Michael Mantell

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — In this week’s parasha, Tazria, we discover tzara’as, which we have come to know in modern terms as leprosy. While this disease is uncommon today, who hasn’t found a spot or two on their body, had a biopsy and been told, B’H, “all is clean?” This seems […]

Night of Beginnings: A Passover Haggadah; Text and art  by Maria Falk; Published March, 2022, University of Nebraska Press as a Jewish Publication Society book. By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — When a Haggadah is written by a founding mother of feminist Judaism, as poet and author Marcia Falk is described, the reader

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — Of course, thousands of years before we began learning that “we are what we eat,” Judaism was already teaching the importance of the food we put inside of our bodies and its significance in living optimally. This week’s Torah education brings us a long list of nourishing

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — Each week we read of stories and learn messages in the Torah to offer us the strength and direction in how to serve Hashem, our Creator, in the best way possible, to live life most optimally. He is, in the words of “Yedid Nefesh” a piyyut first

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — Purim. It’s our happiness, fun-filled, dramatic, costume-drinking-upside down-holiday. Many have the tradition to fast on the day before Purim (Fast of Esther). Some have the custom to give three coins to charity to recall the half-shekel donated annually to the Temple during Adar (Machatzit HaShekel), and this

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — This week we begin a new book of the Torah, Sefer Vayikra, the book of Leviticus, and we read the Torah reading by the same name, Parashat Vayikra. In addition, this Shabbat we read from a second Sefer Torah since it is Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of Memory, the Shabbat observed before Purim. The

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — It’s taken four parshiot to arrive here, winding our way through Terumah, Teztzaveh, Ki Tisa and Vayakhel to Pekudei and the completion of the prototype of our synagogue. As it says, “In the first month of the second year, on the first of the month, the Tabernacle

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — This special week, on Shabbat Shekalim, we read parashat Vayakhel. This is the first of several Shabbatot leading to Passover, including Shabbat Zachor (April 12, 9 Adar II), Shabbat Parah (April 26, 23 Adar II), Shabbat HaChodesh (April 2, 1 Nissan) and Shabbat HaGadol (April 9, 8

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — What counts in your life? Rather, what do you make count in your life? This week’s parasha may seem a bit “obsessed” with counting. “When you take the sum of the children of Israel according to their numbers, let each one give to the Lord an atonement

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — It’s been 60 years since I hearkened to the glorious words, “Yaamod Ha’Bachor ha’Bar Mitzvah Moshe Rafoyel ben Betzalel Shlishi,” and chanted this parasha, Tetzaveh, at Temple B’nai Abraham in Newark, N.J., under the watchful eye and full heart of Rabbi Joachim Prinz, zt”l. I recall our

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. In this week’s Torah reading, we learn of a gift that Hashem has given to us, yes, another gift, this, the gift of giving. Want to grow happier and more joyful than you are? Terumah teaches us a way — give. Want to live with a sense of abundance and

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. This week’s Torah reading has been described as a pivot point in the Book of Exodus, where we drill down to the details of behavior in an ideal relationship with Hashem. We see repeatedly that behavior over belief is what is critical in our faith. It says quite dramatically: וַיִּקַּח֙

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. In this week’s parasha, Yitro, one of the six portions termed for an individual, we discover the Ten Commandments, the Aseret HaDib’rot, being revealed to Moses and to the Israelites in the wilderness. We see from this pinnacle experience that the Torah can be learned anywhere, even in a wilderness,