Getting the Divine View on You
How to make worlds of a difference
And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.
My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house.
With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches;
and the picture of the LORD shall he view (Numbers/BaMidbar 12:6-8)
Several years ago, I gave my kids Cheerios for breakfast. It said on the front of the Cheerios box that on the back of this box is a three-dimensional Cheerios bumblebee. So I looked at the back of the box and saw a distorted, blurry thing. Have you ever looked at a 3-D book without the goggles? You see a mishmash of misprinted, distorted images. There were no goggles inside the box of Cheerios,...
There is a special mitzvah (imperative) to love the stranger, the Ger, listed as the fourth mitzvah in Maimonides’ Hilchot Deot (laws of ethical relationships). And as one is not meant to remind a person that he or she is a convert I will change the names and details of this story, but the story is true.
A number of years ago a student joined our program, who always perked up when I was teaching the special mitzvah of loving the stranger, or convert (Ger). It transpired that his mother was a giyoret (convert) and he shared the following story with me:
Due to the fact that he was already a boy old enough to understand when his mother converted, our student himself also had to undergo a conversion of sorts, including immersion in the mikveh or ritual pool. Having grown up in a small farming community in the middle of nowhere and now moved to a big city, he was...
Isn’t Humbleness Just Low Self-Esteem?
“Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” (Numbers 12:3)
Was Moses, indeed, humble? The man who courageously challenged the mighty Pharaoh the King of Egypt, who led an entire people out of slavery, the man who after seeing the golden calf smashed the very tablets written by the finger of G-d.
Judaism teaches that no character trait is absolutely negative, everything has a role. All we have to do is look at each trait with an open mind and determine its pluses and the minuses. When it comes to pride there is an aspect of it that comes from the godly grandeur of our soul and is therefore, truly humbleness and the source of powerful sacred self esteem. But there is an aspect of pride that comes from our ego which is haughtiness and self destructive; alienating us from our true inner self. This type of pride focuses...
There are many burdens we carry in this world. The challenge may well be in how we choose to carry them. This week’s portion, Naso, contains a case in point.
“Ki Avodat HaKodesh Aleihem Ba’Katef Yisau’”
“For the holy (items of) service they shall carry upon the shoulder…” (Bamidbar 7:9)
There was a special mitzvah regarding the transport of The Holy Ark, which held the tablets of the Ten Commandments. The Ark was to be borne on the shoulders of the Levites, until it arrived at its destination.
Why was it so important that the Ark be carried upon their shoulders?
Maimonides includes this mitzvah as one of the 613 mitzvoth listed in his Sefer HaMitzvoth, (see Positive Commandment 34), where he describes and explains each of the 613 commandments in the Torah. Yet Maimonides has a principle only to list those commandments, which are “Le’Dorot”, or forever, something that does not seem to apply to the carrying of the Ark.
Maimonides, in his Laws of...
Prophecy 101:
Ego is a Non-Prophet Venture
This week we begin to read from the fourth of the five books of Moses. Although this book is referred to in English as the Book of Numbers, in Hebrew it is referred to as Bamidbar because of the opening verse; "And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness (Bamidbar) of Sinai ..."
The Midrash, Jewish Oral Tradition, derives a somewhat puzzling insight from the fact that G-d spoke to Moses in the wilderness :
Unless one makes himself hefker (open and ownerless) like a wilderness he cannot acquire wisdom and Torah. (Bamidbar Rabbah 1:7)
In other words, to be receptive to the revelatory word of G-d you must be like the wilderness completely open and ownerless – in a state of humility and surrender. Moses heard the word of G-d not only in the physical location of the wilderness but also because was he was in a “wilderness” state of mind.
Edging G-d Out
The creative experience...
Three thousand years ago, King Solomon wrote in the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) that there is a time and a season for everything under the sun.
“A time to sing, and a time to dance, a time to rejoice and a time to mourn, a time to reap and a time to sow.” And, like all things, there is a time to ask questions and a time to remain silent.
In the Israeli army, there is a type of question known as a ‘she’elat kitbag’, or a ‘kitbag’ question. This concept is born of the first day men are inducted into the army, and I remeber it like it was yesterday.
When newly drafted soldiers arrive at Bakum (Basis Klitah U’Miyun: The base for receiving and sorting), they enter at one end of a long series of huts as civilians, and emerge a few hours later, Israeli soldiers in full uniform with all their gear thrown into a kitbag.
Vaccinated and examined, with your...
Making G-d's Will Ours
"Behold you have sinned against G-d. And you your sin will find you." ~~ Numbers 32:23
THE PROCESS OF 'I'-DENTIFYING
If G-d were the sun each of us would be a ray of His divine light. The goal of the spiritual disciplines of daily Torah (Bible) life - study, prayer, meditation, and the performance of mitzvas (religious duties; plural for mitzvah), is to serve G-d and, thereby, become one with our true essence. Through these practices we experience our self an aspect and individualized expression of the Timeless Universal Self - G-d.
The 20th century Kabbalist Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan explains in his book Inner Space that in order to feel this powerful truth, we must learn to disengage our inner self from its outer trappings. In other words, we have to get in touch with our soul as distinct from our persona, thoughts and feelings.
The goal of disengaging the self from the outer trappings is to realize...
Maxim Cohen was born in Morocco and made Aliyah to Israel as child in 1948. He enlisted in the IDF and became a driver. But following the Six-Day War in1967, Cohen left Israel with his parents to live in France.
On Yom Kippur in 1973, Cohen – a traditional, observant Jew – was in Synagogue with the Jews of his community. At 2 p.m. during the afternoon prayers, his wife arrived in a car and Cohen immediately knew something was wrong. He rushed outside to discover that war had broken out in Israel. He rushed to the Israeli embassy in Paris where they were assisting soldiers wanting to return to Israel to join the war effort.
Arriving in Israel, he was attached to an armored force fighting the Egyptians in the Sinai. Cohen and his unit eventually crossed the Suez Canal, and after three weeks of intense fighting, on October 24 – the last day of the war, arrived at the outskirts...
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....
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 to...
