We Are Never Alone
Walking and Talking with the Divine
And in the wilderness where you have seen how that the LORD your G-d carried you as a man does bear his son in all the way that you went until you came into this place ----- Deuteronomy 1:31
Even though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you, G-d, are with me. ----Psalms 23
Really!!-- The Zohar Vol. 2 pg. 57
In the world at large, if your boss sends you on a mission, he generally stays at the office, while you go off to accomplish the assigned task. But that's not the case when G-d sends you on a mission. G-d comes along.
This is the meaning of the verse in Psalm 127: “If G-d doesn't build your house, your labor is for nothing.”
Now you might think that if G-d is going to build your house, why do you have to labor at all? The...
His face is a study of pure determination, seeking every depression in the rock with which to grab hold. There is very little room for mistakes, as one slip can result in a 3200-foot free-fall to the valley floor below. But he is determined, and foot by foot, precarious handhold by precarious handhold, he inches his way up in his relentless drive to reach the top of El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park.
El Capitan is not just another climb; it is the Everest of free climbing which sees climbers from all over the world attempting to scale its sheer cliff face. But they all do it with ropes and spikes. Alex Honnhold, perhaps the greatest free-climber alive today, is determined to do it without any ropes or spikes; he wants to do what no-one has ever done: to climb El Capitan with no help and no aids, just himself alone with sheer will.
En-route to Australia some years ago, I...
Is G-d a Lover or a Judge?
When we take a bird's eye view of the holidays that inaugurate the New Year, we see a collection of diverse and disturbing images for G-d. The predominant image for G-d, on Rosh Hashanah, is King and Judge who is writing us into a cosmic Book of life or death. Yom Kippur is associated more with G-d as a compassionate forgiving Father. Sukkot features G- d as a lover---the sukkah also symbolizes a wedding canopy. And on Simchat Torah we reach the height of intimacy and complete union with G-d. What are we to do with all this imagery? Are we really supposed to believe all this?
Surely all these images are only metaphors for a higher divine truth that is beyond spoken words and conceptual images. We can only know the divine truth experientially. Anyone who believes that G-d is literally a King, Judge, Father or Lover is making graven images of G-d and...
One of the great challenges in life is knowing when to lead and when to follow. This is especially true in the military, as witness the different philosophies of the role of officers in the field, in different military doctrines.
The Israeli army, almost since its inception, has trained its commanders to lead by example. Many attribute the birth of this concept to the battle for Latrun in 1948.
Latrun sits on top of one of the most strategically important crossroads in Israel, on a hilltop overlooking the main highway from the coastal plains to Jerusalem, and it commands the entrance to the valley through which one must travel to Jerusalem.
Every army that ever wanted to take this holy city had to pass beneath this hill, which is why it is not only the site of many ancient fortifications, but was used by the British as a prime location for one of their Taggart fortresses.
In 1948, when Israel was fighting its war...
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...
There is a mystical idea which suggests that hidden within every fire of destruction, is the spark of redemption. Such, for example, was the case on August 3rd, 1492, which was also the Ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, the anniversary of the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem. On that day in 1492, one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the Jewish people came to a head, as two hundred and fifty thousand Jews, faced with the impossible choice of baptism or death, were expelled from Spain. Thus began a series of expulsions and inquisitions that would force the Jewish people to wander from country to country, culminating in the unspeakable horror of the Holocaust five hundred years later.
Many do not realize that on that fateful August morning in 1492, the very day eighty thousand Jews followed Don Yitzchak Abarbanel across the border into Portugal, and thousands of boats filled the harbor, setting sail with the...
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...
I remember the first Mishnah I ever learned. (The Mishnah is the basic text of the oral tradition, as codified and edited by Rabbi Yehuda Ha’Nasi circa 200C.E. and represents the sum total of the oral tradition handed down from student to teacher in an unbroken chain from Sinai, over three thousand years ago. It is the foundation of Jewish tradition.) As a child I attended a Jewish Yeshiva Day School, but it was not in the school classroom that I was first introduced to the Mishnah; it was in Synagogue.
The Synagogue we attended when I was five years old, had a strict decorum, and I seem to recall or imagine the challenges this presented to my parents (She’yibadlu Le’Chaim Tovim) who had their hands full, I suppose, keeping track of my elder brother and me. Vague images of my red-faced and embarrassed father carrying me out of synagogue kicking and screaming to stop me from jumping up and...
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...
He had such a beautiful face; I had seen him on the same street corner a couple of times, and each time I caught sight of him, he challenged me anew. He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, with dark curls, olive skin, and the most beautiful brown eyes, twinkling above the wisp of a smile that hovered on his face. To me, he epitomized the challenge of the war we have been engaged in for the past sixty years and more, in the State of Israel.
It was the height of the Intifada, and we were in the midst of a months’ worth of reserve duty in Hebron, back in 1990 or 1991. It is so easy to demonize the ‘enemy’, and one almost needs to imagine the terrorists we were trying to root out as men with evil in their hearts and hatred on their minds, but life isn’t always quite so simple.
Deep in the heart of...
