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 —...
Lebanon was a crazy place to be back in the early eighties, but after almost a year and a half in military courses and training I was glad to finally be dealing with the bigger picture.
My first 21 months in the IDF were mostly spent in course after course after course. Ten weeks of basic infantry training followed by ten weeks of the armored corps’ tank school training as a tank driver, followed by three months in the field training to be part of a tank crew and then a tank unit, followed by three weeks of intense training prep to be accepted to tank commander’s course, followed by three months of tank commander’s course in the desert, with a brief study respite leading to an intense month of prep for Officer’s course to 14 weeks of Infantry Officer’s course followed by eight months in Tank officer’s course; just reading the list still makes me weary.
So, finally with...
What Do We Know?
Humble Words to Console
When we try to understand G-d, we face an inherent obstacle with the very process of knowing. When I attempt to know anything, I am the subject and the thing that I seek to know is the object. In addition, there must be some degree of distance and separation between the subject and the object. Your eye can see almost everything, but it cannot see itself. “Knowing” implies two separate entities: the knower and the known.
However, you cannot know G-d in this normative way, because G-d is the source of all knowing. G-d is the source of all consciousness. Your very ability to think comes from G-d, who is the source of all thinking. How can you think about the source of all thinking? How can your mind hope to comprehend the source and ground of all minds? Yet if you want to know G-d, then you must seek the source of all knowing....
When Bergen Belsen was liberated by the Allies on April 15, 1945, the sight that greeted their eyes, even by concentration camp standards, was like a scene from hell itself. Thousands of bodies were lying in heaps all over the camp. In a desperate attempt to bury the dead before the British arrived, two thousand inmates were made to drag corpses to massive burial pits for three days between April 11 and April 14. And yet there were still over ten thousand rotting corpses around the camp on the day of liberation.
The camp was over-run with typhus, typhoid and tuberculosis, in addition to a lack of food and water and basic sanitation.
When the British liberated the camp, there were over 38,000 prisoners, but tragically, most were so ill, only ten thousand survived. Many of those who died after liberation actually died due to the food bestowed upon them by unsuspecting Allied soldiers who, meaning well, did not realize...
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...
Walk in to The Old City through the Jaffa Gate, and after a short stroll down Ohr HaChaim Street you will suddenly find yourself looking down upon one of the oldest streets in the world. Known as the Cardo and built by the Romans nearly two thousand years ago, it was the main (or hinge: cardinal) thoroughfare in Jerusalem for nearly seven centuries, and one can still see the magnificent Roman columns which adorn its path, rediscovered (courtesy of Jordanian mortar shells) after the Six Day War in 1968.
Any tourist who has ever visited Jerusalem in the last fifty years has most probably seen and even walked on this magnificent colonnade. But there is a detail concerning this street that changed the way I look at it forever.
This street was built by the Emperor Hadrian following the Bar Kochba Rebellion. (There are some who suggest it was partly a cause of the rebellion, but many choose our approach.) After the...
Who is G-d to Judge?
How to Celebrate a Day of Judgment
I did not grow up in a religious home but we did go to shul (synagogue) every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I remember one Rosh Hashanah the rabbi got up and said, “We’re about to open the ark. It is customary for the congregation to stand while the ark is open, but it will be open for quite some time. So if you get tired, you can sit down.”
I thought to myself, “I only come here twice a year, so if standing and going through a little torture is going to take away my sins, then why not stand for the whole thing?” When they opened the ark, everyone stood and then everyone sat. I was the only one who remained standing. I figured, how long could it last, five minutes, ten minutes? I stood there in terrible pain for an hour and a half, figuring ‘OK. I guess...
The thundering sounds of artillery fire echoed through the valleys beneath the Golan Heights and across the Sea of Galilee. All across the Northern border with Syria, civilians were huddled in their bunkers and bomb shelters, wondering when this latest round of violence would abate.
On the face of it, this was nothing new; for nineteen years the Israeli citizens of the north had endured an almost daily barrage of shellfire from the Syrian guns perched in the Heights above. In fact, an average of one thousand shells a day fell on the Kibbutzim, towns, and villages within range of the Golan, when the Syrian army had control of the Heights.
But this time it was different. It was June of 1967, and Israel had finally decided enough was enough.
For five weeks, Israel, in response to the Arab armies massed on her borders, had mobilized her reserves, and the economy had ground to a halt; it was a situation Israel could not...
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...
