(from 2014)
Silence; total and absolute silence; no one moves; eight soldiers in the middle of the night, actively listening, straining for the slightest sound that might signify something out of the ordinary; a velcro patch; a clink of metal, the sound of a body moving on earth, an AK-47 machine gun slowly being cocked or, worst of all, the pin of a grenade being pulled ….
That was how ambushes always began; Israeli soldiers are trained to work, especially at night, in silence, learning to pick up the sounds one often might take for granted; sounds which, if heard, can make all the difference between life and death.
How many thousands of soldiers, in how many trenches back alleys and abandoned houses in Aza had to stop to listen these past weeks?
And in this war civilians too were on the front lines, ever listening for the wail of a siren signaling incoming rockets, giving them scant seconds to make it to shelter…
This...
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....
I can close my eyes and I’m there: one of the most intense moments of my entire life; a moment straight out of Shakespeare: full of sound and fury, but signifying … everything.
Bullets flying everywhere, smoke grenades making it difficult to see; M-203 grenade launcher and Mag heavy machine gun doing their merciless work tearing up the top of the hill we were running towards; not sure what is really waiting for us on top of that hill, wanting so much to get there and yet, not wanting to get there, in the worst way….
Leading men, but to what? Does everyone walk down off this hill at the end of the day? Did we; did I, do everything I was supposed to do? Had I made any mistakes we would realize later were the reason for catastrophe? Would there be a catastrophe? Would I even be there to ‘realize later’?
And then, in the middle of it all, my gun...
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...
Visit Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust museum, and wander off to the paths behind the plaza dedicated to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and you will come across an actual cattle car, one of the many used by the Nazis to transport hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths in the infamous concentration and death camps across Poland.
Engraved on the bannister opposite the box car is a powerful poem, (by Dan Pagis) found written in pencil in a railway-car:
Here in this carload
I am Eve
With Abel my son
If you see my other son
Cain son of man
Tell him I…
Whenever I see this poem, in that place, I am always moved by the abrupt ending of Eve’s (mother of humanity) words: what would she say if she were able to finish her sentence? Why does she not finish her thought? What goes through the mind of Eve along with her son Abel (as in Cain and Abel) on...
The Divine Wants You to be Happy
When Rules Become Delicious Recipes for Your Soul
“And these are the judgments that you shall place before them.” — Exodus 21:1
"You shall place before them, that is, like a table that is set and ready for eating." — Rashi
“Taste and see that G-d is good.” — Psalms 34
LAWS YOU CAN EAT, ENJOY AND SAVOUR
The job of a teacher of Torah is not to be a philosopher, ethical guide or law giver but rather a gourmet chef. A gourmet chef has the ability to bring the taste out of every ordinary cabbage, every simple bean sprout, as well as present it all in a delicious tantalizing way.
Once, I went to someone's home to raise funds for my institute. I thought we would have about a ten minute discussion. Instead, we were talking for five or six hours. I hadn't eaten all day, and I was starving. Finally I decided that instead of asking for a...
This week I am writing to you from a bus somewhere in Poland in the middle of a week with the students of Yeshivat Orayta, seeing what was taken from us in the destruction of European Jewry.
When new prisoners arrived in Auschwitz, if they survived the infamous selections on the train platforms, within an hour they were robbed, stripped, shaved (and had their hair cut), and deloused. Their humiliation had begun. Then they got uniforms and were given numbers, and by the time they were allowed into their barracks to attempt their first night of the sleep of the damned, they barely recognized themselves.
Primo Levi recalls the thought he had that horrible night realizing that had he had access to a mirror, a strange face would have looked back at him; but he could see that stranger’s face in the faces all around him….
But some were stranger than others. One of the things that gave some concentration camp inmates a huge advantage...
May 4, 2009; Seconds, then minutes; the overturned boat remained upside down in the murky waters of the Yarkon River, trapping the woman who had been energetically rowing moments before; even the air bubbles had ceased….
Incredibly a small crowd of onlookers had gathered along the banks of the narrow river watching and pointing, even exclaiming, yet none seemed willing to brave the waters and attempt to rescue the woman whose life was clearly in danger. It was not a raging river, nor were the waters particularly deep, nor wide; rather it was well known how polluted these waters were and none seemed willing to risk the potential illness that might result from entering the waters, even for such a worthy cause.
Finally, nearly four minutes after the woman had capsized, Avi Toibin, a sixty two year old passerby, apparently realizing the stakes and ignoring the danger, jumped in and managed to wrest the woman’s now limp body from beneath the...
Recently, 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 down...
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...
