Jewels 2007

Joe Lapchick was one of the great basketball players in the pre-World War II era and played center for the legendary Celtics. When his 7-year-old son was stricken with polio, Lapchick’s neighbors expressed concern for the boy’s health, but the basketball star was shocked when one of them, in the presence of the sick child, asked if the boy would ever be able to play basketball again.The next day, when he visited the hospital, Lapchick asked his son if he wanted to be a basketball player. The boy said yes, and his father told him that all he wanted was

Genuine compassion is irrespective of others’ attitudes toward you.But, so long as others are also just like myself, and want happiness, do not want suffering, and also have the right to overcome suffering, on that basis, you develop some kind of sense of concern. That is genuine compassion. Now unbiased, even toward your enemy; so long as that enemy is also a human being, or other form of sentient being. They also have the right to overcome suffering. So, on that basis, there is your sense of concern. This is compassion. The Dalai Lama is the supreme head of Tibetan

As we enter the Holy Days, I am reminded that our greatest hope for the future rests with our children. As parents, we have an obligation to teach our children. It is through them that we can and will heal this world.Just as we are taught to model the divine qualities of God, so must we try to teach these qualities to our children. This is what I have learned. Omniscience: Although parents surely do not know everything, parental responsibility is to offer guidance and experience. To raise a child means to act as a parent, not a best friend.

The great thing about the world of the spirit is that gravity doesn’t apply. Inertia can be overcome.Our secular culture teaches us to focus on ourselves when we have problems – whether through healthful things like self-help books and therapy…or through numbing things like comfort food, self-medication and complaining to friends. A teacher once shared with me a special tool for lifting oneself out of sadness and depression. It is a very Jewish way to lift yourself up, and it isn’t something you might expect to hear from a rabbi. He said to turn your focus away from yourself and

Seeking spirituality doesn’t have to be somber. It can be joyous, and no one needs joy more than young people.I have written “Let’s Face It,” a book dedicated to the younger generations. Let’s face it, the world is a mess, and they will inherit that mess. Horace Mann once said, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” As I approach Yom Kippur, I give thanks for all the things in my life that fill me with gratitude. But I have much guilt when I think of the state of the world we are leaving our

I received this letter following the murders of my husband, Dr. David Applebaum, and our daughter Naava, in a terrorist bombing the night before her wedding.“It was the summer of 1996 when I found myself in Jerusalem. I fell quite ill, and my roommates convinced me to go to a pre-hospital emergency room. In walked a middle-aged man sporting a beard and kippah and wearing the traditional white medical coat. And like iridescent diamonds on a lonely black night came his words. ‘Applebaum, ‘said the doctor. ‘That’s my name, and we’re going to take care of you.’The examination began and

It seems unfair, a waste, To journey like a shooting star, One thousand cosmic years through space. To smile one time, just once, Emit your brightest light and disappear In daring curvature to nowhere, Like that actor on the stage Who ends the play to no applause, And bows to empty seats, then glows.Unfair, a waste, But a child may chance to stare And see that daring curvature, remember? Which may just set this child in motion Remind him of those cosmic years, of freedom, And jolt his mind to point up north Beyond the curtain of prediction, Dare to

On Rosh Hashanah in the mid-1960s, my father received a cancer diagnosis. The doctors scheduled radiation treatments, but the initial treatments fell on Sukkot and Simchat Torah when he would normally be attending services at our modern Orthodox synagogue. He asked that he be allowed to come in for treatment during the middle days of the festival. The hospital spokesperson explained that those days were reserved for in-patients. Outpatients generally found it too depressing to see the terrible shape these patients were in. My father, unfazed, said that even if it was too depressing, he would come during the in-patient

At this moment, nothing is more important for healing the world than to link all those who believe that we must set forth a new narrative and create a new world where hope, social justice, peace, and a sense of the sacredness of life prevail. For this, we need to form a critical mass of humanity that influences change at a global scale, to bring together the inner streams of sensitive human beings.The driving force is an upwelling from the heart rising from within many, unbeknown to all. I am simply amazed at the way this is all happening, and

Bill Gates said recently, “Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity, reducing inequity is the highest human achievement. “We now live in a world of reality television, a world of accountability with instant messages, Skype, Bluetooths and Blackberries. We are always on call. We are enveloped in wars televised by CNN, instantaneous and clear though thousands of miles away. But what if a camera were on your life? How would you fare? What are you willing

