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24+ min ago (162+ words) " " " | December 2, 2025 A completely rebuilt and significantly expanded Bar Mitzvah Maamar App has just been released for iPhone and Android, offering families a modern, structured, and stress-free way to support their sons in preparing for the Bar Mitzvah Maamar. Some of the app's key features include:" Multiple study modes: paragraph, linear and full PDF" Audio in both Hebrew and Yiddish" Text that highlights in sync with the recording" Toggle between Hebrew, Yiddish and English explanations" Adjustable audio speed" Custom study planner that calculates how many lines to learn each day until the Bar Mitzvah "Gamification" Recording tools that let each boy save and review his practice" Parents can listen to recordings later in their own time" Hide text for self testing and memory practice" Mark lines and sections as mastered" Countdown to the Bar Mitzvah date" Custom reward system to motivate…...

25+ min ago (728+ words) Most people believe reflection is simple. "Sit down." "Think about your day." "Write what's on your mind." But unstructured reflection rarely produces clarity. At worst, it deepens the loops you're trying to escape. I learned this the hard way'working with engineers, founders, analysts, and leaders who are intellectually brilliant but internally overwhelmed. And I learned it even more deeply while studying with monks in Himalayan monasteries, where reflection is treated not as a mood practice, but as a cognitive discipline. And the difference has everything to do with architecture. Buddhist cognitive science has spent 2,500 years mapping the inner architecture of experience. When you integrate this with modern neuroscience, a clear model emerges'one that explains why most reflection fails, and what kind of structure the mind actually needs. This article outlines that model. Most reflective practices start at the narrative level:…...

30+ min ago (256+ words) The reality of organ harvesting just got much, much darker. In a report by the Department of Health and Human Services, it was discovered that some organ transplants were actually from patients who were still alive. According to Cincinnati's Local 12 News, HHS found out that "in some cases, organ procurement began while patients still showed signs of life." Not only is this raising alarms with some, but it has effectively made the human life itself no more than a commodity off the shelf. As Dr. Joseph Varon of the Independent Medical Alliance stated, "The system has allowed the value of a person'of an actual human being'to be reduced to the commercial value of a pair of organs." While this may seem like a relatively newer topic to some, it is far from that. Canada has been known for the past…...

34+ min ago (625+ words) Even ostensibly Christian churches and denominations have been jumping on the bandwagon, and they were out in force at COP30. One of the key "Christian" players, known as the ACT Alliance, purports to represent more than 140 Christian denominations around the world. In its COP30 statement, the group was blunt: "Climate justice is a faith imperative that unites us across traditions." His theological views were interesting, to put it mildly. "When we say God created us, we also affirm that God created us together with nonhuman creation," argued Bedford-Strohm. "That gives us a sister- and brother-relationship with the whole of nonhuman creation." The pope himself even released a video encouraging the religious leaders gathered in the Amazon for COP30. Celebrating a "global community that works together," he lamented that it has "delivered progress, but not enough." It is time for "concrete actions" rather than…...

35+ min ago (373+ words) Doreen Virtue once stood at the center of the New Age movement. Now she is warning Christians that the same practices that made her famous are leading multitudes into spiritual danger. "In the New Age, I was very famous. I went on Oprah, all the talk shows, CNN, The View, everything," she recalled. "I was writing about mediumship, teaching it, practicing it." For decades she believed she was helping people and even thought she was serving God. That illusion shattered when Scripture confronted her. Preaching from Matthew 7:21-23, she said, "I came so close to hearing those words," referring to Jesus" warning, "I never knew you." Virtue admitted, "I thought I was a Christian my whole life. I was saved at age 59." Her story begins in New Thought churches that taught that "your thoughts create your reality." From there she moved…...

40+ min ago (533+ words) Pope Leo XIV led a silent prayer at the site of the Beirut port explosion and demanded justice for its victims, as he wrapped up his three-day visit to Lebanon. He also met some relatives of the 218 people who were killed by the massive blast on 4 August 2020, which devastated a large part of the capital. Later, the Pope said he was "deeply moved" by his visit to the port and shared "the thirst for truth and justice, of so many families, of an entire country". No-one has yet been held accountable for the disaster, which happened when a fire triggered the detonation of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had been stored unsafely at a port warehouse for almost six years. It is widely believed that officials and politicians were aware of the combustible chemical's existence and the danger it posed…...

41+ min ago (634+ words) On the first Sunday after being named leader of the Catholic Church in May 2025, Pope Leo XIV stood on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and addressed the tens of thousands of people gathered. Invoking tradition, he led the people in noontime prayer. But rather than reciting it, as his predecessors generally did, he sang. In chanting the traditional Regina Caeli, the pope inspired what some have called a rebirth of Gregorian chant, a type of monophonic and unaccompanied singing done in Latin that dates back more than a thousand years. The Vatican has been at the forefront of that push, launching an online initiative to teach Gregorian chant through short educational tutorials called "Let's Sing with the Pope." The stated goals of the initiative are to give Catholics worldwide an opportunity to "participate actively in the liturgy…...

42+ min ago (680+ words) Paganism is the most popular spiritual destination for British Christians who convert to another faith, outstripping Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, a study has found. Religious faith is "fragmenting" in the UK as more than one in ten people who abandon Christianity in Britain take up paganism, wicca or another form of "spiritualism", according to the report. While Christianity is still gaining new adherents, these arrivals are outnumbered by people quitting the faith, figures showed. This is leading Christianity to dwindle in Britain overall, casting doubt on recent reports suggesting that a revival may be under way. The report was compiled by the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life (IIFL). It was based on polling from the Whitestone Insight firm, which surveyed 2,774 people who had experienced some change in their religious beliefs " either coming to, switching or abandoning faith....

43+ min ago (987+ words) Pope Leo XIV answers a question from a journalist aboard his flight back to Rome from Lebanon, Dec. 2, 2025. Aboard the Papal flight from Lebanon At the end of his first foreign trip as pope, a trip focused on dialogue, Pope Leo XIV said the examples of friendship and respect he had seen could be a helpful example for people in North America and Europe, too. For example, the stories of Christians and Muslims helping each other in Lebanon when their villages were destroyed, he said, offer the lesson that "we should perhaps be a little less fearful and look for ways of promoting authentic dialogue and respect," the pope told reporters Dec. 2 during his flight back to Rome from Lebanon. Often, fear of Muslims in the West is "generated by people who are against immigration and are trying to keep…...

46+ min ago (367+ words) The Holy Family were refugees. This is not political interpretation, this is the reality described," the church says. An Illinois church has unveiled a Nativity scene this holiday season that features a baby Jesus zip-tied in the manger, with Roman soldiers depicted as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Mary and Joseph wearing gas masks. The Lake Street Church of Evanston wrote on Facebook that the display "reimagines the nativity as a scene of forced family separation, drawing direct parallels between the Holy Family"s refugee experience and contemporary immigration detention practices." "The zip ties on the infant"s wrists directly reference the children who were zip-tied by agents during a raid on a Chicago apartment building earlier this year, where most residents were U.S. citizens: a stark reminder that enforcement terror does not discriminate by documentation status." The installation uses…...