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On one of my frequent trips, after a long flight, I suddenly realized I had forgotten my tefillin on the plane.
I rushed back to the gates only to discover I could not get through without a valid boarding pass, which I no longer had. Personnel at lost and found (in baggage control)patiently explained they only dealt with items lost in the airport or in baggage, and sent me to the check in counters, where they explained I had no boarding pass and could not get back on the plane, which was now being cleaned, and did I have identification?
Finally, a supervisor with a security guard came out to see what was going on and asked me to describe the lost object. And so, a few months after September 11th, with all of the heightened security, I explained it was a small velvet pouch, with two leather boxes and straps inside. Although my name was on the bag,...
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Pure exhaustion; that was the only way to describe it; She sank down in the back seat of the yellow cab and let her eyes close. She did not know exactly where she was going, but trusted the cab driver to get her there, as she nodded off to sleep. The driver was talking, as New York cab drivers are wont to do, but the woman...
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Getting the Divine View on You
How to make worlds of a difference
And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.
My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house.
With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches;
and the picture of the LORD shall he view ...
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It is a conversation I will remember forever. We were in the midst of basic tank training, enjoying a brief respite from the grueling pace of maneuvers and marches. Having completed basic infantry training followed by tank training school, where we learned the rudimentary skills necessary to function as crew members in a tank, we were now in tank field school, known as ...
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Sometimes, the meaning of life is all about getting the right perspective. Take the story of the sixth ladder company firefighters on duty on the morning of September 11th.
Minutes after the first plane hit the towers, they were rushing into 1 World Trade Center to try and reach the survivors on the floors above. On the twenty-seventh floor, they heard and felt the other tower collapse, and the captain, Bill Jonas, decided they needed to get back down. Clearly, they needed to get out; if one tower could collapse, then so could the other.
Somewhere around the 14th floor, they met a middle-aged woman named Josephine Harris. She had walked down from the 73rd floor and was totally exhausted.
Bill Butler, another of the firemen, folded her arm around his neck and kept moving.
...
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A Love Letter from the Divine
After the miraculous Exodus from Egypt, the Jewish people traveled in the desert for 49 days until they reached Mount Sinai on the 6th day of the Hebrew month of Sivan. There they experienced the ultimate revelation and communion with G-d. They encountered G-d face to face, heard the voice of G-d and received the Torah and its commandments...
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Moses Mendelssohn, the grandfather of the well- known German composer, was far from being handsome. Along with a rather short stature, he had a grotesque hunchback.
One day he visited a merchant in Hamburg who had a lovely daughter named Frumtje. Moses fell helplessly in love with her. But Frumtje was repulsed by his misshapen appearance.
When it came time for him to leave, Moses gathered his courage and climbed the stairs to her room to take one last opportunity to speak with her. She was a vision of heavenly beauty, but it caused him deep sadness by her refusal to even look at him.
After several attempts at conversation, Moses shyly asked, "Do you believe marriages are made in heaven?"
"Yes" she answered, still looking at the floor. "And do you?"
"Yes, I do" he replied. "You see, in heaven at the birth of each boy, G-d announces which girl he will marry. When I was born, my future bride was pointed out...
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Prophecy 101:
Ego is a Non-Prophet Venture
This week we begin to read from the fourth of the five books of Moses. Although this book is referred to in English as the Book of Numbers, in Hebrew it is referred to as Bamidbar because of the opening verse; "And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness (Bamidbar) of Sinai ..."
The Midrash, Jewish Oral Tradition, derives a somewhat puzzling insight from the fact that G-d spoke to Moses in the wilderness :
Unless one makes himself hefker (open and ownerless) like a wilderness he cannot acquire wisdom and Torah. (Bamidbar Rabbah 1:7)
In other words, to be receptive to the revelatory word of G-d you must be like the wilderness completely open and ownerless ...
