Emuna Beams

You're beautiful. Here's proof in a 2-minute message.

The Hebrew month of Elul includes the 4 weeks that precede the High Holidays. At this time, Hashem - the King of Kings - is especially accessible.

In this terribly long exile with never-ending troubles, many have lost hope. They don't believe that their prayers will ever be answered or they don't believe in prayer altogether. They confuse apparent Divine concealment and think that Hashem has forsaken them. Rebbe Nachman, while interpreting one of Rabbah bar bar Chana's cryptic allegories from the Gemara, proves that the opposite is true.

Love is like atomic power. The positive aspects of love can illuminate the world but its negative aspects can destroy the world. In today's lesson on Chapter Four of "Orchus Tzaddikim" (The Ways of the Righteous), we learn an important lesson for life. There are seven main types of love. Each has a misplaced application as well as a positive one. We also learn important holistic health advice when learning the proper way to love ourselves.

This week we learn the ability of powerful prayer. It can rejuvenate and illuminate a soul as well as invoke tremendous Divine abundance.

Chutzpa is the Hebrew word for audacity. When we activate our chutzpa in the right place, we gird ourselves in strength and are able to take a bold stand against evil. On the other hand, chutzpa in the wrong place sends a person into a self-destruct mode. Today's lesson on Chapter Four of Orchus Tzaddikim - Ways of the Righteous - teaches us to differentiate between "holy chutzpa" and the unholy type.

Today's lesson teaches us the secret of effective prayer and how to avoid the negative elements that hinder us during prayer.

Would you do whatever you want behind closed doors if you knew that no one would see you or catch you in the act? Would you allow your spouse to see your computer's or smartphone's surfing history? There's a healthy type of shame that indicates to emuna and spiritual intelligence. This is the subject of today's lesson on the "Gate of Shame", the third chapter of the classic "Ways of the Righteous."

Our host tonight is 7th Degree Blackbelt Taekwondo Master Sunny Levi who is also a Certified Emuna Coach. With her group of "Personal Prayer Bootcamp" graduates, she holds a lively Q&A session with Rabbi Lazer Brody. Anyone can relate to the amazing questions asked here. What should we pray for? Are angels real? Can a person truly overcome PTSD? How does a woman rid her life of anxiety? And, much more...

Wherever I go here in my cherished homeland, be it the desert, the seacoast or the field, I sense a different melody. Strangely, if I'm playing a beautifully crafted Native American flute produced from the finest North American cedar, nothing happens. But if I take a simple flute, like the one King David played made out of a Land-of-Israel reed, it plays by itself. Here's the melody that echoed from the ruins of the Holy Tabernacle in ancient Shiloh. It reflects a haunting sadness in the beginning but finishes with determined hope in anticipation of our rebuilt Holy Temple, soon, amen!