Blog

Teaching in the Old City of Jerusalem, one develops a certain awareness, almost a radar, for the different types of people that can wander in off the street. Many of the people who frequent the old alleyways and ancient stones of Jerusalem are incredible people with incredible stories. But every once in a while, you can get interesting characters who walk in the door.  We once had a fellow wander in who was absolutely convinced that he was King David…. (In fact, there is a medical term for a specific mental disorder which affects people who may visit Jerusalem and have too intense a spiritual experience, resulting in the conviction that they are prophets or the like, known as ‘The Jerusalem Syndrome’.) So you keep your eyes open for such individuals, and you develop an ability to deal with their issues without distracting the rest of the group.  One day, a few minutes after my class had begun, a fellow wandered in...

Getting From the Real to the Ideal The Journey of Personal Transformation When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your G-d has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, and take her for a wife - Then you shall bring her home to your house... ... and she remain in your house and weep for her father and mother for a month, and after that .... she shall be your wife. And if you do not want her, you shall send her out on her own; you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, because you "violated" her. (Deut. 21:10-14) The Torah permits this only as a compromise to the yetzer ha-ra (evil urge). (Talmud Kiddushin 21b) 'And you shall take her unto you as a wife' - the Torah only permits this in...

It’s been almost twenty years, and every so often I still pause to think about how different it could have been… Just a few months ago we merited to walk our second child, our oldest son Yonatan, on that most special of walks, the walk down the aisle to his chuppah (wedding canopy.)  It’s such a powerful walk, because on the one hand, you can’t wait to get there, and on the other, you never want it to end. And as people stood and clapped and smiled and laughed, and Yonatan’s smile light up his entire face,  and my wife Doreet’s eyes filled with tears of joy, my entire being was filled with a deep sense of gratitude; what an awesome privilege Hashem bestowed upon us; such a blessing. And I couldn’t help but think about how different it might have been, and how many times I came so close to chas ve’shalom never experiencing such a joyous moment. Just a few...

The Prophet Powered Life “I (G-d) will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto you (Moses); and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him” (Deut. 18: 18) Through using methods such as meditation and music, the prophets of ancient Israel were able to induce altered states of consciousness in which they experienced a direct revelation from G-d. Sometimes they received a message for the entire world. When such messages had eternal significance, they were recorded and later incorporated into the Hebrew Bible. Only fifteen prophets’ revelations are included, with another dozen or so prophets mentioned by name in the various Biblical books. The Talmud, however, tells us that there were as many prophets in ancient Israel as Israelites who came out of Egypt during the Exodus, in other words, approximately three million. The Talmud also tells us that after the Temple was destroyed, the period of...

Court - a system any healthy society needs, but no one really wants to visit. Just like a judge: someone you want as a friend, but not someone you want to meet at work all too often. A date in court is not something most people look forward to, and the feelings such a visit generates range from frustration and trepidation, all the way to outright fear and terror. The army has its own system of courts and judges, and military court, like any other court in the world, it is not somewhere you really want to be. In the field, it is most often the office of the commander, and, depending on the issue involved, it is usually the battalion commander who deals with the more serious issues. When I was in the regular army, I was in the 195th battalion of the 500th armored division, and our battalion commander, a legend in his own right, gave new meaning to the...

A Short-Cut to a Life of Blessings You get what you give “Thou shalt not harden thy heart, nor shut thy hand from your needy brother; surely open thy hand to him.” — Deut. 15:7-8 Is there a short-cut to the spiritual wealth of life? One of the most powerful and immediate ways to connect the circuit of life, and let the blessings flow is Tzedaka, that is charity. The Talmud teaches: "Tzedaka saves from death." When we need an incredible influx of life force — because we are facing impending physical death or impending spiritual death, the act of giving to charity can be one of the most powerful antidotes. As proof for the statement, the Talmud tells the incredible story of the daughter of the famous Rabbi Akiva, who lived some 2,000 years ago. A star-gazer told Rabbi Akiva that his daughter would die on the day of her wedding. Rabbi Akiva replied that just because it is written in the stars...

It was them against us; that much was clear. The only question was who would break first. I can’t even remember exactly what it was we were supposed to have done, and what it was that had so enraged them, but our sergeants were on the war path, and it was clearly going to be a long afternoon... They called it a ‘misdar amerikai’ (American inspection), and none of us knew the origin of the term, but its meaning was clear enough. This had all started out as just another inspection. Six months into our army service, having completed basic infantry training followed by tank school we were now on maneuvers out in ‘the field’ where we were meant to learn how to assimilate all we had learned and begin to function as effective tank crews in battle-worthy battalions. It was Friday afternoon, and after a week of intense maneuvers with very little sleep, followed by the weekly servicing of...

You Get Back What You Put In The Joys of a Commandment-Driven Life The Zohar, which is a Jewish mystical classic, written two thousand years ago, states that there will come a time when people will be performing tradition and rituals like cows eating grass. Essentially, the cow chews its food, stores it and then chews its cud, thereby re-chewing the food, over and over again. The Zohar is using this metaphor as a symbol for something that is done mindlessly without intention or taste. In Jewish tradition, there is a concept called taamei mitzvos, which can be described as the "reason for the commandments." But taamei mitzvos can also mean the "taste of the commandments." In Hebrew, taam means both "taste" and "reason" — and there is definitely a connection between the two. Without understanding the reason behind the life of commandment it can become mindless and tasteless. Imagine a man who observes Sabbath, but it has no meaning to him —...

It’s not easy being the new guy on the block. I had been in the army for almost two years but I had only just started active combat duty in Lebanon as a young second lieutenant, straight out of Officer’s course, and while I may have outranked the guys in my platoon, I was also the one with the least amount of experience in the field. Ten weeks of basic infantry training, three months of tank school and three months of tank-crew training in the field, followed by three months of tank commanders’ course, a month of pre officer’s infantry training and four and a half months of combat infantry officer’s training followed by eight grueling months of Tank Officers training, and I was heavy on training but woefully short on field experience, and my men knew it. One of the results of being in training so long was that I had gotten used to the army way of details: morning...

What Do We Know? Humble Words to Console When we try to understand G-d, we face an inherent obstacle with the very process of knowing. When I attempt to know anything, I am the subject and the thing that I seek to know is the object. In addition, there must be some degree of distance and separation between the subject and the object. Your eye can see almost everything, but it cannot see itself. “Knowing” implies two separate entities: the knower and the known. However, you cannot know G-d in this normative way, because G-d is the source of all knowing. G-d is the source of all consciousness. Your very ability to think comes from G-d, who is the source of all thinking. How can you think about the source of all thinking? How can your mind hope to comprehend the source and ground of all minds? Yet if you want to know G-d, then you must seek the source of all knowing....