Dear Friends,

After a brief one week hiatus, Challa and Chasidut resumes this Thursday February 23 @ 7:30 pm…. 

This Thursday evening is Rosh Chodesh Adar- and as such we’ll be exploring the theme of Meshenichnas Adar Marbim Bisimcha-When the Month of Adar commences our joy increases…What are we to focus on during these days leading up to Purim? How do we prepare for the great day of Purim?

We’ll be exploring beautiful teachings from the Aish Kodesh zt’l-Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto, Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlop zt’l,and the Netivot Shalom zt’l-Rebbe of Slonim. 

As a special treat (for this week only!), we will be preparing our challot with a special Rosh Chodesh Adar twist and surprise…. 

As always, we ask for RSVP’s so we know how many to prepare for, as well as a contribution of 20 shekels per person which helps cover costs of refreshments and all baking materials and supplies…. 

We look forward to braiding and learning together…. 

Rabbi Sam Shor
Director of Leadership Development
ISRALIGHT
Faculty, Yeshivat Orayta
sam@isralight.org
ravsam@orayta.org
02-627-4890
212-444-1660

(click here for print version)

The Divine Wants You to be Happy When Rules Become Delicious Recipes for Your Soul

 “And these are the judgments that you shall place before them.”— Exodus 21:1

 ”You shall place before them, that is, like a table that is set and ready for eating.”— Rashi

 “Taste and see that G-d is good.”— Psalms 34

 LAWS YOU CAN EAT, ENJOY AND SAVOUR  

The job of a teacher of Torah is not to be a philosopher, ethical guide or law giver but rather a gourmet chef. A gourmet chef has the ability to bring the taste out of every ordinary cabbage, every simple bean sprout, as well as present it all in a delicious tantalizing way. 

Once, I went to someone’s home to raise funds for my institute. I thought we would have about a ten minute discussion. Instead, we were talking for five or six hours. I hadn’t eaten all day, and I was starving. Finally I decided that instead of asking for a contribution, I would just ask for something to eat. So I said, “Could I just have an apple?” 

She replied, “Oh, you must be starving. I’m so sorry!” 

My hostess ran to her kitchen and made me a Salad Nicoise — exquisitely arranged. Now, I’m not a big salad eater, but that’s what she chose to prepare for me. Well, I took one forkful, and I have to admit I had never tasted a salad like that in my life. Because this woman was able to bring out its’ true beauty and taste, suddenly I had a whole new appreciation for the vegetable kingdom.

Once I tasted this woman’s Salad Nicoise, I could never be satisfied with lettuce and tomato alone. The job of a Torah teacher is to present the Torah in an appetizing way; to reveal the beauty and flavour of G- d’s laws for all to see and taste.

THE TASTE OF LIFE

The Zohar, which is the Jewish mystical classic, written two thousand years ago, cautions us not to perform G-d’s commandments like cows eating grass. Doing so brings ruins upon us. Let’s try to understand what this means.

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 Torah 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 Torah living it can become mindless and tasteless.

Imagine a person who observes Sabbath, but it has no meaning to him — no taste. The only thing that keeps him doing it is guilt, or respect for the tradition, or simply habit. Without his understanding the meaning behind the observance, it will eventually stop sooner or later, in this generation or the next.

An experience I had working with a Jewish youth group describes how this translates down the line to the grandchildren. I was hired to try to rejuvenate interest for Judaism among the participants, and I thought a “Sabbath Experience” would be a great idea. So I presented my plan to one of the chapter presidents, a girl of about 16 or 17. She looked at me in total shock. “Sabbath!” she exclaimed incredulously. “Do you mean no tearing toilet paper?” This was the first thing that came to her mind. I said “Sabbath” and she thought “toilet paper.” So in jest I said, “Yes! Haven’t you ever tried that? For thousands of years Jews get together, put a roll of toilet paper on a table, sit around the table and chant, ‘Don’t tear it, don’t tear it!’” She looked at me with an expression that said “Is this guy for real?” And then she said, “You know, I always wanted to ask a rabbi, ‘are you allowed to flush on Sabbath?’” Imagine this is the question she always wanted to ask a rabbi.

Perhaps sometimes partial ignorance is even a greater problem than complete ignorance. At least when we know nothing, we don’t have bad feelings. But partial ignorance can translate into a total distortion. Perhaps it would have been better for the girl to be completely ignorant of Shabbat than to think of toilet paper in association with the most beautiful of Torah celebrations. As a result she is not even open to experience an authentic Sabbath. Her reaction and associations are but a symptom of the real problem: she does not know (or is confused about) who she is and who her ancestors were. And she will have nothing real to say to her children about Sabbath. Sabbath is not just not tasteless, but perhaps even bitter tasting to her.

We can perform the commandments and the traditions like cows eating grass. They chewed before, they chew now, and they’ll chew later because they chewed before — and that’s when it all starts breaking down. That’s when children say to their parents, “Why should I do this? This is not interesting. This is restrictive and meaningless.” And that’s when some parents respond, “You should. You must. You have to.” Rarely do people respond positively to empty demands; instead, they rebel against them. People respond to what they find clear, fascinating, relevant, inspirational and meaningful. Most people do what they want, not what they should.

When the meaning and the taste of G-d’s commandments are lost, then there is no love for it and no joy in it. When a person whom you love asks you for a favor, it is easy to do it, it’s a pleasure. But when you don’t like the person, the favor can be the hardest thing in the world because there are no good feelings surrounding it.

I think a lot of people don’t have good feelings about a Torah life because they don’t understand the meaning of it. They don’t know the taste of it and, worse, they likely have a bad taste about it. The Talmud says that when people accept the commandments with joy and happiness, these feelings are guaranteed to be long lasting. But when people accept commandments with anger or feelings of coercion, though they may observe them for a while, eventually they reject them and everything breaks down.

MISERABLE DANCING BEARS

This is the tragedy of religious education today. At home and in school, as children and even later as adults, we learn an incomplete and often wrong definition of our relationship to G-d. For many the word “G-d” conjures up serious negativity and distorts the meaning of any other words associated with it like Torah, commandments, Sabbath, etc..

Then, what should be holy words become, instead, triggers for our distorted images and bitter experiences from the past. Our first step in overcoming this huge obstacle is to get in touch with these triggers in order to then create a new trigger, a new identification, a new understanding, a new feeling.

How the mind stores images and then reacts to triggers is an amazing psychological phenomenon. Most of us have had the experience of, for example, driving a car and, all of a sudden, feeling overcome by a sad feeling. We get in a bad mood — doing nothing, just driving — and we don’t know why.

What can happen is this: While you are driving you hear a song on the radio that happened to be playing in a restaurant when you were breaking up with your boyfriend or girlfriend. You may not have payed any attention to the song playing at the time; it could have been background music. As you were experiencing that traumatic moment, you heard the Beatles singing, “She loves you, Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and you did not even notice it. Then one day you happen to be feeling really happy. You are driving down the highway, it’s a beautiful day, and the radio announcer says, “Now let’s hear an oldie but goldie from the Beatles: “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Suddenly you sense a dramatic shift in your mood and feel depressed. You don’t know why, but the words “she loves you” call forth that painful break-up mood from your memory bank.

This same kind of reaction is triggered in many of us regarding G-d and religion. And when that happens our minds can bring up a lots of stuff — pain, sadness, guilt, disempowerment, etc.

I was told that some circus trainers teach bears to dance by making them walk on hot coals. When the bear is walking on hot coals, it starts to make jagged movements from the pain. As the bear is walking over the coals and shaking in pain, the trainer plays music that later becomes a trigger for the pain of the coals. At that point, they can bring out the dancing bears for all to watch with wonder and joy. When the music starts to play, the bear starts to dance. But his heart cries because is re-experiencing the painful musical association.

A similar thing happens for many people when it comes to religion. I have met people from religious backgrounds who once kept Sabbath, ate Kosher, and prayed three times a day. But these practices were joyless and came with a lot of confusion, fear, oppression, and guilt. These people’s negative experiences turned into painful triggers that forced them to run from G-d and any religious institution. They don’t even believe that one could enjoy and love living G-d’s word. 

G-D WANTS YOU TO BE HAPPY

When I was in my early 20s, I studied in a yeshiva and completed my rabbinical ordination. After many years of full-time Torah learning, I felt I would like to start reaching out and teach. Because there are so many thirsty souls in the world that know so little about the Torah, I felt that I should share what I have learned thus far. But I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do just yet; perhaps I was too young or perhaps I was not learned enough. I decided to ask a Torah scholar, Rabbi Joseph Shalom Eliyashuv, for advice. Rabbi Eliyashuv is considered to be one of the greatest Torah authorities of our generation, and I was a little nervous to meet him. I shared with him my dilemma and asked him, “What does G-d want me to do?”

Rabbi Eliyashuv turned to me and said, “You should sit and continue to learn for a couple more years.” Hearing that, I must have made a very contorted face, like “ugh!” because he asked, “What’s wrong?” Spontaneously I said, “But I’m not happy just sitting and learning. I want to go out and teach!”

“Why, then, are you asking questions?” he asked. I was shocked by his question. It is common for everyone in the Torah community to ask Torah Sages questions.

“I beg your pardon,” I stammered.

 ”Why are you asking questions?”

 ”Because I want to know, what is it that G-d wants me to do?”

“Of course, G-d wants you to be happy,” he answered, “and you didn’t tell me you weren’t happy in the yeshiva. If you’re not happy just sitting and learning, and you’d be happier going out and teaching Torah, then do it. Don’t you think teaching Torah is also a commandment?”

Suddenly I realized how I had missed a fundamental Torah truth. I did not understand my happiness was an important or even valid factor in religious law. In fact, I assumed that the more you suffer the holier you must be. Can you imagine my surprise and relief? Had I not made that contorted face, and had the great Rabbi Eliyashuv not been sensitive enough to see it, I would have walked out of his office and sat in yeshiva for years, feeling miserable and thinking that I am such a holy martyr — a true servant of G-d. It may sound crazy, but that was my baggage. I did not think that happiness was a consideration in Torah law. But here was one of the greatest rabbis of our time — a holy gourmet chef — saying, “G-d wants you to be happy.”

