Some me readers accuse me of having a lack of love for my fellow Jews when I point out the shortcomings of Diaspora Judaism. But the truth is the exact opposite. It is precisely out of my great love for them that I write what I write, to turn them on to the far more complete life of Torah that is found in Eretz Yisrael.

I am not blaming them for staying in foreign gentile lands when they could come live in the Land of Israel. By and large, no one ever taught them what the Torah is really all about. For 2000 years, without the physical possibility of returning to Israel to rebuild our Jewish State, we had to make do with the exile. In order to strengthen their communities, rabbis and Jewish educators concentrated on the handful of commandments that could still be performed, like kashrut, Shabbat, tefillin, the holidays, tzedaka, good character traits, joining the sisterhood and coming to Hebrew school. Lacking our own Jewish Land, Judaism became the performance of ritual commandments, in many ways, a religion like any other, stripped of the Torah’s encompassing national foundation. Wandering in foreign lands, our identities as Israelites was lost. We became Germans and Moroccans and Yemenites and Frenchmen and Americans who practiced the religion of Judaism, the small remnants of the Torah that we still had in the lands of our dispersions. But that isn’t what Torah is. Torah is the national constitution of the Israelite nation, filled with the national commandments of conquering the Land of Israel, establishing a Jewish monarchy, a Sanhedrin, a Jewish army, a Jewish police force, and a Jewish economy based on the unique agricultural laws pertaining to the Holy Land. The goal of the Torah is not just to perform ritual mitzvot, but to establish a Torah State in the Land of Israel. This is what we have been praying for ever since we were exiled and scattered to foreign lands – to return to Zion and Jerusalem in order to rebuild our fallen Israelite Kingdom. This is the Redemption we long for – at least the Redemption which we are supposed to long for.

To cite two examples I used in the past: once I was in Toronto to raise money for a yeshiva in Israel. A synagogue graciously invited me to speak to the congregation, and I held up that Shabbat’s local Jewish newspaper. The headline read: “Looking Forward to the Next Decade of Jewish Life in Toronto.”

“Something seems to have gone wrong,” I told them. “A Jew is supposed to yearn for the next decade of Jewish life in Zion. I have the feeling that if the Mashiach should come today, he would mess up your plans.”         

Another time, I was in Boca Raton visiting my parents before they came on aliyah. A flyer on the synagogue bulletin board announced: “THIS SUMMER COME ON A TRIP TO OUR NATION’S CAPITAL WITH THE RABBI” Underneath the headline was a photo of the Capitol Building in WDC. Now when Jewish kids are educated to believe that WDC is their nation’s capital, and not Jerusalem, it isn’t any wonder that they end up in Boca all of their lives.

Finally, to use the Hanukah story to make the matter clear. The Macabbees didn’t risk their lives so that Jews could eat jelly donuts in Sidney, Australia and Palm Springs, CA. They risked their lives to purify the Land of Israel of foreign influence and rule, so that the Jews could be free to keep the Torah in their own sovereign Jewish Land.

Now, I ask you. If the Macabbees lived in Brooklyn today, or in Los Angeles, Miami Beach, Montreal, Melbourne, Cape Town, Paris, Manchester, Mexico City, Buenos Aries, or Berlin, would they continue to live there, or would they rush home to the Land of Israel?     

Be honest. Of course, they would leave everything behind and hurry to catch the first flight that they could. More than that. If they had been living in Europe or America one hundred years ago, when the Zionist movement was gaining momentum, would they have stayed behind in gentile lands, or rushed to volunteer in the fight to re-conquer and rebuild the Land of Hashem?  The answer is obvious. Lovers of G-d like the Macabbees would have rushed back to Israel at the very first opportunity without finding 101 reasons for staying in Greece.

Now is the matter clear?

Many people think that in lighting giant Hanukah menorahs in places like Manhattan, Paris, Melbourne, and Berlin, we are “a light to the nations.” However pretty and moving this may be, the light of these solitary and scattered menorahs gets swallowed up by the deep surrounding darkness. It’s a little like lighting a match in a dark alley. For a few seconds, there’s a flickering of light, and then it vanishes, engulfed by the darkness of the alley. Even if matches were lit in alleyways all over the world, the light would shine for an instant then disappear.

