A Soulful Journey

  Hasidim are of telling this story: Once deep in the forest their leader, the Rebbe, came upon a beautiful palace. Through the gate in its high wall he saw that the windows shone with light  and sounds of feasting and joy could be heard from within. "How can I enter this palace?" The rebbe asked the gatekeeper. "You may never enter. The palace has been forbidden to you." Despite these words, the rebbe was drawn to the loveliness of the palace making an inner promise to remain by the gate. There he sat waiting, his heart full of sorrow and longing. Years passed. The Rebbe grew old and frail but the dream of entering the palace remained bright in his heart. One morning, the Rebbe looked up and saw that the ancient hinges of the great gate turning, turning, and the path to the palace was clear and the doors of the palace wide open. Joyful music was ringing out to welcome him. As the Rebbe drew near to approach the palace, he stopped and asked the gate keeper, "Wh

  Sayings of a Jewish Buddha If there is no self, whose arthritis is this? Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated? Drink tea and nourish life; with the first sip, joy; with the second sip, satisfaction; with the third sip, peace; with the fourth, a Danish. Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story. Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems. What would you talk about? The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single Oy. There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that? Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis. The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be

 "I have no intention of dying so long as I do things.  And if I do things, there is no need to die.  So I will live a long, long time."  - Albert Schweitzer This is a timely message especially in dark days when we feel hopelessness.  The antidote to such a funk is to take action, make a difference, work to dispel the blank emptiness around us.  There is always a response to the dark.  Get up.

  Once upon a time a cruel Pasha forbade the Jews of the little town of Safed in Eretz Yisrael to kindle lights after dark. He wanted to keep the children from their books. But the children, who were accustomed to study Torah in the evenings, de­cided to take a daring step. They went down into the valley as it grew dark and began hunting fireflies and putting them into boxes. When they had caught a great many, they returned home and went to their schoolhouse. There they released the hundreds of insects. And wonder of wonders Instead of flying away, the fireflies clustered above the tables, giving light for the children to study by. But a watchman, seeing the glow, rushed to the Pasha to report that the Jews were disobeying his orders. The Pasha called his guards and galloped furiously to the Jewish quarter. When he reached the schoolroom, he stared in astonishment at the scene. There sat the boys over their books, studying the Holy Scriptures and over the tables hovered and blinked the

  "When a person has reason to cry, and he wants to cry, but is not able to cry—that’s the greatest cry of all." ~Menachem Mendel of Kotzk

  “My days are consumed like smoke, My bones are charred as the dead, My heart is withered as grass, For I have neglected to eat my daily bread.”    Psalm 102 Why would life be so desolate just because you did not eat bread?  A better question is, ‘what is bread to the psalmist?’  Bread is the fabric of all life.   Within the tradition, the all-encompassing blessing over food is the one for bread.  Whenever a Jew sits down to eat there is the regular staple of bread present.  It is the same with the Sabbath when we place on our table, two loaves of special bread, hallah.  When you say the blessing over bread it encompasses the entire meal.  Everything else is subsumed under the category of bread.  It is not the same with any other blessing, only bread.  What makes bread so special? In fact, the blessing for bread is actually wrong.  The blessing read, “Who brings forth bread from the earth.”  Does God really do this?  Or is it more correct to say that God brings forth wheat from the ea

There is a story about an old man who loved books.   It was a joy for him in his old age.  all his life he had worked hard to collect this great collection of works.  Carefully, he hand picked each volume and meticulously placed on his shelf.  Every day he would reach out into his vast library and pick out a tome to poke his nose into and become lost in its pages.   Hours would pass unnoticed as he sat curled in his quiet chair, reading. With time came problems.  First his vision failed.  It was all he could do now to walk through his collection and touch each binding.  The old man remembered where they all were and he derived pleasure from touching and holding his treasures. Soon came the next problem.  Finances became stretched taut to the point of breaking.  The old man's children met to discuss what to do:  They decided to sell all the precious books and replace them with bound volumes that held blank pages. "Papa will not know the difference" they told one another. 

