Category: Isralight Blog

Along with all the challenging events of the summer of 2014, including the terrible kidnapping and murder of our three boys Gilad Eyal and Naftali, I heard an incredible story:  A teacher who worked in a resource room in a class for children with learning disabilities had a young student who joined the class and started taking lessons. He clearly had no difficulty with his lessons and consistently did well on tests, and yet continued to attend the classes as a remedial student. Try as she might, the teacher could not determine what learning disabilities this boy might have.  Assuming the boy was simply trying to find an easier path of study, she took him aside and explained to him that he could not continue to attend the remedial class as it was a waste of his time and unfair to the other students who were in much greater need of her attention.   Lowering his voice, the boy said he would tell...

Ready to HotSync Your Soul? Secrets to a Super-Natural Life of Freedom and Synchronicity Years ago, I saw these sandals I really liked. At the time, I knew nothing about these shoes other than I just liked the way they looked. So I went into a store and I tried on a pair, but they didn't feel right. They had all these funny bumps inside of them. I told the salesman, "There is something wrong with these shoes." He said, "No there is something wrong with your feet. You must understand that these shoes are designed to support the shape of a natural foot." "What's unnatural about my feet. They're in their natural place — at the end of my legs." He laughed. "You don't understand. Your feet have taken the unnatural shape of the shoes you've been wearing. And the shoes you've been wearing are good for killing cockroaches in tight corners, but they are not meant to contain feet." I felt insulted so I took...

It was her eyes that really captured me; there was an intense sadness there mixed with pain, and yet every now and then a flash of fire that seemed to suggest… defiance?  The woman was being interviewed on the television news and I stopped for a minute to watch. The screen was focused in close, showing only her face, and as the commentator translated, I realized she was speaking about her son who had just been killed in a terrorist bus bombing. I watched as a tear rolled down her cheek and listened to her describe all of the dreams and aspirations her son, Yosef, would never realize.  The camera panned around what must have been his room, and I noticed a soccer ball lying in the corner. The cameraman must have noticed it too, because he immediately panned in on the mud-speckled ball, which better than anything the mother was saying, conveyed the tragedy of lost hopes and dreams, and represented...

Love Thyself!! Secrets to Your Ultimate and Everlasting Net Worth Just as a person must believe in G-d, so too, he must afterwards believe in Himself. That is to say, that G-d is involved with him and he is not a waste—that he is here today and gone tomorrow... Rather one must believe that his soul is from the Source of Life, may His name be blessed and that G-d gets pleasure – taanug-- in him and is -- mishtashaya -- playfully involved with him when he does His will. And this is the meaning of the verse “and they believed in G-d and Moses His servant” (Exodus 15). [The soul of] Moses consisted of the 600,000 souls of the Jewish people of that generation --- and they believed that G-d desired them – wants and receives pleasure from the good within them. - Rabbi Tzadok Hacohen: Tzidkat HaTzadick 154 I heard an interview with a famous singer. The interviewer asked her, “What are your feelings...

One of the saddest stories I ever heard was from a Holocaust survivor many years ago who would say Kaddish on the tenth of Tevet every year, in the shul I grew up in as a boy. He was given the privilege of leading the services on that day and for a long time I thought he just had a Yahrtzeit (the anniversary of the death of a loved one…) on the tenth of Tevet. Until one year when I found out he said Kaddish for his whole family on this day because he never found out the exact day of their deaths; the tenth of Tevet is the day chosen to remember those whose exact date of death is not known. One year he spoke on Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) in the Synagogue’s Hebrew School, and I went to hear him speak. It transpired that he had escaped the Warsaw ghetto by hiding under a pile of dirty uniforms...

To Serve with Joy Is your life ‘out of service’? “And Moses and Aaron were brought again unto Pharaoh; and he said unto them: 'Go, serve the LORD your G-d; but who are they that shall go?' And Moses said: 'We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds we will go; because the holiday of G-d is for us.'” — Exodus 10:8-9 The King of Egypt must have been quite surprised by Moses answer. To serve G-d is not like serving you. It is not about degrading back-breaking slavery rather a joyful celebration for the whole family. To serve G-d is a holiday for us. The Secret to Service Most people think that a mitzvah is a "demand" meant to deprive or diminish our godly self worth. But that is incorrect. A mitzvah is a "command" enabling us to co- operate, associate, identify and thereby consciously bond with G-d and experience His love. This is...

In 1925, the American Astronomer Edwin Hubble demonstrated (as an extension of Vesto Slipher’s discovery in 1918) that the Universe was actually not static; it was expanding: every galaxy in the observable proximity of earth (as far as 6 x 1017 miles away) was actually receding at the same rate of speed. This, along with other discoveries, gave rise to the big bang theory: that the entire universe had once been contained in a singularity, a single dot that sat for an eternity in space before it exploded. Many, including Einstein, resisted the idea of a non-static universe as it implied a beginning and a supernatural external force that caused the big bang, but eventually, even Einstein had to admit a static universe was no longer likely. Indeed, the death knell of the static universe theory may have been Penzias and Wilson’s discovery (for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965) of the frequency of sound which was the...

Where is G-d, the Miracle Maker? People often say, “If there is really a G-d, why doesn’t He do outright miracles anymore? I would believe in G-d if I saw the ten plagues in Egypt, the sea split or some other supernatural event.” In the past, G-d did miracles in order to prevent some terrible tragedy from happening. G-d overruled the laws of nature to keep the story going—otherwise, it would have ended. But this type of intervention is not the ideal way that G-d wants to act. G-d prefers not to do miracles. He only does them when there is no other way to teach us about His control of nature. People do not really change by witnessing a miracle. Of course, at first they are strongly moved and seem to change. But the awe quickly wears off, and they return to their old ways. We see this human pattern many times in the stories of the Torah. The Israelites witnessed the...

What makes a great leader? Ask a large enough group of Israelis who they think of when asked to think of a Jewish leader, and someone will come up with the name Menachem Begin. A leader of the Jewish underground Irgun in pre-State Israel, and later Prime Minister of Israel, famous for ordering both the bombing of the British Command Center at the King David Hotel as well as the decision to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, Begin was the most wanted Jewish underground commander in Palestine until the birth of the State of Israel. Eventually he won international acclaim as the first Israeli leader to sign a peace accord with an Arab State (Egypt) in 1978, and became the first Israeli to win the Nobel Peace Prize that same year. What was the secret of Menachem Begin’s leadership? Some would say his fiery determination: he was a powerful orator and mesmerizing public figure. Others would say his adherence to his beliefs...

Identity Crisis is a Gift: Awakening to the Role and Goal of Your Soul Kirk Douglas, z”l, the actor, once told me that when people compliment him on a performance, they often tell him how great he was at losing himself in the part. "You just became Vincent Van Gogh! You were so wonderful." And he answers, "No, you lost yourself in the part. I can't afford to lose myself in the part. I have to pay attention to the director, to the cues. I have to hit the mark just right so the action is in the camera frame. I must stay aware that I am an actor playing a role." A good actor plays his part, but he doesn't get lost in his part. He can't even begin to think he is the character he is playing. On the other hand, he still embraces that role with a tremendous amount of love and gives everything he's got to play...