Felafel on Rye

These days, it’s pretty hard to know who really is Jewish. Let’s take the example of the singles-bar scene in New York. A lot of times a Jewish guy will start talking to girl (call her Debbie) and during the conversation, he’ll ask if she’s Jewish, and she says, “Sure,” when she isn’t Jewish at all. So I have devised an almost foolproof test to determine if a person is really a Jew.

Our task as Jews and as a holy Nation is to link the physical world with the Divine. As Rabbi Kook makes clear, Eretz Yisrael is the G-d given place ideally suited for this task.

How can it be that outstanding Torah scholars in Europe, before the Holocaust, and even after it started, were against the Zionist movement and told their congregations not to uproot themselves from where they were and flee to Eretz Yisrael? Even today, there are Torah leaders who tell their followers that the time has not come to go to Israel. The question arises – can Gedolim err?

A few readers have written me lately, saying that my blogs are too hard-hitting, and that I would have better results with honey than with smashing people over the head with a sledgehammer. I am not totally convinced

Some people will tell you that if you put on tefillin in Brooklyn, you’ve reached the pinnacle of the Jewish journey, but it isn’t true. Other people will tell you we have to stay in exile until Mashiach arrives. But that isn’t true either. Hashem isn’t waiting for Mashiach. Before our very eyes, Hashem has brought millions of Jews back to Israel on His own, without waiting for Mashiach to do all the work.

The thought that Eretz Yisrael is an accessory to Judaism, and not a central pillar in itself, is a tragic distortion which was caused by the nearly 2000 year exile of the Jewish People from the Land of Israel. After years of wandering - scattered among the gentiles, separated from our homeland- our orientation to the Land of Israel became distorted and confused.

Today, the “evil thing” in our communities and homes is the onslaught of immodest websites and images on the Internet.

All of the directors and presidents of the Jewish organizations and federations and committees and leagues and unions who didn't and still don't call upon their members to pack up and go, they all should be replaced with braver souls. With the scourge of intermarriage decimating our ranks, all of the rabbis who didn't and still don't urge their congregations to go en mass to Israel should read through the Torah once again.

Rabbi Kook explains that t’shuva comes about in two distinct formats, either suddenly, or in a gradual, slowly developing fashion. Both of these pathways to t’shuva are readily found in the baal t’shuva world. Some people will tell you how their lives suddenly changed overnight. Others describe their experience as a long, challenging process which unfolded over years. Many factors influence the way in which t’shuva appears.

At the last demonstration, I strolled through the crowd and recognized agitators who staged protests against Israeli soldiers in Hevron and Samaria.

Obviously, we have a good distance to go before we reach full redemption, but, for example, last week I davened Mincha on Har HaBayit with a minyan. Once upon a time, that was an impossible dream.

Detention Camps for US Jews? Sounds farfetched but it did to Japanese-Americans during WW II as well

Do you have a teenager who is doing badly in school? Do you have a kid who hates to pray? Does the tiny kippah he wears come off his head the moment he’s down the block? This may be the reason. Nothing desensitizes a person from Torah more than an exposure to porn. Don’t delude yourselves – when it comes to computers, children are geniuses. They know how to navigate through the intricacies of the web like private eyes.

The fact that a Reform Jew wishes to adopt a counterfeit form of “Judaism” is his affair. But the religious Jew is not bound by that. The State of Israel does not have to recognize on an official level the falsehood that every Jew may adopt on a private level.

When you are sick, do you go to the doctor, or the student of the doctor? So why go to Uman where Rebbe Nachman is buried, when you could go to the cities in Israel where his teachers are buried?

"Word came that hundreds of Arabs were gathering in front of the Hevron police station, demanding the dismantlement of the Shoshana settlement. Not wanting to miss the action, the reporters scattered like roaches to their cars. For all of his supposed extremism, Caleb Cohen was right. It seemed that all the brewing tension of the Middle East had surfaced in Meir's backyard."

Ten years ago, Bibi promised he would get it done. Nu? Where's the elevator?

When a man understands that his personal t’shuva advances the redemption process of the world, his motivation to mend his own life is enhanced.

I don't know why we recited Tachanun this morning. We should have recited Hallel!

How can the Jews of the Diaspora put up with it?

Hashem doesn’t want us in Galut forever. We are supposed to long for the higher existence of Geula - of Jewish sovereignty in our own Land, with our Holy Temple in our midst.

We prayed for 2,000 years to return home to Israel, does it make sense to leave the Holy Land on RH?

In spite of the fact that the Chofetz Chaim was vehemently opposed to the non-religious spirit of the secular Zionists, he encouraged the aliyah of God-fearing Jews. He saw the surge of mass aliyah from Russia as “the footsteps of the Mashiach,” and the beginning of the ingathering of the exiles which precedes the Mashiach’s coming.

Rabbi Elisha Bruck, who works with a group called Kedushat Tzion told me that since Medinat Yisrael is a highly-charged subject for charedim, Kedushat Tzion employs the word “immigration” in its literature and conversations, not “aliyah,” which has a Zionist connotation.

Some people don’t realize that Mashiach’s coming is a process that evolves over time. These people want everything to be finished at the start. They say that when Mashiach comes and does all the work of rebuilding the Land of Israel, and gathers all of the exiled Jews to Israel, and fights the wars of Hashem, and rebuilds the Beit HaMikdash, then they will come on aliyah. First, everything has to be perfect. First, the Mashiach has to do all the work.

Like the lions in Rabbi Kook’s poem, may we also find the longing for freedom.

"We need to change reality and passing societal norms to meet halacha – not the other way around."

Of course there's air in America, but it isn’t the holy air of Eretz Yisrael.

If Smotrich doesn’t play ball, he may find himself on the sidelines this time around, warming the bench with Moshe Feiglin, who has already decided not to run, declaring that his unique ideas cannot be heard in this electoral atmosphere.

Point is, the eyes are the soul's windows and forbidden images, face it or not, pollute a Jew’s soul