Ten for Parents

Ten Crucial Thoughts on Parenting

10. Some part of any money that comes your way should be for tzedaka.

9. The way you fulfill your appetites should be preceded by, “How does Judaism say I should do this?” 

8. You have a home in Israel.

7. Nothing is more important to your moral development than Jewish education.

6. Come to shul with me.

5. Make a Shabbat table.

4. It is important to daven.

3. I expect you to live as a Jew.

2. Zei a mensch.

1. “This is what I believe about God…”

Read the list. Discuss them.  Let them become part of the dialogue.

Prayerful Hints

“Work is great.  It warms us,” declares the Talmud (Gittin).

Who does not like a vacation?  Yet, who sits around and just that?  So many people set withering agendas on vacation.  Sports, adventures, hiking, catching a bus or running for a plane or boat, parsing on hundreds of miles, and on. 

Perhaps we have all learned that keeping busy, being productive makes us feel “warm.”   A good day concludes when we have exhausted ourselves with sightseeing.

The same is true for life in general. We seek work that gratifies us, knowing we have expended energy in a constructive manner.  We enter into relationships and know that it will take ongoing effort to ensure continuity.

An Israeli joke tells of Yossi and Shmulik sitting at a café in Tel Aviv drinking coffee all day.

Yossi explains, “We have to watch our caffeine intake.  Too much and it interferes with our sleep at the office.” 

The Holy Days are upon us.  We will sit for long hours seeking forgiveness, meting our responsibility as our ancestors did before us, greeting old friends and looking for God.

In most of those tasks we succeed but there are times when in the course of seeking God we are derailed.  That may be because no one bothered to ever explain how to look for the holy One.

-       Plato wrote the first sentence of his famous “Republic” nine times before he was satisfied.

There are different approaches to God.  They do not all work all the time.  We must be prepared to try different avenues.  How about sitting still?  Try quieting the mind and simply focus.  Or repeat a meaningful word(s) from the prayers like Shma Yisrael, or Hashevaynu Adondai (Return to me, God).  How about moving your body (what we call “shuckling”) as a form of prayer?

-Noah Webster worked for thirty-six years on his dictionary, even crossing the Atlantic Ocean twice to gather information.

Follow his example and read the marginal notes for inspiration.  Or bring an inspiring book with you to shul to resource during the service.  We keep books for reference in the bookcases at the rear of the Sanctuary for this purpose.

-Milton rose at 4 am every day so he could finish Paradise Lost.

Don’t give up.  If one form does not work, try another.  Singing is a way to cast your soul outward.  If it is, sing louder. 

-       Cicero practiced speaking in front of his friends every day for 30 years to perfect his elocution.

Why not read up on the Holy Days before you arrive at shul?  There are loads of books in the library and innumerable sources on line.  Come prepared.

-       Byron rewrote on of his poems ninety-nine times before he was satisfied.  Only then was it declared a masterpiece and has become a classic.

When we put effort into work, vacations, the yard or whatever we come away with a feeling of accomplishment, a rewarding sense of success.  Since it happens in every sphere on our lives why not shul too?    

- Gibbon spent twenty-six years writing The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

I do not think you will be in services that long but come prepared, dedicated to search for your Maker.  As Torah says, “Seek Me and you will find Me.”

Don’t Have a Happy New Year

A wandering merchant came to a town square offering to sell the elixir of life.  Of course, large crowds would surround him, each person eager to purchase eternal youth.  When pressed, the merchant would bring out the Book of Psalms and show them the verse: “Who desires life?  Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from guile.”

Rabbi Artson tells that tale as it demonstrates the greatest truth of life: what we do influences how we live.  On one plane, it is widely accepted that healthy eating produces a healthier lifestyle.  Yet, it is equally true that our outward behavior towards others crafts the inner image of our identity.

Show me a kind-hearted person, generous with deed and word, and I will show you a happy person.  The opposite is also true- a foul-mouthed, mean-spirited person will harbor a nasty cauldron of inner bitterness.

We control how we act and how we act controls how we construct our thoughts.

Rumi and so many other inspired poets speak of following your heart while our faith says the opposite, “Your heart will be drawn after your actions.”  In other words humans have the propensity to justify what we do, even when it is bad.  We merge into one being with what we say.  In stead, the Jewish attitude is to do mitzvot and your heart will follow.

We are headed into the season when the measure of our self is taken, both by God and us.  As we approach the end of the summer we see our reflection mirrored in the eyes of those with whom we interact.  When we see their disapproving glance we can fend off the negativity or be brave – as God would have it - and ask, “How did I create this?”  Equally so, watch for the look of love in another’s eyes and you will find joyful validation.

One man seeking wholeness went to see a mystic.  He yearned for healing.  Half starved, the mystic ordered the man to be fed and then had him repeat the viduy (confession), ashammnu, bgadnu, gazalmu etc- “we have sinned, we have betrayed, we have stolen…..”

