The Role of a Lifetime by Aliza Davidovit

Are you a nice person? What makes you think so? Then there is the better question: Does it “pay” to be nice? The word “nice,” derived from Middle English, once meant foolish and stupid. People do indeed take you for foolish, stupid or weak when you’re nice (especially in places like New York).

Did it pay for Moses to be nice? You can’t get nicer than him. He led his people to the Promised Land via great efforts and personal sacrifice, and in the end he himself wasn’t even allowed in. After all of Jesus’ efforts to spread kindness, healing and love, his days, too, didn’t end with a Lifetime Achievement Award. If being nice pays, how come only the good die young? How come the squeaky wheel gets serviced? How come it’s the guy who punches hardest that wins the heavyweight championship and not the guy who gives him a massage?

It is very hard to keep being nice in a world the often deems you a fool for being so. Let’s face it, nice guys finish last.

But, my friends, if we don’t like the answers it’s because we have approached these questions with a capitalistic mindset. We want payment in the here and now to prove being nice is worth it. However, we are not here to walk our days on earth as collectors of treats because we did something good. Life is indeed a whetting stone and we can use it to shape us into miserable shmendricks or into the best version of ourselves.

As Jesus walked the Via Dolorosa and Moses watched the Israelites cross over into the Jordan Valley, neither said it doesn’t pay to be nice. It is precisely because acts of kindness often get lost in an ever-darkening world that we have the additional responsibility of being extra good, extra nice and extra charitable in order to sustain the light in the world. If each one of us serves as a spark, combined we form an intense ray that can save the world—just like a laser beam (intensified light) can blast cancer.


It is said that when we enter the pearly gates we will be shown two films. One will be a biography of our entire lives, a true nitty-gritty tell-all expose, probably produced by a former 60 Minutes journalist. The other film will be of all that we could have been if we had lived our lives by God’s cues and directions and had given our days the best performance we could. The gap between these two films is a tragic abyss. It is in our hands NOW to decide what movie we want to make and what scenes we want to cut and leave on the edit room floor. Just remember that there are no second takes, the part you play today is a role of a lifetime.
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You Can Do it! by Aliza Davidovit

The Talmud asks, “Who is wise?” The answer: “He who learns from every man.” So please indulge me in that from all the world’s sages, I have chosen to quote Bon Jovi and not Aristotle.
"Welcome to wherever you are
This is your life, you made it this far
Welcome, you gotta believe
That right here right now, you're exactly where you're supposed to be"

We are often so hard on ourselves and critical of where we are in life that our negativity ends up being the biggest blockade of all. “I’m not smart enough,” “I can’t do it,” “The best years are behind me,” “Things are so bad, they just can’t get better,” are phrases with which we often brainwash ourselves, all the while hating where we find ourselves in life. Can you then imagine if you are finding yourself in a rut, how the wandering desert Jews felt going in circles for 40 years. Could God and Moses have been better served with a GPS? Why did they have to make 42 encampments and wait so long between their Egyptian enslavement and tasting the milk and honey of the Promised Land, all the while complaining bitterly?

In our lives, we too often feel like we are going in circles. So many yesterdays merge into one big blur, one indistinguishable from the next. But the truth is we really are on a spiral, and though we think we are passing the same point over and over again, it is always on a different level: either a higher one or a lower depending on what we do with the moment.

The reason we often find ourselves stuck in one perpetual Groundhog Day is because we have not yet learned the lessons and passed the tests. As such, until we get it right, “right here, right now, you're exactly where you're supposed to be.”

The same was true for the Jews who left Egypt. They were not physically able to seize the prize, i.e., the land, because they were not ready spiritually. Each encampment was a testing a ground for them, and they did not move on to the next one until their spiritual mission was accomplished. Their shlepped-out journey was boot camp for the soul. God is always trying to teach us something and make us better, even if we don’t approve of “the accommodations.”

In our own lives, instead of hating every second of the “now” perhaps we should question what spiritual failing is holding us back. But there is another point I want to emphasize, and that is the language we use when we talk to ourselves--which also solidifies the status quo.

