Nitzotzos: Inspiration to Keep Your Spark Alive with Rav Mordechai Burg

Bereishis - The First Murder: When Someone Else's Existence Becomes Unbearable

What happens when another person's success makes us feel like a failure? Why can someone else's significance threaten our own sense of worth? And how does our need to fee

Bereishis - Help I Have Fallen And I Can't Get Up!

In this shmooze, delivered at the first Mevaseret Mishmar of the Zman, Rav Burg explains that the problem was not that Adam HaRishon sinned but that he his behind the Eit

Hoshana Rabba - Yearning For An Embodied Relationship With Hashem

The soul is always searching for home. We spend so much of our lives trying to get closer to Hashem. We seek inspiration, clarity, healing, spiritual intensity, and the

Succos - Safe Enough to Look Up

What does it mean that the sukkah is described by the Baalei Chassidus as Hashem’s embrace? Delivered at the Mesorah Simchas Beis Hashoeva, in this short shmooze Rav Bur

Succos - Yes But Do You Still Love Me? The Embrace of the Sukkah After Yom Kippur

If the Ananei HaKavod first surrounded the Jewish people when they left Mitzrayim, why do we celebrate Sukkos in Tishrei? The Gra explains that Sukkos commemorates the cl

Succos - When You Find Yourself, There’s Room for Everyone

Why is it sometimes so difficult to make room for someone who is different from us? Given to NCSY 4G advisors as part of their chinuch development, in this shiur Rav Bu

Yom Kippur - No Jew Left Behind: The Yom Kippur that Ronnie Greenwald z"l Spent in the Lobby

Right before Kol Nidrei, we make a startling declaration: we permit ourselves to daven together with the transgressors. Chazal go even further and teach that a communal f

Yom Kippur - The 955th Gate

What happens when it feels like the door has closed? Acher hears a Bas Kol say, “Return, wayward children, except for Acher.” Neilah itself is the moment when the gates

Aseres Yemei Teshuva - Inviting In Your Unwanted Guests: An IFS Approach to Teshuva

We often imagine Yom Kippur as a massive cleaning operation. Get rid of the jealousy, anger, shame, and desires we would rather not admit to. Make the house presentable.

Rosh Hashana - The Satan Knows What You Did But He Doesn’t Know You.

The Satan has heard the shofar for thousands of years. Why should hearing it once more leave him confused? In this shiur, delivered at Mevaseret Mishmar, Rav Burg explai

Rosh Hashana - No More Hiding: How to Own What You Did Without Losing Who You Are

Why does Adam HaRishon hide after he sins—and why, when Hashem confronts him, does he immediately blame Chavah and even Hashem? Because once an aveirah feels like a revel

Nitzavim - Are You Dating or Auditioning? Where Real Attraction Comes From

Dating has a strange way of pulling us out of ourselves. Instead of meeting the person across from us, we begin watching ourselves through their eyes: Am I saying the rig

Nitzavim - You Don’t Need to Become More Jewish. You Need to Become More Yourself.

Most of us assume that Yiddishkeit is something being asked of us from the outside. And when it feels difficult, we take that difficulty as proof that it is not really wh

Rosh Hashana - This Year The Shofar Is Silent. Your Soul Is Not.

This year, the first day of Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos, and the shofar will not be blown. For many of us, especially after October 7, that silence feels frightening.

🔥 🔥🔥 Elul Fabrengen With Chaim Ghoori and Rav Burg 🔥 🔥 🔥

At this Motzai Shabbos Fabrengen at the Robinson home in Cedharhurst, Chaim Ghoori sang the most beautiful music and Rav Burg shared Divrei Chizuk on Teshuva. Rav Burg sp

Ki Teitzei - You Have No Idea Who You’re Talking About

Why does the Torah command us to remember Miriam’s aveira? Miriam loved Moshe. She helped raise him, risked her life to save him, and never intended to demean him. Of all

Shoftim - Who Are The Judges Sitting At Your Gates?

Shoftim The Torah commands us to appoint judges and officers at our gates. The Shelah hears something deeply personal in those words. A person has seven gates—two eyes,

Elul - Wearing The Crown Of Imperfection

We often imagine teshuvah as going backward—to the person we were before we failed, became cynical, or compromised something inside ourselves. But if teshuvah simply mean

Re’eh: The Life You Don’t Know You’re Choosing

Most of us think we are making choices. Often, we are repeating patterns we learned so long ago that we have stopped calling them patterns and started calling them our pe

Eikev - The One Thing Hashem Asks of You: When Yiras Shamayim Becomes Natural

Everything is in the hands of Heaven—except yiras Shamayim. But why is fear of Heaven the one thing Hashem cannot give us? And if yirah is Hashem’s greatest treasure, how