Why is Life So Difficult?
Making peace with our battle
In this week's portion, Jacob asks for peace and relaxation, but G-d had another plan.
“Jacob settled (down) in the land of his father's dwellings, in the Land of Caanan.”
- Genesis 37:2
The foremost commentator, Rashi, explains: Jacob wanted to settle down in tranquility but then the ordeal of his son Joseph (sale into slavery) fell upon him. The righteous seek to dwell in tranquility but G-d says 'Is it not enough for the righteous what has been prepared for them (reward) in the World to Come that they need to seek tranquility also in this world!'"
Some people turn to G-d and religion, hoping to find refuge from all the turbulence of life, from doubt, from inner conflicts and mental turmoil. They want instant inner peace, spiritual contentment, and tranquility for their troubled souls.
According to Kabbalah, that is not the purpose of life on earth. In fact, it is just the opposite. We have...
Many years ago, at a Melaveh Malka (Saturday night party accompanying the end of Shabbat) in Har Nof in the Bostoner Beis Medrash I heard a wonderful story from Rav Levi Yitzchak Horowitz, z”tzl, the Bostoner Rebbe.
It seems that after Reb Yissachar, the Rebbe of Nickelsburg, passed away Reb Shmelke (Rav Shmuel Horowitz, the Bostoner Rebbe’s ancestor, who was to become one of the great leaders of world Jewry) was appointed to be the new Rebbe. When he was shown his new home, which had been the home of Reb Yissachar, he seemed distracted and barely paid attention to the tour of the home, finally explaining:
“There is a most remarkable smell in this house! It must be from an amazing Mitzvah (good deed) that was done here!”
But no one seemed to be able to come up with a story of Reb Yissachar that would justify to Reb Shmelke such a wonderful smell. The Rebbe became obsessed with knowing the source...
Real Love Means Embracing Conflict
The Secret of Jacob
The Torah (Bible) teaches us that Jacob went to the house Laban, his uncle, and dwelt there for many years. He married Rachel and Leah, Laban's daughters, and had eleven sons there. After years of struggling with Laban constantly deceiving him he finally left to return home and face Esau who hated him. In the middle of the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two handmaids and his eleven sons, and sent them across the Jabbok River shallows. After he had taken them and sent them across, he also sent across his possessions. Jacob alone remained on the other side of the river. It was there that the famous "stranger" appeared and wrestled with him until just before daybreak:
When the stranger saw that he could not defeat him, he touched the upper joint of Jacob's thigh. Jacob's hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him.
"Let me leave!" said...
It was a blisteringly hot day, and the shade of the trees offered little respite for the forty prisoners of the Waldkommando (Forest brigade) whose job it was to cut down trees for lumber for the nearby Sobibor extermination camp. Today, environmentalists might rail and protest at the sight of these mighty trees being felled in the forest, but in 1943, killing trees was not even a sidebar as the lumber was meant to keep the fires going in the pits where the bodies of tens of thousands of Jews were being burned in the Sobibor death camps. No one was protesting that incredible loss of life either, in the summer of 1943.
Having spent the morning under the watchful eyes of their Ukrainian guards with no respite from the insufferable heat, the prisoners were finally given a break for bread and water. Two prisoners were sent down to the nearby river with buckets to draw water for the Jewish inmates.
It...
Your Place or Mine?
Living in the Arms of Love
Jacob runs for his life to Charan because his brother Esau was out to kill him. The Bible records that on his way “he reached the place and spent the night there ... and lay down to sleep.” (Genesis 28:11)
The Midrash –the Jewish Oral Tradition-- interprets “the place” to mean “G-d.” G-d is “The Place” because according to the Kabbalah He made space within Himself for creation and always holds us all within His loving embrace. Therefore, His loving presence is our ground, context and place. Thus, it states:
Why do we refer G-d as “The Place?” Because He is the Place of the world (i.e. we exist within G-d) ... G- d is the dwelling place of the world...
Jacob lived this truth. He always defined himself and his actions within the context of G-d. Therefore, even though Jacob lay down in a physical place, He experienced himself exiting within the arms G-d’s loving...
There are few things more depressing than getting one of those brown army envelopes in the mail, notifying you of your imminent draft for reserve duty, but this one would be a little different. A year earlier, for various reasons, I had agreed to transfer into a new reserve duty unit. It meant leaving the guys I had been serving with for over ten years and with whom I had become quite close. But after the events of the ‘96 tunnel riots a few high-ranking officers began to see the writing on the wall and realized we were facing a significant security challenge most people were unaware of.
When the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, part of the agreement was the creation of a Palestinian Police force over the Green line. Officially we were supposed to supply them with 5,000 guns to maintain order. But by 1998, five years later, it was estimated there were over 200,000 guns floating around...
Selfishly Selfless
The Way To Self-Actualization
Judaism teaches that no character trait is absolutely negative, everything has a role. All we have to do is look at each trait with an open mind and determine the pluses and the minuses. When it comes to pride there is an aspect of it that comes from the godly grandeur of our soul and is therefore truly self-affirming. But there is an aspect of pride that comes from our ego which is self destructive, alienating us from our true inner self. This type of pride focuses on selfish concerns and social status; it embodies a desire for honor and one-upmanship. This type of pride confuses us to think that as an individual soul we stand independent and apart from the greater collective soul of the community. According to Jewish mysticism this kind of pride is self destructive because in essence our individual self is really an aspect of the collective soul of the community. We...
Tibor Rubin was a Corporal in the Korean War when his battalion found itself ambushed by thousands of Chinese troops in the battle of Unsan, North Korea, in the fall of 1950. The Americans’ firepower soon dwindled to a single machine gun. The weapon was in an exposed position and three soldiers had already died manning it when Corporal Rubin took charge. He fought until his ammunition was gone. Badly wounded, he was captured and sent to a P.O.W. camp, but his bravery helped many of his fellow soldiers survive. And his valor does not end there. He spent 30 months as a prisoner of war in North Korea, and fellow prisoners later testified about his willingness to sacrifice for the good of others; what gave him the strength to do all this?
Tibor was born on June 18, 1929, in Paszto, a Hungarian shtetl with a reported 120 Jewish families, to Ferenc and Rosa Rubin; his father, who...
Making Every Day Count
The Key to Making Life Worth Living
One day as I was waiting for a friend, an old woman sits down next to me. Suddenly she jumps out of her seat, turns to me and yells, "I should have never left Mexico!"
I look at her and ask, "When did you leave Mexico?"
"Thirty years ago!" she cries. "And I regret it every single day of my life!"
You would think that after 30 years a person would finally get used to where they were. But people often live in the past.
One of my students, age 28, told me that his father insulted him when he was age 12 and till this day he continues to feel hurt and angry. I explained to him that although his father hurt him when he was twelve he has allowed his father to continue to hurt him for another sixteen years by holding on to the pain and constantly remembering it. I suggested...
Of all the experiences I have ever had on Yom Kippur, none have made as indelible an impression on me as the ones I spent in Yeshivat Har Etzion as a young student in Israel.
Har Etzion is a very special type of yeshiva (institute for advanced Jewish studies), known as a Hesder yeshiva, where students choose not only to spend years studying Torah, but serve in the Israeli army as well. Literally with a bible in one hand and a rifle in the other, balancing the desire to grow spiritually with the need to contribute to the community and the country, these young men, veterans of some of Israel’s darkest hours were the role models that ended up shaping my life.
And particularly on Yom Kippur, when alumni come from all over the country to pray and study with each other and with their revered teachers, the experience was very powerful; no words could do justice to the feeling one gets...
