The Secret to Immortality
When G-d said to Abraham “Go to yourself-- Lech Lecha” what was He actually asking Abraham to do? This command seems to be contradicted by the remainder of the statement: “...from your country, from your birthplace and from your father’s home.” Are these not the fundamental elements that make up a person’s sense of self? My nation, my birthplace and family together create the context for my identity and establish the vital ground for my sense of self. In addition, they represent citizenship, property rights, and inheritance, all essential sources of personal security.
What G-d is actually saying to Abraham is, “Go to yourself and leave yourself,” bidding him to seek himself and at the same time abandon everything that establishes and confirms selfhood. The very order of the statement verifies this, as it is not in chronological order. A person first leaves his father’s home, then his birthplace and then finally the country’s borders, not the...
The winter of 1944 was an extremely bitter winter in Poland, and none felt it more than the Jews lost in the world of the lagers, the concentration camps.
Often in life, it is the little things one remembers years later, and if you ask Rav Yisrael Lau what got him through that bitter winter as a seven-year-old boy in Buchenwald, he will tell you about Fyodor from Rostov, and a simple pair of ear muffs.
Every morning, the Nazi guards would rush into the barracks screaming and yelling and swinging their rubber truncheons every which way; the prisoners had only seconds to jump out of their bunks and stumble out in the snow; anyone not standing in roll call when it began was often killed on the spot.
As the guards walked up and down the lines in the bitter cold morning, their Alsatian dogs straining on their leashes, they watched for any puddles in the snow.
None of the prisoners, you see,...
Are You Ready for the Ultimate Pleasure?
The generations following the sin of Adam and Eve proceeded upon a path of moral degeneration. Cain, in a jealous rage, impulsively killed his brother Abel. In the next generation, Tuvel- Kain perfected the crime of Cain through manufacturing weapons. Then, Lemach boasted to his wives of committing pre-meditative murder. Idolatry flourished during the time of Enosh. Organized crime was established by a group of hoodlums called “The sons of Elohim.” Sexual perversion was rampant in Noah’s generation.
Torah tradition teaches that there are three cardinal sins that a person should choose death rather than be forced to commit. They are: murder, idolatry, and sexual perversion. These offenses are the ultimate denial of G-d’s love and the values that make life worth living. They are a complete violation of living within the context of G- d’s oneness and love and therefore cut humanity off from the source and ground of life. In a span...
Late June 1976; passengers boarding Air France flight 139 discover it is now stopping in Athens en route to Paris. Some, like George and Rivka Karfunkel don’t want to board; Athens airport was renowned for its terrible security; indeed it was from this very airport a plane was hijacked in 1970. But their luggage is already on board so they board as well…
In Athens, two Germans join the flight: Brigitte Kulma, and Willie Burs along with two Arabs who are connecting from Bahrain. There was no security inspection for transit passengers in Athens so they were able to board with the weapons they brought from Bahrain… The two Germans were members of Baader Meinhof and the two Arabs were members of the PFLP (Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine), an organization founded by Wadi Hadad, who broke off from Yasser Arafat whom he did not consider radical enough … he was the same individual who masterminded the Maalot...
Created in the image of love
The power to be who you are
In the very opening sentences of the Torah (Bible) we are told that the first human being was created in G-d's own image. And what was that image? The first human being was actually a man and a woman — a single entity that included the two sexes. "And G-d created man in His own image, in the image of G-d created He him; male and female created He them" (Genesis 1:27).
In this union of male and female, in this oneness of opposites, the first human being reflected the image of G-d — a oneness that includes otherness and yet remains one.
This is a very important concept. A lone individual does not reflect the image of G-d; an individual in unity with another individual does. So until an individual makes a space to include another, and allows that other to do the same, we do not have the...
He was a tough kid, with obvious ‘stuff’ going on inside; always getting into fights, spending a fair amount of time in the hallway, and always with that sad, lost look.
Many years ago, when I was first exploring the world of education and teaching, I decided to try my hand at different types of teaching to see who and what I would most enjoy teaching, and what really spoke to me. Formal and informal, in schools and summer camps, for a few years I taught just about every type of audience I could find, with an eye towards discovering the type of teaching I truly loved and could spend the rest of my life with . One year, I took a job teaching first graders; to see what it would be like.
As part of that experience, I underwent a one day seminar designed to train young inexperienced teachers how to look for tell-tale signs of abuse at home …....
To Pray the Jewish Way
At first glance prayer seems to be about whining and begging G-d, "Please heal this person ... please bring me my soul-mate ... please help my business, etc." One could mistakenly think that G-d is holding out on us and gets pleasure watching us grovel.
When we are faced with some very serious problems, it is customary to ask others to join together in our prayers. What is that all about? It seems as if we hope to move G-d through force: "G-d, if you don't respond to my prayers, then I will recruit through the e-mail thousands of others to pray."
Do we think these strategies really work? What are we actually doing here? If G-d is all knowing then why am I telling Him my problems? He already knows them. If G-d is good then why am I asking for Him to change my situation? Obviously whatever happens to me is for my best and I...
Some time ago I had the privilege of meeting a World War II veteran with a fascinating story to share:
Born in Germany, he was lucky enough to be born to parents who saw the writing on the wall, and sent him away for High School to boarding school in England. Visits home, while full of the wonderful memories of family and home cooking, were also filled with tension, as he watched Adolph Hitler’s rise to power, along with the Nazi impositions on Jews and Jewish living.
Eventually, his family succeeded in getting out, and he wound up a young Jewish immigrant with a German accent in America. As World War II grew into a worldwide conflagration, and the storm clouds of conflict approached America’s shores, Victor, (we’ll call him), succeeded in enrolling in a prestigious Ivy-League University. He was eventually drafted into the U.S. Army. As a college student he’d succeeded in being part of a special technical program in engineering,...
What You See Is What You Get
"Daddy, where is G-d?"
"Son, wherever you let Him in."
— Attributed to Rebbe Pinchas of Koretz
How do we open our souls' eyes to let G-d in?
The Kabbalah says, "There is no king without a nation." This point requires deep exploration. It may make sense that, in the human world, a king is dependent on having subjects who acknowledge his sovereignty. The last Emperor of China ceased to be emperor when there were no longer people who bowed when he entered the room. Even after the Communist government had exiled him, as long as people recognized him and acknowledged him as their sovereign, he was, in a very real sense, still a king, albeit without the power to rule. But G-d is reality, so how can G-d be dependent on human acknowledgment.
The world that you and I live in is a product of our perception of reality. The philosopher Immanuel Kant probed this concept. He...
In retrospect, it seems almost trivial, but one of the difficulties of my time in Lebanon, was the lack of space; the sense of being on top of one another.
I particularly recall once, during the scramble to get down into the bunker when the siren went off (signaling the possibility of an incoming mortar or artillery barrage) squeezing into one of the small rooms with three-tiered bunk beds, to wait out the alert. As the workload of missions in the area had increased, and the infrastructure of the positions (mutzavim) had not, the army used a system for quarters known as ‘mitah chamah’ or ‘warm bed. This meant that when you had time to sleep for a few hours, you did not get your own bed, and certainly not your own room; you grabbed an empty bed as someone was always out on a mission or patrol.
But this time, the alert had sounded as the patrols had just returned...
