A Soulful Journey

May you live to see your world fulfilled, May your destiny be for worlds still to come, And may you trust in generations past and yet    to be. May your heart be filled with intuition and your words be filled with insight. May songs of praise ever be upon your tongue and your vision be on a straight path before you. May your eyes shine with the light of holy words and your face reflect the brightness of the heavens. May your lips speak wisdom and your fulfillment be in righteousness even as you ever yearn to hear the words of the Holy Ancient One of Old.   - Berakhot 17a, trans. Lawrence Kushner

A folk saying: "What the child says out in the street comes either from his father or his mother."  -T almud, Sukkah 56b Think then speak.

The story is told the Bratzlaver rebbe, the famous Rebbe Nachman, who on the eve of his daughter’s betrothal remarked, “If the Messiah comes my daughter shall be married in Jerusalem.  If not, then in Bratzlav.”  - Rabbi Jonathan Magonet Lose hope and you have lost reason for being.  Hope and you will find that the stars will always shine.

"If you want to send a message call Western Union. "  - Sam Goldwyn If you want to communicate speak from your heart.

During the first Kneisiah Hagedolah in Marienbad, the Hafetz Hayim was asked to lead the assemblage of rabbis and rebbeim in Birkat Hamazon.  He asked himself: “Why do I merit this honor?  It cannot be because of my great scholarship," he mused.  “It cannot be because of my piety,” he continued.  “It must be because I am a kohen, which of course is not due to any personal merit.  I inherited it from my ancestors.”   - Rabbi Morris Shapiro It behooves us to be be modest.  If we have any claim to merit it is because we have been brought to this place on the  shoulders  of giants.

"Abraham was unable to save Ishmael. Isaac was unable to save Esau."  - Talmud, Sanhedrin It is up to us to do our best to encourage everyone to do teshuvah, to help them turn their lives around.  Yet, the Torah tells that sometimes we are incapable of doing so.

"May the works of my hands become points of blessing in the upper worlds. May my planting and tending this earth add blessing and abundance to this world, and may the prayers woven by this work arouse the spiritual sap that will nourish these plantings, to make the flow of love and blessing flow over them, so that they grow and bloom, for good and for blessing, for good life and for peace. May what grows in this earth and in our hearts add to the ripening of the fruit of “the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden.” May the whole of Creation return to its original strength, and may all the sparks scattered by our wrong deeds return to be included in the majestic might of the Tree of Life, alongside all the sparks gathered and made whole by our good and loving deeds in this world."  - Rabbi David Seidenberg

The quality of mercy is not strained, It droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven Upon the place beneath; it is twice blessed;It blessed him that gives and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The thrones monarch better than his crown .  - Shakespeare It is so easy to be compassionate.  Just open your heart and your soul will begin to sing.

When we pray, "Lord be merciful to me, a sinner," does it really help? Maybe the answer lies in an incident that took place in 1347, when King Edward III of England invaded France and besieged the city of Calais.  Because of the city's resistance, he vowed to destroy it. Finally the city's burgesses came out and pleaded for clemency if they surrendered.  The King answered, "My word is pledged. I cannot go back." But Queen Philippa interposed saying, "I pray thee, gentle sir, for the love of me, forgive them."  And the city was saved.  - A. Stauderman There is always hope.  Do not give up as we stand before the King.  Just open your heart.

Ricky Ricardo comes home and finds Lucy searching the living room floor. When he asks what she is doing, she replies, “I lost my earring in the bed room” “What are you doing looking for it out here?” he asks. Lucy says, “Because the light is better out here.”  - Stuart Robinson Sometimes we deliberately avoid looking into our own shadows.

The difference between justice and mercy is dramatically shown in an incident, probably apocryphal, attributed to Napoleon. A young soldier has been found guilty of sleeping while on sentry duty and had been sentenced to death. His distraught mother finally got an interview with Napoleon to plead for her son. He was her only child. He was young. He had an otherwise blameless record. “Yet he endangered the entire army by his action,” said Napoleon.  “Justice demands that he should die.” “True, sire,” responded the woman.  “But I plead not for justice, but for mercy.” “Very well then,” answered Napoleon.  “I will have mercy.”   -A. Stauderman Practice being  merciful  with those around you.

In the little museum at the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, the tranquil scenes in the dioramas of ancient American Indian life depict women weaving baskets, cooking, taking care of the children.  In one, the men are standing around staring into the wilderness, often with a dog at their side. I overheard a woman remark how typical it was to see the women doing the work while the men lounged around doing nothing.  The woman was wrong.  Those ancient cliff dwellers weren’t simply doing nothing – they were watching out. Watching out is still a popular pastime in the masculine genes.  What does a small boy do when he climbs a tree?  He watches out!  A grown man leaning against his tractor, seemingly doing nothing, is actually obeying the deep urge to watch out.  Even a boy standing on a street corner or sitting on an apartment stair is doing what nature intended for men to do - watching out.   –Gene H...

Pvt. Shimon Ohana, on his first combat assignment, leapt forward to protect a child and took a bullet in the chest. When he arrived at Hadassah-University Hospital he was initially declared dead. After surgery and treatments, the medical team was able to revive Pvt. Ohana. But his recovery stalled because he refused to eat. They spoke to his mother Rachel and found out that Shimon was a picky eater. So the surgeon asked her: what does your son like to eat? Well, only her homemade meatballs. So, Mrs. Obama was sent home to Beersheba to cook her son spicy Moroccan meatballs. The next morning, she returned with the meatballs, and she started to feed her son. As Sofer describes it: “When Shimon finished his first meatball, he made awful gulping sounds. At first Rahel thought she’d injured her son, but then she realized he simply wanted more. His doctor nodded. Shimon swallowed another meatball and made the same scary sounds. Four meatballs later he was calm and quiet. Before long he l...

