My first gift to you--a vial of light

 Click to watch

You are the light

 Click to watch: 

Getting too Dark to See

"A little bit of light dispels a lot of darkness."

I was on a ferry in Connecticut 25 years ago when a man jumped overboard and committed suicide. It was my first time on a ferry, a trip which went from happy to harrowing in an awful instant. My heart ached for that stranger whose name I did not know.

That tragic episode made me deeply question how cruel and sad a world we must live in that some people feel life is not worth living. As an optimistic newlywed then, I remember entertaining the fleeting query, “Could that ever be me?”  Since then, unfortunately, I’ve known other people, some closer to me than others, who have tragically ended their lives, leaving me shocked each time. Every incident catapulted me into deep introspection: How does life become so dark that one can no longer see any light?  At which point does death start looking more attractive than life?

 Click to watch Aliza's Torah videos on YouTube... 

This article, however, is not about suicide, but rather about the very dark zone, the gravitational black hole, that so many people find themselves in today. And although they don’t contemplate death (I pray), life has become a depressing, meaningless chore where one day blends into the next without distinction. Unhappy marriages, lonely singles, family strife, economic strain, humiliating circumstances, aching voids, health issues and Corona are among the many strands which weave the noose around the neck of our optimism.

Interestingly, it is at this time of year when the nights are longest and darkness seems to prevail that we read about the story of Joseph, who found himself in the darkness of a snake-filled pit into which his brother’s had thrown him. Then, after being sold as a slave and exiled to Egypt, he was thrown into the darkness of Pharaoh’s dungeon. What truly did he have to live for? One day he was living a comfortable life as his father’s beloved favorite son, and the next day, he was in bondage.

Joseph had grown up on the inspiration of his dreams, which saw him ruling over his brothers. But he saw no “happily-ever-after” ending for himself from the depths of the pit. His brothers stripped him not only of his coat of many colors, but also of his pride, his innocence, and the years he could have lived peacefully by his father’s side.

In some measure, the brothers killed everything that made his life meaningful, except his faith and the light of G-d that burned inside him. Fortunately, faith knows no shackles nor taskmasters nor pits or self- pity—it sees only light. The Torah teaches us something very interesting about Joseph’s attitude throughout his great suffering. The dungeon to which he was condemned was called Beit Hasohar, the “house of light.” Even in the depths of a dark dungeon, Joseph maintained his faith in God. He remained optimistic and hopeful as he created his own “light.” It was a house of light because he himself shone. In fact, he is called a “jumping man.” The Midrash tells us that throughout his captivity, he behaved joyously, singing and dancing.

We must learn to emulate Joseph as we go through our own trials and tribulations. We need to keep our faith shining with laser-like intensity until it cuts right through the “dungeon” wall. It is a sin to succumb to despair and it is idol worship to believe that life is worth living only when we are riding high. Throughout time the rabbis have taught there is no blessing where there is sadness and on some level, today, science proves it. “The mere act of smiling can reduce blood pressure, lower stress hormones, boost mood and generate the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 bars of chocolate...”

In the story of Chanukah, the golden Temple menorah was stolen by the Syrian-Greeks, and there was only enough pure olive oil to last one day. The Maccabees didn’t lament the darkness of the circumstance. Instead, they made a metal menorah to replace the golden one. And the one day’s worth of oil miraculously lasted eight days.

We too have much more potential inside ourselves than we realize. We can keep going and shine brightly. If only we would stoke our souls and refine our faith like pure olive oil, the miraculous lights of life would be with us 365 days a year.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe and those before him taught that just as it takes a little light to dispel much darkness, so we must never give up hope or faith, nor feel that the ‘night’ is insurmountable.

Having faith, however, is not a mere a slogan to say while trying to aggressively and craftily manipulate circumstances, thus creating further darkness. If a person really had faith in G-d, he wouldn’t work on the Sabbath because he would have faith that G-d would provide for him. If one had faith, he would not be afraid t to give charity because he would be confident of G-d’s generosity towards him. If one had faith, he would do everything so differently, because a person of faith will “let go and let G-d.” In our worldly affairs, we believe that one hand washes the other. Yet  when it comes to G-d, we are ready to collect with both hands and serve with neither.

