A Soulful Journey

Seer of the seventies, Alvin Toffler, wrote: "Once the klutz factor is eliminated, we don't need the typist." from The Third Wave Toffler was correct as he was with so many of his predictions. In this instance a segment of the job market was eliminated. There are no secretaries with typing skills in the workforce any more. They have been replaced with computer literate receptionists. The world moves on. Keep up or get out of the way. I wonder how many silent redundancies were made in the seventies and eighties. I wonder how many people slunk off wounded, feeling inadequate, less than human when innovation and people made them feel worthless. Perhaps another avenue of thought would go like this: Every person has unique skills that belong to them. To try to fit everyone into the same slot may be to miss their gift and deprive us all. Thank God we are all different.

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.

The story is told of Joshua ben Levi who approached the Messiah to find out when he was coming. "Today," the Messiah replied. After having waited the duration of the day Joshua ben Levi then went to Elijah and asked why the Messiah had lied to him. Elijah answered, "He meant today, if only you would listen." retold by Rabbi Albert Friedlander

Dwight L. Moody was an Evangelist minister. Once while working in his study, his son knocked on the door. "What do you want?" asked the minster harshly. His son answered, "I don't want anything. I just want to be near you." Isn't this what God wants?

How much will make us happy? When does contentment arrive? Society is consumed with consumption on the premise that it will bring happiness. If only we had enough we'd be truly happy. "Do you really sell that much salt?" a man asks a grocer whose store is stacked with thousands of boxes of salt. "No," says the grocer. "I sell maybe two boxes a month. To tell you the truth, I'm not a very good salt seller. But the guy who sells me salt - now he's a good salt seller!" - Mel Brooks Maybe it is g ood to laugh at ourselves. Such self deprecation may bring us closer to home. To us.

A mikveh is a pool of water. In fact, the word mikveh literally means pool or collection. The very first time it is used is in the opening passage of the Torah, Genesis 1: 9-10, where God commands the waters be gathered together (mikveh) to reveal land. The primary stipulation that separates a mikveh from say the local pool is that a mikveh must be composed of “living waters.” The “living waters” have to flow from some naturally occurring source of water: It cannot be static. Water purifies. It is the source of our being. After all, our body mostly made of the stuff? We instinctively recognize that the intrinsic qualities of water as where we all came from. For all those months of gestation we were rocked in fluid, protected in a soft cocoon of water inside our mother. Just hearing the sound of water calms infants and loosens up the mental calluses from adults. That is why so many of us head for the beach during vacation. We are soothed and buffeted by the return to the primordial wate...

"It used to be the custom to plant a cedar tree when a boy was born; a pine tree was planted for a girl. When the two were to be married the huppa (canopy) was woven from branches of both trees." ~ Gittin 57a Dreams of the future. A child is born and we begin to imagine what will come. The first steps, learning to read, balancing on a bicycle, education, graduation, a wedding. As a young father I remember the dreams I drafted in my mind for my first born. Meticulously, I planned out his future. He would grow unafraid of bullies, confident of his own strengths; he would be a gifted student and choose between the many schools that courted him. It did not matter to me what profession he chose, I thought magnanimously, as long as he was a learned man. As I aged, I saw the many terrible things that happen to children. There is disease, dangerous mistakes, substance abuse, accidents, self-hate, maliciousness by peers (and sometimes by friends) a...