Life’s Pathway: Inspirations to Fire the Soul

I just finished and published Life’s Pathway: Inspirations to Fire the Soul, my second book.

Immediately comments began to pour in like, “This is very different from your last book.”  “I was very surprised because it reads in such short snippets.”

As I consistently heard similar comments I thought it best to explain why I wrote this book and why it is so wildly different from Journey to the Soul.

So much has changed in my past thirty years in the rabbinate.  I used to preach and pepper my talks with Yiddishisms or at least tell a long-winded joke and have the punch line in Yiddish.  I can no longer do that because I have to explain what the words mean.  Few are the laughs because they don’t get it.  

If members did not keep kosher they knew what they were doing wrong.   Nowadays, it is not so.  I used to assume that most of the congregation kept kosher.  That too has changed.

Facility with Hebrew is down.  One of the dominant issues facing all synagogues is how to make their services accessible to those who cannot read Hebrew.  Or make services shorter to become more tantalizing (or less brutal in length).

Intermarriage used to be an issue that was both rare and vexing.  It is neither today.

It is the same with knowledge of Jewish texts, support of Jewish causes, davenning, putting on tefillin….

I am not bemoaning these changes. 

I take them as a challenge.  My driving question today is how to make Judaism both meaningful and practical.

Story: A poor couple came to a rabbi who was famous for his power of prayer.  The couple came to the rabbi to ask him to pray on their behalf for a child.  The rabbi agreed to pray for them, but only for five hundred dollars.

The couple could not afford that much money, yet mindful of the rabbi’s reputation, they asked if he would do it for $100.

The rabbi refused, insisting he would only do it for $500.

After much argumentation and frustration they said, “Forget it, rabbi.  We do not need you.  We will go home and pray on our own.”

They left and the rabbi smiled.  That is precisely what he wanted them to do. - Reuven Bulka

This is essentially why I wrote Life’s Pathway: Inspirations to Fire the Soul.  Between its covers are daily readings – like the one above – that allows the reader to feel, learn, and even practice the touchstone of our faith.   No lectures or diatribes.  No guilt (Boy, do I feel guilty about that!)  And no major Hebrew hurdles or mental gymnastics.  With pithy ancient sayings and wise parables the book provides easy access to Jewish principles for living.  And not only is it painless, it is fun! 

For more, see http://www.outskirtspress.com/webPage/isbn/9781478738015