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"Shabbat Shalom from Bangkok"

Prayers

Friday, August 30, 2024 - 4:07 AM

By the Grace of G-d

Dear Friend,

Seeing something makes it very real.

Look at this picture and tell me if it looks like a car from which two adults and four children all emerged alive.

Here is what happened. After the car tumbled off the side of a canyon road in California, the father was treated for a gash on the forehead that was fixed with stitches. The mother suffered three broken ribs. The children – including two one year old twins – emerged without a scratch.

This story happened back in the summer of 2022. I remember seeing this picture just after it happened as I am friends with the father.

Fast forward to this week. I forgot about this story.

My friend came to consult with me about incorporating prayer into his daily schedule.

I was delighted by the purpose of our meeting. It is very inspiring for me to see people grow in their Jewish observance. I am humbled by the arduous journeys and great efforts that people make in advancing in their spiritual growth.

Rather than just suggesting certain prayers to incorporate into his schedule, it was a chance for me to spell out the basics of prayer.

Prayer in its purest sense is turning to G-d when in need.

Simply put, to understand that there is no other source for life, health, sustenance or money other than the Creator of the Universe.

Turning to G-d when you need something is the basis of prayer.

When you see a traffic buildup and you call out ‘Oh my G-d, please let me get home in time to meet my child when they come home from school’ this is prayer.

The most basic and fundamental form of prayer.

Sometimes people get a bit overwhelmed when they think about prayer, because they assume it must be done in a certain way and using exact words.

That is true when we refer to detailed prayer. Basic prayer is simply communicating with G-d about your needs.

When viewed from this perspective, it is safe to say that most of humanity is praying without even realizing it.

About two thousand years ago when the Jews were exiled to non-Hebrew speaking lands, they began to lose their ability to express themselves eloquently in Hebrew or in any language for that matter.

It was for this reason that the prophetically endowed sages of that time compiled prayer texts in Hebrew. This would allow even the simplest of Jews to be able to speak to G-d in the most subliminally meaningful and poetically expressive language before the Almighty.

The Siddur Prayer book gives every person the ability to pray like a professional. (And of course these days there are Siddur Apps).

Click here for extensive discussion on the development of Tefilah.

In this article let me just touch very briefly on the basic ‘form’ of prayer. The order and sequence of how ought to present their requests to G-d.

It starts with submission to G-d and praising him.

Just as if you were standing in front of a human king. You would start off by acknowledging and praising his exaltedness and greatness.

Then comes the request. You petition the king for his kindness and benevolence.

The conclusion of prayer should be with thanks and blessings of Shalom.

The beginning of our daily communication with G-d is the moment we open our eyes.

We say Modeh Ani Lefanecha … I thank you G-d for returning my soul…

The mere fact that I opened my eyes and am aware means that I am alive.

We therefore start by thanking G-d for life itself.

The more elaborate form of thanks for the gifts we are blessed with before we even do anything are the morning blessings of gratitude.

Click here for morning blessings of gratitude.

Then we ask G-d for our needs and thank Him for everything He does for us.

It was only after I finished the meeting that I was reminded that this was the very same friend who two years ago had this incredible miracle. That he and his family walked out of their totally wrecked car alive and well thank G-d.

I had been emphasizing thanking G-d as an important part of prayer and indeed the person I was meeting has so much to thank G-d for.

But not just him. So do I. So do you.

It was Divine Providence that this meeting took place this week.

At the beginning of the week, I paid a visit to Phuket with our son Leibel. It was a short stopover on our way back from Almaty, Kazakhstan.

(We had spent the weekend there, joining hundreds of Chasidim who traveled from far and wide to visit the grave of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, the father of the Rebbe in honor of his eightieth yahrtzeit.

As mentioned in last week’s article, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak was exiled by the KGB to a remote province in Kazakhstan because of his holy work of spreading Judaism.

He is buried in a small Jewish section of a general cemetery and until very recently was too remote for many visitors. In exile during his lifetime and after passing.

A truly inspiring symbol of standing firm in commitment to G-d to the point of sacrifice).

We used the layover time in Phuket to visit the Chabad House to pray and eat something.

