Rafael Eliezer Ben Leah

As a person who spends most of his time obsessing over words and ideas I’m always aware about how inadequate words can be when trying to describe how someone special makes us feel or how something affected us or what something truly means to us. I say this now because for a long time a friend had been struggling with cancer, I found out just a few minutes ago that he finally lost that fight, and it was a fight till the end, even as it felt like an inevitable outcome I still held out hope, prayed for his wellbeing and recovery everyday and tried against all odds to believe it was possible.

This man was there for me at a time in my life where I felt very alienated from those around me. When I first got to Israel he took me under his wing and helped me work though ideas and problems that I was struggling with, he was there for me and he understood me and for that I will forever be grateful. Over the last few months I’ve found my eyes filled with tears thinking about him and his four little girls, girls now without their father, it’s just so hard to think about such a young life being taken away from us so early.

I wish that I had the words, but I don’t, for now I just have my tears.

Baruch Dayan Emet.

Dancin' in the Rain

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain

Vivian Greene

Choose Life

In Deuteronomy 30:19, ha kadosh baruch hu says, "I call this day upon heaven and earth as witnesses. I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life." A religious person might read the words "life" and "blessing" as refering to Torah and Mitzvot, and "death" and "curse" as referring to doing sins to disconnecting oneself from Torah and Mitzvot.

Chassidus teaches us that life and death, blessing and curse, are not two separate entities from which we must choose. But in fact the Torah is telling us something much deeper: that everything in existence has life and death in it. The external of something is the death of that thing, and the internal of something is the life of it.

Judaism is not something we do. It's who we are and the Torah and Mitzvot connect us to that innermost part of ourselves. Choose life, L'shalom.