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...

In the year 1263 Raymond de Penyafort of Spain challenged the Jewish people to a debate. As the church’s representative, he chose a Dominican friar named Pablo Christiani, a Sephardic Jew who had converted to Christianity, to represent them. The Jewish community came to no less than the Ramban himself, to represent them. The Ramban, Rav Moshe ben Nachman (Nachmanides) was the undisputed great leader of his generation.  (His now famous commentaries on the entire Torah and Talmud established him as one of the greatest scholars in Jewish history.) He agreed on condition that he be allowed to respond in the debate. The church was relying on the fact that the Jews would be hesitant to incur the wrath of the church by responding to Christiani’s suppositions, but King James of Aragon, in whose presence the debate took place granted the Ramban free speech. After the debate the Church published its version of the debate which suggested the Jews had no answers for...

Unmasking Nature: G-d’s Love is Here and Now According to Jewish Tradition, as soon as the Hebrew month of Adar begins we must increase our joy because the miracle of the Purim Story happened on that month. Purim celebrates the salvation of the Jews in the year 357 BCE from the wicked Haman’s scheme to exterminate all the Jewish men, women and children living in the Persian Empire, which meant all the Jews in the world at that time. In the Purim story, however, there were no miraculous divine interventions. There were no supernatural plagues and no splitting of any seas. In fact, G-d’s name is not even mentioned once in the entire Purim story recorded in the Book of Esther (Megillat Esther). Although the holiday of Purim is celebrated only on the 14th of the month of Adar, and in some places on the 15th, the whole month is identified with greater joy. Purim is so abundant with joy that its celebration overflows into the entire month,...

In a cattle car in Poland, in the summer of 1942, Reb Azriel Dovid Fastag, who was the composer of tunes for the Moshitzer rebbe, was headed to his death in Treblinka. It is impossible to imagine what it must have been like. Over a hundred Jews, forced to stand for days on end with only a bucket in the middle of the car for waste, no room to even sit or lie down, no food or water, in the stifling summer heat, all crammed in together heading to whereabouts unknown, for reasons they could not even imagine. Listening to the clickety-clack of the wheels of the train, a tune sprang into his mind, and he composed the now-famous “Ani Ma’amin” tune:     “I believe, with complete faith, in the coming of the messiah, and even though he may tarry, I await him nonetheless…” And he began to hum and then to sing the haunting melody, in the crowded cattle car full of...

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...

A number of years ago at a parlor meeting of the coalition for the Israeli Soldiers missing in action, someone stood up to share a few words about a close friend of his with whom he had both studied and gone to war: Yehuda Katz. Yehuda Katz, a soldier who, along with Zack Baumel and Tzvi Feldman, has been missing in action since the battle of Sultan Yaakov in June of 1982, studied in Yeshivat Kerem Be’Yavneh and has been missing now for over twenty years. At the beginning of the Lebanon War on the first Sunday night in June of 1982, they received word in the Yeshiva that buses would be coming to take the boys up North to fight. Kerem Be’Yavneh is one of a number of very special Yeshivot (Academies for higher Jewish learning) whose boys combine their yeshiva studies with army service in Israeli Combat units. In addition to their regular reserve duty and studies in yeshiva, whenever...

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...

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 the city of Jerusalem....

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...

“Dayeinu.” Such a powerful word: ‘Enough!’ We sing it every year on Passover, but the song is rather puzzling. If you take a careful look at the words, they are challenging, to say the least. “If we had only been taken out of Egypt, without all the miracles, Dayeinu! It would have been enough... “If G-d had split the Sea, but not led us through it on dry land, Dayeinu! “If He had brought us to Sinai, but not given us the Torah, Dayeinu! ...” What does this mean? How could it have been enough to come to Sinai without receiving the Torah? What would the point have been? And how could it have been enough to split the Sea without going through it? This question is of course the theme of this song, which leads us to its conclusion: “Al Achat Kamah Ve’Kamah...” “How much more so are we thankful, seeing all that G- d has done for us.... Not only has Hashem split the Sea, but...