Category: Chumash Shemot

To Serve with Joy Is your life ‘out of service’?   “And Moses and Aaron were brought again unto Pharaoh; and he said unto them: 'Go, serve the LORD your G-d; but who are they that shall go?' And Moses said: 'We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds we will go; because the holiday of G-d is for us.'” — Exodus 10:8-9 The King of Egypt must have been quite surprised by Moses answer. To serve G-d is not like serving you. It is not about degrading back-breaking slavery rather a joyful celebration for the whole family. To serve G-d is a holiday for us. The Secret to Service Most people think that a mitzvah is a "demand" meant to deprive or diminish our godly self worth. But that is incorrect. A mitzvah is a "command" enabling us to co- operate, associate, identify and thereby consciously bond with G-d and experience His love. This is...

Wake up an Israeli tank commander in the middle of the night and flash a picture of a BMP-1 APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) at a distance of 5 kilometers, when it appears to be little more than a speck in the distance, and he will instantly recognize it as a Soviet- made troop carrier that fires armor-piercing Sagger anti-tank missiles. He will also be able to rattle off to you their effective range, and threat capacity (the amount of time it takes to aim and fire, as well as which Israeli tanks will effectively pierce). He will also know instantly that this carrier is most likely to be seen in the Syrian theater of war. The Israeli army takes the topic of enemy weaponry very seriously and has a variety of often-sadistic methods for ensuring that its commanders become extremely proficient in this particular expertise. I remember vividly the oft-repeated ritual of testing on this topic that took place every Friday...

Where is G-d, the Miracle Maker? People often say, “If there is really a G-d, why doesn’t He do outright miracles anymore? I would believe in G-d if I saw the ten plagues in Egypt, the sea split or some other supernatural event.” In the past, G-d did miracles in order to prevent some terrible tragedy from happening. G-d overruled the laws of nature to keep the story going—otherwise, it would have ended. But this type of intervention is not the ideal way that G-d wants to act. G-d prefers not to do miracles. He only does them when there is no other way to teach us about His control of nature. People do not really change by witnessing a miracle. Of course, at first they are strongly moved and seem to change. But the awe quickly wears off, and they return to their old ways. We see this human pattern many times in the stories of the Torah. The Israelites witnessed the...

 One of the strangest dialogues in the entire Torah occurs in this week’s portion: Va’Era: At the behest of G-d, Moshe shares with the Jewish people that their redemption is at hand. But  “… they do not listen to Moshe from their despair and hard labor “ (Exodus 6:9) Then, Hashem (G-d) tells Moshe to go to Pharaoh and tell him (again) to release the Jewish people from Egypt. And Moshe struggles with this command. After all, he reasons: ‘If the Jews did not listen to me, why should Pharaoh? ‘(6:12). It’s a good question, which God does not seem to answer. Eventually, G-d repeats his command to Moshe to see an audience with Pharaoh, and again Moshe questions whether Pharaoh will listen to him (6:30) ,at which point (7:3) G-d repeats his command adding that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he will not listen! (6:3-4) Which makes one wonder what the point of this entire exercise is? Why is Moshe being sent to...

Identity Crisis is a Gift: Awakening to the Role and Goal of Your Soul Kirk Douglas, the actor, once told me that when people compliment him on a performance, they often tell him how great he was at losing himself in the part. "You just became Vincent Van Gogh! You were so wonderful." And he answers, "No, you lost yourself in the part. I can't afford to lose myself in the part. I have to pay attention to the director, to the cues. I have to hit the mark just right so the action is in the camera frame. I must stay aware that I am an actor playing a role." A good actor plays his part, but he doesn't get lost in his part. He can't even begin to think he is the character he is playing. On the other hand, he still embraces that role with a tremendous amount of love and gives everything he's got to play his...

It was late in the day, and dark had fallen; people were headed home after a long work day, and Theodore was headed back to his hotel room with a few hours work ahead of him on the portable typewriter he had brought with him from Vienna to cover the events of the trial. There was much to write about, and the events of the day had made him extremely uncomfortable, though he could not quite put his finger on it. He was covering the espionage trial of a young Captain in the French army’s staff headquarters accused of passing top secret information to the Germans. The winds of war were blowing once again in Europe in December 1894, and tensions were high. All eyes were on the trial, which Theodore Herzl’s paper had dispatched him to cover. The French had suspected for some time that there was a high placed leak in the French army staff and recent events...

Successful People are Unaccomplished Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy, a day of solemn rest to the Lord. (Exodus 35:2) During the forty years that the Israelites wandered in the desert they carried with them a portable temple referred to as the Tabernacle or the Mishkan. The creative acts that are forbidden on Shabbat are those acts similar to the skills that went into building or assembling the Mishkan. The Talmud outlines 39 different categories of such creative acts that are forbidden to do on Shabbat. They represent our ultimate power of creativity which is to build a temple that accommodates the presence of G-d on earth. Of course we know that G-d does not literally dwell in the Mishkan, however, the Mishkan symbolizes our ability to serve G-d and infuse every moment and every place with the presence of G-d. In other words the greatest accomplishment of a human being is to serve to make manifest G-d’s presence...

There are sounds that you hear and things that you see that will always make you stop whatever you are doing. People yelling, the sound of an ambulance racing down a Jerusalem street, or even the backfire of a car, if you’ve just finished reserve duty...and always, the sound of a child crying. I recall one time I was standing at the entrance to a supermarket, and saw a little girl, who couldn’t have been more than three or four, sobbing her eyes out. I didn’t see any adults near her, and she didn’t seem to be physically hurt, so I walked over, figuring she was lost and looking for a parent... as I got within a couple of feet, a man standing on the side, whom I hadn’t noticed before, took a few steps closer and gently nudged me with his hand as if to say ‘don’t trouble yourself’, while continuing to speak on his cell phone. I assumed he...

Shabbat: Rest Assured Keep the Shabbat for it is holy unto you..... because in six days G-d made heaven and earth: and on the seventh day He abstained from work and rested. (Exodus 31: 14-17) Most people know what you don’t do on Shabbat: you don’t tear toilet paper, you don’t drive, you don’t write, you don’t turn on lights, you don’t shop, etc. But they don’t know why, and they don’t know what it is you, in fact, do on Shabbat. And of course, when you just focus on what you don’t do on Shabbat, the experience—which is supposed to be joyous and fulfilling—basically ends up sounding like torture. You have to ask yourself, “Is this the way I want to celebrate a holiday? Is this how I want to spend my weekend after working hard all week long?” In order to understand the real meaning of Shabbat, let’s explore the first place it is mentioned in the Torah. This paragraph is from the Book of Genesis and...

This past week I spent the week in Poland with Orayta and there an experience we had that I cannot get out of my head, shared with us by Rav Yitzchak Rubenstein our incredible guide for the week: The wind was howling as we walked into the forest of Zvilitovska Gora, a suburb of Tarnow, but we could not have imagined what awaited us there.  How do you make a people die? You kill all the children.  We came to a clearing in the forest and saw a mass grave surrounded by a blue fence with a Magen David where 800 children lie buried, brothers and sisters forever.  Eight hundred children all below the age of ten; because of what use were children in the German empire; they would not have even made good slaves...  We all fell silent as the trees swayed as if in mourning, and you could hear the moaning of the wind in the trees.... we had no words.  So Rav Yitzchak helped us fill in the picture: he showed us...