Israeli potato salad graces my mother-in-law's table every Shabbat and chag, and it appears frequently on mine too.

It's a colorful, pretty, and flavorful potato salad. It's also versatile as you can customize it to your taste by omitting or increasing any of the ingredients, and it will still turn out good.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

• 2 fist-sized potatoes (or one giant potato cut in half for quicker cooking)
• 1 small to medium carrot (depending on how much you like carrots)
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup peas (fresh or frozen is best, but canned is okay too)
• 1 pickle
• mayonnaise (however much you like)
• salt
• white or black pepper

Prep

• Peel carrots and potatoes, then boil them with the egg until soft enough to cut and eat with pleasure, yet not too mushy.

(This takes around 30 minutes.)

*You can dice the pickle during this time.

• If using frozen or fresh peas, you can either add them to the boiling carrots, potatoes, and egg, or you can pour boiling water over them and let them sit covered for at least 15 minutes, depending on how you like your peas.
• When ready, pour everything into a strainer.
• Let the carrots, potatoes, egg, and peas sit until cool enough to handle comfortably.
• Dice everything into cubes. (They need not be perfect cubes; just however you like your cooked veggies. You can also slice everything or cut them into chunks.)
• Dump everything (the carrots, potatoes, egg, and pickle) into a bowl.
• Add however much mayonnaise, salt, and pepper you all like.
• Mix it all together.
• Transfer to a storage container and/or serving bowl.

And there you have it: Israeli potato salad.

Betayavon!

To save/download a shortened version of this recipe (i.e. without all the little tips), please right-click the image below, then click "Save Image As" and save it to your desired folder.

NEW!
Here is an amazing & inspiring post from Shuvu Banim:
The Correct Mindset Going into Purim
The section called "Purim Reveals the Real You" is particularly enlightening. It's a great idea on how to make the most of Purim, which seems like a minor holiday, but in reality, Purim possesses tremendous light and spiritual power. May we all receive its benefit!

A Lesson of the Kli Yakar from Megillat Esther
The Kli Yakar on Parshat Titzaveh goes into a whole thing about what we can learn regarding the angels' reaction to King Achashverosh's appalling blasphemy of eating and drinking from the vessels of the Beit Hamikdash while wearing the garments of the High Priest.
Please see How to Avoid being a Pathological Pollyanna. Then scroll down a little over halfway until you get to The Mountain of Sludge and start reading from there.

Joy and Light: A Purim Dictionary
On Purim, we especially emphasize joy and light.
One popular Purim melody (sung also in the weekly Havdalah) and taken from Megillat Esther 16:8 is:
לַיְּהוּדִים הָיְתָה אוֹרָה וְשִׂמְחָה וְשָׂשׂן וִיקָר
"Layehudim hayta ora v'simcha v'sasson viy'kar."
"For the Jews, there was light and joy, gladness and honor."
(Hebrew courtesy of Chabad's wonderful online source: The Complete Jewish Bible)

Throughout his commentary on Tanach, the Malbim provides definitions for all different types of words.

• Ever wondered about the difference between "sasson" and "simcha"?
• Or the difference between "ohr" and "noga"?
• Or maybe you have a name that has always been defined as "joy" (like Aliza or Rina or Asher) or "light" (like Ora or Hila), and you'd like to know exactly what kind of joy or light it means?

Take a look at the Purim Dictionary to find out!
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*Purim is an auspicious day for bonding with Hashem and asking for whatever you wish. So don't forget to inundate God with your requests!

Wishing everyone a Purim full of tremendous light and joy!

Seeing as Rosh Chodesh Adar (the first day of the Hebrew month of Adar) is on the horizon, I thought it might be interesting to look at the importance of the Moon.

The Moon plays a major role in Judaism, from determining months and holidays to its necessity for the mitzvah of Birkat Halevanah (Blessing of the Moon).

The Moon also contains profound spiritual and kabbalistic significance.

But in this post, we'll focus on just the bare scientific necessity for the Moon.

What would our world be like without the Moon?

Monstrous Tidal Waves
Everyone knows that the Moon affects tides. The Sun does, too, but to a lesser extent. The reason why the Earth bulges out at the equator is due to its pull on the Earth. This lunar pull also keeps the oceans in check. If the Moon suddenly disappeared, the oceans would flood into every continent, completely changing the map of the world. In fact, the movement of the newly liberated oceans to meet each other would cause 59-foot (the height of a 6-story building) tsunamis all over pushed from behind by the force of the entire ocean.

