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Can You Forgive G-d? How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. ~~ Anne Frank This imperfect world is the perfect place for a dynamic life filled with challenge, growth and love. That’s the way G-d planned it. Here is what the Torah tells us: “In the beginning G- d created heaven and earth. And the earth was chaos and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep....And G-d said: ‘Let there be light’: and there was light....G-d divided the light from the darkness. G-d called the light ‘Day’ and the darkness He called ‘Night’...Let there be firmament in the midst of the water...Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear...G-d called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of waters He called Seas, etc.’ (Genesis 1:2-10) G-d intentionally created the world in a state of chaos, void, and darkness....

I can still remember the exact moment and his words, thirty years later. Rav Aharon Lichtenstein z”tzl, our Rosh yeshiva (head of Yeshivat Har Etzion where I was studying) was giving his advanced Talmud lecture to a group of about sixty students and as he was wont to do, looked up from his books scanning the students, and you could feel the tension in the air. Most students, myself included, were terrified of this moment. The word genius does not do justice to who Rav Lichtenstein was; beyond being one of the greatest rabbinic leaders and Talmudic minds of our generation, he was uncompromising in his pursuit of truth and his determination to arrive at a full and accurate understanding of every topic and every question we studied. Often, he would call on a student to read which would usually result in a series of questions that tested the students’ knowledge of the topic at hand and put him to...

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...

One of the saddest stories of ‘what might have been’ to come out of the Holocaust was the story of Joel Roth. In the spring of 1944 the Jews of Poland, Western Europe, Belarus and the Ukraine were largely gone, and the Nazis set their sights on the last great Jewish community on the European continent: the Jews of Hungary. As the Germans took over and the Nazi recipe of ghettos and deportations began to unfold Joel Roth, an accomplished politician, saw what was coming. Desperate to avert the inevitable, he had a plan to save the Jews of Hungary by negotiating a deal between the Allies and the Germans. At the time, the Germans were being over-run on all fronts, and their largest problem was their overextended supply lines. The Allies were bombing the rail tracks and most trains still moving were busy transporting Jews to Auschwitz, so Roth proposed a simple deal: 400 trucks for 400,000 Jews. Called in...

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...

The sport of ‘rappelling’ or ‘sneppling’ as it is known in Israel, is the art of   descending from a cliff by sliding down a rope which is sunken into the mountain above with stakes. When one of our daughters celebrated her twentieth birthday, her brothers decided to plan a surprise birthday for her. So they told her she should keep Saturday night (Motzaei Shabbat) free, and having gathered a bunch of their and her friends, proceeded to blindfold her and take her to a cliff at the Northern edge of Efrat where they had arranged: ‘Ta’da!’ the chance to rappel down the side of the cliff into a dark abyss with all of her friends watching (only one other girl was brave enough to participate…). It is one thing to be doing this in the army, or even to tackle such an adventure out of necessity. But lowering yourself over a cliff while risking a hundred-foot drop is not exactly...

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...

In Israel, even a bus ride can become an existential experience. There are many Jews with a more conservative approach to modesty within Jewish tradition, who are very uncomfortable sitting next to someone of the opposite sex. I recall once on a long, crowded bus ride from Haifa to Jerusalem, watching a fellow in a long black coat and black hat struggling with this issue. He was sitting towards the rear of the bus, in a window seat, when the fellow sitting next to him suddenly jumped up, apparently about to miss his stop, and jumped off the bus. A woman standing in the aisle immediately seized the opportunity to grab the seat, and this religiously garbed fellow now found himself trapped next to the window with this woman in between him and the aisle. While one can never assume knowledge of what a person is thinking, I had the distinct impression that both she, and a number of people...

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...

I remember one of the guys I was in Yeshiva with, trying to convince me not to sign up for Officer’s course. I would be forced to spend an additional year and a half in the army, without any spiritual environment to safeguard my religious ideals. “Atah titkalkel”, he said, ‘you will be corrupted’….  This issue, here in Israel, threatens to rip apart the social fabric of the country. There are many in the ‘religious’ camp (whatever that means…) who believe that those capable of sitting and learning Torah should not go into the army.   After all, for two thousand years of exile we did not have a land, our only connection to our Jewish heritage was the study of our Torah, which allowed us to maintain our identity and survive as a people. And make no mistake about it, I watched a lot of guys go into the army with a Kippah on their heads and a pair of tefillin...