THE BRAVE NEW LAND

Have you been challenged recently? I have… I think it started a few months back when my mom was diagnosed with cancer; well, I guess that is really more of a challenge for her than for me... Anyways, she has been undergoing chemo and I am due to visit her back in my birth country, SoCal, fairly soon; but more on that later down the page. Another challenge that I have been dealing with recently is, at work, I have been trying to iron out a bit of a communication problem. This is the kind of communication problem that affects the company’s whole marketing concept and there are a few opposing departments that are butting heads (with me smack in the middle). I am kind of the only marcom guy there and I have been trying to implement a style guide, as well as sweeping reforms to the branding concepts, and to organize the way that information is stored, labeled, and accessed for later retrieval. The guys I work for are Christian, Zionists from Germany ― very ‘yashar’ (straight), accept that ...

The night of Motze Shabbat (Saturday night), I had trouble sleeping. All night long the dogs in the neighborhood were barking and yelping. Once in a while, I could also hear the calls of the jackals that run in packs in the wilderness near my house. Something, it seemed, was not quite right in the neighborhood. Eventually, after finally falling asleep, I woke with a start from a dream into which I had descended. It was a gruesome dream, a dream that scared me wi de awake in the dead of the night. When I sat up in bed, there was a silhouette, still afloat in my subconscious mind, of a zombie ripping the flesh from a woman’s neck with its pointed yellow teeth. In the dream, I had been trying to save her and her family from the raging creatures while driving like a bat-out-of-hell, screeching around corners, looking for other people to help escape the zombie mobs. The front cab of the pickup truck that I was driving had been organized to accommodate as many people as I could fit in and I ...

Recently I was abruptly interrupted from my childlike stupor, which had ensured me that reason would eventually prevail in the world. What happened… you may ask? Well, I have always felt that, when it comes down to it, people will be reasonable and rational, even if they have a few hiccups along the way. It all started about a month ago, on Facebook, when I received a friend request from someone that I didn’t know. As usual, when this occurs, I sent him a message asking him how he found me. He replied that he liked what I wrote on the status of a Dali Lama post. I don’t remember what it was now, but probably something that differed with Mr. Lama’s assertion about compassion for our fellow human beings, in and of itself, as a way to true and everlasting peace in the world. I feel that without a higher source, we will always get lost in the fluff of our egos, but more on the ‘ego’ thing later. Once this guy and I were ‘Facebook friends,’ I commented a few times on his posts, which were m...

Did you ever have the experience of dreaming such a vivid dream that it was absolutely real, like your dream life was the real life while the life that you enjoyed when in a conscious state was only a vague and distant feeling, like a dream inside your dream? I have. I once had a dream that I drove my car backwards over a cliff. As I fell, looking up at the beams of my headlights that were bouncing off of the slowly receding cliff-top, I was absolutely aware that I was falling into the sea. I fell for a long time, as if time began to slow down, and then my life flashed before my eyes. I saw my family and friends and all my close relationships as they paraded across my ‘conscious’ mind. I was going to die and I knew it. When the moment of my death arrived, time came to a complete stop; I opened my eyes and realized it was all only a dream. I had this strange feeling, though, that lasted for a few minutes. I wasn’t quite sure which state was the dream and which was reality. In this week’...

What’s the red stuff you may be asking…? Well, I will get to that later. First I want to talk about the Ethiopians in Israel. There was a little get-together that was held at my house this week, in which two tall, thin Ethiopian gentlemen discussed their experiences, culture, and difficulties both moving to ‘Jerusalem’ from Africa and living in ‘Jerusalem’ as well. I say ‘Jerusalem’ because that is what they call Israel... ‘Jerusalem.’ Back in Ethiopia, there were Jews, Christians, and Muslims all living together in neighboring villages and in a neighborly way too. This is how these gentlemen described their lives in Africa—that they shared what they had with each other and lived in peace… once upon a time. History tells us that the Jews of Ethiopia were once made up of half of a million people. They ruled the mountain highlands of Gondar that surrounded Lake Tana and called themselves Bay’ta Israel (the house of Israel). The heights of Jerusalem have, for centuries, inspired their pra...