Every morning, Jews say the blessing "Baruch...rokah ha'aretz al hamayim -- Blessed be...Who spreads the land over the water" to show appreciation for the fact that the water usually stops at the seashore. (Well, that's one of the meanings of the blessing, anyway.) A major reason why it doesn't encroach further is because of the reining-in effect of the Moon as described above.

Heat Loss
Without the Moon, the ocean currents would slow down or stop, preventing the transfer of heat around the world.

The Earth as a Drunken Dreidel
The Moon has a stabilizing effect on the Earth. As the Earth spins on its axis, it spins at a tilt that wavers between 22-25 degrees.

Without the Moon, the Earth would swing around like a drunken dreidel, veering from zero degrees (no tilt at all, standing straight up) to an 85-degrees tilt (lying on its side, which would chill the upper hemisphere and shine the Sun directly on the South Pole and presumably cause some major warming and melting down there).

Good-Bye Seasons
Due to the crazy wobble described above, seasons would just come and go randomly. Antarctica would sometimes be the frozen wasteland we know today and other times be as hot as the tropics. Hot areas of the world would sometimes freeze and cold areas would sometimes bake.

Rotation on Steroids
Without the Moon, the Earth would spin much faster. The Moon acts as a gentle restraint on the Earth (perhaps yet another reason why the Moon is likened to a woman in Jewish allegories and Hebrew grammar). If the Earth spun faster, this would shorten the days to 6-12 hours, which would increase our calendar year to 1000 days. It would also increase the strength of hurricanes, making Category 5 storms the norm.

Of course, there are other results you likely thought of: darker nights, the absence of eclipses, nearly non-existent tides, no asteroid blocker to protect Earth, and so on.

Our Sages often emphasize that the Torah is a blueprint for the world. Before Hashem created our world, He created the Torah, then structured the world accordingly.

As you can see from the above, without the Moon, not only would we face the challenge of physical survival, but we wouldn't be able to keep many aspects of the Torah relating to time.

Of course, the monster tidal waves wouldn't occur if the Moon never existed, but only if it suddenly disappeared. However, a steady tilt, predictable seasons, and the present calendar could never have developed without the Moon. (Not to mention how difficult life would be under such conditions.)

So whether we're grateful that Hashem created a Moon (at the perfect size and the perfect distance!) or we're grateful that Hashem allows us to keep the Moon, may you enjoy a very good month and rejoice in the fact that we even have such a thing as a month!

Chodesh Tov! May this Adar see the Redemption in a sweet way.

Upon checking the dry government storm tracker (National Hurricane Center) on Wednesday, I noticed a system forming right over southern Florida and the Caribbean again.

Every 12 hours, it was jumping. At first it had a 20% chance of developing into a full-fledged tropical storm or hurricane in the next 5 days, then that chance rose to  40%. With its counterclockwise rotation, steepening pressure and wind speed, things didn't look good. Right before Yom Kippur, the chance of a major storm developing within the next two days rose to over 50%.

But when I checked it Sunday morning after Yom Kippur, the chance of cyclone formation had dropped to...zero percent.

You can see it here: Atlantic 5-Day Geographical Tropical Weather Outlook

At present condition, there is suddenly no chance of a storm; not in the next two days and not in the next 5 days.

The weeks I spent in southern Florida showed me that it is an awful place to live and even after some intense questioning of Floridians, I still have no idea why pioneers moved there nor why anyone chooses to live there now. The weather, services, and culture are among the most unpleasant I've ever encountered...the Jewish community being the happy exception. Whether they were secular or frum or anything in between, almost all the Jews I met were extremely likeable.

And Southern Florida hosts one of the more significant frum populations in America, meaning that quite a few people were steeped in tefillah and teshuvah during that critical time.

Did their Yom Kippur tefillot sweeten the churning din winding up above their heads?

I like to think that yes, their tefillot and teshuvah dissipated this potential storm.

Prayer works, even if we don't see it.
___________
Note: There is something big building up off the Western coast of Mexico.
And it's currently moving northward.
Please see Eastern North Pacific 5-Day Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook.

Hebrew contains a lot of different words for sin, joy, light, serenity, and much more.

And despite the excellent English translations that abound, it's hard to encapsulate what a Hebrew word really means within its English equivalent.

On Yom Kippur, we say Vidui (The Jewish Confession) to God.

But do we know what we're really saying?

Whether we say chatiti, aviti, u'peshati in Hebrew or I've erred, I've sinned, and I've transgressed...do we really know what we're saying?

By taking a look at the Malbim on Neviim & Ketubim (Prophets & Writings), you can find the true definitions of thousands of words.

I haven't found the Malbim's definitions of all the words to Vidui. But I thought I'd share the ones I have found up until now.

For most, I didn't note the original source of the definition in my notes. But the one or two I did note are cited below if you want to look it up for yourself.

(Because the words appeared in Neviim & Ketuvim in a different tense than they appear in Vidui, I've included the original root word found within the Malbim's commentary in order to be true to the Malbim's definition.)

If you'd also like a PDF version to print out, please press the blue button:

Chatati –  חטאתי
 חוטא (choteh) – accidental sinner, pulled by his desires
 
Aviti – עויתי
עוון (avohn) – sin from corrupted thinking
עיוה (ivah) – more severe than the other synonyms for sin, includes confusion and madness, one confuses the bodily kochot (pressures) with the derech hayashar (straight path)
 
Pashati – פשעתי
פשע  (pesha) – rebellion performed with the powers of intellect and insight

____________
 
אשמנו
אשם (asham) – one who is chayav (legally deserving of) punishment for his sins
 
העוינו
עיוה (ivah) – more severe than the other synonyms for sin, includes confusion and madness, one confuses the bodily kochot (pressures) with the derech hayashar (straight path)

והרשענו
 רשע (rasha) – sins intentionally against Man and God
 
זדנו
 זד (zed) – The zed is one who disagrees over the ways of wisdom and over the truth with protestations and inferences and plots to transgress it with repugnance (shiat nefesh), and it is the opposite of the modest one (tzanuah) who covers his face degrees within degrees and knows the "fluff" of his value like “and Moshe covered his face.” (Malbim, Mussar Chachma, Mishlei 11:2)
 
 זדון (zadon) – He who opposes Hashem and the ways of Torah b’mezid and publicly, as is written: “And the man who will do b’zadon against Hashem—he is the reviler (megadef)”, and if it’s accompanied by excess pride, he makes fun of wisdom and chachamim, as is written: “the arrogant zed--letz is his name”...the zed creates schemes to commit evil against his fellow. (Malbim, Mishlei 11:2)
 
טפלנו שקר
שקר (sheker) – its truth can be clarified immediately
 
כיזבנו
כזב (kazav) – its truth can be clarified only later
 
לצנו
לץ (letz) – inactive, doesn’t do any evil, but doesn’t do any good, either. Just pursues wind and nothingness and frivolousness and jokes; doesn’t involve himself with Torah
 
ניאצנו
ניאץ (ni’atz) – degrades and scorns something
 
עווינו
עוון (avohn) – a sin from corrupted thinking
 
פשענו
פשע  (pesha) – rebellion performed with the powers of intellect and insight
 
צררנו
צורר (tzorer) – active enemy (as opposed to one who just hates you in his heart)
 
רשענו
רשע (rasha) – sins intentionally against Man and God
 
שיחתנו
 משחית (mashchit) – wants to destroy for no reason

It's always weird to apologize on a blog. You don't even know the vast majority of your readers.
But just the same, I am sorry if anything I wrote here hurt you in some way. My intention is always to build and not to destroy, but sometimes good intentions just aren't enough and hurtful messages come out anyway.
So I hope that you, whoever you are wherever you are, will take this as a personal apology.
And thanks for reading and thanks also to all who've left comments.
I really appreciate your readership and your thoughts.

May we all have a sweet year!
________________________
Some articles that can contribute to having a meaningful Rosh Hashanah:
14 Ways to Sweeten Dinim
Dr. Ballen's Really Helpful SWAP Tool

Yael [not her real name] grew up next door to my husband, both in Morocco and in Eretz Yisrael. Several years older than him, she remembered things from Morocco that he couldn’t as a baby.

We spent Shabbat in her villa with her family in a pastoral area of Eretz Yisrael and she’s full of joy and vitality. She and her husband celebrate Saturday night Melaveh Malka with singing, tambourines, and bongo drums.

She described the good relations Jews enjoyed with their Muslim neighbors.
But when the Jews chased out the antisemitic British and established a country of their own, the Arab propaganda machine started up against all Jews everywhere.

Like other Moroccan Jews I've met, Yael emphasized that crimes against Moroccan Jews were committed by Muslim strangers, and not by the Muslims they knew and lived with (unlike in Europe, where pogroms and Nazi collaboration were carried out by non-Jewish "friends" and  neighbors). And she also stressed Moroccan Jewry's unwavering belief that Morocco's royal family opposed the antisemitic outbreaks, but couldn't always stop the riled-up masses.

