Category: Isralight Blog

I once met a fellow who was born in Germany, but managed to get out in 1938 in the nick of time. Some people don't think of such a person as a survivor in the same way as someone who survived the death camps, but Shmuel (not his real name) lost his entire family; he was the only one who managed to get out. And after three years in Nazi Germany, he lived on the run for two more years before finally escaping to Cuba. It is a mitzvah to hear such people's stories in order to remember, and I asked him what made him realize it was time to get out, when the rest of his family could not see the writing on the wall. It was a standard German-Jewish Holocaust story: 'it can't happen here' or 'the Jews have been through this before; we'll get through this as well'.... And to be honest, he wasn't overly concerned when...

“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, because a Jewish holiday...

Many years ago, when I was in High School, my mother arranged for me to get a ride up to school once a week with one of the teachers who taught there. We lived in Manhattan, and as the Mesivta High School I attended was in Riverdale, having a ride that morning saved me a good hour I would have spent on public transportation. It also meant leaving our apartment at 7:30am instead of 6:30 for which I was understandably grateful.  In retrospect, I am not entirely certain the arrangement was purely practical, as the teacher would regularly engage me in a variety of Torah topics and philosophical and existential questions … One morning as we were driving up the West Side Highway, a car barreled down an entrance ramp and slammed into the front of our car. After being thrown across the highway, the rebbe managed to get control of the car as the engine puttered off, and we...

Achieving Sacred Selfishness Happiness through holiness I had a student that once came into my office and said, "My father who passed away was an atheist and a fantastic human being. He was such a moral human being. He was such a good human being. I don't believe that had he been a believer, he would have been any better. He was the epitome of being a good person. So I have a problem with Torah because I really don't believe that it would have made a difference." So I told him that it isn't the goal of Torah to merely become a moral person. There is a lot more to it. Morality is important, but morality is a stage in the journey. The destination is holiness — being whole. Morality is an aspect of that, but it is not that. So I asked him, "Do you think your father might have been more holy?" That shocked him, he never even thought about holiness. What...

Some time ago, after a lecture on the ethical challenges of the seventh commandment ("Thou shalt not steal"), I was approached by a fellow from Vienna who was a Holocaust survivor. "Why do you assume stealing is always wrong?" asked the fellow, "Sometimes, it is even an obligation." "I always had a strong desire to take things, and I never understood why," he continued, "And it wasn't that I necessarily needed the things I took; I just loved the prospect of being able to steal things out from under people's noses. I became quite good at it, though my conscience always bothered me. Often, I was able to resist the temptation to take things that weren't mine, but it was always a struggle. I often wondered why G-d had burdened me with this particular challenge. I knew it was wrong to steal, and never rationalized theft; I just loved the 'thrill of the take'. Why did G-d create me with this challenge?...

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...

The  Klausenberger Rebbe is quoted as suggesting: ‘When you are in a place of darkness, you do not chase away the darkness with a broom. You light a candle.’ May this Torah serve as one more candle to help illuminate the darkness. Any serious student of history will recognize that there are moments, all too rare, when a door stands open, waiting for a person, a people, or even the entire world to walk through, and change life as we know it, forever. Such a moment came and went in 1967, when the paratroopers, on the wings of eagles, stormed the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.  There was a magic in the air that day, an indescribable feeling. It was as if anything was possible, and dreams could really come true. After two thousand years of dreaming and crying, longing, and waiting, a people who had never let go of a dream, were finally coming home.  A friend of mine, who was...

“Nachash Tzefah; Nachash Tzefah.” I remember it like it was yesterday: it was nearly 2AM, and the phone was ringing. I picked it up and was surprised to hear it was my father calling me from America. “Are you all right?” he asked, and I didn’t understand what on earth he was doing, calling us at 2 o’ clock in the morning; much less what he was concerned with. “Of course I’m all right, why wouldn’t I be all right?” And then everything changed, forever. He had heard on CNN that Iraq had launched a scud missile, which had fallen somewhere in Israel. He was more updated than I. As he was explaining what the news had said, the sirens went off, and I dropped the phone to wake up my wife and then one-year old eldest daughter, and rush them into our sealed room, as the code words for an Iraqi missile attack came blaring over the radio. I can remember the...

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...