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To Pray the Jewish Way At first glance prayer seems to be about whining and begging G-d, "Please heal this person ... please bring me my soul-mate ... please help my business, etc." One could mistakenly think that G-d is holding out on us and gets pleasure watching us grovel. When we are faced with some very serious problems, it is customary to ask others to join together in our prayers. What is that all about? It seems as if we hope to move G-d through force: "G-d, if you don't respond to my prayers, then I will recruit through the e-mail thousands of others to pray." Do we think these strategies really work? What are we actually doing here? If G-d is all knowing then why am I telling Him my problems? He already knows them. If G-d is good, then why am I asking for Him to change my situation? Obviously, whatever happens to me is for my best and I...

There are few things as painful as the desire to give birth when faced with the inability to do so. Countless treatments, endless tears, hopes dashed and dreams unrealized; even with all that modern medicine has to offer, sometimes, for reasons we will never understand, a woman, no matter how hard she tries never succeeds in becoming pregnant… But I once met a woman who took all that to an entirely different level… We were halfway through the afternoon Mincha service when one of our students came over to me and clearly wanted to ask me something. Normally I don’t speak until the service is over, having learned there are very few things in life that cannot wait five minutes. But something suggested this was an exception to the rule. As it turned out, there was a woman in the back of our Beit Midrash who had walked in and started wailing; literally. She was actually standing at the entrance to...

What You See Is What You Get "Daddy, where is G-d?" "Son, wherever you let Him in." — Attributed to Rebbe Pinchas of Koretz How do we open our souls' eyes to let G-d in? The Kabbalah says, "There is no king without a nation." This point requires deep exploration. It may make sense that, in the human world, a king is dependent on having subjects who acknowledge his sovereignty. The last Emperor of China ceased to be emperor when there were no longer people who bowed when he entered the room. Even after the Communist government had exiled him, as long as people recognized him and acknowledged him as their sovereign, he was, in a very real sense, still a king, albeit without the power to rule. But G-d is reality, so how can G-d be dependent on human acknowledgment. The world that you and I live in is a product of our perception of reality. The philosopher Immanuel Kant probed this concept. He...

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. Gambling that the Syrians would never expect a surprise attack on such strategically superior positions, the Israelis were climbing the Golan in an attempt to remove, once and for all, the Syrian...