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(print version) The Chassidic Rebbe of Hornostipol had a devoted attendant by the name of Reb' Dan, who served the Rebbe faithfully for over fifty years. After the Rebbe's death, the Rabbi in the village, Rav Yankel, announced that the coveted burial plot next to the Rebbe was due him inasmuch as he was the Rabbi of the town. Reb Dan protested, saying that just as he had never left the Rebbe's side in life, he deserved to not be separated from him in death. The dispute was brought before the Rebbe's son (Rav Avraham Twersky's grandfather), who ruled that the decision should be made by G-d, and that whoever died first was to be buried next to the Rebbe. From that time, whenever Rav Yankel would take ill, Reb Dan would panic, and would insist that the very best specialists be brought in to treat him. He would also go to all the synagogues urging everyone to pray for Rav Yankel's speedy recovery....

(print version) Do Good. Feel Good. Do Bad. Feel Bad. When we do something wrong, we not only violate our relationship with G-d and break a particular law but we also wrong ourselves and damage our self-esteem. Sin is an act of self-betrayal. The Talmud teaches that we cannot do wrong unless a spirit of insanity enters us. Indeed, we have to be out of our minds to transgress G-d's will; who only wants the best for us. Therefore, when we do wrong we have lost ourselves, at least temporarily. We become estranged from our Godly essence, and we are no longer at home with our true selves. After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, G-d asked them, "Where are you?" Likewise, when we do wrong we lose ourselves in our self-imposed spiritual exile; we become strangers to ourselves. When we transgress G-d's will, we violate our G-d-given potential. We experience a schism between who we are and who we ought to be;...

(print version) Sometimes, the most poetic people can come in the most surprising packages. If you would have asked me what Abir would end up doing with his life, I would have imagined him as a bouncer, or perhaps a taxi driver in New York. Abir, an ex-paratrooper, is one of the unsung heroes of the battle of the Chinese chicken farm, when a battalion of paratroopers in the Yom Kippur war had to take a crucial Egyptian position by running 300 yards of open kill-ground; most of the battalion never made it out of there. I could easily have imagined him grabbing one of the first planes out after the war, maybe to New York or Los Angeles. But you can still find Abir tucked away in the art gallery he owns called the Olive Tree in the Old City of Jerusalem opposite the Cardo. He is one of those personalities described in books as ...

(print version) Making Every Day Count The Key to Making Life Worth Living One day as I was waiting for a friend, an old woman sits down next to me. Suddenly she jumps out of her seat, turns to me and yells, "I should have never leftMexico!" I look at her and ask, "When did you leaveMexico?" "Thirty years ago!" she cries. "And I regret it every single day of my life!" You would think that after 30 years a person would finally get used to where they were. But people often live in the past. One of my students, age 28, told me that his father insulted him when he was age 12 and till this day he continues to feel hurt and angry. I explained to him that although his father hurt him when he was twelve he has allowed his father to continue to hurt him for another sixteen years by holding on to the pain and constantly remembering it. I suggested that...

(print version) I don...

(print version) Enjoying Heaven on Earth In this week's Torah portion G-d appeared to Abraham and yet He said nothing. "G-d appeared to [Abraham] in the Plains of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of the tent in the hottest part of the day. [Abraham] lifted his eyes and he saw three strangers approaching and ran towards them." Until now G-d appeared to Abraham to instruct, promise or bless him. The Talmud (Sotah 14A) comments that G-d was visiting sick Abraham who was recuperating from his circumcision. What does this mean? When you visit a person who is ill it is not in order to say something; your mere presence communicates your pure desire to identify with this person in his/her time of need. You go for the sole purpose of being there. So it was when G-d visited Abraham. For the first time G-d appears to Abraham only to be with him, identify with him and share this special moment. Sometimes the highest...

(print version) The small room wasn...

(print version) Abraham: The Master of Personal Transformation In reading the Torah's (Bible) account of Abraham, we cannot but be surprised and disturbed by the obvious omissions. Abraham appears upon the stage of history as a virtually anonymous character, without lengthy introduction or background or any real character references. The Torah recounts his genealogy and the migration of his family from one Mesopotamian city to another. It mentions his wife Sarai (who is later renamed Sarah) and her barrenness. It also mentions the death of his father and brother. But these are all mundane vital statistics that do not hint at Abraham's spiritual status. Suddenly, yet in an oddly matter-of-fact way, the Torah relates a momentous revelation, one of the most crucial scenes in the entire Torah. G-d bursts into the personal life of this one man, calling to him, demanding of him a radical renunciation and promising that he will become prosperous, famous, the progenitor of a great nation which will be...

(print version) The winter of 1944 was an extremely bitter winter in Poland, and none felt it more than the Jews lost in the world of the lagers, the concentration camps. Often in life, it is the little things one remembers years later, and if you ask Rav Yisrael Lau what got him through that bitter winter as a seven year old boy in Buchenwald, he will tell you about Fyodor from Rostov, and a simple pair of ear muffs. Every morning, the Nazi guards would rush into the barracks screaming and yelling and swinging their rubber truncheons every which way; the prisoners had only seconds to jump out of their bunks and stumble out in the snow; anyone not standing in roll call when it began was often killed on the spot. As the guards walked up and down the lines in the bitter cold morning, their Alsatian dogs straining on their leashes, they watched for any puddles in the snow. None of the...

(print version) Are You Ready for the Ultimate Pleasure? The generations following the sin of Adam and Eve proceeded upon a path of moral degeneration. Cain, in a jealous rage, impulsively killed his brother Abel. In the next generation, Tuvel- Kain perfected the crime of Cain through manufacturing weapons. Then, Lemach boasted to his wives of committing pre-meditative murder. Idolatry flourished during the time of Enosh. Organized crime was established by a group of hoodlums called ...