Day of Restoning

The purpose of this blog is to turn Friday night dinner into Shabbat. Please print and share.

Several readers replied to my fantasy last week about creating a news service dedicated to good news, the Good News Network or GNN.

One wrote that it would be rather boring.

Another pointed out, "It's already there — www.goodnewsnetwork.org"!

(Which if you think about it gives us an opportunity to put the first reader's point to the test.)

What do you think? Does it work? Are you going to bookmark it?

Or is it boring?

Here's a story that's neither bad news nor boring. 

I heard last night from someone who heard it from the doctor himself.

This Jewish doctor was preparing to perform a certain surgery on a Gentile patient. The surgery was known to be painful and to help his patient prepare mentally, he wanted to give her something to distract her.

So for some reason this doctor, wearing a yarmulke, mentioned the Jewish idea of Shabbat - Sabbath - a time to rejuvenate and heal.

"Oh, I know about Shabbat," she said. "I kept Shabbat for four years."

Needless to say, the doctor was slightly nonplussed.

She continued, "I come from New York. There I worked in a travel agency where most of the other employees were Jewish. As my kids became teens, I started to have all kinds of conflicts with them, struggles and all that. Yet I noticed that my co-workers all seemed to have happy families. They were always going to celebrations, you know graduations and whatnot, and simchas. So I finally had to ask one of them what it is that Jewish people did to keep their kids close to them. She explained to me about Shabbat, that you all eat together, you talk about the week, what the kids learned in school, sing songs and all that. So I decided that we were going to keep Shabbat."

And so she did.

For four years.

"What about the gefilte fish? Did you make gefilte fish?"

(For some Jews, Shabbat isn't Shabbos without gefilte fish.)

"Everything was 0-U, all the way."

All of her kids went to college, and graduated.

After the youngest one was out of the house, she stopped keeping Shabbat.

But then one day she got a phone call from her daughter, who was struggling with her own teenager.

"Mom, what's that thing we used to do, that 'Shabbat'?"

The Midrash calls Shabbat a "precious gift from God's secret vault".

I wonder how many of us appreciate it.

The question this week for your table: What's the difference between "Friday night" and "Shabbat"?


Shabbat Shalom

PS - We have added new Purim and Pesach ideas to bestjewishkidsbooks.com

PPS - Please help my "letter to the French People" (here in English) go viral. Send the link(s) to everyone you know who knows someone French, or in France, or who took French in high school, or who at least can say "Oui, oui."

Devorah Torah

Did you ever find yourself struggling to stay awake during a sermon?

Who hasn’t?

Did you ever find yourself giving a sermon and wonder why so many people were sleep-deprived lately?

Yesterday someone asked me if I could help his daughter with her “Dvar Torah” for her Bat Mitzvah. He wanted me to send him some thoughts about her Torah portion.

More specifically, he wanted me to send her ideas about the portion of her portion that was her portion, or at least a portion of the portion of her portion that was her portion.

I asked him if she felt that she had to speak specifically about a portion of her portion of the portion. Or should she necessarily speak about any portion of the portion?

For example, another young lady in San Francisco chose to speak about the hugely-important mitzvah of not speaking gossip (lashon hara). She even made a public commitment not to speak OR LISTEN TO lashon hara.

Thanks to her, there has been an estimated 7.7 percent decline of lashon hara levels in San Francisco over the past 30 days.

That’s the nature of a good Dvar Torah – it inspires the audience to think about their own lives in a new way.

So now I’d like to share a most unusual Dvar Torah at our own Friday night dinner table.

First we sing “Shalom Aleichem”. (To learn one of the classic tunes for this great song, click here.)

Then the children line up for their parental blessing. We go oldest to youngest, but we've heard there are families who go youngest to oldest. (The traditional blessing is here.)

(but I always add my own words).

Then we sit down, say “Shabbat Shalom” or “Gut Shabbos” or “Good Shabbat” to each other and do Kiddush and Hamotzee.

Then I start to ask the kids what they learned this week. In their schools and camps, they USUALLY learn something about the Portion. But if they didn’t, I try to have a story ready for them. (looking for great books of dinner-table-friendly stories? see below.)

(At some point, of course, I tell over the week’s Table Talk, of course...)

Lately, at some point in the meal, our 4-year-old Devorah gets out of her seat, strides over to the bookcase I keep by the table, takes a large book and announces, “I have a Devorah Torah!”

She insists that everyone listen.

We listen.

She opens the book and, pretending to read, starts to improvise a story that can go on for quite a long time.

It’s entertaining… for a few minutes.

What keeps it going is her radiant joy, and our reluctance to stop her.

There are two morals to this story.

The first is what makes a great Dvar Torah?

1. Be happy
2. Be personal - tell a story
3. Be brief

Question for your Table: What’s the second moral to this story?


Shabbat Shalom

“Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.” – Churchill

Some recommended books of meaningful stories:

1. http://tinyurl.com/touchedbyastory (or use this for paperback)
2. http://tinyurl.com/maggidspeaks (or use this for paperback)

If you use one of these links, a portion of your purchase is donated to support JSL’s programs.

Need more ideas? Send me an email.

PS...

