Aleph Beta

21/05/2026

What if Ruth wasn’t just entering Abraham’s story…
but continuing it?

Both leave everything behind.
Both walk toward an unknown land.
Both choose responsibility for someone else’s future.

And through Ruth’s radical act of loyalty and kindness, a broken family line is restored - eventually leading to King David himself.

There’s so much more beneath the surface of Megillat Ruth than meets the eye.

For Shavuot, we created a Ruth Guide to help you explore the deeper story and themes of the book of Ruth.

Download it at the link in bio.

21/05/2026

Shavuot starts tonight.

Only a few weeks ago, we celebrated Pesach, leaving Egypt to receive our freedom, and now, it's 49 days later.

We've counted up to this moment, to climb a mountain… and accept 613 commandments?!

Stop and feel the strangeness of that for a second. We walked out of slavery just to walk into a life of obligations? That sounds like the opposite of freedom.

Unless freedom doesn't mean what we usually think it means.
Rabbi Fohrman explores the deep connection between Egypt and Sinai — and what real freedom actually looks like — in this Shavuot playlist:

👉 https://www.alephbeta.org/playlist/shavuot-sinai-freedom
What does "freedom" mean to you?

Fall in love with Torah. Aleph Beta brings the Torah to life with colorful videos and study guides, uncovering profound insights about how we should live our lives.

20/05/2026

The Ten Commandments aren’t just a list of laws. Hidden inside them is a connection to a completely different story in the Torah.

Rabbi Fohrman counted 37 textual parallels between the Ten Commandments and the Jacob and Esau story. In the exact same order. And when you read them through that lens, every single commandment looks different.

Comment TEN below and I’ll send you a full breakdown of all ten commandments read through this lens.

Based on Rabbi Fohrman’s teachings in A Book Like No Other, Season 4.

19/05/2026

Most of us learned the Ten Commandments as a list. Number them off — one through ten — and check the box.

But look at the list again and something strange starts to happen.

Why is "don't murder" — arguably the gravest sin a human can commit — sitting at the same numerical level as "don't covet your neighbor's stuff"?

Why is "keep Shabbat" tucked between honoring God and honoring parents?

And why exactly ten?

It turns out the Ten Commandments aren't a list at all. There's a hidden architecture inside them — and once you see it, you can't unsee it.

A worthwhile watch as we head into Shavuot. Rabbi Fohrman walks through it here:
👉 https://www.alephbeta.org/playlist/hidden-structure-of-ten-commandments

18/05/2026

Have we been reading the Ten Commandments wrong this entire time?

Rabbi Fohrman noticed something hiding in plain sight in the very first line—and it reframes everything that follows.

If this did something for you, comment TEN below and I’ll send you a full breakdown of all Ten Commandments through this lens.

Based on Rabbi Fohrman’s teachings in A Book Like No Other, Season 4.

18/05/2026

Ready to dive deep into the powerful and emotional story of Ruth?

Check out our free guide:

This free Shavuot study guide takes you on a journey through the Torah — from Cain and Abel to King David — and reveals the hidden thread that makes the Book of Ruth one of the most profound texts in all of Tanakh.

17/05/2026

Shavuot is the day we celebrate the most thunderous moment in Jewish history: standing at Sinai, receiving the Torah from God Himself.

So here's a question that's always puzzled me.

Why, on that of all days, do we sit down and read a quiet little love story about a Moabite widow named Ruth, who follows her mother-in-law back to Bethlehem and ends up gleaning in a stranger's field?

No thunder. No mountain. No fire. Just two women, a barley harvest, and a few lines of dialogue that — it turns out — may have changed Jewish history forever.

Rabbi Fohrman pulls apart the Megillah and finds something extraordinary hiding inside it. Definitely worth the watch before Thursday night.

👉 https://www.alephbeta.org/playlist/book-of-ruth

What was your "aha" moment with Megillat Ruth?

15/05/2026

Try this with your family at the Shabbat table this week:
Ask everyone what we celebrate on Pesach. (Easy.) On Sukkot. (Usually easy.) On Shavuot.

Watch the room go quiet.

Shavuot doesn't have the props of the other holidays. No matzah. No shofar. No sukkah. No fasting. Just one day — and an idea so enormous that the rest of the Jewish calendar quietly orbits around it.

What is Shavuot really about? And why does this single, quiet day matter so much?

Rabbi Fohrman digs into the surprising answer here:
👉 https://www.alephbeta.org/playlist/what-does-shavuot-celebrate

How do you explain Shavuot to your kids?

The Torah seems to speak of Shavuot as a harvest holiday, but the Rabbis conceive of it as the time to celebrate the Giving of the Torah. Which one is it? Find out here!

14/05/2026

This weekend, the USA is celebrating a special occasion, , and we are exploring some of the beautiful elements of the practice of the Sabbath.

Where do the 39 prohibitions come from? And what can it teach us about the holiness inherent in each of us?

Like, share and celebrate 🕯️ 🕯️

14/05/2026

This week, in honor of , we're looking at the acts that are forbidden on Shabbat, the 39 melachot. Let's take a closer look:

What if being “created in God’s image” (“betzelem Elokim”) has nothing to do with how you look but rather everything to do with what you build?

In Parshat Vayakhel, the Torah does something strange:
It places Shabbat right next to the building of the Mishkan.

From that connection, the Sages derive the 39 forms of melachah, creative acts we avoid on Shabbat.

Why these particular acts?

Because they’re the very acts used to build something sacred.

God created the world by shaping, organizing, and making space to create a world and to fashion mankind.

Then, He handed that power to us.

The Mishkan is the way we created and ordered our world in order to make space for God.

So b’tzelem Elokim isn’t just who you are.
It’s what you do.
You create.
You make space.
You build something that isn’t just for you.

And Shabbat?
It’s the pause that reminds you:
you’re capable of all of it.

Go even deeper:

What does it mean that we are created in the image of God, b'tzelem Elohim? Rabbi Fohrman argues that the answer lies in God's own process of creation, work – and most importantly, His rest on the Sabbath Day. What can we learn from these concepts to be more Godlike in our actions? In Vayakhel, th...

12/05/2026

In honor of , we are taking a deep dive into Shabbat this week:

Most of us think Shabbat is a break from the work week.

What if it's actually the thing that gives the work week meaning?

In this Meaningful Judaism episode, Imu sits down with Rabbi Fohrman to unpack a song most of us sing without thinking too hard about it: Shalom Aleichem. And tucked inside its words are some genuinely weird questions. Why are we singing to angels at all? Why welcome them in just to send them away? Why ask them — not God — for a blessing?

The answers take us all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
Adam was given a two-part mission there: l'avdah u'l'shamrah — to work the garden and to guard it. After the exile, the work part stayed with us (think: the daily grind), but the guarding was handed over to angels with a fiery sword. We became workers without the sacred half of the job. That's what makes work feel like slavery.

Shabbat is how we get the other half back.

When we stop on the seventh day, we're not just resting — we're taking back our role as shomrim (guardians). Our six days of work suddenly mean something again. The Shalom Aleichem angels? It's a changing of the guard.

Go deeper and watch the full episode here:

In this animated video version of the Meaningful Judaism podcast episode, Rabbi Fohrman takes a fresh look at Shalom Aleichem to uncover its hidden depth. This familiar yet curious prayer leads him to a surprising insight about the profound meaning behind keeping Shabbat—and what resting on the se...