And for something else very touching. To visit the hotel property in Patong where our family had an accident and were saved by a miracle. It was back in 2021 during Covid when we were in Phuket as part of the Sandbox quarantine program.

(Another thing to thank G-d for. That the pandemic is over. We are able to move around freely without restrictions).

Why did we want to go back to that same site?

To bless G-d for His kindness and benevolence in making a miracle for us.

The Code of Jewish Law teaches,

When an individual sees the place where a miracle was performed on his behalf — for example, he was saved from a wall which fell on him or from a wild animal or robbers — after thirty days [of the event.], he is obligated to recite the blessing, “Blessed are You, G-d our L-rd, King of the universe, Who performed a miracle for me in this place.” This rule applies] even when there is no [specific feature or landmark] associating the miracle with that place.

Isn’t every single breath a miracle? Every sunrise, sunset, wind, rain and all the other things we call ‘nature’?

True, life itself is a miracle and a blessing. However, the regularity and predictable rhythm of nature is not by chance. It is exactly the way that G-d intended. He intentionally created the world in a way that for most part He is concealed behind the façade of the garments of nature.

When something unusual happens, those garments are moved aside for a moment. When an event occurs that naturally would have caused fatal damage and miraculously that danger is averted, this is a revelation of G-dly presence.

Upon experiencing this kind of Divine intervention, there is a special thanksgiving blessing. Praising Hashem and thanking Him for the extraordinary above-nature twist of events.

Whereas G-d chooses to remain hidden in the natural running of the world, in the case of a miraculous event, He is choosing to show His Face (so to speak) so that we can ‘see’ His presence and take that inspiration with us for the rest of our lives.

This weeks Torah portion is Reeh. See.

The first verse reads, ‘See I set before you today a blessing…’

All of us are always recipients of G-d’s blessing.

Sometimes in a most dramatic way. And with pictures that allow you to literally ‘see’ the miracle.

Like my friend who emerged from his car miraculously and has pictures to show the enormity of the miracle.

Other times they are ‘small miracles’ when things come together in a way that you would not be able to predict.

May the Almighty bless you with the gift of R’eeh – seeing His blessings to you in every aspect of your lives.

And collectively we pray, for secure peace in Israel, for our soldiers, the return of our hostages, the healing of the wounded and the ushering in of peace to the world at large.

Especially as we are about to enter the month of Elul. This week on Tuesday and Wednesday we mark the last day of Menachem Av and the first day of the month of Elul which means we are just about thirty days away from Rosh Hashana.

Time to start wishing for a Shana Tova.

Chodesh Tov

And of course, what is most immediate,

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Yosef Kantor

Revealing your true self

Friday, August 23, 2024 - 2:03 AM

By the Grace of G-d

Dear Friend,

When an NKVD (later known as KGB) document is marked ‘super-secret’ within an entire file that is marked ‘secret’ it attracts unique attention.

In the west, we are used to court records being accessible to the public. These days even the secret and classified documents don’t always remain private as there are data breaches, Wikileaks and whistleblowers. This was not at all the case during the dark and menacing days of Soviet communism under Stalin and his cohorts. The vast reams of documents that chronicled the sham court cases resulting in executions and forced exiling were out of public reach, locked behind iron doors literally and figuratively.

Even once the walls of communism came crashing down in the 1990’s, the archives did not immediately become declassified. It took many years for access to be possible and even then, only after an arduous process.

This Shabbat, the 20th day of the Jewish month of Menachem Av (August 24), marks 80 years since the untimely passing of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, of righteous memory, father of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak was respected as one of the greatest Talmudic and Kabbalistic scholars of his generation. He served as chief rabbi of the city of Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, during the bloody Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent Communist oppression.

Despite terrible persecution directed at religious leaders in those days, he remained fearlessly defiant in strengthening Jewish learning and practice in his city and throughout the Soviet Union. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak was eventually arrested, tortured, and banished to near-solitude in a primitive, disease-infested village in Kazakhstan, where his body finally succumbed to life-threatening illness that resulted in his untimely passing.

Only quite recently were the documents chronicling the court proceedings of his interrogation made available.