Rabbi David Aaron
Author of Endless Light, Seeing G-d, The Secret Life of G-d, Inviting G-d In, Living A Joyous Life, and The G-d-Powered Life

(click here for print version)

At the end of World War Two, the United States Army liberated the Concentration camp of Buchenwald, and began the painstaking process of administering to the survivors. Rabbi Herschel Schechter, who was the chaplain of the US eighth army, stayed in the camp and attempted, as much as was possible, to create a semblance of Jewish experience for those who had survived. How does one run a prayer service, and encourage people to pray to a G-d who seemed to have been so absent in those terrible years?

Rabbi Schechter requisitioned one of the barracks and set it up as a makeshift synagogue, and began running services for those who were interested. One day, noticing one of the survivors standing on the side watching the prayers, Rabbi Schechter invited him to join the service, but the man refused. Nonetheless, he remained in the barracks, watching the service with the vacant eyes that were common in the camps in those days.

Realizing he had seen this fellow attend services before, though always as a spectator, Rabbi Schechter approached him again, and offered him a siddur (prayer book). The survivor, whom we now know as Simon Weisenthal, refused again, and explained:

“One day, one of the men in our barracks succeeded in smuggling a siddur into the camp. I was amazed that someone was willing to risk torture and certain death simply for the opportunity to pray. That a Jew, even in this hell, was willing to defy the Germans, and continue to believe in G-d, was a testament to the power of the human spirit, and to the Jewish people’s survival, against all odds. And I resolved that if a Jew could continue to pray under such circumstances, then maybe G-d was still out there, hidden in the indomitable spirit of the human soul, and I, too, would pray.

“I was in awe of this fellow, until I discovered what he was doing with the prayer book he had smuggled in: he refused to lend the siddur to anyone unless they first handed over their meager daily food ration. He was renting the prayer book out for rations, and Jews in the barracks, desperate to hold a siddur in their hands after all this time, were forced to give up their only food for a few minutes with the prayer book.

“And at that moment I decided that if a human being could sink that low, then truly there was no G-d, and I resolved never to pray again.”

After hearing his words, Rabbi Schechter responded with a simple question:

“Instead of looking at the fellow who refused to give away his siddur without first taking the food of his fellow prisoners, why don’t you look at all the Jews who were willing to give up the only food they had for a chance to pray with a siddur?”

There was a moment of silence between the two, and something glimmered deep inside those vacant eyes. And then, quietly, Simon Weisenthal stepped forward, took a prayer book, and began to pray.

What does it mean to be a slave, and are we ever truly free?

This week’s portion, Mishpatim, begins with a very challenging and almost incomprehensible concept: the idea of a Jewish slave, serving his Jewish master.

“And these are the judgments (or rules) that you must set before them (the Jewish people): If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years, but in the seventh year, he is to be set free.

“If he was unmarried when he entered his enslavement, he shall leave by himself. But if he was a married man, his wife shall leave with him. If his master gives him a wife, and she bears sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall remain her master’s property, and the slave shall leave by himself.

“And if the slave declares, “I love my master, my wife and my children; I do not want to go free,” his master must bring him to the courts. And he must bring the slave next to the door or doorpost, and his master must pierce his ear with an awl, and the slave shall then serve his master forever.” (Shemot 21:1-6)

Slavery? Masters? Is this the reason we left Egyptbehind us, to create our own system of slavery? Just last week, in the portion of Yitro, the Jewish people received the Torah, and began their journey to fulfill a dream, and create an ethical society on the way to a better world. Three thousand years before the American declaration of independence, in a world steeped in paganism and the belief that makes right, the Jewish people came onto the world scene with the belief that all men are created equal. This is why the Torah we received at Sinai begins with the creation of the world, and the creation of human beings, all of whom are created in the image of G-d.

So what went wrong? How can the Torah now be telling us about Jewish slaves, in a Jewish slave system?

It is important to note that this is not a small, obscure set of details, hidden somewhere at the end of the Torah; this is the beginning of the very first portion we read after Sinai. In fact, the commentaries make a point of explaining that these laws are a direct continuation of Sinai.

In the verse: “And these are the judgments….”, Rashi quotes the Midrash which explains that the word “And” comes to include that which precedes it, to teach us that just as the commandments that preceded these came from Sinai, so too these judgments are a direct continuation of Sinai and are a part of the law given by G-d.

Having just experienced Sinai, received the Torah, and heard the Ten Commandments, the Torah begins to delineate the mitzvoth we were given at Sinai. The Torah chooses to begin with this very strange set of rules, all about human slavery. Why?

How can the same system that speaks of ‘loving one’s fellow as much as oneself’, or ‘loving the stranger’ allow one human being to enslave another?

Perhaps a closer look at some of the details of these verses will help us understand what lies at the root of this challenging set of laws.

A slave, it seems, remains a slave for only six years. However, when he is set free the question arises as to what he takes with him. Quite simply, he only takes out with him, says the Torah, what he had when he came in. This alone would be challenging enough; after all, shouldn’t the master be responsible to set him free with some allowance or stipend, so he at least has some head start on life? But it gets worse! If this fellow marries a woman who is a fellow slave, she doesn’t go with him when he leaves; she is the property of her master, and remains enslaved!

And as if that isn’t difficult enough, the question then becomes what to do in the event the slave, as a result of this seemingly cruel law, decides he prefers a life of slavery to a life of loneliness, and wants to stay? The Master is then obligated to take the slave to court and subject him to a ceremony, which is nothing short of bizarre! And all of the commentaries here seem to agree, that this ear- piercing ceremony (itself a piece of this puzzle we need to understand) is actually some form of punishment… for the slave!

Why would this slave’s wish to remain in the home of his master, be viewed as something worthy of punishment? It seems, at first glance, like a perfectly natural desire: this slave wants to stay with his wife and children, whom he loves.

In fact, the verse expresses this when it says that the slave declares: “I love my master, my wife and my children; I do not want to go free.” (21:5)

And this does not seem to be a pre-requisite to the subsequent proceedings; it appears rather, to be the underlying reason, for this slave’s actions. Why then is this slave worthy of punishment? If this piercing of the ear is indeed a punishment of sorts, what has this slave done wrong? His desire seems a perfectly natural one, and it is the system that seems to be at fault?

Unless of course, one takes a closer look at the story:

Isn’t it interesting that this slave declares: “I love my master, my wife and my children”?

What sort of a slave loves his master? (And what sort of a husband loves his master more than his wife?) This must have been a common enough occurrence as to be predicted, and even addressed by the law.

Indeed, the Talmud tells us: “Kanah’ Eved Kanah Rav”; “He who acquires a slave, has really acquired a master.”

And, in fact, the laws of how one is meant to treat a slave are nothing short of incredible:

If one has a Jewish slave, and there is only one pillow in the house, he must give it to the slave. If there is only enough food for one meal, he must give it to the slave. And if there is only one bed in the house, the master must sleep on the floor! This is certainly not the kind of slavery we are accustomed to reading about. In fact, if the master hits his slave, and injures him in any way, the slave immediately goes free! (See 21:26)

Indeed, the term slave, with all of its negative connotations, would probably be better replaced by the term ‘indentured servant’. And in order to really understand this, we need to understand the process by which a Jew becomes such an indentured servant in the first place.

A Jewish ‘slave’ is someone who was, for example, caught stealing. In our society, such a person, if convicted, is punished by being sent to prison. Whereupon he or she will serve their time in prison until their sentence is up, and the courts decide that they have paid their debt to society.

In Judaism, however, punishment never involves prison. In fact, the concept of prison barely exists in the Torah, and then only when no one knows what to do. For example, when Eldad and Meidad (two elders) are teaching in the camp without Moshe’s permission, and it is unclear what the response should be, Joshua suggests they be locked up:

“Adoni’ Moshe, Ke’la’eim” “My master Moshe (says Joshua), lock them up!” (Numbers 11:28), because no one as yet knows what to do with them. (In fact, the Modern Hebrew word for prison: Keleh’, comes from this same biblical root.)

And when the Jewish people find one of their own gathering wood on the Sabbath, no one knows what to do with him, and what the law is regarding such a person: “Vaya’simu Oto’ Be’mishmar.” “He was placed under guard.” (Numbers 15:34) And here too, mishmar is a form of incarceration.

Prison in Judaism essentially means: we have no idea what to do with someone, so we put them out of the way, in a place where we don’t have to deal with it. In fact, as many are beginning to realize, the civil penal system in effect today in most countries not only is not a solution to the problems and not a viable form of rehabilitation, it in fact exacerbates the problem.

Judaism has a much simpler system, which begins with the idea that we do not believe in punishment. Punishment purely for punishment’s sake serves no one and accomplishes nothing. It is most probably a Christian concept related to the idea of purgatory or eternal damnation. In Judaism there is no such thing as eternal damnation, because what could be the point of being in hell or purgatory forever?

In Judaism the result of mistakes or transgressions is not about punishment, it is about consequence. If a person makes a mistake, there is a consequence to that mistake, which must be assumed as the responsibility of the person who made the mistake in the first place.

Imagine you are lost in a forest, trying to get to the other side. You come to a fork in the road and don’t know which way to go. If you take the correct path, you will be getting closer to the other side of the forest, which is your goal. But if you take the wrong path, with every step you take you will be headed in the wrong direction, further away from the other side of the forest you are seeking.

There is a consequence to taking that wrong path, then: you basically have to return to the fork in the road and get back on the right trail. Having to retrace your steps in this instance is not a punishment; it is simply the necessary consequence of your mistake.

And this is the paradigm of life in this world. Life in this world is like a forest, and the other side of the forest we are trying to reach is to become better, ethical people in order to help create a better, more ethical world. But sometimes you come to a fork in the road, and the choices aren’t so clear, because you’re a little lost.

Imagine you walk into a room and someone has left a wallet full of money on the table. You can take the right path and make sure the wallet with all of its contents is returned to its owner, or you can take the wrong path, and keep the wallet. And if you steal the wallet, then you are headed in the wrong direction, and getting deeper and deeper into the woods. And once you steal, it becomes easier to steal again, and again, and again….

And there is a consequence to this wrong turn in the road: you have to go back and retrace your steps till you can return to that fork in the road, and get back on the right path. So how do you do that? Well, first thing, you have to return the money you stole! It is incredible that civil law ‘rehabilitates’ a prisoner through the prison system, without ever forcing him to repay what he stole!

The first thing a person must do, as the obvious consequence of his mistake, is to repay what he took. (Sometimes this is not so simple, but at least it is the principle on which Jewish criminal law is based.) And then, he has to try and become again the person he was before he ever stole in the first place; he has to try and get back to that crossroads.

