A Soulful Journey

When Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai became deathly ill, his students entered to visit him. When he saw them, he cried. They said to him: Master! Lamp of Israel! Steadfast Pillar! Mighty Hammer! Why are you crying? He said to them: If I was being taken before a king of flesh and blood, it could be that he would rule today but not tomorrow. If he was angry at me, it is possible that his anger would pass; and if he imprisoned me, his imprisonment would not last forever. Even if he killed me, this death would not be an eternal death. It is possible that I might be able to appease him with words and bribe him with gifts. Even under those conditions, I would be afraid. But now they bring me before the king who is the king of all kings, the blessed Holy One, who lives forever and ever. If he is angry at me, his anger is forever; and if he incarcerates me, his incarceration is forever. If he kills me, then the execution is for eternity; nor can I appease him with words or bribe him with gifts. A...

Robert Raines tells a beautiful story about a young man named David who left home for the first time. From the age of seven he had lived with his uncle and aunt, who sold fruit at a peddler’s stand. They loved and cared for him. He stood on the train platform getting ready to leave. He grabbed the rough hands of this peddler uncle and said, “How can I ever begin to repay you for what you’ve done for me!” His uncle spoke: “David, there’s a saying, ‘The love of parents goes to the children, but the love of these children goes to their children’.” ”But, David protested: “That’s not so.  I’ll always be trying to …” And then the aunt interrupted, “David, what your Uncle Asher means is that her parent’s love isn't to be paid back; it can only be passed on.”

Prime Minister Menachem Begin, on a visit to Washington, at an impressive dinner tendered to him and his wife at the National Portrait Gallery. In a sentimental mood, he indicated that he would reach the pinnacle, and we called the obstacles he had faced. Lifting a glass to toast to his wife, with whom he shared his flight and dinner, he cited the words of Jeremiah: “I remember your love for me in our youth, when we were first married, when you followed along with me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.”  Compare that view of marriage with the story told by Ilka Chase about her divorce from her first husband.  It was his second divorce.  When they parted ways she placed into his suitcase personal mementos with a message next to his wife: “I hope this reaches you in time.” – Rabbi Gerald Zelizer Live life and make it full of love.

"Death is nature's way of saying, 'Your table is ready'."  - Robin Williams Inevitable is death.  Therefore live every day as if it were your last.

All things that clasp and cherish Pass like dreams that we may not keep. Human hearts forget and perish, Human eyes must fall asleep. - Heinrich Heine, trans. Emma Lazarus

When my mother moved from Manhattan to a rural area in Connecticut, she missed the Yiddish newspaper,  The Forward , she had been reading for many years.  So my sisters and I decided to give her a subscription as a gift. I phoned  The Forward  and explained to the woman who answered that I wanted to buy a gift subscription for my mother. “We don’t do subscriptions,” she replied crisply. “We’ll set up and ordinary subscription for your mother and then  you  write her a nice letter and tell her it’s a gift.   She’ll love to hear from you.” – Sophie Glazer Call someone you love.

"I shall dwell in Your tent forever." -Psalms 61:5 "Forever" means in every universe . An ancient rabbi asked, "Can anyone expect to live in two worlds at the same time?  In the world and in the world beyond? Yes.  When a teacher departs from his world and his students repeat his teaching, at that every moment his lips speak speak from beyond the grave and say, " I am living in two worlds; in the world I left and in the world where I am now." - Yevamot 77a, see Rashi We all come from place of great holiness.  We left there when first conceived.  Deep in our unconscious we still remember fragments, even as this world demands our attention.

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure ." -Clarence Darrow Having total control over one's feelings is the work of a tzaddik .  Not acting on our feelings is the work of being human.

One night after a date with her new boyfriend, my 16-year-old daughter, Emily rushed into the kitchen to share her news.  “Mom, he kissed me!” she announced proudly. Husband and daughter have always been close, and he had been having a hard time facing the fact that she was growing up. I knew he might not wish to hear of her first kiss. Emily, however, had already told him. I was relieved and touched when she repeated their conversation. ”Dad,” she had whispered, “he kissed me.” ”Honey,” he whispered that, “I don’t blame him.”  -Rebecca Braker Love is wonderful but it can be painful if we fear that sharing it will diminish the love we receive.  The truth is that love is not divisible.

