Intro Contents Purchase Contact Introduction to Deep Waters Torah is the Hebrew word used to describe the five books of Moses, known to the Christian world as the Old Testament. The Torah was given to the Jewish People by God at Mount Sinai and throughout their forty years of wandering in the wilderness. It is not a history book, although it contains historical material. It is not a book of stories, although it contains some of the greatest stories ever told. It is the communication of the will of God, and the guide to attaining closeness to the Divine. Some of the basic principles of the Torah apply to all mankind, while the majority, including the hundreds of commandments relating to the details of life and death, apply specifically to the Jewish People. This doesn't mean that the Jews possess the only way of reaching that state of spiritual bliss for the soul called "Heaven". Every person, by following the basic laws of moral conduct, can attain a place in Heaven. The various monotheistic religions each have their own path. The Torah is the unique, and often challenging, path for the Jew. Only through the teachings of the Torah can a Jew fulfill his spiritual destiny. Since the giving of the Torah, accompanied by orally transmitted interpretations and teachings, over 3500 years ago, the Jews have relentlessly studied, analyzed, and questioned it in order to understand its true meaning. Since the Torah is the word of God it is as relevant today as it was three millennia ago. It is our constant challenge to uncover the relevancy of the Torah and apply its lessons to our own lives. In Deep Waters I have tried to apply the ancient messages of the Torah to modern life. The Torah is divided into fifty two portions called "Parsha(s)", one of which is read every Sabbath of the year in the Synagogue. The Parsha of the week is usually studied in the order of its reading. The first section of this book is devoted to the study of the weekly Parsha. The chapters are divided according to the weekly Parsha. Some chapters have more than one lesson. Many of the lessons are followed by personal reflections. Not every Parsha is included in this work. The second section of this book is devoted to the Jewish holidays, fast days, and commemorative events. The final section includes sermons that I delivered at the Manhattan Jewish Experience. I did not identify the specific Midrashic, Talmudic, Rabbinic, or Chassidic sources I cited, in an attempt to keep this work user friendly and easy to read. Almost all of the ideas presented in this book are my own, based on the Torah that I have learned over the decades from my holy teachers who I will not name here for fear of embarrassing them. I cited the sources of the teachings that I transmitted in their entirety at the beginning of the respective lesson. All of the lessons in Deep Water were written to stand independently of each other, and therefore, some ideas are repeated. I hope that this work will bring the Torah to life and demonstrate how the lessons and teachings within it can help us lead more fulfilling lives.