Indeed this is why Judaism’s word for this process is not ‘repentance’ (again, a Christian word based on the concept of penance, which is very different from what Judaism suggests.), it is Teshuvah, which comes from the root Shuv, to return, or go back. Maimonides (Hilchot Teshuvah 2:1) points out that real Teshuvah occurs when a person finds themselves in the same situation they were in, and this time make the right choice instead of the wrong one. In other words, they succeed in getting back to that crossroads.

So, in order to rehabilitate himself, a person must give back what he stole, and then attempt to become the person who never would have stolen in the first place.

All of which brings us back to our portion, and the Jewish indentured servant (not slave).

What happens if a person stole, but has long since disposed of what he stole? What if he spent the money, and now has nothing with which to pay back the person he stole from?

This is essentially the situation many petty thieves and criminals find themselves in today. But Judaism has a very different response. When a person has nothing, and ultimately must feel like nothing, the Jewish court evaluates what this person is worth on the ‘open market’ and sells his services to someone in order to facilitate his ability to repay those he stole from. Imagine a person stole $5,000 dollars, and has not a penny to his name. The court will assess what skills he has and allow the market to actually place a value on those services. And by selling himself into servitude, he can repay the debt he owes, and begin the process of returning to the person he was meant to be.

In other words, when a person has hit rock bottom, and feels he is utterly worthless, a thief, with nothing to contribute to society, Judaism tells him he is wrong.

He is taken to court, where the judges effectively say to him: ‘you think you are worthless? We will show you that you have value; you are worth much more than you think you are.’ And this is why he goes into service, and in the process discovers all that he has to contribute. And he becomes an intricate part of a family, which is such a different reality from our modern day convicts, shunned by society and hidden away to rot where no one can see them.

It is easy to understand why a person would want to stay in such a reality: who wouldn’t? No bills, no worries, a great job, a great family, a sense of purpose and belonging, it would probably be hard for most people to leave such a life. This, of course, is precisely the problem.

Note that the indentured servant in the verse declares his love first for his master and only then for his wife and children. This is not at all about a person not wishing to leave the love of his life and his partner in creating a better world. In fact, the woman described is not even a Jewish woman, she is, according to tradition a Canaanite servant, who at least according to Maimonides has not fully accepted the seven Noachide laws, which is why she is still in service. (And if she is still an idolatress, she cannot be a true partner for a Jewish servant, because the most important aspect of any relationship is the sharing of common goals. It is hard enough to build a home when you share the same purpose and dreams; without them, it is close to impossible.)

The servant here loves his master more than his wife, which means he likes the life his master provides for him. And that is his mistake, because the whole purpose of his experience is to teach him that he has only one master. We are put in this world to make a difference, and G-d never wanted slaves; we are meant to be partners with G-d in building the world He has given us.

Our challenge is to embrace the freedom we have and decide what to do with it, and how best to use it to serve the whole world, by making this world a better place to be.

And this is what is really going on when the court brings him to the doorpost, the same doorpost whereon the blood of the lamb (of the Paschal sacrifice) was placed prior to our Exodus fromEgypt. Before we got out ofEgypt, we had to getEgyptout of ourselves. So we slaughtered and ate of the lamb, one of the gods ofEgypt, and placed it upon the doorpost as if to say: “into this home the gods ofEgyptdo not enter”. On that last night inEgyptwe discovered that freedom is not about where you are; it’s about who you are.

And, much like those Jews inBuchenwald, whether we are free or living as slaves is really up to us.

At that same door, the servant’s ear is pierced, because there is something that he was meant to hear, but didn’t.

Sometimes, you listen to something, but you don’t really hear it. The word Shema’ (Hear) is also related to the word ‘Me’aim’, which means innards, or guts. There are things that we need to hear, and feel in our gut. And if this servant had really heard the message at Sinai, and internalized the challenge of creating a world in partnership with G-d, he would never have walked through whatever mistaken doorway got him into trouble in the first place.

The fact that he wants to stay there means he still hasn’t gotten the message, which is why he needs to hear where he is at on a much deeper level.

Ultimately, we all serve something; and the only freedom we really have is the ability to choose what we wish to serve: the pot of soup at the end of the day, or the higher purpose we are willing sometimes to give it up for.

Shabbat Shalom,

R. Binny Freedman

(click here for print version)

Is G-d Just a Cosmic Party Pooper?
How to Find Our Mission in Life

I recall a cute comic strip depicting Moses coming down from Mt.Sinai with the Ten Commandments written in stone. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” he announces to the Israelites waiting anxiously at the bottom of the mountain. “The good news is that I got Him down to ten.” The crowd cheers. “The bad news is that adultery is still in.”

It is not uncommon for people to think the commandments spoil the fun of life — that G-d is really a cosmic party pooper, and that there is a conflict of interest between man and G-d.

People think that serving G-d is demeaning; servitude implies a slave-master relationship. But that is not the real meaning of serving G-d. The opportunity to serve G-d is the greatest gift we could ever imagine. It’s empowering. To serve G-d means that we can do something on behalf of G-d. It’s an unbelievable honor!

The Talmud teaches that if you come close to fire, you will be warm; that the servant who comes close to the king partakes in royalty.

I’ve been at the home of some very, very wealthy people. I always find it so interesting that the various workers in the home — gardeners, caterers, hair dressers, etc. — live in the mansion with their boss, eat the same food, and enjoy the use of the same facilities like the pool, sauna and jacuzzi during their breaks. The workers in the palace in many ways enjoy the life of royalty. They come the closest and thereby enjoy the most intimate encounters with the king.

Working for G-d is not a diminishing experience. It’s the most incredible elevation of status. If I build my business for my sake, to make money for me, it is really no big deal. But if I build my business for G-d’s sake — if I look at what I do and I ask myself how can I promote G-d’s purpose in this world; how can I bring into the world more love, peace, kindness, justice, wisdom; how can I be an instrument serving to reveal Divine qualities and ideals in the world — it’s an unbelievable opportunity! This is the secret to a profoundly meaningful and fulfilling life.

There’s an amazing song by Bob Dylan: “You’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Everybody’s serving somebody. There’s nobody in this world that isn’t serving somebody else. The question is not — to serve or not to serve. The question is - who to serve?

If my life is dedicated to gaining approval from certain people, then I am always less than they are. But if my life is dedicated to G-d, then the sky’s the limit to my self-worth. There is no greater mission waiting for me. There is nothing higher.

All human beings have been given a mission in this world. There is a universal mission that we are all obligated in. However, there is also a unique mission for every nation –United States,England,China,Israel, etc. And within each nation’s mission each citizen has a special, personal mission. Sometimes you know your mission and sometimes you don’t know your mission. But that doesn’t mean you’re not performing it. All in all, it is important to remember that even if you are not sure what your precise personal mission is — even if you don’t feel like you’re fulfilling your mission — you may in fact be on target. This is one of the most important lessons of the Torah and Kabbalah. Each and every one of us has a Divine purpose and mission on earth.

By now I am sure you are wondering how you can find out what is your calling and mission. The Vilna Gaon, who was one of the greatest sages of the Jewish people in the 18th century, tells us how. He quotes Ecclesiastes — “In all your ways know G-d and He will straighten your path” – and explains the difference between a “way” and a “path” like this: A “way” is known to everyone. It’s the highway. Everyone knows where the highway is. It’s a public thoroughfare. But a “path” is off the beaten track. A path is not public. It is the private and unique way for the individual.

There are certain ways that we serve G-d that are common to us all. These ways are not unique to any of us. They are the highways of life. You can’t get anywhere unless you get on those highways. However, once you get on the public highway, suddenly you will see a sign that says, “David — exit 3 miles left.” That is where David turns off to continue his journey to fulfill his mission. Now Jan who was also on the highway sees David get off and feels a little jealous. “Lucky guy! He found his path.” But with some patience Jan plods forward until she discovers her path. And sure enough there’s a sign for her too. “Jan, 5 miles exit left.”

Everyone has a unique path waiting for them to journey upon. To find it we’ve got to get on the highway. Collectively we have a mission. It’s the highway. The collective mission of human beings is to become more and more humane.

Each nation has a mission. One nation may be responsible to lead the advancement of technology in the world. Another perhaps is meant to lead research and development in the field of medicine. Another perhaps is called upon to increase art and music. And yet another may be appointed to head up promoting the moral and ethical progress of the world.

After we have accepted our mission as a member of the human race and our mission as a member of our specific nation, then we will be we shown our individual mission. Until that time you should work at becoming a more decent human being and a better citizen of your nation. You get on the public highway when you fulfill G-d’s commandments and then G-d will lead to your unique path.

Each and every one of us has a mission in life — a calling. The thing you have to always remember is “Who” is calling. G-d is calling you to be His agent on earth, and the mission He is asking you to fulfill is not only your mission but G-d’s mission.

Unfortunate is the person who thinks he or she doesn’t have a mission in life. Nietzsche, the German philosopher famous for saying that G-d is dead, ironically insisted that “unless a person feels that some infinite whole is working through him, his life has no meaning.”

That “infinite whole” is G-d and every one of His commandments is an opportunity to experience the profound meaning of service. Our mission in life is our meaning in life.

Rabbi David Aaron
Author of Endless Light, Seeing G-d, The Secret Life of G-d, Inviting G-d In, Living A Joyous Life, and The G-d-Powered Life

(click here for print version)

Friday night. The sun has long since set, dark clouds hide the stars, and the wind is howling off the Shouf mountain range in central Lebanon.

I had managed to quietly sing the Kabbalat Shabbat service, while en-route to the ambush site, and even pray the evening service while in the staging ground, before giving my men a final inspection, but I had no idea what to do about Kiddush. In such situations we usually ate from our packs, one or two at a time, and we had a system to ensure that we didn’t make much noise, but I had never happened to find myself in this particular situation on a Friday night. I had not thought it through in advance, so I had no wine with which to make Kiddush, and a wave of depression fell over me as I realized how far I was from where I really wished to be on a Friday night. Having come straight from a patrol to lay down this ambush, (intelligence had indicated that terrorists might be coming through this valley on this particular night…) there were no candles lit, no beautiful Shabbat table laden with freshly baked Challot and wine, and certainly, in the cold Lebanon night, no-one was singing Shabbat songs.

