May 12, 2008 Chosen Words: A newsletter for personal and spiritual growth gleaned from classic biblical and other sources that will help you enhance your day to day life. Likely the most constructive three minutes you will spend today Mark Steyn: Israel's 'doom' could also be Europe's JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: When Faith Meets Fate, Part One May 9, 2008 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Reverence, Yes; Worship, No Mona Charen: Did Israel Drive Out the Arabs 60 Years Ago? JWisdom: Ultimate opportunities by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky May 8, 2008 Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Israel at 3,500+ Jonathan Tobin: Still Fighting the Same War Steven Plaut: How ‘nakba’ proves the fiction of a Palestinian Nation JWisdom: Taking Israel for Granted? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher May 7, 2008 Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Israel is irrelevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Dion Nissenbaum: Latest Olmert scandal could derail efforts to force Israel's compromises JWisdom: My Inner Ventriloquist by Sara Yoheved Rigler May 6, 2008 Caroline B. Glick: Anti-Zionism at 60 The Kosher Gourmet By Ethel G. Hofman: In honor of Israel's 60th anniversary, the former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with a smorgasbord featuring the taste and essence of the Jewish homeland JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Jewish Deer in Nazi Headlights May 5, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Busy work Jonathan Mark: Remarkable half-century old Mike Wallace interview with Abba Eban puts current anti-Israel sentiment into perspective May 2, 2008 Rabbi Berel Wein: Rote religiosity Caroline B. Glick: Whitewashing Hamas JWisdom: Parent trap? May 1, 2008 David Zwiebel: Faith communities can learn from Orthodox Jews in stimulating private philanthropy for religious education George Friedman and Peter Zeihan of Stratfor: The Shift Toward an Israeli-Syrian Agreement JWisdom: It's time to wake up by Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis April 30, 2008 Jonathan Tobin: Pennsylvania's Democratic slugfest may leave some Jewish votes up for grabs The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Fresh herbs, sauteed veal and tiny creamer potatoes makes a light spring dinner JWisdom: How to Build a Mentch by Rabbi Mordechai Becher April 29, 2008 Daniel Pipes: Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood Joel Brinkley: On human rights, the U.N. once again strikes out JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: When The Truth is Unbelievable April 28, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I'm often stuck in the doctor's waiting room for hours! Doesn't he owe me something for my wasted time? Steven Emerson: New U.S. government policy advises agencies to avoid using some of the very same words that make up terror groups' names JWisdom: Why You & I Never Die: A Jewish View of Immortality, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron April 25, 2008 Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg: Schadenfreude isn't kosher for Passover --- or at any other time Rabbi Berel Wein: The secret of how the data bank of memory is transferred from one generation to the next JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part III April 24, 2008 Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: The successful failure Fred Burton and Scott Stewart of Stratfor: Placing the terrorist threat to the food supply in perspective JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part II April 23, 2008 Connie Ogle: An intricate game of a novel Jonathan Tobin: Making Sense of the 'J Street' Jive JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen April 22, 2008 Jonathan Rosenblum: Why Israel's 'Leaven law' matters Caroline B. Glick: Obama the Savior April 18, 2008 Rabbi Harvey Belovski: Multimedia tool of antiquity Caroline B. Glick: Revealed Truths vs. revealed lies JWisdom: More than miracles by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky April 17, 2008 Rabbi Avi Shafran: Deconstructing Dayeinu Rabbi Elazar Meisels: Is innovation at the Seder a slap at tradition? JWisdom: Discovering Your Divine Mission, Part III by Rabbi David Aaron April 16, 2008 Jonathan Tobin: A Prayer for Sderot's Children Ethel G. Hofman: Sumptuous Seder JWisdom: The Divine is in the details by Rabbi Mordechai Becher April 15, 2008 Rabbi Dovid Zauderer: Let Charlton Heston Go! Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Jimma, tyranny's enabler JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part IV by Dr. Lisa Aiken April 14, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: The Snitching Supervisor Jonathan Tobin: Forget the Fun and Games! JWisdom: Sincerity is Valued Most by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D. April 11, 2008 Rabbi David Gutterman: A Mystery in the Middle East Caroline B. Glick: Why Ahmadinejad smiles JWisdom: Elevated illness by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky April 10, 2008 Stratfor Intelligence Briefing by George Friedman: A Mystery in the Middle East The Kosher Gourmet By Steve Petusevsky: The spring elegance of asparagus JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: The Power of Rational Lies April 9, 2008 Michael Feldberg: An all but forgotten Colonial doctor who put his Jewish values before his life Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's "Everything's Relative" gets philosophical JWisdom: Four Rabbis in Bnei Brak by Rabbi Mordechai Becher April 8, 2008 Caroline Glick: Covering for the enemy Elliot B. Gertel: 'House' goes Hasidic JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part III by Dr. Lisa Aiken April 7, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I have a translating business. Recently someone asked me to translate some financial documents that are clearly forged. Should I agree? Jonathan Rosenblum : Israel is unwittingly helping to fuel the international campaign of delegitimization against it JWisdom: Matzah and leaven as a life philosophy by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D. April 4, 2008 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The Mystery of Suffering Caroline B. Glick: Fear of democracy JWisdom: Dirty Jews by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky April 3, 2008 Rabbi Y. Y. Rubinstein: Parents --- and the children who would be them The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Tempted by restaurant dressings? Don't be. Here are recipes that can be made at home, healthier! JWisdom: The importance of retaining a 'slave mentality' by Rabbi Mordechai Becher April 2, 2008 Mitch Albom: Child abuse, disguised as faith Jonathan Tobin: Unreasonable Accommodations JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith with Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Eliminating Jewish Influence over Germans March 22, 2007 J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !) Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review July 27, 2004 / 17 Tamuz, 5764 Tisha B'Av: Celebrating Jewish sadness By Rabbi David Aaron http://www.jewishworldreview.com | This past Tisha B'Av, I watched my thirteen year old son publicly recite Eicha (Lammentations) for the first time. As he read Jeremiah's heart wrenching words his voice started to quiver and tears began to pour down his cheeks, I thought to myself, what am I doing to my son? Why put him through this pain and cause him such grief? Why pass on to him a history of Jewish pain? I too began to cry. Growing up the son of a holocaust survivor, I was very conscious of the pain of being Jewish. My mother's experiences in the holocaust made me aware of the horrors that Jews have experienced throughout our history. Until I revisited Judaism in my teens, I did not love being Jewish. In fact, I hated it. I realized that if I were born a couple decades earlier, I too would have known the horrors of life in a concentration camp. Focused on the pain of my Jewish identity, it took me years to find within it power and joy. How can Jews find meaning, power and beauty in our long history as victims of incredible oppression and cruelty? As counterintuitive as it may seem, it is necessary for humans to feel pain in order to feel joy. We strive to be happy our whole lives and avoid all sadness and pain. But only people who truly know pain and sadness can truly know pleasure and joy. And only people who truly know pleasure and joy can know pain and sadness. We live in a dualistic world. We know black from white and white from black, up from down and down from up. At the very breathtaking peaks of life are the beginnings of the slopes down. The mountain and the valley are interfaced and one. To be fully alive and aware we must be willing to embrace the total spectrum of human emotions and experience. We must be willing to feel the pain and pleasure, the sadness and the joy because they are the two sides of the one coin of life. Although G-d promised that eventually the Temple will be rebuilt, Jewish tradition teaches that only those people who truly understand and feel the pain over the destruction of the Temple will have the ability to rejoice at the rebuilding of the Temple. In a strange way, on Tisha B'Av we take pleasure in our ability to mourn and we experience profound fulfillment in our tears. Unfortunately, society has perpetuated the silly attitude that men should not cry. But without a good cry, we cannot have a good laugh. One of the most powerful and beautiful moments of my life was when I cried the first time in front of my wife. In fact, crying in front of your spouse is one of the greatest opportunities to share your genuine humanness. Animals do not cry nor do they laugh. The laughing hyena is not expressing intense joy; it is