(Reprinted from 2005)
Theirs was a moment that captured the Nation. After over a year of speeches, talk shows, political debates, rallies, letters to politicians, bumper stickers and banners, it all came down to a small farming village a few Kilometers from the Gaza strip called Kfar Maimon.
On a hot summer’s day, beneath the blistering desert sun, fifty thousand protesters, desperate to stop, or at least delay what they view as a National tragedy, the abandonment of twenty- one towns and villages along the sea in the Gaza strip, squared off against no less than twenty thousand Israeli soldiers and policemen.
The Israeli government had cast the die, and the stakes were enormous. They could not afford to let tens of thousands of protesters enter the towns and villages of Gush Katif en masse, and the protesters knew it.
Whether they were right or wrong we will never know, but the assumption was that if fifty thousand Jews could swamp...
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....
Is there any comfort? It’s been ten years and many of us have moved on, since that terrible summer of 2006 and the Second Lebanon War. But for the families whose loved ones never returned, it is like yesterday, and the heroes whose larger than life stories fill our hearts, still occupy empty chairs and shattered dreams, as if they had only just walked out the door.
Such a hero was and is Michael Levin. Absolutely refusing to take no for an answer and determined to enlist in the IDF and fulfill his dream of becoming a paratrooper, he actually climbed in to the draft center through a second floor window to get his papers. (The enlistment officer told him he was sometimes responsible for ensuring draftees did not illegally get out of the army, but had never seen a recruit avoid the guards in order to get in to the army!)
When the second Lebanon War broke out Michael was...
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...
Dedicated to the memory of Binyamin ben Daniel ve’Yehudit; Benji Hillman, h”yd, of blessed memory, a Company Commander in Golani’s elite Egoz unit who fell in battle in Lebanon ten years ago. It seems like yesterday….
Sleep; such a precious commodity, and so hard to come by those days; I remember it was a glorious day, that Shabbat morning, and truth be told, if I had been left to my own devices, I probably would have slept all day. But he, of the mischievous eyes and a shy smile, could not leave well enough alone. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with his older sister Abigail, who could not have been more than six, and they were impatiently waiting for me to wake up so I could pad into the kitchen and reach high in the cupboard where their mother kept the Shabbos treats…. Even then, there was no stopping Benji when he was on a mission….
So many...
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...
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 any more. 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 an...
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, and it wasn’t in a classroom. (The Mishnah is the basic text of the oral tradition, as codified and edited by Rabbi Yehuda Ha’Nasi circa 200C.E. )
The Synagogue we attended when I was five years old, had a strict decorum, and I recall the challenges this presented to my parents; Vague images of my red-faced and embarrassed father carrying me out of synagogue kicking and screaming come to mind.
I had succeeded in escaping from the seat next to my father, and running up to the front of the synagogue. Rabbi Dr. Simon Greenberg, who was an eminent Torah Scholar (Talmid Chacham), had an honored place in the front row, and I can still remember his piercing eyes and warm smile. He had the largest hands I had ever seen, and somehow, he succeeded in getting hold of me (I was not easy to catch) and hoisting me up to sit on his...
