Zohar Ammud Yomi

In this episode we will dive into two comments from the Degel on Parshat Tetzaveh. The Degel reads tetzaveh not only as “command,” but as tzavta — connection — teaching that the purpose of creation itself is conscious relationship: from the world, to Israel, to the tzaddik, to the Divine. He then turns to the image of “pure olive oil, crushed for illumination.” Olive oil represents wisdom. When we speak with awareness, we can elevate the hidden sparks within even painful or constricted experiences. What feels crushed in life can become a source of light. The goal is to raise a ner tamid, a continual lamp — symbolizing both the Shekhinah and the human soul — transforming inner darkness into steady illumination through wisdom and connection.

In this episode of The Neshamah Project, Rabbi Ben Newman explores the deeper meaning of “Vayikchu li terumah” — not as giving something to God, but as taking the Divine into our own lives. Drawing on Hasidic and kabbalistic teachings, we look at how Torah, sacred language, and sustained practice can shape us over time, like the forty-day formation of both the human body and the revelation at Sinai. What might it mean to build an inner sanctuary where the Shekhinah can truly dwell?

A mystical reading of Mishpatim that reframes justice as part of a longer soul-arc. Drawing on the Degel Machaneh Ephraim and the Zohar, this episode explores how moments that feel unfair may be part of a deeper reckoning, not punishment but completion. For modern seekers, it becomes an invitation to loosen certainty, release resentment, and see conflict as a doorway to spiritual maturity.

his episode of The Neshamah Project explores a Hasidic teaching that insists liberation happens one person at a time, each according to their own inner awareness and capacity. We reflect on Moses as a figure of parental love—one who carries others forward and, like The Giving Tree, gives so deeply that he does not enter the land himself. Alongside this, we consider a vision of power rooted not in harm or domination, but in chesed: elevation, presence, and freedom you can actually taste.

For Tu Bishvat, I recorded a special episode of The Neshamah Project Podcast that moves from soil to soul. A spoken-word meditation on the four layers of being: doing, feeling, thinking, and simply being. From dirty hands and daily obligations to emotion, insight, and the quiet fire underneath it all. No climbing, no escaping, no bypassing. Just roots, trunk, branches, and breath. One chain. One tree. One life, fully inhabited.

In this episode of The Neshamah Project, we explore a piercing teaching from the Noam Elimelekh on the Exodus that reframes Pharaoh as the inner force of resistance to change. Drawing on Hasidic psychology, the text examines why stopping harmful behavior isn’t the same as true freedom, and why partial transformation often collapses under pressure. This episode speaks directly to anyone who has experienced relapse, burnout, or the unsettling sense that they’ve “left Egypt” but haven’t yet arrived anywhere stable.

A dream-text from R. Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin wrestles with a haunting question: what does it mean to count as a person in sacred community? Moving through golems, speech, da’at, obligation, and minyan, this reflection probes the line between intelligence and responsibility, creation and covenant. Read through the lived time of Parashat Bo, it opens a startlingly modern conversation about personhood, moral agency, and who truly belongs in holy space.

This week we explore two Hasidic teachings on Parashat Va’era that ask how spiritual power becomes healing rather than harmful. Drawing on the Degel Machaneh Ephraim and the Maor VaShemesh, the episode examines the Torah’s pairing of firmness and compassion, judgment and mercy, showing how the same force can destroy or heal depending on how it is held. Together, these texts offer a bracing vision of spiritual maturity rooted in integration rather than extremes.

What if meaning isn’t something we think our way into, but something we do our way into? In this episode of The Neshamah Project, we explore a teaching from Ohr HaMeir on the opening of Shemot, where holy names are not fixed labels but living realities formed through action, movement, and intention. Prayer is not only spoken. It is embodied. Hands, breath, posture, and presence become ways meaning enters the world. We look at burnout as a spiritual form of Mitzrayim—constriction, fragmentation, disconnection—and ask how small, conscious acts can begin an inner Exodus. Drawing on Kabbalah, embodied spirituality, and contemporary insight, this episode offers a gentle but radical invitation: to let the body help the soul remember, and to rediscover human thriving through mindful action. Meaning doesn’t arrive all at once. It moves.

This week we look at two Hasidic readings of Vayeshev that together map the inner life: Siach Chayyim teaches that the soul’s descent into this world is purposeful, an apprenticeship in humility, growth, and learning to say “Here I am” even when we’re afraid. The Meir of Premyshlan adds that holiness isn’t only found in elevated moments but in the “lower waters” of daily life, where every ordinary act holds a spark waiting to be lifted. Taken together, the texts insist that our wandering, our struggle, and even our most mundane days are part of the soul’s path back to clarity and connection.