Scientists tell us that the human mind can store as many as 600 memories a second in a lifetime of 75 years with the slightest strain.  That works out to 1,419,120,000,000 memories!  When memories becomes flabby, lack of mental exercise (more than advancing years) is usually the reason.  See Psalm 103:2

On April 10, 1971, The New York Times reported about two academics at Princeton: Prof. John M. Darley, who teaches psychology at the university, and C. Daniel Batson, a Doctor of Theology doing graduate work in psychology there while teaching at the Princeton Theological Seminary, ...recruited 40 volunteers from the seminary. Explaining that they were studying the vocational placement of seminarians, Dr. Batson and Professor Darley asked each to record a brief talk on a given text. To half the volunteers they presented a text on job opportunities; the other half got a text of the Good Samaritan parable. (Which talks about people refusing to help an injured man on the side of the road - C.S.)......One by one the volunteers were then told to proceed from Green Hall to record their talk in the Annex....The volunteers were dispatched at 15-minute intervals....and there - lying in a doorway in the alley - was a young man coughing and groaning and possibly in pain. The “victim” had been put ...

"The Hebrew nation compensated for the insignificance of its members and territory by its religious genius, its tenacious belief; its poems and histories cling to the soil of the globe like primitive rocks...."   Ralph Waldo Emerson Now we have that home.

“There are three things I always forget.  Names, Faces - and the third I can’t remember.”   - Italo Suevo It is good to be aware of one’s flaws.

One Tisha B’Av Napoleon rode by a synagogue in small town and noticed Jews sitting on the ground and wailing bitterly. “Why are the Jews crying?” he asked a bystander. “They are mourning their land which was destroyed about two thousand years ago,” he was informed. These words deeply impressed Napoleon.  “A nation that can mourn over the destruction and loss of their land which occurred two thousand years ago,” he exclaimed, “such a people will never perish.    They may be certain they will survive and hat their land will eventually be restored to them.” Remember.  Never give hope.  Never jettison your faith.  Remain true.

"It's so simple to be wise.  Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." Sam Levenson

Rabbi David Wolpe tells of the student who asked a rabbi why he puts on  tefillin , and the rabbi says, “You have to put on  tefillin  for a year in order for me to answer that question.”    Being religious means a  commitment by you to God.

According to Greek a legend a woman came to the River Styx to be ferried across to the Region of the Departed. Charon, the kindly ferryman, reminded her that it was her privilege to drink the water of Lethe, and thus forget the life she was leaving. Eagerly, she said, "I will forget how I suffered! And, he added, "Remember too that you will forget how you rejoiced." The woman said, "I will forget my failures." Charon chimed, "And your victories." She continued, "I will forget how I have been hated." "And also how you have been loved," added the ferryman. She paused and then left the waters of Lethe untasted rather than give up on life's memories. Remember this story when darkness descends.  Once there was light.  And there will come a time when light returns.

Hayom Harat Olam : “This moment is pregnant with eternity" – Rabbi Gerson Cohen   The syntax of  harat  in  Ha-yom harat olam  presents an interesting problem to translators.  Harat  remains the construct of the noun  harah  and  harat olam  is parallel to  ahavat olam , as an example. The translation "This day is the birth of the world" is superior to "this day gives birth to the world," because it does not confuse a noun with a verb. Obviously, the root is ' harah '.  Even Shoshan suggests that  harat  is a  nismakh  form of the substantive from the adjectival form  harah , but this is likely not correct.   The origin is what sparks the controversy. It is Jeremiah 20:17, where the  pshat  is "and her (my mother's) womb (would have been) pregnant forever" (i.e. I would never have been born). Understood as Jeremiah spoke it regarding his own struggles, the word  harat...

A rabbi saw a member of his congregation walking his dog.  "What a nice dog you have," the rabbi said. "This is my Kaddish," answered the man sarcastically. The Rabbi responded, "I am delighted that you have a better Kaddish than your father had."  - Rabbi Hillel Silverman. Never forget where you came from.  Know where you are going.  Do the right thing.  Remember.

Rabbi Akiva had a daughter, and Chaldean astrologers told him that on the same day that she enters the wedding canopy, a snake will bite her and she will die. She was very worried about this. On that day, her wedding day, she took the ornamental pin from her hair and stuck it into a hole in the wall for safekeeping, and it happened that it entered directly into the eye of the snake. In the morning, when she took the pin, the snake was pulled and came out with it. Her father Rabbi Akiva said to her: What did you do to merit being saved from the snake? She told him: In the evening a poor person came and knocked on the door, and everyone was preoccupied with the feast and nobody heard him. I stood and took the portion that you had given me and gave it to him. Rabbi Akiva said to her: You performed a mitzva, and you were saved i...

"Happiness is good health and a bad memory." - Ingrid Bergman It is vital to remember who we are, where we come from, but learn to forget the bad.

“ When I was young I had such a good memory that I remembered things that never happened.” – Mark Twain We all have selective memories.  May we so conscious as to select only the good ones.

"Know yourself that each and every thing in the world has a heart, and also the world in its entirety has a heart. And the toe nail on the foot of the heart of the world is more heartful than the heart of any other heart."  ~ Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, Tale of the Seven Beggar s

Memory is the glue that keeps the Jewish people together.  In the novel Mila 18, one of the characters makes the statement, "When a Jew says, 'I believe' what he really means is remembering." When Elie Wiesel received the Congressional Medal of Freedom he said, "To be a Jewish to remember.  To forget is to deny our people and ourselves." Keep learning so as not to forget.