The Library

What does it mean to serve? Does this question touch a nerve? You got some nerve! To ask me to serve You want me to be your slave? Do you want me to build you a cave? Or dig a grave? Yea for you, I will dig a grave! Go away! Hide in a cave! I am for me Can't you see? I'...

My precious child, I want to wish you a shana tova, a sweet new year, and share with you a few things that I think you need you to know. When I look at you I see something very different than what you see when you look in the mirror. You see yourself as you are now. But...

I want to respond to a question that I have been asked numerous times over the years about Yom Kippur. It goes roughly as follows: we stand before God on Yom Kippur and say we are sorry. We admit that we have ‘transgressed’ and made mistakes in our lives during the past y...

Last night I received a prompt on my iPad, asking me to approve a software update to IOS 10. I was in the middle of something, so I clicked on “Later”, and then “Install Tonight”. I finished up whatever else I was working on, and went to sleep, counting on the update to o...

A chossid once came to his Rebbe crying about the setbacks he'd faced. The Rebbe, sitting behind a desk, told him to jump over the table. The guy thought he was joking. When the Rebbe repeated it the fourth time, the guy got up and took 3 steps back to be able to take a r...

You're not forgotten, you're not aloneYou think you're worthless, but you're worth itAnd He calls you His ownMade in His image, you were made for moreYou think there is no plan, that it's all by chanceBut don't believe that anymore: Every time that you wake up breathingE...

Schonbrun likes to tell the story of a "young and successful executive" who, speeding down an urban street in his new Jaguar, feels a brick smash into the side of his prized automobile. Angered, he backs up, gets out of the car, and grabs the kid who threw the brick. "Wh...

There is a fellow who owns a jewelry store in Israel. One day a nine year old girl walked into the store and said, “I am here to buy a bracelet.” She looked through the glass cases and pointed to a bracelet that was $3,000. The man behind the counter asked her, “You want...

I watched myself today as my thoughts and feelings changed drastically throughout the day: 7am - The alarm rings. There is nothing in the world more important and more beautiful than sleep. I really wish I could just sleep all day. (If not for my wife who, I know, will...

Every pull to lust and connection is really a pull of your soul to G-d... It's just that an addict's brain messes up the signals... The Bal Shem Tov calls it "Fallen Love"... Its source is up on high, but our souls are trapped in physical bodies and are looking for the an...

"So, I've always been an avid reader. And at one point in my early sobriety I became a little obsessed with death, so I was poking around all the used bookstores in my neighborhood for books that were a little... well, macabre, I guess. Anyway, I found this one book that ...

I never knew what the word meant - until I sat in the classroom with my student who'd just turned 12. She sat in her place, ready to bentsh bircas hamazon, and I sat in mine, just beside her desk at the side of the classroom. Usually she sung bircas hamazon with the clas...

Why do I feel I need to act out? What brought me to this point? Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel after dealing with it correctly? What have I done to ease the discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't be acting out? How will I...

Chazal say: בא חבקוק והעמידן על אחת, צדיק באמונתו יחיה– The prophet Chavakuk came and founded all the Mitzvos of the Torah up on one Mitzva: that of EMUNAH, as the Pasuk (in Chavakuk) says “The righteous one lives in his faith.” This means that all the mitzvos of the Tora...

One of the big demoralizers and deterrents to spiritual progress, is the feeling that I'm anyway in the mud and G-d surely isn't interested in me now. Even if we are making good progress in general but now we had a slip or fall, we get this feeling that "I'm anyway far ...

GYE Responds: Thank you for this nice share. Yes, what Dov always shares seems to be the only way to beat the yetzer hara at the end of the day. I was thinking recently, we find by the story of the Meraglim, that they clearly saw that אל פי טבע (naturally) there was no...

We can try hard to guard our eyes and even make all sorts of barriers and penalties for ourselves, but if we aren't willing to truly give G-d our hearts, we will likely end up slipping again. What does it mean to give G-d our heart? It means that we need to be ready to a...

It says in the kinnos the story of a son and a daughter of R' Yishmael Kohein Gadol, how their masters put them together in a room "to mate." All night, the daughter cried, "I am the daughter of Yocheved! How can I marry a slave!?" and in the other corner the son cried, ...