It was them against us; that much was clear. The only question was who would break first. I can’t even remember exactly what it was we were supposed to have done, and what it was that had so enraged them, but our sergeants were on the war path, and it was clearly going to be a long afternoon...
They called it a ‘misdar amerikai’ (American inspection), and none of us knew the origin of the term, but its meaning was clear enough. This had all started out as just another inspection. Six months into our army service, having completed basic infantry training followed by tank school we were now on maneuvers out in ‘the field’ where we were meant to learn how to assimilate all we had learned and begin to function as effective tank crews in battle-worthy battalions.
It was Friday afternoon, and after a week of intense maneuvers with very little sleep, followed by the weekly servicing of...
You Get Back What You Put In
The Joys of a Commandment-Driven Life
The Zohar, which is a Jewish mystical classic, written two thousand years ago, states that there will come a time when people will be performing tradition and rituals like cows eating grass.
Essentially, the cow chews its food, stores it and then chews its cud, thereby re-chewing the food, over and over again. The Zohar is using this metaphor as a symbol for something that is done mindlessly without intention or taste. In Jewish tradition, there is a concept called taamei mitzvos, which can be described as the "reason for the commandments." But taamei mitzvos can also mean the "taste of the commandments." In Hebrew, taam means both "taste" and "reason" — and there is definitely a connection between the two. Without understanding the reason behind the life of commandment it can become mindless and tasteless.
Imagine a man who observes Sabbath, but it has no meaning to him —...
It’s not easy being the new guy on the block. I had been in the army for almost two years, but I had only just started active combat duty in Lebanon as a young second lieutenant, straight out of Officer’s course, and while I may have outranked the guys in my platoon, I was also the one with the least amount of experience in the field.
Ten weeks of basic infantry training, three months of tank school and three months of tank-crew training in the field, followed by three months of tank commanders’ course, a month of pre officer’s infantry training and four and a half months of combat infantry officer’s training followed by eight grueling months of Tank Officers training, and I was heavy on training but woefully short on field experience, and my men knew it.
One of the results of being in training so long was that I had gotten used to the army way of details: morning...
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. “Knowing” implies two separate entities: the knower and the known.
However, you cannot know G-d in this normative way, because G-d is the source of all knowing. G-d is the source of all consciousness. Your very ability to think comes from G-d, who is the source of all thinking. How can you think about the source of all thinking? How can your mind hope to comprehend the source and ground of all minds? Yet if you want to know G-d, then you must seek the source of all...
When Bergen Belsen was liberated by the Allies on April 15, 1945, the sight that greeted their eyes, even by concentration camp standards, was like a scene from hell itself. Thousands of bodies were lying in heaps all over the camp. In a desperate attempt to bury the dead before the British arrived, two thousand inmates were made to drag corpses to massive burial pits for three days between April 11 and April 14. And yet there were still over ten thousand rotting corpses around the camp on the day of liberation.
The camp was over-run with typhus, typhoid and tuberculosis, in addition to a lack of food and water and basic sanitation.
When the British liberated the camp, there were over 38,000 prisoners, but tragically, most were so ill, only ten thousand survived. Many of those who died after liberation actually died due to the food bestowed upon them by unsuspecting Allied soldiers who, meaning well, did not realize that the...
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: “If G-d doesn't build your house, your labor is for nothing.”
Now you might think that if G-d is going to build your house, why do you have to labor at all? The...
His face is a study of pure determination, seeking every depression in the rock with which to grab hold. There is very little room for mistake, as one slip can result in a 3200-foot free-fall to the valley floor below. But he is determined, and foot by foot, precarious handhold by precarious handhold, he inches his way up in his relentless drive to reach the top of El Capitan, in Yosemite National park.
El Capitan is not just another climb; it is the Everest of free climbing which sees climbers from all the world attempting to scale its sheer cliff face. But they all do it with ropes and spikes. Alex Honnhold, perhaps the greatest free-climber alive today, is determined to do it without any ropes or spikes; he wants to do what no-one has ever done: to climb El Capitan with no help and no aids, just himself alone with sheer will.
En-route to Australia some years ago, I had...
Making G-d's Will Ours
"Behold you have sinned against G-d. And you your sin will find you." ~~ Numbers 32:23
THE PROCESS OF 'I'-DENTIFYING
If G-d were the sun each of us would be a ray of His divine light. The goal of the spiritual disciplines of daily Torah (Bible) life - study, prayer, meditation, and the performance of mitzvas (religious duties; plural formitzvah), is to serve G-d and, thereby, become one with our true essence. Through these practices we experience our self an aspect and individualized expression of the Timeless Universal Self - G-d.
The 20th century Kabbalist Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan explains in his book Inner Space that in order to feel this powerful truth, we must learn to disengage our inner self from its outer trappings. In other words, we have to get in touch with our soul as distinct from our persona, thoughts and feelings.
The goal of disengaging the self from the outer trappings is to realize that you are not your thoughts, your emotions, your body, your money,...
(reprinted from 2004)
In 1986, an Israeli fighter-plane was shot down over Lebanon, and the pilot and navigator, safely ejected from the burning plane, found themselves trapped behind enemy lines. In one of the most daring missions of the war, an Israeli search and rescue team flew in under heavy fire, and in a classic retrieval operation, with an Israeli commando suspended from a helicopter by a cable, literally plucked the pilot from the jaws of the approaching enemy only eight hundred yards away. His co-pilot already surrounded by an enemy that was only fifty yards away, could not be rescued.
Ask any Israeli air force pilot what his ultimate nightmare is, and he will tell you of Ron Arad, the navigator of that flight who had to watch his co-pilot whisked away to safety, while he was left behind. Years later, Ron Arad is still missing.
This mission raises one of the classic questions in military operations: at what point...
Can You Forgive G-d?
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. ~~ Anne Frank
This imperfect world is the perfect place for a dynamic life filled with challenge, growth and love. That’s the way G-d planned it.
Here is what the Torah tells us: “In the beginning G- d created heaven and earth. And the earth was chaos and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep....And G-d said: ‘Let there be light’: and there was light....G-d divided the light from the darkness. G-d called the light ‘Day’ and the darkness He called ‘Night’...Let there be firmament in the midst of the water...Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear...G-d called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of waters He called Seas, etc.’ (Genesis 1:2-10)
G-d intentionally created the world in a state of chaos, void, and darkness. This...
