Choose Good, Feel Great
Secrets to Living Your Best Life
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your seed ------Deut. 30:19
Goodness that isn't chosen is not complete goodness. If we didn’t choose goodness—if we were just naturally good, or if goodness was the only option available—how could that be the highest expression of goodness?
I know a fellow that has dozens of guests over at his home every weekend. When I complimented him on his hospitality, he said, “What are you talking about? It comes naturally to me. It's not a struggle for me. I love to do this!”
Is he really choosing goodness? If it comes naturally, is it complete goodness? Goodness that wasn’t chosen is not the greatest good. Only after you struggle with evil and chose goodness will you accomplish true and complete...
The banging on the door was a shock, but everyone knew what it must mean.
There were three of them standing in the darkened stairwell when they opened the door, in their signature long leather coats. It was the summer of 1938; not an auspicious time to be Jewish in Berlin. Yet Hans was not Jewish; or at least he was not Jewish anymore. He had been named Joseph at birth but had long since forgotten the Jewish grandfather after whom he had been named. His mother had been Jewish but had married a Christian German businessman and had eventually converted to his faith, and Joseph, himself married to a non-Jewish woman had never really considered himself Jewish. But apparently the Nazis begged to differ.
Someone had informed the authorities that he had been born of a Jewish mother, and his presence was kindly requested at Police headquarters. He was told he need not bring any belongings; it was simply...
How Happy is Happy Hour?
And you shall be happy in all that the Lord your G-d has given you (Deut. 26:11)
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. --- Anne Frank
Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. --- Hellen Keller
Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. ---- Spike Milligan
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King Solomon said in his famous book Ecclesiastes, “I praise happiness,” and yet he also concluded “What does happiness accomplish?”
Is happiness praiseworthy or worthless?
The Talmud explains that King Solomon was referring to two types of happiness. The happiness derived...
Teaching in the Old City of Jerusalem, one develops a certain awareness, almost a radar, for the different types of people that can wander in off the street. Many of the people who frequent the old alleyways and ancient stones of Jerusalem are incredible people with incredible stories. But every once in a while, you can get interesting characters who walk in the door. We once had a fellow wander in who was absolutely convinced that he was King David…. (In fact, there is a medical term for a specific mental disorder which affects people who may visit Jerusalem and have too intense a spiritual experience, resulting in the conviction that they are prophets or the like, known as ‘The Jerusalem Syndrome’.)
So you keep your eyes open for such individuals, and you develop an ability to deal with their issues without distracting the rest of the group.
One day, a few minutes after my class had begun, a fellow wandered in...
Getting From the Real to the Ideal
The Journey of Personal Transformation
When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your G-d has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, and take her for a wife - Then you shall bring her home to your house... ... and she remain in your house and weep for her father and mother for a month, and after that .... she shall be your wife. And if you do not want her, you shall send her out on her own; you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, because you "violated" her. (Deut. 21:10-14)
The Torah permits this only as a compromise to the yetzer ha-ra (evil urge). (Talmud Kiddushin 21b)
'And you shall take her unto you as a wife' - the Torah only permits this in...
I recently read a vignette received in an email, which touched me:
A fellow, on his way home, stopped to watch a Little league baseball game being played in the park. Sitting down on the sidelines to watch he asked one of the boys playing what the score was: “We’re behind fourteen to nothing” the boy replied with a grin.
‘Really?” Said the fellow watching, “you don’t seem at all discouraged?”
“Discouraged? Asked the boy with a puzzled look on his face:
“Why would I be discouraged? We haven’t been up to bat yet!”
Sometimes, we get too focused on where we are headed and lose sight of where we really are….
This week’s portion of Ki Teitzeh contains one of the most difficult set of laws in the entire Torah: the laws of the Ben Sorer U’moreh: the wayward son. This refers to a child who has adopted a pattern of negative behavior that we presume will eventually lead him to a horrible life of...
A Short-Cut to a Life of Blessings
You get what you give
“Thou shalt not harden thy heart, nor shut thy hand from your needy brother; surely open thy hand to him.”
— Deut. 15:7-8
Is there a short-cut to the spiritual wealth of life? One of the most powerful and immediate ways to connect the circuit of life, and let the blessings flow is Tzedaka, that is charity.
The Talmud teaches: "Tzedaka saves from death." When we need an incredible influx of life force — because we are facing impending physical death or impending spiritual death, the act of giving to charity can be one of the most powerful antidotes.
As proof for the statement, the Talmud tells the incredible story of the daughter of the famous Rabbi Akiva, who lived some 2,000 years ago. A star-gazer told Rabbi Akiva that his daughter would die on the day of her wedding. Rabbi Akiva replied that just because it is written in the stars...
Recently at a wedding in LA, the family of the groom decided to daven mincha (pray the afternoon prayer) and someone immediately asked: ‘Which way is East?’ I was struck by the fact that in Israel no-one asks, ‘Which way is East?’; it’s always ‘Which way is Jerusalem?’ (I recall the first time in Lebanon we prayed facing south; a strange feeling for someone used to praying east, having grown up in NY…)
And of course, it is always powerful to realize that any Jew, praying anywhere in the world faces Israel. And every Jew in Israel always faces Jerusalem, and every Jew in Jerusalem faces the Old City, and every Jew in the Old City prays facing the Temple Mount and specifically the place where the Temple once stood. Why is the Temple so important that even today we still yearn for its rebuilding and pray facing its location?
It is interesting to note that the forerunner of the Temple or...
You Get Back What You Put In
The Joys of a Commandment-Driven Life
The Zohar, which is a Jewish mystical classic, written two thousand years ago, states that there will come a time when people will be performing tradition and rituals like cows eating grass.
Essentially, the cow chews its food, stores it and then chews its cud, thereby re-chewing the food, over and over again. The Zohar is using this metaphor as a symbol for something that is done mindlessly without intention or taste. In Jewish tradition, there is a concept called taamei mitzvos, which can be described as the "reason for the commandments." But taamei mitzvos can also mean the "taste of the commandments." In Hebrew, taam means both "taste" and "reason" — and there is definitely a connection between the two. Without understanding the reason behind the life of commandment it can become mindless and tasteless.
Imagine a man who observes Sabbath, but it has no meaning to him —...
It’s not easy being the new guy on the block. I had been in the army for almost two years, but I had only just started active combat duty in Lebanon as a young second lieutenant, straight out of Officer’s course, and while I may have outranked the guys in my platoon, I was also the one with the least amount of experience in the field.
Ten weeks of basic infantry training, three months of tank school and three months of tank-crew training in the field, followed by three months of tank commanders’ course, a month of pre officer’s infantry training and four and a half months of combat infantry officer’s training followed by eight grueling months of Tank Officers training, and I was heavy on training but woefully short on field experience, and my men knew it.
One of the results of being in training so long was that I had gotten used to the army way of details: morning...