All the above is beautiful and inspiring but ultimately useless even if we do have faith in Hashem, but give Him no reason to have faith in us. Joseph did not survive Egypt simply because he had faith; that would just make him a positive thinker. He survived and triumphed because G-d had reason to have faith in him. Despite all the perverse influences around him, he behaved like a mensch and maintained his unique identity.

The most beautiful woman in the world made daily advances at him and he did not succumb because he saw his father’s face and the moral teachings of his faith guided his conscience and his deeds. 

By passing the tests, we create light, just as friction creates a spark.  By keeping the commandments, we become powerful eternal flames. “When the lamp [man] and flame [Torah] unite, they produce a light which fills the house--the world.” (Rabbi Elie Munk). We are not merely candles in the wind or glow-in-the-dark wands that quickly burn out, leaving us terrified and inconsolable in the dark lonely nights. If we see the light, we can be the light!

When a young man once inquired of the Lubavitcher Rebbe what his favorite prayer was, the Rebbe replied, “Modeh Ani.” This 12-word prayer stood out as powerful to him because it affirms that G-d has faith in us, which means all things are possible. And just as the menorah light is “reborn” every night in a crescendo of illumination, a Jew too must strive every day with the outlook that yesterday wasn’t good enough. Today we must shine brighter.

What are you doing with the faith He has entrusted in you? Who have you become while stumbling through the darkness? Hashem is the only light, the Source, awaiting you even when you feel it’s getting too dark to see.

 Subscribe to watch Aliza's Torah videos on YouTube... 

Why is the Hebrew word for life, plural, Lchaim?

 

Will You Remember Your Name?

 Watch on YouTube:

A Leg to Stand On

One early morning, while studying Tanya, I looked away from the page before me to ponder its profound teachings. I stared and stared into the cozy glow of the dim light, and behold, a devil was looking back at me! Yes it was a devil, I’m sure of it. There were not one now, but four. I jumped up from my seat to investigate.  I was in shock. Why had I never noticed this before? Here in the dining room of my childhood home, my mother’s home, stood a beautiful, ornate, expensive mantelpiece clock which had four devil heads serving as its feet. I was quite certain that this was not permitted in a Jewish home, even for art’s sake. And so I did what I do best.  I bothered a very busy, respected rabbi with the likes of questions that only Aliza can ask.   

           Click to watch Aliza's Torah videos on YouTube... 

“Dear Rabbi, I have an odd question. Please see attached photo, exhibit A…Is that idol worship? Should I and can I remove just the legs and throw them away or have I created an issue where there is none?” Friends, for 30 years, that clock decorated our home. Neither I nor my mother ever noticed that we had an idol in our midst.  I thought of the years we celebrated holidays in that room, the years my father prayed there and donned his tefillin, all the years I studied Torah in that room and then I thought of the devil holding up “time,” i.e., that clock, and I was not pleased.

The rabbi replied. My “odd” question indeed had an answer. The faces had to be smoothed down to destroy the semblance of a graven image or alternately, they could be removed altogether. As the Second Commandment states: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, nor any manner of likeness of anything that is in heaven above, that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”  

G-d’s law is clear, “You shall have no other gods before Me.”

Judaism teaches, moreover, that idols are not just statues and graven images. Idols are anything that we worship that comes between man and G-d.  Materialism, obsession with beauty, fitness, money, the government, politics, the army, physicians, can all be considered idols if we empower them with the belief that it is they who  sustain us and not the Will of G-d.  In fact, the Sages teach that even anger is tantamount to idol worship.  For, in a rage, we bow to the circumstances and lose the clear and cool-headed understanding that everything that happens to us is designed by the Almighty.  Arrogance too is likened to idol worship. An inflated ego and self-deification leave no room for anything or anyone else to exist—not even G‑d.

