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On Purim we are meant to reach a state of consciousness where it is impossible to discern between “Blessed is Mordechai” and “Cursed is Haman”. This concept appears to be completely absurd. Mordechai is pure goodness; a representative of God on this earth; a symbol of courage, faith and wisdom. Haman, on the other hand, is the antithesis of these ideas. Haman is Amalek – an arrogant coward committed to the annihilation of any Godliness or goodness in the world. As a people who tend to erect concrete walls between good and evil, this blurring of lines begs further investigation.

Perhaps we should first examine the nature of opposites as seen through Torah eyes. Afterall, Purim is all about opposites – “Nahafokh hu!” Everything in the Purim story turned out the exact opposite way of how it seemed it would at the beginning. We know that in the physical world, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. For example, how far back we pull the slingshot determines how far forward the pebble will fly. We also know that everything that exists in this physical world is merely a physical manifestation of a deeper truth in the spiritual world. By observing the physical world around us we are able to understand not only scientific concepts, but also mystical realities.

This concept can be applied to all energies in the world, not only those that we are able to experience on a physical level. For example, there is a general rule in Judaism that in any situation where there is a potential for holiness, there is an identically powerful potential for impurity. All things that make the world go round – sex, power, money – can be used to either create, build and elevate our beautiful world, or absolutely corrupt and destroy it. There is also an idea that as we grow, so does our yetzer harah. As we strengthen our connection to Hashem and are lead more and more by our souls than our bodies, our evil desires kick it into overdrive, putting us into even more tempting situations than we’ve previously endured. It is almost like a spiritual thermostat, except with the opposite purpose of ensuring that we never get too comfortable!

All of these complicated ideas appear in my brain visually on an xy-axis. Picture a grid where for each point on the positive side, there is a mirror image of an equal and opposite point on the negative side, leaving us with a perfectly symmetrical graph of opposites. Well hold on a second – if points War, Hate and Disease can be obliterated by simply erasing Peace, Love and Health, is that perhaps a theoretical option to consider? Can we annihilate Evil by giving up Good?

When we erase all the points from the grid we are not left with nothing – we are left with an empty axis. The axis is the structure of the universe, the paradigm through which the world exists. Removing the points leaves us with a tremendous void. Happiness is not merely the absence of sadness. A cease-fire is not true peace. These energies are real – they all have tangible identities, powers far greater than we can begin to understand, and without them life would simply not be world living.

An empty axis is a world of unfulfilled potential. On one end, we have Hashem - hidden behind this checkered screen, dying to communicate with us, to send us messages, to teach us about the workings of the world, to actualize the purpose of creation. And on the other side you have us – begging to communicate with our creator, to understand the hidden mysteries of life here on earth, to see the world develop in the way in which we wish it would. But then there is a breakdown. Without the points, God has no way of speaking to us, and we have no data to interpret.

This understanding, however, only brings up more problems. It suggests that points Cancer, Global Warming, Depression and Poverty are all drawn by our Benevolent Artist. To explain this anomaly, we must return to our discussion of how our evil inclination grows along with our goodness. Previously, I wrote that because our yetzer harah and yetzer tov are of equal force, whenever our yetzer tov ‘wins’, our yester harah needs to become stronger as well. But if they are truly equal, how can our yetzer tov ever be triumphant in the first place? How can we ever graduate to a higher level of goodness if we are always pitted up against a twin evil? Wouldn’t we be trapped in a perpetual scrappling match? A spiritual stale-mate? By recognizing that the evil isn’t really Evil, and instead using it for Good, we take from the Evil in order to feed the Good. We need to learn to stare the evil of the world straight in the eyes and say, “You do not exist. Ein od mivaldo – there is nothing in this world except for God”. When we are able to see our hardships and pain as challenges sent to us by our loving Father in heaven to help us actualize our potential, we will learn to bless the Evil, thus making it Good.