My first sergeant, a Yemenite Jew, crawled over to me and I noticed a strange smile on his face; not the normal expression of a soldier lying in the bitter cold in the middle of the night in Lebanon…

“Achi!” ‘My brother’, he whispered,
“Mah kara?” (‘What’s up?’),
“Atah Nir’eh Kol Kach Atzuv, mah zeh tzarich le’hiyot?”
‘You look so down, what’s the matter with you?’

“You know”, he continued, we’re not ready to lay down this ambush; we haven’t finished all the preparations (known in the army as “Hachanot”…) I was somewhat surprised, thinking I had been pretty thorough, but you learn pretty quickly to listen to your men, especially your first sergeant, who had been around…

“B’li Kiddush, lo Zazim!”, ‘How can we move without making Kiddush?’ he said with a smile. (It had become the custom in the battalion that every Friday night, before we ate, I would make Kiddush for the whole battalion, and all the guys would always kid me about it…).

It was only then I noticed he had crawled over with a canteen in his hand… and unscrewing the cap on the canteen, he told me he had no Kiddush cup, but promised me the Kiddush wine this week would be worth it. And together with seven other men in Israeli Army uniform, on a wind-swept hill in the middle of the night in Lebanon, we made Kiddush.

I had never seen him with a Kippah on his head, nor had I ever caught him with a pair of Tefillin on his arm, but at that moment, for me, Moshe Biton was the holiest man in the world. And that Friday night Kiddush was absolutely one of the highest experiences of my life.

Kiddush is all about sanctifying the moment. It’s about elevating the mundane to a different place, and about how we can transform the ordinary every day to something incredible; something really special. But that also raises one of the most challenging questions we face as Jews.

The climax, perhaps even the apex, of the Friday night Kiddush has us say:

“Ki Vanu Vacharta Mikol Ha’Amim”
“Because You (Hashem) have chosen us from amongst all the nations”.

We are called the chosen people; indeed we say this every day. Every morning when we wake up, we say the blessing:

“Asher Bachar Banu Mikol Ha’Amim, Ve’natan Lanu Et Torato”
“Hashem has Chosen us from amongst all the Nations, and given us His Torah…”

What does this mean? Do we think we are better than every-one else? Are we an elitist society? Is this what Judaism is all about?

Given that there are Jews from every racial background on the face of the earth, and that a walk through any street inIsraelwill see Jews from every nationality in the world speaking the same language, one would be hard-pressed to imagine that this idea is racist. Anyone who wants to be a Jew can join the club. (Though what that entails is far from simple, and involves at the very least defining what it means to be a Jew in the first place)

But something doesn’t seem to sit right about the idea that we consider ourselves to be chosen above all the other peoples of the world. In fact, if we think we are so great, one wonders what it is we are chosen for. I remember thinking, on that hill inLebanon, and in many similar situations in the army and out, do I/we really want to be chosen? If this is what I am chosen for, to be in green pajamas, playing war games in the night, then thanks, but no thanks!!

In fact, the sources make very clear that any person, who lives an ethical life regardless of whether they are or are not Jewish, has a portion in the world to come (Tosefta Sanhedrin 13), and that anyone can cause the Divine Presence of G-d to reside in them.

So what does it mean to be chosen? And what does this chosen-ness have to do with Shabbat? Why is that one of the major themes of Shabbat, is found, not only in the Kiddush, but also in the special prayers for Shabbat, culminating with the statement in the Shabbat afternoon service:

“Atah Echad, Ve’Shimcha Echad, U’Mi Ke’amcha Yisrael, Goy Echad Ba’Aretz.”
‘You are One, Your name is One, and who is like unto Your Nation Israel: One nation in the World.”

Are we really ‘the one, the only one’?

And why, in introducing this idea that we are chosen, every day, do we link this to the fact that Hashem gave us the Torah?

It would seem, that the ideal place to look, in order to make sense of this idea would be that point in Jewish history where Hashem actually chose us as his people. And that, according to Jewish tradition, is this week’s portion, Yitro.

3,200 years ago, G-d chose to give us this special set of books that we call the Torah. Beginning with the Ten Commandments the entire Jewish people received and with them the revelation that encapsulates the one to one relationship that we had with G-d, beneath that little mountain, somewhere in the Sinai desert. Arguably, this is the single most significant experience in Jewish history. It forms the basis for who we are, and all that we have to share with the world. All of which raises a rather interesting question.

If this experience, which is clearly the central piece of this week’s portion, is so significant, why is the portion named after Yitro, who is described in the opening remarks of the portion to be a “Kohen Midyan”, a Priest of Midyan?

Why isn’t the portion named after Moshe, who received the Torah to begin with? (In fact, there is no portion anywhere in the Torah named after Moshe, nor for that matter after Avraham, Yitzchak or Yaakov, either!)

Even more challenging is how this portion begins: One would have expected the story this week to begin with chapter 19 (of Exodus), which describes the arrival of the Jewish people at Sinai, in preparation for the giving of the Torah. Instead, we are treated to the arrival of Yitro, Moshe’s father in law. Tthe exchange that takes place between Yitro and Moshe and the results of that conversation are even stranger.

Yitro notices that Moshe is sitting all day long holding court for the Jewish community. So he advises Moshe to set up a system of courts and judges, with lower courts and appellate courts, and even Supreme courts, all finally reporting to Moshe in the event that a problem cannot be solved. Amazingly, Moshe thinks this to be a great idea, and this forms the basis for the Jewish judiciary, which of course is the foundation of any, and in this case the Jewish, ethical system. This is nothing short of incredible!

Imagine you meet a friend who is about to go into a private meeting with the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Z”TL), to try and resolve a difficult Halachic question. And although you know he is five minutes away from an answer from the Rebbe, you decide to give him some advice and tell him what you think is the best solution, and he actually listens to you, and decides to do what you are suggesting! And he calls his wife to tell her the answer, and how to deal with it, and then off he goes to his meeting with the Rebbe! That would be beyond chutzpah, it would be ridiculous! How could you imagine giving advice to someone who is going to see a world authority, and why on earth would he be so presumptuous as to listen to you, and all this before even seeing what the Rebbe has to say! How could Yitro have the audacity to suggest a system, when Moshe, and for that matter the entire Jewish people, is about to have a tete a’tete with G-d?

And why are we listening to this priest of idolatry in the first place, much less naming one of the most important portions of the Torah in his honor?

(Granted that Yitro may have left the Idolatry of Midyan, to embrace Judaism, but if that were the point, one would expect to see that a bit more clearly expressed in the text, which it clearly is not. In fact, a contextual reading of this story has Yitro returning to Midyan and not even waiting for the experience of Sinai! (See 18:27)

One wonders if this may be precisely the point.

There are really two pieces to the idea of chosen- ness.

The first is, did G-d choose us, or did we choose G-d?
The second, which is far more crucial, is: What exactly are we chosen for?

Often, when considering this question, people point out that before G-d chose us, we chose G-d. Abraham, alone in a world of pagan idolatry and immorality, was the first to consider the possibility that G-d wasn’t a part of the world; the world was a part of G-d. Historians are generally intrigued, and have no explanation for how one people came to the idea that G-d is an unseen, all-giving, loving entity, that is the source and the totality of all reality. Especially given that this was a complete departure from everything anyone had ever considered to this point.

There is even the oft-quoted Midrash (Oral traditional teaching) that has G-d offering the Torah to all the nations of the world, with each of them finding some problem in its content that make it untenable to their way of life. Each nation asks, what is in this Torah, and to one G-d says ‘Thou shalt not kill’, to another ‘Thou shalt not steal…’ and each nation cannot imagine life without theft, or without cheeseburgers, or without hunting as a sport… Yet, says the Midrash, the Jews simply say we will live it, whatever it says… (next week’s discussion…).

But is this really a fair expression of the idea that we chose G-d? What if G-d had told us a little more of what was in this book? I sometimes wonder what would have happened if G-d had told us that the Torah says ‘thou shalt not gossip’ (even in the back of the Synagogue!), we might well have looked for another book!

If the Torah makes the point of sharing this story of Yitro with us right before receiving the Torah, and if Jewish tradition even calls the portion Yitro, in his honor, then there must be an idea, which is crucial to our relationship with G-d, and our being chosen by G-d to receive the Torah.

You see, just because I am chosen does not mean that anyone else is not chosen. In fact, we are all, every one of us, chosen, in some special way.

Imagine that I come home and tell our children that after a long day, whoever gets into pajamas, brushes their teeth, and gets into bed all on their own, will get an extra story before bed-time. And imagine our son Yair does exactly that, and gets ready for bed all on his own, and with no cajoling whatsoever is all ready for a story. But Adi, our daughter still resists and wants more help with pajamas and teeth, and being ‘eased’ into bed. So of course, Yair gets an extra story, and Adi doesn’t. But then Adi yells: “favorites!” “It’s not fair…!” (You know the rest of the script…) So that’s ridiculous. I’m not favoring Yair; no one child is my favorite, because they are all my favorites, always. My relationship with Yair has changed in that moment because of how he behaved, and the efforts he made, but that will never cause me to favor him more.

Hashem created each and every one of us. And just as all individuals were created by G-d, so were all the Nations of the world. And to the best of my knowledge, you will not find, in any Jewish source, that just because I am chosen, that someone else isn’t, or that the fact that I am chosen implies that I am somehow better than anybody else.

In fact, one of the most challenging aspects of parenting is to be able to show your children that each one of them is chosen, and special, while showing them that none of them is more special…

And maybe this is what this strange story of Yitro is doing here. Before we begin our very special chosen relationship with Hashem, remember, that just because the Torah is truth, does not mean that truth is not to be found anywhere else.

To be chosen is a gift; the gift that Hashem gives me. Some of us are chosen to be musical, some artistic, some to be methodical, and some brilliant. My challenge as an individual is to decide how I think Hashem chose me. What is my gift? What do I really have to give the world? And of course, a gift is meaningful when I can give it purpose. To be chosen also means I have a purpose. And if I take the gifts Hashem has given me (which is how G-d chooses me) and transform into a gift I give back to the world (How I choose G-d), then I am no longer a created object, I am a partner in creation.

And if this is true for individuals, it is equally true for us as nations of the world. We are all given our special gifts, and each of us, Buddhists and Muslims, Catholics and Jews, French and English; have to figure out as a people, how we are chosen (what special gifts we have been given) and what we are chosen for.

