Yom Kippur - Vive la Différence

The goal of this email is to put the PUR back into Yom Kippur. Please share.

Here's a puzzler for your Friday night dinner table:

What's black and white and read all over, and worth 36¢?

Too hard? OK, we'll come back to that.

First, a more personal question:

Now that the hard work is behind us, and Yom Kippur is so far off, what's there to do?

The answer, according to the Rambam, is.... do more.
If you are ordinarily not particularly friendly.... try to be friendly.

If you are ordinarily friendly.... be more friendly.

If you ordinarily are not particularly careful about what you say.... be careful.

If you ordinarily are careful about what you say.... be more careful.

If you ordinarily don't give tzedakah generously.... give tzedakah generously.

And if you are ordinarily generous.... now be more generous.
Once or twice a year I remind you that this blog is a project of a non-profit organization that is doing ambitious, creative work for the betterment of the Jewish People and humanity (like this, and this, and this, not to mention this
and this and this.)

 
Our operating budget is funded mainly by people like you. If you find this email occasionally uplifting, thought-provoking, discussion provoking, educational or even amusing, please consider an $18 donation for the New Year. (http://jsli.org/donate/)

Doing so sends the message that this blog is worth at least 36¢ a week to you.

Is it?

A final question for your table:

If a person is normally a tzaddik - is it possible for them to become a greater tzaddik?



We have one week to practice being a greater tzaddik until the big soul-scrub next Tuesday night.

Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom and a happy Yom Kippur.


"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." (Churchill)

If I Can Do It, So Can You

The purpose of this email is to stimulate the cerebral cortex of those at your Rosh Hashana table. Please print and share.
Please see below for an important announcement.


When is losing gaining, and gaining losing?

Today, erev Rosh Hashana, I have a story for you to share at your table.

A true story of grit, sweat and determination.

It is the dramatic and ultimately cathartic tale of my...

INBOX.

Yes, it's true. The last Table Talk of the year (and the first, if you share it tonight) is a blog about the inbox.

Most of the time we are in such denial about our inbox that we pretend that it's not worthy of conversation.

But if you think about it, the inbox is an excellent indicator of a person's inner health.

Show me your inbox and I'll know what kind of person you are.

Show me a person with an endless inbox, and I'll show you a person who never seems to get projects finished, is always running from one thing to another and feeling quite overwhelmed by life.

(Or perhaps it's just a person who is using gmail. For some reason.)

Show me a person with an empty inbox, and I'll show you someone who is in charge of their life.

But (aside from those who suffer from gmail-itis) is an empty inbox even possible? And if it is possible, is it a goal worth striving for?

My personal story begins two years ago when I saw my inbox surge - after deleting spam and all low-hanging fruit - to over 900 messages. To some of you that probably seems petty, like someone bemoaning gaining five pounds.

It was indeed similar to the feeling I had around the same time when I noticed my waistline exceed 36 inches.

I could see the direction this was going.

And I didn't like it.

I knew it was going to be an epic battle, a clash of wills between me and.... myself.

Who was going to win?

There are multiple roads to success on trimming down. But what's the value if you lose but regain?

So the first step is setting up some new habits. Like folders to file away any email that doesn't get a reply within 1 week. For any reason. If it didn't get a reply in a week, it must not have been that urgent.

Well, like my weight loss, I was able to trim significant fat in the first year. But when I got to around 100 messages, it seemed like I just couldn't cut more. That inbox bounced up and down from about 75-125 for this past year.

It was crazy. And a bit frustrating.

Maybe a sane person would just give up and learn to live with himself.

Maybe I'm insane, but last Rosh Hashana I decided to dream big.

I dreamed of what I wanted to become, my greatest vision for myself.

And that was someone with an empty INBOX.

Frankly, it has been a brutal year. Up and down, up and down, more down than up, but then you go out of town and look what happens, you end up bloated... What kept me hopeful through it all was that vision.

And of course I had a plan, a system.

Well, today I'm happy to say, on the very last day of the year I did it.

I surely had a lot of help from Above, but the first thing I had was a vision, a dream.

What's your dream? What kind of person would you like to become?

Organized? Patient? Punctual? Calm?

Happy?

Visualize that potential you on Rosh Hashana. Ask for it when you hear the shofar.

Then on Sunday morning, write down on low-tech paper three steps you need to take to get there.

Tonight and over the next 2 days is our annual chance to  push RESET.

How is this year going to be differerent for you? Is it going to be the same old patterns and bad habits, or something new.

Think about what it would be like to have an EMPTY inbox.

Down to ZERO messages.

It feels great.

I recommend you do it to.

Not only with your email. With any clutter in your life.

If you knew you could absolutely accomplish one personal goal in the coming year, what would it be? Think about that yearning dream when you listen to the shofar tomorrow.

That vision is what will justify another year of life.

