Category: Chumash Shemot

The Gift of Giving: Love’s Secret Service In this week’s Torah Portion we are commanded to bring pure oil to the tabernacle to light the Menorah (candelabra). “And you (Moses) shall command the children of Israel, that they bring to you pure olive oil beaten for the light, to cause a lamp to burn continually.” (Exodus 27:20) The Midrash, which part of Jewish Oral Tradition, asks an obvious question. The entire world is illuminated by G-d’s splendor and yet He tells the Jewish people to bring oil to light the Menorah before Him? The Midrash answers that G-d desires the works of your hands. How can we understand that G-d desires the works of our hand? How can G-d want something from us? What can we give G-d? Does G-d lack anything that we can provide? The Kabbalah teaches that G-d created the world to give us goodness and yet it seems from the Midrash that G-d is not looking to give but really wants to receive. How...

In 1860, a relatively unknown one-term congressman (who had practiced law in the prairie towns of Illinois) named Abraham Lincoln stunned the country by prevailing over three prominent rivals—William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates—to win the Republican nomination for President. But even more surprising was what Lincoln did after being elected President: He appointed all three rivals to his cabinet—Seward as secretary of state, Chase as secretary of the treasury, and Bates as attorney general. Reading up on Abraham Lincoln, one discovers that this was not an astute political move; rather, it was simply who he was. In fact, even his enemies often became his friends. To quote David Chamber Mearns: “Enemies seemed to be potential friends to Abraham Lincoln. When British writer       Edward Dicey was introduced to the president as one of his enemies, Lincoln’s       response was: “I did not know I had any enemies”.       (Largely Lincoln pg. 93) The same Dicey, in the June 1861 issue of Macmillan’s,...

The Simple Art of Ecstasy How to See Divine Presence Here and Now “ And let them make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell amongst them.” — Exodus 25:8 In this week's Torah Portion we encounter the precise design and magnificent beauty of the holy tabernacle and its' vessels. What is the relationship between this physical construct and feeling the presence of G-d dwelling amongst us? YOU CAN SEE G-D Once I was giving a seminar, and I asked everyone to look around the room and point to beauty. The first interesting result was that everyone pointed to something different. One man pointed to his wife. A woman named Bea pointed to a glass menorah (a Hanukkah candelabra) that was sitting on a windowsill. I asked Bea how she saw beauty in that menorah. Did she see beauty with her physical eyes? "Well," she answered, "the glass is translucent, and its delicacy has an ethereal quality. The shape is pleasing to the eye and because...

Many years ago, long before we founded Yeshivat Orayta, I was privileged to direct a program called Isralight, which was primarily what some would refer to as a ‘Kiruv’ or ‘outreach’’ program. The students, mostly post-College and young professionals, usually came from a very limited Jewish background seeking spirituality and meaning in their lives. I recall one day as we were beginning a new three week program, a student walked in who looked vaguely familiar. Bare-headed, with a lumberjack beard and wearing jeans and a T shirt, it took me a minute to realize he was a boy who had been in yeshiva with me though a few years younger. He came with his non-Jewish girlfriend with whom he was living, and as he did not introduce himself, I decided to pretend I did not recognize him. After a few days of classes and discussion we spent Shabbat with the group in the Old City, and I decided to do...

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...

A while back, the media reported that two days before his execution, Adolph Eichmann penned a letter to then President Yitzchak Ben-Zvi begging for clemency. Facing his imminent death by hanging (the only death sentence ever executed in the State of Israel), the once arrogant Eichmann, finally humbled, was begging for his life. His request was denied, and two days later he was hanged, his body cremated, and his ashes spread over the Mediterranean to prevent his tomb from ever becoming a shrine for hatred. During his time in prison, he took ill briefly, and, experiencing shortness of breath and fever, was seen by the prison Doctor, himself a Holocaust survivor. He would later describe the mix of emotions he felt, as he attempted to divorce himself from his personal feelings and focus on the task at hand, which in his words, was “to view him as any other patient in need of medical assistance”. But is this correct? Is...

Ready to HotSync Your Soul? Secrets to a Super-Natural Life of Freedom and Synchronicity Years ago, I saw these sandals I really liked. At the time, I knew nothing about these shoes other than I just liked the way they looked. So I went into a store and I tried on a pair, but they didn't feel right. They had all these funny bumps inside of them. I told the salesman, "There is something wrong with these shoes." He said, "No there is something wrong with your feet. You must understand that these shoes are designed to support the shape of a natural foot." "What's unnatural about my feet. They're in their natural place — at the end of my legs." He laughed. "You don't understand. Your feet have taken the unnatural shape of the shoes you've been wearing. And the shoes you've been wearing are good for killing cockroaches in tight corners, but they are not meant to contain feet." I felt insulted so I took...

In April of 1988 I was called up for my first reserve duty. The first intifada had exploded just a few months earlier, and we were stationed for a month in a nasty little piece of real estate called Jebalya which was a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Needless to say things were pretty intense. One day I was given an assignment to take six men and set up a lookout position on the roof of an Arab house that overlooked the main road passing by Jebalya where Jews often travelled. There had been a number of incidents that week, including riots, Molotov cocktails, burning tires laid across the road and rock throwing at moving vehicles; our job was to help get things back under control.  It was an extremely uncomfortable feeling, to be setting up a military position on someone’s roof, but from a strategic point of view, it made sense, and, reminiscent of western laws of...

Love Thyself!! Secrets to Your Ultimate and Everlasting Net Worth Just as a person must believe in G-d, so too, he must afterwards believe in Himself. That is to say, that G-d is involved with him and he is not a waste—that he is here today and gone tomorrow... Rather one must believe that his soul is from the Source of Life, may His name be blessed and that G-d gets pleasure – taanug-- in him and is -- mishtashaya -- playfully involved with him when he does His will. And this is the meaning of the verse “and they believed in G-d and Moses His servant” (Exodus 15). [The soul of] Moses consisted of the 600,000 souls of the Jewish people of that generation --- and they believed that G-d desired them – wants and receives pleasure from the good within them. - Rabbi Tzadok Hacohen: Tzidkat HaTzadick 154 I heard an interview with a famous singer. The interviewer asked her, “What are your feelings...

 May 1948; tough times for the Jewish people, and particularly for the Jews struggling to claw out a place for themselves in a land they hoped to claim as their own. A few months after the United Nations voted to partition the remaining territory in the British Mandate for Palestine and allow finally, the creation of a modern Jewish state, six Arab armies were poised to attack. They were waiting for the British to leave, so as not to find themselves in the position of attacking British sovereign territory. The Arabs who were already in country however, had no such dilemma, which was why the Jordanian legion was on the offensive. Even as the Jews were still celebrating the partition plan vote, the Jordanians were already on the march.  The Jordanian Legion, commanded by Abdullah Tell, was without a doubt the best fighting force in the Middle East. Thirty-two hundred strong at three full brigades, they were British-trained and French-armed, and...