When we observe our situation in the world right now, covered with Points of Pain, it is difficult to say that all of the trials and tribulations in our personal and national lives are worthy of blessing, but Mordechai wasn’t exactly living in Gan Eden, either! At a time when the Jews were condemned to total annihilation and the world was being ruled by Evil and Corruption, Mordechai was able to see the real King and thus, he changed fate.

If you believe that you live in a chaotic world run by Chance and Evil, then you will. But if you believe that all of the perceived chaos, chance and evil are really just gifts from God to help us grow into better people and stronger Jews, then so it will be -“Nahafokh hu!”. You have the power to live in a world where the beauty and mastery of an entirely good and loving God runs the show. By seizing the evil and manipulating it for God’s will, we elevate it to a point where it forces our yetzer tov to strive to a higher level, thus evil actually creates good and darkness gives way to light. So “Cursed is Mordechai” – down with the goodness that tricks us into thinking we have reached our potential, and “Blessed is Haman” – may we rise to the challenges of the day!

Wishing all of Am Yisrael a truly happy Purim, where we can look back on our lives and say, Ein Od Mivaldo!

When I dropped math in high school and spent my grade twelve year mocking all of the number crunching nerds around me, I never imagined that years later I’d be wiping the dust off my old textbooks and starting from square one. Now, as I study for my SATs in order to get into university in Israel, it looks like the joke is on me. I was complaining to my family about the tediousness of my new favorite subject when my sister asked jokingly, “What if 1+1 doesn’t really equal 2? Then everything else you’re doing is useless!” From there, erupted a dinnertime conversation about the essence of Oneness. My father, the token Breslover, argued that 1+1=1 because the nature of oneness is a completion so whole that it leaves no room for separate parts.
My brother, the 17-year-old hooligan, argued that he was being ridiculous because 1+1 clearly equals 2.
I, the mathematician, argued that 1+1=window.
My sister, the normal one, marveled at how her joke turned into a philosophical debate.
My mom ate her Chinese food.
The question may seem silly, but the power of oneness is something that has mystified us since Day 1. Pardon the pun. And the rhyming.

This week’s parsha, Vayakhel, opens with Moshe gathering B’nei Yisrael together to give them the commandment of Shabbat.

“And Moses gathered (vayakhel) the entire assembly of the children of Israel and said to them: These are (eleh) the things that Hashem commanded…” (35:1)

The commentators ask many questions about this verse: Why is the commandment of Shabbat repeated so many times throughout the Torah? And why now, specifically? Why did Moshe gather the people in such a way as seen in very few other places in the Torah? Furthermore, the Netivot Shalom points out that Shabbat is the epitome of the experience of closeness to God. How is it possible that right after the grievous Sin of the Golden Calf, the Jewish people can be expected to climb to such lofty heights? Are we not tainted and unworthy? By comparing the language used in this week’s parsha with last week’s parsha, we learn an important lesson:

“…and the people gathered (vayikahel) around Aaron and said to him, “Rise up, make for us gods that will go before us…” (32:1)

“And upon the completion of the golden calf: “They said: ‘This is (eleh) your god, O Israel…” (32:4)

Through carefully examining the language, we are told to pay close attention to the connection between these two events. But what could possibly be further away from Shabbat, man’s acknowledgement of God as the Creator of the universe, than idolatry? Whereas in last week’s parsha the people gathered together in order to proclaim an idol as their god, this week, the peopled are gathered together by Moshe in order for him to proclaim the word of God unto them. The Netivot Shalom goes on to say that there is an element of Teshuvah contained in Shabbat that can bring a Jew up from the depths of any situation imaginable, even that of the Golden Calf. What is this element? None other than the Power of One, of course. He interprets Pasuk 35:1 in such a way that the word “eleh” is referring to “vayakhel” – Moshe gathered the entire assembly of the children of Israel to tell them not only the ‘Dos and Donts’ of Shabbat, but also the message of unity, captured in the word “vayakhel”

