I can still remember that night; it was the loneliest, most depressing night of my life. After almost a year of training, with only a couple of days to go before getting my bars and finishing officer’s course, I had been ordered to stand before a tribunal headed by the base commander along with my battalion and company commanders and summarily told I would not be graduating.
I could not blame them; my maneuvers had not been tight enough, my command not sharp enough; I was not ready. And my commanders did not feel, in good conscience that they could send me out to command men in battle. But it was devastating. With all my fellow cadets giving in their gear and practicing for the final ceremony on the parade ground, I was told I was free to go and was dismissed.
We were on a base in the middle of the Negev desert and it was nine o’clock at...
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...
Sometimes, you can’t change the world, and in order to make sure the world doesn’t change you, difficult and often painful decisions are necessary.
I still remember the sinking feeling in my gut when I realized who the culprit was, and what I probably was going to have to do about it.
I had come to this army unit as a young officer, full of motivation and inspired to make a difference, only to discover that the reality of army life often had its own set of rules.
One of the most damaging norms in army life is how easy it is, even as a relatively honest person, to become a thief. People justify it by differentiating between outright theft and minor pilfering, whether grabbing extra cookies from the kitchen when the cooks aren’t looking, or swiping an extra pair of pants before inspection from a different tent because in the middle of the night someone swiped yours. At the...
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...
Clearly, I had been stood up; today I would have just sent him a text, but this was back in the days before cell phones, when a meeting over a cup of coffee was just two people with no distractions, and I had no way of reaching him nor could I be sure he might not still arrive so I ordered the grilled cheese sandwich and decided to wait a bit longer. There was a fellow sitting at the table next to mine with his back to me, telling a funny story and I could not help laughing, causing him to turn and smile in my direction. The fellow he was sitting with was getting up to leave but he himself seemed to be in no hurry so we started a conversation which seemed entirely ordinary, until he asked me a rather odd question: ‘Is the sun setting?’
Which was when I realized he was blind. It was indeed a beautiful...
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...
It was finally the day; after over a year of training I was finally about to get my bars and join the very special family of IDF Officers. My parents had flown in from the US for the occasion along with my younger brother and were on their way down for the ceremony, which was a couple of hours away, deep in the desert on the Shizaphon Armored Corps base.
We were being inspected by the base sergeant-major an hour before the ceremony when we would be receiving our officer’s bars at long last. The Army Chief of Staff (Moshe Levy) would be attending so everything had to be perfect. He stopped in front of me and, looking down, saw my Tzitzit (religious fringes) hanging down to my knees and snapped an order: “tuck those in immediately! I had better not see those hanging out during the ceremony!”
To be honest, I don’t normally wear my tzitzit out; they have been wrapped...
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...
It should have been one of the most powerful and exciting days of my life; I can still see all the guys, in their dress uniforms, preparing for the final ceremony; instead, it was one of the most depressing. After eight of the longest, most grueling months I had ever experienced, I was three days away from receiving my officer’s bars. A month-long test (navigation, desert survival, weapons proficiency etc.) to enter infantry officer training, followed by nearly four months of infantry officer’s training in the desert, best described as hell on earth, and then the most difficult four months I have ever experienced; tank officer’s course. Averaging three hours sleep a day for 18 weeks, under intense pressure; this was where tank commanders were trained by the IDF to become platoon leaders.
And then, three days before I was meant to receive my bars, I was told by the battalion commander that for me, there wasn’t going to be...
Funny. You Don't Look Religious
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
I once was hired to organize educational programs for a large Jewish youth group in the United States. To overcome any possible stigmas associated with the word "rabbi" and to encourage the kids to relate to me without preconceived notions, I asked the executives to introduce me as just David Aaron, not as Rabbi David Aaron. They respected my request, but I was dismayed to read in their newsletter the following announcement: "We want to welcome a new member to our staff: David Aaron, our Judaism specialist."
This sounded even worse! It made Judaism sound like a rare disease. Don't we go to specialists when we have a problem our general practitioner cannot treat? What do you do with a Judaism specialist? Do you come to him and say, "I've got this problem with Jewish guilt. Do you have a cure, Judaism specialist?" I was in trouble before I even started. I didn't want...
