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Many years ago, at a parlor meeting of the Coalition for the Israeli Soldiers Missing in Action, someone stood up to share a few words about a close friend of his with whom he had both studied and gone to war: Yehuda Katz.  Yehuda Katz, a soldier who, along with Zack Baumel and Tzvi Feldman, has been missing in action since the battle of Sultan Yaakov in June of 1982, studied in Yeshivat Kerem Be’Yavneh.  At the beginning of the Lebanon War on the first Sunday night in June of 1982, they received word in the Yeshiva that buses would be coming to take the boys up North to fight. Kerem Be’Yavneh is one of a number of very special Yeshivot (Academies for higher Jewish learning) whose boys combine their yeshiva studies with army service in Israeli Combat units. In addition to their regular reserve duty and studies in yeshiva, whenever the army is in a tight spot, this is naturally one...

Dating the Divine Celebrating love “These are the appointed holidays of G-d, holy convocations, which you are to proclaim in their appointed times.” — Lev. 23.4 Henny Youngman, the comedian, once said, "I tried being an atheist, but I gave it up. There were no holidays." What is a holiday really about? Is it the same as a vacation? A vacation is a time to vacate, but a holiday is a time to celebrate. To vacate means to take off, get away from the everyday and clear yourself out from the tensions and challenges of the daily grind. Perhaps you'll suntan on a beach, play golf or catch a good concert. A holiday, however, is a holy day. It is not an escape from everyday life to paradise. Rather, it is a time to infuse paradise into the everyday. This is the power of celebration. My guess is that the word celebrate connects to the word celestial. And from a Jewish perspective that would make sense,...

Counting The Omer; an Enormous Opportunity It was our first Masah’, our first forced march. We were barely two weeks in the army, and Itzik, a sadistic little first sergeant who had made it his mission to make us, or rather, break us into soldiers, owned us for the night. Whenever a unit in training goes out on any maneuver without an officer, the rule in the Israeli army is that the unit has to stay within sight of the base. Officers undergo intensive training in navigation and map reading, and the point is to be sure men don’t get lost out in the field. Theoretically, this should have been good news, as it meant the distance we could cover was limited. But as we soon discovered, Itzik was not to be deterred. We were based in a miserable little hole not far from the Mediterranean shore, and unfortunately this meant there were lots of sand dunes for them to...

Achieving Sacred Selfishness Happiness through holiness I had a student that once came into my office and said, "My father who passed away was an atheist and a fantastic human being. He was such a moral human being. He was such a good human being. I don't believe that had he been a believer, he would have been any better. He was the epitome of being a good person. So I have a problem with Torah because I really don't believe that it would have made a difference." So I told him that it isn't the goal of Torah to merely become a moral person. There is a lot more to it. Morality is important, but morality is a stage in the journey. The destination is holiness — being whole. Morality is an aspect of that, but it is not that. So I asked him, "Do you think your father might have been more holy?" That shocked him, he never even thought about holiness. What...

Some time ago, after a lecture on the ethical challenges of the seventh commandment ("Thou shalt not steal"), I was approached by a fellow from Vienna who was a Holocaust survivor. "Why do you assume stealing is always wrong?" asked the fellow, "Sometimes, it is even an obligation." "I always had a strong desire to take things, and I never understood why," he continued, "And it wasn't that I necessarily needed the things I took; I just loved the prospect of being able to steal things out from under people's noses. I became quite good at it, though my conscience always bothered me. Often, I was able to resist the temptation to take things that weren't mine, but it was always a struggle. I often wondered why G-d had burdened me with this particular challenge. I knew it was wrong to steal, and never rationalized theft; I just loved the 'thrill of the take'. Why did G-d create me with this challenge? It wasn't...

Sick Minds, Sick Bodies The power of our beliefs to heal or harm The Jewish Sages gave a spiritual rather than physiological explanation for the disease tsara'as (generally translated as "leprosy") which affected not only the body but also clothing and the walls of houses. According to one source several sins could possible be the cause: Shmuel bar Nachmani said in the name of R. Yochanan: Because of seven things the plague of leprosy is incurred, namely, slander, the shedding of blood, a vain oath, incest, arrogance, robbery and envy. (Arakhin 16a) However, most Sages concur that the main cause for tsara'as was slander and gossip. HOW CAN WE UNDERSTAND THE PHYSICAL IMPACT OF OUR MORAL AND SPIRITUAL ACTIONS? The Kabbalah teaches that the world you and I live in is a product of our perception of reality. The philosopher Immanuel Kant probed this concept. He asked: Do we see reality or do we see our perception of reality? Kant's answer is that we do...

Why Eat Kosher? The Talmud tells a story about the famed author of the Mishna, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. The rabbi was walking down the street one day, when a little calf ran up to him and hid under his cloak. Apparently, the calf had run away from the slaughterhouse. The rabbi said to the calf, “Go back to be slaughtered, for this you have been created.” At this point, a Divine decree was made against him because he had not shown pity on the creature. As a result he become sick and suffered for many years, until one day he showed pity on a family of young rats and was suddenly healed. We know that Judaism permits us to eat meat as long as the animal was slaughtered properly, so what did Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi do that was so wrong? He incorrectly said, “for this you were created.” The Talmud is teaching us that, contrary to his declaration, animals were not created for...

There is a little known test that officer cadets undergo in one form or another during Infantry Officer’s training that they almost always fail; which is precisely the point. It takes many forms so that one class will never be forewarned by the previous one. Mine was administered near the midpoint of a horrible experience known as bochan Aricha. We were dropped in the middle of the desert and after a ten kilometer run (more like a jog), within sight of a tent we presumed to be our objective, we were suddenly told we were under chemical attack and made to don our gas masks. Our commanders would often change the rules of the game and throw unexpected surprises at us, to test our resiliency and ability to cope with unexpected situations. It is hard to describe what it is like to run and fight in a gas mask; you are already exhausted, running on little sleep and in the...