A Soulful Journey

  When Moshe Rabbenu asked God what he should call Him, the Lord answered, " I Am what I Am ."  What God was saying to Moshe was that He exists, is real and never-changing.   God said those words to Moshe, He told them to Joshua, and the words continued to reverberate throughout the generations and epochs.  The Voice remains.  The Promise endures.  The Word of God has not changed.  He still Is.   My hope for you is that this  year unfolds to reveal many blessings.  May you find tucked inside each minute of the coming year, soulful joy and contentedness. new discoveries about your inner universe and the outer world.   May the Lord bless us all with wisdom to see through our own flaws and see beyond the flaws of others.  

  “The grave’s a fine and private place, / But none, I think, do there embrace.”  Andrew Marvell “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / With your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver Do not waste a moment.

  Not so long ago and old man in Russia started learning Hebrew.  That was illegal. A man from the KGB approached the old man and asked, "Tell me, what do you think you are doing?" The old man replied, "I am old.  I could die any time.  I want to learn Hebrew so I will understand what they are saying in heaven." "And what makes you think you are going to heaven, old man? Perhaps you are going to hell." The old man gazed at the KGB and said, "In that case, I already know Russian."  -Rabbi Jacob Radinsky   We work for heaven today.  What we do impacts our present and informs our future. For this reason, nothing is meaningless.  Nothing.

  Rabbi Eliezer said, "Repent one day before your death." "But," his disciples asked, "how does a person know when they are going to die?" "All the more reason, said Rabbi Eliezar "to repent today lest you die tomorrow. In this way, a person will spend their whole life in teshuva."   -Shabbat 153a 

  Good morning to You, Lord of the world! I, Levi Yitzhak, son of Sarah of Berditchev, am coming to You, in a legal matter concerning Your people Israel. What do You want of Israel? It is always, "Command the children of Israel," It is always, "Speak unto the children of Israel." Merciful Father! How many people are there in the world? Persians, Babylonians, Edomites! The Russians, what do they say? Our emperor is the emperor. The Germans, what do they say? Our kingdom is the kingdom. The English, what do they say? Our kingdom is the kingdom. But I, Levi Yitzhak, son of Sarah of Berditchev, say: I shall not go hence, nor nudge from my place until there be a finish until there be an end of exile - Glorified and sanctified be His great name." -Nahum Glatzer in  A Jewish Reader   How wonderful it would be if each of us would care for one another to this dredger.  Surely the Master of Creation would be moved to tears.

  "Please, God, make her well." Numbers 12:13   -Rabbi Joseph Telushkin  Moses' prayer for his sister, Miriam.

  When the Lord created Adam, the first being, He took the man through the Garden of Eden.  "See My works.  Look at how exquisite they are!  All that has been created is for you.  Do not spoil or desecrate this word because there is no one to repair it after you." Kohelet Rabbah 7:13  

As the etymology of that term [charity] (from the Latin root  caritas , or "love") implies, charity is a voluntary act of love by one person fo another. The analogous Hebrew term  tzedakah  (from a root meaning "to be just") has an altogether different connotation:  tzedakah  is an obligation rather than a voluntary act of grace, an obligation inherent in one’s membership in the community. Although benevolence ( khesed , in Hebrew) and acts of loving-kindness ( gemilut khasadim)  are valued, Jewish tradition holds that the poor should not be dependent on them; as human beings they have the right to a decent life - hence the non-poor are expected to help, in accordance with their means. As Jacob Neusener puts it: "The Jew no more ‘gives’ tzedekah than the citizen ‘gives’ incomes taxes to the government. You pay our taxes because you must."  From:  Charles Silberman,  A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today

  Living is not difficult.  We were not consulted - as far as we can recall - about being born.  The same will be true when we exit this world; it will happen without or permission. Living is easy: living a quality life is the hard part.  That is why the vast majority of our literature attempts to give meaning to the mundane.  Starting with the Torah, God guides us through various stages of moral devlopment.  From the simple living of Eden to the Laws of Noah to Sinai and the culmination of the revealing of the 613 mitzvot God teaches us through example and law. Countless times throughout history, it has been has proven that humanity, left to its own minds, are ingenious crafters of vicious behavior. With a navigational guide to point us in the right direction we have a much better track record. With this thought in mind it is curious that the Talmud warns us, "In a place where you drink water do not throw stones." - Baba Kamma 92b 