The only way of sustaining the light is by lighting all of the matches as one great bonfire, and this can only be accomplished by bringing the matches together and kindling them in one place – the Land of Israel.

When all of the scattered exiled Jews are gathered in the Land of Israel, a great Divine light goes out to the world like a beacon, illuminating the darkness of the nations. This is the meaning of “For from Zion shall go forth the Torah, and the word of the L-rd from Yerushalayim.” The light goes out from Yerushalayim, and not from Times Square or Beverly Hills. We become a “light to the nations” precisely when we are living together in Eretz Yisrael, and not when we are scattered all over the world, minorities in foreign lands, stripped of our Israelite nationhood and our pride.

During the long exile, the lighting of the Hanukah menorah had meaning in reminding the Jews in faraway places, where we were strangers in someone else’s land, that we were still connected to an eternal light and a Land of miracles – but now, with the re-establishment of Medinat Yisrael, and the ingathering of Jews from all over the world, we no longer need the menorahs in New York. The time has come for each and every Jew to take his little light and join in with the great light that is shining forth from Israel.

For example, even in this early stage of our Redemption, when millions of our outcasts have gathered in Eretz Yisrael, even though we are still a ways from our full Torah power, still, even in our temporary secular/Torah state, all of the world’s attention is focused on what the Jews are doing in Israel. Pick up any leading newspaper from the capitals of the world and chances are you will find a front-page story about Israel. When a settler lights a small menorah on a hilltop in Judea, the whole world goes crazy. The United Nations rushes to condemn it. The White House issues and immediate warning. And the Europeans protest at the top of their lungs, like a Sunday church choir.

No one cares about the giant menorah in Berlin or Brooklyn. But a tiny menorah lit by a Jewish settler in Beit-El, Elon Moreh, Yitzhar, or some deserted and unnamed hilltop, causes an international raucous. Why? Not because the settler is infringing on Palestinian rights. No one really cares about the Arabs. The uproar comes because, in their unconscious psyches, the gentiles sense that with each Jew who returns to the Land of Israel and sets up his home on a Biblical mountainside, the one and only G-d of Israel is returning with him, to establish His rule in the world, and the nations cry out, blinded by the light.

Even in our present interim stage of Redemption, when our incredible Torah power is still hidden, and when prophecy has not yet reappeared, the sons of Esav and Yishmael sense the great light and they tremble, knowing deep in their hearts that their religions and doctrines are false, that G-d has not abandoned the Jews as they claim, and that the prophecies of the Torah will surely come to pass if they don’t try everything in their power to stop it, so they can continue on with their falsehood, stealing, and whoring.

That’s why the light of even one small menorah on a hilltop in Samaria, where the Hanukah story all began, shines more brightly than all of the scattered menorahs, however towering that they might be, in the lands of the gentiles, “For from Zion shall go forth the Torah, and the word of the L-rd from Yerushalayim.”  

PS:

If you missed seeing my singing Hanukah greeting on Youtube, you can still see it, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8oPjfl2Bsk&feature=youtu.be

On Hanukah, in addition to thanking G-d for the miracles He performed for our forefathers in the days of the Macabbees, there is a general mitzvah to praise and thank G-d for the miracles He has performed in our personal lives. Of course, His miracles are with us every day, but some stand out more than others.

So, in the hope of inspiring others to discover the great blessing I found in my life, I will try to describe how I, a totally assimilated screenwriter in Hollywood, made the long, exhilarating, challenging, humbling, and, joy-filled journey back to G-d, to Torah, and to the Land of Israel - Eretz Yisrael.

It is a voyage from depression to happiness, from emptiness to fulfillment, from darkness to light. You can make it too.

While old-time readers may be familiar with my magical mystery tour, new readers are sure to find some benefit in hopping onboard my yellow submarine for the journey. I will try to include some new insights and illustrations along the way to make the adventure interesting to veteran travelers as well.

35 years ago, there was a popular TV mini-series called ROOTS, about the Blacks in America. Likewise, my mini-tale may be called, "SHORASHIM," which means roots in Hebrew, for, all in all, it was a journey back to my roots, back to where all the Jewish People come from, and back to who we really are.