In perusing the many hundreds of pages of this previously highly classified file, the story of the torturous methods of interrogation come to light. Interrogations were mostly scheduled for Friday nights or the eve of other important Jewish holidays. They were held at night for many long hours. Clearly, the intent was to break the person they were interrogating till he would provide them with the information they were looking for and sign a document that confirms his guilt.

These court proceedings were taking place in Kiev the capital of the Ukraine. When they saw that they were unable to break the indomitable spirit of the great rabbi and get the ‘admissions’ they were seeking, they proceeded to arrest the members of the Synagogue staff who worked closely with the rabbi back in Dnepropetrovsk.

The harsh tactics worked. Some of those close associates of the rabbi gave in to their captors and signed on incriminating statements that ‘admitted’ the ‘crimes’ of supporting Jews and Judaism that the communists were searching for.

Once those statements had been made, the interrogators brought the rabbi back from Kiev and brought him and his synagogue staff together for a joint interrogation. This was in an effort to have Rabbi Levi Yitschak ‘admit’ to and corroborate their charges once he realized that they had ‘admitted’ to ‘counterrevolutionary’ activities (i.e. Torah and Mitzvahs).

After that meeting there is a set of documents marked super-secret.

Those extra classified documents are the written and signed records of the synagogue staff revising their former admission as being false and made only under duress.

It would appear, that meeting their rabbi even while they were all hopelessly imprisoned, had the opposite effect than what the NKVD expected. It infused them with the inner fortitude needed to stand up for the truth.

Of course, the communist government wanted those documents reneging on their previous admission to be even more secret and locked away from unwanted scrutiny. If revealed, they would pull out the rug from under the central aspects of the prosecution’s case.

Now these documents and many other similar ones are out there in the open. The communist regime’s cruelty is well known. And we, humanity, need to learn the appropriate lessons of standing up for G-dly morality, respecting fellow human rights and freedoms.

As Jews, when we remember the life of someone who stood steadfast against all odds and gave his life for commitment to Hashem and His Torah, we are inspired us to deepen our own commitment to Hashem’s mitzvahs without yielding to the things that threaten to deter us.

Rabbi Levi Yitschak’s heroic example of steadfast and proud adherence to Judaism's ideals, serves as a shining beacon of inspiration for all of us today, and for all generations to come.

What grabbed me in a very powerful way is this detail about the ‘super-secret’ document.

Because I think that deep down, we all have that ‘super-secret’ part of our inner selves that has the tendency to remain hidden and undeveloped unless ‘prodded’.

We live our lives with a personal ‘truth’ that we adhere to. An outlook on life that defines how we make our life choices.

There is, however, a more essential and ‘truer’ truth that we have.

Our soul. The innermost part of our spiritual identity which is a ‘part of G-d’ and is perfectly aligned with G-d’s will.

Under the duress of peer pressure, societal norms and expectations, we profess ‘truths’ that are not G-d oriented. Just like the staff of the Rabbi Levi Yitschak.

In a moment of clarity, when our exterior is peeled away and we ‘meet’ G-d, the truth comes out.

As the aphorism goes ‘A Jew neither wants to sever his connection with G-d. Nor is he able to disconnect from G-d’.

Every Jew has his or her ‘red line’, which he will not cross even if he has to pay for it with his life.

This is the essential truth of a Jew.

The super-secret.

In our parsha this week of Eikev Moshe tells the Jewish people:

And now, Israel, even though you rebelled against God all those times, what does God, your God, demand of you? Only that you exercise your free choice to revere God, your God, to walk in all His ways

Moshe makes it sound easy. What is G-d already asking of you? nothing unattainable, simply to revere G-d and do what He wants.

Sounds challenging to me.

The Talmud indeed asks, ‘is revering G-d so simple a matter’? and the Talmud answers ‘yes, for Moshe it is quite a small matter’.

The Tanya asks, how did the Talmud answer the question? Moshe is speaking to the people and telling them that it’s easy for them.

The Tanya answers that there is a manifestation of Moshe’s soul in the soul of each and every Jew. In that deepest space of the soul, it is easy to revere G-d and make the right life choices.

