Author: admin

Many years ago, while teaching an adult education class, it was obvious that the topic we were studying was pushing someone’s buttons. We were discussing the underpinnings of the mitzvah of respect for one’s parents, and the challenges of developing a healthy and meaningful relationship between parents and children, when I noticed one of the students’ eyes were watering. Clearly, he was struggling with the discussion on some level.  After the class, I invited him in to my office for a chat. This fellow was a very successful businessman in his late forties, who had decided to finally take a break from work to explore his relationship with his Jewish identity. He was married, with two children, and as far as I knew, his family was in good health, and so was his marriage.  In the midst of our discussion, eyes brimming with tears, he confided:  “You know, thirty years ago, I set for myself a number of goals. I grew up in...

Dating the Divine Celebrating love “These are the appointed holidays of G-d, holy convocations, which you are to proclaim in their appointed times.” — Lev. 23.4 Henny Youngman, the comedian, once said, "I tried being an atheist, but I gave it up. There were no holidays." What is a holiday really about? Is it the same as a vacation? A vacation is a time to vacate, but a holiday is a time to celebrate. To vacate means to take off, get away from the everyday and clear yourself out from the tensions and challenges of the daily grind. Perhaps you'll suntan on a beach, play golf or catch a good concert. A holiday, however, is a holy day. It is not an escape from everyday life to paradise. Rather, it is a time to infuse paradise into the everyday. This is the power of celebration. My guess is that the word celebrate connects to the word celestial. And from a Jewish perspective that would make sense,...

Visit the Synagogue of the Maharal (Rav Meir Leibush Lowe) of Prague (known as the Altneu Shul, in Prague), and you will immediately notice its most distinctive feature : with the exception of some Hebrew letters very high up near the ceiling, the walls are completely blank; devoid of any art or decorations. Standing in stark contrast to all the other Jewish Synagogues of Prague (not to mention all over Europe) this detail demands explanation.  There is an intensity to this shul with its history of hundreds of years; perhaps this is why:  On April 17, 1389, Easter Sunday, a Priest apparently leading a procession past the Jewish community of Prague was hit with sand thrown by a few Jewish children. (It may be some sand kicked up by a game they were playing landed on the Host (the Eucharistic wafer representing their Lord.)  Claiming they had denigrated Christianity and desecrated the Host, his incitement led the clergy to encourage the mobs to...

Look Who’s Talking: The Truth About Gossip “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” ~~Jane Austen “Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.” ~~George Elliot Whoever speaks with an evil speech- lashon hara – is as if he denied G-d . . . Evil speech kills three people – the one who says it, the one who accepts it, and the one about whom it is said. (Maimonides Hilkhot Deot 7:3) A philosopher once said, “If a man finds himself, he has a mansion in which he can live for the rest of his life.” I would like to add: If a man does not find himself he can build mansion after mansion and try to compensate for the loss of self, but huge as his mansion may be, it won’t do...

R. Smulyan, in his book ‘5000 B.C….’, posits the question of two identical twin brothers, one who always lies, and the other who always tells the truth. The truth-teller always tells the truth and is always accurate; whatever is indeed true he actually believes to be true. The liar on the other hand, always lies, and his responses are always false, such that whatever is true he will always believe to be false and whatever is false he will always assume is true. Thus, posits Smulyan, each brother will always give the same answer to the same question, but for different reasons: “For example, suppose you ask whether two plus two equals four. The accurate truth- teller knows that it is and will truthfully answer yes. The inaccurate liar will believe that two plus two does not equal four (since he is inaccurate) and will then lie and say that it does; he will also answer yes.” (Much like the...

Sick Minds, Sick Bodies The power of our beliefs to heal or harm The Jewish Sages gave a spiritual rather than physiological explanation for the disease tsara'as (generally translated as "leprosy") which affected not only the body but also clothing and the walls of houses. According to one source several sins could possible be the cause: Shmuel bar Nachmani said in the name of R. Yochanan: Because of seven things the plague of leprosy is incurred, namely, slander, the shedding of blood, a vain oath, incest, arrogance, robbery and envy. (Arakhin 16a) However, most Sages concur that the main cause for tsara'as was slander and gossip. HOW CAN WE UNDERSTAND THE PHYSICAL IMPACT OF OUR MORAL AND SPIRITUAL ACTIONS? The Kabbalah teaches that the world you and I live in is a product of our perception of reality. The philosopher Immanuel Kant probed this concept. He asked: Do we see reality or do we see our perception of reality? Kant's answer is that we do not...

In September of 2000, in the wake of what has become known as the second intifada, my unit was called up as part of the massive call up of reserves that occurred as fighting broke out all over the country. We had no idea how long we would be in for, which of course made the experience all the more difficult.  Our unit was given the task of patrolling the ‘border’ between Efrat, where I live, and Beit- Lechem (Bethlehem) and its environs, which lay a short ten-minute, walk to the North.  One afternoon, I got an urgent call from one of our lookouts that there seemed to be a large crowd gathering in one of the Arab villages near Efrat, and that it seemed they were surrounding a Jewish man with a gun.  Given the context of those days, a Jew caught in an Arab village amidst a mob, was certainly a life and death situation so we pulled out all the...

Why Eat Kosher? The Talmud tells a story about the famed author of the Mishna, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. The rabbi was walking down the street one day, when a little calf ran up to him and hid under his cloak. Apparently, the calf had run away from the slaughterhouse. The rabbi said to the calf, “Go back to be slaughtered, for this you have been created.” At this point, a Divine decree was made against him because he had not shown pity on the creature. As a result he become sick and suffered for many years, until one day he showed pity on a family of young rats and was suddenly healed. We know that Judaism permits us to eat meat as long as the animal was slaughtered properly, so what did Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi do that was so wrong? He incorrectly said, “for this you were created.” The Talmud is teaching us that, contrary to his declaration, animals were not created for...