WHY IS LIFE SO DIFFICULT?
Making peace with our battle
In this week's portion, Jacob asks for peace and relaxation, but G-d had another plan.
“Jacob settled (down) in the land of his father's dwellings, in the Land of Caanan.” — Genesis 37:2
The foremost commentator, Rashi, explains: Jacob wanted to settle down in tranquility but then the ordeal of his son Joseph (sale into slavery) fell upon him. The righteous seek to dwell in tranquility but G-d says 'Is it not enough for the righteous what has been prepared for them (reward) in the World to Come that they need to seek tranquility also in this world!'"
Some people turn to G-d and religion, hoping to find refuge from all the turbulence of life, from doubt, from inner conflicts and mental turmoil. They want instant inner peace, spiritual contentment, and tranquility for their troubled souls.
According to Kabbalah, that is not the purpose of life on earth. In fact, it is just the opposite. We...
Many years ago, at a Melaveh Malka (Saturday night party accompanying the end of Shabbat) in Har Nof in the Bostoner Beis Medrash I heard a wonderful story from Rav Levi Yitzchak Horowitz, z”tzl, the Bostoner Rebbe.
It seems that after Reb Yissachar, the Rebbe of Nickelsburg, passed away Reb Shmelke (Rav Shmuel Horowitz, the Bostoner Rebbe’s ancestor, who was to become one of the great leaders of world Jewry) was appointed to be the new Rebbe. When he was shown his new home, which had been the home of Reb Yissachar, he seemed distracted and barely paid attention to the tour of the home, finally explaining:
“There is a most remarkable smell in this house! It must be from an amazing Mitzvah (good deed) that was done here!”
But no one seemed to be able to come up with a story of Reb Yissachar that would justify to Reb Shmelke such a wonderful smell. The Rebbe became obsessed with knowing the source...
Real Love Means Embracing Conflict
The Secret of Jacob
The Torah (Bible) teaches us that Jacob went to the house Laban, his uncle, and dwelt there for many years. He married Rachel and Leah, Laban's daughters, and had eleven sons there. After years of struggling with Laban constantly deceiving him he finally left to return home and face Esau who hated him. In the middle of the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two handmaids and his eleven sons, and sent them across the Jabbok River shallows. After he had taken them and sent them across, he also sent across his possessions. Jacob alone remained on the other side of the river. It was there that the famous "stranger" appeared and wrestled with him until just before daybreak:
When the stranger saw that he could not defeat him, he touched the upper joint of Jacob's thigh. Jacob's hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him.
"Let me leave!" said...
Rabbi Abraham Twerski shares a powerful story about one his ancestors, the great Rebbe Nachum of Chernobyl (in his book Generation to Generation).
It seems that Rebbe Nachum owned a magnificent pair of Tefillin (Phylacteries), which had actually been written by Reb Ephraim, the great scribe of the Baal Shem Tov, in the early eighteenth century. A wealthy member of the community had offered Rebbe Nachum a staggering fifty rubles for the tefillin. Yet, despite the fact that he lived in abject poverty, Rebbe Nachum had consistently refused to part with the tefillin. His wife on occasion had pleaded with him to sell the tefillin to support their family (one could buy a new, perfectly good pair of tefillin for two rubles) to no avail. Even when they had no wood for the fire or the children were starving, he refused to sell the tefillin, always somehow finding other ways to put some meager amount of food or money on...
The Secret to Happiness
If you think religion is going to give you a quick fix you are wrong. And if you think that religion will put you on easy street you are deluded.
Very often religion is presented as offering the secret to ultimate happiness. I have heard religious leaders try to entice people towards a religious lifestyle promising them that through the synagogue or the church they will find happiness and bliss.
This approach is really no different than any other marketing strategies. People want to be happy and are looking for the magic formula. Marketers bombard us daily with promises for a better life. Blondes have more fun, toothpaste gives your mouth sex appeal, lose weight and feel great. It is too easy to point to a million things that we are missing that are the cause of our unhappiness. People think that all they need is the more and the right. If only I had more hair, more...
There are few things more depressing than getting one of those brown army envelopes in the mail, notifying you of your imminent draft for reserve duty, but this one would be a little different. A year earlier, for various reasons, I had agreed to transfer into a new reserve duty unit. It meant leaving the guys I had been serving with for over ten years and with whom I had become quite close. But after the events of the ‘96 tunnel riots a few high-ranking officers began to see the writing on the wall and realized we were facing a significant security challenge most people were unaware of.
When the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, part of the agreement was the creation of a Palestinian Police force over the Green line. Officially we were supposed to supply them with 5,000 guns to maintain order. But by 1998, five years later, it was estimated there were over 200,000 guns floating around...
Selfishly Selfless
The Way to Self-Actualization
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 the 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 self affirming. But there is an aspect of pride that comes from our ego which is self destructive; alienating us from our true inner self. This type of pride focuses on selfish concerns and social status; it embodies a desire for honor and one-upmanship. This type of pride confuses us to think that as an individual soul we stand independent and apart from the greater collective soul of the community. According to Jewish mysticism this kind of pride is self destructive because in essence our individual self is really an aspect of the collective soul of the community....
Eli Wiesel describes one of the most painful moments he ever experienced, as a push from behind. Shouting, chaos, dogs barking and even attacking, SS guards with guns shouting commands in German which most could not understand; for the Jews who arrived at Auschwitz, stepping out of the cattle cars onto the platform must have been a hell beyond description; a world of pure chaos and terror. Eli Wiesel’s mother, having survived the ghetto, must have instantly understood what was happening: the Nazis were herding the hapless Jews towards the far end of the platform, where they were being split into two lines. She must have been watching and quickly realized what that selection meant: all the young and strong were headed to the right, and the old and sick the weak and the babies were being directed to the left; you did not have to be a genius to figure it out, so she pushed young, barely bar mitzvah...
Making Every Day Count
The Key to Making Life Worth Living
One day as I was waiting for a friend, an old woman sits down next to me. Suddenly she jumps out of her seat, turns to me and yells, "I should have never left Mexico!"
I look at her and ask, "When did you leave Mexico?"
"Thirty years ago!" she cries. "And I regret it every single day of my life!"
You would think that after 30 years a person would finally get used to where they were. But people often live in the past.
One of my students, age 28, told me that his father insulted him when he was age 12 and till this day he continues to feel hurt and angry. I explained to him that although his father hurt him when he was twelve he has allowed his father to continue to hurt him for another sixteen years by holding on to the pain and constantly remembering it. I suggested...
Eternity; a powerful word; what does it mean? Does anything really last forever?
Many years ago, in the wee hours of pre-dawn darkness on an empty Jerusalem road, I discovered just how fleeting life can be. At 4am, after a very late night studying and reconnecting with my students after a prolonged trip overseas, I was finally headed home for what I thought would be a peaceful Shabbat and a chance to reconnect with my wife and kids, I must have fallen asleep at the wheel. I was rudely re-awakened when my tiny Peugeot 104 wrapped itself around an electric pole.
Had I not been wearing a seatbelt, I probably would not be here, but I quickly realized I was in serious trouble. The impact was so powerful that my wife would later describe the steering wheel as completely bent by the force of my body crashing into it. When my belongings in the car were eventually returned the steel...
