Created in the image of love
The power to be who you are
In the very opening sentences of the Torah (Bible) we are told that the first human being was created in G-d's own image. And what was that image? The first human being was actually a man and a woman — a single entity that included the two sexes. "And G-d created man in His own image, in the image of G-d created He him; male and female created He them" (Genesis 1:27).
In this union of male and female, in this oneness of opposites, the first human being reflected the image of G-d — a oneness that includes otherness and yet remains one.
This is a very important concept. A lone individual does not reflect the image of G-d; an individual in unity with another individual does. So until an individual makes a space to include another, and allows that other to do the same, we do not have the...
Endings and beginnings: the black and white of life.
Close to 80 years later, the image still remains, burned into his memory, as if it were yesterday.
He was five and a half years old, but already an adult, standing in the central square (the umshlagplatz) of the Piyotrekov ghetto, next to the synagogue. His father, the Rabbi of the town, stood tall and proud in the middle of the square surrounded by the men of the village, distinguishable by his long full beard and his black rabbinic frock. The men were all on one side of the square and the women and children, by decree of the Nazis, off to one side.
Tension filled the air, with an intense, silent fear of the unknown, as they stood waiting in the square from where Jews were sent to... where?
Seventy-eight years later Rav Yisrael Lau remembers watching as the commandant of the Gestapo approached his father, the Rabbi, with murder...
Sukkot and Simchat Torah
Celebrating Wholeness, Spontaneity and Anticipation
Off to a Right Start
The holiday of Sukkot reminds us of the huts of the Israelites as they wandered for forty years in the desert after their miraculous Exodus from Egypt . It would stand to reason, then, that Sukkot should be celebrated right after the holiday of Passover. However, the Talmudic sages explain that since Passover is in the spring, living in the sukkah would not be anything special. It is common to be outside during the warm months of the year. After Yom Kippur, however, when it starts to get cold, people generally take shelter inside. We go outside, only because G-d commands us to do so.
Leaving our homes precisely when we are not naturally inclined to do so, internalizes one of the important lessons of Sukkot-G-d is our only true shelter, and we must trust in Him. We often transgress the will of G-d, because we mistakenly think we...
Yom Kippur was over, and with the festival of Sukkot around the corner, I realized I had no way to get a set of four species in time for the festival.
Traditionally, every day of Sukkot (The Festival of the Booths, or the Feast of Tabernacles), one gathers the four species mentioned in the bible (The Etrog or Citrus fruit, the Lulav or palm branch, the Haddasim or myrtle branches, and the Aravot, or willow branches) wrapping them together as part of the daily ritual of the holiday.
We were actually in Lebanon at the time, and as I was the only Kippah-wearing soldier on the base, I already knew I would have no minyan ( community prayer service), and no sukkah (the booth Jews traditionally eat and sleep in during the festival.) So the thought of having no set of ‘arbah minim’ (the four species) was really depressing.
With so many patrols and duties (we were in a hot...
Getting the Forgiveness You Want and Need
Yom Kippur is all about love and forgiveness. It's about how we are always inseparably close to G-d. On Yom Kippur we get a glimpse of ourselves, our choices and our relationship to G-d from another perspective--G-d's perspective. This is the transformational power of Yom Kippur that makes it into a Day of Atonement and forgiveness.
There is a cryptic verse in the Book of Psalms (139:16), which, the Sages say, refers to Yom Kippur: The days were formed, and one of them is His.
Every day of the year we see the world from our perspective but there is one day -- G-d’s day -- when we get a glimpse of the way the world looks from His perspective and everything changes in light of that perspective. On Yom Kippur we see it all from the perspective of the World to Come where you get to see the whole picture.
The Talmud teaches that in this...
The thundering sounds of artillery fire echoed through the valleys beneath the Golan Heights and across the Sea of Galilee. All across the Northern border with Syria, civilians were huddled in their bunkers and bomb shelters, wondering when this latest round of violence would abate.
On the face of it, this was nothing new; for nineteen years the Israeli citizens of the north had endured an almost daily barrage of shellfire from the Syrian guns perched in the Heights above. In fact, an average of one thousand shells a day fell on the Kibbutzim, towns, and villages within range of the Golan, when the Syrian army had control of the Heights.
But this time it was different. It was June of 1967, and Israel had finally decided enough was enough.
For five weeks, Israel, in response to the Arab armies massed on her borders, had mobilized her reserves, and the economy had ground to a halt; it was a situation Israel could not...
Who is G-d to Judge?
How to Celebrate a Day of Judgment
I did not grow up in a religious home but we did go to shul (synagogue) every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I remember one Rosh Hashanah the rabbi got up and said, “We’re about to open the ark. It is customary for the congregation to stand while the ark is open, but it will be open for quite some time. So if you get tired, you can sit down.”
I thought to myself, “I only come here twice a year, so if standing and going through a little torture is going to take away my sins, then why not stand for the whole thing?” When they opened the ark, everyone stood and then everyone sat. I was the only one who remained standing. I figured, how long could it last, five minutes, ten minutes? I stood there in terrible pain for an hour and a half, figuring ‘OK. I guess...
I hadn’t planned on stopping to watch, but something about him caught my attention. Maybe it was his eyes, which was where his smile began; before it spread to the rest of his face; you could see it coming in the twinkle in his eyes.
Or maybe it was the fact that, knowing his history as a Holocaust Survivor, it seemed so powerful that on a day such as this, he could tell his story, with such a smile.
It was Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, the anniversary of the day our Temples were destroyed, the city of Jerusalem ransacked and hundreds of thousands of Jews murdered or sold into slavery, and he was being interviewed on Israeli television. A day full of painful memories for the Jewish people and yet here he was, smiling; so I stopped to hear his story. He began...
“How old are you?”
The question hung in the air as the Kapo in...
Choose Good, Feel Great
Secrets to Living Your Best Life
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your seed ------Deut. 30:19
Goodness that isn't chosen is not complete goodness. If we didn’t choose goodness—if we were just naturally good, or if goodness was the only option available—how could that be the highest expression of goodness?
I know a fellow that has dozens of guests over at his home every weekend. When I complimented him on his hospitality, he said, “What are you talking about? It comes naturally to me. It's not a struggle for me. I love to do this!”
Is he really choosing goodness? If it comes naturally, is it complete goodness? Goodness that wasn’t chosen is not the greatest good. Only after you struggle with evil and chose goodness will you accomplish true and complete...
One year, on Yom haShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), we were privileged to hear the story of a Holocaust survivor, Mrs. Marlit Wendel, who shared her incredible story with the Orayta students. Sometimes, it is the small details of a story that are the most powerful….
Marlit, her mother and older sister were able to survive Auschwitz and the war together. Their arms were actually numbered with three consecutive numbers.
Born in 1930, she was eight years old in October of 1938 when three Gestapo agents burst into their home in the middle of the night waking and terrifying her and her siblings and their babysitter. Her parents were out late, and upon seeing all the lights on when they returned understood the Gestapo was probably in the house. So her mother came upstairs and her father ran; they never saw him again.
After the war they found out he had been caught in a roundup in a shul and sent to the Sachenhausen concentration camp;...