If man never sinned, perhaps as an individual he would be able to achieve oneness with God. However, after sinning, in order to man to reach such lofty heights, we need to be lifted along with those around us. The only antidote to the most grievous of sins is unity. For example, the generation that built the Tower of Babel in efforts to wage war against God was spared the punishment of being wiped in the merit of their unity. Furthermore, when B’nei Yisrael were in Egypt, we had sunk to the 49th of 50 gates of impurity. We were on the cusp of total spiritual annihilation. In order to become an Am worthy of receiving the Torah and experiencing the revelation of God at Har Sinai, we needed to bypass all of these gates. It is for this reason that Hashem gave B’nei Yisrael the mitzvah of the korban pesach. This is a communal mitzvah – not only must the offering be eaten with the entire household, but “kol kehal haedat yisral” – “the entire congregation of the assembly of Israel” must slaughter it together (12:6). It was only through this type of behaviour that B’nei Yisrael finally achieved the level of encamping “k’ish echad b’lev echad” – “like one man with one heart” – at Har Sinai.

I learned this Netivot Shalom on Monday morning before going to the rally organized by the Jewish community in support of the residents of Sderot, who have been barraged by Qassam rockets on a daily basis for the last eight years. The rally was deemed ‘a huge success’, and the community of Toronto was praised for being the leaders of North American Jewry for finally taking action. The overarching theme of the speakers (including Alan Dershowitz!) was that of the solidarity between the Jews of Toronto and those of Sderot. “Your future is our future,” emphasized David Koschitzky, chair of the UJA Federation of Toronto, speaking to a tired group of Sderot citizens gathered together on a live video feed at 3am. As I looked around the spacious hall, full to capacity with 2 000 Jews of all ages and religious background, waving Israeli and Canadian flags, I wasn’t sure if I should be proud or ashamed. The speakers all seemed to be very impressed by the message of strength and unity expressed by such a turn-out, but I couldn’t help but wonder: “in a city of more than 200 000 Jews, where are the other 99%?!”

And then I thought back to the Netivot Shalom. What is so powerful about unity, anyway? When we are gathered together, the individual is nullified, he teaches. We do not disappear in a creepy communist way, but rather when God sees Jews gathered together in love and support of one another, our individual sins fall away. They are completely overshadowed by the power of our coming together. As my token-Breslov-father was sure to remind me, surely all of the Toronto Jews that missed the rally were busy learning Torah and visiting the sick, but for the few that did not know about it and instead watched the Raptors game, perhaps the unity among those gathered together in Toronto and Sderot is enough to bring us all one step closer to Peace in the Middle East.

So as we enter into this Shabbat, I hope that we all have a heightened understanding of the essence of unity on Shabbat and the totality of the Oneness of Hashem. May we all spend quality time with those we love and remain united in thought, action and prayer with all of Am Yisrael around the world.

“I have a great story for you,” announced my friend excitedly.
“Tell, tell,” I begged, playing into her intention of suspense.
“Hm, I dunno, it’s gonna cost ya,” she added, jokingly.
“Well, uh, my soul’s for sale?”
“Ah, please! No one wants a soul these days!”
We laughed. She told me the ‘great story’.

I have no recollection of the ‘great story’, but, since that day, the meaningless preamble has popped into my head time and time again. We may have joked casually, but the truth behind our banter is certainly not a laughing matter. We live in a world where many people spend their lives chasing after things that will ultimately prove to be futile and empty. They deny that the very source of their existence exists. Religion is a burden, God, an inconvenience, and Truth, an illusion.

With this reality as my backdrop, I began to learn this week’s parsha, Ki Tisa. I, like all of the commentators, was baffled by the story of the Sin of the Golden Calf. How is it possible, they ask, that a mere forty days after the greatest revelation in the history of the world the people sinned so grievously? What were they thinking? Perhaps they were trying to replace Moshe, not God? Yes, this makes more sense! Or maybe it was the Egyptian multitudes that joined B’nei Yisrael when they left Egypt? My confusion, however, lies somewhere else.

