The Megilah App It’s Purim. I’m sitting in the magnificent Sandton Shul (www.sandtonshul.co.za ) in Johannesburg where the atmosphere is dignified but celebratory. I feel far from my family who are scattered in three different countries and think of them nostalgically. The Megilah reading starts. The community is both enthralled and entertained by the reading of Chaim Ehrlich. And I feel proud because Chaim is an iAwaken member and son of one of my first and dear Talmidim. I hold my iPhone in my hand and am following the megillah on one of its brilliant apps...

In my Yom Kippur Article I wrote about the two operating systems that govern us: the heroic operating system and thedefensive, instinctual one. It goes without saying that we can master our heroic system. We can dominate our instinctual system, ouryeitzer harah, with our heroic system, our yeitzer hatov. Lead By Greatness (now due out by Mid-November IY"H) will provide methodology to do this. But can we also improve our instinctual systems? Can we so to say, rewire our instinct and elevate it? The Rambam says we can and this week's pa..

"It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else and still unknown to himself."[1] Inside the wrapping A relationship with our own identity sounds easy. As one who is struggling with this, and has been for years, I can assure you though, that this is not the case. To me at least, my relationship with my own identity has been the most challenging relationship of all. The reason for its complexity is the difficulty we often experience in confronting our deeper selves in truth, and the ease with which we confuse our identities and images. Most of us have several images;..

Character Mastery We are governed by two paralleloperating systems. In Lead By Greatness[1] I refer to them as the defensive operating system and the heroic operating system. The defensive operating system governs our survival instincts working reactively most of the time, especially when we are confronted with physical danger. The heroicoperating system is responsible for the things we do for causes that are bigger than even our own survival or the survival of our families. Whether we do something dramatic like risking our lives to save others..

Orthodoxy by definition cannot be modern; only Torah can. I have deeply missed my communication with you over such a long period. I am happy to say though, that in this time I have completed the first draft of my book's manuscript and hope to share it with you before the end of this year. This is the book that contains the philosophy of business, built on Torah pillars, that I have crafted piece by piece over two decades of international consulting while at the same time learning and teaching Torah. Businesses in a vast spectrum of industries and geographies and their leaders, have n..

The art of listening Isn't it irritating when you're talking to someone and you know they're not listening, or at least that they are just not getting what you're saying? It's sometimes hard to appreciate that life is a constant ongoing conversation between G-d and us. It is not just that we speak to him in our tefillos (prayer) and he speaks to us in our limud Torah (study of the Torah). He speaks to us in an ongoing conversation; sometimes in a whisper sometimes in a loud and amplified voice. No matter the volume, most of the time we are hard of hearing. We miss the ..

Nature vs. Nurture….or neither?   Who is this man Ya'acov, later renamed Israel a name we see in almost every newspaper and newscast almost every day? His story begins with a mother perplexed by the almost schizophrenic nature of her fetus that is equally stimulated by the energy of divine sanctity and the negative force of idolatry.  According to some, she knew she had twins, in which case she must have thought of the possibility that each child is stimulated by a different force, one by kedusha, the other by avodah zara (idolatry). Why is she so perpl..

Adam What is humanity? Hashem poses this great existential question to the first Man only moments after his creation: "Man's wisdom is greater than yours," Hashem said to His angels inShamayim. He proved His point by having the Man define the essence of every living creature, something the Angels were incapable of doing. "And you," said Hashem to the Man, "how do you define your own essence?" [1]  We wait with bated breath for deep philosophic insights from the person with the purest intellect ever created. Will he define his Divine soul? Will he differentiate himself as t..