In the course of repeating the list of sins he fainted.  When he came to the mystic sent him away ordering him to never again forget that some words are important as deeds, some words are actually deeds and some deeds take control of our self.  They and us become one.

Don’t have a happy New Year, make it a good one through your actions.

Mazel Tov!

Mazel tov!

Everyone, Jew and gentile, has heard this phrase.  We take it to mean, ‘Well done!”   Or “congratulations!”  Actually, mazel tov means “good luck.”   

The words are meant to ward of the “evil eye.”  Ok, say something good happens to you.  If someone comes up and says, “What a wonderful thing to happened to you” (i.e. I am envious and it should have happened to a nicer person) they would be putting the “evil eye” on you, this is wishing something bad.

Another generation may remember saying “kayna hara” after hearing good news, which are words to chase away and bad wishes or spirits.  Going back another generation, some will even remember spitting over their shoulder when something good was spoken to chase away a possible curse.

“Mazel tov” – good luck -- was originally a way to disrupt the pathway of the evil eye.

Going back even further in time, “mazel” was how the star lined up.  “Mazalot” means constellations.  In Israel there are star charts of the floors of some synagogues.  Astronomy was an important way to chart of the passage of time.   One scholar, Rabbi Shmuel was said to be more familiar with the pathways of the stars than the streets of the city where he lived.

Going back millennia, mazel tov indicates a wish for the stars to align in a favorable pattern to bring about a good outcome.

A Time Anomaly

Moses dispatched twelve spies to determine the viability of the Land.

Tisha B’Av (forty days later) the Jews deny their heritage in fright and refuse to enter the Land.  They are sentenced to forty years of wandering.

The first Temple was destroyed on the same date.

The Second Temple was destroyed on the same date.

The Judean revolt was quashed leading to 2,000 years of exile.

Ferdinand and Isabella expelled all Jews from Spain.

So, is Tisha B’Av fated to be a day of darkness and excruciating pain?   We will fast and read Lamentations on this date.  Is the ninth of Av cursed?

Is there such a thing as good or bad luck?  Are things fated by the universe and therefore we are trapped? 

I remember my father telling me when I was saddened to hear about all the tragedies on Tisha B’Av.  He soothed my anxiety by telling me that the Mashiah would be born on this day.

Maybe we can change our ill fortune; God has not written our lives before they have been lived. 

We are not as stuck as we feel.

We are not fated or slated for anything but are ever free to choose our own destiny.

In the seventeenth century Italian violinists kept toads in their violin cases.  Before a concert they would pull out their toad and stroke it for good luck. Centuries later it was discovered by herpetologists that toads secrete alkaloids that dry out skin.  Toads actually helped them play better because they fingers did not stick to the strings!

Maybe there is no mazel tov: there are only the results of our efforts.

From Freedom to Free

A few weeks back we celebrated Pesach, a breathing memorial to enslavement to freedom.  We sang, “How is this night different!” in wonderment as celebrated our first freedom.   We declared, “Let all who are hungry come and eat” as if for the first time we had bread on our tables and declared that anyone could partake.

Seven weeks later we became a “holy nation” at Sinai as G-d shared His vision in the revelation.  This became Shavuot.

At the first celebration we are bound by history.  The shared past of pain and liberation is a story that continues to unite us.  We recall other seders, people who used to sit at our table, sang songs, and recounted a story that is part of our collective past.  We use the anniversary of the Exodus to appreciate what has happened to us, to give new focus to the past year and remember an event that made us a people.  We are bound to each other because of our mutual experiences, our history.

We used to be Ivrim, “others,” then we became am Yisrael, a people united by common shared experience.

Sinai is a radical shift in thinking.  Israel was freed through water but forged in fire.

Sinai is a vision that begins with a mountain swamped by smoke and fire and ends with a blueprint, a plan, for the future. 

When G-d revealed the Torah at Sinai it was not an event for posterity; it was an ever-unfolding moment that would reveal itself in stages through the prophets and holy rabbis.  Torah was always about the future, never the past.  And it holds out the vision of a new order, one where equality reigns paramount; where human dignity is a universal right (and demand); where every member is a holy priest; where a covenant connects all to the same end.

As if to prove the point, Torah indicates that “all the people” were present at Sinai and each accepted it.  Not the officers, the influential or the entitled were addressed and responded but “all the people.”  In Judaism there is no privilege.  Each person is equal and defined by his or her actions.  Even G-d is subject to covenant, which is why the Torah later declares, “it [the Torah] is not in heaven.”

Pesach is what G-d did for us, Shavuot is about what we are pledged to do for ourselves.   This sacred time is about our passage from slaves to visionaries.

“The day is long, the hour is late and the Master is impatient,” declares the Mishna.  We have ideals set before us; we are people of vision.  We remain unified by our shared history while being cognizant that we are covenanted to construct a better future based on what we can be.