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Making G-d's Will Ours "Behold you have sinned against G-d. And you your sin will find you." ~~ Numbers 32:23 THE PROCESS OF 'I'-DENTIFYING If G-d were the sun each of us would be a ray of His divine light. The goal of the spiritual disciplines of daily Torah (Bible) life - study, prayer, meditation, and the performance of mitzvas (religious duties; plural for mitzvah), is to serve G-d and, thereby, become one with our true essence. Through these practices we experience our self an aspect and individualized expression of the Timeless Universal Self - G-d. The 20th century Kabbalist Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan explains in his book Inner Space that in order to feel this powerful truth, we must learn to disengage our inner self from its outer trappings. In other words, we have to get in touch with our soul as distinct from our persona, thoughts and feelings. The goal of disengaging the self from the outer trappings is to realize...

Maxim Cohen was born in Morocco and made Aliyah to Israel as child in 1948. He enlisted in the IDF and became a driver. But following the Six Day War in1967, Cohen left Israel with his parents to live in France. On Yom Kippur in 1973, Cohen – a traditional, observant Jew – was in Synagogue with the Jews of his community. At 2 p.m. during the afternoon prayers, his wife arrived in a car and Cohen immediately knew something was wrong. He rushed outside to discover that war had broken out in Israel. He rushed to the Israeli embassy in Paris where they were assisting soldiers wanting to return to Israel to join the war effort. Arriving in Israel, he was attached to an armored force fighting the Egyptians in the Sinai. Cohen and his unit eventually crossed the Suez Canal, and after three weeks of intense fighting, on October 24 – the last day of the war, arrived at...

Can You Forgive G-d? How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. ~~ Anne Frank This imperfect world is the perfect place for a dynamic life filled with challenge, growth and love. That’s the way G-d planned it. Here is what the Torah tells us: “In the beginning G- d created heaven and earth. And the earth was chaos and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep....And G-d said: ‘Let there be light’: and there was light....G-d divided the light from the darkness. G-d called the light ‘Day’ and the darkness He called ‘Night’...Let there be firmament in the midst of the water...Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear...G-d called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of waters He called Seas, etc.’ (Genesis 1:2-10) G-d intentionally created the world in a state of chaos, void, and darkness. This...

Nineteen hundred and fifty-two years ago, this past week, (on the 17th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz) the end finally began. After two and a half years of siege, the Roman Legions broke through the ancient walls of Jerusalem and began their savage rampage of pillage and looting through the streets of Jerusalem. Although the walk from the city walls to the temple mount is a short ten-minute stroll, it would take the Romans three weeks to actually set fire to the Temple and end the battle for Jerusalem. Amidst the fire and destruction, Rav Yochanan Ben Zakkai smuggled himself out of the city, realizing the war was lost, and preferring to begin the long and tortuous process of assuring the Jewish people’s survival in the exile.  Nineteen hundred years later, the Jews of Jerusalem again faced that most awful of challenges: to stay and fight or leave and live to fight another day.  In her book Forever My Jerusalem,...

When the Loser is a Winner The Talmud teaches that King Solomon wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes after he saw prophetically that his kingdom and the Temple that he worked so hard to build would be destroyed. Imagine what a devastating realization that must have been to know that what you invested your entire life will be destroyed. We can understand why he bemoaned, “Futility of futilities ... what profits does a man have from all his work under the sun.” However, his ultimate resolution was “Revere G-d, live by His commandments -- for this is all man is.” King Solomon realized that our real accomplishments in life is not building the kingdom or the temple on earth, but what we make of ourselves -- the kingdom and temple we build in our inner world. This does not mean that you should not build in this world but rather that you should recognize that what you build on the outside is not the goal...