Ki Tavo: Goodness and Gratitude
At the week’s beginning, we’re faced with ten years since the most shocking day in American history, a day of brutal terror and destruction. At the week’s end, on Shabbat, we’re celebrating the birth of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the father of the Chassidic movement, who taught joy, sincerity and love. Two diametrically opposed anniversaries fittingly placed at opposite poles.
And yes, there is a very valuable lesson here: that this world is a battle between those who celebrate death and those who celebrate life, between those who wish to conquer the world with slogans of hate and those who would transform it with messages of love.
True, each of us carries within a destructive impulse. So too, no society can claim it is free of vice. But this world we have built—a world where, for the first time in history, the common man can educate himself and his children, a world that produces enough food to potentially feed all its inhabitants, a world where the life of every human being is valued beyond measure—this is an accomplishment that did not come easily, and it is one we must all heroically defend.
The Baal Shem Tov taught to fight darkness with light, hatred with love, suffering with joy. Never before was such a message so crucial, for if we will hold tight to those ideals, nothing can bring us down.
Tzvi Freeman,
on behalf of the Chabad.org Editorial Team
Like many great feats, the towers didn’t go up easily. It was the culmination of decades of political wrangling . . .
When we ask or answer, “Where were you on September 11,” we shouldn’t limit the question to our geographical location.
Ten years later, we look back at the 9/11 terror attacks and ask what we have learned as Americans and as Jews.
Col. Goldstein describes the scene at the site of the World Trade Center when he arrived.
It was not the hearts of Jewish believers, but the minds of Jewish philosophers, that could not find a place to fit such an infinite G‑d inside such a busy, messy, finite world.
The Baal Shem Tov’s teachings are like a diamond of many different facets, and yet it is one glistening essence. And from that essence comes life.
Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem Tov entered a chilled, dreary world and set it afire.
There is an element of appreciation that is expressed more by our words than our deeds . . .
Couldn’t G‑d have given the poor farmer who traveled all the way to Jerusalem a simpler way of saying “thank you”?
That “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is a fact already noted by the Talmud some 1,500 years ago. But what’s so great about being rich, anyway?
Gratitude and fruit, awareness versus acknowledgement, priorities over percentages, and the polarity of reward and rebuke . . .
As hard as I try, I am having trouble concentrating on the words in the prayerbook. What should I do?
Sure to be the most popular desert at any Shabbat table, versatility is what makes this Persian roulade so fantastic.
I got hot-pink glasses with rhinestones on the sides. They would be adorable, but for the fact that they are reading glasses . . .
Is your soul wearing sunglasses? A one-minute meditation on the relation between body and soul.
Here on the quiet beach, our family finds solitude and togetherness. We find each other in the absence of others . . .
It’s easy, sometimes, to feel content with how far we’ve come and how much mastery we’ve attained.
Do we anticipate the coming of Moshiach just to make ourselves feel better, or to align ourselves with the true and ultimate purpose for which the world was created?
What makes us feel better? When we are taken care of, or when we take care of others?
The Rebbe was not only someone I could rely on for spiritual guidance, but also someone I could fully trust with Israeli security concerns . . .
We started guillotining kings over two hundred years ago, and they haven’t really been in fashion since then . . .
The letters arrived from scholars and laypeople; from children, teachers, scientists, Jewish activists and heads of state . . .
Suddenly the Baal Shem Tov’s eyes fixed on Feivel. “You fool!” he cried. “What are you doing here?”
Finally, the great moment arrived. Rabbi Ze’ev reached into his pocket, and his heart froze . . .
That force that holds electrons in their orbit and planets in theirs, explodes incessantly within the stars above and is the darkness that fills the empty space—that force is a single whole, and it is G‑d.
It is not all of G‑d. It is an expression of G‑d. All of it could disappear in a single instant, and for Him nothin...