“Aaron said to them, ‘Remove the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, sons, and daughters, and bring them to me.’ The entire people removed the gold rings that were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron.” (32:2-3)

Unfortunately, it is not hard for me to imagine Am Yisrael rebelling against, or flat out denying the existence of, God. I do not have to delve so deeply into my imagination to conjure the image of people who would rather follow their own personal desires than that of an Eternal being. What is difficult to grasp, however, is how Aaron convinced ‘the entire people’ to give up their jewelry, wealth and riches. It appears that Rashi, too, is bothered by this part of the plot. He explains that Aaron knew that the people were misguided, yet out of fear for his own life, he went along with their plan. He was sure that the women would not easily give up their jewelry (which many say they didn’t), and thus he could buy enough time for Moshe to return and the whole episode to be forgotten. Aaron could never have anticipated how enthusiastic the people would be with the idea of a molten god. When we learn this story, we tend to give B’nei Yisrael a very hard time about their actions, yet there is actually something impressive going on here. In a world where many have given up God for money without a second thought, it is humbling to think of a people that would give up all of their most valuable possessions for God, even if in a misguided manner.

Nevertheless, it is considered a great sin, arguably an archetypal-root-of-all-sins-kind-of-sin. The parsha opens up with Hashem demanding that Moshe take a census of B’nei Yisrael by collecting half a shekel from each person.

“Everyone who passes through the census, from twenty years of age and up, shall give the portion of Hashem. The wealthy shall not increase and the destitute shall not decrease from half a shekel – to give the portion of Hashem to atone for your souls.” (30:14-15)

The Torah goes to great lengths to emphasize the value of the half-shekel and the importance of it being atonement for sins. It is said that through the contribution of half a shekel, B’nei Yisrael would achieve forgiveness from the Sin of the Golden Calf. Well, pardon my saying so, but that’s a pretty good deal. If atonement only costs fifty cents, it certainly pays to sin!
It is clear that there must be a deeper more symbolic significance to the contribution of the half-shekel for it to atone for a sin as great as idolatry. In Jewish tradition, the half-shekel has been linked to the three master relationships of a human being: the relationships between fellow man, a man and himself, and man and God.

On a national level, through each man giving an equal contribution, we learn the concept of our individual responsibility to both Am Yisrael and humanity as a whole. In order for the world to rise to a higher level, it is imperative that each of us does our part. Depending on our stature, our purpose appears to be a greater or lesser sacrifice, yet at the end of the day, none of us can be complete without the other.

On a personal level, within each man exists a dichotomy. Human beings are a pardoxal half-physical, half-spiritual being, and by taking our animalistic desires for materialism and directing them to something greater than ourselves, we are able to become a more complete being. Weare not giving away half a shekel, but rather gaining control of half of ourselves, thus becoming whole.

Lastly, we see how the contribution of the half-shekel connects to our relationship with God. We were married to God at Mount Sinai with the two tablets as our marriage contract. When Moshe came down from Har Sinai with the freshly engraved tablets and saw B’nei Yisrael dancing and celebrating around a Golden Calf, he smashed the tablets. The sin was adultery just as much as it was idolatry! The Sin of the Golden Calf is the ultimate separation from our Creator. We are nothing without God, and He has chosen to be nothing in this world without us. In order for us to actualize our potential and become whole beings, we must first recognize that there is no self out of a Divine context. If there is no God, there is no me. Furthermore, it is perhaps more important for us to recognize that God cannot move the world to its intended purpose without us doing our part as well.

We live in a broken world of fractures, schisms, and half-shekels. War is rampant, relationships are failing, God is hidden and people are depressed. In order for us to gain true atonement for the sins of our time, whether they are personal or national, we need to create connections and bring unity into the world. We need to focus on healing, stitching and bringing things back together by improving our relationships with our fellow man, ourselves, and our God. The first step in doing so is recognizing that we are but a half-shekel, and that, alone, is worthless. We may only be half of the story, yet its ending is entirely dependent on us.