What are we, as a people chosen for? What, indeed, is our mission? It is interesting that Judaism has been caught between the extremes of religious fanaticism on the one hand, and secular humanism on the other. The religious fanatic believes, essentially, that G-d supersedes man, and that human beings are insignificant before G-d, therefore, in the name of G- d, there is no limit to what we can do to man. As long as G-d lives, it does not matter if man dies.

The secular humanist, on the other hand, believes that G-d is dead. And if we are not created in the image of G-d, then we are in the end, created in the image of matter. And if we are matter, and random, then how long does it take before a man can become a bar of soap, or a lampshade.

Judaism offers the world the idea that man cannot be insignificant before G-d, because man comes from G- d, and is even an extension of G-d. Ultimately, Judaism suggests that the first place to look for G-d is in the person sitting next to me. Only when I realize that every person is created in the image of G- d, and that every human being is chosen, in his or her own special way, am I ready to realize that we each, all of us, have a purpose. And then I am ready to tackle the meaning of being chosen. I am ready to discover the gifts I have been given (how G-d chose me), and the way I can use them to give back to G- d (the choices I make.)

This is why chosen-ness is such a central part of Shabbat; because on Shabbat I take the time in my week to consider what all the running around is all about. Shabbat is the island in time that allows me to consider who I really am, and why I am really here. It is also the reason Shabbat is so connected to the idea of Jewish community, because together, our challenge is to re-discover what we as a people are doing here, and how we can use the special gifts we are given, to make the world a better place.

And the key to discovering just what we, as a people, have been given is to explore the book that gives us the formula for what those gifts, and that purpose really is.

Three thousand years ago Yitro, a Midianite Priest, taught us that truth is truth, and that we all have our gifts, and each one of us is ‘the one, the only one’, in our own special way. And that allowed us to begin the journey of discovery to what our one-ness is all about.

Maybe if we all, as Jews, learn to respect the one-ness and chosen-ness of others, we will be ready to appreciate the one-ness and chosen-ness we already have.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rav Binny Freedman

(click here for print version)

The Nourishing Power of Love
Is Your Food Missing Vitamin L?

When the Israelites were wandering in the desert, G-d fed them with a hitherto unknown substance called “manna.” The people would go out of their tents every morning, and find this strange stuff lying there on the ground. G-d tells the Israelites: “I fed you manna — something that neither you nor your fathers knew what it was — so that you should know that not by bread alone does a person live, but by all that comes from the mouth of G-d.”

Why did it have to be something unfamiliar? What would have happened if the Israelites would have woken up in the morning and found bagels all over the place? Imagine being in the middle of the Sinai desert, and every morning appear these bagels, sliced in the middle, with two centimeters of cream cheese and lox. Now that would be a Jewish experience! Why did it have to be something that didn’t look like food?

Because if the manna did look like food the Israelites would think, “Well, okay, the bagels did come from G- d, the Bagel King, but the nourishment comes from the bagels.” However, since the manna obviously could not be nourishing in and of itself, the Israelites would necessarily learn an essential life lesson — all things come from G-d , not just food, but the nourishment in the food. If G-d had wanted pens to be nourishing they would have been.

It’s not on bread alone that man lives but by that which comes from the mouth of G-d. G-d determines what is a vehicle for life force and blessing. The Israelites realized that this odd, gray stuff was not going to nourish them. G-d was going to nourish them. The manna was just a vehicle for the nourishing love of G-d. And then they realized that back inEgypt, when they had bread to eat, it was not the bread that nourished them. It was also G-d. It’s hard to recognize G-d as the source of the sustaining energy in bread, because we think of bread, or any food we are used to, as inherently sustaining. I know the bread nourishes me; I know the apple nourishes me. But what’s this white, powdery, amorphous stuff called manna? Is that really going to sustain me? Obviously not. It must be G-d who is going to sustain me through this stuff. This lesson is true forever.

To the extent that I realize that this bread is only a channel for the nourishing energy of G-d to enter the world, to that extent the bread becomes a channel for the nourishing energy of G-d to enter the world.

This is why Judaism teaches that we must recite a blessing before we eat. When we say a blessing over a food, I begin with, “Blessed are You, G-d…” Many people mistakenly think that these words mean that we are blessing G-d, the Infinite One. But we are in fact acknowledging G-d as the Source of this food. When we eat an apple, we can just eat an apple, or we can, by saying the blessings consciously, make the apple into a conductor-wire for channeling G-d’s presence, love, vitality, goodness, and blessing. An apple can be a nutritious snack, or it can plug me into the Source of all life force and nutrition.

The Kabbalah teaches that if we eat without reciting a blessing, then the food feeds just our body. It does nothing for our soul. But when we make a blessing on the food, we transform that food. It’s not the same bread. It’s not the same apple. It’s not the same pretzel. This pretzel is now a vehicle for the life giving force of G-d to enter the world.

What’s the difference between a home-cooked meal and a frozen dinner? It’s the love and care that you can actually taste in the food. Even if it says on the package “Mom’s Home-made Frozen Dinner,” you can taste in the food that “Mom” is just a company that wants to make money. But the real mom makes you dinner for free because she loves you and cares. And you can taste the difference.

In order to taste the divine love and care in all food, we need to arouse the taste buds of our soul and acknowledge G-d as the loving source of all by making a blessing before we eat.

Rabbi David Aaron
Author of Endless Light, Seeing G-d, The Secret Life of G-d, Inviting G-d In, Living A Joyous Life, and The G-d-Powered Life

(click here for print version)

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 ‘todah’. And if you didn’t get a perfect score, you didn’t get home for Shabbat. So you can imagine everyone knew this topic backwards and forwards. One of the regular questions on the test was the RPG anti-tank weapon. A hand-held Russian-made toy, this Rocket Propelled Grenade was a tank killer, and one of the arch nemeses of the armored corps. Easy to fire, with a range of up to 300 yards, it could peel through the armor on our tanks like butter. You could flash a picture of one of these to any tank officer in his sleep, and he’d spew out the name of the weapon, whether it was friend or foe, statistics, and effective responses, without even batting an eye.

So when, on tank patrol in Beirut, you see one of these tubes sticking out of an alley, you know exactly what you have to do, and you know you only have a second to do it. There is an over-ride system a tank commander has, called a ‘mashbet’, which takes control of the main gun away from the gunner. You don’t have time to bring the gun around for the gunner to see in his limited scope, direct him to the target, and wait for him to aim and fire. That takes eight seconds, which is seven seconds too long. So you grab the mashbet, which sits in the turret wall right at hip level, and bring the tank gun left to site on this tube even as it is emerging from the alley it was hiding in. You have practiced this again and again in maneuvers, till you can aim the main gun at close range and hit the target in your sleep. At a couple hundred yards, even with a target as small as a person, you can’t miss.

It all seems like slow motion, seeing the tank gun come left, while the fellow in PLO camouflage uniform, jumps out and crouches down, hefting the long tube on to his shoulder to aim at a huge target that must fill his scope. It’s like the Wild West, you have only a second to aim & fire, and whoever hits the trigger first, wins. And that’s when you realize why they spent so much time preparing you for just such a moment; why you’ve had to have made the choice in your mind long ago. Because as your finger tightens around the mashbet trigger, you suddenly realize the man holding the RPG isn’t a man at all, he’s a seven year old boy.

They called them RPG kids; children trained by the PLO to fire RPGs at tanks in combat. They banked on the Israeli soldiers’ sense of moral responsibility causing that hesitation that could make all the difference. We lost a lot of men in those moments of hesitation…

Years later, you know you made the right choice. In urban warfare, tanks travel in columns, and often only the tank in front can fire in the narrow alleyways of Beirut. And if your tank gets hit, the whole column gets stuck in what could easily turn out to be a nasty ambush. So there are a lot of men depending on your decision. But the image of what a 105mm tank shell does to a seven-year-old boy stays with you forever

Choices; sometimes obvious, often difficult, we don’t always relish the weight and challenge that come with them, but they are, in the end, part of what make us who we are. The choices we make carry with them the ability to grow, to express ourselves, and most of all, to be partners with G-d in creating, every day, the new world we live in. It would perhaps, be simpler, if we didn’t have to make such choices, and G-d did it all for us. But then we would be animals, and life would lose its meaning. Judaism believes that the power to choose is the essence of the image of G-d we carry within us. And because we make these choices we can be held accountable for all that we do. There is consequence to our actions, and there is purpose to our existence.

All of which makes the opening of this week’s portion, Beshalach, so challenging.

G-d tells Moshe, that the people should make camp opposite the Sea, because:

“I will strengthen Pharaoh’s heart that he will pursue them (Israel), and I will harden Pharaoh and all his armies, that Egypt will know that I am G-d…” (Shemot 14:4)

Essentially, Hashem will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he will pursue the Jewish people, resulting in the miracle of the splitting of the Sea. This has been one of the major themes of the entire story of the exodus fromEgypt. All the way back at the Burning Bush, when Moshe is first sent to Egypt to confront Pharaoh, G-d tells him (3: 19-20) that Pharaoh will not let the people go, and G-d will strike at Egypt with all manner of miracles, and only then will Pharaoh let the Jewish people go.

And again, before ever arriving in Egypt, G-d tells Moshe (4:21) that:
“I will harden his heart and he will not send the people out…”

Indeed, throughout the entire Exodus story, even at the last plague of the first born, (11:20) G-d consistently hardens Pharaoh’s heart, so that he will not let the people go.

Why is this concept so crucial to the entire story of the Exodus fromEgypt? Why is it so important that it is repeated so often? What would have been so terrible if, after a couple of plagues, Pharaoh had seen the writing on the wall, and let the Jewish people go home? We could have received the Torah en entire year earlier!

Think about it; the world was without the Torah for nearly a year, simply because G-d hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Why?

And even more challenging is the theological issue this raises. If Pharaoh did not actually choose to keep the Jews in bondage, why was he (along with all ofEgypt) responsible for the consequences? If after, say, the first plague, Pharaoh would have let the Jewish people go, but didn’t because G-d hardened his heart, how could Hashem then ‘punish’ him for his refusal by visiting the next plague upon him? He did not choose to refuse, so why is he responsible for the implication of that choice-less choice?

And of course, this question has enormous ramifications for us, in all that we do. If G-d is really pulling the strings, and we find ourselves in situations where we really have no choice, perhaps we are not responsible either?

