Jewels 2019

Dear Sonny, Do you remember as a child, how you celebrated Roosevelt’s victories? They were victories for all people and all times and celebrated things like, Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear. That was a long time ago, but the values and victories still remain true. We have allowed the mobs to take over. We have abandoned Democracy. We need leaders who pursue justice and democracy. We need citizens to recognize that their greatest power is to vote. Practicing democracy, means that every vote counts. It is the only way justice can be brought forward

Nessa, at 95, has a question for me. “What are you going to do about it?” She’s talking about antisemitism. That isn’t surprising. When Nessa was a girl, she lived in Warsaw, Poland. And because of Hitler she was moved, along with her dad, sister and mom and 400,000 other Jews, to the Warsaw ghetto. Only Nessa and her dad survived. “The United States used to be magic,” Nessa says. “Now, it reminds me of 1938.” She isn’t worried for herself––she’s worried for me. For us. For everyone with plugged ears and averted eyes. She asks a second time, loud

Holy Child, The most important truth I want you to know, in the most absolute way, is that you are never alone. Although there is so much that limits my ability to be with you throughout your life, G-d is always there and loves you more than any parent can. There is no relationship that is more important, or intimate than the one you can develop with G-d. Every choice you make, especially ones that affect other people, will bring you either closer or further away from G-d. This is a beautiful world and we are meant to enjoy and

I was raised in a country that I do not take for granted. My parents were refugees from Europe, survivors of the Holocaust, and Israel became their safe haven. It allowed them to build a family and a successful life for themselves, me and my sister. Always armed with a positive perspective and love of life, my parents taught me that with the right attitude, you can conquer anything and face any challenge. My favorite time is Shabbat dinner when we sit around the table with our kids and guests, reflect on the week and celebrate life. It’s during moments like Shabbat,

Thousands of years ago, two rabbinic scholars debated, what is the most important verse in the bible. Rabbi Akiva insisted that it was “Love Thy Neighbor as thyself.” Another scholar, Ben Azzai, countered with a verse from Genesis, “This is the book of the generations of Adam, on the day G-d created him.” Without a doubt, today’s media critics would question how anyone could possibly vote for “This is the book of Generations of Adam,” over the more obvious “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.” So how did Ben Azzai’s odd choice make it to the finals? The answer is he

Dear Future Me: This is my advice…continue to trust your wisdom. When people talk fast, listen slowly. You have learned that the hard way. Look for the unexpected, mystical signs of how your life is intended to keep unfolding, be it the next adventure or making a new friend. Continue to appreciate the lessons you have learned and at long last stay away from people wanting YOU to learn their lessons for them. My Precious Past Self: I never want to forget how deeply loved I was by my parents of blessed memory. I never want to forget how remarkable

I remember a hot Saturday morning in August, 20 years ago. I was on the brink of middle age but in my spiritual adolescence. I was dutiful about my seminary studies, church work and prayers. My failures weighed on me, including my first marriage. Our two school-age daughters, visiting for the weekend, were still asleep in their bedroom. I knew my choices had hurt them. I wanted to feel better about myself, to feel useful, worthy and loved. I was working hard to earn God’s esteem. I admit I sometimes still do. As I prayed, I started thinking about my

A letter For Grieving Friends …………………..(Psalm 23) גם כי אילך בגאי צלמוו Those who walk through the Valley of Shadows wear no shoes. Their feet are cut and torn as they stumble through the darkness. With no time to pack a bag or say goodbye, they begin their journeys unprepared. Some are dressed in finery: jewels gleaming like stars in the dim light. Others are in pajamas, work clothes, prayer shawls or bathing suits. Some clutch briefcases, papers, blankets or teddy bears. And everyone wears their grief. With each cautious, painful step, they move further into the abyss. The chasm

Dearest Danny, I’m speaking to you from the future (more on that in a moment) and someone has asked me to write you a letter. I wasn’t planning on being in touch because, well, I didn’t want to mess with the whole natural order of things, you know? I’d say I hope you are well, but me being you, I know that you are and you are not. I know exactly what it’s like to be inside that head of ours. I hope you take some comfort in that — that there’s at least one other person out there who

As you enter Elul, I hope you remember to incorporate the beautiful Hebrew acronym from Song of Songs that characterizes this month – Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li – I am to my Beloved and my Beloved is to me. As you consider your need for deeper human connection, I hope you will engage in the practice of “cheshbon hanefesh” – deep soul searching, and arrive at a place of hope to not desist from the work to build a better world. Your life has been touched by a term you learned while traveling in Africa – Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a

