Recently I had a run in with a friend. I suggested that we sit down and talk it out. His response was, "nah, let it sit for some time and it will blow over for both of us". Turns out he was correct. It did blow over. But it doesn't always. Sometimes, issues from the past linger and the can become consuming, eating us up from within, until it gets resolved. How does one resolve the issues from the past? There are two approaches: A. face the demons head on...
We stand under a Chuppah to indicate that the marriage takes place under the Heavenly Eye of G-d. We place a ring on the finger to demonstrate the Infinite One's involvement in our union. We circle the groom 7 times to establish a Divine Protective Wall around the couple. Why all this G-d Involvement in what should be a simple ceremony to demonstrate the committment of two lovers to each other? Marriage is the union between two finite people. By definition the finiteness of the two means that I stop here and...
Spousal Manipulation. Sounds like a bad idea if you want to have a happy marriage. Yet we see in this weeks Parsha that Rivka seems to be doing just that in dressing Jacob up in Esau's clothing, preparing animals from the back yard and pretending that they were hunted and teaching her son Jacob to deceive his father. It opens up an uncomfortable question of, do the ends justify the means? Often times in Judaism and in the Torah, the answer is yes. But then it begs the question here, what...
Ever lose a dollar or five or a twenty? You realize it must have fallen out of your pocket at the grocery store when you pulled out your wallet or when you needed to show your license. It's frustrating but manageable (as long as it is not $100 or maybe more). Wouldn't it be nice to know that the five or twenty was picked up by someone who really needed the money and it helped them buy a loaf of bread that they might have otherwise not been able to afford?...
Last week some workers in our house had some music playing. The lyrics caught my ear. Too blessed to be stressed. I now know that this is a pretty popular line and meme out there. The specific lyrics of this particular group were a little too funky and hipster for me to fully comprehend but the punch line - too blessed to be stressed got me thinking. In this month of Elul we focus on our relationship with G-d. As in any relationship it is a two way street. There is what we do for G-d...
It seems like love is in the air. Someone posted on facebook just today, "Did I really count 37 engagements this month?". Not surprising considering that we are entering into the month of Elul - the final month of the Jewish calendar, whose Hebrew name is an acronym for the word Ani Lidodi Vidodi Li - I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me. Our relationship with G-d is like our human love relationships and vice versa and we can learn from each relationship to improve on the other. Since...
Do you ever want something from someone else? Something only they can give you? You have two choices when it comes to this request. A. You can rationalize why they should grant your request or B. beg or plead. I don’t really mean beg, more like calling on some inner part of your relationship with them that would evoke a response to respond to your request. Which approach makes more sense? Well if you were Moses and had been nominated for a job you didn’t ask for or want (taking the...
Ok, this is an article a bit out of my character. It is not that I am not straightforward always, it’s more that I generally try to package my comments in a more subtle manner. But, something happened this week that just struck a chord. So, here it is. I was reading this book called “The Portable Jewish Mother; a hearty serving of OY VEY!”, a cute little book that talks about all the stereotypical stuff your read about the Jewish mother. But there is other stuff about the Jewish lifecycle,...
It’s been said “everybody backs up sooner or later”. And today the responsible thing to do is to back up to the Cloud. Is all your stuff backed up to the Cloud? And is backing up to the Cloud really all that new? Advantages of backing up to the Cloud: You always have your files in case your computer’s hard drive or external hard drive crashes and burns You can access the files from wherever you are You don’t have to worry about saving your files in different versions because the Cloud holds them all...
This old Yiddish saying (it's translated from Mentsch Tracht uhn Gut Lacht) is a safe comeback from a rough day, perhaps a cynical escape of a small and faithless mind or a light'ish statement on a fundamental of Jewish faith. How often do we plan out the outcome of a business endeavor, a human interaction or even the very realities of day to day life; good health, raising fine children or something as simple as your daily schedule, only to have things turn out completely different then we expected? We often react...