I’m the one who did it—Aren’t I great? by Aliza by Aliza by Aliza

I wrote it and I want credit for it. Isn’t that in all our natures? We do something we deem good and want to make sure our name is soldered onto it. It is what you call “ego.”

How many unknown soldiers are turning in their unmarked graves because their headstones cannot boast their heroism by name? How many ghost writers are haunting the bookshelves because others take public credit for all their work? Facebook and Twitter are the best modern examples to show that we all want witnesses for our lives. Some go so far as to post what they ate, how they slept, that they are sitting in traffic, that they sneezed, that they walked, that they breathed, reporting their lives in real time down to the most preposterous minutiae. After all, if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it really make a sound at all? We are all, in our own way, sending out flares to let others know we are alive.

And then there is Moses. The most humble man in history, besides Obama of course. Moses was the man offered the greatest job in history by God Himself, and he was reluctant to accept. He wasn’t looking for that place “to go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came.” But, it turns out, he’s a household name nonetheless. Yet, in this week’s Bible reading his name is nowhere to be found. It’s a first since the recounting of his birth. But what makes it evermore strange is that this week’s Torah reading usually falls during the anniversary of Moses’ birth and death. If ever there was a time to honor him and put his name in neon lights it would be in this current chapter. But the omission underscores everything that Moses really was, even more than Cecil B. DeMilles’ film, wherein “Moses” was nominated for a Golden Globe. This great man had led the Jewish nation out of slavery, destroyed the mighty empire of Egypt, played a huge role in unfolding the ten plagues, brought a people through a sea that split in two, received two sets of the Ten Commandments and after that action-packed life he tells God that if You intend to destroy the Jewish people because of the sin of the Golden Calf, then take my name out of your book. And God did.

From Moses we learn that life is about a fight for things bigger than ourselves. Perhaps ego is necessary to give us a spine and a little incentive, but it cannot be the wind beneath our wings. Pharaoh was motivated solely by his ego and his own prestige, and he and his gilded kingdom are but mere dust in parched tombs and his army and chariots lay buried deep under the sea. Moses’ ego was MIA. He lived for his people and led them to the Promised Land with fertile teachings from which a nation blooms and to this day sings his praise in their daily prayers. In fact, most great people live in perpetuity because they lived for things greater than themselves.

Okay, obviously not anyone of us is a Moses. But we can be to the people in our own lives. We can choose to make peace among family members and not take credit for it; we can leave food by the door of a poor person and not stand there waiting for a thank you; we can pray for someone who’s sick for a year with only God as our witness. When we direct our energy outward to help others and to live “big” lives and not ones that can be tweeted in 140 characters or less, then our lives will speak for themselves. We will not need the bullhorns or billboards to announce to the world, “my name is so and so and I’m just so fabulous.” The truth is none of us would ever need an obituary to prove that we died if all along we had purposeful and unselfish lives to prove that we lived. If it is true that man’s mission is to fix the world and make it a better place for all, sometimes you just have to sign out as “John Doe.” And as the old expression goes: "There is no limit to what a man can do so long as he does not care a straw who gets the credit for it." Humility is a great thing—I intend to try it sometime. By Aliza By Aliza By Aliza By Aliza

I Love You, Ya, Ya, Maybe!

America is awash in red. No the communists aren’t coming (well maybe they are). But for now, it is Valentine’s decorations which envelop storefront windows and red velvet boxes that line supermarket shelves. Love is definitely in the air—this week.

But, come Wednesday morning when all the ruddy-wrapped accessories are stripped away and the only remnants of “loving” are a hangover, a half-eaten box of chocolates and scattered lingerie, many will find themselves singing that famous Foreigner song, “I Want to Know What Love is.”

Tragically, Whitney Huston’s short life reveals that even “learning to love yourself is [actually not] the greatest love of all.” Perhaps self-centered love is the worst of all because in our day and age we don’t even know how to love ourselves properly. All our efforts at “self-improvement” which mask as self-love, i.e., going the gym, striving for success, marrying for money, getting plastic surgery, lead to self-worship, not really to self-love. When our hearts are filled with too much self-worship, how can there ever really be room for another occupant, even God? Our every interaction with others, even those we profess to adore, will always be fettered by the self-serving interests of our primary lover, ourselves.

