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...
On one of my frequent trips, after a long flight, I suddenly realized I had forgotten my tefillin on the plane.
I rushed back to the gates only to discover I could not get through without a valid boarding pass, which I no longer had. Personnel at lost and found (in baggage control)patiently explained they only dealt with items lost in the airport or in baggage, and sent me to the check in counters, where they explained I had no boarding pass and could not get back on the plane, which was now being cleaned, and did I have identification?
Finally, a supervisor with a security guard came out to see what was going on and asked me to describe the lost object. And so, a few months after September 11th, with all of the heightened security, I explained it was a small velvet pouch, with two leather boxes and straps inside. Although my name was on the bag, it...
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...
The sensei clapped his hands loudly: “Yame!” (‘Stop!’); and the entire Dojo (everyone in the Karate Training hall) went silent.
We all gathered and sat as our Sensei (Master) strode to the front of the hall. He motioned to one of the larger brown belts in the room to stand and assume a fighting stance, and then pointed to Laurie to stand opposite. Were it not for everyone’s serious demeanor I would have burst into laughter; she could not have been more than 5 feet tall, a thin wisp of a girl, and seeing her assume a fighting stance opposite the tall muscular brown belt seemed ludicrous. Barry was well over six feet and all muscle; he probably outweighed her by almost a hundred pounds, and had been training for nearly five years, while Laurie had only joined the Dojo six months earlier.
My mind vividly recalled almost the exact same scene when Laurie had first walked into the Dojo...
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...
A black and white image of a Jew being beaten in the streets of Vienna; Jews being forced onto trains and deported, and a column of Jews with faces full of despair, being forced out of town, herded down a dark street led by Rabbis holding Torah scrolls… Scenes straight out of the Holocaust; except they aren’t.
These are actually scenes from a silent movie produced in 1924 in Austria, nearly fifteen years before Hitler’s Nazi Stormtroopers came marching across the border when Austria was annexed to Germany in what became known as the Anschluss, in March of 1938.
The film was based on a book written and published in 1922 by Hugo Bettauer, a Jewish writer, who, somehow, saw what was coming. The book was a huge success and sold a quarter of a million copies. And it shined a light on the overt storm of anti-Semitism that was rapidly spreading across Austria and all of Europe. Two years...
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,...
We all love getting those cute 3 minute videos during the day that give us a laugh or a smile. Recently, someone sent me a clip that really got me thinking. It’s a video of a fellow giving his (I assume) two sons a challenge: they have four minutes to call the number he has written down… using an old rotary phone.
Their comical and unsuccessful attempts to figure out how to use the phone were also instructive. At one point, realizing that turning the dial round was not actually accomplishing anything, one of them realizes they need to ‘turn the phone on’, so he lifts the receiver and puts it back down with a triumphant look! And through-out the video as they figure out how to use the rotary-dial, they continuously miss the detail that makes it all irrelevant: they keep putting the receiver back down….
( To see the video : https://www.google.es/search?source=hp&ei=FBsHXfLQOcrVwAKY2pPACA&q=Boys+trying+to+figure+out+how+to+use+a+rotary+phone+...&oq=Boys+trying+to+figure+out+how+to+use+a+rotary+phone+...&gs_l=psy-ab.3...2804.15799..16094...1.0..0.139.6402.1j55......0....1..gws-wiz.....0..0i131j0j0i10.4trbVpxSUlE )
It never ceases to amaze...
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...
We were on our way back, heading south-east from Beirut back down towards Marja’oun when the shelling started, and our jeep driver was in a near-panic. He was not part of our regular unit; he was a reserve duty soldier doing a few weeks of reserve duty in Lebanon and had been assigned to me as a driver. We had just finished escorting a convoy of trucks up to a base on the outskirts of Beirut, and I was counting our blessings that the trip had been un-eventful; obviously I was getting ahead of myself. We had barely gotten out of Beirut when all hell broke loose and the artillery shells started flying literally just over our heads.
Logically, especially as my assumption was that they were trying to hit us from the hills above us, the smart thing to do would have been to pull over and take cover. But the driver panicked and hit the gas trying to...