One doesn’t have to create a new reality; it is just about declassifying the ‘super-secret’ dimension of your innate truth and revealing your true self.

Wouldn’t it be a shame if we lived our lives in ‘surface level peer pressure mode’ and only achieved true clarity moments before we leave the world?

Let us access our true ‘inner soul’ dimension and live our lives according to that truth.

Let me give a practical example.

You are in a remote location and it’s Yom Kippur.

Of course, a Jew fasts on Yom Kippur by default. Usually, he would be surrounded by fellow Jews in the Synagogue who are also fasting.

Now you are all alone, no one will ever know if you ate or not.

Perhaps you even have a headache. A little voice niggles at you ‘certainly G-d won’t mind if I take a dispensation just this one time’.

Dig a little deeper.

Your inner self knows that G-d is everywhere, and you truly care about your relationship with him.

Kivi Bernhard, whom I remember from Yeshiva days, is a sought-after public speaker, the author of Leopardology™ – The Hunt For Profit In Tough Global Economy. He was booked to speak at a small high-powered event which was being hosted by Microsoft. His agent accepted the speaking engagement but when Kivi looked at the calendar and saw that it was on Shabbat, he said he couldn’t accept the engagement. The Microsoft staff had already fixed the topic of the meeting and really wanted Kivi to be there. They figured it was solvable by money. They bypassed the agent and reached out to Kivi offering twice the usual fee. Kivi stood steadfast to his keeping of Shabbat and declined. In the end that part of the meeting was rescheduled, and he gave the talk on Sunday morning.

Later, a senior VP at Microsoft shared with Kivi that when he was with Bill Gates on a private jet, this event came up. The Microsoft executive mentioned the unusual experience and the phenomena of having to work with the speaker bureau to reschedule the start date of the meeting to accommodate “a Jew’s observance of the Sabbath,”

He said to me this made quite an impact on Mr Gates who remarked “there are some things that just cannot be bought with money… I guess the Sabbath is one of them.”

Listening to Hashem and His instructions for life as communicated in the Torah, allows one to align with their deepest core self.

It leads to a deeper sense of happiness. For the soul can only be truly happy when one lives according to the ‘super-true’ truth.

Living this way puts on the direct path to being truly wholesome and happy as G-d has in mind for us.

When we all live this way Mashiach is here.

May this be a reality NOW.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yosef Kantor

Loving

Friday, August 16, 2024 - 3:50 AM

By the Grace of G-d

Dear Friend,

We are reading the fifth book of the Torah. Second Parsha of the fifth book to be precise.

The most well-known passage among Jewish People is the ‘Shma Yisrael’. Most Jews if there is one part of the Torah and prayer that they know in the original Hebrew it’s the six words of ‘Shma Yisrael….’.

As stories emerge from the October 7th massacre, many survivors recall those moments when they held onto Shema Yisrael as tightly as they held onto their weapons. And in many cases, it was the only weapon they had. They whispered or shouted or closed their eyes and moved their lips over and over again—”Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem echad.”

Benni Chasson lived on Kibbutz Kissufim. He and his wife spent hours and hours in their “safe room,” until soldiers arrived to rescue them at 4:00 in the morning. Were they terrorists or Israelis? He wasn’t sure.

“Finish this sentence,” he told the soldier outside: “Shema Yisrael …”

And the soldier answered, “Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad.” Finally, they felt safe to open the door.

From article by Linda Hirschel entitled From the Gas Chambers to Gaza, Shema Was on Our Lips

Yet, the Shema prayer only appears in the Torah at the fifth book, which means that it was said by Moshe in the fortieth year after the giving of the Torah at Sinai.

Where was the Shema prayer earlier?

And once we are asking. Here is another basic question.

The Shema is a lead up to the next verse.

One of the most important commandments of the 613.

Ve’ahavta et Hashem. You shall love Hashem.

Same question. Why does such a fundamental mitzva only get taught forty years into the journey, just before Moshe passes away?

Let us think about love and discuss some basic facts about love.

Sometimes love is automatic. Spontaneous. A natural response to the circumstances.

Most babies are loveable.

During the courtship and early stages of marriage love seems to be natural and effortless.

