How to Lose.... Wait!

The purpose of this blog is to turn Friday night dinner into a valuable asset. Please print and share.
Happy birthday shouts-out to Lisa + Susan in SF!

One of my favorite motivational videos is "The Time You Have (in Jellybeans)".

He starts with 28,835 jellybeans, representing the days in a lifetime of 79 years.

Then he starts removing jellybeans from the pile, to represent the time we spend in childhood, sleeping, eating, shopping, work, commuting, watching TV, chores, taking care of others' needs, etc.

He ends up with a small pile of jellybeans representing free time - time for enjoying life, self-fulfillment etc.

And he asks: What are you going to do with this small bit of time that remains after you have done all those other activities?

In my opinion, there is something very Jewish and yet something very un-Jewish about this message.

First question for your table: What do you think?

Second question: Imagine you were sitting on a bus next to someone with a bag full of dollar bills.

Every minute or so, he reaches into the bag, pulls out a dollar, and drops it out the window.

You are watching this peculiar behavior for awhile, until he appears to run out of money.

Then he turns to you and asks, "May I borrow a dollar?"

What do you say?

In the video, an efficient person may notice something he left out of his jellybean count: time that is wasted.

Wasted not because a person's standing in line at airport security, but because they're standing in line at airport security without a book.

Wait-time.

Our life is filled with little time-nuggets of wait-time. These are opportunities to learn and to grow.

But we totally waste most of these .

3rd Q for your table: If someone asked you how to use their wait-time for a purpose, what would you advise?


"If you love life, then love time, for that is the stuff that life is made of." (Ben Franklin)


Shabbat Shalom

 
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Who Knows? The Save-a-Life Lottery

Congratulations! You've won the jackpot for your Friday night dinner table. Please print and share.
Dedicated this week in memory of R. Meir.

A question for your table, followed by a story, followed by a question.

The first question: In your opinion, what percentage of the news that you read or hear is good news?

It seems to me that it's a very low percentage.

Sometimes I fantasize about starting a news service called GNN - The Good News Network.

What do you think? Would the world beat a path to my door?

Short of that, I have this humble blog, tirelessly delivering you the good(s) every week. (I admit that last week wasn't such good news, but I hope you appreciated the effort.)

So to make up for that, this week is a truly uplifting story.

It starts with a man named Jiang Yonfeng.

Jiang is Chinese, living in Shanghai. He's 36.

He works as a driver for some unnamed company.

At his office one day someone from the Red Cross is signing people up for an international stem cell registry program.

Who knows? Maybe they'll find a match and you could save someone's life?

Not likely. The odds of ever finding a match are longer than winning the lottery.

 

Donor and recipient must have nearly the exact same genes.

But it doesn't cost anything. Just give them a bit of your saliva.

So Jiang joins the program in March, 2013.

Hey, who knows?

Can you picture yourself in his shoes?

How long would you remember registering? A few days?

Pretty soon you'd forget all about it.

But in November, 2014 Jiang receives a phone call. He's a match for a leukemia patient in the UK.

A seven-year-old boy.

Jackpot.

According to the rules of the game, he and the boy will never meet nor even know each other's names.

How do you think that makes him feel?

Oh, by the way, in order to make the actual donation, Jiang has to fly to Beijing, spend five days in the General Hospital of the Airforce of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, receiving daily injections to activate his stem cells, then be hooked up to a transfusion machine for three hours. British doctors on hand will then rush the stem cells back to the UK.

All this for someone he never met and would never meet.

Jiang says he feels great: "I just want the procedure to be done as soon as possible so they can send my cells back to the UK and help the little kid recover as soon as possible. I hope he can be brave and strong and he can live a good life."

 

 

Question for your table: How would that make you feel?


Shabbat Shalom

PS - You too can play the save-a-life "lottery": register your stem cells here or your bone marrow here. Learn more here. Or increase your odds of winning to nearly 100 percent by donating your extra kidney.