Here, I’ll tell the story in Yael’s own words as best I remember:

And that’s where she ended it. It was clear from her face and the hand she clutched over her heart as she spoke that even fifty years later, the trauma was still raw.

(I know, I know…it makes you want to storm over to Morocco and shout: GIVE THAT LITTLE JEWISH GIRL HER COAT BACK!)

No one died, no one was even bruised or even cursed, but there’s something about these very human stories that tear at your heart.

The happy postscript is that Yael remained frum after arriving to the poor, dysfunctional immigrant neighborhood in Eretz Yisrael (a lucky fact she attributes to her father's beautiful singing and the general music in the home, plus her brother’s ability to bring some of the yeshivah atmosphere and enthusiasm home from the yeshivah which he later attended). She earned a college degree and married a cheerful man who also likes music.

But the beginning of the marriage saw no children. After 4 years of infertility, the Lubavitcher Rebbe came to Yael’s husband in a dream and promised them a son within a year.

And so it was. Within a year, their first son was born followed by a daughter three years later, and then no more.

Interestingly, neither Yael nor her husband shared any connection with Lubavitcher Chassidus or the Lubavitcher Rebbe other than the general esteem in which Yael and her husband held all tzaddikim. The Lubavitcher Rebbe's appearance occurred completely out of the blue.

When the dream’s message was fulfilled, Yael and her husband became Chabadnikim.

May all Jews everywhere merit to embrace all our chagim in peace.

Of course Elul and Av did not switch places.

But at first, it felt like they did.

Av is always a hard month for me and a time when I really struggle to overcome the inner lion roaring to get out.
(Please see How to Deal with the Mazal of Crabby Tammuz and Savage Av for more about Av's "inner lion.")

But mostly, this Av saw me making some progress without the usual lows. I was thrilled because I thought that if Av was going so well, spiritually speaking, then Elul would be amazing.

Only Rosh Chodesh Elul arrived, and I went numb. It wasn’t depression exactly, but just "blah." I even did a few things in the spiritual realm that called for tremendous time, effort, and a certain amount of self-sacrifice. One of them I’d never done before.

I felt good for two minutes after I’d completed these efforts, then things went right back to blah.

I tried all sorts of things, including writing down 20 things for which I was grateful and Pitum Haketoret among other spiritual efforts, acupressure, the proper vitamins...and still no release.

Then I started thinking things that I knew were false and anti-Torah, like maybe this is Heavenly rejection, maybe Hashem doesn’t like me anymore, chas v’shalom.
And yes, I knew this couldn’t possibly be true, yet I fretted about it anyway.

(I realized later that because I've failed this particular challenge before, Hashem was probably throwing it my way again in a last-ditch attempt for me to tackle it before Rosh Hashanah.)

Heartbreakingly, it also seemed that toddlers injured in Av were succumbing to their injuries in Elul.

I felt a lot of din maybe?

Then I started seeing a lot of spiders, including a very big one. In Perek Shira, the spider (smamit) says, “HalleluHu b'tziltzalei shema. HalleluHu b'tziltzilei teruah - Praise Him with resounding cymbals. Praise Him with trumpet blasts” (Tehillim 150:5).

• According to the Metzudah Tehillim, Rav Shimshon Rafael Hirsch explains this verse as "a call to whole groups for attentive participation."
• Metzudat David says tziltzalim (cymbals) produce a sound that travels far.
• Malbim says that teruah (trumpeting) represents fear of punishment (yirat onesh), but this fear will be mixed with joy.

(I believe that some interpret smamit as a small lizard and I saw a couple of geckos along with the spiders. Either way, I got the message: With humility and joy, Praise Hashem LOUD AND CLEAR!)

So all these "singing" spiders and geckos encouraged me to start calling out thanks and praise to Hashem (as per the Sages commentaries on that verse) with myself, with my family members, and on this blog.
(Now you know why you got a big dose of pro-monotheism posts!)

Finally, I decided to say a prayer before randomly opening Volume 1 of Words of Faith by Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender.

It was all about not speaking falsely (even positively) or with any exaggeration of the deceased. I haven’t been speaking about dead people at all recently as far as I could tell, so I did the procedure again with the Volume 2.

Bingo!

It was all about the key to getting past “dry” hitbodedut:
Talk to Hashem like He's your Good, True Friend.

I realized that when I was trying to talk to Hashem, I was being too self-conscious about it. I was being too formulaic and not "real" enough.

I ended up not having any alone-time that day, so I resolved to give it a try the next day.

