SOUL-UTIONS TO PAIN
The archetypical story about pain is recorded in the book of Job, who experiences horrible tribulations. Job's friends try to give him answers to explain his pain, but Job is not satisfied with any of their answers. In the end, G-d Himself speaks to Job and gives him resolve.
Job's friends tell him that there is no such thing as pain without justice. This means that when a person goes through pain it is simply the fulfillment of justice. Pain is not haphazard or accidental. In some way-even if we cannot possibly fathom why-we have deserved our pain. But Job does not accept this answer.
Maimonides, the great Torah sage known as the Rambam, says that this answer is actually the true position of Jewish tradition. In fact, when the Rambam discusses the meaning of "pain" or "suffering," he quotes the verse in the book of Job recording the answer of Job's friend who said that there is no pain...
Visiting Poland is an overwhelming experience; it is a country that serves as a mass memorial to European Jewry; a Jewish community that flourished for a thousand years, and is no more. To attempt to comprehend the enormity of millions of lives taken in such a brutal fashion; of one and a half million children and thousands of Jewish communities, is simply beyond comprehension. So one attempts instead to focus on an individual story; on the details.
A visit to the Jewish cemetery of Warsaw is a case in point. With hundreds of thousands of Jewish graves buried there over hundreds of years, including some of the greatest Rabbis of Jewish history, it is an overwhelming experience. At one point, on our recent visit to Warsaw, we stopped in front of a large gravestone with the name Adam Czerniaków (pronounced Cherniack; November 30, 1880 – 23 July 1942)
It was immediately clear there was a story here; he was buried in 1942, when...
Successful People Are Unaccomplished
Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy, a day of solemn rest to the Lord. (Exodus 35:2)
During the forty years that the Israelites wandered in the desert they carried with them a portable temple referred to as the Tabernacle or the Mishkan. The creative acts that are forbidden on Shabbat are those acts similar to the skills that went into building or assembling the Mishkan. The Talmud outlines 39 different categories of such creative acts that are forbidden to do on Shabbat. They represent our ultimate power of creativity which is to build a temple that accommodates the presence of G-d on earth. Of course we know that G-d does not literally dwell in the Mishkan, however, the Mishkan symbolizes our ability to serve G-d and infuse every moment and every place with the presence of G-d. In other words, the greatest accomplishment of a human being is to serve to make manifest G-d’s presence...
They were all so different; how would I ever be able to turn them into a cohesive unit?
It was my first command, and this was my first mission. After finally completing Officer’s course I was assigned to the 430th battalion of the 500th armored Brigade which at the time was still stationed in the Jordan valley. Given a few days to rest up after 11 grueling months of infantry officer’s training and then tank officer’s course I reported for duty to my new base with visions of commanding men under fire.
After meeting first the battalion commander and then my new company commander, I was assigned my quarters, where I met Chaim and Ohad, my two fellow platoon commanders. Having spent most of the past year sleeping in the field or in a tank it was awesome to have my own bed and cupboard in an actual room in officer’s quarters. It was late evening by the time I got my...
Shabbat: Rest Assured
Keep the Shabbat for it is holy unto you.....
because in six days G-d made heaven and earth: and on the seventh day
He abstained from work and rested. (Exodus 31: 14-17)
Most people know what you don’t do on Shabbat: you don’t tear toilet paper, you don’t drive, you don’t write, you don’t turn on lights, you don’t shop, etc. But they don’t know why, and they don’t know what it is you, in fact, do on Shabbat.
And of course, when you just focus on what you don’t do on Shabbat, the experience—which is supposed to be joyous and fulfilling—basically ends up sounding like torture. You have to ask yourself, “Is this the way I want to celebrate a holiday? Is this how I want to spend my weekend after working hard all week long?”
In order to understand the real meaning of Shabbat, let’s explore the first place it is mentioned in the Torah. This paragraph is from the Book of Genesis and...
