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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 ...
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A windswept hill, where the leaves rustle on the olive trees, and the ground lies silent... almost in silent memorial, to the sounds that echoed here forty-two years ago....
The view today is mostly obscured; where once the hill overlooked the Northern side of Jewish Jerusalem, from across the Jordanian border, today the homes and streets of Ramat Eshkol, a neighborhood that sprouted up after the Six Day War fill the landscape. And where once Jordanian guns trained on Israel, forcing civilians to seek refuge behind makeshift protection, toady children play soccer in a new school that sits just below the ridge.
But take a walk below the old Jordanian police academy, along the rows of trenches that snake their way across the hill, and close your eyes, and you can still hear the echoes of gunfire, and the cries of the soldiers that rang out here, on Ammunition Hill, in June of 1967.
In May of 1967, with Arab armies massed...
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In 1986, an Israeli fighter-plane was shot down over Lebanon, and the pilot and navigator, safely ejected from the burning plane, found themselves trapped behind enemy lines. In one of the most daring missions of the war, an Israeli search and rescue team flew in under heavy fire, and in a classic retrieval operation, with an Israeli commando suspended from a helicopter by a cable, literally plucked the pilot from the jaws of the approaching enemy only eight hundred yards away. His co-pilot already surrounded by an enemy that was only fifty yards away, could not be rescued.
Ask any Israeli air force pilot what his ultimate nightmare is, and he will tell you of Ron Arad, the navigator of that flight who had to watch his co-pilot whisked away to safety, while he was left behind. Years later, Ron Arad is still missing.
This mission raises one of the classic questions in military operations: at what point...
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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...
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Nineteen hundred and forty-two years ago, this week, the end finally began. After two and half years of siege, the Roman Legions broke through the ancient walls of Jerusalem, and began their savage rampage of pillage and looting through the streets of Jerusalem. Although the walk from the city walls to the Temple mount is a short ten minute stroll, it would take the Romans three weeks to actually set fire to the Temple and end the battle for Jerusalem. Amidst the fire and destruction, Rav Yochanan Ben Zakkai smuggled himself out of the city, realizing the war was lost, preferring to begin the long and tortuous process of assuring the Jewish people...
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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 theTemplethat 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, ...
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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...
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Pure exhaustion; that was the only way to describe it; She sank down in the back seat of the yellow cab and let her eyes close. She did not know exactly where she was going, but trusted the cab driver to get her there, as she nodded off to sleep. The driver was talking, as New York cab drivers are wont to do, but the woman...
