Isralight

Small Tastings of Torah, Judaism and Spirituality by Rav Binny Freedman – Portion of Bereishit

October 25, 2019 by admin Comment Closed

His steely eyes should have given him away, but over twenty years ago, I was a new immigrant, only four months into my Israeli army service, and I had no idea who this Lieutenant General really was. We were finishing our second stage of tank training at the Israeli Armored Corps school, and, graduating as a tank driver, I was being awarded my first rank: private first class (Turai’-Rishon) by someone whom I would later learn was and still is an Israeli legend. This particular rank has almost no value (I wore it on my arm for one day, only so that I could outrank my older brother, who was a few days away from completing his sergeant’s course in the paratroopers and demand that he “get off his feet for a soldier who outranked him!”), and was awarded to a few of us who represented the battalion as outstanding cadets at the final ceremonies of the course. Looking back, the true value...

Sparks – by Rabbi David Aaron

October 17, 2019 by admin Comment Closed

Simchat Torah: The Joy of Torah More than truth, Torah is a living encounter with G-d. The experience at Mt. Sinai was not only a revelation of G-d’s truth, but more importantly, it was a revelation of G-d’s love. Torah was and continues to be G-d’s love letter to the Jewish people. Imagine one day you receive a love letter. You are at work and eating lunch at the employee cafeteria, and someone drops a letter in front of you. You see that it’s a letter from the one you love. Do you rip open the envelope and start to speed-read through the letter? No, of course you don’t. You save this letter. You’re going to read it in a very special place because this letter deserves more. Now imagine you’re in that special place. You open the letter carefully, you start to read your beloved’s words and you actually begin to hear her voice. And then you feel her presence. If you’re anything...

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

October 17, 2019 by admin Comment Closed

There is a powerful story I heard many years ago but never shared publicly, considering it too fantastic to possibly be true. But recently having read an accounting of it in Yitta Halberstam’s Small Miracles of the Holocaust, (Dancing with G-d pp. 178-181) I had the opportunity to ask a Hungarian Auschwitz survivor who recalled that this story had made the rounds in Auschwitz. It is difficult for me to imagine that the story is true, and yet, who could make up such a story? Apparently, in the fall of 1944, as the last remaining Jews of Hungary were being sent to the gas chambers, a Commandant decided to consign every Jew under the age of 18 to their fate. Normally youth in their later teens were sent to the labor battalions, receiving a reprieve from the infamous selections, but for some reason this Officer was determined that all Jews under 18 should be gassed. It was a well-known fact that...

Sparks – by Rabbi David Aaron

October 8, 2019 by admin Comment Closed

Getting the Forgiveness You Want and Need Yom Kippur is all about love and forgiveness. It's about how we are always inseparably close to G-d. On Yom Kippur we get a glimpse of ourselves, our choices and our relationship to G-d from another perspective--G-d's perspective. This is the transformational power of Yom Kippur that makes it into a Day of Atonement and forgiveness. There is a cryptic verse in the Book of Psalms (139:16), which, the Sages say, refers to Yom Kippur: The days were formed, and one of them is His. Every day of the year we see the world from our perspective but there is one day -- G-d’s day -- when we get a glimpse of the way the world looks from His perspective and everything changes in light of that perspective. On Yom Kippur we see it all from the perspective of the World to Come where you get to see the whole picture. The Talmud teaches that in this...

Small Tastings of Torah, Judaism and Spirituality from Rav Binny Freedman – Portion of Vayelech/Yom Kippur

October 8, 2019 by admin Comment Closed

Ramallah; 1988; in Mutzav Sivan right next to the Arab ‘refugee’ camps of Al Bireh and Al Amari during the first intifada; a nasty time, in a nasty place. After a week of intense action, non-stop patrols, riots, chasing kids throwing rocks, and endless briefings and late night ambushes, I had a few hours to catch my breath and was lying on my bunk with a good book and a bag of Wise barbecue potato chips which my mom had somehow gotten to me and I had been saving for a quiet moment. It was around 11am, the Arab kids were all in school, and the prayers in the Mosques that incited many of the riots were still twenty-four hours away. Technically I was the Officer in charge of the ready-alert squad (the Kitat Konenut) and thus still on duty with my boots and uniform on, but it was a quiet Thursday morning; In the middle of all that chaos...