Jerusalem; 722 BCE: the mightiest army on the face of the earth has surrounded the city; bent on conquest and determined to put an end to the Jewish people once and for all.
Approximately 35,000 people, all that remain of the Jewish people after the destruction and conquest of the North and the exile of the ten tribes, are crowded inside the city walls as the Assyrian army lays siege to Jerusalem.
The Assyrian general Saragon, also known as Sanhereb, the Destroyer, has never been defeated, and has amassed the largest army the world has ever known: 185,000 men.
Hizkiahu, the Jewish king, has no army to speak of; it would seem we are in the verge of the final solution to the Jewish people, 2,700 years ago.
And then G-d performs a miracle, and according to the book of Kings, on the first night of Passover, an Angel smites the Assyrian army and all 185,000 Assyrian soldiers die, saving the city of Jerusalem....
Purim: Secrets Behind the Purim Mask
Purim celebrates the salvation of the Jews from the wicked Haman's scheme to exterminate all the Jewish men, women, and children living in the Persian empire in the year 357 B.C.E., which essentially meant all the Jews in the world. Some of the commandments of Purim, such as hearing Megillat Esther, which recounts the Purim story, and enjoying a festive meal, are obvious ways to commemorate this deliverance.
Other commandments and customs have no apparent connection to what happened on Purim. Why are we required to give charity to the poor, send two food items to a friend, and get so drunk that we do not know the difference between Haman, the villain, and Mordechai, the righteous hero of the story? (This last commandment, I understand, is very rigorously kept in college dorms all year round.)
What is behind the customs to dress up in costume and to eat hamentaschen, delicious, sweet tarts named literally, "Haman's...
A few weeks ago I joined about 35 students from Yeshivat Orayta for a week in Poland. We had a remarkable guide named Rav Yitzchak Rubenstein who shared the following story with us:
The Nazis understood the power of hope. They always left the glimmer of a possibility that it might get better, perhaps because it often kept the Jews from risking it all in rebellion. (In the army they teach you in Officer’s course to always leave the enemy an avenue of retreat; you don’t want him to feel he has to make a last stand….)
In the ghetto, this meant that work was life. If you had a job (and the papers to prove it) that was deemed vital to the Nazi war effort, you were exempt from the transports to the East; no one really believed it was desirable to be on board one of those transports….
Before the war there were 250,000 Jews in Lodz, which was 40% of...
The Simple Art of Ecstasy
How to See Divine Presence Here and Now
“ And let them make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell amongst them.”
— Exodus 25:8
In this week's Torah Portion we encounter the precise design and magnificent beauty of the holy tabernacle and its' vessels. What is the relationship between this physical construct and feeling the presence of G-d dwelling amongst us?
YOU CAN SEE G-D
Once I was giving a seminar, and I asked everyone to look around the room and point to beauty. The first interesting result was that everyone pointed to something different. One man pointed to his wife. A woman named Bea pointed to a glass menorah (a Hanukkah candelabra) that was sitting on a windowsill. I asked Bea how she saw beauty in that menorah. Did she see beauty with her physical eyes? "Well," she answered, "the glass is translucent and its delicacy has an ethereal quality. The shape is pleasing to the eye and because...
This week's byte is dedicated in memory of Mr. Ernest Kan, Eliyahu ben Moshe v'Rochel, z"l, beloved father of Susan Rotsztajn.
As a child in Germany, Mr. Kan saw the worst that man was capable of, but chose to live life seeing instead all the beauty people could share. Among the very many special things his life represented, Mr. Kan was privileged as an adult, to return to the high school from which he was expelled (after Kristallnacht) to give the commencement address and share life lessons with the next generation of German children. He is greatly missed, and the world is a better place for his having been here....
Yehi zichro baruch (may his memory be a blessing for us all...)
Sometimes inspiration comes in the simplest of moments, like a good cup of coffee.
In the fall of 2000, my unit was called up on special emergency orders (known as a ‘Tzav Shmoneh’). I still recall the middle of the night phone call from...
