A Soulful Journey

The following is attributed to Charles Schulz, creator of the 'Peanuts' comics. You don't have to actually answer the questions. Just ponder on them. Just read the e-mail straight through, and you'll get the point.   1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.  2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.  3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant.  4 Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.  5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.  6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners. How did you do? The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday.  These are no second-rate achievers.  They are the best in their fields.  But the applause dies...  Awards tarnish...  Achievements are forgotten.  Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners. Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one: 1. List a few teachers who aided your...

A legend tells  when the emperor Hadrian boasted that he was greater than Moses.  After all, Moses is dead while Hadrian was alive. Rabbi Joshua thought  and asked Hadrian to prohibit anyone in the empire from lighting a fire for three days. Hadrian agrees, but that evening they see smoke rising in the distance. A sick Roman official needs hot water. Rabbi Joshua has made his point: Hadrian cannot enforce his own command even for one night  while still alive , while Moses prohibited Jews from lighting fire on Shabbat centuries earlier and they still obey him. What  makes us who we are is both our lineage and fidelity to an eternal faith.

  כל המחובר לטמא טמא והמחובר לטהור טהור וכולן אחת אחת בפני עצמן טהורות Any thing that is attached/connected to an item that is impure becomes impure. Any thing that is attached/connected to an item that is pure becomes pure.                          - Mishna  Keleim 12 While this Mishna is concerned with the laws of purity that were of singular importance in Temple times, it has great import in every era.  Values change with the company we keep.  Mix with people  who use foul language and soon we speak as them.  The same goes for drugs, lying, faithlessness.... And, of course, the opposite also applies. The right company can realign our moral compass with tzedaka, prayer, kindness....

 There, where one burns books, one in the end burns men.   -Heinrich Heine Book burnings no longer take place, for the most part.  Our corollary in modernity is the obfuscation of knowledge.  Facts are few, opinions many.  When opinions are viewed as facts and differing “facts” are reduced to ridicule we face the modern version of book burning.  As Heinrich Heine opined, what follows is extremely dangerous.

Stevie Morris was asked by his teacher to find the elusive mouse hiding in her  classroom.  No one else could find the little creature but this child was special and the teacher knew it.  His keen sense of hearing compensated for his blindness.  She appreciated his gift and let him know that he was special. Years later, after he changed his name to Steve Wonder, he never forgot how this one teacher in urban Detroit was the start of his new life of creating music. -Paul Harvey How wonderful this life would be if everyone was told how special they are.

  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that " the Bible is meant to be our critic, not we its critic."