Sparks – by Rabbi David Aaron

October 3, 2019 by admin Comment Closed

Is G-d a Lover or a Judge? When we take a bird's eye view of the holidays that inaugurate the New Year, we see a collection of diverse and disturbing of images for G-d. The predominant image for G-d, on Rosh Hashanah, is King and Judge who is writing us into a cosmic Book of life or death. Yom Kippur is associated more with G-d as a compassionate forgiving Father. Sukkot features G- d as a lover---the sukkah also symbolizes a wedding canopy. And on Simchat Torah we reach the height of intimacy and complete union with G-d. What are we to do with all this imagery? Are we really supposed to believe all this? Surely all these images are only metaphors for a higher divine truth that is beyond spoken words and conceptual images. We can only know the divine truth experientially. Anyone who believes that G-d is literally a King, Judge, Father or Lover is making graven images of G-d...

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

October 3, 2019 by admin Comment Closed

One of the great challenges in life is knowing when to lead and when to follow. This is especially true in the military, as witness the different philosophies of the role of officers in the field, in different military doctrines. The Israeli army, almost since its inception, has trained its commanders to lead by example. Many attribute the birth of this concept to the battle for Latrun in 1948. Latrun sits on top of one of the most strategically important crossroads in Israel, on a hilltop overlooking the main highway from the coastal plains to Jerusalem, and it commands the entrance to the valley through which one must travel to Jerusalem. Every army that ever wanted to take this holy city had to pass beneath this hill, which is why it is not only the site of many ancient fortifications, but was used by the British as a prime location for one of their Taggart fortresses. In 1948, when Israel was fighting its war...

Sparks – by Rabbi David Aaron

September 26, 2019September 26, 2019 by admin Comment Closed

Who is G-d to Judge? How to Celebrate a Day of Judgment I did not grow up in a religious home but we did go to shul (synagogue) every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I remember one Rosh Hashanah the rabbi got up and said, “We’re about to open the ark. It is customary for the congregation to stand while the ark is open, but it will be open for quite some time. So if you get tired, you can sit down.” I thought to myself, “I only come here twice a year, so if standing and going through a little torture is going to take away my sins, then why not stand for the whole thing?” When they opened the ark, everyone stood and then everyone sat. I was the only one who remained standing. I figured, how long could it last, five minutes, ten minutes? I stood there in terrible pain for an hour and a half, figuring ‘OK. I guess...

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

September 26, 2019September 26, 2019 by admin Comment Closed

In July of 2018, in a widely publicized story, twelve boys, aged 11-16, members of a junior soccer team, were discovered and rescued along with their twenty-five year old coach, in a daring cave rescue in Tham Luang, Thailand. They entered the cave as part of a field trip but were trapped inside after heavy monsoon rains flooded the cave entrance, blocking their way out. Efforts to find the boys were hampered by rising water levels and strong currents and it took a week until two British divers finally found them on an elevated rock four kilometers from the cave entrance; incredibly all were found alive. They were eventually rescued in a massive effort involving an international team of over 10,000 people, including over 100 divers, representatives from about 100 governmental agencies, 900 police officers and 2,000 soldiers, as well as ten police helicopters, seven police ambulances, more than 700 diving cylinders, and the pumping of more than a billion...

Sparks – by Rabbi David Aaron

September 19, 2019 by admin Comment Closed

How Happy is Happy Hour? And you shall be happy in all that the Lord your G-d has given you (Deut. 26:11) The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. --- Anne Frank Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. --- Hellen Keller Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. ---- Spike Milligan ****************** King Solomon said in his famous book Ecclesiastes, “I praise happiness,” and yet he also concluded “What does happiness accomplish?” Is happiness praiseworthy or worthless? The Talmud explains that King Solomon was referring to two types of happiness. The happiness derived...

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