PPS - As far as I know, my "letter to the French People" (and here in English) has not yet gone viral in France. Please help it spread by sending the link to everyone you know who knows someone French, or in France, or who took French in high school.

Dahlia's Hand

In memory of Dalia Lemkus and Almog Shiloni, murdered this week because they were Jews who dared living in the Land of Israel.
The goal of this blog is to bring a bit of contemplation to your Friday night dinner table. Please print and share.

According to accounts, Dalia Lemkus was a normal young woman.

When she was murdered this week, she was hitchhiking to her volunteer job at Yad Sarah.

Yad Sarah means "Sarah's Hand". The name is a nod to the great Matriarch who ran (with her husband Avraham) an enormous free hospitality enterprise some 3,700 years ago.

Incidentally, in the vicinity of Dahlia's home.


(And, ironically, in the vicinity of the murderer, who murdered in order to market the idea that his people are the more authentic heirs to the legacy of Abraham. How do you say "confused" in Arabic again?)
 
Yad Sarah is one of the biggest charity organizations in the Land of Israel. They serve without discrimination Jews, Arabs, Druze, Christians - namely everyone. With 6,000 volunteers and only 150 paid staff, they lend for free over 244,000 pieces of medical equipment every year.

Someone broke their leg and needs crutches? Call Yad Sarah.
Need a wheel chair? Call Yad Sarah.
How about an oxygen concentrator, apnea monitor, infant scale, hospital bed, shower chair, high-tech or assistive device? Call Yad Sarah.

Someone in a wheelchair needs a ride to a medical appointment? Call Yad Sarah.
Someone needs to make a decision on medical devices, needs advice, needs training? Call Yad Sarah.

And this is only a partial list! Learn about the extent of their services here.

Even tourists enjoy the free services of Yad Sarah.

(Yad Sarah's entire $23 million budget comes from private donations. Their main website is here; their American site is here.)

This background tells us a lot about Miss Lemkus. But there's more.

She was just completing her training as an occupational therapist.

She spoke English with a South African accent, thanks to her parents who made aliyah thirty years ago.

When she went to synagogue on Shabbat she made a point to smile at everyone in her row before anything else.

She was sought after by brides to do their makeup on wedding day because she loved doing that chesed and was good at it

When Yad Sarah needed a volunteer to cover the evening shift, what would they do? Call Dahlia.

We know where she got it from. Her father, an optometrist, serves as a volunteer ambulance driver. Her mother, an international sales rep, cares for the elderly. When her brother Chaggai celebrated his bar mitzvah a month ago, guess who cooked all the food?

When a neighbor had to go to the hospital with a sick child, guess who stayed with the other young children all night and refused to be paid?

In other words, she was a normal Jewish girl from a normal Jewish family.

Right?

She couldn't afford a car, so she had to hitchhike: to get to her job in a Kiryat Gat kindergarten and to her volunteer work at Yad Sarah.

She was murdered at the bus stop / hitchhiking post of Alon Shevut.

The town stands on the site of the Battle of Beit Zechariah, fought between the Maccabees and the Seleucid army after the defeat of the Seleucids in Jerusalem.

That modern road is in fact an ancient road to Jerusalem, still marked by Roman milestones. Many ancient mikvaot have been found in the surrounding hills, presumably used by pilgrims heading up to Jerusalem.

Dahlia was trying to head up that road when she was brutally run over then stabbed. Oh, I forgot to mention that she survived a knife attack at that exact spot in 2006. I guess she didn't get the message then.

The murderer first tried to run her over with his Subaru minivan. When he saw that she was still writhing with life, he jumped out and stabbed her in the neck, over and again. Two others were wounded before the murderer was immobilized by a security guard.

“Dalia! Dalia!” wailed her mother as her daughter was lowered into her final resting place.

Her uncle described her as "the angel of our family."