I also tried to remember that Rav Berland spoke about this, that sometimes you’re not given a good feeling about your spiritual stuff for two reasons:

1. Having too much blessing too fast really makes people incredibly stuck on themselves. I’ve seen it happen and it’s a very real concern.
2. Sometimes, Hashem just wants us to serve Him from a place of constriction. It’s a way of serving Hashem l’Shem Shamayim. You don’t have all the enthusiasm and flavor and spiritual uplift. You’re only doing it because Hashem said so.

It feels all wrong, but really, constriction is Hashem’s way of earning you and the rest of Am Yisrael a lot of extra merit. In other words, it’s actually a really good thing, even though it feels bad.

So that made me feel a little better.
 
But I was still out of sorts until I finally had the private time to speak to Hashem. I still got distracted, but I tried to follow the "Good, True Friend" advice by closing my eyes and settling my mind into the idea that right now, I'm talking to Someone who really cares about me, is totally Trustworthy, and Kind, Gentle, and Warm. And eventually it went pretty well and I felt better.

Now Elul is going better. I’m in basically good spirits even as those year-end “This is your last chance to get it right!” nisayonot are rolling in.

So I hope I’ll keep feeling the spiritual flavor of Elul. But if I don’t, I plan to do my best to keep pushing myself along spiritually and trying to feel good about serving Hashem from a place of constriction.
____________________
How to Serve Hashem from a Place of Constriction by Rav Berland

Note: This post has been updated, mostly with prettier formatting and additional details added to the stories.
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Dancing at Weddings

At a wedding long ago, one of the guests was this adorable young woman sweetly dressed in a pink velvet top and a wide pink satin skirt that reached her ankles. She was petite with a strawberry blonde shaitel full of little curls down to her shoulders. She looked like the perfect doll come to life.
 
Imagine my shock when we started circle-dancing and she grabbed my hand, immediately yanking on my arm with a force that belied her delicate little stature. I immediately pulled away – but she actually hung on!

Then she let me go and as I stepped away from the dancing, the next woman joined hands unsuspectingly with the The Doll, only to immediately be yanked so hard she almost fell over. She looked at The Doll with the same shock I probably had on my face, and also stepped away, rubbing her shoulder. The pattern repeated itself and someone even said, “Ow! Stop – that hurts!”

The Doll responded by pursing her lips and furrowing her pert little nose.
Wimp! she clearly seemed to be thinking.

It ended with several of us standing there and staring at her in disbelief.

“C’mon! C’mon!” she barked, bouncing on her feet like a boxer up for the next round. “Let’s dance! C’mon!” Her lips rubbed against each other and her eyes lit up like the eyes of those who go to hockey games to see the blood bounce off the ice. Her little fists pounded her satin skirt as she looked at us. “Come on! What’s wrong with you guys? This is a wedding! Let’s dance!”

At that point, as if one, we drifted away to other circles of dancers.

As I looked back, her face was all pinched and glaring in a way that clearly said, Can’t take the heat, eh? What a bunch of wimps!

I wondered who'd had the guts to marry her.

A girl name Miriam loved to attend weddings because she loved to dance for the kallah – something she did with infectious joy and energy. When other girls complimented her dancing, she always answered, “Thanks! B’ezras Hashem, I’ll dance at your wedding, too – may it be soon!”
 
When I mentioned to a mutual friend how much I admired Miriam’s dancing, the friend said, “Sure! And you should have seen how she used to rip up the clubs with her dancing!”
 
“Really?” I said (neither of us realizing at the time that now we were entering the realm of lashon hara).
 
“Sure! She used to go clubbing all the time and dance for hours! She was also really into rap music.”
 
“But that’s so weird,” I said. “Because her dancing is totally tzanuah. She doesn’t throw in any of those provocative moves. She just seems totally happy for the kallah.”
 
“Yes,” said the friend. “Because she’s done true teshuvah. She’s a real example to follow.”

A distant cousin of my husband’s whom I’d never met before danced at our wedding non-stop and with a serious sense of purpose and dedication. When I thanked her later and told her how much it meant to me, she looked surprised and said, “Of course! It’s a big mitzvah to dance at a wedding.”
 
I found out later she was known to be a conscientious, serious, trustworthy type.

Another time, I watched as two newly married women danced for a kallah. One looked unsmiling off to the side, her movements half-hearted and robotic; she seemed not to want to be there and didn't care who knew it - including the kallah. In contrast, her partner gazed warmly into the eyes of the kallah with a quiet smile, her steps gentle and light.
 
Socializing with them later revealed that the first was very unhappy. (Understandably, she was feeling very lonely as a newlywed far away from her family and old friends.) And the second was warm, kind, and engaging (and trying very hard to help the first newlywed not feel so lonely). So this may not have reflected the first newlywed's true essence, but merely the state she was in at that time.

