Category: Isralight Blog

It was a blisteringly hot day, and the shade of the trees offered little respite for the forty prisoners of the Waldkommando (Forest brigade) whose job it was to cut down trees for lumber for the nearby Sobibor extermination camp. Today, environmentalists might rail and protest at the sight of these mighty trees being felled in the forest, but in 1943, killing trees was not even a sidebar as the lumber was meant to keep the fires going in the pits where the bodies of tens of thousands of Jews were being burned in the Sobibor death camps. No one was protesting that incredible loss of life either, in the summer of 1943. Having spent the morning under the watchful eyes of their Ukrainian guards with no respite from the insufferable heat, the prisoners were finally given a break for bread and water. Two prisoners were sent down to the nearby river with buckets to draw water for the Jewish inmates. It...

Your Place or Mine? Living in the Arms of Love Jacob runs for his life to Charan because his brother Esau was out to kill him. The Bible records that on his way “he reached the place and spent the night there ... and lay down to sleep.” (Genesis 28:11) The Midrash –the Jewish Oral Tradition-- interprets “the place” to mean “G-d.” G-d is “The Place” because according to the Kabbalah He made space within Himself for creation and always holds us all within His loving embrace. Therefore, His loving presence is our ground, context and place. Thus it states: Why do we refer G-d as “The Place?” Because He is the Place of the world (i.e. we exist within G-d) ... G- d is the dwelling place of the world...   Jacob lived this truth. He always defined himself and his actions within the context of G-d. Therefore, even though Jacob lay down in a physical place, He experienced himself exiting within the arms G-d’s loving...

Koach hataya; literally: ‘a force of deception ‘. One of the most difficult roles a soldier can assume in any engagement. This is the force designated to draw the enemy out of hiding, or to commit its forces, so that the usually larger force hidden in the wings can then destroy it. I once met a fellow who had fought in the Vietnam War who had been part of just such a unit, fighting deep in the jungles of Vietnam, in the Tet offensive of 1968. The mission of their unit was to draw the enemy out of hiding so that larger US forces could then engage and destroy them. He was very good at what he did, and often he was sent ahead on point, with the task of making enough noise to draw the enemy out…. He recalled on one occasion being able to feel the eyes of a thousand enemy soldiers watching him as he walked down a foot path...

Do Good. Feel Good. Do Bad. Feel Bad. When we do something wrong, we not only violate our relationship with G-d and break a particular law but we also wrong ourselves and damage our self-esteem. Sin is an act of self-betrayal. The Talmud teaches that we cannot do wrong unless a spirit of insanity enters us. Indeed, we have to be out of our minds to transgress G-d's will; who only wants the best for us. Therefore, when we do wrong we have lost ourselves, at least temporarily. We become estranged from our Godly essence, and we are no longer at home with our true selves. After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, G-d asked them, "Where are you?" Likewise, when we do wrong we lose ourselves in our self-imposed spiritual exile; we become strangers to ourselves. When we transgress G-d's will, we violate our G-d-given potential. We experience a schism between who we are and who we ought to be; we...

Sometimes, the most poetic people can come in the most surprising packages. If you would have asked me what Abir would end up doing with his life, I would have imagined him as a bouncer, or perhaps a taxi driver in New York. Abir, an ex-paratrooper, is one of the unsung heroes of the battle of the Chinese chicken farm, when a battalion of paratroopers in the Yom Kippur war had to take a crucial Egyptian position by running 300 yards of open kill-ground; most of the battalion never made it out of there. I could easily have imagined him grabbing one of the first planes out after the war, maybe to New York or Los Angeles. But you can still find Abir tucked away in the art gallery he owns called the Olive Tree in the Old City of Jerusalem opposite the Cardo. He is one of those personalities described in books as ‘larger than life’, tall, dark, and handsome, with a...

Making Every Day Count The Key to Making Life Worth Living One day as I was waiting for a friend, an old woman sits down next to me. Suddenly she jumps out of her seat, turns to me and yells, "I should have never left Mexico!" I look at her and ask, "When did you leave Mexico?" "Thirty years ago!" she cries. "And I regret it every single day of my life!" You would think that after 30 years a person would finally get used to where they were. But people often live in the past. One of my students, age 28, told me that his father insulted him when he was age 12 and till this day he continues to feel hurt and angry. I explained to him that although his father hurt him when he was twelve he has allowed his father to continue to hurt him for another sixteen years by holding on to the pain and constantly remembering it. I suggested...

Quiet; the sweet serene quiet of deep sleep; and exhaustion; exhaustion that is so deep you don’t even realize you are sleeping; you are away, somewhere, in your dream world experiencing life as you would perhaps love it to be. You are comfortably warm and snuggly under your blankets or in your sleeping-bag; and then all that peace and serenity comes to an abrupt halt. Shouting and yelling; darkness turning into abrupt harsh light; sleeping bags and blankets thrown off and the bitter cold immediately pervading every aspect of your being. Worst of all, you have exactly seven minutes from the time the guard is told to wake everyone up, to be standing in rows in your uniform on the parade ground with boots laced and buttons closed, ready for anything; for a new day of hell. We were perhaps a few weeks into basic infantry training in the IDF, and of all the horrible, sadistic systems they employed to break us and...

Enjoying Heaven on Earth In this week's Torah portion G-d appeared to Abraham and yet He said nothing. "G-d appeared to [Abraham] in the Plains of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of the tent in the hottest part of the day. [Abraham] lifted his eyes and he saw three strangers approaching and ran towards them." Until now G-d appeared to Abraham to instruct, promise or bless him. The Talmud (Sotah 14A) comments that G-d was visiting sick Abraham who was recuperating from his circumcision. What does this mean? When you visit a person who is ill it is not in order to say something; your mere presence communicates your pure desire to identify with this person in his/her time of need. You go for the sole purpose of being there. So it was when G-d visited Abraham. For the first time G-d appears to Abraham only to be with him, identify with him and share this special moment. Sometimes the highest moment...

Akeidat Yitzchak; the binding of Isaac: One of the most challenging stories in Jewish history, when a parent, four thousand years ago, is asked to do the unthinkable; to sacrifice his only beloved son, in the name of…what? Most people think this is an ancient legend, but it is a script that is all too familiar today, to so many families in Israel. As long as I live, I will never forget her screams: “Lamah? Lamah? Al Ta’azov Oti’!” “Why? Why? Don’t leave me!”  It was supposed to have been such a happy day; I was finally getting out. After four and a half years in the Israeli army, I had finally received my honorable discharge, and had spent the previous day giving back my gear; this was supposed to have been my first day of real freedom. No one to tell me where to go, no orders to analyze and fulfill, no inspections, patrols, guard duty stints or maneuvers; just a long,...

The Secret to Immortality When G-d said to Abraham “Go to yourself-- Lech Lecha” what was He actually asking Abraham to do? This command seems to be contradicted by the remainder of the statement: “...from your country, from your birthplace and from your father’s home.” Are these not the fundamental elements that make up a person’s sense of self? My nation, my birthplace and family together create the context for my identity and establish the vital ground for my sense of self. In addition, they represent citizenship, property rights, and inheritance, all essential sources of personal security. What G-d is actually saying to Abraham is, “Go to yourself and leave yourself,” bidding him to seek himself and at the same time abandon everything that establishes and confirms selfhood. The very order of the statement verifies this, as it is not in chronological order. A person first leaves his father’s home, then his birthplace and then finally the country’s borders, not the...