A Soulful Journey

The Satmar Rebbe was dying and greeted by Moses in heaven.  Moses told the rebbe to expect a big banquet in his honor.  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and Solomon would all be there.  The rebbe was overjoyed. "Who will be the mashgiach?" he asked. Moses answered,  "Maimonides and Rashi." "In the case, the rebbe responded, "I 'll take the fruit salad."

There are times when some luminaries outshine all else.  The sun when it shines, for example, makes it impossible to see other stars. A Philadelphia Phillies captain once delivered to the umpires before the game the lineup card. It read with a notation is the ninth spot - the pitcher's place - "Willoughby and the others" for the batting order.   - George Will

"We shall fight Hitler as if there were no White Paper, and fight the White Paper as if there were no Hitler."  -David Ben-Gurion, 1939 What do we learn from this brave statement?  That Ben-Gurion was prescient? No, we learn that we must stand up for each other and against evil.

A famous professor of mathematics at Cambridge University decided that he needed to become more cultured in world literature.  Going to an advisor he asked, "Would you tell me a good book in which to begin to learn the rudiments of literature?"  Having recommended Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," he later returned to the English professor and remarked, "The book sayid, " leagues another league and another league."  Why couldn't he just have said, one and one-half leagues?" -Louis Jacobs Literature is for the heart, not the head.  It is important to know which to use and when.

Anatole Broyard, the former editor of the New York Times Book Review, wrote after his doctor diagnosed him with prostate cancer, " When you learn that your life is threatened, you can turn toward this knowledge or away from it.  It turned toward it...it sounds trite, yet I can only say that I realized for the first time that I don't have forever...nothing was casual anymore.  I understood that living itself has a deadline.  How can you not be curious about the world?  The streets, the houses, the trees, the shops, the movement and the stillness...When my wife made me me a hamburger the other day, I thought it was the most fabulous hamburger in the history of the world."

 “Had anyone suggested at the time that it would not be the Egypt of the pharaohs that would survive and change the moral landscape of the world, but instead a group of Hebrew slaves, it would have seemed an absurdity.” - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks 

When our son Larry was born, I was forewarned by my family and friends that my 3-ear old daughter, Claudia, could become jealous.   After several months however, Claudia seemed to adore her younger brother.   But one day I glanced at the crib and was horrified to see an ink line drawn down the center of Larry’s nose and little squiggles all over his cheeks.   Claudia does resent the baby, I thought.   I’ll have to handle this calmly so as not to add to her negative feelings.   Very casually I asked my daughter why she had written all over her brother. Claudia looked at the baby, then at me, and replied, matter-of-factly, “I didn’t have any paper.” Don't get angry.  First look, see and ask.  Then think.

“The first mention of sin in the Bible is not in connection with Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit, but relates to Cain killing his brother Abel in a fit of jealousy…”   -Harold Kushner Real s in happens when we hurt one another.

“Hurry back, we miss you already.” – sign leaving Ben-Gurion Airport

"Parents don't come full bloom at the birth of the first baby. In fact, parenting is about growing. It's about our own growing as much as it is about our children's growing and that kind of growing happens little by little." -Fred Rogers 

What do you do with the mad that you feel When you feel so mad you could bite? When the whole wide world seems, oh, so wrong, And nothing you do seems very right? What do you do? Do you punch a bag? Do you pound some clay or some dough? Do you round up some friends for a game of tag? Or see how fast you go? Its great to be able to stop When you've planned a thing that's wrong. And be able to do something else instead And think this song: I can stop when I want to. Can stop when I wish. Can stop, stop, stop anytime. And what good feeling to feel like this. And know that there's something deep inside That helps us become what we can. For a girl can someday be a woman And a boy can someday be a man. -Fred Rogers

"Often since I was young, men have attacked me- Let Israel now say: Often since I was young, men have attacked me- But never have they prevailed."  -Psalm 129

When Medlevitch returned from his sentence in Russia of twelve years in prison for attempting to hijack a plane to Israel, he spoke in London.  However, he refused to come and just relate his experiences.  He first insisted that there be an opportunity for him to convince young people to make aliya .  He said: "You give money and hard work but it is not enough.  You must be ready to sacrifice everything for Eretz Yisrael ."

"Everyone in Israel believes in God.  You can tell by how they drive."  -Rabbi Leonard Kravitz

"The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have run out." -Chinese proverb As long as we can speak there is civility.

"More than 300 years ago a ship by the name of the Mayflower left Plymouth for the New World. It was a great event in American and English history. I wonder how many Englishmen or how many Americans know exactly the date when that ship left Plymouth, how many people were on the ship, and what was the kind of bread that people ate when they left Plymouth. Well, more than 3,300 years ago the Jews left Egypt. It was more than 3,000 years ago and every Jew in the world knows exactly the date when we left. It was on the 15th of Nisan. The bread they ate was matzoth. Up to date all the Jews throughout the world on the 15th of Nisan eat the same matzoth, in America, in Russia, and tell the story of the exile from Egypt and tell what happened, all the sufferings that happened to the Jews since they went into exile. They finish by these two sentences: "This year we are slaves; next year we will be free. This year we are here; next year we will be in Zion, the land of Israel." Je...

Two Jews died in Brisk on the same day.   A poor shoemaker passed away in the morning, followed at no onetime by a wealthy, prominent member of the Jewish community.    Although halacha teaches that the one who dies first must be buried first, the burial society, which received a handsome sum of money from the heirs of the wealthy man, decided to attend to him first.   When Reb Chayim was informed of the decision of the society, he sent word to attend to the shoemaker first.   The members of the Chevra Kaddisha did not listen.   When Reb Chayim learned of their refusal, he left his study, went to the house of the wealthy man, and chased the members of the burial society away.   He then saw to it that the poor man, who had died first, was buried before the rich man. Reb Chayim’s actions and the halacha reflect the Torah’s statement that every person ins created in God’s image and thus deserves equal treatment, regardless of his or her standing in the...