In many ways, it was like a voyage back through history in a Jules Verne time-tunnel ship, smashing through barriers of time and place, shedding generations of foreign identities, peeling off layers and layers of foreign cultures, foreign values, foreign aspirations, and foreign ideas, to break through the Matrix of the Truman Show bubble we live in, to get to the other side to the roots of my soul, back, back, back through 2000 years of exile, in order to discover my true self and forge a steadfast attachment to G-d, to Torah, to the saga of the Jewish Nation, and to Eretz Yisrael, where my, and your, great great great great great great grandfather were born.

To discover all these treasures, I had to give up many things. I had to give up my inflated ego, my arrogance, and my preoccupation with myself. I had to give up my false identity as an American with all of its aspirations of achieving fame, money, and success. And I had to give up the need to be in constant intellectual control, in order to let change happen and make room for G-d in my life.

Before discovering the truth of the Torah, I was the center of my existence. Afterward, G-d became the center. Before my enlightenment, I always did what I wanted to do. Afterward, I realized that we were put here on Earth to do what G-d wants us to do. Before I boarded the tshuva (repentance) ship, I lived for myself and used my talents to further my own selfish interests. Afterwards, I realized that G-d had given me talents for the sake of the Torah and the Jewish People, to share with others the insights that He so graciously sent my way.

I grew up in the "Fifties" in a typical assimilated Jewish family of the time. In those days, the reform movement wasn't quite as watered down as it is today. We lit Hanukah candles and pretty bulbs on a Xmas tree (so I wouldn't feel different from the other boys on our block.) We ate matzah on Passover, and hid Easter eggs like our non-Jewish neighbors. Hearing the shofar on Rosh HaShanah was a part of our yearly cycle, along with a respectful visit to the temple on Yom Kippur. But while my parents always fostered a pride in being Jewish, being an America came first.

To me, going to Hebrew school meant having to miss basketball practice and being different from my friends. When bar mitzvah time came around, our temple was under construction, so my bar mitzvah service was held in the local Unitarian church. That's right - a church. To me, that's a perfect metaphor for Jewish life in America - it's like being bar mitzvahed in a church!

After that, I had nothing more to do with Judaism for almost two decades. It wasn't a part of my consciousness at all. During my high school years at the prestigious Philips Andover Academy prep school, I tried my hardest to be a WASP like everyone else. On Sundays, while the "chosen" were praying upstairs in the beautiful New England church on the campus, we handful of Jews were segregated to hold an alternate service in a small room in the basement of the building.

Apparently, I was born with a sensitive soul, for even then I felt estranged from the constant patriotic American message of you-have-to-wear-tassled-p

In a split second of piercing awareness, like when the sea was split for the Jews leaving Egypt, and the sky was opened for everyone one to see the Divine Hand behind nature and history, I understood that G-d was everything. I bought a book about the foundations of Judaism. Rosh HaShanah was coming, and I read about "Tashlich." So on Rosh HaShanah day, I walked down to the beach and threw my cortisone pills into the Pacific Ocean. "Please G-d," I begged. "Accept these pills as my sins and please heal me without any more medicine."

I had tried everything else, and I was convinced that my separation from G-d was the source of my problems. But without the medicine, I became sicker and sicker. I started bleeding profusely. Within a short time, I lost twenty pounds. Finally, I had to be hospitalized. They gave me the cortisone intravenously, but the minute I got out, I stopped taking the pill once again. I figured that by relying on the cortisone, I would never get down to the source of the problem. Once again, I started to bleed. One evening, I became really scared, thinking that if I kept up this insanity, either I would bleed to death, or I would have to have my colon surgically removed. That night I had a dream. I was in a second-hand clothes shop, looking at old clothes when I spotted a door to another room. Curious, I stepped inside. The inner room was filled with books in Hebrew, four walls of bookshelves stacked with holy Jewish texts, like the study hall of a yeshiva. I couldn't read Hebrew at that time, but I was filled with a profound sense of peace and inner calm. I just wanted to stand there and soak in the holiness of the books. But the shop owner appeared and said he wanted to close the store. I begged him to let me stay another five minutes, just to stand there and look at the books. Grudgingly, he agreed. That's when I saw another door to yet another inner room. Venturing forward, I stepped inside. The room was empty except for a huge black box in the center of the floor. It was a giant tefillin, the funny little box that Orthodox Jews wear on their head during prayer, but this one looked like some gigantic oversized tefillin in a Woody Allen movie. Gazing at it, my heart swelled with love. Man how I wanted that tefillin. Suddenly, I heard a tremendous thunderous Voice From Above, like a Voice Out Of Sinai, proclaiming, "THIS IS THE ANSWER! YOU HAVE TO ATTACH YOURSELF TO G-D!" I awoke startled. My heart was pounding. The Voice still rang in my ears. It was the clearest, truest, most real experience I had ever heard in my life.

