Blog

Real Love Means Embracing Conflict The Secret of Jacob The Torah (Bible) teaches us that Jacob went to the house Laban, his uncle, and dwelt there for many years. He married Rachel and Leah, Laban's daughters, and had eleven sons there. After years of struggling with Laban constantly deceiving him he finally left to return home and face Esau who hated him. In the middle of the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two handmaids and his eleven sons, and sent them across the Jabbok River shallows. After he had taken them and sent them across, he also sent across his possessions. Jacob alone remained on the other side of the river. It was there that the famous "stranger" appeared and wrestled with him until just before daybreak: When the stranger saw that he could not defeat him, he touched the upper joint of Jacob's thigh. Jacob's hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him. "Let me leave!" said...

It was a blisteringly hot day, and the shade of the trees offered little respite for the forty prisoners of the Waldkommando (Forest brigade) whose job it was to cut down trees for lumber for the nearby Sobibor extermination camp. Today, environmentalists might rail and protest at the sight of these mighty trees being felled in the forest, but in 1943, killing trees was not even a sidebar as the lumber was meant to keep the fires going in the pits where the bodies of tens of thousands of Jews were being burned in the Sobibor death camps. No one was protesting that incredible loss of life either, in the summer of 1943. Having spent the morning under the watchful eyes of their Ukrainian guards with no respite from the insufferable heat, the prisoners were finally given a break for bread and water. Two prisoners were sent down to the nearby river with buckets to draw water for the Jewish inmates. It...

Your Place or Mine? Living in the Arms of Love Jacob runs for his life to Charan because his brother Esau was out to kill him. The Bible records that on his way “he reached the place and spent the night there ... and lay down to sleep.” (Genesis 28:11) The Midrash –the Jewish Oral Tradition-- interprets “the place” to mean “G-d.” G-d is “The Place” because according to the Kabbalah He made space within Himself for creation and always holds us all within His loving embrace. Therefore, His loving presence is our ground, context and place. Thus, it states: Why do we refer G-d as “The Place?” Because He is the Place of the world (i.e. we exist within G-d) ... G- d is the dwelling place of the world...   Jacob lived this truth. He always defined himself and his actions within the context of G-d. Therefore, even though Jacob lay down in a physical place, He experienced himself exiting within the arms G-d’s loving...

The Chassidic Rebbe of Hornostipol had a devoted attendant by the name of Reb' Dan, who served the Rebbe faithfully for over fifty years. After the Rebbe's death, the Rabbi in the village, Rav Yankel, announced that the coveted burial plot next to the Rebbe was due him inasmuch as he was the Rabbi of the town. Reb Dan protested, saying that just as he had never left the Rebbe's side in life, he deserved to not be separated from him in death. The dispute was brought before the Rebbe's son (Rav Avraham Twersky's grandfather), who ruled that the decision should be made by G-d, and that whoever died first was to be buried next to the Rebbe. From that time, whenever Rav Yankel would take ill, Reb Dan would panic, and would insist that the very best specialists be brought in to treat him. He would also go to all the synagogues urging everyone to pray for Rav Yankel's speedy recovery. The...

Do Good. Feel Good. Do Bad. Feel Bad. When we do something wrong, we not only violate our relationship with G-d and break a particular law but we also wrong ourselves and damage our self-esteem. Sin is an act of self-betrayal. The Talmud teaches that we cannot do wrong unless a spirit of insanity enters us. Indeed, we have to be out of our minds to transgress G-d's will; who only wants the best for us. Therefore, when we do wrong we have lost ourselves, at least temporarily. We become estranged from our Godly essence, and we are no longer at home with our true selves. After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, G-d asked them, "Where are you?" Likewise, when we do wrong we lose ourselves in our self-imposed spiritual exile; we become strangers to ourselves. When we transgress G-d's will, we violate our G-d-given potential. We experience a schism between who we are and who we ought to be; we...

Eli Wiesel describes one of the most painful moments he ever experienced, as a push from behind. Shouting, chaos, dogs barking and even attacking, SS guards with guns shouting commands in German which most could not understand; for the Jews who arrived at Auschwitz, stepping out of the cattle cars onto the platform must have been a hell beyond description; a world of pure chaos and terror. Eli Wiesel’s mother, having survived the ghetto, must have instantly understood what was happening: the Nazis were herding the hapless Jews towards the far end of the platform, where they were being split into two lines. She must have been watching and quickly realized what that selection meant: all the young and strong were headed to the right, and the old and sick the weak and the babies were being directed to the left; you did not have to be a genius to figure it out, so she pushed young, barely bar mitzvah...

Making Every Day Count The Key to Making Life Worth Living One day as I was waiting for a friend, an old woman sits down next to me. Suddenly she jumps out of her seat, turns to me and yells, "I should have never left Mexico!" I look at her and ask, "When did you leave Mexico?" "Thirty years ago!" she cries. "And I regret it every single day of my life!" You would think that after 30 years a person would finally get used to where they were. But people often live in the past. One of my students, age 28, told me that his father insulted him when he was age 12 and till this day he continues to feel hurt and angry. I explained to him that although his father hurt him when he was twelve he has allowed his father to continue to hurt him for another sixteen years by holding on to the pain and constantly remembering it. I suggested...

Eternity; a powerful word; what does it mean? Does anything really last forever? Many years ago, in the wee hours of pre-dawn darkness on an empty Jerusalem road, I discovered just how fleeting life can be. At 4am, after a very late night studying and reconnecting with my students after a prolonged trip overseas, I was finally headed home for what I thought would be a peaceful Shabbat and a chance to reconnect with my wife and kids, I must have fallen asleep at the wheel. I was rudely re-awakened when my tiny Peugeot 104 wrapped itself around an electric pole. Had I not been wearing a seatbelt, I probably would not be here, but I quickly realized I was in serious trouble. The impact was so powerful that my wife would later describe the steering wheel as completely bent by the force of my body crashing into it. When my belongings in the car were eventually returned the steel...

Enjoying Heaven on Earth In this week's Torah portion G-d appeared to Abraham and yet He said nothing. "G-d appeared to [Abraham] in the Plains of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of the tent in the hottest part of the day. [Abraham] lifted his eyes and he saw three strangers approaching and ran towards them." Until now G-d appeared to Abraham to instruct, promise or bless him. The Talmud (Sotah 14A) comments that G-d was visiting sick Abraham who was recuperating from his circumcision. What does this mean? When you visit a person who is ill it is not in order to say something; your mere presence communicates your pure desire to identify with this person in his/her time of need. You go for the sole purpose of being there. So it was when G-d visited Abraham. For the first time G-d appears to Abraham only to be with him, identify with him and share this special moment. Sometimes the highest moment...

Go to any Yemenite Jewish wedding or Bar-Mitzvah, and you will hear the women shouting the ‘yelilot’ traditionally ‘sung’ at all celebrations. I can still recall, at my Bar Mitzvah, when being called to the Torah for the first time at the Kotel (the Western Wall in Jerusalem).   Some of the Yemenite women standing up on a bench looking over the divider saw me being called to the Torah and let loose with some blood curdling sounds, nearly knocking my mother off the bench! While not being exactly sure why they were all yelling, I realized, watching everyone else smiling, that the sudden cries and ‘yelilot’ (which seemed to me at the time like a blood curdling war cry) must be part of the ‘party’ in Jerusalem.  Nearly ten years later, at the military funeral of one of my men killed in a Jordanian border ambush, I heard the same blood curdling sounds, only this time they were cries of anguish, not...