If a person grows up in a really tough neighborhood, in a home full of all sorts of abuse, then hasn’t G-d ‘hardened his heart’? Is he really responsible for the choices he will ultimately be led to? This position, often taken by the environmentalist approach to the study of human behavior, seems to be completely at odds with Jewish tradition. Every Yom Kippur, we own up to the mistakes we have made, taking responsibility for our actions, and Maimonides, in his laws of repentance, makes abundantly clear that every human being is capable of rising above his environment, however challenging that might prove to be.

Yet G-d states quite clearly here that He hardens Pharaoh’s heart. So how is Pharaoh then held accountable for his actions?

The key to this question may lie in a fascinating insight the Ramban (Moshe Ben Nachman, a 13th century commentator inSpain, and later inJerusalem,) makes.

It is interesting to note, that in the first five plagues, despite Hashem’s promise to harden Pharaoh’s heart, it never says that he does so. In fact, consistently in the first five plagues, the Torah actually describes how Pharaoh hardens his own heart. (See 7:23, 8:11, 8:15, 8:28, and 9:7) It is only with the advent of the sixth plague, that we begin to see (9:12) that G-d actually hardens Pharaoh’s heart.

The Ramban suggests that although Pharaoh can only be responsible for the choices he himself makes, a person can make choices, which ultimately remove his ability to choose.

A person can actually sink to such a level of evil, as a result of the choices he has made, that he actually no longer has the ability to choose. This is how far down into the abyss of human behavior Pharaoh had sunken. He was so invested in evil, so absorbed in the path he had chosen, he no was no longer on that path out of choice, he was simply on a roller-coaster ride he could no longer control.

This may explain why the decisions Pharaoh was making, from our perspective, made absolutely no sense. How could he have been so blind? Clearly, every time Pharaoh refuses to let the Jews go, things only get worse. And clearly, Hashem has the ability to deliver on His promises, andEgyptis no match for the hand of G-d. Eventually, the Jews will be going home, so why not just let go?

When you stop to think about it, Adolph Hitler found himself in exactly the same place 3,000 years later. In fact, the parallels to ancientEgyptare fascinating. The choices Hitler made at the end of the war make absolutely no sense. In 1944, when most of the problems the German armies were facing were the holes in their supply lines, Hitler was dedicating most of his rail lines to transport the 400,000 Jews of Hungary toAuschwitz.

Imagine a drug addict. It is hard for many of us to understand what motivates a person to pick up heroin for the first time. The implications of such a decision are so clear, and can only end in disaster. Nonetheless, this decision is a choice that someone makes. And this choice may lead to another choice, to use heroin again, and again, and again. But eventually, when a person reaches a certain stage in their addiction, they are no longer able to choose. One might suggest that the definition of addiction is that you can no longer freely choose. The only way for an addict to really break his addiction is for others, perhaps in a rehab center, to step in and gradually return to him his ability to choose. This does not, however mean, that he is not responsible for his actions. His own actions were what led him to the state of addiction he now finds himself in.

This is not, incidentally, always a bad thing. We can actually use this process to remove choices we don’t want to have to struggle with.

Rav Dessler, in his Michtav Me’Eliahu, points out that every person has a range of choice with which they struggle. But each person can change the parameters of that range. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, for example, did not struggle with the temptation to eat a cheeseburger when he walked by McDonald’s. The idea of eating a cheeseburger must have been so beyond where he was, that the thought most probably never occurred to him. Quite simply, the path of his life removed that choice from his range of possibilities!

This also means that I not only have the ability to remove choices from my own range of possibilities, but I can actually influence someone else’s range of choice as well. Most notably, this is true in the way we raise our children. By making certain choices for the way our children will lead their lives, we actually have removed certain issues from the range of their possibilities.

Growing up in the home I grew up in, it is not really much to my credit that I chose not to date and marry a non-Jewish partner. In fact, I remember the point that this became abundantly clear to me.

I once asked my mother (really, it was one of those questions you ask your mom just to see if you can get to her…) what she would say if I brought home a non-Jewish girlfriend. I was about 16 at the time, and 24 some odd years later, I still remember the answer. She said ‘ if you could bring a non-Jewish girlfriend home to this house, we probably wouldn’t have much left to talk about’.

And in that moment, I knew I could never, would never, date, much less marry someone who was not Jewish. And I don’t really think that was my choice.

This is true, to some degree, of all the choices we make. They affect everyone else in our lives, and their choices, as well. For example, if you are the type of person who is successful in always keeping a smile on your face, and rarely getting angry, then you remove other people’s choice to create conflict with you. If I am determined to be happy and positive, it is much more difficult for anyone to choose to argue with me. It always takes two people to have a really good fight. And if I refuse to choose to fight, then don’t I actually limit someone else’s ability to make that mistaken choice as well?

And this leads me to one last point: It is important to differentiate between the choices that are ours to make, and the choices we cannot make for anyone but our selves.

The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidut, makes an incredible statement. Says the Baal Shem, when you see someone else making what you perceive to be a bad choice, don’t assume it is so that you can tell them what you think they are doing wrong. It is really so you can realize how much you need to work on that very same issue. For example, if I see someone desecrating Shabbat, it is not so I can yell “Shabbos!” at him or her; it is because my Shabbat needs a little work.

I remember, after my army stint was over, doing guard duty one night in yeshiva. There was a two-man patrol around the grounds of the yeshiva, and all the students gave a certain number of hours to guard duty every month. For practical reasons, they always paired up the new guys with no military experience with veterans who were more experienced. I had been in Yeshiva a few years already, and was about to start rabbinical studies, and this boy I was with was in his first year of yeshiva studies out of High school.

In the middle of the patrol, while we were talking, he started telling me a joke. After a moment I realized he was telling me a dirty joke! I couldn’t believe it, here we were, spending our days studying Torah, I was getting ready to begin the process of studying to become a rabbi, and this albeit younger, yeshiva student was telling me a dirty joke! I resisted my impulse to let him have it, because I didn’t want to embarrass him, which gave me a moment to think. And it occurred to me, that this guy must think that I am the type of guy who wants to hear a dirty joke… If Rav Lichtenstein, the head of the yeshiva, was walking with us, I imagine this boy would not have started telling such a joke.

So after I thought about it, I realized the joke was on me. The real challenge of that experience was to become the type of person no one would ever consider telling a dirty joke to in the first place.

Often, the choices we have to make are a function of the choices others make before us. The implications of those choices are the gift that we ultimately give to the world.

Maybe this is why this issue is so much a part of our Exodus fromEgypt. We all have our own littleEgyptwe are always trying to get out of. And part of making that exodus, is the awareness of the choices we make, and the understanding of the implications they have.

May Hashem bless us all to rise to the challenge of the choices we are faced with, and to revel in the way that those choices make us partners with G-d in re-creating the world each and every day.

And may we even be blessed, on occasion; to see just how beautiful the gift of our choices is, to the world around us.

Shabbat Shalom,

R. Binny Freedman

(click here for print version)

The Miraculous Power of Love

The first of the Ten Commandments is: “I am YHVH your G-d Who took you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” The Zohar, the magnum corpus of Jewish mysticism, explains: “This is the foundation and the root of Torah, all the commandments, and the complete faith of Israel”.

Thus, the Exodus is the seminal event of the Jewish calendar and of daily Jewish consciousness.

Although the obvious theme of the holiday is freedom it is commonly referred to as Passover. Wouldn’t “the Holiday of Freedom” or the “Exodus” be more appropriate? Jewish tradition teaches that it is so named because G-d passed over the houses of the Jews when He caused the death of the first born of the Egyptians during the tenth plague. This disturbing image of G-d, hopping and skipping over the Jews’ homes, is also hinted at in the Song of Songs, which is read on Passover: “Behold the voice of my Beloved comes skipping over mountains, hopping over valleys.”

Indeed, the oral tradition emphasizes that it was G-d Himself who was skipping. The Jerusalem Talmud establishes that G-d personally came to redeem Israel, He did not send an agent. A verse in Exodus reads, “I will perform judgment—I am YHVH.” The famous Torah commentator Rashi from the eleventh century explains that G-d is assuring them that “I Myself and not an agent” will deliver you from your oppression and enslavement. Couldn’t G-d have simply decreed the death of the first-born without all this skipping around? What is the significance of His personal involvement?

It is common knowledge that the Jews in Egypt deteriorated to the 49th level of spiritual impurity and moral decadence. Our sages tell us that G-d saved them just before they fell to the last level, the fiftieth, which is total spiritual suicide and obliteration. In other words, the Jews were actually unworthy of liberation. So why did G-d free them nonetheless?

A careful reading of the Exodus story shows that the predominant message of the liberation of the Jews is the revelation of the profound truth of “I am YHVH.”

We know that each Divine name indicates a different encounter with G-d, revealing different attributes and perspectives of the Divine truth and our relationship to G-d.

Elokim is G-d revealed as the Creator of nature, borders, rules, principles, and regulations. This is the name that appears throughout the creation story. In addition, this name refers to G-d when He is revealed as a Judge, committed to laws, order, justice, consequences, cause and effect. G-d, as Elokim, responds measure for measure to the choices and deeds of people. Therefore, G-d as Elokim cannot save the Jews, because they don’t deserve it.

However, G-d is not only referred to as Elokim, but also as YHVH. This divine name is mentioned when G-d is revealing His compassion. It indicates that G-d is not only a Creator, a Ruler, and a Judge, but also a compassionate Sustainer. He lovingly extends and shares His being with us, perpetuating our existence at every moment. We do not exist independently of YHVH, rather we are unified with Him as the rays of the sun are to the sun or the thought is to the thinker. Therefore, YHVH suggests that G-d is like a compassionate parent and we are His children.

G-d as Elokim is committed to the laws of nature and only works within the limitations of time and space. Therefore, G-d as Elokim could not liberate the Jews from Egypt.

G-d as YHVH, however, is beyond nature. He is the miracle worker Who, in the name of love, can transcend time and space and perform supernatural feats.

Indeed the exodus of the Jews was miraculous. The Egyptian military security was so tight that no slave had ever succeeded in escaping Pharaoh’s captivity. And yet the entire nation of three million people left Egypt in less time than it takes for bread dough to rise. To mobilize my own family to leave the house takes longer than that. G-d, however, not only suspended the laws of nature, He also suspended the laws of justice. This perhaps is the greatest miracle in the exodus story — that even though the Jews were undeserving and unworthy to be liberated by G-d as Elokim, they were nonetheless saved by G-d as YHVH.

