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Making Every Day Count The Key to Making Life Worth Living One day as I was waiting for a friend, an old woman sits down next to me. Suddenly she jumps out of her seat, turns to me and yells, "I should have never left Mexico!" I look at her and ask, "When did you leave Mexico?" "Thirty years ago!" she cries. "And I regret it every single day of my life!" You would think that after 30 years a person would finally get used to where they were. But people often live in the past. One of my students, age 28, told me that his father insulted him when he was age 12 and till this day he continues to feel hurt and angry. I explained to him that although his father hurt him when he was twelve he has allowed his father to continue to hurt him for another sixteen years by holding on to the pain and constantly remembering it. I suggested...

I don’t recall the exact year, but it was in the late eighties, and the summer just did not seem to want to end. The Jewish holiday of Sukkot had long since come and gone, and still there was no rain. The Kinneret Lake, Israel’s only freshwater lake, and source of fully a third of Israel’s drinking water, was dangerously low, as was the aquifer, and the crops were dry in the fields. The Rabbinic authorities had already declared two public fast days, to no avail; sunny blue skies prevailed and still the rains would not come. Newscasters spoke of the worst drought in a century, and you could see people were getting worried. In the west, when black rain clouds fill the sky, people get depressed and annoyed about having to wear rain gear, while outings are cancelled. But in Israel when the skies open up, you can still see people singing in the rain; Israel is a country that naturally...

Enjoying Heaven on Earth In this week's Torah portion G-d appeared to Abraham and yet He said nothing. "G-d appeared to [Abraham] in the Plains of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of the tent in the hottest part of the day. [Abraham] lifted his eyes and he saw three strangers approaching and ran towards them." Until now G-d appeared to Abraham to instruct, promise or bless him. The Talmud (Sotah 14A) comments that G-d was visiting sick Abraham who was recuperating from his circumcision. What does this mean? When you visit a person who is ill it is not in order to say something; your mere presence communicates your pure desire to identify with this person in his/her time of need. You go for the sole purpose of being there. So it was when G-d visited Abraham. For the first time G-d appears to Abraham only to be with him, identify with him and share this special moment. Sometimes the highest moment...

I can still remember that night; it was the loneliest, most depressing night of my life. After almost a year of training, with only a couple of days to go before getting my bars and finishing officer’s course, I had been ordered to stand before a tribunal headed by the base commander along with my battalion and company commanders and summarily told I would not be graduating. I could not blame them; my maneuvers had not been tight enough, my command not sharp enough; I was not ready. And my commanders did not feel, in good conscience that they could send me out to command men in battle. But it was devastating. With all my fellow cadets giving in their gear and practicing for the final ceremony on the parade ground, I was told I was free to go and was dismissed. We were on a base in the middle of the Negev desert and it was nine o’clock at...

The Secret to Immortality When G-d said to Abraham “Go to yourself-- Lech Lecha” what was He actually asking Abraham to do? This command seems to be contradicted by the remainder of the statement: “...from your country, from your birthplace and from your father’s home.” Are these not the fundamental elements that make up a person’s sense of self? My nation, my birthplace and family together create the context for my identity and establish the vital ground for my sense of self. In addition, they represent citizenship, property rights, and inheritance, all essential sources of personal security. What G-d is actually saying to Abraham is, “Go to yourself and leave yourself,” bidding him to seek himself and at the same time abandon everything that establishes and confirms selfhood. The very order of the statement verifies this, as it is not in chronological order. A person first leaves his father’s home, then his birthplace and then finally the country’s borders, not the...

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...