Category: Isralight Blog

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...

In 1948, things did not look promising for the Jews.  The Arab armies of Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and forces from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria prepared to attack the newly declared State of Israel as soon as the British pulled out in May of 1948, vowing to push the Jews into the sea.  In Tzfat, where 80,000 Arabs surrounded approximately 3,000 Jews living in the Jewish quarter, the Jews were braced for the worst. One night, a few weeks before the pullout, the British told the Jewish community they were leaving Tzfat in the morning and had reliable intelligence that the Arabs were planning a massive attack immediately following their departure. Predicting a massacre, they urged the Jews to leave the city, even making room for them in the convoy. With eight hours’ notice, they assumed the Jews would panic, but not a single Jew left the city.  Sure enough, as the empty British trucks pulled out of Tzfat, thousands of Arabs armed...

Why Eat Kosher? The Talmud tells a story about the famed author of the Mishna, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. The rabbi was walking down the street one day, when a little calf ran up to him and hid under his cloak. Apparently, the calf had run away from the slaughterhouse. The rabbi said to the calf, “Go back to be slaughtered, for this you have been created.” At this point, a Divine decree was made against him because he had not shown pity on the creature. As a result he become sick and suffered for many years, until one day he showed pity on a family of young rats and was suddenly healed. We know that Judaism permits us to eat meat as long as the animal was slaughtered properly, so what did Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi do that was so wrong? He incorrectly said, “for this you were created.” The Talmud is teaching us that, contrary to his declaration, animals were not created for...

How important is it that we listen to our rabbis and teachers? On the one hand, there is something beautiful about a leadership that encourages its students to think for themselves, rather than relying completely on their rabbis and teachers’ opinions. As an example, I distinctly recall my Roshei Yeshiva, Rav Lichtenstein & Rav Amital’s strong reaction to students in the yeshiva who opposed their political views; stating unequivocally that such opposition was healthy, especially as they both felt Halacha (Jewish law) did not mandate a specific political opinion. In fact, this seemed so refreshingly different from the ‘Chareidi’ world whose rabbinic leaders seemed to regularly demand fealty to every political and administrative decision. And yet, the Torah nonetheless clearly commands us to follow our Torah leaders’ rulings as stated clearly in the Torah: “You shall do according to what they tell you…and keep it according to all which they teach you. According to the Torah they will teach you … you...

Human beings are like no other animal, in that we will sometimes go against every natural instinct for reasons that often cannot be explained. We will give away our food, despite being hungry, when others are in need. We will give another our coat, in the midst of winter, despite the bitter cold, because someone else is suffering. And sometimes, we will sacrifice everything for something greater than ourselves. Half an hour’s walk from the gates of the old city of Jerusalem lays a hill which today sits in the heart of the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood of Jerusalem.  Situated overlooking the main road from the Damascus gate, the average visitor will miss this little hill, unless he knows what he is looking for. Even from the air, this small hill can easily be missed. But to any Israeli paratrooper, and for that matter any Israeli who knows the story of the six-day war, this strategic bump on the topography of the map,...