Many years ago, I had the opportunity to take a long-overdue vacation with my family in Walt Disney World. For our children, who had just spent the better part of a year dealing with the …
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By Rabbi Binny Friedman
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4/7/21
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This doesn’t look like such a good idea, said Benjy, commander of an elite company in Golani’s Egoz unit, in the summer of 2006. “I know,” responded his commander, …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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1/29/21
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The sun had long since set, dark clouds hid the stars, and the wind was howling off the Shouf mountain range in central Lebanon.
I had managed to quietly sing the Kabbalat Shabbat service …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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2/3/21
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One afternoon during the second Intifada, our unit responded to heavy gunfire coming from El Khader, one of the Arab villages along …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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12/30/20
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There is war, and then there is madness. In war, one has to fight, but when madness sets in, sometimes has to run. Such was the question on a dark October afternoon in 1973, when the quiet beauty …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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11/25/20
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If you would have asked me what Abir would end up doing with his life, I would have imagined him as a bouncer....
Abir, an ex-paratrooper, is one of the unsung heroes of the battle of the …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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11/19/20
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His eyes haunt me. His name was Martin Shtiebel, and his picture is one of many on display in the museum at Dachau, the first and longest standing concentration camp.
In 1933, the year Hitler …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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11/12/20
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There are few feelings that leave us more challenged, hurt and insecure than the feeling we get from being ignored. Part of this may stem from our need to feel we have what to contribute.
One …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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11/4/20
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In 2005, Steve Jobs delivered the commencement address at Stanford University. In it, he described how he had started Apple in a garage at age 20, and after ten years of hard work, built it into …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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10/1/20
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If you would have collected a group of world-renowned military strategists on Yom Kippur in 1973 and asked them, at 4 pm Israel time, for a prognosis on the status of the events unfolding on the …
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By Rabbi Binny Freedman
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9/23/20
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