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In general, I prefer to stay away from politics in these articles, but I am going to make an exception this week (while attempting not to take sides). For nigh on a year, Israel has been politically paralyzed. Be’ezrat Hashem, in a few weeks Israelis (those still willing to vote :)) will go to the polls for a third time. And yet, on a news program the other day, two well-known Israeli political commentators agreed they would not be surprised if we need yet a fourth election! Try as they might, the political parties do not seem to be able to move the needle and polls still suggest the breakdown of votes, assuming no political party radically changes its position, will remain basically as it is now with no party or position gaining a clear majority. What is going on? And how can we break this stalemate? Many will suggest, more or less, that three parties are responsible: The current Prime Minister facing...

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...

One of the greatest gifts we have in this world is the ability to make choices in our lives. Though sometimes, we might wish we didn’t have to make those choices. They had trained us for just such a moment. Again and again, this exact question had come up; in fact, an entire day in Officer’s course had been dedicated to this very question. What would you do? How would you respond? And all of us, without fail, had reached the same conclusions. Intellectually the choice was very clear and made infinite sense. But that didn’t make the choice any easier. One of the most important topics, drilled into you again and again is what they call “Todah”, recognition of enemy weaponry. In fact, every Friday morning in tank Officer’s training, (usually done when you are already in dress uniform, literally with the bus engine running, waiting to take you home for a weekend pass,) there was a pop quiz on...

To Serve with Joy Is your life ‘out of service’? “And Moses and Aaron were brought again unto Pharaoh; and he said unto them: 'Go, serve the LORD your G-d; but who are they that shall go?' And Moses said: 'We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds we will go; because the holiday of G-d is for us.'” — Exodus 10:8-9 The King of Egypt must have been quite surprised by Moses answer. To serve G-d is not like serving you. It is not about degrading back-breaking slavery rather a joyful celebration for the whole family. To serve G-d is a holiday for us. The Secret to Service Most people think that a mitzvah is a "demand" meant to deprive or diminish our godly self worth. But that is incorrect. A mitzvah is a "command" enabling us to co- operate, associate, identify and thereby consciously bond with G-d and experience His love. This is...

What is the power of a hug?  Sometimes it’s all about the context… Recently, someone sent me a story regarding a fellow named Yankel, who was a survivor of Auschwitz. Sharing his story, he recalled his journey when he was loaded onto a cattle car and sent to Auschwitz, in the winter of 1944. In an effort to efficiently ensure the transports arrived at the camp to be immediately processed trains were often held en-route until the crematoria schedule was ready for them. As such, the cattle cars would often sit on the tracks in stations overnight and even for days on end with no food and of course no blankets or supplies for the frozen and desperate Jews inside. That first night in the cattle car it was bitterly cold and the Jews locked in the cattle car were shivering, with no blankets and no way to keep warm. Yankel was a teenager, freezing along with all the other townspeople that...

Where is G-d, the Miracle Maker? People often say, “If there is really a G-d, why doesn’t He do outright miracles anymore? I would believe in G-d if I saw the ten plagues in Egypt, the sea split or some other supernatural event.” In the past, G-d did miracles in order to prevent some terrible tragedy from happening. G-d overruled the laws of nature to keep the story going—otherwise, it would have ended. But this type of intervention is not the ideal way that G-d wants to act. G-d prefers not to do miracles. He only does them when there is no other way to teach us about His control of nature. People do not really change by witnessing a miracle. Of course, at first they are strongly moved and seem to change. But the awe quickly wears off, and they return to their old ways. We see this human pattern many times in the stories of the Torah. The Israelites witnessed the...

In January of 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, at the behest of his boss, Heinrich Himmler, convened a conference in a Villa in Wansee, a suburb of Berlin. Some of the top hierarchy of the Nazi party and the SS were invited, including Adolf Eichmann. They had finally concluded that there was nowhere to send all the Jews. When Hitler began his war of domination he initially had not intended it seems to annihilate the Jews; he simply wanted them out of Europe. In fact, the Nazis may have planned to fund their Nazi War machine by ransoming off their Jews. As an example, the St. Louis, which was the last boat full of German refugees to set sail before the War began sailed in June of 1939. Bound for Cuba, there were approximately 960 German Jewish refugees aboard, with visas for Cuba. Passage on board cost five hundred dollars, an enormous sum, equivalent today to nearly eleven thousand dollars. And the Cubans...

Identity Crisis is a Gift: Awakening to the Role and Goal of Your Soul Kirk Douglas, the actor, once told me that when people compliment him on a performance, they often tell him how great he was at losing himself in the part. "You just became Vincent Van Gogh! You were so wonderful." And he answers, "No, you lost yourself in the part. I can't afford to lose myself in the part. I have to pay attention to the director, to the cues. I have to hit the mark just right so the action is in the camera frame. I must stay aware that I am an actor playing a role." A good actor plays his part, but he doesn't get lost in his part. He can't even begin to think he is the character he is playing. On the other hand, he still embraces that role with a tremendous amount of love and gives everything he's got to play his...

Zvika had just been given two weeks leave; Having been accepted to the prestigious Company Commanders course, he had been given two weeks leave and was at home on his Kibbutz Lochamei Hageta’ot near Haifa when, at exactly 2pm on the afternoon of October 6th, 1973, the Yom Kippur War began. Nearly two thousand Syrian tanks poured across the border in the Golan Heights while hundreds of thousands of Egyptian troops crossed the Suez Canal in the Sinai, and Israeli troops, suffering unspeakable losses, scrambled to try and hold back the onslaught. Twenty-one year old Captain Zvika Greengold, a tank officer, sensed how bad things were and frantically started making his way across the country to the Golan Heights where he understood the situation was dire; Syrian tanks were just a few hours away from Tel Aviv and there was not much standing in their way.  Arriving at the IDF Command center in Nafach on the Golan, a couple of...