Judaism teaches that the essential name of G-d is YHVH, and that the essential attribute of G-d is love and compassion. This basic truth is embodied in the Exodus story and therefore we must remember the exodus daily.

The name Elokim, however, is really only an aspect of the name YHVH. In other words, the divine attribute of justice is an aspect of the attribute of love and subordinate to it.

Such is the way of true parenthood: because of my love for my child I establish for her rules and regulations. I create a world of law and order where her choices incur real consequences. I judge her, reward her and discipline her, all for the sake of empowering her to take responsibility and become who she can be. However, since my judgment is because of my love and thereby subordinate to it, there may be times when I will be compassionate towards my child even though she does not deserve it. I will “pass over” my standards of judgment and be compassionate, in order to save my child. I will overrule my rules in the name of love.

This is the meaning of the verse in the Song of Songs; “Behold the voice of my beloved comes skipping over the mountains, hopping over the valleys.” Nothing can stand in the way of G-d’s love for you. No obstacle is too great. His love transcends all barriers.

This is the inner dynamic of this miraculous event and this is one reason why this holiday is commonly referred to as Passover. G-d, in order to pass over the homes of the Jews, passed over His attribute of judgment in the name of love. The Zohar teaches: “Even though G-d loves justice, His love for His children overcame His love for His justice.”

One more vital point needs elucidation: Why did G-d require the Jews to sacrifice the Pascal lamb and smear its blood on their door-posts? Did G-d really need this sign to identify Jewish homes and pass over them?

There really is one obstacle that can stand in the way of G-d’s love. G-d can love us, but He can’t make us believe that he loves us. A poignant passage in Isaiah portrays this impasse. The Prophet is defending the people, claiming that they are sinning because G-d is not present for them. G-d responds [Isaiah 65:1]: “I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for Me. I was ready to be found by those who did not seek Me. I said ‘Here I am, here I am.’”

G-d may pour upon us all His love, but it is up to us to acknowledge and accept it. We have to make some overture, some sign, which is what smearing the blood on the door-posts was all about. G-d did not need an identifying sign, but we had to identify ourselves as wanting redemption and believing it can happen. G-d says to the Jews, “Nothing can stand in the way of My love for you, except you.”

Passover is the time to experience and acknowledge G-d’s unconditional love for you. That’s why it is the foundation of all the holidays, of all of Judaism. Without the acknowledgment that G-d loves you enough to redeem you even when you’re not worthy, you have no inkling of G-d’s relationship with you. That’s why we read the great love poem, the Song of Songs, on Passover. That’s why we spend hours reciting the Hagaddah, like an enamored lover describing every minute detail of how her beloved proposed to her.

The more we acknowledge G-d’s love, the more love we will experience.

Rabbi David Aaron
Author of Endless Light, Seeing G-d, The Secret Life of G-d, Inviting G-d In, Living A Joyous Life, and The G-d-Powered Life

(click here for print version)

What does it mean to truly live in, to truly be in a moment? One day, when we are all up in heaven, perhaps I will have the chance to ask Noam Apter, 22, of Otniel.

Friday night: White tablecloths and china, the light of the Shabbat candles, and the sweet singing of Shalom Aleichem, a song of peace that begins every Shabbat dinner in every Jewish home. No matter where Jews have been, and how unwelcoming and challenging the world around them has been, they are still singing of peace on Friday nights. And this particular Friday night in the Yeshiva at Otniel was no different. Except that while the students of this yeshiva and their families were singing of peace, no one heard the silent click of wire cutters slicing through the security fence.

Smiling faces, Kiddush over wine, and the blessing of the children; every Friday night for thousands of years Jewish parents have taken a moment to appreciate the gift of children sitting at the Shabbat table. It is a moment of dreams and joy, of potential and love. If we can bless the sweet delicious challot, and appreciate how blessed we are have to have bread on our table when so many in the world can only imagine such a luxury, how can we not take a moment to appreciate what a blessing each child is, and how many dreams each of them represent? Except that this Friday night, while parents were blessing their children with light, and seeing in them the majesty of creation, two other ‘children’, armed with M-16 automatic assault rifles and grenades, were making their way into the same dining hall bringing with them darkness and destruction.

Otniel, a town in the Hebron foothills south of Jerusalem, is also home to a very special Yeshiva, where boys add two years to their army service in order to combine army service with Jewish studies. While students and families sang and danced to traditional Shabbat tunes in the dining hall, Noam, along with Gavriel, age 17, Tzvika, age 19, and Yehuda age 20, were in the kitchen getting the first course onto the serving plates.

In the blink of an eye, light became darkness and the sweet sound of Shabbat melodies was lost in the horrible sounds of gunfire. Two terrorists, members of the Islamic Jihad organization, entered the kitchen wearing IDF army uniforms and began shooting immediately.

Under fire, Noam Apter ran towards the door separating the kitchen from the dining room where over a hundred unsuspecting people, young boys and families, were welcoming Shabbat.

Wounded and bleeding profusely, with his last strength, he managed to lock both locks and throw the key away. He locked himself in with the terrorists, preventing them from entering the dining hall, raining death and destruction on all those inside.

Noam Apter paid for this act of heroism with his life. The terrorists murdered him, and the other three boys with him.

It is difficult to imagine what pure terror such a moment must contain. To be in such close quarters, with no way of defending yourself, facing evil in its purest form, the range of emotions that must inevitably sweep over a person is impossible to describe. Many experience pure fear, the fear of the unknown. Some experience intense sadness, the sadness that comes with the awareness of endings; dreams that will never be realized, loved ones that will be left behind, goals never to be achieved.

And some, those rare few, experience challenge, the challenge that comes with the realization that life always means opportunity, and that we are always here for a purpose. How does a human being rise to such a level? How does one overcome every natural instinct of self-preservation, and see his fellow human beings before him, that he is able to run towards danger, instead of away from it? If I ever get the chance, I will ask Noam Apter that question. There are those who, in a moment, achieve what most people strive an entire lifetime to become.

You may think that this is a terribly sad story, and this is true. But there is also a deep joy hidden here, because in between the lines of this story is the secret power of a given moment, and with it, perhaps, the reason we are still here as a people, after four thousand years of wandering and struggle, pain and suffering. But to explain this, we need to take a closer look at the story of the exodus from Egypt in Parshat Bo.

At long last, after two hundred years of pain and suffering in the darkness of Egyptian servitude, the family of Yaakov finally leaves Egypt, and, amidst the great Exodus from Egypt, the Jewish People is born. Perhaps no less important, we are given our mission as a people, as we receive our first mitzvah, the first commandment given to us as a people on the road to Sinai.

“And Hashem (G-d) spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt saying: This month shall be to you the beginning (Head) of the months, it will be the first for you of the months of the year.” (Shemot 12:1-2)

Incredibly, the first mitzvah given to us as a people is the mitzvah of Kiddush HaChodesh, the sanctification of the new moon. One might have assumed, and maybe even expected a more ‘impressive’ mitzvah to get our journey as a people started: Shabbat, for example, or the mitzvah to believe in one G-d. We might even have understood beginning with one of the special mitzvoth associated with Pesach (Passover), like Matzah or the Paschal lamb (which actually does come next). So why is the first mitzvah given the Jewish people, the commandment to have a calendar (and begin it with this month of Nissan)?

Why is our calendar (and which month we begin that calendar with) so important as to merit being the very first mitzvah the Jewish people are ever given as a people?

This is especially challenging when one stops to consider the nature of our ‘lunar’ calendar, which seems to be almost as much a solar calendar as it ever was a lunar one.

As an example, the calendar we employ utilizes a rather odd system of leap years (which occur seven out of every nineteen years) to ensure that the three major festivals always fall in the appropriate seasons. Pesach, after all, is meant to fall in the springtime, as it represents the newness of planting and springtime and is the birth or planting of the Jewish people. Indeed, G-d Himself says: “Today you are leaving, “Be’Chodesh Ha’Aviv”, in the month of spring. (Shemot, 13:4)

Shavuot, the festival of the giving of the Torah, is known as the festival of the first fruits (called “Chag Ha’Bikkurim”, in early summer, just as Sukkot is the festival of the harvest (“Chag He’Asif”). The entire Jewish calendar revolves around making sure that these festivals fall during the solar seasons we are meant to experience with them. So why then, do we have a lunar calendar? Again,why is it the first mitzvah we are given as a people?

It is interesting to note that there seems to be an extra word used here in communicating the nature of this mitzvah, which is the word “Lachem” (“ for you” (Shemot 12: 2) The first month which is meant to begin the Jewish New Year is “for you”, and the word is plural, meaning perhaps: ‘for all of you’.

(This month shall be to you (“Lachem”) the beginning (Head) of the months (Shemot 12:1-2))

The Torah need only have said that this month (Nissan), the month in which we finally left Egypt behind, would be forever the first month of the year. Why the necessity to stress that the month was and is for us?

Further, why does G-d need to present this commandment to both Moshe and Aaron? It would certainly have been enough for Hashem to speak with Moshe, as was normally done; why must Aaron be included here?

Lastly, how does all this relate to the exodus from Egypt, which is clearly the central theme of this particular parsha?

Perhaps before we explore the difference between solar and lunar calendars, we need to first understand what a calendar is all about. When you stop to think about it, a calendar is all about time. This was really the first gift Hashem gave us as a people. Just prior to leaving Egypt, on the eve of the tenth and last plague, Hashem gave us the gift of time.

A slave really has no need for a calendar, because a slave really has no use for time. His time is not his own; he is essentially at the mercy of his master. He cannot plan, because his future is not his to determine. Tomorrow will be no different from today, which, is indistinguishable from yesterday. His is a life of toil, with no set hours, and no end in sight, merely a tool in someone else’s plan, without rhyme or reason, as much an object to his overseers as an ox or a plough, he is merely one more object to be utilized as long as practical, and eventually discarded when no longer useful.

Indeed, many historians believe our numerical system of counting was originally devised in ancient Egypt as a method of numbering slaves. Slavery inevitably reduced human beings to mere numbers, indistinguishable from one another, which is why the Torah prohibits counting human beings; in Judaism, especially after our experience in the horrors of Egyptian slavery, a human being is never a number, he is always a world.

One needn’t go all the way back to the Egypt of 3,000 years ago to understand this message; it is no accident that the Nazis were tattooing numbers onto human arms in an effort to turn human beings into numbers. Because once a human being is reduced to a number, he is no longer a person; he is no different from a lampshade or a bar of soap, just one more item on a shelf, to be used until no longer useful and then discarded. And that is how human beings can be tossed into pits, or baby boys tossed into the Nile River.