And even outside of weddings, a dancer’s personality still peeps out. At an old age home, I watched as one young woman pranced lightly among the residents, singing softly and pleasantly while clapping her hands gently. I didn't realize at the time she was divorced (her shaitel was very realistic) and the light that shone from her soul belied the traumatic year she spent in an emotionally abusive marriage. (As I got to know her, I discovered an exceptionally special young woman who remarried a really wonderful and sweet bachur not long after.)
 
The old folks mostly slouched in their chairs, staring at nothing, with only a few blessed with enough good health to clap and sway in rhythm. The young woman’s face glowed with gentle joy and caring. Another dancing girl kept stared blankly off to the side as she clapped her hands and bounced around, singing by rote. Then she grabbed the hands of an elderly woman hunched almost face down over a desk and started swinging the woman’s stiff arms back and forth. The elderly lady made a choking sound, then started emitting warbles of pain: “Ahhhahh – ahhahh – aaaaagh!”
 
But the girl didn't stop.
 
Shocked, I put my hand on the girl’s arm and whispered, “Wait, I don’t think she likes that much.”
 
Startled, the girl’s eyes widened as her head jerked around to look at me. Then she gave me a disgruntled frown and shook me off, moving away while looking at me as if I had done something indecent. I was certain it was just a defensive reaction; after all, she must have been embarrassed to be shown how she was accidentally hurting this arthritic old lady. I thought that was the end of it until I saw her back with the same woman, the elderly lady’s stiff body rocking back and forth helplessly as the same girl swung the lady’s arms from side to side, accompanied by the elderly lady’s painful warbles.
 
Without thinking, I rushed over to the girl and said, “Stop! Can’t you see you’re hurting her?!”
 
The girl looked at me in startled disgust, raised her chin, and gave a disdainful sniff as she danced as far away from me as possible.
 
She seemed so sure of herself, I started wondering whether I’d misinterpreted the elderly lady’s sounds. Perhaps the elderly lady was trying to sing along and I mistakenly thought she was in unbearable agony?
 
I leaned over to see if the lady was okay. She lay with her stiff arms stretched out across her desk, breathing hard, and still gasping and groaning a little. Her eyes were wide and frantic-looking. Biting my lip, I asked her if she was okay. She stared at me a moment as if to say, Do you really need to ask? and rolled her eyes.
 
Oddly, that same girl appeared very different in class. She sat staring off into space the entire time, leaning to the side in a way that made me wonder if she was drugged. If directly addressed, she looked startled, straightened up for the time it took her to answer, then immediately flopped over and went back to staring at nothing. She seemed quiet and unhappy, and my initial impression of her was of a nice girl for whom I felt sorry. But her dancing persona gave me a totally different insight.
 
(Although to be fair, popular medications like Prozac can cause its user to become insensitive and even obnoxious to others. Even Tylenol studies recently proved that acetaminophen lowers a person's  empathy. So perhaps the disdainful dancer I saw was not the real her, but merely how she was on medication. Maybe.)

The explanation behind Tu B’Av opened my eyes to the fact that you certainly can see a lot in a person’s dancing. There are basic middot, like a need to dominate or a sense of purpose or insensitivity or someone who just goes through the motions. And then there are personality types – all good, but still different: lively and bursting with simchat chaim or gentle and sweet or serious and committed.
 
And that’s just to name a few.

• So a boy looking for an energetic girl who embraces a life of mitzvot with gusto might choose a girl like Miriam.
• But a boy who prefers a girl who’s gentle and sensitive might choose the second baton-dancer or the young divorcee.
• Yet another boy who’s looking for girl who marches through life with heartfelt seriousness and a strong sense of purpose might choose my husband’s distant cousin.

(And in case you were wondering, The Doll and the girl at the old age home were just 2 out of only 3 times I ever saw such aggressive behavior while dancing. Phew!)

I always find it very hard to relate to the times when either Beit Hamikdash was standing.

Meaning, I find it hard to visualize what it must have been like, what exactly it gave to us and what exactly we lack now.

It's hard to know what you've never experienced.
 

Part of the problem is that you read about how things operated, yet at the same time, people started acting like it wasn’t there and all sorts of crazy things happened, like all the times a fake Kohen Gadol went into the Kodesh Kadoshim (Holy of Holies), he entered with a rope around his ankle so that when he dropped dead (Kodesh Kadoshim doesn’t suffer fakes), the people could pull him out for burial without endangering themselves.
 
