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It was one of the darkest moments of my life. In retrospect it seems almost trivial; so insignificant against the backdrop of the significant events one experiences in life: marrying the girl of your dreams; the birth of your children; walking your daughter down the aisle at her wedding or holding your grandchild for the first time…. But at the time it seemed like my life had entered a dark cloud and I could not begin to fathom why it was happening.  After completing two months of basic infantry training, two months of tank school training to become a tank driver followed by the armored corps’ grueling twelve-week field training course, and then successfully completing tank commander’s course I was invited to IDF Officer training. This is a course by invitation only; no matter how much you want it the army has to decide you are worth the spot. I recall struggling with the decision as it meant signing up...

Why is Life So Difficult? Making peace with our battle In this week's portion, Jacob asks for peace and relaxation, but G-d had another plan. “Jacob settled (down) in the land of his father's dwellings, in the Land of Caanan.” - Genesis 37:2 The foremost commentator, Rashi, explains: Jacob wanted to settle down in tranquility but then the ordeal of his son Joseph (sale into slavery) fell upon him. The righteous seek to dwell in tranquility but G-d says 'Is it not enough for the righteous what has been prepared for them (reward) in the World to Come that they need to seek tranquility also in this world!'" Some people turn to G-d and religion, hoping to find refuge from all the turbulence of life, from doubt, from inner conflicts and mental turmoil. They want instant inner peace, spiritual contentment, and tranquility for their troubled souls. According to Kabbalah, that is not the purpose of life on earth. In fact, it is just the opposite. We have...

Compromise: such a challenging word; ranging from the very noble, to the very naïve. How does one know, truly, when compromise is called for, and even laudable, and when, on the other hand, it is actually a tragic mistake? In the military, compromise can be a dangerous thing, and orders, once received, must out of necessity be carried out to the letter. There is no room for variance. But sometimes, when orders contravene principals, following those orders may be an unacceptable compromise, and the challenge becomes how to know where the line one cannot cross actually lies. In all the years I served in the Israeli army, I only once knowingly and willfully refused a direct order, because a commander of mine drew a line in the sand I was not willing to cross; it was a compromise I could not and would not accept. For some reason, when I arrived at the Armored Corps Tank commanders’ course, all the...

Real Love Means Embracing Conflict The Secret of Jacob The Torah (Bible) teaches us that Jacob went to the house Laban, his uncle, and dwelt there for many years. He married Rachel and Leah, Laban's daughters, and had eleven sons there. After years of struggling with Laban constantly deceiving him he finally left to return home and face Esau who hated him. In the middle of the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two handmaids and his eleven sons, and sent them across the Jabbok River shallows. After he had taken them and sent them across, he also sent across his possessions. Jacob alone remained on the other side of the river. It was there that the famous "stranger" appeared and wrestled with him until just before daybreak: When the stranger saw that he could not defeat him, he touched the upper joint of Jacob's thigh. Jacob's hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him. "Let me leave!" said...

Rabbi Abraham Twerski shares a powerful story about one his ancestors, the great Rebbe Nachum of Chernobyl (in his book Generation to Generation).  It seems that Rebbe Nachum owned a magnificent pair of Tefillin (Phylacteries), which had actually been written by Reb Ephraim, the great scribe of the Baal Shem Tov, in the early eighteenth century. A wealthy member of the community had offered Rebbe Nachum a staggering fifty rubles for the tefillin. Yet, despite the fact that he lived in abject poverty, Rebbe Nachum had consistently refused to part with the tefillin. His wife on occasion had pleaded with him to sell the tefillin to support their family (one could buy a new, perfectly good pair of tefillin for two rubles) to no avail. Even when they had no wood for the fire or the children were starving, he refused to sell the tefillin, always somehow finding other ways to put some meager amount of food or money on...

“War is hell”; so said General William Tecumseh Sherman in the Civil War. But what exactly makes war ‘hell’? Most people, when hearing or reading about the horrors of war, think of the inevitable destruction, the fear of dying, and even the pressure of making a mistake that costs someone else their life. Indeed, war is full of uncertainty. But sometimes the devil is in the details, and one aspect of combat and military operations that does not get its due is pure exhaustion. It is hard to describe what it feels like to be expected to go on, after two and even three days with no sleep; when all you want to do, more than anything else in the world is curl up on the ground and close your eyes, but you can’t…. I can still remember being in Lebanon lying in an ambush waiting for terrorists that might come out of the darkness at any moment desperately trying to...

Do Good. Feel Good. Do Bad. Feel Bad. When we do something wrong, we not only violate our relationship with G-d and break a particular law but we also wrong ourselves and damage our self-esteem. Sin is an act of self-betrayal. The Talmud teaches that we cannot do wrong unless a spirit of insanity enters us. Indeed, we have to be out of our minds to transgress G-d's will; who only wants the best for us. Therefore, when we do wrong we have lost ourselves, at least temporarily. We become estranged from our Godly essence, and we are no longer at home with our true selves. After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, G-d asked them, "Where are you?" Likewise, when we do wrong we lose ourselves in our self-imposed spiritual exile; we become strangers to ourselves. When we transgress G-d's will, we violate our G-d-given potential. We experience a schism between who we are and who we ought to be; we...

Sometimes, the most poetic people can come in the most surprising packages. If you would have asked me what Abir would end up doing with his life, I would have imagined him as a bouncer, or perhaps a taxi driver in New York. Abir, an ex-paratrooper, is one of the unsung heroes of the battle of the Chinese chicken farm, when a battalion of paratroopers in the Yom Kippur war had to take a crucial Egyptian position by running 300 yards of open kill-ground; most of the battalion never made it out of there. I could easily have imagined him grabbing one of the first planes out after the war, maybe to New York or Los Angeles. But you can still find Abir tucked away in the art gallery he owns called the Olive Tree in the Old City of Jerusalem opposite the Cardo. He is one of those personalities described in books as ‘larger than life’, tall, dark, and handsome, with a...