Jewels 2005

The first Shabbat in Elul, two weeks after my father’s death, my family gathered around the Shabbat table. Everyone was home from summer camp and jobs, and for the first time in months, all the members of our immediate family filled their traditional seats. As we chanted Kiddush, I began to cry. The sweetness of the moment was overwhelming. All those I love gathered together, in our home, celebrating Shabbat.I thought ahead to Rosh Hashanah Dinner. It never occurred to me that last year would be the last time. Who would I sit next to in synagogue? What will the

Midrash tells us that our name, Yisrael, when vocalized differently, can become “Yashir Eil” – “God will sing.” We are God’s song in this world. Full of potential for harmony – tension, joy, sorrow, anger, comfort, pain, and majesty – God sings through each of us. Elul is the time to focus and question: what Godsong will be heard through my life in the coming year?Chasidic wisdom likens each of us to a shofar. Were it not for the breath of God blowing through me, I would make no sound at all. Elul is the time to tune up, sharpen

The instructor filled an empty jar with rocks. “Is it full?” Then he poured a pitcher of pebbles into the jar. “Full now?” Next he poured sand. “Full?” Finally he poured water. “Now it’s full.”“What do you learn from this?” One student answered, “That no matter how busy you are, you can always fit it one more thing?” “No, the important thing is: you have to put the rocks in first. If you fill your jar first with the pebbles, sand or water, there will be no room for the rocks.”[1] Put the rocks in first, those important things that

Take some time out each day to cast away the business of being busy. Find a quiet moment to reflect, or go for a walk by yourself, or sit, or meditate – cleanse your mind and let your soul float to find the deep meaning of life. Know that time is short and life moves fast. Harold Grinspoon is a real estate entrepreneur who is committed to enriching Jewish life through the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, created in 1993. www.hgf.org

We approach the holidays in reflection upon our lives, who we are, whom and what we treasure, what matters for our hearts, our souls, our lives. As we do this a vision for the next year can emerge.We are inspired by those who have gone before us, like 90 year old Brother Roger of Taizé, founder of the Taizé Community in France, who had a profound influence on thousands of peoples lives worldwide and who was killed this August. He founded a community where reconciliation would be lived out in daily life, where “Love would be at the heart of

As a teenager in a family of very modest means, I had many dreams-ideas about what I wanted to achieve. So I got an after-school job at a mortgage company. After college, I stayed on with that company and I was sent on the road as a loan officer. I visited communities and met many others who had dreams-dreams of owning a home.Everywhere, I met hard-working families and individuals. Yet some of them found their dreams of homeownership impossible to achieve. Discrimination, subtle and not so subtle, stood in the path of racial and ethnic minorities who wanted to purchase

I remember the first time Sarabeth came to meet me. Depressed and angry she told me that her husband had taken their money and left her and her three children with nothing– not even a place to live. I assured her that each of her children would have a bar mitzvah at Sinai Temple. Years went by, Sarabeth rebuilt her life. The kids had their simchas. On one uneventful day I hardly recognized the beautiful woman who came to my office and offered to repay the synagogue. I refused Sarabeth and told her in time I would need her help

With a daughter now old enough for sleep away camp and the variety of summer vacations we take, summer is a time when our family is seldom at home. Every year we tell ourselves that this year will be different. This summer we will not let our spiritual commitment fall by the wayside. But it does, and then like clockwork the high holidays come around to recharge our spiritual batteries.We are fortunate to attend services at the Brandeis-Bardin institute in Southern California. We celebrate the holidays in the middle of 3000 beautiful acres of rolling hills. The cycle continues. We

On a beautiful summer Shabbat afternoon at a Jewish camp in New England, a legend was born. For the first time in thirty years, the camp allowed its vocational education staff to participate in the staff softball game. Many of the staff were opposed to this concept as the game was considered a highlight event of the week, and it was very competitive. As always, the game was well attended by staff and campers.The special needs program campers and staff was were all awaiting the arrival of their player. Big Jake came running on to the field in full catcher’s

I was 18 years old with a dream summer internship, living in dorms packed with socially and politically savvy college students from around the country. My roommate was coming a week late, and I eagerly anticipated her arrival, certain we’d become best friends instantaneously. Way too early one morning, there was a knock on my door. “Hi. I’m your roommate” she said perfunctorily, and walked right past me. “Great to meet you!” I said, “Where are you working this summer?” No answer. “Have you been to DC before?” I asked, as she made herself busy placing her precious few items

