Category: Isralight Blog

A black and white image of a Jew being beaten in the streets of Vienna; Jews being forced onto trains and deported, and a column of Jews with faces full of despair, being forced out of town, herded down a dark street led by Rabbis holding Torah scrolls… Scenes straight out of the Holocaust; except they aren’t. These are actually scenes from a silent movie produced in 1924 in Austria, nearly fifteen years before Hitler’s Nazi Stormtroopers came marching across the border when Austria was annexed to Germany in what became known as the Anschluss, in March of 1938. The film was based on a book written and published in 1922 by Hugo Bettauer, a Jewish writer, who, somehow, saw what was coming. The book was a huge success and sold a quarter of a million copies. And it shined a light on the overt storm of anti-Semitism that was rapidly spreading across Austria and all of Europe. Two years later...

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,...

His disarming smile caught me by surprise, as did his baby-faced youthful appearance; he was after all a nineteen or twenty-year old kid; yet my son was clearly in awe of him, and I was curious to understand why. Our son Yair, after a grueling process, was recently accepted into an elite unit within the paratroopers, and we were invited after two months to visit his base for a special ‘Parents’ day’. For me it has been no less than fascinating to observe the process whereby the IDF molds these soldiers into elite fighters, but it has been equally interesting to note what sort of men are chosen to command these elite soldiers and to observe albeit from a distance what constitutes elite leadership from the army’s perspective. Some of what we hear from our son is not surprising: grueling physical exercises, uncompromising regulations, and even harsh conditions when the boys were out in the field (‘shetach’) for two weeks (including...

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...

Take a drive up the south side of the Golan Heights, and you will see one of the most incredible vistas in Israel. As the road winds up the side of the Golan cliffs, the panoramic view deep into Syria is overshadowed by the Russian made Syrian Bunkers that bear silent testimony to the near suicidal challenge that faced the Israeli troops who made their way up the mountain under murderous fire in 1967, breaking the stranglehold Syrian guns held over the Israeli towns and villages below.  Up on top of the Heights, as one drives across the open plains, one notices the occasional odd collection of trees that seem to grow in clusters above most of the Syrian positions that controlled the Heights. These trees are no accident; they are part of one of the most incredible stories in modern Israeli history, and bear witness to the fact that one man, in the right place, at the right time, can...

Prophecy 101: Ego is a Non-Prophet Venture This week we begin to read from the fourth of the five books of Moses. Although this book is referred to in English as the Book of Numbers, in Hebrew it is referred to as Bamidbar because of the opening verse; "And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness (Bamidbar) of Sinai ..." The Midrash, Jewish Oral Tradition, derives a somewhat puzzling insight from the fact that G-d spoke to Moses in the wilderness : Unless one makes himself hefker (open and ownerless) like a wilderness he cannot acquire wisdom and Torah. (Bamidbar Rabbah 1:7) In other words, to be receptive to the revelatory word of G-d you must be like the wilderness completely open and ownerless – in a state of humility and surrender. Moses heard the word of G-d not only in the physical location of the wilderness but also because was he was in a “wilderness” state of mind. Edging G-d Out The creative experience...

‘Kakash’: Tank Officer’s course; known as one of the most difficult courses in the Israeli army. Four and a half grueling months of misery deep in the desert, with little or no sleep, at best on or in the tanks, with no showers all week long; just an endless misery of dust, grease, scorching desert sun, and endless tank maneuvers.  The pinnacle of this course, which came all the way at the end, was the ‘Ringo’ maneuver.  After four months of training, each cadet was given a platoon of tanks to command, in deep desert and mountain terrain, with a host of unexpected dilemmas and targets thrown at him one after another. Designed to test his ability to react and make difficult decisions under intense pressure, it was the tank officer’s ultimate nightmare, and we all knew it was waiting for us at the end of the course. Failing this test meant failing Officer’s course.  For me, repeating the entire course...