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A windswept hill, where the leaves rustle on the olive trees, and the ground lies silent... almost in silent memorial, to the sounds that echoed here forty-two years ago....
The view today is mostly obscured; where once the hill overlooked the Northern side of Jewish Jerusalem, from across the Jordanian border, today the homes and streets of Ramat Eshkol, a neighborhood that sprouted up after the Six Day War fill the landscape. And where once Jordanian guns trained on Israel, forcing civilians to seek refuge behind makeshift protection, toady children play soccer in a new school that sits just below the ridge.
But take a walk below the old Jordanian police academy, along the rows of trenches that snake their way across the hill, and close your eyes, and you can still hear the echoes of gunfire, and the cries of the soldiers that rang out here, on Ammunition Hill, in June of 1967.
In May of 1967, with Arab armies massed...
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I once met a fellow who was born in Germany, but managed to get out in 1938 in the nick of time. Some people don't think of such a person as a survivor in the same way as someone who survived the death camps, but Shmuel (not his real name) lost his entire family; he was the only one who managed to get out. And after three years in Nazi Germany, he lived on the run for two more years before finally escaping to Cuba. It is a mitzvah to hear such people's stories in order to remember, and I asked him what made him realize it was time to get out, when the rest of his family could not see the writing on the wall.
It was a standard German-Jewish Holocaust story: 'it can't happen here' or 'the Jews have been through this before; we'll get through this as well'.... And to be honest, he wasn't overly concerned when...
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Achieving Sacred Selfishness
Happiness through holiness
I had a student that once came into my office and said, "My father who passed away was an atheist and a fantastic human being. He was such a moral human being. He was such a good human being. I don't believe that had he been a believer, he would have been any better. He was the epitome of being a good person. So I have a problem with Torah because I really don't believe that it would have made a difference."
So I told him that it isn't the goal of Torah to merely become a moral person. There is a lot more to it.
Morality is important, but morality is a stage in the journey. The destination is holiness ...
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Some time ago, after a lecture on the ethical challenges of the seventh commandment ("Thou shalt not steal"), I was approached by a fellow from Vienna who was a Holocaust survivor.
"Why do you assume stealing is always wrong?" asked the fellow, "Sometimes, it is even an obligation."
"I always had a strong desire to take things, and I never understood why," he continued, "And it wasn't that I necessarily needed the things I took; I just loved the prospect of being able to steal things out from under people's noses. I became quite good at it, though my conscience always bothered me. Often, I was able to resist the temptation to take things that weren't mine, but it was always a struggle. I often wondered why G-d had burdened me with this particular challenge. I knew it was wrong to steal, and never rationalized theft; I just loved the 'thrill of the take'. Why did G-d create me with this...
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Why Eat Kosher?
The Talmud tells a story about the famed author of the Mishna, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. The rabbi was walking down the street one day, when a little calf ran up to him and hid under his cloak. Apparently, the calf had run away from the slaughterhouse.
The rabbi said to the calf, ...
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Passover - In the Name of Love
Passover commemorates the miraculous exodus of the Jews from Egypt. After 210 years of oppression and cruel servitude, an entire people leave in astounding record time, faster than it takes dough to leaven into bread. We celebrate this event with a festive meal and ceremony called the...