How can we then keep the commandment to “love our neighbors as ourselves” when we can’t even love ourselves properly? In fact, I’d go so far as to say that we hate ourselves because we are rotting at the core. Basic human decency and compassion have become a valueless currency. I’m not surprised that in our time a bestselling book can be titled: Why Men Love Bitches. Being kind is so yesterday!

We have become overly seduced by visuals and not by substance. A recent study came out that said people who use Facebook too much tend to develop a poor self-image because they get jealous observing how well others are doing. Imagine that, mere status updates on a social networking site can drive our self-love into the dumpster—boy we must be a really deep and confident society, NOT! If we are obliged to love our neighbor as ourselves, it is no wonder that everyone hates each other these days and that razor sharp divisiveness is tearing the world apart. And that is because we have learned to love ourselves and others for the wrong reasons. Go figure that we are a rhinoplasty-crazed society and yet we never looked so ugly. I’m reminded of the book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, wherein the main character remains breathtakingly handsome while a portrait made of him becomes ever more ugly and deformed as he sins and becomes morally corrupt. The canvas reflects the ugliness and degradation of his soul, but his personage continues to be adored because of his exterior beauty and success.

There is only one true guiding love affair that will sustain us in life and that is our love affair with God. And the Almighty does not leave his love affair with people to chance or have them singing “I want to know what love is.” He explains explicitly what He wants by his laws and decrees. How often in our lives do we walk away from a relationship saying, “I gave that person everything I have and they didn’t appreciate it? The better question is, “Did you give them anything THEY wanted or needed?” Jews can keep a perfect “Sabbath” on Wednesdays but at the end of the day would that mean anything to God who asked that the Jews keep it on Saturday?
Perhaps love is not about giving what YOU want to give to yourself or to others, but rather doing what you don’t feel like doing and giving what you don’t have--be it time, patience, understanding, a helping hand or a compassionate heart, etc.

The Bible is the best love story ever told. In adoring God and keeping his commandments we imbue ourselves with true self-worth and with lasting and authentic reasons to love ourselves and to be loved. When on Facebook be jealous not that someone got a new car or a new job, but rather that a friend went out to give charity and help others that day and you did not. You want to know what love is? Ask God. He has never whispered a sweet nothing in our ear.

The Way We Were

We’ve all heard people say it and we all say it ourselves too: “I’m not what I used to be.” Some of us were better looking long ago, we were better lovers, had more patience, ran more quickly, etc. Time wages a war of attrition against us mere mortals and slowly, but ever so surely, like a veritable Indian giver, time takes away all the gifts it once gave us. And sometimes life is not so slow handed and snatches what we value most with the mercy of a guillotine. For even of this great country I can say, "It is not what it once was." Do the Indians want that back too? (Something tells me they wouldn't take it now.) I often feel as if watching America and observing life is like watching the battery bar on my cell phone. Slowly, slowly I see the life force draining away. I'm far from the phone charger and who will hear me now? Who would care to hear me now, after all, I'm not what I used to be.

In the course of interviewing people, I have often asked the following question: "What is the one thing that if it were taken away from you, would make you cease to be you?" The answers varied greatly.

But the universally true answer lies in the Bible, the one true and eternal "charger." For there is only one thing in life that leaves us not "less than we used to be" but rather greater than what we ever were: God's laws. In keeping His commandments we don't cease to be who we are, but rather become ever more who we were meant to be.

Countries and people only decline when they attach themselves to false gods, when they spurn morality and evacuate religion from their lives as though that ONE sustaining force is what's burning down the house.

We learn from the story of Esau how he was tired, even in his youth, because he was always pursuing the next big thing, going for the next big kill. He attached himself to this world alone, he idolized himself, was self-indulgent and never attached himself to a spiritual outlet. He held Kurt Cobain's suicidal philosophy that, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." And he did.

So here is a convoluted sentence for you: Esau was not what he used to be even while he still was what he was. For every second in all of our lives we are continuously diminishing unless we are bringing light to the world and enriching not only our own souls but the universal soul. And conversely, even though the burning bush was enveloped in fire, it was not consumed, it did not burn out, because when we attach ourselves to God's will and live beyond all the ephemeral things we think make us who we are, we get better every day, not worse.

