Category: Chagim

Chanukah: The Light of Love Most people who have read a little about Kabbalah probably know that this mystical tradition of Judaism talks a great deal about light – what it calls the Endless Light. The Kabbalah teaches that through our actions we draw and increase this Divine Light into the world or diminish its presence. For a long time, I had difficulty in understanding this Kabbalistic metaphor until one day it all came together. As a way of explaining this difficult concept, let me ask you to imagine for a moment that you have walked into a magic store. And there, they are selling special flashlights equipped with magic lights of different kinds. For example, you can buy the light of science, and when you point that flashlight at your hand, you see not a hand, but cells and blood vessels and tendons and ligaments. Or you can buy the light of art, and you point that flashlight at your hand,...

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...

I still don’t know how he made it into Infantry Officer’s course, but I do know how difficult it was for him. Overweight, and far from being an athlete, the physical challenges he would clearly have to overcome seemed insurmountable. How would he run up a 3 km mountain with a gasmask in the time allotted (Bocha nafchah)? How would he pass the Bar-Or 2km run test? How would he manage the morning runs for what seemed endless miles? And most of all, how would he get through Wingate and the Ason Teva or ‘freak of nature’ run and obstacle course?  Two thirds of the way through the course we started training for the Ason Teva course and I stopped wondering about him and started worrying how on earth I would make it through myself. Every time we practiced it, after coming up soaked out of the river I could not seem to get up the 6-meter rope fast enough; between...

Re-telling the Story; A Passover Byte There are moments in time one needs to forget. And yet, so often, these same moments, we really need to remember. Such a moment came into my life on August 9th (the twentieth of Av) 2001. An innocent, beautiful afternoon in the heart of Jerusalem surrounded by the music of children's laughter. Lives full of promise captured in a mother's hug, or a young soldier's grin. The fulfillment of years of toil viewed through the contented sigh of an old man, leaning on his walking stick as he watches his grandchildren enjoying the treat of an ice cream on a hot summer's day. All of this magic, ripped apart by the nuts and bolts, explosives and hatred of a suicide bomber in a Pizzeria. It was one of those moments you try not to think about, that you decide to put behind you. For me, it is relatively simple to let go of such...

Sukkot and Simchat Torah Celebrating Wholeness, Spontaneity and Anticipation Off to a Right Start The holiday of Sukkot reminds us of the huts of the Israelites as they wandered for forty years in the desert after their miraculous Exodus from Egypt . It would stand to reason, then, that Sukkot should be celebrated right after the holiday of Passover. However, the Talmudic sages explain that since Passover is in the spring, living in the sukkah would not be anything special. It is common to be outside during the warm months of the year. After Yom Kippur, however, when it starts to get cold, people generally take shelter inside. We go outside, only because G-d commands us to do so. Leaving our homes precisely when we are not naturally inclined to do so, internalizes one of the important lessons of Sukkot-G-d is our only true shelter, and we must trust in Him. We often transgress the will of G-d, because we mistakenly think we...

Yom Kippur was over, and with the festival of Sukkot around the corner, I realized I had no way to get a set of four species in time for the festival. Traditionally, every day of Sukkot (The Festival of the Booths, or the Feast of Tabernacles), one gathers the four species mentioned in the bible (The Etrog or Citrus fruit, the Lulav or palm branch, the Haddasim or myrtle branches, and the Aravot, or willow branches) wrapping them together as part of the daily ritual of the holiday. We were actually in Lebanon at the time, and as I was the only Kippah-wearing soldier on the base, I already knew I would have no minyan (community prayer service), and no sukkah (the booth Jews traditionally eat and sleep in during the festival.) So the thought of having no set of ‘arbah minim’ (the four species) was really depressing. With so many patrols and duties (we were in a hot zone)...

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...

Who is G-d to Judge? How to Celebrate a Day of Judgment   I did not grow up in a religious home but we did go to shul (synagogue) every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I remember one Rosh Hashanah the rabbi got up and said, “We’re about to open the ark. It is customary for the congregation to stand while the ark is open, but it will be open for quite some time. So if you get tired, you can sit down.” I thought to myself, “I only come here twice a year, so if standing and going through a little torture is going to take away my sins, then why not stand for the whole thing?” When they opened the ark, everyone stood and then everyone sat. I was the only one who remained standing. I figured, how long could it last, five minutes, ten minutes? I stood there in terrible pain for an hour and a half, figuring ‘OK. I guess...

More than what he was saying, it was his face that caught my attention. Flicking on the television absent- mindedly as I was getting dressed for a wedding, I came across the middle of a program on what, after a moment, I realized was a story from that summer's war in Lebanon. A young man, who had clearly been there, was describing some of the events surrounding a particular battle, though I had missed the beginning of the program and do not know exactly where these events took place. He was sharing what must have been an extremely difficult experience: the house his unit had taken refuge in was hit by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile, a number of his comrades had been killed and wounded, and he himself wasn't sure he would make it. But what made me stop and listen was his face. The events he was describing must have been extremely painful, and yet there was no pain...