Rabbi Avraham Arieh Trugman

On the morning of the day the Torah was given at Mt. Sinai, along with thunder and lightning and a heavy cloud on the mountain, there was the sound of a shofar that grew increasingly loud. Later it states that the people saw the sounds of the thunder and the...

The portion of Bamidbar is usually read the week before Shavuot. Therefore, it also falls in close proximity to Jerusalem Day, which occurs a week earlier. Jerusalem Day commemorates the day during the 1967 Six Day War on which Jewish rule returned to the unified holy city for the first...

Lag Ba'Omer, the 33rd day of the Omer, commemorates two events. The first is the interruption or end of the plague between Pesach and Shavuot that killed the students of Rabbi Akiva during the time of the Roman occupation of Israel. After the death of 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva,...

According to the wisdom of arranging the letters of Hebrew words in various ways, in order to extract multiple layers of meaning, the letters of the word Lag (as in Lag B'Omer, the 33rd day of the Omer) when reversed, spell gal. The root word gal has many...

To the six directions they would wave it
Through thirteen sifters they sifted it
On the altar they would burn it
And the nations heart was uplifted

Forty-nine gates
Forty-nine days
Forty-nine walls
Forty-nine ways

Turning potential into...

The Torah portion of Toldot's opening verse reads, "And these are the children of Isaac the son of Abraham; Abraham gave birth to Isaac" (Genesis 25:19). From time immemorial, the commentators have questioned this verse's redundancy: having told us that Isaac is Abraham's son, why does the verse...

On the seventh day of Pesach we celebrate the crossing of the Reed Sea. On this day the Jewish people left the borders of Egypt and watched as the pursuing army was drowned in the sea. According to one Midrash the sea did not split until Nachshon Ben Aminadov entered...

When trying to understand the significance of Sefirat Haomer, the counting of the Omer -- the 49-day period from Pesach to Shavuot -- we can ask the following question: Why do we count up from one to 49 and not the more common way of counting down to an anticipated...

After the yearly Torah reading cycle is completed on the morning of Simchat Torah, we immediately begin the cycle again by reading the beginning of Bereishit, recounting the creation of the world. This practice connects the end of the Torah with its beginning.

This ceremonial completion and immediate new...

Of all the mitzvot, rituals and customs of Rosh Hashanah, blowing the shofar stands out as the most potent of all its symbols. The physical action of blowing the shofar entails breathing deeply in and then blowing out. This action is reminiscent of the description of the formation of man...