“the angel of our family”
‘Such an incredible loss to our family’ | The Australian Je

This week's questions for your table:

1. Do you agree with me that Dalia was a "normal Jewish girl from a normal Jewish family"?
2. Did Dalia live a full life?


Shabbat Shalom

PS - What, you haven't told your favorite teacher or school about the Amazing Nature for Teachers ? Just highlight this paragraph and click "forward". AmazingNature4Teachers.com.
 
(Or better yet, send them a gift subscription.)

Note: some subscribers are parents who sign up to inspire their families!


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The Meaning of Lift

The goal of this blog is to give a helping hand to your Friday night dinner conversation. Please print and share.

Central Pennsylvania.



 



Rural central Pennsylvania. 



Driving with the wife and 3 kids.



Heading home on a Sunday evening after a LONG day.



3 hours of driving ahead of us.



A narrow road, traffic. Not a lot of room to maneuver.



An object on the road. Black.



Looks like part of a truck's engine. 



Can we make it over it?



Hope so, no choice. 



SCRAAAAAAAPE......POP! 



 Guess not..... 



 Plume of oil spurting out the back of the car. 



Seven year old, "I can't breathe!! I can't breathe!!" 



 We made it off of the road safely. There is a happy ending. 



 But I wanted to relate one detail of this story that should be remembered. 



 Not only did Act Towing take care of our minivan, they took us in a 
separate vehicle, first 20 miles to the airport to see if there were any
 rentals available (there were not) and then 15 miles to a hotel. 



 And not only that, but the next morning, the boss's wife picked us up in
 her minivan to take us back to the airport to get our rental car.



She didn't need to. They could have told us, "Sorry buddy, call a cab!" 



 That's hospitality. That's kindness. 



 And here's the best part: She showed no sign of trouble or hurry or bother. 



 2 questions for your table:



 - What's a better feeling, when someone goes out of their way to help you, or when you go out of your way to help someone?

 - Does it matter how you do it, or is the doing it the main thing? 



Shabbat Shalom 

 
PS - Some say the cultivation of compassion starts with this kind of wonderment.

 

Help is On the Way

The purpose of this blog is to help you transform your Friday night table from a meal to a profound encounter. Please print & share.


This week: A Question, a Problem, a Solution for your table

1. The Question: Were you profoundly happy or profoundly disappointed Tuesday night?

Most people I spoke with were one or the other. I have found very few people who (like me) are unconvinced that the differences between the two candidates were more significant than their similarities.

2. The Problem: Since the country - and much of the world - is so divided and believes so much that they are right and the other side is wrong, is that OK? Does unity matter?

3. The Solution: There is one way to create unity, whether between two people or between two groups of people. That is to have a common purpose, a common goal.

Sometimes that common goal is to defeat a common enemy.

This would be a bottom-line level of unity.

Other times, the common goal is something positive, like educating our children.

Right now we have a common enemy, and I would like to use this soapbox to encourage you to join with me in unity to fight it.

Imagine a newlywed couple who are renting a basement apartment.

In the apartment they have all of their wedding gifts.

Furniture.

Linens.

Photo albums.

Childhood mementos.

Many precious books.

All of their clothing.

The basement was flooded by Sandy and they lost...

everything.

Their cars were completely destroyed.

They still have to go to work.

They still have to eat.

They are lucky that they are renters.

Homeowners have the added pain of losing the entire house AND needing to make mortgage payments. AND paying for the demolition of the condemned house. (Can they even think of rebuilding?)

We're not talking about a few hundred people here. There are thousands.

From The Jewish Week: “We have families who have lost all their cars, totaled from storm damage,” Dolgin said. “We have families whose basements are completely flooded, homes that will surely be condemned. One grandfather died in his sleep during the storm, another grandfather had a stroke as the house was flooding. Worst of all, there are many families we have not yet heard from.”

If you are the director of a school with hundreds of children and overnight the school building is destroyed, what do you do?

The needs in New York are enormous and profound.

Just like you shouldn't believe all the bad news you read, you also shouldn't believe all the good news.

