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...
Many years ago, a fellow walked into a class I was giving (in a co-ed Jewish outreach program) with his girlfriend, and something about him immediately caught my attention. The class was on the Holocaust and the challenge of our relationship with G-d in a post Holocaust world; halfway through the class he raised his hand and when he spoke, I realized what it was that had caught my attention: he was German, with a strong German accent.
He was not Jewish, though he had a Jewish girlfriend who had joined him, and they ended up signing on for a three-week program we were running in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Eventually, I found out his story: He was from Munich and was in Israel on a summer volunteering program. A year earlier he had been going through a box in his grandparents’ home and accidentally found his grandfather’s Nazi membership card. This led him to an eventual confrontation with his grandfather. And the...
Why is Life So Difficult?
Making peace with our battle
In this week's portion, Jacob asks for peace and relaxation, but G-d had another plan.
“Jacob settled (down) in the land of his father's dwellings, in the Land of Caanan.”
- Genesis 37:2
The foremost commentator, Rashi, explains: Jacob wanted to settle down in tranquility but then the ordeal of his son Joseph (sale into slavery) fell upon him. The righteous seek to dwell in tranquility but G-d says 'Is it not enough for the righteous what has been prepared for them (reward) in the World to Come that they need to seek tranquility also in this world!'"
Some people turn to G-d and religion, hoping to find refuge from all the turbulence of life, from doubt, from inner conflicts and mental turmoil. They want instant inner peace, spiritual contentment, and tranquility for their troubled souls.
According to Kabbalah, that is not the purpose of life on earth. In fact, it is just the opposite. We have...
The vision of what it would mean to command men, was evaporating before my eyes. Two weeks after completing IDF Officer’s course, I had been looking forward to the challenges of mission control, decisions under extreme stress, and leading by example, but these two young conscripts, one of whom had only recently completed his eight months of basic infantry and tank crew training, presented me with nothing of the sort.
They were arguing over an ammo cartridge, each claiming it to be his, and with a gear inspection coming up in the morning, this somehow became significant as neither wanted to fail the inspection.
I had made the mistake of telling my squad, on the first day I met them, that they should feel free to share with me any problem they had, no matter how small, and I was fast regretting the decision. It wasn’t even a case of one claiming the other stole it, rather, the cartridge had...
Real Love Means Embracing Conflict
The Secret of Jacob
The Torah (Bible) teaches us that Jacob went to the house Laban, his uncle, and dwelt there for many years. He married Rachel and Leah, Laban's daughters, and had eleven sons there. After years of struggling with Laban constantly deceiving him he finally left to return home and face Esau who hated him. In the middle of the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two handmaids and his eleven sons, and sent them across the Jabbok River shallows. After he had taken them and sent them across, he also sent across his possessions. Jacob alone remained on the other side of the river. It was there that the famous "stranger" appeared and wrestled with him until just before daybreak:
When the stranger saw that he could not defeat him, he touched the upper joint of Jacob's thigh. Jacob's hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him.
"Let me leave!" said...
A small mutzav (fortified position) on the Qasmsiyeh Bridge deep in the IDF security zone in Lebanon and far from the border and Hezbollah, until the IDF, as part of a gradual withdrawal, pulled back below the Awali River.
Overnight, this unit of Hesdernikim (boys who combine their army service with yeshiva study committing to five years of service rather than the normal three years) found themselves on the front lines and things started heating up. Firefights, midnight ambushes, and roadside bombs became the norm, and morning roll calls and pre-mission briefings took on a whole new meaning. On March 19, 1985, Hezbollah terrorists opened up on one of the patrols as they crossed the Qasmsiyeh Bridge and Dani Moshitz and David Cohen ob”m, were both killed.
Just a few days earlier, as part of their efforts to stay one step ahead of the enemy who clearly had a ‘home court’ advantage, they tried to change up their patrol routes...
Your Place or Mine?
Living in the Arms of Love
Jacob runs for his life to Charan because his brother Esau was out to kill him. The Bible records that on his way “he reached the place and spent the night there ... and lay down to sleep.” (Genesis 28:11)
The Midrash –the Jewish Oral Tradition-- interprets “the place” to mean “G-d.” G-d is “The Place” because according to the Kabbalah He made space within Himself for creation and always holds us all within His loving embrace. Therefore, His loving presence is our ground, context and place. Thus, it states:
Why do we refer G-d as “The Place?” Because He is the Place of the world (i.e. we exist within G-d) ... G- d is the dwelling place of the world...
Jacob lived this truth. He always defined himself and his actions within the context of G-d. Therefore, even though Jacob lay down in a physical place, He experienced himself exiting within the arms G-d’s loving...
