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The second of this week’s portions, Massei, begins by describing the many journeys of the Jewish people in the desert, on their way to entering the land of Israel. Describing each stop along the way, the Torah delineates no less than forty-two separate places the Jewish people passed through on their way to Israel. From Ramses, the Egyptian suburb built by Jewish slaves, all the way to the plains of Moab on the banks of the Jordan River, the Torah takes the time to list each and every part of the Jewish journey from slavery to freedom, leaving us to wonder why so much space is devoted to a delineation of geographic progression. Why not just express that over forty years the Jews made it up from Egypt to the staging ground along the Jordan, from whence the entry to Israel would begin. Why the need for so many ‘pit-stops’? In fact, the desert is all about space, and much less about...

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. This...

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...

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...

Pure exhaustion; that was the only way to describe it; She sank down in the back seat of the yellow cab and let her eyes close. She did not know exactly where she was going, but trusted the cab driver to get her there, as she nodded off to sleep. The driver was talking, as New York cab drivers are wont to do, but the woman’s thoughts were already far away, with her family in Israel, and her son in N.Y.U. medical center, all awaiting news that he would be able to have the complicated liver transplant he so desperately needed. It was hard for her to imagine it had only been three weeks since he had been diagnosed; events since then had been such a whirlwind. Meir* seemed so happy when she had let him stay home from school in order to take him to the medical center for a follow up visit. Her son had been having stomach...

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...