simply making a sound that sounds to us as laughter. According to Jewish mysticism animals feel pain, but they do not know they are feeling pain. It is not as if in the middle of their pain, they think, "Oy, if only I could be happy." We feel pain and joy most acutely when we are looking at it. Those are the times we really sob and rejoice. When we are in our pain and we remember all of the joyous moments of our lives. And in our most joyous moments, we remember all of our pain. These paradoxical moments capture the profundity of life and the unique power of human consciousness. Illustrating this point, in the very midst of Jeremiah's woes, he says, "What does a living human being have to complain about?" It is a serious question. Are we complaining about our crying and suffering? Are we complaining about complaining? Jeremiah realizes in the depth of his pain that we cannot know the joy of being alive without experiencing the pain that comes with it. And we should be thankful for the very ability to cry — it is a sign that we are fully alive and conscious. Our ability to cry and feel pain is itself part of our ability to laugh and feel pleasure — together they capture the miraculous experience of being alive. Understanding the depth of Jewish history and life takes the courage to open yourself up to both mourning and celebrating, crying and laughing — but especially crying. It is strange how we cry in moments of pain but also in moments of intense joy. What does pain and joy have in common that they can both move us to tears? Both pain and joy can bring us face to face with the bedrock of life and this encounter is overwhelming. Suddenly it hits us: We are real and this moment is real and life is overwhelmingly mysterious, miraculous and incomprehensible. Our intellectual and emotional faculties, with which we generally grasp reality, are simply too small to capture the truth we face and we simply break down in tears. This is hinted to in the metaphoric language of Jewish Mysticism that describes how the finite vessels of our perception broke down because they could not contain the endless light of G-d's truth — the manifestation of ultimate reality. I used to imagine that, please G-d, when I will be standing under the wedding canopy, the chuppah, of my children, I will be crying my eyes out. I now know this to be true, thank G-d. When you really open yourself up to the most powerful, deepest experiences that life offers, you cannot help but cry. Jeremiah, while lamenting the destruction of the Temple, tells us to, "Pour out your heart like water." It is an interesting phenomenon that tears are salty. Salt water does not quench your thirst; rather, it makes you thirstier. However, Jeremiah is teaching us that when our tears pour out of our hearts then such tears actually satiate us like fresh water. Crying from the heart satisfies a very deep need; it quenches. The famous psychologist Carl Jung said that neurosis actually is a substitute for legitimate suffering. In others words, denial of our pain is counterproductive and even destructive. If a person is not ready to accept his legitimate suffering, then he will express it in unhealthy and dysfunctional ways. However, acknowledging and expressing sadness through crying heals our hurt, helps turn our pain into a source of motivation and empowers us to feel joy with even greater sensitivity. To be fully alive means to open ourselves up to the spectrum of life's experiences and to embrace the dialectical dance of pain and pleasure, joy and sadness, laughter and tears. Judaism is not about being happy it's about being whole. Wholeness, however, is actually the only true path to real happiness because then you experience an inner happiness even when you are sad. You take pleasure in your ability to feel pain. You embrace and celebrate the totality of your humanness. To be whole we must be willing to immerse ourselves in the complete drama of being alive and human. Therefore, even as I struggle to share Jewish pain with my children, I feel a strange joy in it. It gives me a deep sense of peace to share with my children this battle, this restlessness that we Jews feel because this is truly the path to wholeness and experiencing the fullness of life. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Rabbi David Aaron is the founder and dean of Isralight, an international organization with programming in Israel, New York South Florida, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Toronto. He has taught and inspired thousands of Jews who are seeking meaning in their lives and a positive connection to their Jewish roots. He is the author of the newly released, The Secret Life of G-d, and also the author of Endless Light, Seeing G-d and Love is my religion. (Click on link to purchase books. Sales help fund JWR.) He lives in the old City of Jerusalem with his wife and their seven children. To comment, please click here. © 2004, Rabbi David Aaron