When you are a number in a vast sea of slave labor, what difference does it make what day or even what month it is? Tomorrow and today are one and the same, and we are all discardable items in a physical world. In the end, we cannot change the world around us, nor is there any value to any attempt to change who we are, because after all, we will all wither away and die anyway.

Only with freedom did we rediscover the value and the power of time. Because all of a sudden what we did today could make all the difference in who and how we would be tomorrow.

This is the essential difference between a lunar and a solar calendar. Every day, everywhere in the known world, the sun will rise in the East and set in the West. This will happen every day, of every week, of every year, forever. The sun represents the idea that in the end, nothing ever really changes. From our human perspective, we see the sun remaining the same every day; rising and setting today just as it did yesterday, and as it will continue to do every day, forever. And if the world does not change, then who are we to assume that we can be any better? In the end, there is no point to change and growth, because it all turns out the same anyhow.

When one looks up at the sun, one is reminded of the inexorable pattern of nature. One cannot, in truth, even look at the sun. We are, before the mighty majesty of the heavens, small indeed. And like all things natural, we too, small that we are, will one day fade away into the oblivion of time. Here today, gone tomorrow, we might as well enjoy our short time on this earth, for it will be gone before we know it, and nothing we do really makes that much of a difference, when viewed against the magnitude and unchanging pattern of the sun.

But Judaism has a very different approach: Our calendar is a calendar of the moon. Although our calendar is linked to the seasons, which suggests that there is a time for all things, and that life is a process of growth and harvesting, it is also a lunar calendar. One of the things that distinguishes the moon from the sun is that, unlike the sun, even to the naked eye the moon appears different every night. The moon waxes and wanes, and just when you think it is gone forever, it comes back, stronger than ever, kind of like the Jewish people.

From the outset, Hashem wanted to teach us, that we always have the power to change, and that we are never doomed to stay where we think we are stuck. We can always rise above where and even who we are, just like the moon, which is constantly changing and never ‘gives up’, waxing again just when it appears to be gone forever.

But there is more. Time is meaningless unless it is imbued with purpose. Like freedom, now that for the first time in 200 years we had ‘time on our hands’, the question was, what was all that time for?

Ever wonder why the Jews have such a strange way to celebrate freedom?

I can remember the magnificent celebrations in 1976 to commemorate America’s bicentennial. An armada of navy ships, including battleships, destroyers, and even an aircraft carrier, sailed down the Hudson River, culminating in an incredible fireworks display above the statue of Liberty in New York’s Harbor. And the next night, over Central Park in New York City, they gave out free beer to over a 100,000 people with an even bigger fireworks display. Imagine, 100,000 New Yorkers in Central Park at midnight, with free beer; now that’s a party!

But what do we do to celebrate our freedom? Every year, on the anniversary of the exodus from Egypt, we have the most structured night of the year! And there are so many details…you have to have four cups of wine, not three, and each one has to be at least 4.4 fluid ounces, and you must be sure to lean when you drink, not to mention how much effort has to go into the matzah, and the need to eat a minimum of two matzot at different parts of the seder. In fact, there are fourteen different components to the Seder, beginning with the Kiddush, and culminating in the Hallel and Nirtzah prayers after the meal. And heaven forbid there be any Chametz (unleavened bread) at the Seder!

In fact, the very name Seder, means order! So where’s the party? Why doesn’t the Torah loosen up a bit?

See, the message of the Seder is that we don’t celebrate freedom, because we don’t view freedom as the end of a struggle, it is merely another stepping- stone. The question in life is not whether you are free; the question is what that freedom is for. If your freedom is only to drink and get high, then in the end, you are still a slave. We all serve something, and the challenge of ‘freedom’ is what we choose to serve.

What was the purpose of leaving Egypt? Where were we meant to go, and who were we meant to be? That is the hidden message of the moon, and the reason it is the beginning of the journey of the Jewish people. We are given a world that is very much incomplete, and our challenge is whether we can be partners in changing it, and making it better.

So how do we do this?

Perhaps the ritual of sanctifying the new moon is a clue. Every month, the Sanhedrin (the high Jewish court) would convene in the courtyard of the Temple, the Beit HaMikdash, in Jerusalem, on the nights when the New Moon was meant to appear. Having waned away into nothingness, the new month would begin as soon as the barest sliver of the New Moon would be seen in the sky.

Interestingly, however, the Sanhedrin itself could not witness this sliver of moon and declare the new month. They had to wait until two individuals came forth and claimed to have seen the sliver of moon in the sky. Only when they were both questioned separately, and the facts ascertained to match reality (i.e. that they saw the sliver of moon in the part of the sky it was expected to appear in, etc.) was the new month declared. Perhaps the calendar and this ritual were not meant to be a ritual of the leadership alone; it was meant to connect the greatest of rabbis with the simplest of fellows, on whom they depended to set the calendar. And if we are going to make a difference in the world as a people, we can only do it if we are together.

This may be the meaning of the verse:
“Ha’Chodesh Ha’Zeh Lachem…” “This month shall be for you”.

This month is for all of you, and together, it is a gift I give you, says G-d, to change the world.

Indeed, this is alluded to as well by the fact that this very special mitzvah is first given to Moses and Aaron together. The Torah Temimah (Rav Baruch Epstein, 1857-1940) points out that it is two witnesses who determine the New Moon, and not a Jewish court of three judges, because when a decision is made by three individuals there will always be a majority opinion. But when there are two witnesses, in order to make a decision, everyone needs to agree. So the witnesses represent a unity of purpose. When we declare a new month we are dependent on coming together, and learning to be able to agree with each other.

We are never really ‘stuck’ in the moment, and we can always change who we are, and rise to who we can become. And the recipe for all this is the ability, even in the darkest of moments, to always be together, and see everyone around us, even when every instinct screams out to think only of ourselves.

In Otniel, Noam Apter seized such a moment. Faced with a reality where there was no way out, and a foregone conclusion, he chose to see everyone else rather than himself, and in so doing grabbed on to a window, a fleeting moment of Jewish history, and brought us all a little bit closer together. And as much as that moment was full of tragedy, it was, as well, a celebration of who we really are.

Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “If”, comes to mind:

“If you can fill the given minute, with sixty seconds of long distance run,
Yours is the earth and everything in it, and you’ll be a man my son.”

Sometimes, a person comes along who truly succeeds in filling the given minute with sixty seconds of long distance run.

Three thousand years ago, a people, enslaved for two hundred years, discovered that every minute can be such a moment. And in the town of Otniel, a young man, may his memory be blessed, reminded us that such moments begin by seeing everyone else even before you see yourself.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rav Binny Freedman

(click here for print version)

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 ten supernatural plagues topped off with the miraculous splitting of the sea and were saved from destruction by the hands of the Egyptian armies. However, not too long afterward, their faith deteriorated, and they began to complain about their conditions in the desert. Miracles don’t change people, only people can change themselves; and to accomplish that, they have to make choices and get proactive.

There is another reason why G-d is reluctant to do miracles. And that is because the story of life is about the evolving manifestation of the G-dliness within us. Miracles actually stifle the growth of the expression of the divine from within us; manifest through our choices, our commitments, and our hard work.

This explains the bizarre behavior of the Israelites who wrestled with the significance of their identity in the desert for forty years. The desert was a miraculous place for the Israelites. They enjoyed a daily portion of manna, the heavenly bread that fell daily from the sky. They also drank water that flowed abundantly from a rock. For forty years the Israelites sojourned in a miraculous desert where everything was upside down. Generally wheat comes from the ground and water from the skies, but for forty years it was just the opposite.

In the desert the Israelites lived in a divine womb, like a fetus whose needs are completely cared for. And yet with all these comforts they complained and rebelled over and over again. Why?

Because under these miraculous conditions, their inner stature was dwarfed. It was like you and I living under the shadow of our parents. There is a spirit within us that is restless and demands to be established and expressed. This spirit is the manifestation of the G-dliness within us that must evolve and emerge. This is why the miraculous desert was not the destination of the Israelites. It was only part of their process and journey.

Their original destination was the Promised Land. The funny thing, though, is that when they were about to get there, they started to have second thoughts. They sent in a group of spies to check it out. This group returned after a quick look and told the people that the Promised Land consumes its inhabitants. In other words, it was a place that demands a lot of work. The people wondered, “Why should we leave the comfortable womb of G-d that encompasses us with daily miracles? Why leave this wonderful desert and go to a land that demands so much human effort and hard work? What is so promising about the Promise Land?”

This was their dilemma: On the one hand, the G-dliness within them wanted to become manifest through their choices, determined efforts, and hard work. Therefore, they resented all the freebies in the desert. But then again, it was also very nice to have it all miraculously handed to them on a silver platter and to bask in the light of G-d. Why should they soil themselves with the labors of this physical world when they could stay in bliss and enjoy the supernatural desert? Why leave the spiritual life of the desert and go to work?

The forty years in the desert was a time for the revelation of G-d the miracle Maker, showing that G-d is the Power who is above and beyond the laws and limitations of nature. During that time the Israelites developed a profound belief in divine transcendence. But then the time came for the manifestation of divine immanence—that aspect of G-d which is expressed from within humanity.

The problem with the miraculous life in the desert was that the light of divine transcendence eclipsed the light of divine immanence. But the danger in the Promised Land was that the light of divine immanence could eclipse the light of divine transcendence. In the Promised Land, the Israelites could come to think that all their success was really their own and had nothing to do with G-d.

The challenge of the Israelites just before they entered into the Promised Land sheds light on our own challenge. Every day we witness amazing advancements in science and technology. We, too, are creators of worlds. We seem to be ascending to the stature of G-ds. Will we let this power go to our heads and fool us into thinking that we are G-ds and do as we please? Or do we graciously accept these powers as gifts from G-d, signs of the growing light of the G-dliness within us and yet humbly obey and follow G-d’s commandments?

Before we can get out of our oppression in Egypt and get to our freedom and empowerment in the Promised Land G-d performs miracles to remind us who’s Boss. But God then wants us to actualize our godliness and perform miracles with the divine power of love within us.

Rabbi David Aaron
Author of Endless Light, Seeing G-d, The Secret Life of G-d, Inviting G-d In, Living A Joyous Life, and The G-d-Powered Life