Just...Stop

The goal of this blog is to give you a conversation-starter at your dinner table. How about typing “CTRL-P” and taking it home?

Look at this unbelievable headline:

S Korea child 'starves as parents raise virtual baby'.

A South Korean couple who were addicted to the internet let their three-month-old baby starve to death while raising a virtual daughter online, police said.

Question for your Table: What's wrong with these people?

It's really simple, as tragic as it is:

They didn't know how to stop.

Someone recently asked me, "How can our family make Shabbat more meaningful?"

I answered, "What do you mean, 'Shabbat'?"

"You're asking me?"

"I know what I mean by Shabbat. But what do you mean by Shabbat?"

"I don't know. I guess that's part of the problem. I don't really know what it means."

Step 1: Look at the headlines. Look at your life. Do you sometimes go overboard, putting too much on your plate?

Step 2: Tonight, allow yourself to stop.

Just stop.

Try with the email.

Ooo, I know this is hard. See if you can go one evening (let's say Friday, for the sake of discussion), without doing email or internet.

Can you? Then you can do Shabbat.

Can't you? Then you need Shabbat.

Shabbat
Shtabbat
Shtab
Stab
Stop

Shabbat Shalom

The Week That Is

Sometimes, so many things happen, it’s hard to digest them.

Yom Kippur, earthquakes and tsunamis, births and deaths, and on and on.

There is this idea that the 6 days of the week – Sunday thru Friday – are “unified” on Friday night.

Meaning, each day has a different energy, a different wavelength, a different set of challenges and rewards.

On Friday night, these 6 units of time coalesce into a single unit, “the week”. The opportunity to let these 6 gel is called “Shabbat” or “Shabbos”, which literally means “stopping to run around and do things in order for all that you’ve done the past 6 days to be able to coalesce and be digested.”

So much has happened this week. So little has happened.

I don’t know about you, but I have a love-hate relationship with NPR. They have had some stories that have been so anti-Israel it makes some people think of them as “national Palestine radio”. But mostly they have some real gems.

Here are two stories from this week that I wanted to share with you.

The first is about Jennie Litvak, who learned to play trumpet from Dizzy Gilespie, and now plays shofar: Click here.

The second is my brother’s story this morning, on health care co-ops: Here.

Here’s the question for your table: Can you remember one thing you worked on or accomplished each day this week?

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Sukkot

PS - This US Army broadcast from Nazi Germany stirs the soul:


“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” - Churchill

Your Brother’s Blood

In memory of Rabbi Gabriel and Rivka Holtzberg and all the other victims.


Please print this message and read/share at your Friday night dinner table.

November 27th, 2008 (Ynet News): The two-year-old son of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka is asking about the whereabouts of his parents, his nanny told Ynet. The nanny, Sandra Samuel, is a local who had been living with the family. She and the toddler are currently staying in the Israeli Consulate in Mumbai. “The baby is okay, but I have no idea about the couple. Nobody told us anything,” she said. “In the evening his mother always puts him to sleep and now he doesn’t understand what’s going on,” she added.

I’m very sad. I did not know the Hotlzbergs, yet I knew them intimately.

I am them. Like the Holtzbergs, my wife and I, too, left our comfort zone to go to the high tech capital on the West Coast, in order to do a little Jewish outreach.

OK, so they chose Mumbai and we chose Silicon Valley, but believe me I can relate to them. I know many Chabad emissaries (several of whom knew the Holtzbergs) and they are as a rule the most giving, loving, selfless and hardworking people you will ever meet. When they move to a community, they are committed forever to that community (unlike yours, truly, who relocated to Baltimore). Contrary to popular myth, they don’t enjoy long-term support from some golden Chabad bankroll. They quickly have to support themselves. I know several who moonlight in other jobs just to pay the bills. Abandoning their mission due to hardship is not an option, not because they took an oath but because they care.

Now, my style of teaching Judaism is slightly different than some Chabad rabbis. Some will tell you, “Just put on the tefillin, it’s good for you, even if you don’t understand it, it’s a mitzvah.”

I will tell you, “You want to learn about tefillin? So come and learn. Whether or not you put it on is your business.”

You may prefer one style over the other. Different strokes for different folks.

But make no mistake: the terrorists did not choose the Chabad House of Mumbai randomly. It was a premeditated attack on Mumbai’s most visibly Jewish target. Unlike all the other victims of this tragedy, the Holtzbergs and their guests were not killed because they represented international business or because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were killed because they were Jews.

This week’s question for your table is: what does that simple fact mean to you?

In other words, do you agree with this news analysis:



For a change, I’m going to put on my Chasidic hat and ask you outright to do a mitzvah, even if you haven’t learned about it.

Please, tonight, 18 minutes before sunset, light Shabbat candles. If you light them anyway and know someone who doesn’t, phone them up and encourage them to – just this one time.

In memory of those who lost their lives, in honor of those who need healing, and in solidarity with the frontline soldiers of Chabad worldwide.

Time to light Nov 28:
Los Angeles: 4:26
New York: 4:12
San Francisco: 4:34
Seattle: 4:03

Other cities – try one of these sites:
http://www.chabad.org/calendar/location.htm
http://shabbos.com/
http://www.candlelightingtimes.org/shabbos/


Shabbat Shalom