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How Can an Argument Bring People Closer? The Unexpected Sound of Spirituality  Imagine someone who has spent months in silent meditation, immersed in peaceful introspection. Now, bring them into a beit midrash, the heart of Jewish learning. What would they expect? A sanctuary of calm, quiet reflection? Instead, they’d be shocked. The room is alive with intensity—voices rising, hands gesturing, students leaning into each other, arguing over a passage in the Talmud. At first glance, it looks more like a heated dispute than a spiritual experience. How can such passionate disagreement be part of a path to wisdom? This, however, is the Jewish way of learning. Torah study isn’t a solo practice of silent contemplation. It’s a dynamic exchange, a pursuit of truth through rigorous discussion and debate. A War of Ideas, Not of Egos  In Judaism, learning isn’t just about absorbing information—it’s about engaging with it. The Talmud describes Torah study as milchamta shel Torah, the “battle of Torah.” But this battle isn’t about ego or winning an argument....

Sometimes, it's that one extra word that makes all the difference. It was only a fraction of a moment of my time in the army, but it was a lesson I never forgot, though to this day I am undecided as to whether I agree with it. I was desperate to get a day off; we were still in basic training, and I had barely been in the army three months, but my folks were landing at the airport the next afternoon, and I was hoping my commanders would give me a break as I had not seen head or hair of any family in the two months since I had joined up. My folks had done me the enormous favor of landing on a Thursday afternoon, which was the best possible day of the week for a tank crewman to get extra leave. Thursday was "Tipul She'vui" day, which meant the weekly servicing and cleaning of every last inch of every...

Successful People Are Unaccomplished Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy, a day of solemn rest to the Lord. (Exodus 35:2) During the forty years that the Israelites wandered in the desert they carried with them a portable temple referred to as the Tabernacle or the Mishkan. The creative acts that are forbidden on Shabbat are those acts similar to the skills that went into building or assembling the Mishkan. The Talmud outlines 39 different categories of such creative acts that are forbidden to do on Shabbat. They represent our ultimate power of creativity which is to build a temple that accommodates the presence of G-d on earth. Of course we know that G-d does not literally dwell in the Mishkan, however, the Mishkan symbolizes our ability to serve G-d and infuse every moment and every place with the presence of G-d. In other words, the greatest accomplishment of a human being is to serve to make manifest G-d’s presence...

A number of years ago at a parlor meeting of the coalition for the Israeli Soldiers missing in action, someone stood up to share a few words about a close friend of his with whom he had both studied and gone to war: Yehuda Katz. Yehuda Katz, a soldier who, along with Zack Baumel and Tzvi Feldman, has been missing in action since the battle of Sultan Yaakov in June of 1982, studied in Yeshivat Kerem Be’Yavneh and has been missing now for over twenty years. At the beginning of the Lebanon War on the first Sunday night in June of 1982, they received word in the Yeshiva that buses would be coming to take the boys up North to fight. Kerem Be’Yavneh is one of a number of very special Yeshivot (Academies for higher Jewish learning) whose boys combine their yeshiva studies with army service in Israeli Combat units. In addition to their regular reserve duty and studies in yeshiva, whenever...