two holidays.

Rekindling Our Inner Flame

by Joel Padowitz

Deep within every one of us glows a spiritual ember waiting to burst aflame to allow us to fulfill our spiritual potential.

Soulless

by Rabbi Avi Shafran

The Greeks thought that physicality was a primary goal of man.

Out of the Closet

by Debbie Hirschmann

My mother, a Holocaust survivor, always said, "You can be a Jew on the inside, but not on the outside." It was just too risky.

The Darkness that was Greece

by Rabbi Ahron Lopiansky

The world of Greece was defined by beauty and philosophy, which many Jews admired. Yet in the end, there had to be a fight to the finish between the two ways of life. Why?

Israel's Glory vs. Greek's Beauty

by Rabbi Ahron Lopiansky

The Greeks restricted the world to physical beauty while the Jews opened the eyes of the world to the spiritual glory that lies deep within.

Illuminating the Days of Darkness

by Rabbi Yonason Goldson

The Greeks fought desperately to uproot the Torah, the spiritual compass that kept the Jewish people pointed toward the light through the darkness of exile.