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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...

Many years ago, a good friend of mine who ran a high school shared with me parts of the process he used to employ in interviewing prospective applicants. The boys were invited to a day of interviews, tests and experiences, and in the middle of the day they broke for lunch. When they entered the dining room the tables were set with six seats per table. On each table a large platter was waiting, with rice, and five pieces of Schnitzel. The boys who took first, were usually the ones he was less interested in. Without discussing the ethical and practical implications of that ‘test’ (not sure I am personally comfortable with such a methodology), what I think this educator was attempting to ascertain was, whether the boys were takers or sharers. This week, we read the portion of Korach, which tells the story of Korach’s famous rebellion against Moshe and Aharon, which does not end well for Korach who is...

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...

A black and white image of a Jew being beaten in the streets of Vienna; Jews being forced onto trains and deported, and a column of Jews with faces full of despair, being forced out of town, herded down a dark street led by Rabbis holding Torah scrolls… Scenes straight out of the Holocaust; except they aren’t. These are actually scenes from a silent movie produced in 1924 in Austria, nearly fifteen years before Hitler’s Nazi Stormtroopers came marching across the border when Austria was annexed to Germany in what became known as the Anschluss, in March of 1938. The film was based on a book written and published in 1922 by Hugo Bettauer, a Jewish writer, who, somehow, saw what was coming. The book was a huge success and sold a quarter of a million copies. And it shined a light on the overt storm of anti-Semitism that was rapidly spreading across Austria and all of Europe. Two years later...

Getting the Divine View on You How to make worlds of a difference And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the picture of the LORD shall he view           (Numbers/BaMidbar 12:6-8) Several years ago, I gave my kids Cheerios for breakfast. It said on the front of the Cheerios box that on the back of this box is a three-dimensional Cheerios bumblebee. So I looked at the back of the box and saw a distorted, blurry thing. Have you ever looked at a 3-D book without the goggles? You see a mishmash of misprinted, distorted images. There were no goggles inside the box of Cheerios,...

His disarming smile caught me by surprise, as did his baby-faced youthful appearance; he was after all a nineteen or twenty-year old kid; yet my son was clearly in awe of him, and I was curious to understand why. Our son Yair, after a grueling process, was recently accepted into an elite unit within the paratroopers, and we were invited after two months to visit his base for a special ‘Parents’ day’. For me it has been no less than fascinating to observe the process whereby the IDF molds these soldiers into elite fighters, but it has been equally interesting to note what sort of men are chosen to command these elite soldiers and to observe albeit from a distance what constitutes elite leadership from the army’s perspective. Some of what we hear from our son is not surprising: grueling physical exercises, uncompromising regulations, and even harsh conditions when the boys were out in the field (‘shetach’) for two weeks (including...

Isn’t Humbleness Just Low Self-Esteem?  “Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” (Numbers 12:3) Was Moses, indeed, humble? The man who courageously challenged the mighty Pharaoh the King of Egypt, who led an entire people out of slavery, the man who after seeing the golden calf smashed the very tablets written by the finger of G-d. Judaism teaches that no character trait is absolutely negative, everything has a role. All we have to do is look at each trait with an open mind and determine its pluses and the minuses. When it comes to pride there is an aspect of it that comes from the godly grandeur of our soul and is therefore, truly humbleness and the source of powerful sacred self esteem. But there is an aspect of pride that comes from our ego which is haughtiness and self destructive; alienating us from our true inner self. This type of pride focuses...

Take a drive up the south side of the Golan Heights, and you will see one of the most incredible vistas in Israel. As the road winds up the side of the Golan cliffs, the panoramic view deep into Syria is overshadowed by the Russian made Syrian Bunkers that bear silent testimony to the near suicidal challenge that faced the Israeli troops who made their way up the mountain under murderous fire in 1967, breaking the stranglehold Syrian guns held over the Israeli towns and villages below.  Up on top of the Heights, as one drives across the open plains, one notices the occasional odd collection of trees that seem to grow in clusters above most of the Syrian positions that controlled the Heights. These trees are no accident; they are part of one of the most incredible stories in modern Israeli history, and bear witness to the fact that one man, in the right place, at the right time, can...