Yes We Can

Moses said a lot. A lot about standing up and changing things for the better. And he didn't just say it. He did it. He showed the world that the impossible is possible. He took a nation of slaves to freedom, and the world hasn't been the same since. Because now we know that we don't have to be slaves to the world around us. We are free to change. No one can tell us that we can't.

When a group of colonists struggled to build a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, the world was against them. The winter at Valley Forge was a dark one. They were losing the war. A light shone in the snow. It was Channuka and one of the soldiers had lit a candle of hope. He explained how a small team of Maccabees vanquished an entire army. Freedom had won, and so would they.

When slavery was the law of the land, the negro slaves compared themselves to the Hebrews going out of Egypt, and they knew that their freedom would come. They called Lincoln, Moses.

When Jews were trapped behind the indestructible iron curtain, people all over the world rallied together in quoting Moses: "Let my people go!" and the walls fell.

So many have changed the world, and there will be many more to come. It was Moses who taught us how, who taught us that yes, we can.

Transcript of the video:

It was the bold encouragement offered by Moses to a nation yearning for freedom

Yes, we can!

It was the phrase that kept our hopes alive during history's harshest times

Yes we can

It was spoken defiantly to those wishing to stamp out religious freedoms

Yes we can

When triumph seemed beyond reach; G-ds miracle was not. In hidden caves, attics and cellars His people courageously whispered:

Yes He can

THIS was the message that G-d sent the world when a small team of Maccabees vanquished an entire army

Yes we can

And was the comforting answer to the Jews in Communist Russia who wondered: Will the Menorah ever shine in my life

Yes. We. Can.

On Chanukah we celebrate freedom. We celebrate with pride. We celebrate in public, in the open because we can! Whether you lit the menorah last year, or 20 years ago, celebrate this Chanukah with family. Celebrate with Chabad

Start lighting YOUR menorah Sunday evening December 21st, 2008 and let the flame of freedom speak for herself:

Yes. We. Can.

Shabbat

The Holy Sabbath Day

Shabbat is delicious food, a richly-set table, the glow of candlelight, sweet singing, luxuriant sleep. It is an island of tranquility in the maelstrom of work, anxiety, struggle and tribulation that characterizes our daily lives for the other six days of the week. For 25 hours every week (from sunset Friday to nightfall Saturday) the world literally comes to a halt: the business is closed, the car stays in the driveway, the phone stops ringing, and the radio, TV and computer remain off. The pressures and worries of material life recede as if a weekly low tide to reveal the inner calm beneath.

Our focus turns inward -- to family and friends, to our inner self, to our soul. We remember that G-d created the world in seven days, and put us into it for a purpose. He took us out of Egypt and decreed that never again shall we be slaves to any alien master. Our jobs, financial commitments and material involvements are the tools with which we fulfill our divine purpose, not the masters of our lives. This recognition gives meaning to everything we do and makes our lives holy. Shabbat is one of the most powerful ways to actualize our Jewish values and pass them along to our children. Indeed, the Jews have kept Shabbat for 4,000 years, through all the ups and downs of our miraculously long history.

Shabbat is a day of holiness, set apart and elevated above the rest of the week. The unique quality of Shabbat derives from two types of mitzvot. First are the mitzvot that celebrate and sanctify the day such as lighting the holy Shabbat candles and reciting the Kiddush over a cup of wine. Equally important are the mitzvot which require that we refrain from certain activities termed melachah, or "work".

The Mishnah explains that there are 39 different categories of melachah, which encompass all forms of human productivity. These melachot are not a haphazard collection of activities, and do not necessarily represent physical exertion. Rather, the principle behind them is that they all represent constructive, creative effort, demonstrating man's mastery over nature. (This is why modern innovations such as flipping a light switch or driving a car are included in these timeless principles. They qualify for one or the other of the 39 categories because they represent a very clever manipulation of one's sorroundings.) Refraining from melachah on Shabbat signals our recognition that, despite our human creative abilities, G-d is the ultimate Creator and Master.