In the case of the Jews, throughout every century and within every country they have lived, they have been called the vilest of names by antisemites. Considering that type of talk, it’s a wonder that Jews haven’t developed an inferiority complex and confined themselves to the ghetto to make mud patties, but rather have excelled in every industry and jumped to the forefront of the world stage. It is because, in my opinion, their main coach, GOD, talked up their game, called them a special and chosen people and told them they are to be a light among the nations. All the confidence that haters of Jews tried to suck out of them, was ineffectual because God breathed his eternal confidence and praiseworthy words into them.

Therefore we too, as we struggle to move forward in life and to fight our spiritual battles, must alter the language we use when we talk to ourselves: “You are smart enough,” “You can do it,” “The best years are ahead,” “Things are hard, but they will get much better.” Don’t think of yourself as stuck in a dead end, think of yourself as engaged in an opportunity. As Bon Jovi says, “Welcome to wherever you are” and work with it, don’t let it work against you. God’s faith and his word are upon each of us, and the slogan for his “army” has always been “Be All You Can Be.” For in truth, what makes a land flourish with milk and honey is what we bring to it, not what we take from it.
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What's Ruining Your Life? by Aliza Davidovit

It is our habits, not our wishes that shape our lives. How many of us are still keeping our New Year's resolutions? Are you? It is said that 90% of people break their New Year's Resolutions before Valentine's Day. We enter the new year with the best of intentions to access the better part of us--the svelte, more successful, smarter, happier version of ourselves. They are worthy goals, reachable goals, yet in the un-actualized state they feel like “from here to eternity.” And though we deem ourselves free men in the world's greatest democracy, we are rendered slaves not by taskmasters but by our own doing. We become the imprisoned victims of our habits and slaves to our passions, be they food, gambling, sex, materialism, anger, etc. Such indulgences which we deem as self expressions of freedom are really shackles and leashes on liberty.

Habits seem so benign. Even phonetically the word is soft and subtle unlike such words that grate on our ears and sensibilities like cancer, Al Qaeda, foreclosure. But habits, though they be silent infiltrators, wreak more havoc into our lives than the aforementioned. That glass of Scotch is ever so comforting as we go through our divorce, our financial troubles, our rough patches. And, as with all bad habits, it enters one’s life like a guest but it proceeds like the host. What’s one small piece of cake, cookie, potato chip? They are the momentary appeasers that wear away your will. If one cookie didn’t kill you, neither will two. Well, then, how can a third? Then your mindset changes: Well I already had so many what’s the difference now if I have more. Bad habits, my friends, are little devils chaining you to the past and murdering your future. They try and please you and appease you as they steal your life away.

For how many years have you been trying to lose weight, quit smoking, cut down on alcohol, learn Spanish? As I’ve written before, we must learn to be masters of the moment and not succumb to them, for the aggregate of these moments is your life. The distance between our wishes and goals seems like “the longest yard” because we are not focusing on the immediate step in front of us but on the entire conquest--exhausting us by its magnitude even before we get started. You must learn to say a decisive “NO” when a bad habit offers you an invitation--not a taste, not a sip, not another single lazy minute in bed.

In this week’s Torah portion we read about the seven of the ten plagues and how Pharaoh hardened his heart against freeing the Hebrew slaves. The question has often arisen whether Pharaoh ever had free choice as to what he would do because it says on some occasions that it was God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart. But Maimonides teaches that the Egyptian ruler was himself responsible because he used his free will to “deal wisely with the children of Israel” and refused to let them go. He developed some pretty bad habits and the more a person engages in wrongdoing the harder it is to do good. He became a victim of his own actions. His lash may have enslaved the Jews, but the repetition of his own misdeeds enslaved himself and prevented him from repenting. Turning one’s back on God is hard the first time. It gets easier every time one does it. Pharaoh was caught in his own cycle of abuse. The initial performance of a wrong doing may arouse serious guilt, but when a person repeats it over and over again one eventually comes to deem it as permissible and soon elevates it to the status of a good deed: “If I didn’t have that drink, I’d go crazy”; “If I didn’t sleep with that other girl, my marriage would have never survived”; “If I didn’t eat that chocolate bar, I’d have no energy.” We are masters at manufacturing excuses for our weaknesses. But the prosecutor has the winning argument-- Exhibit “A”: Let the results speak for themselves.