Drafting a letter to my future-self prompts me to reflect on human mortality. Surrounded as I am by beings of finite years, statistically speaking, when I read this letter on the eve of next year, not everyone in my life will be as alive and well as they are today. Some will have passed having been blessed with length of years, some will have succumbed to illness and some will have died tragically. “Who will live and who will die?” the high holiday prayer book asks. None of us knows for sure. All of which begs the question: If I

Four Notes about Self Portraits: Kenwood House, London, “Self Portrait with Two Circles” by Rembrandt. The Dutch painter stood in front of the canvas in Amsterdam in his last years of life and looked into his own eyes. Now, I am the one standing in front of that same canvas, and Rembrandt is looking straight into my eyes. There is truth in his eyes, and something broken but still proud, and there’s compassion and there’s pain. I’m trying not to turn my eyes from this look. Rembrandt wrote a visual letter to himself in Amsterdam, but for one hour in London, 350 years later, his letter is addressed

Dear Amanda, It’s 2019/5779. Truth, for many citizens of the world, must be encapsulated in 280 characters. People, ideas, institutions, relationships and even states, are “good” or “bad.” We’ve either “won” or we’ve “lost.” There is no in between. There are no shades of gray. There is no room to engage, listen, learn…adjust. You are frustrated. You ask yourself every day, on a broad scale, how you can shift this toxic cultural paradigm. You do the work, rejecting the binaries that marginalize members of your Jewish and Zionist and progressive communities and fight to highlight not just the grays but

Dearest One, This is my favorite story of us. Appropriate, I think, as we get ready to leave the third rehab of this year, that was part of the 14th hospitalization of the last two and a half years. Before the wheelchair and the walker and the oxygen, before the small suitcase of meds complicated even a weekend overnighter, and the list of my conditions stretched onto a second page, when I could still take a walk with you without thinking about how I was going to take a walk with you, but when it was all starting to slip.

Dear Birthday Boy, As you approach your birthday, here’s a thought. Genesis 23 tells us that Sarah died at the age of 127, an impressively long life, but not all that unusual according to accounts of the deaths of other biblical figures. What is striking is the way that number is presented in the text. Instead of writing the number 127, it is broken up into components that a wonderful Midrash explains in this way: When Sarah died she had the wisdom that comes from 100 years, the inner beauty and vitality of a 20-year-old and the awe and innocence

As 5780 approaches, you are more rooted than you have been in the recent past. A focus on home, chosen family and purpose has grounded you in your current place. You have worked hard to let go. To let go of the collection of old stories that you were told as you grew, some of which continue to be retold, some of which simply linger in the background. To let go of resentment and disappointment that grew in the space between the messages you were given about what it meant to live in this world and your lived reality. This

For a while I was unhappy with your choices. Now I realize, because of you, I am me.  So, love your imperfections. Love what you hate. Love yourself with the abundance you love others. You don’t feel it, but you are strong and beautiful. Strong because you try, fight, push and pull. That, darling, is beauty. I know it doesn’t make the disappointments sweeter or hardships easier. But I am grateful for the difficulties you encountered; today they are my superpowers. You are a fierce stilt walker, but not forever. Turns out, lessons we learned walking on those stilts are rules

For the last three years, I’ve been writing a book entitled Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy in which I revisit aspects of my life that were shaped by my parents’ humiliations. I delve deep into their shame about being Greenhorns (immigrants), impoverished, imperfect, unhappy, inadequate – and their abiding fear of disgrace, the shanda. Retrieving childhood feelings and experiences is hard at any age but thanks to my discovery of a large plastic bag stuffed with correspondence dating back more than eighty years, my memory was turbo-charged and the book is richer for it. The letters my parents

Self-examination is rarely easy, sometimes painful and yet always necessary. I tell my students: “don’t fall in love with your own assumptions.” Much like examining one’s own purposes, questioning one’s own assumptions is hard. In fact, too often in the world of national security—my world—the policy-makers/analysts are not even aware of their assumptions. Policies are driven by givens that are not questioned. The same in life—aren’t many of us driven by habits that are impervious to the effect on others or our presumed priorities. Where should one start with self-examination? Why not ask, do I have the right priorities? In my

A letter to my children, Midrash teaches that God created the world on Rosh Hashanah. In this particular story, God has a thought, consults with the angels and then begins, forming human beings from the dust. This story depicts a seemingly direct path from the idea to the reality. The Hebrew word used in the midrash is “bara” meaning that God created the world on Rosh Hashanah. Yet, Rosh Hashanah is known by another name – Hayom Harat Olam – the Day the World was conceived. Where the word bara implies a sense of creation in a moment, harat, conception, means

