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(print version) Theirs was a moment that captured the Nation. After over a year of speeches, talk shows, political debates, rallies, letters to politicians, bumper stickers and banners, it all came down to a small farming village a few Kilometers from the Gaza strip called Kfar Maimon. On a hot summer...

(print version) What Do We Know? Humble Words to Console When we try to understand G-d, we face an inherent obstacle with the very process of knowing. When I attempt to know anything, I am the subject and the thing that I seek to know is the object. In addition, there must be some degree of distance and separation between the subject and the object. Your eye can see almost everything, but it cannot see itself. ...

(print version) Lebanon was a most unlikely place for a halachic discourse (a dialogue involving a complex legal question of Jewish tradition), but that had never stopped Dani before, and this was no exception. Anyone who ever served in Lebanon, particularly in the springtime, would be familiar with the beautiful cherry orchards that dotted the countryside, and this was equally true for the area that Dani's unit was patrolling. Ripe on the trees, no fruit ever tasted as sweet to me as the cherries you could pick and savor from the trees that dotted the area of Lebanese no-man's land the IDF patrolled in the spring of 1984. During the long hours of patrol, the fruit offered a brief respite from the grueling duties Israeli soldiers had to shoulder day by day. But to Dani, the readily available fruit presented an entirely different image, or rather, a challenge. Whose fruit were these? Where were the Arab owners who had planted and...

(print version) We Are Never Alone Walking and Talking with the Divine And in the wilderness where you have seen how that the LORD your G-d carried you as a man does bear his son in all the way that you went until you came into this place ----- Deuteronomy 1:31 Even though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you, G-d, are with me. ----Psalms 23 Really!!-- The Zohar Vol. 2 pg. 57 In the world at large, if your boss sends you on a mission, he generally stays at the office, while you go off to accomplish the assigned task. But that's not the case when G-d sends you on a mission. G-d comes along. This is the meaning of the verse in Psalm 127: ...

(print version) The bus comes careening down the narrow street, and the few pedestrians hug the walls as the thirty feet of Egged bus hurtles by with inches to spare. Years ago, this was all a lot of fun, and we used to describe the experience, unique to this neighborhood, as a new sport, eligible for the Olympics. It doesn't seem possible that there is enough room for both the bus and the pedestrians (not to mention baby carriages, wheelchairs, etc.) along these narrow streets which are more like alleys, but somehow everyone always emerges unscathed; one more miracle in the city of Jerusalem. Students used to delight in the 'thrill' of an Egged bus hurtling along at breakneck speed, without even seeming to slow, and feeling the wind rush by as the thirty tons of bus rushed by, inches from their faces. But the groups don't really come to this Jerusalem neighborhood anymore. And not because of the fears of terrorism, or...