My friends, tomorrow, later, the first of the month, New Years are all false starting dates. There is nothing magical on those days that will transform you from what you are to who you want to be. The magic is in the current moment. It is up to you whether you will be its master or its slave.

The Lights of Faith by Aliza Davidovit

The Sun’s not coming out today.
Would you come out on a day like this?

The temperature has dropped. It’s freezing outside. The leaves have abandoned the trees once again. And the gray chilling skies make the outdoors evermore uninviting. The sun seems to have absconded as well like a fleeing accomplice to all that has brought darkness upon this great land: the flailing economy, the unemployment rate, the federal debt, the housing crisis, a divisive Congress and the unprecedented uncertainty about the future. It appears to be the winter of our greatest discontent. Doom and gloom has replaced the optimistic morning dew and is choking our spirits and setting us into further depression and despair. It becomes easier day by day to become apathetic and adjust our eyes to the darkness instead of searching for the light and creating new light.

Yet, I urge everyone, even if the sun is not coming out on a day like this, YOU MUST. Interestingly, it is at this time of year, in fact this week, that the nights are longest and darkness seems to prevail as the sun goes to bed early. But it is also the most precious time of year as both Jews and Christians celebrate their holidays of lights with brightly lit Christmas trees and the glow of the Chanuka menorah. Each is a symbolic lesson to us that in the blackest of times, we must be the ones responsible for bringing light to our world and our lives. These holidays of lights are a priceless metaphor that light triumphs over darkness (and it always will).

Orphan Annie was right, the sun will come out tomorrow, but today create your own sunlight. It takes just a single flame to dispel much darkness. If you’re feeling miserable, put on some makeup and make yourself look pretty, if you’re a woman. For a man, shave and go to the gym; you will feel better. If you’re feeling antisocial, go give a few dollars or a cup of coffee to a homeless person--your spirits will be lifted. If you’re feeling depressed, start singing the happiest song you know. Undoubtedly you will crack yourself up, and if your voice is as good as mine you make crack a few mirrors too. You cannot get out of a black hole by entertaining the darkness but rather by seeking the light.

In this week’s Bible portion we read about Joseph. One day he was the beloved favorite son of Jacob; the next day his brothers sold him into slavery; the next day he rose to great prominence in Egypt; the next day he was thrown into jail; the next day he was the most powerful man in Egypt under Pharaoh. The rollercoaster of his life had bigger highs and lows than the 456-foot high Kingda Ka joyride at Six Flags Great Adventure. Nonetheless, he rose from the snake-filled pit into which his brothers cast him to great power, prestige and prominence. And the Bible teaches us something very interesting about Joseph’s attitude throughout. The dungeon to which he is condemned is called in Hebrew “Beit Hasohar,” the “house of light.” Even in the depths of a dark dungeon, Joseph maintained his faith in God, he remained optimistic and hopeful and he created his own “light.”

Yet just as abruptly as Joseph’s problems came upon him, they left him with equal speed as he was beckoned to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams.

My friends, the trials and hardships inflicted on man are limited. Just when a person least expects salvation, it is just around the corner. There is a season for everything in our lives, even a winter of discontent. The things we want most usually hit us by surprise as if God is trying to remind us, again, that our blessings come from Him no matter what else we may think.

Indeed the world stage and our personal stages appear pretty bleak these days. Many people even feel it may be the end of time. I prefer to think in terms of a great new beginning. We can learn from Joseph and our beautiful holidays of lights to never yield to the darkness of despair but rather to have faith in almighty God and trust ALWAYS that the darkest hour is just before the dawn.

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