Category: Chumash Shemot

Recently, 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 it even...

Is G-d Just a Cosmic Party Pooper? How to Find Our Mission in Life I recall a cute comic strip depicting Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments written in stone. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” he announces to the Israelites waiting anxiously at the bottom of the mountain. “The good news is that I got Him down to ten.” The crowd cheers. “The bad news is that adultery is still in.” It is not uncommon for people to think the commandments spoil the fun of life -- that G-d is really a cosmic party pooper, and that there is a conflict of interest between man and G-d. People think that serving G-d is demeaning; servitude implies a slave-master relationship. But that is not the real meaning of serving G-d. The opportunity to serve G-d is the greatest gift we could ever imagine. It’s empowering. To serve G-d means that we can do something on behalf of G-d. It's...

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...

    No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. - Aesop  Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel z”tzl, the famed Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir, once met with a small group of businessmen and asked them what they thought the most important lesson of the Holocaust was.   “Never forget?" Suggested one; “Always fight?” posited another. With a sigh, the rabbi explained: ‘I learned the essence of the human spirit; of what really matters.’ During the Holocaust human beings were treated like animals; transported in cattle cars, with no food, no water, no bathrooms, and not even a few feet in which to lie down. Thinking they were headed for work camps, when they finally arrived, and the doors slid open amidst suddenly blinding light, rifle butts, Nazi guards and dogs, men were separated from women, families were broken apart, and children were dragged away screaming. Finally, after the endless roll calls, they were allowed to enter the barracks for what was meant to approximate...

(print version) 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....

(print version) Jerusalem; 722 BCE: the mightiest army on the face of the earth has surrounded the city; bent on conquest and determined to put an end to the Jewish people once and for all. Approximately 35,000 people, all that remain of the Jewish people after the destruction and conquest of the North and the exile of the ten tribes, are crowded inside the city walls as the Assyrian army lays siege to Jerusalem. The Assyrian general Saragon, also known as Sanhereb, the Destroyer, has never been defeated, and has amassed the largest army the world has ever known: 185,000 men. Hizkiahu, the Jewish king, has no army to speak of; it would seem we are in the verge of the final solution to the Jewish people, 2,700 years ago. And then G-d performs a miracle, and according to the book of Kings, on the first night of Passover, an Angel smites the Assyrian army and all 185,000 Assyrian soldiers die, saving...

(print version) The Gift of Giving: Love...

(print version) In 2010, addressing the Knesset on the occasion of the visit of his Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told this story: "I wish to share with you and the members of the Knesset a special story that touched my heart. It is a story about an Italian woman during World War II." "On the train, on her way to work, this woman observed a German policeman arresting a Jewish girl. The Italian woman, who was then eight months pregnant, came between the German officer and the Jewish girl." "Without an ounce of fear she confronted the German officer and told him: 'You can kill me, but look at the faces of the passengers on the train. I assure you, they will not let you out of here alive'." "With these decisive words, that Italian woman saved the life of the Jewish girl. She lit, if only for a second, a beacon of human light and courage in the great...

(print version) The Simple Art of Ecstasy How to See Divine Presence Here and Now ...