Blog

It was a narrow winding road, barely paved, and I was definitely nervous; the constricting alleys of Beit Romano, deep in the heart of Hebron, is not my normal comfort zone. As I drove deeper into the largely Arab populated villages, I passed the occasional Israeli soldiers on guard in their guard-posts, and I had the sense they thought I was mad. But I was on a mission. Our youngest son Yair, who at the time was in his initial training in the regular army (he is now a Paratrooper Commando Officer in the reserves), along with his commando squad of paratroopers, had been sent to spend Shabbat guarding the roads and back alleys of Hebron, and they had a short window in which I could find them all before they headed out for guard duties and patrols. One of the boys’ parents had managed to get and send us all some photos, taken by one of the commanders, of their insane week of...

How Happy is Happy Hour? And you shall be happy in all that the Lord your G-d has given you (Deut. 26:11) The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. --- Anne Frank Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. --- Hellen Keller Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. ---- Spike Milligan ****************** King Solomon said in his famous book Ecclesiastes, “I praise happiness,” and yet he also concluded “What does happiness accomplish?” Is happiness praiseworthy or worthless? The Talmud explains that King Solomon was referring to two types of happiness. The happiness derived...

Chapter 28 in this week’s portion of Ki Tavoh is one of the most difficult and harrowing chapters in the entire Torah.  Yet, along with chapter 30 of the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) contained in the next week’s portion of Nitzavim, it is actually one of the two chapters in the entire Torah, along with chapter 28 here in Devarim, that most speak to me personally. To be sure, chapter 28 of the book of Devarim starts out well: “And if you will hearken to the voice of Hashem your G-d, and do all of the mitzvoth…then all of these blessings shall come to pass… you will be blessed in the city, and blessed in the field… blessed in your coming and in your going…” (28:1-6)   For fourteen magnificent verses, the Torah speaks of all the good and blessings we will enjoy if we will only follow the recipe as laid out in the Torah and then, in verse fifteen, the Torah presents us...

Getting From the Real to the Ideal The Journey of Personal Transformation When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your G-d has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, and take her for a wife - Then you shall bring her home to your house... ... and she remain in your house and weep for her father and mother for a month, and after that .... she shall be your wife. And if you do not want her, you shall send her out on her own; you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, because you "violated" her. (Deut. 21:10-14) The Torah permits this only as a compromise to the yetzer ha-ra (evil urge). (Talmud Kiddushin 21b) 'And you shall take her unto you as a wife' - the Torah only permits this in...

“Achi!” “My brother!” These were the words that always greeted me when I got to the meeting point for reserve duty every year, and it was the most common word on everyone’s lips. Men who had not seen each other often for nearly a year and commonly had little or nothing to do with each other during the year for a few weeks a year rediscovered a brotherhood for those weeks of reserve duty. It’s a funny word “Achi” which does not easily translate as ‘my brother’; there is a power to it in Hebrew as in Israel it connotes much more than a blood relation, being closer to a ‘brother in arms’, and it means that these are men who would lay their lives on the line for each other, quite literally. I never imagined I would see this anywhere else but in the context of the army, perhaps subconsciously assuming it was the product of intense sometimes life threatening...

The Prophet Powered Life “I (G-d) will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto you (Moses); and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him” (Deut. 18: 18) Through using methods such as meditation and music, the prophets of ancient Israel were able to induce altered states of consciousness in which they experienced a direct revelation from G-d. Sometimes they received a message for the entire world. When such messages had eternal significance, they were recorded and later incorporated into the Hebrew Bible. Only fifteen prophets’ revelations are included, with another dozen or so prophets mentioned by name in the various Biblical books. The Talmud, however, tells us that there were as many prophets in ancient Israel as Israelites who came out of Egypt during the Exodus, in other words, approximately three million. The Talmud also tells us that after the Temple was destroyed, the period of...

In the IDF, when an officer is due to receive his second bar, making him a full lieutenant, (usually after a year of combat service as an officer in the field), he has to pass a test on the military judicial code. Basically, once he attains this rank he may be asked to preside over a military court-martial in the field, and as such must know the military judicial procedures that are involved.  One of the sections of the military code dealt with the issue of when an officer was required to recuse him or herself from a case and it was fascinating to me to note that the Torah is much stricter with regards to such rules. I recall there was a soldier who fell asleep on guard duty while we were in Lebanon. It was not an uncommon occurrence, given the extreme conditions we were in, and how exhausted we all were, and one might expect leniency and...

A Short-Cut to a Life of Blessings You get what you give “Thou shalt not harden thy heart, nor shut thy hand from your needy brother; surely open thy hand to him.” — Deut. 15:7-8 Is there a short-cut to the spiritual wealth of life? One of the most powerful and immediate ways to connect the circuit of life, and let the blessings flow is Tzedaka, that is charity. The Talmud teaches: "Tzedaka saves from death." When we need an incredible influx of life force — because we are facing impending physical death or impending spiritual death, the act of giving to charity can be one of the most powerful antidotes. As proof for the statement, the Talmud tells the incredible story of the daughter of the famous Rabbi Akiva, who lived some 2,000 years ago. A star-gazer told Rabbi Akiva that his daughter would die on the day of her wedding. Rabbi Akiva replied that just because it is written in the stars...

I can still see the terrified look on his face, as we both realized, in the same moment, we had been set up.  We were in the midst of a month-long stint of IDF army reserve duty in Ramallah, during the first intifada, where daily stone throwing and Molotov cocktails had become the norm. We were into the second week of our tour, and the frustration had already begun to set in, particularly on this particular stretch of road alongside El Bireh; a ‘refugee camp’ on the outskirts of Ramallah. Every day while on jeep patrol we could get calls that rocks had been thrown by Arab youths, at Israeli cars driving along the road, but by the time we got there, all we would find was the rocks strewn on the road, often along with shattered glass, and the perpetrators long gone. Until this particular afternoon; We happened to be only a few hundred yards down the road when the...