Category: Isralight Blog

How Happy is Happy Hour? The magic formula to true and lasting happiness   And you shall be happy in all that the Lord your G-d has given you. (Deut. 26:11) Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. --- Hellen Keller Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.  ---- Spike Milligan King Solomon said in his famous book Ecclesiastes, “I praise happiness,” and yet he also concluded “What does happiness accomplish?” Is happiness praiseworthy or worthless? The Talmud explains that King Solomon was referring to two types of happiness. The happiness derived from doing a mitzvah – fulfilling G-d’s command -- is praiseworthy. However, when happiness comes from some other source—it is worthless. It is basic human nature to want to be happy. However, the urge for happiness in its primitive form can be satisfied through lusts and cravings. We feel good when we eat, drink, win...

In 2014, Op-Ed Columnist Thomas Friedman published an article in the New York Times regarding a Gallup poll exploring the linkages between education and long-term success in the work place. The research (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/opinion/thomas-friedman-it-takes-a-mentor.html ) questioned what types of College experiences were most likely to produce employees who were successfully engaged in a fulfilling career track. “According to Brandon Busteed, the executive director of Gallup’s education division, two things stand out. Successful students had one or more teachers who were mentors and took a real interest in their aspirations, and they had an internship related to what they were learning in school.” Apparently, there were no significant differences regarding the likelihood of employees being fulfilled in a career path of their choice based on what type of institution (private vs. public college, as an example) they attended. Rather the most significant difference was correlated with how a student received his or her College education. “Graduates who told Gallup that they had a professor or professors...

Getting From the Real to the Ideal The Journey of Personal Transformation When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your G-d has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, and take her for a wife - Then you shall bring her home to your house... ... and she remain in your house and weep for her father and mother for a month, and after that .... she shall be your wife. And if you do not want her, you shall send her out on her own; you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, because you "violated" her. (Deut. 21:10-14) The Torah permits this only as a compromise to the yetzer ha-ra (evil urge). (Talmud Kiddushin 21b) 'And you shall take her unto you as a wife' - the Torah only permits this in...

I recently read a vignette received in an e mail, which touched me: A fellow, on his way home, stopped to watch a Little league baseball game being played in the park. Sitting down on the sidelines to watch he asked one of the boys playing what the score was: “We’re behind fourteen to nothing” the boy replied with a grin.  ‘Really?”  Said the fellow watching, “you don’t seem at all discouraged?”  “Discouraged? Asked the boy with a puzzled look on his face:   “Why would I be discouraged? We haven’t been up to bat yet!”  Sometimes, we get too focused on where we are headed, and lose sight of where we really are…. This week’s portion of Ki Teitzeh contains one of the most difficult set of laws in the entire Torah: the laws of the Ben Sorer U’moreh: the wayward son. This refers to a child who has adopted a pattern of negative behavior that we presume will eventually lead him to a horrible life...

The Prophet Powered Life “I (G-d) will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto you (Moses); and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him” (Deut. 18: 18) Through using methods such as meditation and music, the prophets of ancient Israel were able to induce altered states of consciousness in which they experienced a direct revelation from G-d. Sometimes they received a message for the entire world. When such messages had eternal significance, they were recorded and later incorporated into the Hebrew Bible. Only fifteen prophets’ revelations are included, with another dozen or so prophets mentioned by name in the various Biblical books. The Talmud, however, tells us that there were as many prophets in ancient Israel as Israelites who came out of Egypt during the Exodus, in other words, approximately three million. The Talmud also tells us that after the Temple was destroyed, the period of...

Is it possible to be truly impartial in life? I once heard a story from Rabbi Abraham Twerski, told to him as a boy by his father. (Published in Rabbi Twerski’s Generation to Generation.) The great Rebbe of Berditchev, Rav Levi Yitzchak, was once siting in a Din Torah (a Rabbinical Court case) as one of the Judges hearing the case. After several days of hearing the litigants, he suddenly stood up and announced he was recusing himself. He gave no reason for his abrupt decision, which obviously meant the litigants would have to find a new Rabbinic Court (Beit Din).  A few days later, after Shabbat, the Rebbe of Berditchev called the other Rabbis who had been hearing the case with him together to explain.  “At a certain point during the proceedings, I found myself inextricably leaning towards one of the litigants and became aware that I was losing my objectivity. I could not understand why this was so, but try as...

A Short-Cut to a Life of Blessings You get what you give “Thou shalt not harden thy heart, nor shut thy hand from your needy brother; surely open thy hand to him.” — Deut. 15:7-8 Is there a short-cut to the spiritual wealth of life? One of the most powerful and immediate ways to connect the circuit of life, and let the blessings flow is Tzedaka, that is charity. The Talmud teaches: "Tzedaka saves from death." When we need an incredible influx of life force — because we are facing impending physical death or impending spiritual death, the act of giving to charity can be one of the most powerful antidotes. As proof for the statement, the Talmud tells the incredible story of the daughter of the famous Rabbi Akiva, who lived some 2,000 years ago. A star-gazer told Rabbi Akiva that his daughter would die on the day of her wedding. Rabbi Akiva replied that just because it is written in the stars...

Thousands of feet up in free fall, travelling over 100 miles an hour, Yosef Goodman had only seconds to make a decision. His parachute had become tangled in his commander’s chute above him, preventing both of their parachutes from opening. They were probably twenty second away from certain death, and none of the backup measures were working. On a training jump in the IDF’s elite Maglan paratrooper unit, they were testing a new form of gliding parachute, but something had gone terribly wrong.  With such a short time frame, and no other possible solution, Yosef, over the protesting screams of his commander, calmly pulled out his army knife and sliced through the parachute chords connecting their chutes, saving the life of his Commander but dooming himself to certain death as he hurtled towards the ground at close to 130 miles per hour. A subsequent investigation determined that his decision was the correct one, and the only way to allow at least...

You Get Back What You Put In The Joys of a Commandment-Driven Life The Zohar, which is a Jewish mystical classic, written two thousand years ago, states that there will come a time when people will be performing tradition and rituals like cows eating grass. Essentially, the cow chews its food, stores it and then chews its cud, thereby re-chewing the food, over and over again. The Zohar is using this metaphor as a symbol for something that is done mindlessly without intention or taste. In Jewish tradition, there is a concept called taamei mitzvos, which can be described as the "reason for the commandments." But taamei mitzvos can also mean the "taste of the commandments." In Hebrew, taam means both "taste" and "reason" — and there is definitely a connection between the two. Without understanding the reason behind the life of commandment it can become mindless and tasteless. Imagine a man who observes Sabbath, but it has no meaning to him —...

(from 2014) Silence; total and absolute silence; no one moves; eight soldiers in the middle of the night, actively listening, straining for the slightest sound that might signify something out of the ordinary; a velcro patch; a clink of metal, the sound of a body moving on earth, an AK-47 machine gun slowly being cocked or, worst of all, the pin of a grenade being pulled …. That was how ambushes always began; Israeli soldiers are trained to work, especially at night, in silence, learning to pick up the sounds one often might take for granted; sounds which, if heard, can make all the difference between life and death. How many thousands of soldiers, in how many trenches back alleys and abandoned houses in Aza had to stop to listen these past weeks? And in this war civilians too were on the front lines, ever listening for the wail of a siren signaling incoming rockets, giving them scant seconds to make it to shelter… This...