Abraham's Divine Beard Salon
Besides receiving food, drink and a place to stay, Abraham's many guests were treated to a beard grooming that would totally change their perception of God. What truth was Abraham disseminating throughout the world, and how is it reflected in beard consciousness? In this audio lecture, Rabbi Ginsburgh explores the secret of the mysterious eshel that Abraham planted in Be'er Sheva. When we understand the inner consciousness of this eshel, we can unlock the gate to the true perception of the One God.Click here to read the full article.
Listen to Audio (length: 27:24min)
The Three Angels and their Missions
In this article, we will focus on a well-known limitation of angelic action: one angel cannot perform two missions. Seemingly, for this reason, three angels were sent to Abraham in order to perform three different missions. This limitation may surprise many people because it means that angels have been delegated a very one-track existence. An angel, a true messenger of God, cannot veer left or right. It is always committed to fulfilling its purpose, but that purpose is relatively more simplistic than the purpose of a human soul. Click here to read the full article…
Solving A Contradiction Between Rashi and the Midrash
Regarding the identity of the angel who saved Lot, Rashi, following the Midrash identifies him as Repha’el, who first healed Abraham and then saved Lot. But, the Talmud identifies him as Micha’el who first heralded Isaac’s birth and then continued on with Gavri’el to Sodom and there saved Lot. What is the dispute? How can we understand that both opinions are “the words of Living God,”4 a phrase commonly used to describe that Torah sages do not contradict, they complement? Click here to read the full article…
The Angel Micha'el
the angel Micha’el who represents the power to break out of one’s inbred habits in search of growing closer to the Almighty. Note that the Tanya describes two such methods for freeing one’s self and going beyond one’s comfort zone: 1) by meditating on God’s greatness and thereby arousing new-born love for God, 2) by awakening one’s natural love for God. Click here to read the full article…
The Three Angels Micha'el, Gabriel, and Rephael in the Bible
This article explores the instances in which the three angels appear in the Bible and learns about their essence form these appearances. At the end is a discussion of the notrikon, a phonetic method, whereby the syllables that make up a word are taken as separate units that refer to whole words, which usually make up a phrase from the Tanach, or an idiom of the sages. The notrikon of a word is used as one of the principles of analysis of the Torah and has the power to reveal hidden meanings of words. Click here to read the full article…
The Three Angels and Nature, Concealed Miracles, and Revealed Miracles
Thus, the angel Micha’el works in a miraculous way, completely beyond the limits and scope of natural laws. In context of this verse in the book of Daniel, we can understand that the angel Gavri’el functions within the confines and limits of nature, using natural laws, as his function is judgment (nonetheless, Gavri’el too tries to help the Jewish people win in a natural way against their enemies). From this we can now surmise that the function of the angel Repha’el is to perform miracles that are concealed within nature (or, in the language of Chassidut, enclothed within natural laws). These are three basic forms of God’s guidance of creation and are discussed elsewhere as evolution, enclothement, and omnipresence. Click here to read the full article…
Angels as Men
The Torah describes the three angels as “three men.” In this article we take a more generalized approach to the angels and their essence by using another technique: looking at all the occurrences of the phrase “three men” (שלשה אנשים ) in the Tanach. We find that this phrase appears altogether three times. Click here to read the full article…