When I met my beautiful and amazing wife, I had no idea that I would be spending the next (up until now) 24 years with her. I had just moved from Orange County, California, the place that I grew up, to attend collage at UCSB in Santa Barbara. I was an artist-surfer with big plans. I was going to make it big in the art-world. I was going to be famous. I was headed for stardom. You see, since the third grade, I knew what I wanted to be. I didn’t necessarily know what incarnation it would take, but when I received that first place award for the class art project, I knew it had something to do with exploring the inner depths and expressing it for the world to see. What I didn’t know was that art was only a step along the way to something so much larger. My life had taken a turn that would, seemingly, send me on a journey to the end of my days and to the end of the soul that I had been given on this Earth. Surfing, art, and the spiritual quests that developed from those pursuits had plowed...

Think about this: When G-D made Man, Man was One with the Universe. The Angels, according to the Midrash, even had a problem telling the difference between Man and G-D. Then what happened? It seems that G-D took pity on Man, saying, “It is not good that Man be alone,” and made man and woman from the original Man. This was the first cell division and from there, it has been a series of cell divisions, leading to more, and more, and more. We are now divided in so many ways that you have to wonder, did G-D intend for us to have degenerated so far when He made that first split? Having been made in the image of G-D, we had the free will to decide to eat from the tree and that caused the second split—when we were expelled from the Garden and forced to split by the ‘stress’ (generally mistranslated as pain) of child birthing and rearing and by the stress of the toil of the earth to survive. Then we split again when Cain killed Abel. Then we split again and again and again, all because Adam wa...

Well… My boys are the inspiration for this blog. We all know that Zach has been working very hard before the army, working out like a maniac, and he just made it over the first large hurdle. He had to do a very physical and mental test and, suffice it to say, I am very proud of him. What is interesting though, is that he tells me there was a moment, right at the beginning of this day long test, when he was about to give up. They were giving the boys grueling exercises to do and many of them were dropping like flies. Zach had a moment of, “I can’t do this anymore; what am I doing here” (like all of us have said once or twice in our lives), and then he made a deal with himself to just finish the day. As soon as he shook his own hand on it, the exercise was basically over. He passed his own test and that, my friends, is what this week’s parsha is all about! The part that I am referring to goes like this: G-D appeared to Abram and said to him, "I am Almighty G-D. Walk before Me and be...

‘There is a new master of the digital universe, YOU!’ or at least that is what I read recently from Yahoo as I logged onto my emails. What is the digital universe anyways? We are all quite aware that we have become inundated with technology and that all aspects of our lives seem to revolve around it in some way, but how has technology developed into a universe unto itself? Technology has traditionally been viewed as another set of tools to complete some task a little faster or easier. So, now we can be the master of the digital universe, we have to wonder... Are we the master, or is it? Technology has a history of association with the darker side of human interests as well. Remember Tipper Gore and the parental advisory extravaganza? I remember that in the end, my friends and I all just passed over the music albums without the ‘Tipper Sticker’ because we wanted to sample some of the forbidden fruit from the dark side of Gan (Gard en) Eden. It seems to be human nature to straddle that r...

Sukkot is upon us. I haven’t had time to reflect properly for a real blog, so I am just going to give a synopsis... type blog. Sukkot is about unity. We can all learn from each other how to be together as One by being really good listeners. We all want to tell our story and the best way to do that is to listen. When we listen to others, we are allowing their story to meld into our own story, ultimately becoming One. This season of joyousness, when we are all dwelling in our funny little booths, remember that there are some that may not have an actual Sukka to dwell in. Remember those that have not experienced dwelling in a Sukka and invite them in; and if not into the Sukka itself, then into the Sukka of your hearts! A Sukka is a place where the Devine Shchinah descends down upon our heads, like the clouds of glory did for the Israelites in the dessert. It is a blessing and a mitzvah to dwell, as One, with the Crown of Glory resting upon and within us. It is possible to observe that, w...