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Getting the Forgiveness You Want and Need Yom Kippur is all about love and forgiveness. It's about how we are always inseparably close to G-d. On Yom Kippur we get a glimpse of ourselves, our choices and our relationship to G-d from another perspective--G-d's perspective. This is the transformational power of Yom Kippur that makes it into a Day of Atonement and forgiveness. There is a cryptic verse in the Book of Psalms (139:16), which, the Sages say, refers to Yom Kippur:  The days were formed, and one of them is His. Every day of the year we see the world from our perspective but there is one day --   G-d’s day -- when we get a glimpse of the way the world looks from His perspective and everything changes in light of that perspective. On Yom Kippur we see it all from the perspective of the World to Come where you get to see the whole picture. The Talmud teaches that in this...

The thundering sounds of artillery fire echoed through the valleys beneath the Golan Heights and across the Sea of Galilee. All across the Northern border with Syria, civilians were huddled in their bunkers and bomb shelters, wondering when this latest round of violence would abate.  On the face of it, this was nothing new; for nineteen years the Israeli citizens of the north had endured an almost daily barrage of shellfire from the Syrian guns perched in the Heights above. In fact, an average of one thousand shells a day fell on the Kibbutzim, towns, and villages within range of the Golan, when the Syrian army had control of the Heights.  But this time it was different. It was June of 1967, and Israel had finally decided enough was enough.  For five weeks, Israel, in response to the Arab armies massed on her borders, had mobilized her reserves, and the economy had ground to a halt; it was a situation Israel could not...

Choose Good, Feel Great Secrets to Living Your Best Life I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your seed ------Deut. 30:19 Goodness that isn't chosen is not complete goodness. If we didn’t choose goodness—if we were just naturally good, or if goodness was the only option available—how could that be the highest expression of goodness? I know a fellow that has dozens of guests over at his home every weekend. When I complimented him on his hospitality, he said, “What are you talking about? It comes naturally to me. It's not a struggle for me. I love to do this!” Is he really choosing goodness? If it comes naturally, is it complete goodness? Goodness that wasn’t chosen is not the greatest good. Only after you struggle with evil and chose goodness will you accomplish true and complete...

One year, on Yom haShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), we were privileged to hear the story of a Holocaust survivor, Mrs. Marlit Wendel, who shared her incredible story with the Orayta students. Sometimes, it is the small details of a story that are the most powerful…. Marlit, her mother and older sister were able to survive Auschwitz and the war together. Their arms were actually numbered with three consecutive numbers. Born in 1930, she was eight years old in October of 1938 when three Gestapo agents burst into their home in the middle of the night waking and terrifying her and her siblings and their babysitter.  Her parents were out late, and upon seeing all the lights on when they returned understood the Gestapo was probably in the house. So her mother came upstairs and her father ran; they never saw him again. After the war they found out he had been caught in a roundup in a shul and sent to the Sachenhausen concentration camp;...

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...