When a business partnership is thriving, the partners may feel quite appreciative of each other. It would seem like the ideal model.

In the fairy tales, we could now say that ‘they lived happily ever after’ and close the book.

In real life, it is hardly ever like that.

Kids grow up and the love is challenged.

Parents start going to parenting courses on how to love their child once the kids start growing up and doing their own thing. They seem less naturally loveable at that state. Sometimes mindfulness and rational thinking is required to guide the parents over the humps of dysfunctional parenting, into healthy love.

Kids may have to invest and work on loving their parents.

Self-driving may or may not work in today’s new technology heavy cars. In marriages, it is not at all advisable. Couples must work on their relationship if they want their marriage to endure.

Business partnerships usually develop some hints of disunity. Partners need to invest efforts in keeping the harmonious balance in their joint enterprise.

The first forty years that the Jews were in the desert, there was no need to instruct them to love G-d.

They were in the idyllic state of being totally enveloped with G-d’s kindnesses.

Yes, most of the time the Jewish people had a paradise-like experience in the desert.

I know that it doesn’t sound like that when you read the Torah.

That is because bad news makes for larger headlines.

Our memories and impressions are often formed by sporadic extraordinary episodes that take place. Even though in terms of quantity, they are nowhere near the majority of the days of our life.

Even in the Torah this is the case.

When you read about the sojourn of the Jewish people in the desert, it seems full of drama. Never a dull moment.

When you select out the few incidents that were spread over the first year in the desert and the event of the last year, you have some thirty-eight years of ‘boring’ and ‘routine’ living.

Pleasantly boring.

Dependable source of food.

Mana fell from heaven six times a week. Friday a double portion fell to provide for Shabbat.

Water was provided by the miraculous ‘well of Miriam’.

Their clothing was preserved by the divine ‘clouds of glory’ that enveloped them. Those clouds also protected them from the elements and smoothed out the terrain in front of them.

They had none of the usual concerns and worries of making a living. Neither did they have health issues for nearly forty years.

The natural state of being for the Jews living in that environment was an awareness that Hashem is their provider. No need for reinforcing that belief by declaring the Shema Yisrael.

Also, as they all saw and felt that it was G-d who is providing all of this beneficence, they naturally and instinctively loved G-d.

There was no need to instruct them to make efforts to love Him.

Now the Jewish people are poised to enter Israel.

No more miraculous sustenance. Ploughing, sowing, harvesting and all the other strenuous stages of preparation till one gets an edible loaf of bread.

This is not by mistake, this is by Hashems design. Our mission here in life is to engage in the material world and infuse it with purpose and meaning.

The challenge that Hashem introduces into the mission is the hiddenness of His presence. He chooses to have us live in a natural environment without overriding the system continually with miracles.

We now need to search for him.

Loving G-d will not be instinctive anymore. It needs to be consciously aroused.

Now let’s get practical. For here and now 2024.

How do you bring yourself to love G-d?

Isn’t love only an instinctive emotional expression. If you love something you love it, if you don’t, you don’t.

Can you tell someone ‘love healthy food’?

Most mothers would love to tell their children that.

The answer is that one can bring oneself to love something if one contemplates and internalizes the goodness and importance of it.

Loving G-d is really about being mindful of G-d, His greatness and most importantly His relevance to my life.

By thinking about all the good that Hashem does for us, we will be aroused to love Him.

If you are not immediately sure that Hashem does myriads of good things for you personally, stop and pause. Take a moment to be honest with yourself.

True, we have selective memories. Ask someone about their memorable moments and they will recount the high points of their life and the low points. And many people have weathered many difficult and painful moments during their lifetimes.

However, for the majority of people most of life is lived in the middle zone. In the nondescript uneventful flow of life with its occasional rises and drops that are not newsworthy.

During that ‘routine life’, there is so much blessing that we can and ought to be mindful about.

The question we need to ask ourselves is how much time do we take to reflect on the good that Hashem does for us in our personal life?

The difference between feeling love to Hashem and not feeling that love is all in the mind.

The moment we will be mindful about what Hashem gives us and the all-encompassing embrace that He wraps around us, we will be aroused with a feeling of attraction and love towards Him.