Yes, all the other things we cling to in life are false gods and duplicitous lovers, including our ambitions, our talents, our beauty, our health, etc. In our heyday they may "love us" and satisfy us, but they will ultimately leave us and crown new and younger heads. What will we be left with then?

You have two choices in life: You can lament the loss of what you once were or get busy being and becoming all that you were really meant to be!

The Gift of You!

I couldn’t reach a book this morning so I flipped over a hard plastic trash can nearby to step on which gave me the extra leverage I needed to grab the hardcover volume. Sure enough it also gave me the lead-in to this article which is always the hardest part. What makes the garbage can so poignant this morning is that I was actually reaching for a copy of the Torah and it took something “low” and “base” to allow me to reach up high.

It was upon that realization that this week’s Torah reading began to make ever more sense to me. How many of us are belabored in our lives because of lousy childhoods, or self-perceived flaws, or old-fashioned mindsets that seem to have no home in the "modern" world? For most of us there is always that ONE thing that seems to come between us and the life we’d rather be living. We all know what our one thing is: It’s the thing that has conditioned us to start our sentences/excuses with, “If I only…then I would….” And though that one thing seems to continually do us harm, we can’t let go of it because it’s like a little baby that we’ve nurtured for so long with great stubbornness and have become so attached to that it seems intrinsic to our very being even as it destroys us. But my friends, who says you have to get rid of it? Perhaps God has given it to you as a gift and you are misusing something that is really a blessing in your life.

In this week’s Torah reading, Miketz, we read about the story of Joseph and how his dreams of being honored by his brothers stoked their hatred against him. If only he wasn’t such a dreamer, then he could have had a normal life and avoided a pit, a dungeon, being sold into slavery and being estranged from his family for 22 years. Kenny Rogers was perhaps right to sing: “Don't fall in love with a dreamer/ 'cause he'll break you every time.”

But alas, “There’s the rub.” It was Joseph’s dreams and his ability to interpret them that launched him to great heights and to reign in Egypt side by side with the mighty Pharaoh. It was a pit that was his springboard to those heights. And the dungeon to which he is condemned is actually called a “house of light” in Hebrew.

What I am saying dear friends is that Joseph took the figurative garbage can that was his life, turned it over, and used the very same tool that brought him down to reach up high. God didn’t make us who we are so we can squash ourselves and crush our own spirits. He gave us our gifts and inclinations with the biblical recommendations that we direct them wisely and hone them for good use. When pop culture tries to turn us into clowns or when religion tries to turn us into clones, I say never let either of them destroy the gift that is YOU!

King David was known to have a bad temper, yet it is written about David that he executed justice and righteousness unto all his people,” (II Samuel VIII, 15). David didn't miraculously shed his temper, he redirected it and used it appropriately on the battlefield to kill God’s enemies, unlike Esau who killed for the sake of killing (Rabbah, 63). It was David's "one thing" that killed Goliath; it was Moses one thing--humility--that made him God's greatest prophet; it was Joseph's "one thing" that made a dreamer into one of the most powerful men in the world.

As we light our Chanukah menorahs and Christmas trees this week, perhaps in the romantic glow of their lights we should take another look at the ONE THING in our lives. And instead of letting it burn us out and leave us charred maybe we can all learn to use it as the miraculous drops of oil that will not only sustain us but also set our potential on fire. Hey, who would have ever thought that a garbage can could be a step up in life?

I Want it and I Want it Now!

We live in a world that demands immediate gratification. In a super-speedy world somehow even our microwave ovens seem to be not fast enough anymore. We are used to giving voice commands and pressing buttons and getting what we want in quick time. People are sleeping together by the third date; Amazon orders are at your front door the next morning; basically the Internet can bring you anything you desire in a moment’s time. We have only to look at the young people occupying Wall Street who have just gotten out of university and are already incensed that they aren’t the CEO of a company. The spoiled brat mantra that seems to echo in all areas of our life is: “I want it, and I want it now.”

So I must admit in times like these where the bridge between a desire and its satisfaction is ever shortening, that it becomes ever harder to have patience with God. How many prayers I have made that remain unanswered. Do we have to invent an iPrayer app to get God to get busy doing His job, namely serving me and my every wish and desire? And that is really the crux of today’s problems both spiritually and in the chaotic self-centered world we live in: We have forgotten who is here to serve whom. And that forgetfulness has been coated with impudence and impatience. We act like we are entitled to everything and tend to be appreciative of so little.