Recently divorced, I didn’t really feel like celebrating my birthday. But when my seven-year-old daughter, Sarah and her 17-year-old brother, Scott, presented me with a new watch and a birthday cake, I had to enter into the fun. My daughter and I were sitting at the kitchen table eating the cake when Sarah announced, “Mama, I have one more gift for you. Hold out your hand and close your eyes.” As I did, she reached into her tiny purse. Then I felt her hand gently touch mine. “You can open your eyes now,” she send. When I looked at my hand, it appeared empty.  Before I could utter a word, she explained, “It’s happiness, Mama.” I truly believed, then, the best person for the ones that come wrapped in love.” – Patricia Sharp

One of the most penetrating insights into sin comes from Dante’s Divine Comedy.  It can be found in the “Purgatory” portion, where Dante portrays himself climbing the mountain out of purgatory accompanied by the Roman poet Virgil.  Slowly moving up the mountain, he is purged in turn by each of the seven deadly sins. Virgil makes the observation that love is the basic driving force of all virtue, and at the root of all sin is love-gone-wrong. Love is the highest good, but when it is diverted from a true aim and perverted into a false form, it becomes sin.

A little girl was hospitalized.  As the days passed and the test results were collected, it became obvious that she would not be able to be home on Christmas Day. Being from a prosperous and caring family, they showered her with expensive gifts in an effort to overcome this unfortunate circumstance.   There were great overstuffed animals, including a 6 ft. tall giraffe, dolls, dollhouses and games of every description.  The room was transformed into a miniature Toys-R-Us.  Every time her parents came into the hospital they brought another present.  But they were never able to stay long for they were always due at some luncheon, dinner party or society function.  One day the child was particularly upset in the midst of all these fine gifts and held desperately on to the mother as she gave her a kiss and hug before rushing out to the next engagement. The mother tried to interest her in the newest toy she had brought. Throug...

The focus of prayer is not myself; I turn away from myself to God in the act of prayer. We go hopelessly astray if we think of prayer as a selfish endeavor to persuade or inveigle or beg God to do us a favor, or win us a battle, or even help us when we are in pain. God is no bellhop or housemaid who jumps when we press a button or ring a bell. God does not come to us, but we to God. Prayer does not change God, but changes the person who prays. Our prayers are answered not when we are given what we ask, but when we are challenged to be what we can be. If I recite what I want, it is not to remind You of my wants, O God, but only to make myself aware that things are not always in my hands alone. True worship is not a petition to God for favors: it is a speaking and a summons to ourselves. By being benevolent, people rise to a height, they approach God. Therefore, the beginning of all true prayer is doing good. Who rises from prayer a better person has had an an...

  Five dollars was a matter of tremendous importance in out household on the Lower East Side of New York.  There were not many five dollar bills for use at any one time. I was a kid of about 10 or 11 and I lost a five dollar bill. My mother gave it to me to buy something and I lost it. I don’t know how, but I lost it and that’s all. I sat in the park most of the day afraid to go home.  I walked the streets. Wherever I went I kept looking for that five dollar bill. I knew that this was foolish, but I was frantic. I kept thinking that maybe I could find another five dollar bill to replace the one I lost. Finally it was dark, and I just had to go home. I hardly knew where or how to begin.  What could I say? But I have to say. I told my mother that I had lost the money.  She grabbed me tight and seemed to be as happy as could be and kept repeating in Yiddish over and over again, “It’s better than giving it to a doctor.”   -Harry Golden...

A friendly neighbor allowed the neighborhood children to play in his lovely front yard after school.  One day the sidewalk in front of his house was being replaced to level the walkway.  As children would do, they wrote in the freshly laid cement and added all sorts of names and stick figures.  This angered the friendly neighbor who started yelling at the kids.  The children's parents were shocked to see their neighbor get so angry at their children whom he always liked and they pointed out to him their dismay at his behavior.  He called out at them: "I love your children in the abstract but not in the concrete." Rabbi Gershon Weissman   It is easy to love from a  distance and harder when we are up close and see all their warts.

Rabbah and Rav Zeira feasted together on Purim.  They drank and drank until both were saturated with alcohol when Rabbah arose and cut Rav Zeira’s throat.  The next day Rabbah prayed for him and Rav Zeira was resurrected. The next year he asked, “Will you honor me and come to the Purim feast with me?” Rav Zeira replied, “A miracle does not always happen.”  - Megilla 7b A lesson to the wise: miracles do happen but we have to live responsibly.