This weeks Parsha is a reminder to us. To pay more attention to the passages we say at least twice daily. It is a mitzvah to say Shma Yisrael and the subsequent verses about loving Hashem in the morning and evening. Click here for the text

Because we say it so often, we don’t always reflect meaningfully enough on the depth of what we are saying.

Pause. Reflect. Contemplate.

Every breath is a blessing from G-d. Your biological systems are blessings from G-d. Food, shelter, family, nachas and everything else we often take for granted, are all from our loving Creator.

He is the source of all of that. He is one. He is the ONLY one. There is no power outside of Him. Once you realize He is the provider of all your beneficence your heart will be aflame.

Advertising the source of all good!

Friday, August 9, 2024 - 7:11 AM

A joke to begin with.

Shlomo and Miriam Cohen were visiting Shlomo’s 95-year-old Zadie when he asked them to take him to buy a new Shabbos hat.

Shlomo was worried that Zadie wouldn’t have enough money to buy the hat and might become embarrassed, so he asked the salesperson to tell Zadie that whichever hat he chose costs $25 and Shlomo would pay the difference. Zadie picked out a beautiful new Shabbos hat and was charged $25. After he left, Shlomo paid the other $175.

Later Zadie said, "What a bargain! The last one I bought there, cost me $200!"

I think back to this as it seems to me that there is a habit that some people have which they confuse with being a ‘Jewish custom’ of sorts.

I mean the excitement of getting something for free. Or at least heavily discounted. Or at the very furthest extreme at least not paying retail prices. Some (jokingly?) say that it seems almost sinful to buy something without fierce bargaining.

This weeks Parsha has a verse that jumps out at me because it dispels the notion that paying for something is wrong when you may be able to finagle or beg for it and get if for free.

Here are the verses I am referring to (using the Kehot interpolated translation incorporating Rashi’s commentary to the text).

The background is, that as the Jews were getting closer to Israel, they passed by neighboring countries. Hashem told them that they skirt those borders but could engage with the inhabitants to procure food and drink.

Devarim Chapter 2 verse 6: You may buy food from them with money, that you may eat; and you may also buy water from them with money, that you may drink.

7: In fact, you should purchase food from them, in order to show that God, your God, has blessed you in whatever you do and that you have thus become wealthy. As you know, He was intimately aware of your needs during your trek through this great desert; you have lacked nothing throughout these forty years that God, your God, has been with you.” ’

This verse and the reasoning present a different perspective on the ‘custom’ of bargaining.

Let me clarify myself here. I am not advocating extravagance of wastefulness.

We are taught in the Torah not to be wasteful. Every resource we have in our reach should be incorporated and used in our mission here on earth to serve the Almighty.

The Torah tells us how Yaakov went back over the river to retrieve some inexpensive items he had left behind. Yaakov was a wealthy man at the time but since everything one owns should be utilized in the service of G-d, a Tzadik doesn’t walk away from things objects that he can incorporate into his Divine service.

Click here for a kabalistic teaching by the Arizal on this verse.

I recall that the Rebbe rejected the new roomy more luxurious car that some supporters wanted to give to him. He said that the old car did the job just fine, and it had taken him on many important journeys (between home, office and the resting place of his sainted father-in-law at the Ohel). It would be a waste to get a new car. He continued using the old car till his passing.

Clearly, we need to be mindful of how we spend resources even if we have much more than we can spend.

Hashem gives us what we have, and it is intended to be used meaningfully.

But there are other factors that need to be taken into account as well.

Recently my father shared with me a Yiddish idiom he heard from his grandmother when he was a child. ‘Better to throw out than to throw in’.

It refers to the prohibition of wasting food. What happens when there are a few pieces of food left over, without anyone to eat it before it goes off.

In the olden days, there was usually not an oversupply of food, and the tradition was ‘don’t throw out food’. Rather eat the food so it is not wasted.

Today, there is often (thank G-d) food left over. Sometimes in the name of not being wasteful one will eat more than they intended. ‘It’s a waste to throw out such good, tasty, expensive food’ one says.

