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Beating Jealousy Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive. --Havelock Ellis In this week’s Torah portion Korach, a member of Moses' tribe the Levites and other communal leaders challenge Moses’s leadership and the appointment of priesthood to Moses’ brother Aaron. Motivated by envy toward Moses and Aaron they argue for equality. We are all holy. How can there be a hierarchy in holiness within Israel? They came as a group to oppose Moses and Aaron and said to them, "You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the LORD is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the LORD's assembly? Moses responded to Korach: Now listen, you Levites! Isn't it enough for you that the G-d of Israel has separated you from the rest of the Israelite community and brought you near Himself to do the work at the Lord's tabernacle and to stand before the community and minister to...

Sometimes, the most powerful experiences are the ones you least expect. Such was the case on a recent trip to Poland. Tucked in between our visits to the Lodz Ghetto in the morning and the Warsaw Ghetto in the afternoon, we made a brief stop in a town called Czestochowa where we found ourselves on an innocuous city street off a town square. There were 30,000 Jews in Czestochowa before the war; today it is Judenrein; no Jews are left.  We were not sure where our guide was taking us as we entered an apartment building and walked down the stairs into the basement until we suddenly found ourselves squeezed into a cellar that had been dug as a bunker under the street. The walls were still raw rocks and mud, and the dank musty smell of damp and rot was overpowering.  When the last Jews of Czestochowa were being deported to Treblinka in the summer of 1943 a certain Mr. Fishman,...

From His-tory to Her-story Is G-d male or female? One day my son Ananiel and my two daughters, Leyadya and Ne'ema, burst into my study. They had obviously been fighting over something and were very upset. I could see that I was chosen to be the lucky arbitrator to resolve another case of sibling rivalry. They shouted at each other, "You go, you ask Daddy." "No, no! You go, you go." Finally Ananiel, who was age five at that time, took the challenge and said, "O.K., O.K. Daddy, isn't it true that G-d is a boy?" Ne'ema and Leyadya, ages eight and nine, had tears in their eyes. I could hear them silently pleading with me, "Please no, please no. Tell us it's not true. It's bad enough our brother is a boy. Surely, G-d is really a girl." I said to them, "G-d is not a boy and G-d is not a girl. G-d is beyond that. We may talk about...

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of training to be a Rabbi and a teacher is to have spent time in the presence of great Torah scholars; it allows you to appreciate how little you really know. Having had the privilege of pursuing rabbinical studies in a place where geniuses ‘grew on trees’ and where classes were given by some of the greatest Torah scholars of the generation, the prospect of ‘graduating’ as a rabbi became somewhat of a daunting prospect. How does one reach the point where they feel ready to assume rabbinical studies? Especially after being exposed on a daily basis to what a Torah-scholar and a rabbi can be? I recall a friend very close to me who was, confronted with this very challenge: How do you know when you are ready to leave the greenhouse of the Yeshiva world and put the knowledge you have accrued to serve the community? Torah, after all, is an...

Getting the Divine View on You How to make worlds of a difference And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the picture of the LORD shall he view           (Numbers/BaMidbar 12:6-8) Several years ago, I gave my kids Cheerios for breakfast. It said on the front of the Cheerios box that on the back of this box is a three-dimensional Cheerios bumblebee. So I looked at the back of the box and saw a distorted, blurry thing. Have you ever looked at a 3-D book without the goggles? You see a mishmash of misprinted, distorted images. There were no goggles inside the box of Cheerios,...

It was a beautiful Sunday morning in June 1983, and I can still remember everything about that day. Most of us get excited at the prospect of travel to new places, imagining unforetold adventures and magical moments that lie ahead. After a long period of time studying in Israel I was finally leaving the country on a trip, so one would have expected me to feel excited, and in a glorious mood of anticipation. But this was a different type of trip; Israel was in the midst of the first Lebanon war, and, five months into my Israeli army service, we were headed into Lebanon for the first time; and I was anything but excited. After catching a public bus from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and walking to Yad Eliyahu stadium, we had traveled by army bus up north to Kiryat Shmonah, where we got up on our gear: flak vests, helmets with webbing and gear…. Standing in a ‘U’ formation, our commanders...

Isn’t Humbleness Just Low Self-Esteem? “Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” (Numbers 12:3) Was Moses, indeed, humble? The man who courageously challenged the mighty Pharaoh the King of Egypt, who led an entire people out of slavery, the man who after seeing the golden calf smashed the very tablets written by the finger of G-d. 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 its 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 humbleness and the source of powerful sacred self esteem. But there is an aspect of pride that comes from our ego which is haughtiness and self destructive; alienating us from our true inner self. This type of pride focuses...

Many years ago, I read a story regarding Rav Yitzchak Eisenbach from Jerusalem.  As a young boy, Yitzele’ was walking to the Kotel (The Western Wall) through the Jaffa gate one Shabbat afternoon, in a section of the city which was densely inhabited by Arabs. As he walked through the narrow, unpaved streets he passed numerous Arab-owned cafes in which young and old folks were milling around. Suddenly Yitzele noticed a gold coin on the sidewalk. The value of the coin was such that it could support a family the size of his own for a month!  The poverty in his home was wrenching, and he was thrilled at the prospect of being able to help his parents in their struggle for their family’s survival. However, because it was Shabbat, he would not pick up the golden coin. Instead, he put his foot on the coin to hide it from view, and decided to stand there until nightfall when Shabbat ended so...