Everything about the Beit Hamikdash was set up to make doing the right thing easier and doing the wrong thing harder. It was also set up to atone for when Jews did do the wrong thing because as Rebbe Levi Yitzchack Bender said in Words of Faith, the rituals in the Beit Hamikdash didn’t allow sin to settle on a Jew overnight because the Jewish soul cannot carry sin. Yet today we are forced to carry our sins overnight and even for years. (Unless we sit with Hashem every day to do a cheshbon nefesh…or at least, we immediately acknowledge our sin and ask forgiveness.)
 
So here’s my best shot at what it must have been like:

First of all, the Beit Hamikdash hit all your senses in the most sublime way:

• the air was imbued with the scent of Ketoret and the roasting meat of the korbonot
• you heard the melodies of the Leviim singing as they played their flutes, horns, harps, and drums
• you saw the tremendous beauty of marble, gold, and copper all around you
• the techeilet color worn by the Kohanim was not just a sky blue, but a deep, rich azure
• you walked barefoot on smooth marble
• the emotional atmosphere consisted of profound spirituality, which included sincere teshuvah and lofty joy.
• healing of past traumas came so easily
• it was easy to feel unity, Hashem’s Love along with your own love for others, and forgiveness.

 
(Please see the Kli Yakar on detailed symbolism of the Mishkan and the Kodesh Kadoshim.)

Scent
Today, we know that some scents can be described as “heady.” Furthermore, inhaling certain substances can even make you high. But it’s a false demonic high.

Scent is incredibly powerful; you probably have known the experience of catching a smell you haven’t smelled in years and being taken back to that original experience (whether for good or for bad).
 
Yet the scent of the Ketoret was special.

Made with specific ingredients in specific amounts, it enhanced the spiritual experience with total purity. Ketoret was Holy and by inhaling it, you became infused with untainted Holiness and spirituality. This gave you a shortcut of sorts to the very things we fight so hard for today: teshuvah, feeling close to Hashem, davening with a focused mind and a captivated heart…Ketoret also repelled flies, and nullified scorpions and snakes wherever the scent wafted. Ketoret could also stop even the most rabid plague.

Even today, just reading the Ketoret service provides powerful protection against disease, family disharmony, and klippot (forces of spiritual impurity) while opening channels of success (both financial and spiritual).

If that’s true of just its reading, imagine what being infused with its scent must have been like!

(See more at How Ketoret Proctects against Spiritual Tumah.)

The Scent and Sight of the Korbonot Experience
Many modern Jews struggle to relate to the Korbonot (Sacrifices). In short, Korbonot were performed with specific actions in specific amounts on specific animals. Everything was highly symbolic and the Kohanim themselves dedicated themselves out of heartfelt concern for the errant Jews offering the Korbonot and out of their own personal sense of intimacy with Hashem. Living within the Beit Hamikdash as it were, the Kohanim were constantly infused with the entire atmosphere - heart, body, and soul.

The entire physical ritual of the Korbonot reflected a spiritual process which affected the baal teshuvah on the inside by spiritually cremating all that person’s bad thoughts and taavot that led to the sin in the first place!

But as people began to relate to the Korbonot by rote, they clogged the opening for the spiritual effect to penetrate, which also clogged the preventive effect.

In other words, those offering the korbon didn’t want the atonement and prevention enough. Going through the motions was enough for them, tragically speaking.
 
(See the Kli Yakar on more detailed symbolism of the  Kohanim and the Ketoret and here for a short explanation of how the Korbonot worked on an inner spiritual level.)

Music
Ah, music…this is what I’m affected by the most. I could get lost within just the right song.

Today, popular music is calculated and produced to hit a person’s brain in just the right way. Producers have fine-tuned tempo, chord structure, beat, and timing to a science.
Just the “right” song can pull you from a lively mood into one of longing, nostalgia, or tears within minutes. Yet just the “right” upbeat song can imbue renewed energy and cheer to a gloomy person, even igniting him to dance.

Today’s music has been one of the strongest influences in society’s downward spiral. (TV/movies and books/newspapers are its competition for what gets First Place in the promotion of immoral gunk.) I even read a disturbing account of a prisoner in a torture chamber during the Balkan War of the Nineties whose guitar-playing inflamed tired or uninterested torturers back into torture-mode.
(And no, he wasn’t forced to play. Sick, I know.)
 
But the music of the Beit Hamikdash hit all the right notes—literally. Every note, every instrument, every voice was meant to uplift your heart in the purest and most genuine way.

