Category: Chumash Shemot

Identity Crisis is a Gift: Awakening to the Role and Goal of Your Soul Kirk Douglas, z”l, 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...

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...

They were all so different; how would I ever be able to turn them into a cohesive unit?  It was my first command, and this was my first mission. After finally completing Officer’s course I was assigned to the 430th battalion of the 500th armored Brigade which at the time was still stationed in the Jordan valley. Given a few days to rest up after eleven grueling months of infantry officer’s training and then tank officer’s course I reported for duty to my new base with visions of commanding men under fire.  After meeting first the battalion commander and then my new company commander, I was assigned my quarters, where I met Chaim and Ohad, my two fellow platoon commanders. Having spent most of the past year sleeping in the field or in a tank, it was awesome to have my own bed and cupboard in an actual room in officer’s quarters. It was late evening by the time I got my...

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...

There is an amazing story told about Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was on a speaking tour across India, part of his non-violent struggle for independence from the British. At that time, the only affordable mode of travel across the country was by rail. When there were no whites waiting for a train, the British rail company, in an effort to save the expense and time of actually stopping at the station, would have the trains slow down long enough for passengers to run along-side and hop on. (This racist policy was part of what Gandhi was struggling against...) One day, Gandhi was running to get on a train, and as he jumped up, his shoe slipped off his foot. Though he tried to grab it, he ended up watching helplessly as it fell to the tracks. Quickly, he grabbed the other one off his foot and threw it back down the tracks toward the first rapidly disappearing shoe. People who saw this thought perhaps...

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...

Seven years ago, on 5 Adar I, 5776, one of modern Israel’s greatest war heroes, Yanosh ben Gal, A”H, was laid to rest in the military cemetery in Givat Shaul.  To honor his memory, this story is reprinted from a previous article:                                                                                                             As the summer of nineteen seventy three wound down, the seventh armored brigade was stationed on the Bar Lev line, on the border with Egypt along the Suez Canal.  On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the brigade was given a week’s leave for the holidays. As the men of the seventh headed off for some R&R all over the country, Yanosh, the brigade commander, stopped off on his way home at the General Staff base in Tel Aviv; an ingrained habit to keep abreast of the intelligence reports.  What he saw alarmed him: Egyptian and Syrian troop buildups along the Canal and in the Golan Heights, a high increase of Arab military radio traffic, and an unusual amount of activity...

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...

Sometimes inspiration comes in the simplest of moments, like a good cup of coffee.  In the fall of 2000, my unit was called up on special emergency orders (known as a ‘Tzav Shmoneh’). I still recall the middle of the night phone call from my battalion commander telling me to get my gear together and report to our assembly point.  In response to my query of when I needed to be there his response was ‘I’ll see you in an hour’, and when I asked how long I could expect to be in for his answer was: “Ein li musag” “I have no idea”; which was a shock coming from a battalion commander.  The challenge of having your entire life turned upside down in an instant, with no time to prepare for it, is hard to describe. And this reserve duty was even more difficult as a result of how close we were to home.  Usually, the long trip to whatever hot zone...