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Sometimes, you can’t change the world, and in order to make sure the world doesn’t change you, difficult and often painful decisions are necessary. I still remember the sinking feeling in my gut when I realized who the culprit was, and what I probably was going to have to do about it. I had come to this army unit as a young officer, full of motivation and inspired to make a difference, only to discover that the reality of army life often had its own set of rules. One of the most damaging norms in army life is how easy it is, even as a relatively honest person, to become a thief. People justify it by differentiating between outright theft and minor pilfering, whether grabbing extra cookies from the kitchen when the cooks aren’t looking, or swiping an extra pair of pants before inspection from a different tent because in the middle of the night someone swiped yours. At the...

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 “The sons of Elohim.” Sexual perversion was rampant in Noah’s generation. Torah tradition teaches that there are three cardinal sins that a person should choose death rather than be forced to commit. They are: murder, idolatry, and sexual perversion. These offenses are the ultimate denial of G-d’s love and the values that make life worth living. They are a complete violation of living within the context of G- d’s oneness and love and therefore cut humanity off from the source and ground of life. In a span...

Clearly, I had been stood up; today I would have just sent him a text, but this was back in the days before cell phones, when a meeting over a cup of coffee was just two people with no distractions, and I had no way of reaching him nor could I be sure he might not still arrive so I ordered the grilled cheese sandwich and decided to wait a bit longer. There was a fellow sitting at the table next to mine with his back to me, telling a funny story and I could not help laughing, causing him to turn and smile in my direction. The fellow he was sitting with was getting up to leave but he himself seemed to be in no hurry so we started a conversation which seemed entirely ordinary, until he asked me a rather odd question: ‘Is the sun setting?’  Which was when I realized he was blind. It was indeed a beautiful...

Created in the image of love The power to be who you are In the very opening sentences of the Torah (Bible) we are told that the first human being was created in G-d's own image. And what was that image? The first human being was actually a man and a woman — a single entity that included the two sexes. "And G-d created man in His own image, in the image of G-d created He him; male and female created He them" (Genesis 1:27). In this union of male and female, in this oneness of opposites, the first human being reflected the image of G-d — a oneness that includes otherness and yet remains one. This is a very important concept. A lone individual does not reflect the image of G-d; an individual in unity with another individual does. So until an individual makes a space to include another, and allows that other to do the same, we do not have the...

Endings and beginnings: the black and white of life. Close to 80 years later, the image still remains, burned into his memory, as if it were yesterday. He was five and a half years old, but already an adult, standing in the central square (the umshlagplatz) of the Piyotrekov ghetto, next to the synagogue. His father, the Rabbi of the town, stood tall and proud in the middle of the square surrounded by the men of the village, distinguishable by his long full beard and his black rabbinic frock. The men were all on one side of the square and the women and children, by decree of the Nazis, off to one side. Tension filled the air, with an intense, silent fear of the unknown, as they stood waiting in the square from where Jews were sent to... where? Seventy-eight years later Rav Yisrael Lau remembers watching as the commandant of the Gestapo approached his father, the Rabbi, with murder...