Rabbi Baron's Articles

A bunch of children are given gifts. One child receives a bicycle, while the rest get tricycles. All the children jump onto their tricycles with great excitement and are having a great time, while the one lone child feels tortured. "Why do I only have two wheels on this bike which doesn’t seem fit to work, while everyone else is fortunate enough to have three wheels which are perfect for riding?" he complains to himself.

We live in G-d's world. There are no mistakes about what G-d gives us. So if we see in our lives a less-than-perfect situation, it is only for the purpose of granting us an even....

Since our childhood, we have always wanted to exercise our own free choice. As children, we do not want to be told what to do. We want freedom from the “tyranny” of adults telling us what to eat and when to go to sleep. "Eat healthy" and "go to sleep early" is what those “totalitarian” adults would tell us.

The truth is that free choice holds the key to power: power to become something truly great or power to self-destruct. The power we can access through our free choice can be used for good or bad. The best case scenario is to use that freedom of choice to generate something truly great. However if we don't make mindful choices, that freedom can also destroy us. It can...

“You Chabadniks have so much fun,” said Miri, our Shabbat guest last Friday night. At first glance, I thought this was your typical, “the grass is greener” attitude. Miri lives in Boro Park and enjoys an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, as well as a nice standard of living. Yet, she doesn’t see herself as having fun, in the way she perceives Chabadniks as having fun. My first reaction was to tell her what Dennis Prager, a noted talk show host, says on this topic. Prager says that all Chabad Rabbis have in their contract that they must be happy, or else they’ll be sent back to Brooklyn. The proof he offers for this is that...

Yellow lights at intersections seem a lot shorter than they used to be when I was a kid. I am convinced that they make those lights shorter so they can catch you with those red light cameras. When I told my kids about my thoughts, my daughter challenged me. She said that maybe time goes by quicker as you age, so you experience the yellow light to be shorter, whereas in reality nothing has changed....

Moses had the historic role of leading the Jews out of Egypt. He was also chosen by G-d to be His personal messenger to deliver the Torah, His word, to the world. This was the most important communication of all time. If this is the case, why did G-d choose Moses for these rolls if Moses had a speech impediment? In fact, Moses himself asked this question of G-d as he was being drafted for the job.

Moses was an 80-year-old shepherd when G-d appeared to him in the burning bush, and drafted him for a career change...