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

Exhuming Obama

The purpose of this blog is to help you turn your Friday night table into the talk of the town. Please print & share.

(If you have our iphone/ipad app, The Amazing Jewish Fact-a-Day Calendar, and it has been malfunctioning the past few weeks, some good news. We have submitted an update to Apple that includes fixing many broken links. If you do not have the app, from now through Sunday we have made it FREE. That's right, that is not an error. The app will be free through Sunday night. All owners of the app (paid or free) will receive the 2.6 upgrade when Apple releases it.)

True story: A woman is just leaving the house on the way to do some really important shopping.... and there's a neighbor whom she always finds so annoying.

"Oh what great timing! My phone is out and I really need to make a call. Do you think I could borrow your cell phone for a few minutes?"

The woman really doesn't want to help. She has a tight schedule and a list of errands. Let her borrow someone else's phone, she's thinking.

This woman is being tested. I will offer my interpretation of her test and how it applies to you and me.

Last week, several astute readers caught an error in this email. I had written that the ghost of Samuel came up feet first. In fact, he the story tells specifically that he came up head first, unlike ordinary ghosts.

The reason is quite simple: he was being called by King Saul, and when being called by a king, you don't come feet-first. See Miss Manners, Chapter 1.

So this leads us to the obvious question: Does the same protocol apply to the president of the United States?

If President Obama were to hold a seance to contact the ghost of, let's say, Jimmy Carter, no wait, technically he's he's still alive. Let's say, the ghost of Dick Cheney....

No, he's technically still alive too.

OK, let's imagine Obama, he's rounding the corner to the final stretch of this horse race, he's got Romney so close behind he can feel his breath on the back of his neck. He's tried everything to get those poll numbers higher, nothing is working. He's into the low 50s, but it's too close for comfort.

So he holds a seance in the Rose Room to see if he can get a little pep talk from the ghost of Ronald Reagan.

Wait a second. Would Obama, a Democrat, turn to Mr. Conservative Revolution for eleventh-hour counsel?

Here's a little presidential secret for you: these presidential guys have a lot more in common than you think.

Anyway, the real question is - does Reagan come up feet first like an ordinary ghost, or does he come up head first in honor of the President?

(Believe it or not, this is actually going somewhere....)

On the one hand, King Saul was a monarch-for-life, while Mr. Obama is an elected, term-limited official.

On the other hand, he's the President. You know, hail-to-the-chief and all that.

Where this is going:

One of the most fundamental of all Jewish values is the concept that every person you meet is created in the same Divine image. (For John Lennon that means, "You better recognize your brother in everyone you meet.")

A person with no Torah but treats others well - especially opponents and adversaries - has a foundation to acquire wisdom, and the wisdom he acquires will stick.

A person who knows the entire Torah but has no respect for others, his Torah has nothing to rest on and he will lose it.

If we Jews were living up to the Torah, we would be so ethical that any non-Jew would do business with us on a handshake.

If we were getting the Torah's core message, we would be so concerned for others that there wouldn't be any hunger.

I think we're on the right track. But we're being tested all the time.

Question for your table: When were you last tested in this area, and how did you do?


Shabbat Shalom