I heard a great line a few months back that questioned: “What if you woke up tomorrow with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?” Personally, I would have awoken this morning with a great parking space. So often I hear from people that they don’t understand why God is being so hard on them or why they just can’t seem to get what they ordered from that big eBay in the sky. And I answer them the same way I answer myself: We are not here to give orders to God but rather to serve His purpose in all that we do--and that is to better ourselves and the world we live in. The point is not to be nice and content when you get what you want, the point is to elevate each terrain you walk upon until you reach your destination. In a sense I agree with Herman Cain who said that if you are not rich it is your OWN fault. No, sometimes God doesn’t bless our best efforts and not all of us can be financially rich regardless how hard we try, but the person we are inside and the world we engage along our journey can be enriched if we strive with dignity, kindness, mercy, compassion and generosity.

But we are so busy serving and overstuffing ourselves with our immediate wants and desires that we don’t realize that from a spiritual standpoint we look like blubbery busting corpulent Romans suckling on grapes of wrath. But the word of God, our spiritual trainer, is here to refine us and shape us into fit, beautiful appreciative souls. It’s in serving God in all our doings--in how we say “hello” to strangers; in how we talk to people who bug us; in how we treat those who need us, in how we plow through life with our strivings--that we become mensches and really fulfill the reason we were put on this earth.

So, as a journalist, when I attend events with very affluent people who are so used to getting what they want that they tend to be mean, rude and condescending to waiters and hired help, I cannot but think: No sir, you did not make it, you LOST it.

In the Torah there is a strict prohibition against cutting down fruit trees. Doing so can bring terrible luck, perhaps death. Even if a person has a valuable property and wants to erect a house in place of the fruit trees, NO CAN DO. It should make us realize that if we have to go to such lengths to build our lives around the living fruit tree, then how more do we have to guard the dignity of people while we strive forward in life? A take away lesson for me is clear: As we strive to make our way and stake our territory in personal relationships, in work and in our community, we cannot fell life to pave our way. People’s lives, feelings, time, money etc., cannot be collateral damage to fulfill our needs.

So to make full circle here, I’d say the biggest gift a human being can have in life is the ability to appreciate. When you have that gift, even if you have a little in life, it is as if you have a big treasure. On the other hand, though our spoiled generation may have every gimmick and gadget in the world, it is as if they have nothing at all because they don’t appreciate what is in their hands. And though our fast paced world and technology have the ability to take that gift of appreciation away from us, God in His great wisdom does everything in the right time. Yes Domino’s Pizza may get to your house quicker than God at times, but let’s never forget as we grumble and groan that we are here to serve Him and maybe he is waiting for us to deliver.

How the Heck Do You Do This?

I spent the Jewish holidays with friends who are big into brain teasing gadgets of the Rubik's Cube kind. There is always a trick to these toys which is counter intuitive to logic, such as getting a ball out of a hole which is smaller than its circumference or a getting loop over a bar that is double its size. And though I was dead set on entering the New Year by leaving old problems behind, the masochist in me picked up these puzzling and mind boggling new ones that kept me enraptured for hours. What made matters even more frustrating was that others in the household were able to catch onto the trick and unlock these craftily engineered mysteries with ease and facility while I was nearing hysteria saying, “How the heck do you do this?; it’s impossible.” I think I even saw the family dog put his paws over his eyes because she couldn’t take watching me do the same motions over and over again and meet the same unsuccessful end. Finally, I did something I have never really done my whole life. No, I didn’t cheat and bust the games open with a hammer (though it did cross my mind). I just stopped trying to do it on my own and asked my gracious hostess, “How do you do it? What’s the trick?”

I believe that there are no coincidences in life. This episode was a symbolic lesson to me that perhaps what I needed to learn this New Year more than anything else was that the solution to untangling old problems once and for all may be to ASK! It happens so often in life that we have an issue we can’t resolve on our own but we keep pulling at it with both hands and instead of unraveling it, we keep tightening the knot. The sweat gathers on our brow but we won’t let it show. After all, we know it all, right? We are smarter than everyone we know, right? No one would understand my problem, right? It has to be my way, right? WRONG! Sometimes we just have to ask and we also have to listen. What point is there to reinvent the wheel when we can benefit from someone else’s wisdom and roll with it?