Jewish Unity

1949, just after the establishment of the state of Israel, I heard the voice of David Ben Gurion, first prime minister and first minister of defense. He was on the radio between 7 and 7:30 PM on Yoman Hachadashot, News Journal. I will never forget it. He had come back from a visit to the biggest army camp which there was in Israel at that time, Sarafin, near Ramalah. "I saw there," he said, "the dining room at lunch. All the soldiers sat at the table eating lunch. One soldier stood on the side, not sitting with the others, a loaf of bread in one hand and a tomato in the other. He was eating a piece from the bread and a piece from the tomato. I called him over. I said, 'Are you crazy? Why don't you use a plate, a fork, a knife? Why are you standing? How do you eat like this?' "

"He said, 'I am an observant soldier. I only eat kosher. All the food which is brought here is kosher, but the cutlery, the plates, and the pots are not. In the same pot that they cooked dairy in the morning, they cooked a meat meal for lunch. I can't use anything which is prepared in this kitchen. The bread and the tomato I can eat, but nothing cooked.' "

"I gave an order: All the kitchens of the Israeli Defense Force must be kosher. The same will be in the hospitals and in prison. Why? We are one nation. If there are a thousand soldiers, one observant and nine hundred and ninety-nine liberated, the observant soldier may not eat non-kosher, but the liberated ones may eat kosher. So the kitchen must be kosher. Because we are one nation. We have one army."

This became a law in the IDF until this very day. If there is something not kosher we are to be blamed for it. Maybe the rabbi supervising did not do well. But the orders are strict. All public kitchens must be kosher because one out of a thousand was observant.

I spoke to a group of Members of Knesset. They asked why I insist on halachic conversions. I said, "Aren't you aware of the wholeness of the Jewish People? The unity of our nation? Conversion is the way of entrance to the Jewish family. If you make it halachic, according to Jewish Law, it is accepted by everyone. Thier children can marry my children, and my children can marry thier children because they are converted halachically. All other ways, you can call them whatever; if they are not accepted by the one out of a thousand, create a split in the nation. Is this what you want? To divide the people? To rend it and cut it apart? Or to preserve the wholeness of the people, the unity of Israel? Love of one's fellow Jew. One nation, one family. To ensure the eternity and to ensure the wholeness, and to be loyal to the Torah. What's wrong with that? To ensure that we exist and we are not in a decline, God forbid.

I don't interfere in your synagogues and temples. I do not oversee your prayer book. I do not supervise your meals. If you mix meat and milk, it pains me, but I am not trying to stop you. I have no power to control your behavior. But when we speak about conversion, this is the identity card of our nation. This is the way to enter the Jewish club, the Jewish family, the Jewish nation. There must be one way. This will be the iron bridge. Otherwise it's a paper bridge. We will collapse.

- Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau
Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv and Former Chief Rabbi of Israel
in a talk at the Eternal Jewish Family's third national conference
on Adopting Standards for Universally Accepted Conversions in an Intermarriage
in Boston MA on October 30, 2006.

Freedom

We most often think of the stimulus/response theory in connection with Pavlov's experiments with dogs. The basic idea is that we are conditioned to respond in a particular way to a particular stimulus. We are slaves to our environment. Whatever happens to us determines what we do.

Victor Frankl was a determinist raised in the tradition of Freudian psychology, which postulates that whatever happens to you as a child shapes your character and personality and basically governs your whole life. The limits and parameters of your life are set, and, basically, you can't do much about it.

Frankl was also a psychiatrist and a Jew. He was imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany, where he experienced things that were so repugnant to our sense of decency that we shudder to even repeat them. His parents, his brother, and his wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens. Except for his sister, his entire family perished. Frankl himself suffered torture and innumerable indignities, never knowing from one moment to the next if his path would lead to the ovens or if he would be among the "saved" who would remove the bodies or shovel out the ashes of those so fated.

One day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called "the last of the human freedoms" – the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away. They could control his entire environment, they could do what they wanted to his body, but Victor Frankl himself was a self-aware being who cold look as an observer at his very involvement. His basic identity was intact. He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him. Between what happened to him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response.

In the midst of his experiences, Frankl would project himself into different circumstances, such as lecturing to his students after his release from the death camps. He would describe himself in the classroom, in his mind's eye, and give his students the lessons he was learning during his very torture.

Through a series of such disciplines—mental, emotional, and moral, principally using memory and imagination—he exercised his small, embryonic freedom until it grew larger and larger, until he had more freedom than his Nazi captors. They had more liberty, more options to choose from in their environment; but he had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options. He became an inspiration to those around him, even to some of the guards. He helped others find meaning in their suffering and dignity in their prison existence.

The Talmud teaches us that, "a prisoner cannot free himself from his prison." No one rises up out of the pit by tugging at his own hairs. He needs someone else to pull him out. How does one gain the freedom to choose their response? The redemption from Egypt gave us the ability to do so. It is in that sense that the sages say, "not only has the Holy One freed our ancestors, He also freed us with them." How so? By making us aware of an entirely different aspect of our choices and actions. The moral dimension. Something may be enjoyable to do, but not right. Before we would have done it without question. We would have been enslaved by our stimulus response. Now we can think about what we are doing. Is it right? If not, I can choose not to do it. That is the only true freedom.