The dream made me understand that turning my back on the world and becoming an ascetic wasn't the way. That might be good for the first stage of penitence, and for monks and swarmis who live out their lives in delusion, when, in fact, G-d doesn't want us sitting alone in the Himalayas, separated from mankind and leaving them to drop dead from disease and starvation. For a Jew, spirituality is bringing G-d into the world at every moment, to sanctify all of existence and raise it to perfection and rectification, known as "tikun."

I realized that to enter the world of the Judaism, to understand its teachings, I would have to put aside all of my previous false and superficial notions of life, put aside, for the moment, all the books I had read and courses I had taken, and follow the Psalms of King David as my reliable guidebook, accepting the words of G-d in the Torah as absolute truth. For a Jew, the a basic instruction manual is the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, the guidebook of Jewish Law, and that the way to get close to G-d is by doing the mitzvot, just like He commanded the Jewish People at Sinai.


The next morning after my dream, I went to an Orthodox shul and asked the rabbi to show me how to put on tefillin. He happily agreed and told me to say the “Shema Yisrael” prayer, which I still remembered from Hebrew School. But even though I would return to the synagogue every morning to put on tefillin, I was still bleeding profusely. Finally, I decided that to stay alive I had to continue taking the cortisone. That very same morning, my uncle phoned, asking if I could drive him to the hospital. He had to have laser surgery on a cataract, so he needed someone to drive him home afterward. Since my aunt was a doctor, I asked him if she could write me out a prescription for the cortisone, because I wanted to avoid the tortuous medieval examinations I always had to suffer whenever I went to the gastroenterologist. When I met my uncle later that morning, he handed me the prescription. At the hospital, all during his treatment, I stood outside the operating room and prayed the same mantra over and over, "G-d, please heal my uncle. G-d, please heal my uncle." For forty-five minutes straight. Thank G-d, the laser treatment was a success. When I returned to my apartment, I headed straight to the bathroom, as was my usual custom. But this time, there was no bleeding! The blood had vanished. Disappeared! For the first time in weeks. Without any medicine! The bleeding never came back! A miracle! Even then, at that very moment, I knew that my sickness was over. I felt like G-d had reached out a metaphorical finger and healed my colitis. I was astounded.

I was absolutely dumbstruck by the miracle. "Am I hypnotizing myself with all of this religion business?" I thought. But the bleeding didn't return. No doctor has ever been able to explain it. The cortisone had always taken ten days to turn off the bleeding, and here the bleeding stopped without taking cortisone at all.

I was blown away. How could I continue on with my bohemian life of beaches and Hollywood discos? The next night, after not having bled the whole day, I prayed a heartfelt bedtime prayer. "Dear G-d," I said. "I don't know why you have come into my life and done this great miracle for me. But I am certainly grateful, and I would like to make You happy some way in return. Tell me what You want me to do, and I will do it. When I read the Bible, it seems clear that You want the Jewish People to live in the Land of Israel. So if You want me to go there, give me some kind of sign and I'll go. If You want me to stay here in Hollywood, I'll do that too. Maybe I can write Jewish movies, or get a job at some Jewish newspaper. Just give me a sign from Heaven, and I'll do it."

The very next morning, when I was leaving my apartment, I noticed that I had mail in my mailbox. It turned out to be a large travel brochure. On the cover was a big picture of the Western Wall. The caption read: "JERUSALEM, MY CHOSEN."

Here’s a little singing greeting card I wrote for Hanukah to all of my brothers and sisters around the world that you can see me sing on youtube, a little song to the tune of the John Lennon hit, “Imagine”.  Happy Hanukah!

