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The Simple Art of Ecstasy How to See Divine Presence Here and Now “ And let them make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell amongst them.” — Exodus 25:8 In this week's Torah Portion we encounter the precise design and magnificent beauty of the holy tabernacle and its' vessels. What is the relationship between this physical construct and feeling the presence of G-d dwelling amongst us? YOU CAN SEE G-D Once I was giving a seminar, and I asked everyone to look around the room and point to beauty. The first interesting result was that everyone pointed to something different. One man pointed to his wife. A woman named Bea pointed to a glass menorah (a Hanukkah candelabra) that was sitting on a windowsill. I asked Bea how she saw beauty in that menorah. Did she see beauty with her physical eyes? "Well," she answered, "the glass is translucent, and its delicacy has an ethereal quality. The shape is pleasing to the eye and because...

Sometimes inspiration comes in the simplest of moments, like a good cup of coffee.  In the fall of 2000, my unit was called up on special emergency orders (known as a ‘Tzav Shmoneh’). I still recall the middle of the night phone call from my battalion commander telling me to get my gear together and report to our assembly point.  In response to my query of when I needed to be there his response was ‘I’ll see you in an hour’, and when I asked how long I could expect to be in for his answer was: “Ein li musag” “I have no idea”; which was a shock coming from a battalion commander.  The challenge of having your entire life turned upside down in an instant, with no time to prepare for it, is hard to describe. And this reserve duty was even more difficult as a result of how close we were to home.  Usually, the long trip to whatever hot zone...

The Divine Wants You to be Happy When Rules Become Delicious Recipes for Your Soul “And these are the judgments that you shall place before them.” — Exodus 21:1 "You shall place before them, that is, like a table that is set and ready for eating." — Rashi “Taste and see that G-d is good.” — Psalms 34 LAWS YOU CAN EAT, ENJOY AND SAVOUR  The job of a teacher of Torah is not to be a philosopher, ethical guide or law giver but rather a gourmet chef. A gourmet chef has the ability to bring the taste out of every ordinary cabbage, every simple bean sprout, as well as present it all in a delicious tantalizing way. Once, I went to someone's home to raise funds for my institute. I thought we would have about a ten minute discussion. Instead, we were talking for five or six hours. I hadn't eaten all day, and I was starving. Finally I decided that instead of asking for a...

Along with all the challenging events of the summer of 2014, including the terrible kidnapping and murder of our three boys Gilad Eyal and Naftali, I heard an incredible story:  A teacher who worked in a resource room in a class for children with learning disabilities had a young student who joined the class and started taking lessons. He clearly had no difficulty with his lessons and consistently did well on tests, and yet continued to attend the classes as a remedial student. Try as she might, the teacher could not determine what learning disabilities this boy might have.  Assuming the boy was simply trying to find an easier path of study, she took him aside and explained to him that he could not continue to attend the remedial class as it was a waste of his time and unfair to the other students who were in much greater need of her attention.   Lowering his voice, the boy said he would tell...

Ready to HotSync Your Soul? Secrets to a Super-Natural Life of Freedom and Synchronicity Years ago, I saw these sandals I really liked. At the time, I knew nothing about these shoes other than I just liked the way they looked. So I went into a store and I tried on a pair, but they didn't feel right. They had all these funny bumps inside of them. I told the salesman, "There is something wrong with these shoes." He said, "No there is something wrong with your feet. You must understand that these shoes are designed to support the shape of a natural foot." "What's unnatural about my feet. They're in their natural place — at the end of my legs." He laughed. "You don't understand. Your feet have taken the unnatural shape of the shoes you've been wearing. And the shoes you've been wearing are good for killing cockroaches in tight corners, but they are not meant to contain feet." I felt insulted so I took...

It was her eyes that really captured me; there was an intense sadness there mixed with pain, and yet every now and then a flash of fire that seemed to suggest… defiance?  The woman was being interviewed on the television news and I stopped for a minute to watch. The screen was focused in close, showing only her face, and as the commentator translated, I realized she was speaking about her son who had just been killed in a terrorist bus bombing. I watched as a tear rolled down her cheek and listened to her describe all of the dreams and aspirations her son, Yosef, would never realize.  The camera panned around what must have been his room, and I noticed a soccer ball lying in the corner. The cameraman must have noticed it too, because he immediately panned in on the mud-speckled ball, which better than anything the mother was saying, conveyed the tragedy of lost hopes and dreams, and represented...

Love Thyself!! Secrets to Your Ultimate and Everlasting Net Worth Just as a person must believe in G-d, so too, he must afterwards believe in Himself. That is to say, that G-d is involved with him and he is not a waste—that he is here today and gone tomorrow... Rather one must believe that his soul is from the Source of Life, may His name be blessed and that G-d gets pleasure – taanug-- in him and is -- mishtashaya -- playfully involved with him when he does His will. And this is the meaning of the verse “and they believed in G-d and Moses His servant” (Exodus 15). [The soul of] Moses consisted of the 600,000 souls of the Jewish people of that generation --- and they believed that G-d desired them – wants and receives pleasure from the good within them. - Rabbi Tzadok Hacohen: Tzidkat HaTzadick 154 I heard an interview with a famous singer. The interviewer asked her, “What are your feelings...

One of the saddest stories I ever heard was from a Holocaust survivor many years ago who would say Kaddish on the tenth of Tevet every year, in the shul I grew up in as a boy. He was given the privilege of leading the services on that day and for a long time I thought he just had a Yahrtzeit (the anniversary of the death of a loved one…) on the tenth of Tevet. Until one year when I found out he said Kaddish for his whole family on this day because he never found out the exact day of their deaths; the tenth of Tevet is the day chosen to remember those whose exact date of death is not known. One year he spoke on Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) in the Synagogue’s Hebrew School, and I went to hear him speak. It transpired that he had escaped the Warsaw ghetto by hiding under a pile of dirty uniforms...

To Serve with Joy Is your life ‘out of service’? “And Moses and Aaron were brought again unto Pharaoh; and he said unto them: 'Go, serve the LORD your G-d; but who are they that shall go?' And Moses said: 'We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds we will go; because the holiday of G-d is for us.'” — Exodus 10:8-9 The King of Egypt must have been quite surprised by Moses answer. To serve G-d is not like serving you. It is not about degrading back-breaking slavery rather a joyful celebration for the whole family. To serve G-d is a holiday for us. The Secret to Service Most people think that a mitzvah is a "demand" meant to deprive or diminish our godly self worth. But that is incorrect. A mitzvah is a "command" enabling us to co- operate, associate, identify and thereby consciously bond with G-d and experience His love. This is...

In 1925, the American Astronomer Edwin Hubble demonstrated (as an extension of Vesto Slipher’s discovery in 1918) that the Universe was actually not static; it was expanding: every galaxy in the observable proximity of earth (as far as 6 x 1017 miles away) was actually receding at the same rate of speed. This, along with other discoveries, gave rise to the big bang theory: that the entire universe had once been contained in a singularity, a single dot that sat for an eternity in space before it exploded. Many, including Einstein, resisted the idea of a non-static universe as it implied a beginning and a supernatural external force that caused the big bang, but eventually, even Einstein had to admit a static universe was no longer likely. Indeed, the death knell of the static universe theory may have been Penzias and Wilson’s discovery (for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965) of the frequency of sound which was the...