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Unmasking Nature: G-d’s Love is Here and Now According to Jewish Tradition, as soon as the Hebrew month of Adar begins we must increase our joy because the miracle of the Purim Story happened on that month. Purim celebrates the salvation of the Jews in the year 357 BCE from the wicked Haman’s scheme to exterminate all the Jewish men, women and children living in the Persian Empire, which meant all the Jews in the world at that time. In the Purim story, however, there were no miraculous divine interventions. There were no supernatural plagues and no splitting of any seas. In fact, G-d’s name is not even mentioned once in the entire Purim story recorded in the Book of Esther (Megillat Esther). Although the holiday of Purim is celebrated only on the 14th of the month of Adar, and in some places on the 15th, the whole month is identified with greater joy. Purim is so abundant with joy that its celebration overflows into the entire month,...

Sometimes, it's that one extra word that makes all the difference. It was only a fraction of a moment of my time in the army, but it was a lesson I never forgot, though to this day I am undecided as to whether I agree with it. I was desperate to get a day off; we were still in basic training, and I had barely been in the army three months, but my folks were landing at the airport the next afternoon, and I was hoping my commanders would give me a break as I had not seen head or hair of any family in the two months since I had joined up. My folks had done me the enormous favor of landing on a Thursday afternoon, which was the best possible day of the week for a tank crewman to get extra leave. Thursday was "Tipul She'vui" day, which meant the weekly servicing and cleaning of every last inch of every...

Successful People Are Unaccomplished Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy, a day of solemn rest to the Lord. (Exodus 35:2) During the forty years that the Israelites wandered in the desert they carried with them a portable temple referred to as the Tabernacle or the Mishkan. The creative acts that are forbidden on Shabbat are those acts similar to the skills that went into building or assembling the Mishkan. The Talmud outlines 39 different categories of such creative acts that are forbidden to do on Shabbat. They represent our ultimate power of creativity which is to build a temple that accommodates the presence of G-d on earth. Of course we know that G-d does not literally dwell in the Mishkan, however, the Mishkan symbolizes our ability to serve G-d and infuse every moment and every place with the presence of G-d. In other words, the greatest accomplishment of a human being is to serve to make manifest G-d’s presence...

There are sounds that you hear and things that you see that will always make you stop whatever you are doing. People yelling, the sound of an ambulance racing down a Jerusalem Street, or even the backfire of a car, if you’ve just finished reserve duty...and always, the sound of a child crying. I recall one time I was standing at the entrance to a supermarket, and saw a little girl, who couldn’t have been more than three or four, sobbing her eyes out. I didn’t see any adults near her, and she didn’t seem to be physically hurt, so I walked over, figuring she was lost and looking for a parent... as I got within a couple of feet, a man standing on the side, whom I hadn’t noticed before, took a few steps closer and gently nudged me with his hand as if to say ‘don’t trouble yourself’, while continuing to speak on his cell phone. I assumed he...

Shabbat: Rest Assured Keep the Shabbat for it is holy unto you..... because in six days G-d made heaven and earth: and on the seventh day He abstained from work and rested. (Exodus 31: 14-17) Most people know what you don’t do on Shabbat: you don’t tear toilet paper, you don’t drive, you don’t write, you don’t turn on lights, you don’t shop, etc. But they don’t know why, and they don’t know what it is you, in fact, do on Shabbat. And of course, when you just focus on what you don’t do on Shabbat, the experience—which is supposed to be joyous and fulfilling—basically ends up sounding like torture. You have to ask yourself, “Is this the way I want to celebrate a holiday? Is this how I want to spend my weekend after working hard all week long?” In order to understand the real meaning of Shabbat, let’s explore the first place it is mentioned in the Torah. This paragraph is from the Book of Genesis and...

“Make it count”. Words that would stay with me forever. Lying on a hill not four hundred yards from two terrorists who were firing indiscriminately on the local Jewish civilians behind us, it should have been simple.  It’s you or them, on top of which you are protecting civilians; women and children taking cover in the homes behind our position.  But sometimes life is not so simple. It was getting darker, and as the sun dropped lower on the horizon, and the light mixed with shadows, it was clear why we could not open fire. Literally in between and all around the two terrorists who were firing were about twenty or thirty little kids. The local Arab school they were firing from was one that was familiar to me, such that I knew this school was never open at 5 in the afternoon. They had brought these children there for a reason: they were hoping we would respond with fire so...