“I wear prayers like shoes. Pull them on each morning to take me through uncertainty.” writes Ruth Forman, contemporary poet, in a work called I Wear Prayers Like Shoes. The poet goes on about the shoes: “They were mama’s gift to walk me through life. She wore strong ones.” Imagine if everyone in the world were walking around on prayers!Truth is everyone has a shoe story: new shoes for that first day of school, new shoes for the High holidays, new shoes for a job or a new fitness program or a birthday, ball or wedding. And, in fact, those

Why does Rosh Hashanah come before Yom Kippur? Surely it should be the other way around! First we should cleanse ourselves, purge our sins, and then celebrate the new year. The emotional logic seems compelling — repentance is what enables us to begin anew.Yet there is a deep logic to the order of the yamim noraim — the days of awe. For repentance begins in gratitude. First we must value what is, and estimate the true worth of the gifts we have been given. Rosh Hashanah comes to encourage us to appreciate the world — hayom harat olam — on

Many years ago, my husband had a conversation with a Benedictine monk whose selflessness haunts me.“It wasn’t that he was thinking too much of himself or too little of himself,” my husband says. “He just wasn’t thinking of himself.” “What does that mean?” I ask. “When we spoke, he got himself out of the way.”To get oneself out of the way – what would it be like to encounter others without an inventory of wishes, wants, expectations and demands. Who would be left without the odd, borrowed bits of selves that coalesce as faces to hide behind? I used to

One winter day when I was six or seven, my brother and I went out for a walk with our Great-Uncle Sydney near his apartment on the Lower East Side. As we turned a corner we came across a homeless man lying in a doorway. Sydney let go of our hands, took a step forward, reached into his wallet and handed the man several bills. He spoke quietly to the man for a moment, then took our hands and resumed our walk. He didn’t say a word. Intensely curious about what I had seen, I asked my uncle what had

When the Hasidic master, Reb Yitzchak Yakov, the Seer of Lublin, died, his disciples divided his worldly goods. One got his books, one his kiddush cup, another his tallis. There remained one humble hasid. To him was given the Rebbe’s clock.On his way home, the hasid stopped at an inn. When he discovered he had no money to pay the innkeeper, he offered the Rebbe’s clock as payment. The innkeeper installed the clock in one of the rooms. A year later, another of the Rebbe’s hasidim passed by and stayed at the inn. All night, he could not sleep. All

The seasonal call for personal introspection is a prerequisite for world transformation. Through it we learn to critique lovingly. We learn that we can create a new plan. We learn that our good intensions can succeed. Once we know that internal battles can be waged and won, we can turn our sights outwards. And dream of a better day for humanity and the Jewish people.Elul is our month of preparation. Tishrei is our month of spiritual action. And then Cheshvan moves us to external action; to Jews worldwide affirming that our obligation to pray together is made more meaningful by

I’m good at making resolutions, God, but I’m not very good at keeping them. There are so many goals I’d like to achieve, so many changes I’d like to make.I pray to You tonight, God, for strength. I want to live a meaningful life, God. I want to comprehend my true promise. I want to understand why You have put me here. Help me to see, God. Show me the person I have the potential to become. Let me find my passion, God. Teach me to resist temptation, to conquer self-destructive habits, to overcome selfishness and pettiness. Give me the

According to the Rosh Hashanah ritual of tashlich, we toss scraps of bread into a living body of water, symbolizing the casting away of transgressions for which we seek forgiveness.So every Elul, I find myself ankle deep in the Santa Monica Bay, heaving bread into waves where a few short weeks earlier I was splashing with my kids. As soon as the rabbi intones the liturgy, seagulls swoop in. “Like swallows returning to Capistrano,” a fellow congregant once told me. “The birds probably set their biological clock to tashlich.” Not only do we return each year with our sins, the

Elul is the time when we begin to prepare ourselves for the deep moral and religious assessment that takes place on the High Holy Days. Elul is also a popular time for weddings. At many of those weddings, the rabbi will point out that an old tradition points out that the Hebrew letters of Elul can stand for the verse from the biblical book of Song of Songs (6:3), Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li — “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” The tradition is based on Rabbi Akiva’s interpretation of that book as the love poetry not just

In the summer of 2000 I was walking in the streets of Tel Aviv when I was stopped by a middle-aged man and asked directions in Hebrew. I explained to him in English, “I’m sorry, I’m just a tourist from America who doesn’t know the city.” I could tell he was a bit shocked that I didn’t speak Hebrew.I didn’t think much of the incident until the next day in Jerusalem, when I tried to enter Al-Aqsa (on the temple mount) to do my afternoon prayers. Out of all the people who went to pray, including family members and other