“Hold on, so let me get this straight,” I demanded in a voice choked by disbelief, “you’re saying that there is absolutely no way that I can start at York University this coming semester?”
“No, I’m sorry,” responded the bored voice on the other end of the phone, as if my future wasn’t hinged on the outcome of this conversation. “Your application has been forwarded on to the following semester. Have a great day.” Click.

And that was it. I hung up the phone and heard a nervous chuckle escape from my tightened chest, a chuckle that soon developed into full-blown laughter. I had accidentally sent in my transcripts three weeks late, and as a result of this minor oversight, “the Faculty of Arts at York University was full”. My ‘plan’ had been to start at York in January 2008 - until this happened. Well, that’s not really true. My ‘plan’ had actually been to start at McGill in September 2007 - until Shanah Bet happened. Well, that’s not exactly true either. My ‘plan’ had originally been to start at Western in September 2007, until ‘my year in Israel’ happened. And that’s not completely true either, but for Sanity’s sake, I’ll stop here and allow your imaginations to wander.

In this pivotal moment, instead of berating myself for my stupidity or panicking in the face of the Unknown, I threw my head back, stared heavenward and laughed. In this timeless moment, I saw past, present and future bound together as one. I suddenly understood that all of the confusion, challenges and choices of the last few years of my life had lead me to this fateful moment – so I called my mom and told her I was making aliyah. I’m not joking.

On top of this story being simply great, it is also completely relevant to this week’s parshah. Parshat Beshalach contains one of the most miraculous events in Jewish History. More amazing to me than the splitting of the sea, is the moment directly following it: “…And the nation feared Hashem, and they had faith in Hashem and in Moshe, His servant.” The Jewish people have a long and well-documented history, yet proclamations of national faith as pure and definitive as this are few and far between, thus begging further investigation.

There is a midrash claiming that from the time of creation until the splitting of the sea, no man had never before sang a song in praise of God - not Adam, nor any of our avot. What is it about this event that brought Am Yisrael to an unprecedented level of Emunah and immediately inspired in us song that has since than been immortalized in our prayers every morning? The Slonimer Rebbe suggests that, at this moment, Am Yisrael understood on a deep and profound level that all of the suffering, pain, and tears of the last 210 years of slavery were ultimately for the good. God’s love of Am Yisrael was so clear that the drowning of babies and the backbreaking labor were immediately forgiven, and B’nai Yisrael burst into a song; a song about the past, the future and the present all rolled into one.

“The Song at the Sea” contains within in traces of the cyclical nature of Jewish history and our relationship with Hashem. It hints to the future geulah and reminds us of a time where, despite national tragedy and a seemingly upside down world, we had a pure and perfect faith that it was all for the good. So too, there will come a time when the challenges and horrors of the last three thousand years of Jewish History make sense and reveal themselves to be Hashem’s disguised mercy. Just as I have no idea how my own life plans will turn out, I would never be so arrogant to claim that I have any inkling of how God’s Plan will turn out. I cannot begin to speculate on how our knotted past will untangle itself and emerge as a beautiful bow on our present (and future), yet all that we can (and must!) do is strengthen our emunah that even if we don’t understand it right now, one day we will.

So here I am. Staring blankly out of my bedroom window at the gray screen that covers the world here in chutz l’aretz. God exists within every bit of physicality in this world. Or so I’ve been told. Somewhere hidden deep beneath the gray, slushy snow banks, along with the McDonalds cup and the Coca-Cola can from before the first snowfall is a Divine source. It exists only because a benevolent creator willed it to be. In some deep spiritual reality, in order for the world to develop according to Plan and for the Divine potential to be actualized, this snow bank needs to be exactly here, exactly now. That all, of course, is obvious. But then how come it doesn’t awaken my soul?

With a dream-like smile on my face, a longing gaze in my eyes, a physical pain in my heart and a yearning in my soul, the borders of the screen get fuzzy and a series of dramatic bells take me back to a moment in my not-so-distant past.

