More than what he was saying, it was his face that caught my attention. Flicking on the television absent- mindedly as I was getting dressed for a wedding, I came across the middle of a program on what, after a moment, I realized was a story from that summer's war in Lebanon.
A young man, who had clearly been there, was describing some of the events surrounding a particular battle, though I had missed the beginning of the program and do not know exactly where these events took place.
He was sharing what must have been an extremely difficult experience: the house his unit had taken refuge in was hit by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile, a number of his comrades had been killed and wounded, and he himself wasn't sure he would make it. But what made me stop and listen was his face.
The events he was describing must have been extremely painful, and yet there was no pain...
Is G-d a Lover or a Judge?
When we take a bird's eye view of the holidays that inaugurate the New Year, we see a collection of diverse and disturbing images for G-d. The predominant image for G-d, on Rosh Hashanah, is King and Judge who is writing us into a cosmic Book of life or death. Yom Kippur is associated more with G-d as a compassionate forgiving Father. Sukkot features G- d as a lover---the sukkah also symbolizes a wedding canopy. And on Simchat Torah we reach the height of intimacy and complete union with G-d. What are we to do with all this imagery? Are we really supposed to believe all this?
Surely all these images are only metaphors for a higher divine truth that is beyond spoken words and conceptual images. We can only know the divine truth experientially. Anyone who believes that G-d is literally a King, Judge, Father or Lover is making graven images of G-d and...
One of the most tragic episodes to come out of the Holocaust was the terrible story of the St. Louis.
In 1939, the last boat that was actually allowed to take Jewish refugees out of Nazi Germany was the St. Louis. At that point, the Germans still wanted only to rid themselves of Jews; they didn’t care much where else they would go. And they saw this as a moneymaking opportunity. So they announced that any Jew who could afford five hundred dollars passage (plus an additional two hundred and fifty dollars entrance visa to Cuba), could book passage on the steam ship St. Louis.
Understand that this was, in 1939, an absolute fortune. In fact, five hundred dollars in 1939 was equivalent to almost eleven thousand dollars today! (Before adding the inflation since then….) Add to that the fact that the Jews of Germany and Austria who boarded this ship, had been under Nazi oppression since 1933, and with the...
How Happy is Happy Hour?
And you shall be happy in all that the Lord your G-d has given you (Deut. 26:11)
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. --- Anne Frank
Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. --- Hellen Keller
Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. ---- Spike Milligan
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King Solomon said in his famous book Ecclesiastes, “I praise happiness,” and yet he also concluded “What does happiness accomplish?”
Is happiness praiseworthy or worthless?
The Talmud explains that King Solomon was referring to two types of happiness. The happiness derived...
Teaching in the Old City of Jerusalem, one develops a certain awareness, almost a radar, for the different types of people that can wander in off the street. Many of the people who frequent the old alleyways and ancient stones of Jerusalem are incredible people with incredible stories. But every once in a while, you can get interesting characters who walk in the door. We once had a fellow wander in who was absolutely convinced that he was King David…. (In fact, there is a medical term for a specific mental disorder which affects people who may visit Jerusalem and have too intense a spiritual experience, resulting in the conviction that they are prophets or the like, known as ‘The Jerusalem Syndrome’.)
So you keep your eyes open for such individuals, and you develop an ability to deal with their issues without distracting the rest of the group.
One day, a few minutes after my class had begun, a fellow wandered in...
Getting From the Real to the Ideal
The Journey of Personal Transformation
When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your G-d has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, and take her for a wife - Then you shall bring her home to your house... ... and she remain in your house and weep for her father and mother for a month, and after that .... she shall be your wife. And if you do not want her, you shall send her out on her own; you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, because you "violated" her. (Deut. 21:10-14)
The Torah permits this only as a compromise to the yetzer ha-ra (evil urge). (Talmud Kiddushin 21b)
'And you shall take her unto you as a wife' - the Torah only permits this in...
He had such a beautiful face; I had seen him on the same street corner a couple of times, and each time I caught sight of him, he challenged me anew. He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, with dark curls, olive skin, and the most beautiful brown eyes, twinkling above the wisp of a smile that hovered on his face. To me, he epitomized the challenge of the war we have been engaged in for the past sixty years and more, in the State of Israel.
It was the height of the Intifada, and we were in the midst of a months’ worth of reserve duty in Hebron, back in 1990 or 1991. It is so easy to demonize the ‘enemy’, and one almost needs to imagine the terrorists we were trying to root out as men with evil in their hearts and hatred on their minds, but life isn’t always quite so simple.
Deep in the heart of...
The Prophet Powered Life
“I (G-d) will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto you (Moses); and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him” (Deut. 18: 18)
Through using methods such as meditation and music, the prophets of ancient Israel were able to induce altered states of consciousness in which they experienced a direct revelation from G-d. Sometimes they received a message for the entire world.
When such messages had eternal significance, they were recorded and later incorporated into the Hebrew Bible. Only fifteen prophets’ revelations are included, with another dozen or so prophets mentioned by name in the various Biblical books. The Talmud, however, tells us that there were as many prophets in ancient Israel as Israelites who came out of Egypt during the Exodus, in other words, approximately three million.
The Talmud also tells us that after the Temple was destroyed, the period of...
(from 2018)
Imagine the scene: A beautiful afternoon, with a westerly wind blowing cool air in from the Mediterranean and a group of children and teenagers playing with kites, flying in the wind.
The sounds of the children’s laughter carry across the sand; such an innocent scene on a beautiful late afternoon along the Mediterranean coast.
Only this is not Long Island Sound; it’s the Gaza strip. And the innocent kites these children are flying are laden with incendiary devices and petrol bombs, and they are not innocently flying kites; they are releasing weapons aimed at their Jewish cousins playing in playgrounds and summer camps a short few kilometers away. This is the new generation of ‘RPG kids’, and just like the seven and eight-year-old Lebanese children trained by the PLO to fire RPG anti-tank weapons at Israeli tanks in Lebanon in the First Lebanon War of the early 1980’s, these children are soldiers in the new children’s army of Hamas.
So how...
A Short-Cut to a Life of Blessings
You get what you give
“Thou shalt not harden thy heart, nor shut thy hand from your needy brother; surely open thy hand to him.”
— Deut. 15:7-8
Is there a short-cut to the spiritual wealth of life? One of the most powerful and immediate ways to connect the circuit of life, and let the blessings flow is Tzedaka, that is charity.
The Talmud teaches: "Tzedaka saves from death." When we need an incredible influx of life force — because we are facing impending physical death or impending spiritual death, the act of giving to charity can be one of the most powerful antidotes.
As proof for the statement, the Talmud tells the incredible story of the daughter of the famous Rabbi Akiva, who lived some 2,000 years ago. A star-gazer told Rabbi Akiva that his daughter would die on the day of her wedding. Rabbi Akiva replied that just because it is written in the stars...