Once, a Sunday School teacher asked her class about Lot's wife. A slightly confused youngster, mixing metaphors, responded, "Lot's wife was a Pillar of Salt by day and a Ball of Fire at night."

French poet Apollinaire wrote: Come to the edge No, we will fall, Come to the edge. No, we will fall. They came to the edge. He pushed them and they flew.

An 11-year-old boy and his father went fishing the day before bass season started. At first the boy caught sunfish and perch, which were fine to keep. When his pole bent and doubled over, he knew something huge was on the other end. His father watched with admiration as the boy skillfully worked the fish in and finally lifted it, exhausted from the lake.   It was the largest fish he had ever seen, a bass. In the moonlight, the boy and his father looked at the hand some fish. Then the father lit a match and looked at his watch. It was 10 PM--two hours before the bass season officially opened. He looked at the fish, then at the boy. “You’ll have to put it back, son,” he said. “Dad,” the boy cried. “There will be other fish,” his father said. “Not as big as this one,” the boy protested. The boy looked around the lake… He looked again at his father. Even though no one had seen them, nor could anyone ever know what time he caught the fish, the boy could tell by his ...

"When love was strong we could have made our bed on a sword's edge. Now when it becomes weak, a bed sixty cubits is not large enough for us."  - Sanhedrin

Reb Menachem Mendl said, "Man is the language of God."

Moshe, a new member of the shul, was asked to do hagbah. It was awful, a pitiful sight. He could barely lift the sefer Torah; he almost dropped it and, clutching it shakily, sat down very quickly. He was very embarrassed so he made a resolution to go to the gym and work out. For the next few months, he lifted weights and did push-ups, sit ups, and pull ups. He got himself buff and ready. Simchat Torah came and Moshe was all set. He went to shul, all excited and ready to be called. Of course, during Hallel, when the drinks were passed round, he indulged. Then it happened! He heard the gabbai call his name so he rushed up to the bimah, grabbed the sefer Torah, lifted it, and, arms wide, opened up at least ten columns—the hardest Hagbah of the year! He swung the Torah to the left and then to the right, according to the halakhah, so everyone could see the text. He felt very proud of his perfect hagbah. Turning to the ga...

An attempted jailbreak in Okanogan, Washington, was foiled when two inmates trying to escape during the night made so much noise chipping away through an eight-inch concrete wall that the other prisoners complained to the guards, who caught the men in a crawl space.  Sheriff Jim Weed said that if the men had been able to chip through the outside wall, they would have found themselves eighty feet above the ground. Life does not always go the way we want it, but it usually goes like it should.

When someone you love is falling apart with the dreaded disease that seems to be consuming him little by little, you become steeped in fear and anger and denial and often feel helpless. What can you do? What is the purpose of all this? “Why, dear God, why?” is the question that goes around and around in your head. You’ve heard it said that when you have your health you have everything. I wonder about that. Do you really? My beloved husband is sick. I live and feel and breathe these things and live with the questions always. But I have found one of the answers. I give it to you. No it is not true that when you have your health you have everything. What is true is, if you have someone who truly cares about you, when you do not have your health, you have everything. It is easier to buy good health than to buy good love. No amount of money can do that. Love us a free gift. It can give us all the strength we need to go on when there ain’t no more to give…. Screaming out in the quiet, “...

Humanity cannot stand to be too close, one human being to another.  Schopenhauer used the simile of freezing porcupines. “Some people love the Chinese because they cannot love their neighbor.”  -Voltaire Is this you?  Is it easier to be kind to those in distant lands than the needy here?

The founder of the Jewish ethical movement, Rabbi Israel Salanter tells the story of a strange town on a Shabbat when he was invited to eat with one of the town’s most respected families. Returning from Services, his host noticed to is great horror that his wife had forgotten to cover the hallot.  Fearful that Rabbi Salanter think his household was not knowledgeable about the tradition, the man yelled at his wife for forgetting this basic act. Mortified and blushing with shame, she ran to drape the cover over the bread. When it came time to recite the Kiddush, Rabbi Salanter stopped the man and said: “I am not sure the food in this house is kosher. It is a home that worries more about embarrassing bread than embarrassing people.”

With great love and care, You guided Israel You saved the ancient race, Leading them to self and well, To the gentle place Where You dwell.

A Rabbi who served as a chaplain in the army came home after the last war and he told his friends that he had received many letters from the members of his congregation back home. But the letter he liked the most, that he treasured the most, was a letter from a little girl who attended his religious school, and she wrote New Year greetings to him in a very childish manner, and then she closed the letter with this sentence: “We send our love and we hope that you live all your life.”