I received a gift this morning. I had set my timer for five minutes and closed my eyes. I first focused on experiencing just my sense of taste (toothpaste), then switched to hearing (the fan, birds, a hum), then smell (coffee), then touch (my shorts on my legs, my back touching the couch), then sight (some floaties, splotches of color). Then, gratitude. Reminded of that idea from Teilhard de Chardin: We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a physical experience. Inspired to try something I’d never gotten to click before: To notice whatever it

Note to Self, Each year you use the High Holidays as a reminder to take stock of the year which has passed. What has occurred? How did you grow? What has changed? Knowing how busy and increasingly forgetful you are, I take this opportunity to remind you not to overlook three moments: Reading an EKG in his office, my doctor said to me, “You may have 1. an arrhythmia. You need to see a cardiologist.” Several doctors and two stress tests later, the results came back. Your heart is strong. No arrhythmia. Do you remember how you felt upon receiving that news? You

I was brought here to America for a better life. I’m an adoptee who came from Guatemala at five months old.  I never want to forget how tenuous life can be. Instead of having a great life in America, I could easily have been one of the children in the migrant camps along the U.S. border. My birth family is still in Guatemala.  My birth mom says that making an adoption plan was the hardest thing she’s ever done, but she did it anyway — because she loved me. I now write to her and visit her, and we also

Dear Whatever-Your-Name Will-Be: We write this letter to you, our first great-grandchild, even though you have not been born yet. The first thing we want to tell you is that we love you already and that we look forward to your arrival with much anticipation. We live in Florida, and you will be born in New York, and so we cannot promise that we will be there to greet you or to share in the simcha of your brit milah, because, at our age, travelling is a real hassle. But know that we will be there in spirit or on

Dear Jonah, In a few years, you will be a Rabbi.  You are choosing this path at a time when more people need comfort and have lost faith than I can remember in my lifetime. They all need what I needed when I was five years old. It was just hours after my father had passed away … a Rabbi came to our house, held my hand and told me to not be afraid and that my father was in Heaven with G-d.  He gave me the spiritual comfort I needed in a way I could understand. And it made

Dear Younger Danya: I know you’re lonely.  I know you feel anxious, uncertain. I know it might not feel like it now, but some of the best things that you’re doing now are the small, quiet things. Your aimless evenings on the floor of a bookstore, reading poetry; the notebook you keep in your bag to scribble your thoughts, longhand, on the bus; those moments just taking in the trees in the park; that thing that happens when you get out of the apartment early and just stand there for a second, watching the steam of a city just waking

A letter placed in the Western Wall by the daughters of Hedy Orden. I love you Israel and I was always a Zionist, even before you existed. Every night in Auschwitz, I dreamed of you. Even though I cannot travel to Israel now, I wish I could kiss the ground and share how fortunate I feel. Even with my terrible history, I feel so lucky and grateful. My only wish is to see and feel and hear my family. And with no pain at 93, I am so lucky! Hedy Orden is a philanthropist and a Holocaust survivor living in

Today, you measure one pound. One little pound and you have already changed my whole life and taught me to see the world with new eyes. When I am rushing to make my next meeting, you remind me to slow down because life is fragile. When I am stressed, you remind me to take a deep breath. When I lose control, you remind me that life can be elusive. When I feel your kick inside me, you remind me that a little pain isn’t such a bad thing. When I rest my hand upon my belly, you remind me that

Dear Elan, You have always been inspired by the words that open the final parsha of the month of Elul: אתם ניצבים היום כולכם לפני ה’ אלקיכם You are standing this day, all of you, before the Lord your God Spoken just before Rosh HaShana, these words powerfully prepare you for the Days of Awe. “Standing” has nothing to do with your position relative to the ground. To “stand” here means to be positioned relative to purpose. It implies being held to account, and it evokes that timeless answer to God’s call spoken by Jewish prophets throughout the ages: הנני

I want to tell you a story, because it just happened and you might forget it. I (you, that is) was standing in the airport in Chicago yesterday and a young woman approached the counter and began to scream.  She had been left off the flight. She kept insisting that the crew could help but wouldn’t. They were courteous but at the end, she cursed loudly at them, again and again, and stormed off. I was standing next to a couple waiting to board, and they were bemoaning her behavior, which left the onlookers frozen.  I said yes, she behaved

A Note from Craig If I want to send a message, I send a text. If I want to reach someone, I pick up the phone. If I want to touch someone, I send a note. I’ve always honored the most important moments in my life with handwritten notes. I’ve found that weddings, graduations, disagreements, illness and loss ARE best navigated and celebrated with pen and paper. Although texts and emails might have the ability to live in cyberspace for an eternity, they’re most often forgotten seconds after the send and open buttons are pushed. Handwritten notes take longer to