Isralight Blog – Page 92

Sparks – by Rabbi David Aaron

March 9, 2017 by admin Comment Closed

Purim: Secrets Behind the Purim Mask Purim celebrates the salvation of the Jews from the wicked Haman's scheme to exterminate all the Jewish men, women, and children living in the Persian empire in the year 357 B.C.E., which essentially meant all the Jews in the world. Some of the commandments of Purim, such as hearing Megillat Esther, which recounts the Purim story, and enjoying a festive meal, are obvious ways to commemorate this deliverance. Other commandments and customs have no apparent connection to what happened on Purim. Why are we required to give charity to the poor, send two food items to a friend, and get so drunk that we do not know the difference between Haman, the villain, and Mordechai, the righteous hero of the story? (This last commandment, I understand, is very rigorously kept in college dorms all year round.) What is behind the customs to dress up in costume and to eat hamentaschen, delicious, sweet tarts named literally, "Haman's...

Small Tastings of Torah, Judaism and Spirituality from Rav Binny Freedman – Purim

March 9, 2017 by admin Comment Closed

A few weeks ago I joined about 35 students from Yeshivat Orayta for a week in Poland. We had a remarkable guide named Rav Yitzchak Rubenstein who shared the following story with us: The Nazis understood the power of hope. They always left the glimmer of a possibility that it might get better, perhaps because it often kept the Jews from risking it all in rebellion. (In the army they teach you in Officer’s course to always leave the enemy an avenue of retreat; you don’t want him to feel he has to make a last stand….) In the ghetto, this meant that work was life. If you had a job (and the papers to prove it) that was deemed vital to the Nazi war effort, you were exempt from the transports to the East; no one really believed it was desirable to be on board one of those transports…. Before the war there were 250,000 Jews in Lodz, which was 40% of...

Sparks – by Rabbi David Aaron

March 2, 2017 by admin Comment Closed

The Simple Art of Ecstasy How to See Divine Presence Here and Now “ And let them make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell amongst them.” — Exodus 25:8 In this week's Torah Portion we encounter the precise design and magnificent beauty of the holy tabernacle and its' vessels. What is the relationship between this physical construct and feeling the presence of G-d dwelling amongst us? YOU CAN SEE G-D Once I was giving a seminar, and I asked everyone to look around the room and point to beauty. The first interesting result was that everyone pointed to something different. One man pointed to his wife. A woman named Bea pointed to a glass menorah (a Hanukkah candelabra) that was sitting on a windowsill. I asked Bea how she saw beauty in that menorah. Did she see beauty with her physical eyes? "Well," she answered, "the glass is translucent and its delicacy has an ethereal quality. The shape is pleasing to the eye and because...

Small Tastings of Torah, Judaism and Spirituality from Rav Binny Freedman – Portion of Terumah

March 2, 2017 by admin Comment Closed

This week's byte is dedicated in memory of Mr. Ernest Kan, Eliyahu ben Moshe v'Rochel, z"l, beloved father of Susan Rotsztajn. As a child in Germany, Mr. Kan saw the worst that man was capable of, but chose to live life seeing instead all the beauty people could share. Among the very many special things his life represented, Mr. Kan was privileged as an adult, to return to the high school from which he was expelled (after Kristallnacht) to give the commencement address and share life lessons with the next generation of German children. He is greatly missed, and the world is a better place for his having been here.... Yehi zichro baruch (may his memory be a blessing for us all...) Sometimes inspiration comes in the simplest of moments, like a good cup of coffee. In the fall of 2000, my unit was called up on special emergency orders (known as a ‘Tzav Shmoneh’). I still recall the middle of the night phone call from...

Sparks – by Rabbi David Aaron

February 23, 2017February 23, 2017 by admin Comment Closed

The Divine Wants You to be Happy When Rules Become Delicious Recipes for Your Soul “And these are the judgments that you shall place before them.” — Exodus 21:1 "You shall place before them, that is, like a table that is set and ready for eating." — Rashi “Taste and see that G-d is good.” — Psalms 34 LAWS YOU CAN EAT, ENJOY AND SAVOUR The job of a teacher of Torah is not to be a philosopher, ethical guide or law giver but rather a gourmet chef. A gourmet chef has the ability to bring the taste out of every ordinary cabbage, every simple bean sprout, as well as present it all in a delicious tantalizing way. Once, I went to someone's home to raise funds for my institute. I thought we would have about a ten minute discussion. Instead, we were talking for five or six hours. I hadn't eaten all day, and I was starving. Finally I decided that instead of asking for a...

Small Tastings of Torah, Judaism and Spirituality from Rav Binny Freedman – Portion of Mishpatim

February 23, 2017 by admin Comment Closed

This week I am writing to you from a bus somewhere in Poland in the middle of a week with the students of Yeshivat Orayta, seeing what was taken from us in the destruction of European Jewry. When new prisoners arrived in Auschwitz, if they survived the infamous selections on the train platforms, within an hour they were robbed, stripped, shaved (and had their hair cut), and deloused. Their humiliation had begun. Then they got uniforms and were given numbers, and by the time they were allowed into their barracks to attempt their first night of the sleep of the damned, they barely recognized themselves. Primo Levi recalls the thought he had that horrible night realizing that had he had access to a mirror, a strange face would have looked back at him; but he could see that stranger’s face in the faces all around him…. But some were stranger than others. One of the things that gave some concentration camp inmates a huge advantage...

Sparks – by Rabbi David Aaron

February 16, 2017 by admin Comment Closed

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...

Small Tastings of Torah, Judaism and Spirituality from Rav Binny Freedman – Portion of Yitro

February 16, 2017 by admin Comment Closed

There is a story told by Rav Ephraim Oshry, one of the last Rabbis of the Kovno Ghetto, in his monumental work of Holocaust responsum: Mima’amakim. When the Nazis arrived in the small villages of the Ukraine with their accursed Einsatzgruppen units, they followed a specific recipe: the Jews were ordered to assemble, any thought of resistance was crushed, and the entire Jewish community was led out of town away from prying eyes, usually into the forests on the edge of town. The people were made to dig ditches, undress and pile their belongings in ordered piles, and then to stand in rows one group after another in front of the ditches…. In one small village, as the Jews were assembled in a clearing in the forest outside of town, it was abundantly clear what was about to happen. The remains of the previous day’s action for a different nearby village were obvious; the ditches were already dug, the piles of clothing...

Sparks – by Rabbi David Aaron

February 9, 2017 by admin Comment Closed

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...

Small Tastings of Torah, Judaism and Spirituality from Rav Binny Freedman – Portion of Bo

February 9, 2017 by admin Comment Closed

It is hard to imagine, looking down at the dry, windswept desert floor far below, what it must have been like two thousand years ago, to be a Jewish rebel soldier atop the isolated fortress of Masada. What kept you going, as you gazed down at the might of three full Roman Legions, all bent on your destruction? In the year 70 CE, with the Temple (the Beit HaMikdash) in flames, Jerusalem breached and destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Jews dead, and hundreds of thousands more sold into slavery, the Romans announced that the great revolt had finally been put down. They even minted a coin to communicate their victory to the entire Roman Empire. The coin, known as ‘Judea Capta’, shows a woman, meant to be the Jewish people, cowering at the feet of a Roman legionnaire. The Jewish people had been defeated, and the war was finally over. The only problem was, the Romans were wrong. Two hundred Jewish rebel...

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