Articles by Tzvi Freeman

A friend says she doesn't believe G‑d "causes" the consequence, because, she says, "we have free will."

Each man stands between two females: the corporeal woman below to whom he must provide sustenance and affection; and the Shechinah which stands over him to bless him with these so that he may turn around and provide them to the woman of his covenant

Sure, there are all those events that happened, the weather, geography, DNA. But we are the ones to string them together with meaning and direction. There is no story to life, until we tell it...

Tell me that it is rational to talk to the Force of Being as though this were your closest confidant. Tell me that it is not absurd to plead with this force to adjust reality more to your liking...

It's easy to feel like orphans to this cold universe--to the elements, the forces and empty space that shrug indifferently at the drama of being human...

You can hide it enough so it doesn't embarrass you in public. You can pretty it up so that others are not as annoyed with it. You can try to ignore its whelps and howls when it gets out of hand. But can you free yourself of your ego?

Why do we become a bar mitzvah at adolescence? Because something dramatic happens to our minds at this time: A sort of awakening, a consciousness, a realization that "I exist"

These guys are heavily into the divine energy; you could call them spiritual junkies. Face it: the most successful soul here below cannot hope to dance as gracefully as the clumsiest malach...

They asked the Baal Shem Tov: "The Talmud tells us that for every thing G-d forbade, He provided us something permissible. What did He permit that corresponds to the sin of heresy?" Replied the Besht : "Acts of kindness"

As in any duality, we must determine which side of the coin is dominant and which secondary: Does progress serve tradition, or does tradition serve progress?

It is truly an impossible discovery: that there is another "I" in this world, one who is not "me," who does not confirm my concept of the world, who is the opposite of me in so many ways and who I can therefore never truly know...

When we would be at odds with G-d and He with us, the two angels would turn away from one another. But when the two of us would be in harmony, the temple priests would open the curtains and show us the two figurines entwined in embrace...

We've been studying his mind all our lives. But we still don't get it... It's a mumble-jumble of scattered fragments, each part playing the other's role in an untamed cacophony of an orchestra tuning up

To an ancient Greek or a Hindu, passive stillness is masculine, activity and motion are feminine. To a Taoist, action is masculine and passiveness is feminine. In other words, if it is a virtue it is masculine. The Jew turns the pyramid on its head

Ego makes a mortal being into an idol. But without it, how can we change the world?

There are those who chase the infinite and find they cannot live. There are those who chase all things finite; their life is not worth living. Redemption is when the infinite is at home within our finite world

Initially, it was natural for man to follow woman. Read the story: What convinced Adam to eat of the Tree of Knowledge? Nothing -- just that Eve told him to. Then the roles were reversed. A curse, truly, for both of them...

No, I don't mean words that are sung. I mean the words that music speaks: the nuances and motifs of a melody that take the defined boundaries in which we have boxed ourselves, our feelings and our ideas, and transport them to a higher place

The angels were stunned. They looked upon our world of cruelty between man and man, of mortal blindness to the most obvious of truths, and they said, "This place He desires? This He calls a garden of delight? This He wants to make His home?"

"Where are there computers in the Torah?" Without hesitation the Rebbe answered, "Tefillin." The professor was perplexed