  When you come to the land and you plant any tree, you shall treat its fruit as forbidden; for three years it will be forbidden and not eaten. In the fourth year, all of its fruit shall be sanctified to praise the Lord. In the fifth year, you may eat its fruit.  -Leviticus 19:23-25  Tu B'Shvat is the 15th day of the Jewish month of  Shvat . "Tu" is not really a word; it is the number 15 in Hebrew. Each Hebrew letter stands for a number. In the case of this holiday the "T" (tet) equals 9 and the "u" (vov) is 6. Added together they are 15.  Tu B'Shvat is known as the New Year for Trees.  There are four new years... the first of Shevat is the new year for trees according to the ruling of Beit Shammai; Beit Hillel, however, places it on the fifteenth of that month . - Mishnah  Rosh Hashanah 1:1  Tu B'Shevat is the new year for the purpose of calculating the age of trees for tithing. In Leviticus we are directed to tithe the fruit of trees. The fou

  A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth is Putting On its Shoes …attributed to Mark Twain, by Jonathan Swift.

May you have enough happiness to keep you sweet  enough trials to keep you strong  enough sorrow to keep your human enough hope to keep you happy  enough failure to keep you humble  enough success to keep you eager  enough friends to give you comfort  enough wealth to meet your needs enough enthusiasm to look forward  enough faith to banish depression  enough determination to make each day better than yesterday. anon

  Ask a Jew in the Land of Israel why she may be murdered tomorrow, and she will tell you, “For no more than living here as a Jew.” Ask a Jew why he may die in an explosion, and he will tell you, “For nothing more than educating my children in our sacred texts.” Ask Jews why they may be kidnapped and taken hostage, and they will tell you, “For nothing more than rejoicing on a Jewish festival.”   In other words, those who merited this kindness to the thousandth generation, according to Rabbi Natan, were Jews who were otherwise “unremarkable,”: and who did “unremarkable” things, except for the fact that they chose to do those “unremarkable” things— to live as Jews—in the land of Israel .   -Rabbi Natan

  The Wise Words of an Old Washerwoman from Mississippi Oseola McCarty died in 1999 at age 91 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi where she had lived her entire life. Because she had to provide care of a sick aunt, her education ended in the 6th grade. For nearly 75 years she worked as a washerwoman, washing the clothes by hand. Even though some people had given her a washing machine sometime in the 1960’s, Ms. McCarty refused to use it. She felt it just couldn’t do as good a job as she could with soap, a hot tub of water, and a washboard. She was paid in dollar bills, coins, a handful of cash. When the arthritis in her hands made it impossible to do the work, she finally retired. By then, having lived a simple life for decades, she had $280,000 in the bank. She had made friends with some of the staff at the bank who advised her about her savings. And because of this connection, when Ms. McCarty decided to donate part of the money to a worthy cause, she established a scholarship fu

We pray for children who put chocolate fingers everywhere, who like to be tickled, who stomp in puddles and ruin their new pants, who sneak popsicles before supper, who erase holes in math workbooks, who can never find their shoes... And we pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers, who never "counted potatoes", who are born in places in which we wouldn't be caught dead, who never go to the circus, who live in an X-rated world. We pray for children who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, who sleep with the dog and bury goldfish, who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money, who cover themselves with Band-aids and sing off key, who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink, who slurp their soup. And we pray for those who never get dessert, who have no safe blanket to drag behind them, who watch their parents watch them die, who can't find any bread to steal, who don&#

An old joke that was repeated in Russia: Ivan has a goat and Boris does not.  Boris is resentful. One night Boris is visited by his guardian angel.  "I see your problem," she says.  "Now I will give you what you want." Boris brightens. "You mean," he exclaims, "you're going to kill Ivan's goat?" Work and pray for what you need. Do not undermine others for what they have.  This is what is meant by, "Do not covet."

"Even those things which you may regard as completely superfluous to the creation of the world such as flea, gnats and flies; even they are included in the creation of the world and carry out the Divine purpose through everything - even snake, scorpion or frog!" - Beresheit Rabbah Our sages fully understood the vital importance of all that exists not he planet.  Everything that God made had a purpose.  Everything.

"Peary relates that on his polar trip he traveled one whole day toward the north, making his sleigh dogs run briskly.  At night he checked his bearings to determine his latitude and noticed with great surprise that he was much further south than in the morning.  He had been toiling all day toward the north on an immense iceberg drawn southwards by an ocean current." Human beings are in the  same situation as Commander Peary on the iceberg,  Man's experience is determined by his interaction with the environment. -Ortega y Gasset