"Anyone who gives tzedaka in a brusk manner with gloom over their face nullifies the merit of the act. Even with the gift was a thousand pieces of gold is the tzedaka voided. One must give cheerfully, with a whole heart, sympathizing with the receiver. As it is written: "Did I not weep for the one whose day was difficult? Was not my soul pained for the sake of the poor?" (Job 30:25). Rambam, Mishnah Torah, "Gifts to the Poor" 10:4   We know that tzedaka is a mitzvah.  that is, it is a non negotiable deed that is required of us by God.  What is no mandated is how we feel about doing the tzedaka or what is our physical disposition when we act.   Rambam comes to inform us that as an additional feature of tzedaka* -   we must be joyful (or at least appear that way) in the act.   There is need to further degrade the needy by making them feel like they are depriving us with their hand outstretched to us. Preserving the dignity of a human is paramount.  After all, wh

Caring for others in the Jewish tradition is mutli-faceted.  It is not as simple as writing  check when we feel like it.  It is much more complex. One story tells of a poor yeshiva bachur (student) who studied all day long and depended on the generosity of the own to feed him  This particular yeshiva bachur was sitting at the table of one of the town's matriarchs.  He sat before a plate of noodle soup.  Bending over, he put his ear to the bowl. "What are you doing?" inquired the woman. "Shh.  I am listening to the noodles talking." "What are they saying?" "One noodle is calling to the other, 'Where are you?'"   A cute story but like all good stories, it contains an element of truth.  Those are dependent on us should not have to resort to pleading or begging.  We only have things to share.  We must not be stingy with what God has placed in our care.  So how dd we know when and what to give the poor?  This is spelled out by the great co

  Shammai, the wise teacher of old, antagonist of Hillel said, "Be sure to greet every person with a joyful face."   Avot 1:16 Why? Why bother putting on a happy face for people? Two reasons. The first is that they deserve as much cheer as you do. What we want when we go to the bank is not have a sour, unforgiving person snarling at us. Or a person madly leaning on their horn from behind at the intersection. We want a world where people treat us with dignity, equanimity. Others want what we want. Even more, they deserve what we deserve. Another part of this equation is that we are God’s flock. We are a covenanted people bound to God first through the ancient Patriarchs of the Torah and then again at Mt. Sinai. That means we have a special relationship to our Master and must therefore represent Him in a way that befits our connection. When we "act out" we betray the trust in that relationship. The world will always know us as "Jews" and that is why we have

  Two thousand years ago, Rabban Gamliel made the observation,   "Make His will your will."   Avot 2:4 This is a powerful idea in our faith.  We are asked to bend our desires to what God wants.  Perhaps Rabban Gamliel said this because he understood the power of the  yetser  (the ego force) inside us.  It pushes us to be cruel.  It laughs when someone falls and hurts themselves because it happened to  them .  The yetser is ruthless in its insatiable desire to conquer, humiliate, and take delight when our competitors crash and are burnt up.   Rabban Gamliel fought with the  yetser  in a  lifelong struggle.  He knew that the one sure way to insure that the  yetser  urge was kept in check was to subjugate it and himself to God alone.

It is customary on the day for the Pesach that we rid our homes of anything containing leaven.  As we discard or burn the vestiges of what is left over we traditionally say: "All leaven or anything leavened which is in my possession, whether I have seen it or not, whether I have observed it or not, whether I have removed it or not, shall be considered nullified and ownerless as the dust of the earth." Others seek to add the spiritual dimension of ridding ourselves of leaven saying: Make all the sitra achara (negative forces), all the  kelipot , and all wickedness be consumed in smoke, and remove the dominion of evil from the earth. Remove with a spirit of destruction and a spirit of judgment all that distresses the  Shechina , just as You destroyed Egypt and its idols in those days, at this time.  Amen , Selah.

  What’s the difference between prayer in shul and prayer in a casino? In a casino, you really mean it. What is we  reversed that?  What if our prayer was the most critical word we would ever utter?

  No one could get Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev angry. No matter what anyone did, he would always find something nice to say. He believed in treating all Jews kindly, no matter how much his patience was tested.  Rabbi Levi Yitzhak's neighbor had a son who did not want to keep any of the mitzvot. One year, during the seder, the family was about to make a sandwich of matza and maror for korekh. To everyone's surprise, the boy pulled from his pocket two slices of bread and some meat, and made himself a sandwich. His father started to cry: "How dare you bring bread to my seder?"  "But father," the boy answered, "I'm hungry after reading the Haggadah. What difference does it make if I eat bread or matza? I'm sure Rabbi Levi Yitzhak wouldn't mind. The father jumped up from the table and grabbed his son. "Oh wouldn't he? Lets go ask him." The whole family marched next door, the father leading the boy by the ear. "Rabbi,"