There was no greater imparter of wisdom to the world than Moses. He was privy to the mysteries of the universe, saw God face to face, and was shown the entire panorama of history from the beginning to the coming of the Messiah. And Moses bequeathed to mankind the key to this “gadget” we call life, and that key is the Torah. The question is: Do we want to listen once and for all or keep doing it our way?

Our world is growing ever darker and complex. We seem to be caught in an intractable mystery, a haunting labyrinth in which any hopeful pathway is blocked by a dooming encroaching wall upon which we knock our stubborn heads. How we are going to get out of the mess we're in is a brainteaser of the highest order. Did logic get us into it? Will logic get us out?

Perhaps the “key” to today’s mysteries is “to listen.” Our blessings and curses are just a breath apart when Moses speaks: “If you do not hearken to the voice of God…all these curses will come upon you and overtake you.” But if we do listen, “God will open for you His storehouse of goodness.” Just as those brain teasing toys come with instructions that facilely extricate an otherwise Gordian knot, so too our lives come with instructions and directions: the Bible.

Perhaps it’s time for all of us to start “listening” while God is still whispering--albeit pretty loudly. How many more frequencies will we tune out before we are awakened by a thunderous clang and God asks, “Can you hear me now?”

Hug a Jew Day

It's so hard to feel love for another when their opinions and views of the world are antithetical to everything we believe in. So what is the alternative? To hate? What has that done for us lately?

I can't help but think of my very close friendship with my editor, my best friend. There is probably nothing we wouldn't do for each other. But when we talk about politics, I swear I want to hit him on the head with my T-Fal frying pan. Suddenly, a wall exists between us and it's fascinating to observe how our loving feelings take a dive as he slams my views and I slam his. It made realize, in a sense, how during WWII neighbor turned on neighbor and families turned on each other because of ideology.

I can’t help but think back to the destruction of the temple and the reason cited for its fall: The hatred Jews showed toward each other. Can any rational mind believe that hate can bring about a positive result? Please cite me an example where calling an opponent a shmuck has won any argument.

In this week's Bible portion we read about the breastplate worn by the kohanim, the priests, of the Temple. On its façade were twelve precious stones, each representing a tribe of Israel. The high priest wore that breastplate over his heart and it symbolized the duty of Jews to love one another regardless of how different, diverse or disenfranchised they might be.

Jewish teachings tell us that when the "Patriarch Jacob left his parents’ house to start his own family, he rested on Mount Moriah, the future site of the Temple, for one night, and placed 12 stones under his head, a symbol of the twelve tribes that he would found. Those twelve stones then merged into one single entity."* Today, we are so fractured. The Kabbalah too, teaches, that there is no blessing on things that are broken, whether it be a cup or a people. In fact, it is in the crack where spiritual impurity enters, just as in the physical world bacteria can fester in a crevice.

Jewish unity is probably more necessary now than ever before. I'm not the one to invent the slogan "United we stand, divided fall." Do we need another Hitler, G-d forbid, to remind us that we are all Jews? With events unfolding in Egypt as they are, the Jewish State is in serious jeopardy. "A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph." (Exodus 1:8) History repeats itself. Will a new leadership in Egypt throw three decades of peace by the wayside?

My dear Jews, how can we be a light unto the nations when we can’t even be a spark of inspiration to each other? If, symbolically, we are each a stone that sustains the "temple," tell me which structure can stand when the stones fight among themselves, and won’t unite in common purpose?

I will make this short so as not to compete with a buffalo wing and the Super Bowl. But my suggestion is to start engaging our fellow Jews as if they were a lover that you want to get into bed. Talk sweetly, talk nicely, make your points wisely with facts and love. You can try and get lucky by screaming them into submission--good luck! Just a reminder--tomorrow is “Hug a Jew Day” (not to be confused with Madoff's “Mug a Jew Day”) My advice to all is "speak softly and don’t carry a big shtick."
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Check out my new book: "The Words That Shaped Me"

Footnote
* Rabbi Elie Munk, The Call of the Torah, 1994, p.402