This episode explores how our words of Torah, prayer, and intention become “messengers” that protect and guide us when we face our inner Esau, the parts of us that pull us off our path. Drawing on Siach Chayyim, we look at Jacob’s strategy of splitting into “two camps” of awe and love as a model for spiritual resilience, and with Or HaMeir we dive into Peniel as the practice of seeing the Divine “face within the face” in every situation. Together, these teachings frame our daily work as lifting scattered sparks of presence and finding healing not by erasing our limp, but by carrying our wounds with conscious awareness.

In this week’s episode we explore commentaries from the Skulyer Rebbe and the Or HaMeir, each offering a fierce little window into inner change—lifting ourselves from old patterns, giving voice to buried truth, and integrating both our hidden and revealed selves.

This episode weaves three Degel teachings from Toldot into one arc: Torah-awareness as the “added hey” that opens new possibilities, the idea that our personal lack mirrors a deeper cosmic wound, and the insight that real change comes not from merit but from aligning with the deeper current of mazal. Each teaching becomes a practice: expanding consciousness, healing the world through our own healing, and learning to face the truth of where life is actually carrying us. Together they offer a compact toolkit for spiritual realignment and human thriving.

This week we sit with the Degel’s teaching that Sarah—Shekhinah—becomes “whole” in Kiryat Arba, the place where four directions of Divine flow meet. The mystics say wholeness comes when our own inner movements—reaching, receiving, grounding, and envisioning—come together. When they do, we become a source of nourishment for ourselves and others. This episode explores how to gather those four currents and touch a taste of “Hebron,” the world-to-come that appears in the here-and-now.

In this episode of The Neshamah Project, we explore two luminous teachings from the Maor VaShemesh that reveal how embodied life itself can become a vessel for awakening. First, we reflect on Abraham’s transformation into a living conduit of divine presence—his body, breath, and being illuminated from within. Then we turn to his moment at the tent’s entrance, where overwhelming spiritual light brings him to the edge of dissolution, and simple acts of hospitality become a grounding force. Together, these teachings remind us that spirituality isn’t about leaving the body—it’s about coming home to it. The sacred moves through breath, touch, and service. Presence is found not in escaping the world, but in loving it fully.

In this episode, Rabbi Ben Newman reflects on a teaching from the Maor VaShemesh about Abraham’s journey as a metaphor for our own spiritual unfolding. What does it mean to “go forth” from the stories we’ve inherited — from our comfort zones, our expectations, even our own self-image? Drawing on Hasidic wisdom and Psalm 45, Ben explores how letting go can open us to authenticity, courage, and divine delight — the beauty of becoming who we truly are.

In this episode of The Neshamah Project, we explore a luminous teaching from the Kedushat Levi on Genesis 2:17. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev reimagines the story of Eden not as a tale of sin, but as a lesson in spiritual readiness — about what happens when we try to take in more light than we can hold. Through reflection and interpretation, we uncover how this Hasidic insight becomes a tool for human thriving: transforming darkness into light, overreaching into wisdom, and our daily struggles into sparks of awakening.

In this episode of The Neshamah Project, we explore two luminous teachings from the Maor VaShemesh on Kohelet. First, “All is breath” — a vision of life as sacred exhalation, where every word and action flows from divine intention. Second, “The breath of many voices” — a reminder that when we gather in prayer, song, or silence, our shared breath reshapes the world. Together, these teachings invite us to return to simplicity, to presence, and to the living rhythm that connects every soul.

After the death of Aaron’s sons, the Torah places the Yom Kippur service—why there, and why “not at all times” yet “once a year”? Drawing on the Maor VaShemesh, we explore how all souls are one body, how one mitzvah can tip the world, and why true teshuvah requires discernment—opening wide on “Yom Kippur moments” while keeping loving boundaries the rest of the year. Includes a practical reflection for shifting destructive patterns personally, communally, and globally.

In this week’s episode, we explore the mitzvah of bringing the first fruits and the deeper spiritual meaning hidden within it. The Maor VaShemesh teaches that the practice is not only about gratitude, but about desire itself—how we meet our strongest cravings and transform them into offerings of the heart. Along the way, he weaves the story of Laban, Egypt, and the gathering of holy sparks into a map for spiritual life, reminding us that every act of restraint, every pause before pleasure, can help repair something ancient. What does it mean today to dedicate our “first fruits”—our first energy, first thoughts, first creativity—to the sacred?