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The thundering sounds of artillery fire echoed through the valleys beneath the Golan Heights and across the Sea of Galilee. All across the Northern border with Syria, civilians were huddled in their bunkers and bomb shelters, wondering when this latest round of violence would abate.  On the face of it, this was nothing new; for nineteen years the Israeli citizens of the north had endured an almost daily barrage of shellfire from the Syrian guns perched in the Heights above. In fact, an average of one thousand shells a day fell on the Kibbutzim, towns, and villages within range of the Golan, when the Syrian army had control of the Heights.  But this time it was different. It was June of 1967, and Israel had finally decided enough was enough.  For five weeks, Israel, in response to the Arab armies massed on her borders, had mobilized her reserves, and the economy had ground to a halt; it was a situation Israel could not...

Is G-d a Lover or a Judge? When we take a bird's eye view of the holidays that inaugurate the New Year, we see a collection of diverse and disturbing images for G-d. The predominant image for G-d, on Rosh Hashanah, is King and Judge who is writing us into a cosmic Book of life or death. Yom Kippur is associated more with G-d as a compassionate forgiving Father. Sukkot features G- d as a lover---the sukkah also symbolizes a wedding canopy. And on Simchat Torah we reach the height of intimacy and complete union with G-d. What are we to do with all this imagery? Are we really supposed to believe all this? Surely all these images are only metaphors for a higher divine truth that is beyond spoken words and conceptual images. We can only know the divine truth experientially. Anyone who believes that G-d is literally a King, Judge, Father or Lover is making graven images of G-d and...

One of the most tragic episodes to come out of the Holocaust was the terrible story of the St. Louis. In 1939, the last boat that was actually allowed to take Jewish refugees out of Nazi Germany was the St. Louis. At that point, the Germans still wanted only to rid themselves of Jews; they didn’t care much where else they would go. And they saw this as a moneymaking opportunity. So they announced that any Jew who could afford five hundred dollars passage (plus an additional two hundred and fifty dollars entrance visa to Cuba), could book passage on the steam ship St. Louis. Understand that this was, in 1939, an absolute fortune. In fact, five hundred dollars in 1939 was equivalent to almost eleven thousand dollars today! (Before adding the inflation since then….) Add to that the fact that the Jews of Germany and Austria who boarded this ship, had been under Nazi oppression since 1933, and with the...

How Happy is Happy Hour? And you shall be happy in all that the Lord your G-d has given you (Deut. 26:11) The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. --- Anne Frank Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. --- Hellen Keller Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. ---- Spike Milligan ****************** King Solomon said in his famous book Ecclesiastes, “I praise happiness,” and yet he also concluded “What does happiness accomplish?” Is happiness praiseworthy or worthless? The Talmud explains that King Solomon was referring to two types of happiness. The happiness derived...

Teaching in the Old City of Jerusalem, one develops a certain awareness, almost a radar, for the different types of people that can wander in off the street. Many of the people who frequent the old alleyways and ancient stones of Jerusalem are incredible people with incredible stories. But every once in a while, you can get interesting characters who walk in the door.  We once had a fellow wander in who was absolutely convinced that he was King David…. (In fact, there is a medical term for a specific mental disorder which affects people who may visit Jerusalem and have too intense a spiritual experience, resulting in the conviction that they are prophets or the like, known as ‘The Jerusalem Syndrome’.) So you keep your eyes open for such individuals, and you develop an ability to deal with their issues without distracting the rest of the group.  One day, a few minutes after my class had begun, a fellow wandered in...

Getting From the Real to the Ideal The Journey of Personal Transformation When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your G-d has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, and take her for a wife - Then you shall bring her home to your house... ... and she remain in your house and weep for her father and mother for a month, and after that .... she shall be your wife. And if you do not want her, you shall send her out on her own; you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, because you "violated" her. (Deut. 21:10-14) The Torah permits this only as a compromise to the yetzer ha-ra (evil urge). (Talmud Kiddushin 21b) 'And you shall take her unto you as a wife' - the Torah only permits this in...

He had such a beautiful face; I had seen him on the same street corner a couple of times, and each time I caught sight of him, he challenged me anew. He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, with dark curls, olive skin, and the most beautiful brown eyes, twinkling above the wisp of a smile that hovered on his face. To me, he epitomized the challenge of the war we have been engaged in for the past sixty years and more, in the State of Israel. It was the height of the Intifada, and we were in the midst of a months’ worth of reserve duty in Hebron, back in 1990 or 1991. It is so easy to demonize the ‘enemy’, and one almost needs to imagine the terrorists we were trying to root out as men with evil in their hearts and hatred on their minds, but life isn’t always quite so simple. Deep in the heart of...