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Quiet; the sweet serene quiet of deep sleep; and exhaustion; exhaustion that is so deep you don’t even realize you are sleeping; you are away, somewhere, in your dream world experiencing life as you would perhaps love it to be. You are comfortably warm and snuggly under your blankets or in your sleeping-bag; and then all that peace and serenity comes to an abrupt halt. Shouting and yelling; darkness turning into abrupt harsh light; sleeping bags and blankets thrown off and the bitter cold immediately pervading every aspect of your being. Worst of all, you have exactly seven minutes from the time the guard is told to wake everyone up, to be standing in rows in your uniform on the parade ground with boots laced and buttons closed, ready for anything; for a new day of hell. We were perhaps a few weeks into basic infantry training in the IDF, and of all the horrible, sadistic systems they employed to break us and...

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...

Akeidat Yitzchak; the binding of Isaac: One of the most challenging stories in Jewish history, when a parent, four thousand years ago, is asked to do the unthinkable; to sacrifice his only beloved son, in the name of…what? Most people think this is an ancient legend, but it is a script that is all too familiar today, to so many families in Israel. As long as I live, I will never forget her screams: “Lamah? Lamah? Al Ta’azov Oti’!” “Why? Why? Don’t leave me!”  It was supposed to have been such a happy day; I was finally getting out. After four and a half years in the Israeli army, I had finally received my honorable discharge, and had spent the previous day giving back my gear; this was supposed to have been my first day of real freedom. No one to tell me where to go, no orders to analyze and fulfill, no inspections, patrols, guard duty stints or maneuvers; just a long,...

The Secret to Immortality When G-d said to Abraham “Go to yourself-- Lech Lecha” what was He actually asking Abraham to do? This command seems to be contradicted by the remainder of the statement: “...from your country, from your birthplace and from your father’s home.” Are these not the fundamental elements that make up a person’s sense of self? My nation, my birthplace and family together create the context for my identity and establish the vital ground for my sense of self. In addition, they represent citizenship, property rights, and inheritance, all essential sources of personal security. What G-d is actually saying to Abraham is, “Go to yourself and leave yourself,” bidding him to seek himself and at the same time abandon everything that establishes and confirms selfhood. The very order of the statement verifies this, as it is not in chronological order. A person first leaves his father’s home, then his birthplace and then finally the country’s borders, not the...

The winter of 1944 was an extremely bitter winter in Poland, and none felt it more than the Jews lost in the world of the lagers, the concentration camps. Often in life, it is the little things one remembers years later, and if you ask Rav Yisrael Lau what got him through that bitter winter as a seven-year-old boy in Buchenwald, he will tell you about Fyodor from Rostov, and a simple pair of ear muffs. Every morning, the Nazi guards would rush into the barracks screaming and yelling and swinging their rubber truncheons every which way; the prisoners had only seconds to jump out of their bunks and stumble out in the snow; anyone not standing in roll call when it began was often killed on the spot. As the guards walked up and down the lines in the bitter cold morning, their Alsatian dogs straining on their leashes, they watched for any puddles in the snow. None of the prisoners, you see,...

Are You Ready for the Ultimate Pleasure? The generations following the sin of Adam and Eve proceeded upon a path of moral degeneration. Cain, in a jealous rage, impulsively killed his brother Abel. In the next generation, Tuvel- Kain perfected the crime of Cain through manufacturing weapons. Then, Lemach boasted to his wives of committing pre-meditative murder. Idolatry flourished during the time of Enosh. Organized crime was established by a group of hoodlums called “The sons of Elohim.” Sexual perversion was rampant in Noah’s generation. Torah tradition teaches that there are three cardinal sins that a person should choose death rather than be forced to commit. They are: murder, idolatry, and sexual perversion. These offenses are the ultimate denial of G-d’s love and the values that make life worth living. They are a complete violation of living within the context of G- d’s oneness and love and therefore cut humanity off from the source and ground of life. In a span...

Late June 1976; passengers boarding Air France flight 139 discover it is now stopping in Athens en route to Paris. Some, like George and Rivka Karfunkel don’t want to board; Athens airport was renowned for its terrible security; indeed it was from this very airport a plane was hijacked in 1970. But their luggage is already on board so they board as well… In Athens, two Germans join the flight: Brigitte Kulma, and Willie Burs along with two Arabs who are connecting from Bahrain. There was no security inspection for transit passengers in Athens so they were able to board with the weapons they brought from Bahrain… The two Germans were members of Baader Meinhof and the two Arabs were members of the PFLP (Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine), an organization founded by Wadi Hadad, who broke off from Yasser Arafat whom he did not consider radical enough … he was the same individual who masterminded the Maalot...

Created in the image of love The power to be who you are In the very opening sentences of the Torah (Bible) we are told that the first human being was created in G-d's own image. And what was that image? The first human being was actually a man and a woman — a single entity that included the two sexes. "And G-d created man in His own image, in the image of G-d created He him; male and female created He them" (Genesis 1:27). In this union of male and female, in this oneness of opposites, the first human being reflected the image of G-d — a oneness that includes otherness and yet remains one. This is a very important concept. A lone individual does not reflect the image of G-d; an individual in unity with another individual does. So until an individual makes a space to include another, and allows that other to do the same, we do not have the...

He was a tough kid, with obvious ‘stuff’ going on inside; always getting into fights, spending a fair amount of time in the hallway, and always with that sad, lost look. Many years ago, when I was first exploring the world of education and teaching, I decided to try my hand at different types of teaching to see who and what I would most enjoy teaching, and what really spoke to me. Formal and informal, in schools and summer camps, for a few years I taught just about every type of audience I could find, with an eye towards discovering the type of teaching I truly loved and could spend the rest of my life with . One year, I took a job teaching first graders; to see what it would be like. As part of that experience, I underwent a one day seminar designed to train young inexperienced teachers how to look for tell-tale signs of abuse at home …....