Because we find ourselves surrounded by believers in Messianic fundamentalism, we should, as Jews, examine – or re-examine – our own attitudes toward Messianic faith. For we, too, have within our own community crypto-Messianic movements, believers in ‘Moshiach Now’ slogans, even including those who maintain that a Jewish Messiah has already made his appearance in our lifetime, in Brooklyn of all places.The great 13th Century sage, Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (the Nachmanides) argued that it is impossible to claim, that the Messiah has already come. The Messiah was supposed to make the world a better place and our time a

One of life’s most profound lessons came to me when I was a boy. My parents separated, and my father brought a new puppy into his apartment and into our lives. I responded with guilt, wouldn’t loving this puppy betray the older dog I already loved? My father assured me that our hearts can hold an infinite amount of love: love is never displaced by additional love; it is enhanced, because all of our different loves are expressions of the one embracing love.That same simple lesson emerges from Jewish teaching as well. The great Hassidic master, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of

Barchu is a prayer we can say only in a minyan. There is great wisdom in starting our service by praising God together, because all Jews reflect a different face of God and so we really can’t praise God fully unless we do it together in a group.After the Barchu, we praise God for creating light and darkness. I love that image because it means that both the triumphs and the failures are a praise of God since God creates both light and darkness, life and peace come from recognizing that all experiences, negative or positive, are an opportunity to

here are times when a simple expression of appreciation can change the course of another’s life. My own life has been filled with a treasure trove of feedback from such moments. A woman, whom I do not recognize, rushes up to me in the halls of a Council of Jewish Federations General Assembly and says, “I’m sure you don’t remember me, but 10 years ago at a GA you came up to me after a meeting with encouraging words making me feel that I had something special to contribute and should not waste it. I was hoping I would see

Rosh Hashanah is “Head (rosh) Changing (shenah) Day.” You can’t have a new year with an old head. So if you want a new year, you are going to need to get a new head.A new head is a story-free head. Your stories define you. If your stories are positive and loving then you are optimistic and loving. If your stories are negative and fearful, then you are angry and afraid. Regardless of their emotional charge, however, stories are not reality. A new head is story-free. A new head engages reality with compassionate curiosity, going into what is without the

A driving rain has turned the waves and the sky into one darkness. The coastal road is empty, traffic lights signal to each other in a secret code. Tel Aviv rehearses the Yom Kippur that is to be performed again this year.On the CD I listen again to the gypsies who sang for me once in Moscow. Imagining myself to be Uncle Vanya that night I had thrown my glass of wine against the wall. The singer, dark, with downcast eyes turns fiercely beautiful when the music possesses her. The male guitarist looks like a bank clerk on the take.

Diamond is the hardest of gems. It can leave its mark on all the others, but nothing can mar its surface. It can survive great heat and pressure while exhibiting a beauty that can last an eternity. Despite this, a simple internal fracture, a single flaw, can cause its destruction; a sharp blow in the right place can break this hardest of substances apart.In our life as a People over thousands of years, given the strength of diamond by God, how many times have we allowed hatred among the Jewish People to cause internal fractures that have allowed others to

It always struck me as a bit odd that the month of Elul, coming right before the High Holidays, should be an acronym for such a seemingly romantic sentiment. My beloved? It was enough to convince my wife and me to be married in the month of Elul, and to have an opportunity to reflect a bit on holy union.And then it all began to make sense. The purity with which we are supposed to come to our wedding – after a day of fasting, and, for the man, in the pure white robe, or kittel – is the same

A rabbi hears his little daughter crying, and finally finds her hiding in the closet. When he asks the child why she is crying, she tells him that she was playing hide and seek with the other children. “I’ve been hiding in here so long and no one is coming to look for me,” she sobbed.“Now, my dear child” says the father, “you can begin to understand how God, the Kadosh Baruch Hu, who is hidden from us, must feel when no one seeks to find Him.” I first read this story in The Longer Shorter Way by Adin Steinsaltz,

When is the right moment to sit and contemplate the difficult times we encounter? Why don’t I just get in touch with those things that are painful to think about, very real, hard to stay focused on? How do I set aside time for inner reflection, slowing down enough to notice those thoughts and feelings that cause discomfort and even agitation.Elul is a time for thinking about the “whens” the “whys” and the “hows.” It is the new year that affords us this opportunity, even demands it of us. To move forward, to heal, to forgive, to grow so that