Judaism also teaches that there is nothing but Him,  ein od milvado. And the more we distance ourselves from Him, the more things we need to fill the ensuing void. So, we become collectors. Those things we collect become our gods instead. As a natural consequence, we then need to show off all the things we’ve collected, to gather praise and honor and proudly vie for others to worship us.

By contrast, the closer we get to God and study His words and ways, the less things we need. And the only opinion we come to care about is His.

But, due to our ever-constricted awareness of G-d’s Omnipresence, we live fractured and compartmentalized lives. We relegate G-d to the synagogue’s confines, and do not fear Him nor serve Him in the other buildings of our lives.  We ignore Him in the courthouse, the bank, the hospital, the boardrooms and our living rooms.  Why? Because in those places we bow to our man-made gods.  We think that the judge, the lawyer, the broker, the doctor, our lies and manipulations will save us. But friends, they are just the puppets rendered effective or not by the will of G-d alone.  We are genuflecting to fleeting shadows in place of the Source.

In addition, how often do we really examine our environs and take a good look at what is “decorating” our lives and whether we are surrounded by idols both physically and spiritually?   What is coming between you and G-d? Greed? Laziness? Egoism? Jealousy? Hedonism? Apathy?

I can’t help but think how even the American dollar, the idol of idols that many revere as a god, is smarter than we are, for even the mighty buck itself declares “In G-d we trust.”

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, we learn that two sons of Jacob, Shimon and Levi, took revenge upon the people of Shechem for the rape of their sister by killing every man in the city and plundering the city of its riches, including items of idolatry.

Jacob demanded of his household, “Discard the alien gods that are in your midst… And they gave Jacob all the deities of the nations that were in their possession and the earrings that were in their ears, and Jacob buried them.…” (Genesis 35:2-4) Rabbi Norman Lamm, Z’L, describes this as a cathartic and important episode worthy of replicating in our own lives. Imagine we too stand before a huge pit and are asked to throw in our idols. Could we let go? Would we even recognize them?

My clock with devil’s heads as legs served as a powerful symbol. It was truly a case of eyes wide shut as 30 years later, I noticed what was before me all this time. I couldn’t help but think of Abraham, the father of monotheism, who smashed all the idols in his father’s shop. My turn had come too.

Friends, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury idols, not to praise them: What are the devils that are serving as legs in your life and where are they leading you? Everything that surrounds us has an impact on our souls. Our task is to identify the idols in our lives and destroy them.

Don’t give them a leg to stand on!          

Subscribe to Aliza's Torah videos on YouTube... 

The Sky is the Limit

 

It seems as if no one I know is happy; So many people have major issues sapping their peace of mind. Some, more than ever, find themselves wondering, “What’s it really all about? “What’s going on?” “What does G-d want from me?”                    

These are spiritually-driven questions, yet the askers never seem satisfied with spiritual answers.        

Tell them it’s all about stopping their sins and elevating the world through Torah and they will roll their eyes, shut you up, and start quoting gurus and their trite soundbites as if they were speedy transformative incantations. After all, saying abracadabra to make all our “boo-boos” disappear and wishes come true is so ever convenient.

     Click to watch Aliza's Torah videos on YouTube... 

“Torah? Nah!  There has to be another way,” is a reply I’ve often heard by those attempting to shirk off any religious duty that would interrupt their daily schedules which includes bemoaning their plight. And so, as palliatives for empty hearts and flagging souls, these searchers of life’s meaning fill their lives with materialistic ornaments, promiscuity, Botox, yoga, body sculpting, traveling, shopping, decorating, golfing and all kinds of recreations and distractions, to no avail. Happiness evades them and another day dies and with it the opportunity to create light. The shallow pursuit of more and plenty will never satisfy their souls nor satisfactorily answer their questions. Rather, it will even further exasperate them as their hands are filled with “gold” but their hearts are empty of peace. Still mankind continues to build its golden calves and hence the Heavens rumble.

I find the question, “What does G-d want from me?”  puzzling. When we read articles about the Keto diet, we understand what dietary modifications we have to make. When we read self-help books, we know what the authors are recommending for better living. I am not sure then why when reading G-d’s book, we become illiterates and can’t seem to understand our native tongue. We have the Torah for over 3333 years and we still don’t understand what G-d wants from us? It’s there in black and white. Yet we are more inclined to believe the print in the National Enquirer than G-d’s own word.

When it comes down to TRUTH, we can’t go shopping and bidding for answers that we prefer, as we do on eBay for items. The Torah is the only truth. It is the blueprint of all creation, G-d’s architectural plan for creating the world. Therefore, in order to understand the world we live in and our place in it, we must refer back to the original “user’s manual.” If you don’t subscribe to it, it’s your prerogative. But then don’t seek for truth in the world of lies, just as you wouldn’t read the instructions for your toaster while trying to fix your washing machine. For doing so my friends renders us not “truth seekers” but rather voluntary obfuscators guilty of manufacturing our own darkness.

 So how can we extricate ourselves from the black hole that sucks us is deeper and deeper? Through prayer! It is like a sharp pointed arrow that can pierce the Heavens. And it can save us.  But just as with a bow and arrow, the closer one pulls the string toward one’s heart the farther the arrow will go, so to the more our prayers come from our heart with truth, the higher they will go. When we pray to G-d with all our hearts, all our souls and all our might, we can get close to our Maker and change nature itself. In fact, praying and reopening a relationship with G-d is the ark of our survival. Interestingly, the rabbis teach that the Hebrew word for ark (as in the ark which saved Noah) also means “word” alluding to prayer. Is it truly imaginable that the whole world was destroyed by boiling water and a mere boat withstood it all? Prayer is what kept it sailing and impermeable.

In this week’s Torah reading of Vayeitzei, we read about Jacob’s famous dream of a ladder set in the earth, with its top reaching the Heavens.  G-d’s angels were ascending and descending on this ladder. The angels represent the ascent of man’s prayers. The ascending angels bring man’s supplications to the celestial Throne and then those same angels descend laden with Heavenly blessings. Note that the Hebrew words for “ladder” and “voice” have the same numerical value (136), indicating a relationship between the two and demonstrating the power of prayer: the voice ascends and the sky is the limit.

If  our voices can activate Alexa, what makes us think for a single second that they can’t affect the Heavens? G-d is just waiting to hear from us as parents wait to hear from their children.  The technology also teaches us to be deliberate and articulate in our requests or we may find Alexa playing heavy metal music by Black Sabbath instead of Sabbath sundown times.   And just as we all resent communicating with people who are talking to us while texting and playing with their phones, G-d, too, wants our undivided attention. Pray as if you actually care about your relationship with the Divine, and not with burden-inspired impatience to get it over with. And as Rabbi Doniel Katz brilliantly pointed out, “How you pray is how you live your life.” And that my friends is really something to think about.        

Shabbat Shalom!

Subscribe to watch Aliza's Torah videos on YouTube... 

 

 

 

Which Outlet Are You Plugged in to?

 Click to watch on YouTube

What's Charging You?

My cleanliness phobia has arrested any potential I’d have to purchase second-hand things. However, that doesn’t diminish my affinity for antiques and my propensity to browse through pictures of such items being sold on Facebook Marketplace. As I scroll the pages imagining how I’d refurbish these one-time masterpieces, I can almost conjure the musty smell of estate sales wherein both the objects and their one-time owners have become obsolete. The resulting feeling is always the same: A waft of sadness overtakes me.  Items once cherished--inanimate witnesses to lives now gone--are being sold off by next of kin who couldn’t care less. How meaningless it all is, the summation of a life that can be auctioned off for cheap on Facebook or eBay. It’s just one big pile of stuff out-of-style. In contrast, I can’t help but think of the enthusiasm and the long lines that form for the latest things and devices, and I’m compelled to examine the life that lies between. What is it all really about in the end? What remains of us if the lives we sweated through and for are trivialized by an “everything-must-go” sale.  