“…in Czarist Russia, there lived two Jews who had vowed to remain friends on to death. And so, when one of them was accused of subversive activities, the other hastened to exonerate him by taking the charges upon himself. Of course, they wound up in prison together. The judges were obviously confused: how could they condemn two men for the same crime?  The case attracted the Czar’s attention. He ordered the two Jews brought before and this is what he said to them: ”Don’t worry, I am going to set you free. The reason I asked to see you is that I wished to meet two men capable of such great loyalty. And now,” continued the czar, “I have a favor to ask of you: Take me to your third partner.” Commented the Rabbi of Rizhin: This is the deep and beautiful meeting of the Biblical verse: “When two people love one another, God becomes their partner.” –Elie Wiesel

Working the late shift at the supermarket, I had to fight the urge to change the slow music drifting through the loudspeaker. It was past midnight, and the music was putting me to sleep. I reached for the dial, but stopped when I saw them. An elderly couple, with the entire supermarket to themselves, were dancing down the frozen food aisle. They floated past the peas and corn, eyes fixed on each other. At the end of the lane, he dipped her.  A tear ran down her cheek. Then she smiled and mouthed the words, “I love you.” It was a great day to be on the night shift.    –David Yax I wish you this kind of love.

"The best things in life aren't things."  -Art Buchwald

"In the future a person will have to give account for everything that his or her eye saw and did not take time to appreciate." - Jerusalem Talmud 4:12

If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I say to somebody else, "I love you," I must be able to say, "I love you in everybody I love through you the world, I love in you also myself."  - Erich Fromm

At the estate of the distinguished Doubleday editor, a small head appeared over the fence-and in a big meek voice asked; ”Please, Mr. Beecroft, could I have my arrow back?” ”Certainly my boy,” he said with the spontaneous love that made him famous. “Where is it?” ”I think that it’s stuck in one of your cats.”   -Bennett Cerf Note to reader: Love will always be tested.

“My cousin and his wife own and operate a delicatessen. My aunt is the cashier. When my family was visiting, we went to the deli for lunch. As we pushed our trays to the cash register, my aunt spotted my son and told him the only payment she wanted was a kiss. He kissed her, my other son kissed her, my husband kissed her, and just after I had kissed, I saw the man behind the me smile and put away his wallet.”  - Lynda Howey Do not assume.

An orphaned girl, shunted from one agency to another, was found depositing letters in various secret corners. These letters, it was discovered, all had the same text: “To anyone who finds this letter, I LOVE YOU.” Like this tortured child, the world is dying from lack of love; it is starving for compassion. Either we love or we perish collectively.  – Rabbi Hayim Kieval

A debtor asked his friend how he could escape paying off his debtors. The friend suggested that he act mad, dancing, whistling, and laughing. When they came, they were frightened by the debtor and ran off. Pleased himself he sat down and laughed. The debtor also owed some money to his friend and when he came to claim it he again pretended to be crazy. "You ungrateful wretch!” the friend screamed. "I advised you on how to save your self and now you use it as a weapon against me?” Moral: Do not expect someone who has learned to be dishonest to be honest with you, even if you are their friend.

“One could have the brain of Einstein, the shrewdness of Barney Baruch, and the wisdom of Thoreau, but without Lady Luck in your corner you might just as well stay you to room and turn on the gas.”  - Groucho Marx Groucho was right about needing luck but wrong about giving up when we fail.

A woman wired her husband; “Can't pay hotel keeper. Send money immediately.” To which the husband replied, “Haven't any at present. Send in a few days. Meanwhile I send you 1,000 kisses.” Several days later another telegram arrived from his wife, “Don’t need money. Gave the hotel keeper a few of your kisses.” Do you mouth words of love or act on them?

Reb Shmuel Munkas, a disciple of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady, the Rebbe of Lubavitch what is disturbed by the fact that the artisans of the village advertise their services with large signs depicting their trade, for example a shoe for a shoemaker, a watch for watchmaker etc.. He noted that the Rebbe had so such sign so he climbed up onto the Rebbe’s gate.  Reb Shmuel would be the living advertisement for the Rebbe. Reb Shmuel wanted to the sign of life and vitality, a sign to the world that Jewish learning is critical. Question: What is the sign over your door?