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The Gift of Giving: Love’s Secret Service In this week’s Torah Portion we are commanded to bring pure oil to the tabernacle to light the Menorah (candelabra). “And you (Moses) shall command the children of Israel, that they bring to you pure olive oil beaten for the light, to cause a lamp to burn continually.” (Exodus 27:20) The Midrash, which part of Jewish Oral Tradition, asks an obvious question. The entire world is illuminated by G-d’s splendor and yet He tells the Jewish people to bring oil to light the Menorah before Him? The Midrash answers that G-d desires the works of your hands. How can we understand that G-d desires the works of our hand? How can G-d want something from us? What can we give G-d? Does G-d lack anything that we can provide? The Kabbalah teaches that G-d created the world to give us goodness and yet it seems from the Midrash that G-d is not looking to give but really wants to receive. How...

In 1860, a relatively unknown one-term congressman (who had practiced law in the prairie towns of Illinois) named Abraham Lincoln stunned the country by prevailing over three prominent rivals—William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates—to win the Republican nomination for President. But even more surprising was what Lincoln did after being elected President: He appointed all three rivals to his cabinet—Seward as secretary of state, Chase as secretary of the treasury, and Bates as attorney general. Reading up on Abraham Lincoln, one discovers that this was not an astute political move; rather, it was simply who he was. In fact, even his enemies often became his friends. To quote David Chamber Mearns: “Enemies seemed to be potential friends to Abraham Lincoln. When British writer              Edward Dicey was introduced to the president as one of his enemies, Lincoln’s              response was: “I did not know I had any enemies”.       (Largely Lincoln pg. 93) The same Dicey, in...

Is G-d Beyond Us or Within Us? The Torah recounts that G-d instructed the Israelites to build a sanctuary, telling Moses, “Let them build a sanctuary and I will dwell in them.” Note that G-d did not say, “I will dwell in the sanctuary.” G-d said, “in them.” Is G-d beyond us or within us? 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,...

Sixteen hundred Jews, mostly elderly and families with children, protected by barely two hundred fighters; the odds for the besieged Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1948, were beyond impossible. The Jordanian Legion, by far the best fighting force in the Middle East, committed an entire division of 3200 men, their most elite fighting force, to winning this battle. Approximately thirty thousand Arab irregulars, local Arabs with a gun and a cause, supported them; the Jews were in desperate straits.  There were no reinforcements to be had, but the Israeli fighters, against all odds, refused to give up. They had only three heavy machine guns between them, and one of them was set in a sandbag position on the edge of the Churvah Synagogue, a stone’s throw away from the Muslim quarter. Sitting at the strategic juncture of the widest alleyway into the Jewish quarter, the Jordanians mounted daily and often twice-daily attacks, in full battalion strength, against this three-man...

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...

Some years ago, the media reported that two days before his execution, Adolph Eichmann penned a letter to then President Yitzchak Ben-Zvi begging for clemency. Facing his imminent death by hanging (the only death sentence ever executed in the State of Israel), the once arrogant Eichmann, finally humbled, was begging for his life. His request was denied, and two days later he was hanged, his body cremated, and his ashes spread over the Mediterranean to prevent his tomb from ever becoming a shrine for hatred. During his time in prison, he took ill briefly, and, experiencing shortness of breath and fever, was seen by the prison Doctor, himself a Holocaust survivor. He would later describe the mix of emotions he felt, as he attempted to divorce himself from his personal feelings and focus on the task at hand, which in his words, was “to view him as any other patient in need of medical assistance”. But is this correct? Is...

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...

In April of 1988 I was called up for my first reserve duty. The first intifada had exploded just a few months earlier, and we were stationed for a month in a nasty little piece of real estate called Jebalya which was a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Needless to say, things were pretty intense. One day I was given an assignment to take six men and set up a lookout position on the roof of an Arab house that overlooked the main road passing by Jebalya where Jews often travelled. There had been a number of incidents that week, including riots, Molotov cocktails, burning tires laid across the road and rock throwing at moving vehicles; our job was to help get things back under control.  It was an extremely uncomfortable feeling, to be setting up a military position on someone’s roof, but from a strategic point of view, it made sense, and, reminiscent of western laws of...