The sages say that "no one is free except one who studies Torah." Seemingly, the opposite is true. The Torah contains rules which restrict our lives. Don't kill. Don't steal. How does that make one free? Because these moral principles enjoin us to rise above our automatic responses. The choice is now on a level that is entirely in our control. Will we do what is right or what is wrong? That is the one thing that is entirely up to us.

Like happiness, self-actualizing is an effect, the effect of meaning fulfillment. ...If he sets out to actualize himself rather than fulfill a meaning (out there in the world), self-actualization immediately loses its justification.
-Victor Frankl, The Will to Meaning, p.38

It is this message of freedom that the Haggada is meant to teach us. "Not only has the Holy One freed our ancestors, He also freed us with them." It is this vital message that must be passed on to the next generation through the expert interactive teaching technique of the Seder. This is the special gift we Jews have inherited and must pass on. Freedom.

The story of Victor Frankl is quoted from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

Noise and Music

There once lived an engineer. He would listen to machines for noisy gears and there he knew the problem lay. Then he would fix them, ending the noise.

One day he met a musician. "Play me some music," he said. The musician played a short tune on his violin.

"That is not music, that is noise," the engineer said. "I know noise very well. I work with noise every day. That is noise. I can fix it for you. The problem is that the string of the baton is rubbing against the strings of the violin."

"That certainly is music and not noise. I know music very well. I work with music every day. That is music." insisted the musician.

"Then you are a charlatan. You claim that you work with music but all that you can show me is noise. Perhaps music doesn't exist at all. You have made it up."

"But I have shown music."

"What you have shown me is not music but noise, and I can prove it."

"How?"

"Play one note on your violin repeatedly." The musician did as instructed. Soon, people nearby called out, "Stop that dreadfull noise!"

"I have proven to you that it is noise," the engineer said.

"To the contrary, when I played a tune, everyone enjoyed it and did not complain, but when I played as you instructed they all complained. This shows the difference between noise and music very clearly," said the musician.

"You are a liar. You made up this story about music youself just to fool people," the engineer said.

"You are a fool. You can't even see what is right in front of your own face," the musician said. They both walked away in disgust.

The G-d Microscope

How did we all get here? G-d must have created the world.

"But that goes against science!" some protest. "It wasn't G-d, it was the Big Bang who created the world."

The Big Bang? Is that a nickname for G-d, like the Big Cheese? Who created the Big Bang? Was it an even Bigger Bang?

"You are just stubbornly refusing to accept the findings of modern science!" they will say.

Does belief in G-d really contradict science?

Did G-d create the world? The question is a metaphysical one. Science does not have the tools to address it, much less argue with it. It is a question of the underlying nature of reality.

Science only deals with the most superficial, those things which are exposed, visible to the eye. The scientific method involves trying different things and watching the results. If the results have some semblance of consistency we presume that we can expect the same in the future. There are some deep questions which never will be and cannot be answered through these means. They remain hidden beneath the surface, beyond the reach of scientific inquiry.

The question is only relevant to science in the sense that science must defend it's borders. Those who pronounce upon such matters in the name of science have overstepped their bounds. They distort science and transgress it's principles of empirical observation. They must be opposed by those who would defend the integrity of science.

In days past, science could not tell you what matter was made of, because that was too small to see. They built microscopes, and we could see the tiny parts that things were made of that we never knew existed. They built huge, powerful electron microscopes, enabling us to see atoms. They built enormous particle accelorators, and we can see subatomic particles, protons and nuetrons.

Perhaps someday they will build one large enough to see even the things that those are made of. But will they ever build one large enough to see G-d? Imagine if they did. What would he look like? If he looked any different than they expected, they would deny that it was him. So he would look just as they expect. They would look into the viewer of their miles-long microscope and see an old man with a long white beard grinning back at them. So that is what everything is made of. Would that prove the existance of G-d? No. The athiests would use that as proof of their cause as well.

They would say, "This shows that there was no need for an intelligent designer of the world to create such a complex being as man, it was built into the very building blocks of creation and therefore bound to happen. We only exist because we are patterning after the most basic element that they saw in the microscopes. More random than anyone had imagined."

"But you have seen G-d with your own eyes!" you will say.

"No," they will answer. "Who is to say that what we saw is G-d? The reason that it looks like a person is not because it is one. It is far too small to be a person, much less anything more powerful than a person. It is we who look like it because we are made out of it."

Don't think so? This is already what they say about revelations of G-d such as DNA. DNA proves evolution because it is far too complex to have been designed that way. Something so intracate must have evolved over millions of years. Everything works together too well to have been set in place by some supreme engineer.