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Nineteen hundred and forty-two years ago, this 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, Puah...

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...

5th January, 1895; the sharp sound of the sword broken over a soldier’s knee reverberated across the Morlan Court of the Military academy in Paris.  The captain stood at attention, but the sound made him flinch with the symbolic breaking of his sword and the even more painful and humiliating tearing of his rank-epaulettes off his shoulders, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’ life was now broken. Accused of treason, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on the infamous Devil’s Island, never again to hold his beloved children in his arms and or feel the caress of his wife’s loving embrace. The French command knew there was a traitor in their midst and as the enmity between them and the Germans grew in the period leading up to World War I, they were determined to find the person leaking secrets to the German High Command. Dreyfus, a Jewish Captain in the artillery assigned to the French High Command, was the natural scapegoat. It...

Living G-d’s Life Quite frankly, I don’t believe in G-d. The word spelled G-O-D does nothing for me; in fact, it interferes with my true belief. I am not alone. Jews don’t believe in G-d. Indeed, the word “G-d” is not found in the Torah or the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Moses never heard of G-d nor heard from G-d. The name in the Torah that has been translated as G-d or Lord is Adonai. The word Adonai means “Master.” In Jewish law, whatever a servant owns actually belongs to his master; the servant has no possessions whatsoever. This law also governs our spirituality: G-d is our Master, and in essence we own nothing. For example, it is incorrect to say “my” life because it is really G-d’s life. We do not own the life force within us. This is a difficult concept to accept for many people because it is not a concept—it is a self-evident experience. Consider this: If we are...

Not long ago, I heard a powerful vignette from Rabbi Marvin Heir, former director of the Simon Wiesenthal center.  When Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Holocaust survivor and Nazi-hunter, celebrated his 90th birthday, he insisted the celebration take place in Vienna's Imperial Hotel.  When Rabbi Heir asked him why the Imperial, he explained it was Hitler’s favorite hotel and he and Himmler had permanent suites there.   That night at the Imperial hotel, Mr. Wiesenthal spoke just after the band played, “Mein Shtetala Belz” (My Little Town Belz), a lullaby that evoked the innocent happiness of childhood. With tears in his eyes, he gazed up at the elaborate crystal chandeliers that lit the room like six million stars in the night sky, leaned to Rabbi Heir and whispered, “You see? Even the chandeliers are shaking because this is the first time they have heard such music in this hotel. Hitler and his pipe dream of a thousand year Reich is gone, but even here...

Beating Jealousy Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive. --Havelock Ellis In this week’s Torah portion Korach, a member of Moses' tribe the Levites and other communal leaders challenge Moses’s leadership and the appointment of priesthood to Moses’ brother Aaron. Motivated by envy toward Moses and Aaron they argue for equality. We are all holy. How can there be a hierarchy in holiness within Israel? They came as a group to oppose Moses and Aaron and said to them, "You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the LORD is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the LORD's assembly? Moses responded to Korach: Now listen, you Levites! Isn't it enough for you that the G-d of Israel has separated you from the rest of the Israelite community and brought you near Himself to do the work at the Lord's tabernacle and to stand before the community and minister to...

From His-tory to Her-story Is G-d male or female? One day my son Ananiel and my two daughters, Leyadya and Ne'ema, burst into my study. They had obviously been fighting over something and were very upset. I could see that I was chosen to be the lucky arbitrator to resolve another case of sibling rivalry. They shouted at each other, "You go, you ask Daddy." "No, no! You go, you go." Finally Ananiel, who was age five at that time, took the challenge and said, "O.K., O.K. Daddy, isn't it true that G-d is a boy?" Ne'ema and Leyadya, ages eight and nine, had tears in their eyes. I could hear them silently pleading with me, "Please no, please no. Tell us it's not true. It's bad enough our brother is a boy. Surely, G-d is really a girl." I said to them, "G-d is not a boy and G-d is not a girl. G-d is beyond that. We may talk about...

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of training to be a Rabbi and a teacher is to have spent time in the presence of great Torah scholars; it allows you to appreciate how little you really know. Having had the privilege of pursuing rabbinical studies in a place where geniuses ‘grew on trees’ and where classes were given by some of the greatest Torah scholars of the generation, the prospect of ‘graduating’ as a rabbi became somewhat of a daunting prospect. How does one reach the point where they feel ready to assume rabbinical studies? Especially after being exposed on a daily basis to what a Torah-scholar and a rabbi can be? I recall a friend very close to me who was, confronted with this very challenge: How do you know when you are ready to leave the greenhouse of the Yeshiva world and put the knowledge you have accrued to serve the community? Torah, after all, is an...

Getting the Divine View on You How to make worlds of a difference And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the picture of the LORD shall he view           (Numbers/BaMidbar 12:6-8) Several years ago, I gave my kids Cheerios for breakfast. It said on the front of the Cheerios box that on the back of this box is a three-dimensional Cheerios bumblebee. So I looked at the back of the box and saw a distorted, blurry thing. Have you ever looked at a 3-D book without the goggles? You see a mishmash of misprinted, distorted images. There were no goggles inside the box of Cheerios,...