Category: Isralight Blog

Dating the Divine Celebrating love  “These are the appointed holidays of G-d, holy convocations, which you are to proclaim in their appointed times.” — Lev. 23.4 Henny Youngman, the comedian, once said, "I tried being an atheist, but I gave it up. There were no holidays." What is a holiday really about? Is it the same as a vacation? A vacation is a time to vacate, but a holiday is a time to celebrate. To vacate means to take off, get away from the everyday and clear yourself out from the tensions and challenges of the daily grind. Perhaps you'll suntan on a beach, play golf or catch a good concert. A holiday, however, is a holy day. It is not an escape from everyday life to paradise. Rather, it is a time to infuse paradise into the everyday. This is the power of celebration. My guess is that the word celebrate connects to the word celestial. And from a Jewish perspective that would make sense,...

Counting The Omer; an Enormous Opportunity It was our first Masah’, our first forced march. We were barely two weeks in the army, and Itzik, a sadistic little first sergeant who had made it his mission to make us, or rather, break us into soldiers, owned us for the night. Whenever a unit in training goes out on any maneuver without an officer, the rule in the Israeli army is that the unit has to stay within sight of the base. Officers undergo intensive training in navigation and map reading, and the point is to be sure men don’t get lost out in the field. Theoretically, this should have been good news, as it meant the distance we could cover was limited. But as we soon discovered, Itzik was not to be deterred. We were based in a miserable little hole not far from the Mediterranean shore, and unfortunately this meant there were lots of sand dunes for them to run...

Some years ago, on a Pesach program, an elderly gentleman named Yaakov Gross asked a few of us if he could speak before the Yizkor service. He wanted to share the story of his bar mitzvah in Bergen Belsen. This is the story he shared: In January of 1945 the Nazis were still trying to convince the world that they were treating the Jews well. So, they invited a delegation of the Red Cross to visit the camp. As part of the ‘show’ that they prepared, they ‘invited’ a few of the boys from the kinder-lager, the children’s’ barracks, to celebrate their bar mitzvah in Bergen Belsen; true story. And for the occasion, they erected a platform (read: bimah) in the middle of the square where roll calls and hangings were normally held. And, no less incredible, they secured a Sefer Torah for the event! And so, young Yaakov Gross, who was thirteen, along with five other boys, ascended to receive...

Sick Minds, Sick Bodies The power of our beliefs to heal or harm The Jewish Sages gave a spiritual rather than physiological explanation for the disease tsara'as (generally translated as "leprosy") which affected not only the body but also clothing and the walls of houses. According to one source several sins could possible be the cause: R. Shmuel bar Nachmani said in the name of R. Yochanan: Because of seven things the plague of leprosy is incurred, namely, slander, the shedding of blood, a vain oath, incest, arrogance, robbery and envy. (Arakhin 16a) However, most Sages concur that the main cause for tsara'as was slander and gossip. HOW CAN WE UNDERSTAND THE PHYSICAL IMPACT OF OUR MORAL AND SPIRITUAL ACTIONS? The Kabbalah teaches that the world you and I live in is a product of our perception of reality. The philosopher Immanuel Kant probed this concept. He asked: Do we see reality or do we see our perception of reality? Kant's answer is that we do...

Is there a point past which a person can no longer change; can no longer be forgiven? On the one hand, Jewish law clearly teaches that for some transgressions, such as murder, a person is put to death, suggesting that such a person can no longer redeem him or herself in this world. On the other hand our tradition also teaches us in the name of Rabbi Eliezer (Avot 2:10) “repent the day before you die “ and in the Talmud (Shabbat 153) he explains this to mean that a person should always repent as he never knows when he might die, the clear implication being everyone can repent. Rav Ephraim Oshry one of the last rabbis of the Kovno Ghetto, in his powerful responsum from the Holocaust, Mima’amakim, shares that a fellow came over to him in the DP camp, after the war, with an intense question. He had been a Chazan (cantor) before the war, and some of his fellow former...

You are Loved! Don’t Pass Up Passover I was once sitting and learning Torah with the Hollywood Actor, Kirk Douglas,z”l, when suddenly he turned to me and said, “You know, Rabbi, I love being Jewish.” “Oh, yeah? Why?” I asked. “Because being Jewish is dramatic!” I was surprised by his unusual answer and thought to myself, I guess for these big-time actors, everything is showbiz. “Dramatic? I am sorry but I don’t get the connection,” I told him. “Rabbi, I know drama, and let me tell you, Jewish life and Jewish history is dramatic. In fact, there are several archetypical themes to all films, and they are all from the Bible. Here, let me show you what’s drama.” Kirk then jumped out of his chair and began to improvise a drama. “Now, watch this. Let’s say we are shooting a scene and it’s about a guy named Jerry who is going to get some challenging news about his mother. How do we make it dramatic? We would...

The Gift of the Given Moment A Passover Thought from the Portion of Tzav There are places in this world that are so powerful, so full of meaning that they allow us to tap in to why we are really here. Such a place is Emek HaBacha, The Valley of Tears. In this valley, deep in the Golan Heights, in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, a small group of men held off the might of the Syrian Armored Corps and saved the State of Israel. There is a power to this place, and if you listen carefully to the wind howling through the hills, you can still hear the cries of the men who fell there. We took a group of our students there a few years ago on Israel’s Memorial Day. As I was sharing the story of the battle, I noticed a fellow standing off to the side watching us. You could tell from his eyes that he had...

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...

It wasn’t the danger, or the tension, or even the uncertainty of what lay ahead that was the most challenging part of being in Lebanon, it was the drain of the routine. Day in, day out, patrol after patrol, eight-hour shift after eight-hour shift, Lebanon had a way of wearing you down, until it all became one big blur of green. Which was probably why he slipped by me. Every time we went out on patrol my responsibility as the Officer On Duty (O.O.D.) was to brief and inspect the men. All these years later I can still do it in my sleep: ammunition, cartridges, special weapons check, dog tags, canteens, passwords, orders for opening fire, radio frequencies, personnel check, emergency systems...all done so many times it became a routine you barely needed to keep your eyes open for. Sometimes, despite having a list of the men going out, a name would change because someone switched duty with someone else, and this was...