Important Announcement: At this time of year, many people try to give extra tzedaka. If you're that type, please help eleviate hunger or support Jewish education. This blog is supported exclusively by tax-deductible contributions from readers like you. This is one of two times each year we invite you to become a paid subscriber. Nothing is free, so if you're not a supporter, someone else is paying for you to enjoy this. If it's worth a nickel to you or more, please do the math and click here. It only takes a minute or so and any amount helps.

May you be inscribed and sealed for life, joy, health, wealth and peace...and an empty inbox.

RAS


PS - I've created a downloadable sheet of "significant omens" that are traditionally said at the Rosh Hashana meal. I've added a few jocular modern ones. Try adding your own, and encourage anyone you're with to do the same. The public sample is here, you can download the full one here (requires free logon if you don't already have one).

Call Me Sheleg

The goal of this blog is foster a warm + cozy conversation at your Shabbat table. Don't read it now - print and share!

First of all, there were several great entries to last week's contest to finish the joke.

The judges conferred and decided that the best punch line was:

"One America, on the rocks!"

Now, speaking of penguins, perhaps you heard that Jerusalem, City of Gold, turned white this week.

These pictures are worth a thousand words around your table.

But maybe we could ask a question about snow as well.

Why is a fresh snowfall so magical?

Think about it for a moment.

Is it because snow softens the sounds, slows the pace?

Is it because snow closes schools and is fun to play in?

The Hebrew word for snow is sheleg.

Normally, we look for significance of a word by how it's used in the Torah.

Sheleg is not used qua snow, rather to describe a perfect whiteness, as in "your sins will be made white as snow."

But the word sheleg has a peculiar quality.

Peculiar, that is, to those who study gematria (numerology). It's numerical value is 333.

Numerologists read that as: "The number three expanded to the utmost."

Or, "the ultimate in three-ness."

But what  is "three-ness"?

The number 3 in Jewish thought represents something foundational about humanity: "The world stands on 3 pillars: Torah, Avodah and Chesed" (Pirkei Avot).

(Loose translation: wisdom, spirituality, kindness)

These three qualities are exemplified by the three Patriarchs: Avraham/Abraham, Yitzchak?Isaac, Yaakov/Jacob.

Perhaps this numerology is the key to the lesson of snow.

We need those 3 pillars - Torah, Avodah and Chesed - to have a stable world. Snow shows us what the world would look like when we get the right balance of those three.

It's magical - blanketing the world with a clean whiteness, smoothing over all the bumps, hiding all the dirt.

Yes, we know the dirt is there, and will be back soon enough.

But isn't it fun for a few minutes to pretend that it isn't?

But it's more than pretending. That magic is teaching us something.

It's reminding  us what the world could look like all the time, if each of us worked on the area(s) where we are deficient in our own triangle.

Final question for your table: What area do you need to work on (Torah, Avodah, Chesed) to stabilize your own snowflake?


Shabbat Shalom 


PS - In case you heard about our next Treasury Secretary but missed what I wrote about him a few weeks ago, click here.


If you enjoyed this post, please "like" it, "tweet" it, or simply forward the link to others who may enjoy it.

Can You Ever Go Home Again?

A couple days ago, I was showing someone in San Francisco JSL's newest (top secret) project. He liked the project, but out of the blue asked me the following question:

Why do you do what you do?

My answer is simple: I get to speak with (or communicate in writing with) highly intelligent people about interesting, meaningful things - greatest job in the world.

So here's one such topic for your Shabbat table that we discussed in San Francisco. It begins with a question:

Have you ever gone back to a town, maybe your hometown, after having been gone for a long time? What was it like?
Probably you were amazed by all the changes.

Similar question (for adults): Did you ever see someone as an adult that you'd last seen as a child? What was it like?

Why is it so amazing to see these changes after big gaps of time, but for the town we live in, or the children we see every day, the changes are not so amazing?

I'm sure you'll get various answers to this question and there is no need for me to add my 2-bits. But if you care to hear it, here's my take:

When we see a person or a place every day, the changes are so small and incremental that we hardly notice them, and then we grow accustomed to them and gradually forget how they used to be, how the town used to look.

One building built here, one facade changed there. Slowly, slowly.

But then there's the second question for your table:

Have you ever seen someone after 10 or 20 years or more, and they didn't seem to have changed at all? Same personality, same bad jokes, you know what I mean?

The purpose of this life is to grow and to change (for the better). The third and forth questions for your table are:

- Do you want to be the same person 20 years from now that you are today, or do you want to be greater? More caring, more patient, more disciplined, more honest....?
- If so, how are you going to get there?

Next week, the final email before Rosh Hashana, I'll send some thoughts about how to use the High Holidays to make an incremental but real change in your life (in yourself) so that 20 years from now people who haven't seen you every day will do a double take.

Shabbat Shalom

PS - http://bestjewishkidsbooks.com has great Rosh Hashana books and gifts.
The iPhone app: http://tinyurl.com/amazingcalendarlink
Android version: http://tinyurl.com/amazingandroidcalendar