It’s the summer of 1979, and I am in Utah driving Norman, a young Paiute fieldworker to Indian Peaks, a sacred Paiute site.A converted Mormon, Norman says he has given up Paiute superstition. But as the hours pass, he talks of spirits in nearby Fish Lake, ancestors who watch over us, rains that come from proper incantation. He asks about Judaism, and I tell him of my desert ancestors, discoverers of that oneness of things we call God, and of our own sacred words. I tell him how our numbers, too, like those of the Native Americans, had been diminished

  As a political cartoonist, I’m obsessed with the past and the future, but the future is hypothetical and the past is…well…the way we remember it. They both exist in our minds. A ritual that I’ve set for myself is to periodically escape from the familiar and to live in the present. To find satisfaction in what I am, to feel what it’s like to be me. I’m soon back to thinking about the past, and considering the future. But like any vacation, a quick trip to the present can really recharge your batteries. Yaakov ‘Bones’ Kirschen is a political

I stand at attention facing the Kotel Hama’aravi, the Western Wall, as the army ensemble begins to play. Only a few weeks ago I enlisted into the Paratroop Brigade of the Israeli Defense Forces, and tonight, I stand among hundreds of other new paratrooper recruits for our Hashba’ah, our official induction into the army. We pledge our allegiance to the State of Israel and swear to do anything and everything in our power to defend her.We begin to sing Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah (The Hope). I imagine my ancestors singing this anthem in times of helplessness and powerlessness, hoping for

My father, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, created this parable:Imagine you are on a subway and suddenly realize that your soul mate, the one you’ve been waiting and praying for your entire life, is standing beside you. You’re full of love and disbelief; you can’t speak. Then your soul mate is leaving, walking off the train. Frozen, you manage, “What’s your number?” You hear only the first three digits. Then the doors close. At the next stop, you run to a pay phone, frantically trying every combination of numbers imaginable. Failing that, you drive through the streets, crying, searching. Overwrought, you drive

I was addicted to despair. What’s the point? Why bother? Life is hard, and then you die. In those days I called it existentialism, which cloaked the despair with a veneer of intellectual superiority. I balanced thoughts of suicide with flights of fantasy. The “right” man, the “perfect” guru, the current cause or psychological panacea would give my life meaning, patch the “hole in the soul.” When it didn’t, I wanted to die. At the bottom, I prayed to a God I didn’t believe in. “Show me the way to my mission; what is the purpose of my life?”The “sign”

There is a biblical obligation on a patient to seek healing from a physician. The natural search for health and its maintenance is both a meritorious act and a commandment. The Torah commands us to watch diligently over our bodies and souls. A person is, therefore, obligated to concern himself with his own healing and the healing of his friend and neighbor. A sick person should not rely on a miracle but should conduct himself like all normal people and consult a physician when ill. A pious fool who refuses to allow a physician to help him but relies totally

“Jews, alone, are vulnerable…But Jews must never be alone.” Elie Wiesel is a Nobel Peace Prize winning novelist, political activist, and Holocaust survivor. www.eliewieselfoundation.org

People today are broken and depressed. One of three doctors’ visits by a woman in America is for an anti-depressant, and the rate of depression in men is pushing 40 percent. America is riddled with loneliness as the divorce rate hovers at one in two marriages, and more people than ever live alone. All this is curious given that we live in an age, thank G-d, of boundless prosperity. So why are so many people hopeless?Ours is a culture of soulless capitalism that makes human beings into commodities who judge their self-worth by the quantity in their bank accounts rather

Elul inspires me to ruminate on the state of the world. There are many who fear that we have entered the Age of Excuse. While historically we are a people who value, if not cherish, responsibility, how often do we hear, “It’s not my job”; “It’s not my problem”; “It’s not my fault”; “It’s the way I am.” Some have even devised a weltanschauung that describes this modern day attitude. Much has been written of suggesting we are simply genetically determined products, that our DNA makes us who we are and makes us do what we do. After the tragic

