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(click here for print version) You Get Back What You Put In The Joys of a Commandment-Driven Life The Zohar, which is a Jewish mystical classic, written two thousand years ago, states that there will come a time when people will be performing tradition and rituals like cows eating grass. Essentially, the cow chews its food, stores it and then chews its cud, thereby re-chewing the food, over and over again. The Zohar is using this metaphor as a symbol for something that is done mindlessly without intention or taste. In Jewish tradition there is a concept called taamei mitzvos, which can be described as the "reason for the commandments." But taamei mitzvos can also mean the "taste of the commandments." In Hebrew, taam means both "taste" and "reason" ...

(click here for print version) Theirs was a moment that captured the Nation. After over a year of speeches, talk shows, political debates, rallies, letters to politicians, bumper stickers and banners, it all came down to a small farming village a few Kilometers from the Gaza strip called Kfar Maimon. On a hot summer...

(click here for print version) What Do We Know? Humble Words to Console When we try to understand G-d, we face an inherent obstacle with the very process of knowing. When I attempt to know anything, I am the subject and the thing that I seek to know is the object. In addition, there must be some degree of distance and separation between the subject and the object. Your eye can see almost everything, but it cannot see itself. ...

(click here for print version) Lebanon was a most unlikely place for a halachic discourse (a dialogue involving a complex legal question of Jewish tradition), but that had never stopped Dani before, and this was no exception. Anyone who ever served in Lebanon, particularly in the springtime, would be familiar with the beautiful cherry orchards that dotted the countryside, and this was equally true for the area that Dani's unit was patrolling. Ripe on the trees, no fruit ever tasted as sweet to me as the cherries you could pick and savor from the trees that dotted the area of Lebanese no-man's land the IDF patrolled in the spring of 1984. During the long hours of patrol, the fruit offered a brief respite from the grueling duties Israeli soldiers had to shoulder day by day. But to Dani, the readily available fruit presented an entirely different image, or rather, a challenge. Whose fruit were these? Where were the Arab owners who...

(click here for print version) We Are Never Alone Walking and Talking with the Divine And in the wilderness where you have seen how that the LORD your G-d carried you as a man does bear his son in all the way that you went until you came into this place ----- Deuteronomy 1:31 Even though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you, G-d, are with me. ----Psalms 23 Really!!-- The Zohar Vol. 2 pg. 57 In the world at large, if your boss sends you on a mission, he generally stays at the office, while you go off to accomplish the assigned task. But that's not the case when G-d sends you on a mission. G-d comes along. This is the meaning of the verse in Psalm 127: ...

(click here for print version) This week's byte is based on words delivered this week in 2007 in memory of Major Benji Hillman (Binyamin Aharon ben Yehudit ve'Daniel she'yibadlu' lechaim ) H"YD, a Company commander in Golani's elite Egoz commando unit, who fell in battle, on the 24th of Tammuz 5756 (July 20th 2006). May these words serve to elevate his soul and his memory, and serve as a comfort to his family and loved ones. Yehi Zichro' Baruch (May his memory be a vehicle for blessing). It was 1939, the Nazis had already invaded Poland, but he was one of the lucky ones. Beloved by his entire generation and revered for his incredible knowledge of Torah he was given the chance to get out; safe passage to America had been secured and a new life was waiting and ready. And not just for himself, his entire family would be able to leave Lithuania as well. Indeed he actually visited America the...

(click here for print version) Does G-d Feel Sadness? Many years ago, when I returned from a trip to Israel, my parents picked me up at the airport and sadly told me that we were going to the funeral of my cousin, who had been killed in a car accident. At the funeral, the rabbi said something that angered me very much and challenged my faith in G-d. In his eulogy, the rabbi quoted a Yiddish saying: ...

(click here for print version) (reprinted from 2005) Somehow, the computers or the staff making such decisions had really fouled this one up; how could anyone have thought this fellow was suited to be a gunner? His name was Shachar, which means dawn, and the joke was with him around it was always dawn, because he blotted out the sun. He was a massive fellow, and watching him squeeze into the gunner...