However, we may be overlooking other factors. We all know that overeating has consequences that are not beneficial. The ‘price’ and ‘expense’ that the human body pays for ingesting the additional food is no less wasteful of a behavior.

Thus, it really makes sense to remember that, ‘throwing out is better than throwing in’. (In the original Yiddish ‘aroisvarfen is besser vi areinvarfen’).

What this week’s Parsha may be teaching us is that there is an additional dimension to consider when we act overly frugal.

Part of our mission here on earth is to proclaim the existence of G-d.

We are walking ‘marketing agents’ for G-d’s presence here on earth.

Our sages taught besides the mitzvah that we have to love G-d, we are also enjoined to bring others to love G-d.

How does one do that?

One way is, not by lecturing about G-d but by acting kind and nice beyond the usual expectations of society. When someone who believes in G-d acts extraordinarily honest and caring, they are advertising that G-d is the source of all good and kind things. This will engender the love toward G-d in society at large.

Another way we cause people to come closer to G-d is to share how benevolent He is to us.

This is why it is not enough to be internally thankful to Hashem for His kindness to us. We are instructed to share our gratitude out loud. The song that the Jewish people sang at the splitting of the sea was a classic example of ‘if you are happy and you know it sing a song of praise to G-d’.

When someone is granted a miracle where his life was saved from an almost certain fatal danger, there is a custom to make a ‘seudat hodaah’ a feast of thanksgiving and invite family and friends to publicize G-d’s miraculous intervention.

When we portray ourselves as being poor and needy, what message are we communicating about G-d’s kindness and beneficence?

Acting poor and needy is a statement that loudly pronounces that you have scarce resources. Scrounging for free food would be creating an image that the Jewish people are an abandoned needy people.

If one needs help, it is foolish and conceited to be too proud to ask. Hashem created his world with an imbalance of resources so that we should be given the gift of giving and the humility of receiving.

But in this case the Jewish people were no needy. The opposite was true.

While they were traveling in the desert, G-d had given them every need, way beyond subsistence. G-d had made them wealthy.

They may need food on their journey, but they can well afford to buy it.

And in this way, by buying their food rather than begging for it, they are showing that G-d has taken care of them in a generous way.

May I apply this a little more broadly to the way we talk about our connection to the land of Israel.

Sometimes I sense an apologetic bent in the way Jewish people speak about Israel.

As if we are uninvited and unwanted guests that are somehow tolerated but we should make sure not to speak up too loudly. We are expected to quietly accept whatever policies or dictates the ‘world leaders’ impose upon us.

It is important to remember. We are not ‘beggars’ in the world arena who need to ask and curry favor from the nations of the world to have the right to exist in our land and defend our people.

Hashem gave us our land.

He created it. He gave it to us. There were some periods in history when He took it from us, but essentially and existentially He gave his promised land to His promised People.

Period.

Lying low, trying not to attract attention and with our body language acting as if we are intruders of colonists who have invaded a land is simply a misrepresentation.

So is relying on the UN resolution that granted the modern-day Israel its right to statehood. It is a shallow point that takes away attention from our truthful Biblical claim to Israel. UN resolutions can come and go. G-d’s words in the Torah are eternal.

The Jewish claim to the land of Israel is simple. It is a gift from G-d. To our forefathers Avraham, Yitschak and Yaakov. And to us, the eternal Jewish people who are their direct descendants.

It is disrespectful to Hashem to act as if we are recipients of the nations-of-the-worlds kindness when really our thanks should go to G-d.

We welcome and bless all who help us, and indeed we are blessed that there are nations who choose to help us. Hashem promises to bless those who support His people. As the Torah says ‘those who bless you will be blessed’.

In this week’s Parshah the Torah tells us and reminds us that if we have been given a gift, we ought to thank Hashem for it and openly acknowledge the great blessing that He has given us.

With prayers for our soldiers, our hostages, our wounded and the millions of brothers and sisters living with such faith and determination.

May Hashem bless us to bring Mashiach and be brought to Eretz Yisrael (every single one of us) to witness the building of the Bet Hamikdash, the ushering in of permanent world peace, and the transformation of Tisha B’av into a day of joy and jubilance.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yosef Kantor

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