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...
I remember the look of shock on his face like it was yesterday. At first it seemed to be more filled with fear, but then as the realization of what we were doing dawned on him, he was simply shocked.
It was, I believe, the summer of 1984, and we were on patrol in Beirut. Technically, the Lebanese stores were off limits to us, and we weren’t even supposed to go into them, but it was a really hot day, and we were really thirsty, so, using ‘initiative in the field’ a couple of us went in to a market to get a couple of six packs of coke for the guys.
Imagine what it would feel like to see two fellows in full gear with M-16 submachine guns, webbing and pouches and all, walk into the small corner grocery store you owned one afternoon.
I didn’t see his face right away, and only noticed his apprehension as I was walking back up...
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...
Court - a system any healthy society needs, but no one really wants to visit. Just like a judge: someone you want as a friend, but not someone you want to meet at work all too often. A date in court is not something most people look forward to, and the feelings such a visit generates range from frustration and trepidation, all the way to outright fear and terror.
The army has its own system of courts and judges, and military court, like any other court in the world, it is not somewhere you really want to be. In the field, it is most often the office of the commander, and, depending on the issue involved, it is usually the battalion commander who deals with the more serious issues.
When I was in the regular army, I was in the 195th battalion of the 500th armored division, and our battalion commander, a legend in his own right, gave new meaning to the...
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...
Recently at a wedding in LA, the family of the groom decided to daven mincha (pray the afternoon prayer) and someone immediately asked: ‘Which way is East?’ I was struck by the fact that in Israel no-one asks, ‘Which way is East?’; it’s always ‘Which way is Jerusalem?’ (I recall the first time in Lebanon we prayed facing south; a strange feeling for someone used to praying east, having grown up in NY…)
And of course, it is always powerful to realize that any Jew, praying anywhere in the world faces Israel. And every Jew in Israel always faces Jerusalem, and every Jew in Jerusalem faces the Old City, and every Jew in the Old City prays facing the Temple Mount and specifically the place where the Temple once stood. Why is the Temple so important that even today we still yearn for its rebuilding and pray facing its location?
It is interesting to note that the forerunner of the Temple or...
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 —...
Lebanon was a crazy place to be back in the early eighties, but after almost a year and a half in military courses and training I was glad to finally be dealing with the bigger picture.
My first 21 months in the IDF were mostly spent in course after course after course. Ten weeks of basic infantry training followed by ten weeks of the armored corps’ tank school training as a tank driver, followed by three months in the field training to be part of a tank crew and then a tank unit, followed by three weeks of intense training prep to be accepted to tank commander’s course, followed by three months of tank commander’s course in the desert, with a brief study respite leading to an intense month of prep for Officer’s course to 14 weeks of Infantry Officer’s course followed by eight months in Tank officer’s course; just reading the list still makes me weary.
So, finally with...
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 knowing....
I can close my eyes and I’m there: one of the most intense moments of my entire life; a moment straight out of Shakespeare: full of sound and fury, but signifying … everything.
Bullets flying everywhere, smoke grenades making it difficult to see; M-203 grenade launcher and Mag heavy machine gun doing their merciless work tearing up the top of the hill we were running towards; not sure what is really waiting for us on top of that hill, wanting so much to get there and yet, not wanting to get there, in the worst way….
Leading men, but to what? Does everyone walk down off this hill at the end of the day? Did we; did I, do everything I was supposed to do? Had I made any mistakes we would realize later were the reason for catastrophe? Would there be a catastrophe? Would I even be there to ‘realize later’?
And then, in the middle of it all, my gun...
