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...
In January of 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, at the behest of his boss, Heinrich Himmler, convened a conference in a Villa in Wansee, a suburb of Berlin. Some of the top hierarchy of the Nazi party and the SS were invited, including Adolf Eichmann. They had finally concluded that there was nowhere to send all the Jews.
When Hitler began his war of domination, he initially had not intended, it seems, to annihilate the Jews; he simply wanted them out of Europe. In fact, the Nazis may have planned to fund their Nazi War machine by ransoming off their Jews.
As an example, the St. Louis, which was the last boat full of German refugees to set sail before the war began, sailed in June of 1939. Bound for Cuba, there were approximately 960 German Jewish refugees aboard, with visas for Cuba. Passage on board cost five hundred dollars, an enormous sum, equivalent today to more than eleven thousand dollars. And the...
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 is nearly forty years now, and yet it seems like yesterday. There are moments you can taste, even smell, forever.
Forty yards, or perhaps it was only thirty? Time has a way of coloring the details. We had come under heavy fire, and we were doing everything right; by the book. The force was split up and the cover position was already in place laying down heavy suppressing fire, while we moved into place to charge their position. Six of us, trained and experienced, we were running in a straight line up the hill.
In such moments, you discover whether all the training had really been worth it. In the movies, they always make it seem like the officer is a hero, cool under fire, and wise enough to know exactly what to do. But in reality, the training just takes over. It isn’t bravery, nor is it that the officer is gifted enough to know exactly what to...
To Pray the Jewish Way
At first glance prayer seems to be about whining and begging G-d, "Please heal this person ... please bring me my soul-mate ... please help my business, etc." One could mistakenly think that G-d is holding out on us and gets pleasure watching us grovel.
When we are faced with some very serious problems, it is customary to ask others to join together in our prayers. What is that all about? It seems as if we hope to move G-d through force: "G-d, if you don't respond to my prayers, then I will recruit through the e-mail thousands of others to pray."
Do we think these strategies really work? What are we actually doing here? If G-d is all knowing then why am I telling Him my problems? He already knows them. If G-d is good, then why am I asking for Him to change my situation? Obviously, whatever happens to me is for my best and...
Of all the unexpected visitors I have ever received, none even come close to the surprise I got in the summer of 94'.
I was teaching a course on Jewish values deep in the mountains of Pennsylvania, at a camp called Moshava, near Indian Orchard. We were in the middle of an intense discussion on Jewish ethics, when I noticed three fellows standing at the entrance to the lodge. Their features were far- eastern; Chinese, it seemed, and they were standing patiently at the door, taking it all in.
You must understand, we were really in the middle of nowhere. The group of teenagers sitting before me was part of a very special group of kids who had been chosen to join a Jewish experience away from all the hustle of computers and cell- phones, television and stereos. I couldn't imagine how these three fellows had ended up here, especially as they looked like tourists.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"We come from...
What You See Is What You Get
"Daddy, where is G-d?"
"Son, wherever you let Him in."
— Attributed to Rebbe Pinchas of Koretz
How do we open our souls' eyes to let G-d in?
The Kabbalah says, "There is no king without a nation." This point requires deep exploration. It may make sense that, in the human world, a king is dependent on having subjects who acknowledge his sovereignty. The last Emperor of China ceased to be emperor when there were no longer people who bowed when he entered the room. Even after the Communist government had exiled him, as long as people recognized him and acknowledged him as their sovereign, he was, in a very real sense, still a king, albeit without the power to rule. But G-d is reality, so how can G-d be dependent on human acknowledgment.
The world that you and I live in is a product of our perception of reality. The philosopher Immanuel Kant probed this concept. He...
Several years ago, when a new wave of violence broke out in Israel, our unit was drafted for nearly forty days as part of an emergency draft order attempting to stem the tide of the violence.
It is difficult to describe how challenging it is to be completely uprooted from your life, literally overnight, with no idea of how long you will be needed, or when you will be able to get back to the routine of job and family. It was more than a challenge; it was often overwhelming. One day I was struggling to keep up with e-mail, and preparing classes for upcoming programs, and the next I was struggling to keep up with the pace of shootings, daily intelligence briefings and preparing briefings for men going out on patrols.
But what we had to deal with was nothing compared to what some of the regular army soldiers and officers, trying to respond to the murderous pace of...
Funny. You Don't Look Religious
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
I once was hired to organize educational programs for a large Jewish youth group in the United States. To overcome any possible stigmas associated with the word "rabbi" and to encourage the kids to relate to me without preconceived notions, I asked the executives to introduce me as just David Aaron, not as Rabbi David Aaron. They respected my request, but I was dismayed to read in their newsletter the following announcement: "We want to welcome a new member to our staff: David Aaron, our Judaism specialist."
This sounded even worse! It made Judaism sound like a rare disease. Don't we go to specialists when we have a problem our general practitioner cannot treat? What do you do with a Judaism specialist? Do you come to him and say, "I've got this problem with Jewish guilt. Do you have a cure, Judaism specialist?" I was in trouble before I even started. I didn't want...
It was late, and normally he would have been on his way home, but he had some unfinished business at work, bringing him back up the hill late that night.
Very few people would even have noticed what he saw, much less done anything about it, but Aryeh, an expert in archeology, and very familiar with the normal comings and goings in East Jerusalem, realized something was going on: a long line of trucks was moving up and down the road, in and out of the Old City.
Arabs do not normally work late at night and certainly so many trucks would have to mean a major building project, which was strange considering the late hour. As it turned out, the Wakf (the Muslim religious authority on the Temple Mount) was overseeing an illegal expansion of the El Aksa Mosque on the Mount and needed somewhere to dump all the dirt and rubble they were digging up. And as any digging on...