From this eyewitness account in Tuesday's Forward: "The newscasters and papers are reporting that we’re turning a page. They’re reporting that the lights are coming on, the subways are running, people are back to work. That is not the case in Far Rockaway.....For three straight days I’ve been in Far Rockaway, I’ve not seen a Red Cross volunteer, I’ve not seen FEMA, I’ve not seen the National Guard."

Yet together, we have enormous resources.

Let's work together to help these people. Now. Today. Please.

If you live close enough to New York to assist with physical cleanup, please go this Sunday.

Bring extra gasoline for generators.

Achiezer provides direct service to many families who lost everything they owned. These families must start from scratch; literally.
Many Jewish groups have relief funds, including the JFN.
The Mazal School was destroyed and hoping to survive as a school.

If you know any victims, you might help them navigate their own recovery with these articles from Consumer Reports:

a. Car damaged or destroyed by flood
b. Preparing to deal with home insurance company
c. Other useful articles

If I have failed to move you, read this journal of a survivor.

Chesed - the giving of oneself to help another - is the foundation of everything Jewish. Everything.


Shabbat Shalom

We of the Storm

The purpose of this email is to help you turn your Friday night table into a haven. Please print and share.


Hurricane Sandy passed directly over Baltimore's Jewish community where we live.

Part of me wants to write about that.

About the remarkable chesed in the community. The Chesed Fund who gave away flashlights and batteries. The Hatzala group of volunteer EMTs who carry walkie-talkies 24/7. Chaverim dispatch, who rush to anyone in need of roadside assistance, 24/6. Shomrim and NWCP — two all-volunteer citizen patrols who work in association with the police. The Jewish Caring Network providing meals to dozens of families. Bikur Cholim helping the hospitalized.

Part of me.

Part of me wants to write a sympathy blog about the sufferings, the phenomenal scale of New York's calamity. We in Baltimore know what it's like to lose power for a week - it's a true hardship - remember last summer's derecho? But that's nothing compared to losing everything in a flood.

 Part of me.

Part of me really wants to write about the awesomeness of the Frankenstorm, about the concept of making a bracha to capture that awesomeness and frame it in one's mind.

Part of me.

But then part of me wants to wonder why we allow our media to entertain us with storm stories while ignoring the 16,000 children who die every day from starvation and malnutrition (mostly in Africa). That's one kid every five seconds.

Question for your table: Do you have parts too? Which part is the real you? Which part do you want to be the real you? And what are you going to do about it?


Shabbat Shalom

May Matzah?

Dedicated to my Mom – What more need I say?
To dedicate a future Table Talk, send an email.

Here’s a trivia question for your table – why would thousands of Jews have a custom of eating matzah today, May 8, 2009?

Before I tell you the answer, I would like to share with you a delightful new book that I received as a gift this week.
It’s called Do One Nice Thing – Little things You Can Do to Make the World a Lot Nicer!

Here’s a random example from p. 206:

Donate some of your airline miles
so family members can visit a
wounded service member in the
hospital: visit www.FisherHouse.org
and click on Hero Miles.

The author, Debbie Tenzer, follows each suggestion with a short, thoughtfully-written vignette. Every page is like a ray of sunshine, attractively packaged by Crown Publishers. Great Mother's Day present.

Here’s a link:

http://tinyurl.com/DoOneNiceThing

(disclosure – I created that link so that if you use it, Amazon donates a portion of the proceeds to JSL).

And to answer the trivia question...Did I stump you?

Today is the 15th of the month of Iyar, exactly 1 month after Pesach. In the old days, if someone missed out on Pesach because they were sick or some other legitimate reason (I think you had to have a note from your parent or doctor), they could come to Jerusalem and celebrate “Pesach Sheni” - the 2nd Passover. Lamb, matza, maror, the whole works.

To commemorate this quasi-holiday, many people eat a little matzah.

Shabbat Shalom