Men of Torah

After all the heavy classes with numbers and mystical teaching, we sit to simply review the offerings in Parasha Vayikra and discuss Pesach.

Gregory gives us the follow-up class to Bracha 101 with multiple blessings before meals and reviews very common foods in our lives.

Greg brought the class into the world of Gematria with some definitions and examples from Purim and Pesach. Fascinating!

Gregory teaches us what blessing to use, when to bless G-d and what the follow-up blessing is after eating. I learned a LOT! Nearly everything I thought I knew about the berachot turns out to be wrong.

Peter relates how finding the little bit of good within us builds song. Join us as we learn to build a mishkan into which we pray the Amidah. Wonderful class. Check the Men of Torah site for a link to his online presentation.

Johnnie reviews Rebbe Nachman's lesson to teach us how to perform the practice of mitzvot with greater joy.

Peter walks us through the nature of Chasidut and why it's so very important. He uses the Modeh Ani prayer as an example from Rebbe Nachman's lessons.

After a brief review of the previous trait, humility, we launched into the Fear of Sin. Good discussion as we closed out the book. It seemed to be a VERY profitable book for us to read, and everyone had positive feedback.

There were a LOT of questions about being a good employee, looking for advancement vs. remaining humble, shunning authority and practicing emunah. We will pick this topic up again next week to finish up. We opened with a question from Bill listening from Wisconsin about going to work and dealing with the "kingdom of this world." For the second week in a row, we had the privilege of praying Ma'ariv together as class ended.

This evening was a good look at the specifics of chassidut and the challenges that go along with it. Balance in our thoughts and actions is critical!