So here I am. Sitting on a rooftop in Sfat with a cup of Chai tea in hand, Yosef Karduner serenading me with his Godly praises on my iPod, and the mountains of Northern Israel rolling on before me eternally. And it is here, with, with the sun and the breeze as my witnesses that I will attempt to transfer the status of my soul at exactly this moment onto a one-page-double-sided paper ripped clandestinely out of some poor innocent’s notebook. In just over a month, I’ll be on a plane back to Toronto, to a place formerly known as ‘home’, when the world meant something entirely different. When I look out at these mountains, my heart physically aches and my soul threatens to jump out of my body and sail directly up to it’s Creator. I see the struggles of three thousand years of Jewish history reflected in the heaven-kissed peaks and deep, dark valleys. I see the dichotomy of the finite and the infinite attempting to coexist and make space for each other within themselves. I see the big picture, the master plan, stained by individual trees and interrupted by lone cars on a highway in the distance. And where do I fit in to all of this?

I’ll save you the soul bearing that followed, and zoom in on something so totally bizarre and absolutely illogical that I was experiencing. Through looking at a physical land mass, a geographical collection of mountains, I experienced a moment of intense self-knowledge and complete clarity in my relationship to an infinite Being. Apart from the shocking aesthetic differences, what is really so incredibly different about a dirty snow bank on a polluted side street in Toronto and a majestic mountain top in the hills of the Upper Galilee? Rationally – very little, but realistically - everything.

In Orot Hatechiyah, Rav Kook attempts to explain the constant struggle and tension that exist in Eretz Yisrael today. There are three forces battling within Am Yisrael in the development of the state of Israel – the religious, the nationalist, and the humanist. These forces battle in the Diaspora as well, he explains, yet they manifest themselves in an intensified manner in Eretz Yisrael. And why is that? The most important things in life are ‘good for nothing’, meaning they are ends in themselves, not means to something greater. Torah is one example of this, Eretz Yisrael is another. Eretz Yisrael is not an external means to an end for Am Yisrael, although through being a unified nation functioning according to Torah in our land, we do have the potential to bring about unprecedented change in the world. Primarily, however, our connection as a people to the land of Israel is something inherent, intrinsic and internal. When we are in our land, we experience the spiritual reality that means being completely connected to the essence of who we are, both as individuals and as a nation.

Then how come all the fighting? Why all the tension? After all, I’ve never seen a fanatic observant Jew in Toronto throw a stone at his reform brother driving down Bathurst Street to temple on Shabbat! Nor have I ever seen an unaffiliated Jew in Toronto beat up his brother because he has a strange hairdo and wears a funny hat all the time! When Am Yisrael is disconnected from its essence, when the spiritual umbilical cord is cut, the nation begins to fade away. As a man in Chevron told me on Parshat Chaya Sarah last year, “this is your first time breathing fresh air - you had no idea you were surviving through an oxygen mask all these years”. At the time, I thought he was crazy. Now with a lot of learning, experience, growth and perspective, I know he just understood the reality of the world in a way I had never seen it. People are asleep and apathetic, merely existing in a perpetual state of drowsiness, unaware of the spiritual realities that the soul of the nation is experiencing at any given moment. Sure, returning to the land brings problems, but when you see a sick child lying quiet and calm in his bed, wouldn’t you do anything to bring him back to his mischievous, trouble-making, vase-breaking self? The tension in Israel may at times seem unbearable, but at least it lets us know we are alive.

And this is what it means to be a Jew in Eretz Yisrael. Because of nothing more than God’s infinite mercy, I have had the blessing of spending the last year and a half learning Torah in Eretz Yisrael, strengthening my relationships to my self, my people, my Torah, my God and my land. I am attempting to unify these relationships in a way that they cannot ever be lost because they will define who I am and the eyes through which I see the world. If one aspect is ever missing, I should feel a lack and an identity crisis so large that it should shake me up and drive me to teshuvah. To be a Jew in Eretz Yisrael is to be so aware of your essence, so connected to your true self, that even when you feel confused, lost and scared, you have total clarity about these feelings and you have the ability to feel them completely. You are alive.