Who has inspired your life? My mother. I was taken away from her and put into an orphanage after she gave birth to me when she was 13. They told her that I was dead. She found out that this was not true, and she got the address of the orphanage. It was the first time I remember seeing tears in the eyes of an adult or knowing that an adult could even cry. Did you then go to live with your mother? No, they wouldn’t let her take me. They finally gave me to my father because he was

As the new year approaches, I resolve to focus on joy. This has been my kavannah every year since September 11th.It isn’t easy for me. I’m good at worrying. I’m good at crossing things off my to-do list. Hey, I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Don’t talk to me about joy; it’s not part of my culture. We Jews have filled libraries with the historical litany of our losses, our pain, our despair. Besides, you get to a certain age as an individual or as a people and joy becomes a tall order. And yet, the challenge sticks like

On the wall of the pool at my Jewish community center is a line from the Talmud, “A father should teach his child three things: Torah, a trade, and to swim.” For years, I read this as inspiration to improve my stroke. But then I wondered if the Talmud was also imparting a profound message about hope and healing.It is no surprise that the Rabbis would encourage learning Torah to bring us closer to God and mastering a trade to obtain material sustenance. But why learn to swim? The Talmud does not say, “be taught to walk” because the ground

There is an enormous, untouched potential inside every one of us. It is hope. And hope’s incredible power enables us to survive.Hope contains spectacular power, a power that seems as though it captured bits of the bursting energy of creation. Psychologists at major universities are now discovering that hope is potent and that it plays a significant role in a wide variety of human endeavors – in school, on the job, and in the family. Hope also provides immeasurable benefits for our physical health and for all forms of depression. Hope can make us better prepared for our own promotions.

I was unpacking my suitcase after a short weekend getaway when I realized I couldn’t find my scarf. A great sense of loss overwhelmed me. I remembered the exquisite colors that had given me so much pleasure every time I looked at my scarf. I remembered its lovely silkiness as it touched my fingers and draped so lightly around my neck.And now, I thought, I would never see or touch it again. How had I not been more careful with it? I mourned. How had I not cherished it more, recognized its worth more while I’d had it? I wondered,

In a world of conflicting ideals, how do we seek what is essential in ourselves?As the poet Edward Young asked, “Born originals, how comes it to pass that we die copies?” The sustained pressure of poor role models, the insistent artifice of media manipulations (think of game shows where you win only if you guess the answer everyone else gives) and the need to fit in often misshape us. While the high holidays encourage community and solidarity, while we confess in the plural and pray for the world, each individual is judged and must judge him or herself as an

Modern medicine has contributed enormously to the improved health of the modern world: lower infant mortality rates, better prenatal care and prevention of many infectious diseases.Despite these significant contributions that increase our quality of life, it seems that the wider public is neither fully satisfied nor grateful (malpractice litigation is escalating) and is actually looking for “something else” – an alternative to the principles underlying modern medicine’s approach to diagnosis and treatment. This search expresses itself in the extreme popularity of the non-evidence based “Complementary and Alternative Medicine.” In recent years, more interactions were between patients and alternative medicine practitioners

When I was 17, I left home after the first day of school and rode with a friend in his red ’72 Volkswagen bus to Burlington, Vermont.Most of my days were spent hanging out in a park downtown. Every day around sunset I became filled with a sharp emptiness, a rawness. I could feel a hole in my heart that resonated outward so that everything I saw and heard was filled with this void. One day, as I was sitting on the concrete, I heard a young man in torn-up jeans with long, stringy dreads sing a song, and it

One year, my Yom Kippur sermon was on the theme of forgiveness. The next day, a woman came to see me, very upset about the sermon. She told me how, 10 years earlier, her husband had left her for a younger woman and she has had to raise two children by herself for the past 10 years. She asked me angrily, “And you want me to forgive him for what he did to us?”I told her, “Yes, I want you to forgive him. Not to excuse him, not to say that what he did was acceptable, but to forgive him

My mother-in-law’s mind is full of holes. She spends most of the day in a placid fog, a place where there’s nothing left to do but walk the dog and wonder what’s for dinner. Every time it’s chicken, she rolls her eyes and kvetches, “We had this last night!” No one argues with her anymore.The situation is undeniably tragic. She’s only in her early 60’s, has already suffered through cancer and a mastectomy, and her dementia has been diagnosed incurable. Yet, her disease has set into motion a certain regeneration: Both of her sons have returned to Savannah to help