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...
Walk into The Old City through the Jaffa Gate, and after a short stroll down Ohr HaChaim Street you will suddenly find yourself looking down upon one of the oldest streets in the world. Known as the Cardo and built by the Romans nearly two thousand years ago, it was the main (cardinal) thoroughfare in Jerusalem for nearly seven centuries, and one can still see the magnificent Roman columns which adorn its path, rediscovered (courtesy of Jordanian mortar shells) after the Six Day War in 1968.
Any tourist who has ever visited Jerusalem in the last fifty years has most probably seen and even walked on this magnificent colonnade. But there is a detail concerning this street that changed the way I look at it forever.
This street was built by the emperor Hadrian following the Bar Kochba Rebellion. (There are some who suggest it was partly a cause of the rebellion, but many choose our approach.) After the Great revolt, when...
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 for mitzvah), 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...
Maxim Cohen was born in Morocco and made Aliyah to Israel as child in 1948. He enlisted in the IDF and became a driver. But following the Six Day War in1967, Cohen left Israel with his parents to live in France.
On Yom Kippur in 1973, Cohen – a traditional, observant Jew – was in Synagogue with the Jews of his community. At 2 p.m. during the afternoon prayers, his wife arrived in a car and Cohen immediately knew something was wrong. He rushed outside to discover that war had broken out in Israel. He rushed to the Israeli embassy in Paris where they were assisting soldiers wanting to return to Israel to join the war effort.
Arriving in Israel, he was attached to an armored force fighting the Egyptians in the Sinai. Cohen and his unit eventually crossed the Suez Canal, and after three weeks of intense fighting, on October 24 – the last day of the war, arrived at...
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...
Nineteen hundred and fifty-two years ago, this past week, (on the 17th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz) the end finally began. After two and a half years of siege, the Roman Legions broke through the ancient walls of Jerusalem and began their savage rampage of pillage and looting through the streets of Jerusalem. Although the walk from the city walls to the temple mount is a short ten-minute stroll, it would take the Romans three weeks to actually set fire to the Temple and end the battle for Jerusalem. Amidst the fire and destruction, Rav Yochanan Ben Zakkai smuggled himself out of the city, realizing the war was lost, and preferring to begin the long and tortuous process of assuring the Jewish people’s survival in the exile.
Nineteen hundred years later, the Jews of Jerusalem again faced that most awful of challenges: to stay and fight or leave and live to fight another day.
In her book Forever My Jerusalem,...
When the Loser is a Winner
The Talmud teaches that King Solomon wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes after he saw prophetically that his kingdom and the Temple that he worked so hard to build would be destroyed. Imagine what a devastating realization that must have been to know that what you invested your entire life will be destroyed. We can understand why he bemoaned, “Futility of futilities ... what profits does a man have from all his work under the sun.”
However, his ultimate resolution was “Revere G-d, live by His commandments -- for this is all man is.”
King Solomon realized that our real accomplishments in life is not building the kingdom or the temple on earth, but what we make of ourselves -- the kingdom and temple we build in our inner world.
This does not mean that you should not build in this world but rather that you should recognize that what you build on the outside is not the goal...
5th January, 1895; the sharp sound of the sword broken over a soldier’s knee reverberated across the Morlan Court of the Military academy in Paris. The captain stood at attention, but the sound made him flinch with the symbolic breaking of his sword and the even more painful and humiliating tearing of his rank-epaulettes off his shoulders, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’ life was now broken. Accused of treason, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on the infamous Devil’s Island, never again to hold his beloved children in his arms and or feel the caress of his wife’s loving embrace.
The French command knew there was a traitor in their midst and as the enmity between them and the Germans grew in the period leading up to World War I, they were determined to find the person leaking secrets to the German High Command. Dreyfus, a Jewish Captain in the artillery assigned to the French High Command, was the natural scapegoat. It...
Living G-d’s Life
Quite frankly, I don’t believe in G-d. The word spelled G-O-D does nothing for me; in fact, it interferes with my true belief.
I am not alone. Jews don’t believe in G-d. Indeed, the word “G-d” is not found in the Torah or the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Moses never heard of G-d nor heard from G-d.
The name in the Torah that has been translated as G-d or Lord is Adonai. The word Adonai means “Master.” In Jewish law, whatever a servant owns actually belongs to his master; the servant has no possessions whatsoever. This law also governs our spirituality: G-d is our Master, and in essence we own nothing. For example, it is incorrect to say “my” life because it is really G-d’s life. We do not own the life force within us.
This is a difficult concept to accept for many people because it is not a concept—it is a self-evident experience. Consider this: If we are...
I can still remember the exact moment: we had just come in from manning an impromptu roadblock all day and I was still on edge. Six of us had been tasked with setting up a road block round a bend in the road in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley no more than a few kilometers from the Syrians, and you could not help but tense up every time a car or truck came around the bend.
Would they stop or try to run through us? Would they be armed? Open fire? As the officer in charge, it was nearly impossible to ensure all the men were adequately protected; all you could do was set up a couple of the guys in cover fire positions and do your best to keep everyone on their toes for eight hours in the sun….
By the time we got back in the late afternoon, my nerves were fried, and I was completely exhausted. But as soon as I entered...
