Category: Isralight Blog

5th January, 1895; the sharp sound of the sword broken over a soldier’s knee reverberated across the Morlan Court of the Military academy in Paris.  The captain stood at attention, but the sound made him flinch with the symbolic breaking of his sword and the even more painful and humiliating tearing of his rank-epaulettes off his shoulders, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’ life was now broken. Accused of treason, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on the infamous Devil’s Island, never again to hold his beloved children in his arms and or feel the caress of his wife’s loving embrace. The French command knew there was a traitor in their midst and as the enmity between them and the Germans grew in the period leading up to World War I, they were determined to find the person leaking secrets to the German High Command. Dreyfus, a Jewish Captain in the artillery assigned to the French High Command, was the natural scapegoat. It...

Living G-d’s Life Quite frankly, I don’t believe in G-d. The word spelled G-O-D does nothing for me; in fact, it interferes with my true belief. I am not alone. Jews don’t believe in G-d. Indeed, the word “G-d” is not found in the Torah or the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Moses never heard of G-d nor heard from G-d. The name in the Torah that has been translated as G-d or Lord is Adonai. The word Adonai means “Master.” In Jewish law, whatever a servant owns actually belongs to his master; the servant has no possessions whatsoever. This law also governs our spirituality: G-d is our Master, and in essence we own nothing. For example, it is incorrect to say “my” life because it is really G-d’s life. We do not own the life force within us. This is a difficult concept to accept for many people because it is not a concept—it is a self-evident experience. Consider this: If we are...

Not long ago, I heard a powerful vignette from Rabbi Marvin Heir, former director of the Simon Wiesenthal center.  When Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Holocaust survivor and Nazi-hunter, celebrated his 90th birthday, he insisted the celebration take place in Vienna's Imperial Hotel.  When Rabbi Heir asked him why the Imperial, he explained it was Hitler’s favorite hotel and he and Himmler had permanent suites there.   That night at the Imperial hotel, Mr. Wiesenthal spoke just after the band played, “Mein Shtetala Belz” (My Little Town Belz), a lullaby that evoked the innocent happiness of childhood. With tears in his eyes, he gazed up at the elaborate crystal chandeliers that lit the room like six million stars in the night sky, leaned to Rabbi Heir and whispered, “You see? Even the chandeliers are shaking because this is the first time they have heard such music in this hotel. Hitler and his pipe dream of a thousand year Reich is gone, but even here...

Beating Jealousy Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive. --Havelock Ellis In this week’s Torah portion Korach, a member of Moses' tribe the Levites and other communal leaders challenge Moses’s leadership and the appointment of priesthood to Moses’ brother Aaron. Motivated by envy toward Moses and Aaron they argue for equality. We are all holy. How can there be a hierarchy in holiness within Israel? They came as a group to oppose Moses and Aaron and said to them, "You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the LORD is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the LORD's assembly? Moses responded to Korach: Now listen, you Levites! Isn't it enough for you that the G-d of Israel has separated you from the rest of the Israelite community and brought you near Himself to do the work at the Lord's tabernacle and to stand before the community and minister to...

From His-tory to Her-story Is G-d male or female? One day my son Ananiel and my two daughters, Leyadya and Ne'ema, burst into my study. They had obviously been fighting over something and were very upset. I could see that I was chosen to be the lucky arbitrator to resolve another case of sibling rivalry. They shouted at each other, "You go, you ask Daddy." "No, no! You go, you go." Finally Ananiel, who was age five at that time, took the challenge and said, "O.K., O.K. Daddy, isn't it true that G-d is a boy?" Ne'ema and Leyadya, ages eight and nine, had tears in their eyes. I could hear them silently pleading with me, "Please no, please no. Tell us it's not true. It's bad enough our brother is a boy. Surely, G-d is really a girl." I said to them, "G-d is not a boy and G-d is not a girl. G-d is beyond that. We may talk about...

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of training to be a Rabbi and a teacher is to have spent time in the presence of great Torah scholars; it allows you to appreciate how little you really know. Having had the privilege of pursuing rabbinical studies in a place where geniuses ‘grew on trees’ and where classes were given by some of the greatest Torah scholars of the generation, the prospect of ‘graduating’ as a rabbi became somewhat of a daunting prospect. How does one reach the point where they feel ready to assume rabbinical studies? Especially after being exposed on a daily basis to what a Torah-scholar and a rabbi can be? I recall a friend very close to me who was, confronted with this very challenge: How do you know when you are ready to leave the greenhouse of the Yeshiva world and put the knowledge you have accrued to serve the community? Torah, after all, is an...

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...

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...

Many years ago, I read a story regarding Rav Yitzchak Eisenbach from Jerusalem.  As a young boy, Yitzele’ was walking to the Kotel (The Western Wall) through the Jaffa gate one Shabbat afternoon, in a section of the city which was densely inhabited by Arabs. As he walked through the narrow, unpaved streets he passed numerous Arab-owned cafes in which young and old folks were milling around. Suddenly Yitzele noticed a gold coin on the sidewalk. The value of the coin was such that it could support a family the size of his own for a month!  The poverty in his home was wrenching, and he was thrilled at the prospect of being able to help his parents in their struggle for their family’s survival. However, because it was Shabbat, he would not pick up the golden coin. Instead, he put his foot on the coin to hide it from view, and decided to stand there until nightfall when Shabbat ended so...