Imagine there were no Jews in golus

It’s easy if you wish

No lighting menorahs in Times Square

Or bagels and gefilta fish

Imagine all the Jewish people living in Israel

Imagine there’s no Diaspora

It isn’t hard to do

No assimilation and persecutions

And no false religions too

Imagine all the Jewish People living where they should

You, you may say

I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the Jews will live as one

Imagine no dual identities

I wonder if you can

No American or French Jews

Just Israelis in our own land

Imagine all the Jewish people living in Israel

You, you may say

I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And then Jews and Hashem’s Name will appear as one

DON'T MISS THE SINGING BLOGGER - NOW ON YOUTUBE

Courtesy Machon HaMikdash 

The leftist media in Israel has found a new whip to lash out at the world of Orthodox Judaism. For years, they say, the religious and secular got along, respecting the status quo, but now they complain, the Orthodox are becoming too Orthodox, moving toward an “extreme religious fundamentalism” that reminds them of the dark and primitive tribalism of Taliban, which finds expression in separate seating on Haredi buses for men and women; separate lines in Haredi supermarket check-out counters; and opposition to pictures of women appearing on billboards in Jerusalem. What irks them the most is the increased demand for modesty, coming even from the once moderate religious Zionist community, including opposition to female soldiers singing at IDF ceremonies.

Radio talk-show hosts rant about it for hours. Especially outraged talk-show hostesses, who take it as a personal offence. What a threat to Israeli society, they exclaim! What a terrible denigration of women, of women’s equality, and women’s rights!

Now tell me – who treats women more respectfully, the religious or the secular? Having lived half of my life in the secular world, and half in the religious, I think I have enough experience to answer. In the religious world, the woman is the queen of the house. Every Sabbath eve, the man of the house sings her praises in the famous song, “Eshet Chayil,” the beautiful tribute to the “Woman of Valor” which concludes the Book of Proverbs. The wife is equated with the Shechinah. The blessing in the house derives from her. A husband is commanded to love his wife as himself and respect her more than he respects himself. What religious man doesn’t bring his wife a bouquet of flowers every Erev Shabbat? She is loved and praised for her modesty, which wins her husband’s faithfulness. Though there may be many worthy women in the world, the husband sings to his wife, “you surpass them all.” He loves her not for her charm, nor passing physical beauty, but for her inner essence and fear of G-d.

How different things are in the secular world where a woman is turned into a sex object and considered little more than a whore. In the secular world, a woman is more esteemed for her body and the shape of her legs than for her inner worth. As the song of “The Doors” proclaims, “Don’t you love her when she’s walking out the door?” Who has a higher rate of divorce and adultery, the Orthodox or the secular? The answer is clear. In the secular world, when you get tired of one woman, you get yourself another. They’re all equal, right?

The religious world doesn’t turn their women into objects of sexual fantasy and lust. Pornography is the invention, and multi-billion dollar industry, of the non-religious world, not the religious. In the world of Orthodox Judaism, you don’t have to look like a Hollywood model and starve yourself to death in order to attract a man’s attention, or to keep your husband from running away with some younger girl. In the world of Orthodox Judaism, a woman doesn’t have to walk around half naked and turn herself into a call girl, to be winked at on the bus, pinched in the butt at the office, and forced to submit herself to humiliating and drunken one-night stands in order to keep up in the competition of the secular world’s modern-day jungle.

In the world of Orthodox Judaism, the separation between men and women in public places doesn’t come to denigrate women, but rather to guard their respected status and honor. Likewise, the opposition to pictures of women on Jerusalem billboards serves to protect them from being turned into sex objects to sell Coca-Cola and cars. And if they want to sing, what a wonderful thing, but not in front of religious soldiers, because a man is a man, and, as our Sages have told us, the eyes see, the heart desires, and transgression awaits at the door. And anyone familiar with what goes on in army bases, and the general secular world of nightclubs and pubs, knows very well that when men and women get together, all too often, the result is unwanted pregnancies, abortions, adulterous relationships, divorces, spilling semen in vain, venereal disease, and patterns of self-hate that lead to the psychologist’s couch or worse.

Now, tell me - who is more enlightened and respectful of women – the Orthodox Jew, or the outraged, secular radio-show hostess who has to wear low-cut blouses and flirt with all the guys at the station in order to keep her job?