A Soulful Journey

Mitchell Wohlberg shared: Once, the plight of the Jewish people in a certain small village in Eastern Europe was so great that they cried to God to send the Messiah.  God heard their prayer.  But when the Messiah arrived, he had a problem.  Where should he announce his arrival?  If he announced his presence in the Chasidic shteibel, the MItnagdim would be offended.  If he announced his presence in the Mitnagdic synagogue, the Chasidim would be offended. What should he do? He thought it over and decided that he wouldn’t come so as not to offend either group.”- Robert Orkand W hen will he arrive?  When we are deserving of him.

A man befriended a bird in the forest.    The man sought to deepen their friendship and invited the bird to his home for hospitality.    Before they entered the house from the cold, the bird noticed the man blowing on his hands.    “Why are you blowing on your hands?” the bird asked.    “That’s to make my hands warm,” the man replied.    As they sat down to eat the bird noticed the man blowing on his hot soup.    “Why are you blowing on your soup?” the bird asked.    “That’s to make my soup cold,” the man replied.    With that, the man noticed the bird flying toward the door.    “Where are you going?” he asked the bird.    To which the bird replied, “A man who blows both hot and cold with the same breath cannot be a friend.”   Or as someone so well put it: A true friend is there when you need them … a false friend is there when they need you! – Aesop fable retold by Rabbi Mitchell...

A woman woke up one morning and told her husband, “I just dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace for Valentine’s Day.    What do you think it means?”    Her husband replied, “You’ll know tonight!”    That evening the man came home with a small package and gave it to his wife.   Excited and delighted, she opened it and found inside a book entitled, “The Meaning of Dreams.” - Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg

There is a story told of a husband and wife who had their first child and could not agree on the name, so they went to their rabbi and he asked, “What’s the problem?”    The mother said, “As the mother, I should have the first right to choose … I want the baby named after my father, Reuven.”    The husband said, “No, I am the man of the house … I want the baby named after my father, whose name was Reuven.”    The rabbi immediately perks up and says, “So then, what’s the problem?”    The mother cries out, “His father was a horse thief.”    He cries out, “Her father was a wife beater.”    The rabbi, in his great wisdom, proclaimed: “I have the solution: you are to name the baby Reuven.    If he grows to be a horse thief, then he is named after the husband’s father and if he grows to be a wife beater, he is named after the wife’s father.”    -Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg

There is a story of the minister who delivered a lengthy sermon for some three-quarters of an hour and when he was done one of the people in the audience approached him and told him that he was a reporter from the McNeil/Lehrer Report, he was deeply impressed with the sermon and was wondering if some of it could be used on television.    He asked: “Reverend, could you summarize this sermon in five minutes?”    The minister, thrilled at the opportunity of being on national television, replied: “Of course.”    To which the reporter queried:    “Then why didn't you?”     -Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg