Awhile back, I was given a copy of Dr. Hagi ben Artzi’s book on the Six day war (produced by Mizrachi) Megillat Sheshet Hayamim, based on the IDF’s post war reports analyzing the war. It contained the following fascinating story:
On June 4 1967, the day before Israel launched the six day war, Abdel Hakim Amer, the Egyptian minister of war, decided a review of the Egyptian troops massed in the Sinai was in order. He invited senior military personal from Cairo to join him on an air tour of the lines along with a visit to senior officers in the Sinai on a special flight scheduled to take off from Cairo at 7am the next morning, June 5. A delegation from the Iraqi army was invited to join as well and they flew in a second plane.
To ensure the safety of all these VIP’s flying in a closed military air zone, Amer ordered all his anti-aircraft batteries to stand...
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...
It was a narrow winding road, barely paved, and I was definitely nervous; the constricting alleys of Beit Romano, deep in the heart of Hebron, is not my normal comfort zone.
As I drove deeper into the largely Arab populated villages, I passed the occasional Israeli soldiers on guard in their guard-posts, and I had the sense they thought I was mad. But I was on a mission. Our youngest son Yair, along with his commando squad of paratroopers, had been sent to spend Shabbat guarding the roads and back alleys of Hebron, and they had a short window in which I could find them all before they headed out for guard duties and patrols.
One of the boys’ parents had managed to get and send us all some photos, taken by one of the commanders, of their insane week of combat training in the hot desert sun. One image of Yair carrying a fellow-soldier (who seemed to be twice his size)...
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
******************
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...
“Achi!” “My brother!” These were the words that always greeted me when I got to the meeting point for reserve duty every year, and it was the most common word on everyone’s lips. Men who had not seen each other often for nearly a year and commonly had little or nothing to do with each other during the year for a few weeks a year rediscovered a brotherhood for those weeks of reserve duty. It’s a funny word “Achi” which does not easily translate as ‘my brother’; there is a power to it in Hebrew as in Israel it connotes much more than a blood relation, being closer to a ‘brother in arms’, and it means that these are men who would lay their lives on the line for each other, quite literally.
I never imagined I would see this anywhere else but in the context of the army, perhaps subconsciously assuming it was the product of intense sometimes life threatening...
The Prophet Powered Life
“I (G-d) will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto you (Moses); and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him” (Deut. 18: 18)
Through using methods such as meditation and music, the prophets of ancient Israel were able to induce altered states of consciousness in which they experienced a direct revelation from G-d. Sometimes they received a message for the entire world.
When such messages had eternal significance, they were recorded and later incorporated into the Hebrew Bible. Only fifteen prophets’ revelations are included, with another dozen or so prophets mentioned by name in the various Biblical books. The Talmud, however, tells us that there were as many prophets in ancient Israel as Israelites who came out of Egypt during the Exodus, in other words, approximately three million.
The Talmud also tells us that after the Temple was destroyed, the period of...
Imagine the scene: A beautiful afternoon, with a westerly wind blowing cool air in from the Mediterranean and a group of children and teenagers playing with kites, flying in the wind.
The sounds of the children’s’ laughter carries across the sand; such an innocent scene on a beautiful late afternoon along the Mediterranean coast.
Only this is not Long island sound; it’s the Gaza strip. And the innocent kites these children are flying are laden with incendiary devices and petrol bombs, and they are not innocently flying kites; they are releasing weapons aimed at their Jewish cousins playing in playgrounds and summer camps a short few kilometers away. This is the new generation of ‘RPG kids’, and just like the seven and eight year old Lebanese children trained by the PLO to fire RPG anti-tank weapons at Israeli tanks in Lebanon in the First Lebanon War of the early 1980’s, these children are soldiers in the new children’s army of Hamas.
So...
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...
