When Does Life Begin?

The goal of this blog is to pursue and promote wisdom at your Friday night dinner table.... please print and share.
In honor of Keith on his 50th birthday! The doctor is in? (see below)

Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400.

It carries over no balance from day to day.

Every evening, it deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use.

What would you do?

Draw out every cent.

Each one of us has such a bank.

It's called "time."

Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds.....

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The above is the intro to a three-minute video that is linked below.

I have watched it a dozen times.

I recommend you watch it.

And think.

But before you do, here is a rabbinic background.

The rabbis (of old) say that a person goes through 12 stages of development:

At five years old study the Written Wisdom
at ten years the Oral Wisdom,
at thirteen become responsible for your actions;
at fifteen dialectics,
at eighteen get married,
at twenty find an occupation;
at thirty for authority,
at forty for discernment,
at fifty for counsel,
at sixty to be an elder,
at seventy for gray hairs,
at eighty for special strength.

Maybe you're precocious, maybe you're a late bloomer.

The question for your table:

Are you en route to "special strength" or are you headed the other way ?

The three-minute time video is now playing on our home page: http://jsli.org


Happy Sukkot and Shabbat Shalom

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Are You On the Bus?

Happy Birthday Jorun!
The purpose of this blog is to help your family and friends get on the bus at the Shabbat table. Please print and share.


Imagine you are Ken Kesey.

Actually, don't.

But you can appreciate that if you were Ken Kesey or one of the Merry Pranksters on their 1964 travelling vaudeville lysergic acid diethylamide tour of the USA, you might invent some creative expressions.

They were traveling by bus.

And they were "traveling by bus".

Therefore, if someone was part of their mission, supporting their mission, synchronized with their mission, he or she was "on the bus."

Anyone else, like those who were there for pure entertainment, for their own ego, or for some non-non-comformist purpose was "off the bus."

(BTW, is someone who doesn't fit in to a group of non-conformists a conformist? Just wondering.)

Now imagine you never read Tom Wolfe's biography of the Merry Pranksters, and you recently lost your car, and a friend - unaware that you recently lost your car - calls to check on you, asking, "Are you on the bus?"

Are you offended?

OK, now imagine you're at a Jewish wedding.

A beautiful and graceful wedding. Where family members form an a-capella choir under the chuppa that blows everyone away.

What does it mean to be "on the bus" in that setting? Eating and drinking? Shmuzing?

OK, now imagine you are reading this weekly blog.

What does it mean to be "on the bus" in this context?

(Hint: read the top line)

(Hint: not like the reader who complained yesterday, "Last week's message was pretty short, not much to it." "But did you share it at your Shabbat table?" "No." "So you are mainly reading it for entertainment? It wasn't entertaining enough for you? Even with the great Far Side cartoon and the uplifting music video?")

Let's do one more.

Imagine you are a member of a Jewish community. What does it mean to be "on the bus" in that setting?

(Hint: not necessarily joining a synagogue.)

And so, nu, are you?


Shabbat Shalom


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