WATCH ALIZA'S YouTube on Toldot:  What's Charging You? Or are you ready to burn out and fade away?

In this week’s Torah portion called Toldot, we read about the birth of twin brothers, Esav and Jacob, who were so opposite in their view of life that they began fighting while still in their mother’s womb. Their respective affinities were clear: Esav lived only for this material world and all it has to offer and Jacob lived for G-d, for family and the world to come. Esav was so carnally invested in the physicality of this world that for food, lentil stew, he sold his firstborn birthright to his younger twin brother in order to satisfy a life-sapping hunger born from his exhaustive and exhausting sins. That birthright involved responsibility, accountability and obedient behavior, and thus it meant nothing to him. It was just a potential burden to him or as we would say, a pain in the neck. Even without FB Marketplace, for a mess of pottage, he successfully sold his divine mission for which both his grandfather and father had lived and risked their lives.

 Often people who eschew the commandments, like Esav, tend to believe that doing what G-d wants is burdensome and tiring. And yet, the first words we ever hear about Esav in the Torah are that he’s “exhausted” (Genesis 25:30). The rabbis teach that he was exhausted because he was so busy living for the pleasures of the moment that his energy was depleted in the service of himself. And make no mistake about it, Esav was not 100 years old and burned out from his “party animal” lifestyle when both he and the Torah tell us that he was “exhausted.” He was 15. By then he had already been sleeping with betrothed women, was hunting, killing, manipulating, etc. He was already a stalwart example of what NOT to do.

 How often in our own lives have we said and hear people say, “I’m tired and burned out,” and “I’m not what I use to be.” Observing some people’s lives can be like watching the battery bars on a cell phone. Slowly, slowly we watch the life force draining away.  And they are always far from the charger just when it’s needed most. But in truth, we only decline and drain away when we attach ourselves to false G-ds, when we spurn morality and vacate religion from our lives and unplug ourselves from the ONE true "charger": G-d. The love of money, the fancy cars, the toxic quest for perpetual beauty, the food fixes, the fame, the gadgets, the unbridled promiscuity, the mind dulling entertainments are all false “insulin spikes” that temporarily thrill us and ultimately drain us of our life energy.

 All of our forefathers were very wealthy. Where are their riches now? In the dust with all things that don’t matter. Their last will and testaments did not bequeath us ornate trinkets or mahogany chairs that need slight refurbishing. Their legacy is eternal; it is the Torah and its life affirming light that illuminates our lives in the darkest moments, that energizes us with G-d’s own life force when haSatan tries to deplete us and depress us. When G-d is our “charger” we don’t burn out and fade away; we become like the Chanukah miracle where the light lasts longer than nature expects. We become like the burning bush that is aflame and yet not consumed. We become the radiant light unto the nations that no Nazi’s black boot can stomp out.

 I think about Black Friday aptly named for a dark mindset that sucks us into believing that we need “stuff” and more stuff. Gadgets rendered into G-ds until they become obsolete, until they end up on an online marketplace, until a stranger with a pickup truck hauls away a life once treasured. And so my friends I must ask you, what do we leave behind that endures? Every moment is a fight for survival and offers us the opportunity to choose between life and death, to be an Esav or a Jacob. Will we live solely for the here and now and for the immediate gratifications which leave loneliness and painful emptiness as they quickly evaporate? Or will we triumph over the hours, days and years by efforting to be better Jews on all fronts and create a lasting legacy. If you fear it will be too “hard,” remember that not only the Geek Squad offers technical support, G-d too shall help: " Open up for me an opening like the eye of a needle and in turn, I will enlarge it to be an opening through which wagons can enter ." (Shir Hashirim Raba 5:2)

And for the self-excusing delusory romantics who tend to believe that the Almighty loves all His children regardless of how they live their lives, let the L-rd’s own words end this article: G-d says, “...I loved Jacob. And I hated Esav.” (Milachi 1:2-3). 

                                              Shabbat Shalom!

SUBSCRIBE to ALIZA's YouTube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/c/TheSourceGodsAnswerstoLifesHardQuestions