With today’s heavy bass pounding away in even the frummest venues, it’s hard to imagine the profound and heart-lifting effect of soft drums, flutes, harps, clear horns, and Levite tenors and baritones on the heart of a Jew among the infusion of Ketoret surrounded by marble and rich gleaming metals.

Back then, occult worship offered an easy-come-easy-go coating of feelings and results. But for all the occult incense, you had the equally compelling Ketoret. For the alluring music of the idolaters, you had the equally compelling symphony of the Leviim. For all the glitter and glory of the temples of Baal, Dagon, and Aphrodite, you had the stunning magnificence of the Beit Hamikdash to surpass them all (as stated in the Talmud Sukkah 51b).
 
Yet today...
Reading/Learning

• People complain that frum books (whether non-fiction or novels) just aren’t as compelling as secular books.
• And which article do you turn to first in a frum magazine - the dvar Torah or the newest chapter of the serial novel or news feature?
• Does a blog post on a dvar Torah ever get nearly the same number of comments as a post on something more current and "exciting"?

Music
And even the most insulated frum people perceive frum music as so lacking that they need to spice it up by taking the worst of non-Jewish music and applying it to frum lyrics and Torah verses.

Holy niggunim crafted by tzaddikim “need” bass and synthesizer added to make them appealing to a frum audience today.

In fact, one of the hardest things to let go of for those Jewish children (and I mean those who remembered their love of Judaism and had grown up in committed Torah families) hidden in convents and monasteries during the Shoah were the songs and melodies of the idolatrous religious services.

Physical Beauty and Impressiveness
And is there a shul that rivals in physical beauty the Vatican or Eastern temples or the more exquisitely designed mosques?  

Look at the Kotel remnant of our Beit Hamikdash: pigeons roosting among moss in its crevices, old lumpy stones speckled with erosion and bird-droppings…it’s still beautiful to me and to so many others, but to the physical eye, can it compare to what the other nations have?

In December, drive through the streets of America and look at a Jewish home with its Chanukiyah in the window next to the light-shows decorating the lawns and houses of the non-Jewish neighbors.
How many Jewish children have begged their parents to put up "Chanukah lights" ("Just blue and white lights, Mom and Dad! Pleeeease?") or begged for a tree?

Scents
And how many people find the smell of cigarettes, marijuana, perfume (with names like Poison or Opium or Obsession or Fantasy), and incense more alluring than the aroma of baking challahs and chocolate yeast cakes, simmering cholent, roses in a vase on the Shabbat table, or the Havdalah spice?
__________________________
With the Destruction of the Beit Hamikdash, pure and true spirituality went underground in a sense. Today, you have to dig for it.

Back in the time of the Beit Hamikdash, all you had to do was go there and you had something that was obviously better in every way than anything the nations had to offer.

(Not to mention the mere fact of its existence and operation contributed something to your spiritual efforts even if you were physically far from the Beit Hamikdash.)

Today, we strive to give our hearts a boost by davening at the gravesites of holy tzaddikim, going to holy people for blessings, and going to the Kotel, the last standing remnant of the Beit Hamikdash.

But even with that, so much still depends on us working ourselves up to it.

Sometimes, a Jew visits a holy tzaddik and feels…nothing. A nice guy, to be sure, but nothing more than that.

I know of FFB Jews who heard about the holiness of and special experiences at the Kotel only to finally arrive there in person and feel…nothing. I myself would go visit holy gravesites, only to feel disappointed at feeling…nothing.

Now I feel more at gravesites, but nothing nearly as strong as what I feel at the Kotel. Interestingly, even though I still feel something special at the Kotel each time I go, it doesn’t compare to that initial wallop of spirituality and holiness I felt the first several times I went to the Kotel as a secular teenager completely immersed in a non-Jewish lifestyle.

My point is that even with the spiritual boosts we have today, there are no guarantees even if you really, really want that boost.
(Really, you should hear the disappointment saturating the voice of a Jew who really wanted what the Kotel had to offer, but just didn't feel anything. It's heartbreaking.)
 
Yet in the times of the Beit Hamikdash, all you had to do was want what it had to offer—and you got it. Guaranteed!
 
Today, you have to struggle SO HARD for every little drop of spiritual inspiration…and even then, your achievement within that exertion varies from moment to moment.

And even when you get it, how long can you maintain it?

And no matter how much you want it, not only can you not necessarily maintain it, you often can’t even get there at all.

(Fortunately, any spiritual effort reaps massive dividends in the Upper Realms even if you don't sense a darn thing down here.)

May our Beit Hamikdash be rebuilt and restored to its former glory speedily in our days.