Finding Light in the Darkness ©

CLICK TO WATCH
 ______________________________________________
This blog has been sponsored by the Wordsmithy.

"I'm too Miserable to be Happy" by Aliza Davidovit

Some books are so “good” that once you put them down, you cannot pick them up again. For certain it’s human nature to put down things that we lose interest in. But what if that book is the story of your life? Will you put it down because it’s not a pleasant read?

In today’s difficult times, with the unemployment rate in the double digits and much of our securities vulnerable, it is easy to fall into despair and fear. In line with the “misery loves company motif,” we have joined in a communal depression. Our quick-fix society finds itself paralyzed in the face of challenges which seem to have no immediate exit strategies. Thus, ironically, a country that lost it’s international manufacturing edge still rates high in manufacturing excuses of why we cant be happy or forge forward in our lives even through very difficult times. “How can I be happy now that I lost my job?” “How can I be happy when the whole country is going to hell?” “How can I be happy my wife dumped me?” “How can I be happy when my best friend has everything and I can hardly afford the rent?”

We continually focus on what we are missing instead of what we have. The decisive question is, do you have gratitude or baditude? Because it is indeed your attitude, nothing else, that will be your happy indicator in life.

The first step to inviting happiness into your life is realizing that not everything has to go your way. You don’t always have to own everything you desire, you don’t have to be the most beautiful, or thinnest, or wisest, or even be the happiest to be happy. In fact, it reminds me of an episode of the Twilight Zone: It was about a man who sinned all his life and when all his sinning came to an abrupt end upon death, an angel comes to escort him to a place that clearly gives semblance to heaven. His every desire is met at a moment’s notice. If he desires a beautiful woman, poof, there she is. If he desires to win at the casino, poof he hits the jackpot. When he desires the finest of caviar, poof, there it appears. Day after day, night after night, all his pleasures are satisfied. Eventually this afterlife of plenty and gluttony gets to him and he pleads with the angel who ushered him to this generous place, “Please I can’t take heaven anymore, get me out of here.” To which the angel responds, “Who, my dear sir, told you that this was heaven?”

This man was actually in hell. And where one would usually equate hell as a place of scarcity, that is not so! The only thing missing in hell is the ability to appreciate what we have. Are you guilty of making your own life here a hell here on earth? If you have a little or a lot, you have nothing if you don’t appreciate it.

Just because things don’t always go our way it is no reason to put down the book of our lives and basically stop writing it until things get better. We cannot walk away from ourselves and fall into depression and start gaining weight and drinking too much and cheating on our spouses as palliatives to our pains. Quit it with the contingency happy plan which dictates if only I had this or that then I’d be happy. Challenges are here to make us stronger, to fortify our faith and our efforts, not to weaken us or send us into despair, or keep us hiding in the dark, in our bathrobes, and courting our pain as if it was some great lover.

This week’s reading in the Old Testament speaks of the Patriarch Abrahams returning from Mount Moriah, where God had sent him to sacrifice his son Isaac. The trauma and suffering Abraham must have endured before God’s angel stayed his hand from striking his son is unimaginable. After passing this great test, Abraham goes home not to rejoice, but to find that his wife, the matriarch Sarah, had died. These were just two among the great travails and tests Abraham had to go through in his life. But biblical scholars teach us that this great father of many nations did not succumb to grief; his mourning was contained. The man did not fall apart but kept an optimistic eye on the future and proceeded to find his son Isaac a wife even though he had just lost his own. Abraham didn’t put down writing the narrative of his life but ensured that his story continued through his son and his seed. He refused to be a slave to grief but rather chose to be the taskmaster of hope.

We don’t need to learn from Abraham that life can be tough. But we can learn to keep on moving and to stop mourning over what was or what will never be again. If two things or thoughts cannot occupy the same place at the same time, then you must choose what you want to fill the vacuum of your life with—happiness or regrets, despair or hope, apathy or action, courage or fear. “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, Therefore choose life.”
**********************************
This week's blog is dedicated to the memory of the 13 killed at FT. Hood, patriots whose chances at happiness were mercilessly murdered.


Sponsored by Wordsmithy Editing Services

Bible Talk: Green-Eyed Monsters

CLICK HERE TO READ
 ______________________________________________
This blog has been sponsored by the Wordsmithy.

What's More Important, Yesterday or Tomorrow?

CLICK HERE TO WATCH:
 ______________________________________________
This blog has been sponsored by the Wordsmithy.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Biggest Turkey of All? by Aliza Davidovit

I have often questioned if our mission in life is about becoming all we can be or about maintaining who we started out as? There is no better place than New York City to watch that experiment unfold. Wannabe actresses, singers, journalists, entrepreneurs, and others come from across the nation and across the world believing the city’s sparks of magic and opportunity will turn them into the next American Idol in their respective fields.

Indeed many come armed with great talent, but from the moment they unpack their bags a war of attrition is launched against their values, their upbringing, their religions, and their innocence. The road to success is rough and tough in a big city and for every beauty there is a younger, better looking beauty, for every talent there is a greater talent. Thus, often that trunk we packed at home with all our beliefs and belongings can burden our pace. So, ever so slowly, imperceptibly we lighten our load shedding that which shackles our rise to the top--kindness, integrity, morality, our small town mentalities and God. We begin to ask ourselves: How can I make it in the movies without sleeping with a producer? How can I make it by being mister nice guy? How can I make it if I observe the Sabbath? These doubts don’t happen overnight, and yet they do as night after night, in unguarded moments, Satan taunts us and teases us and lures us away from ourselves, breaking down one barrier at a time.

It is often during such times as Thanksgiving and other holidays when we return home to our familiar surroundings and look into those mirrors that watched us grow up, that we can see how much we have changed.

The big city is but a metaphor for our life’s journey. God sends us to this earth with our talents, our desires and our ambitions. He also sends us tests along the way which we can use to refine us or to redefine us. But when we return to our heavenly maker, will He recognize us? Will we resemble the innocent soul He set upon this earth? How many of us have had a New York “makeover” that has rendered us unrecognizable even to ourselves and to all that we used to be.

It is said that after Adam and Eve took a bite from their “big apple” God called out to them in the Garden of Eden and asked, “Where are you?” Certainly an All-knowing God knew where they were, but it was a question meant to instigate introspection. “Where are you in this world? What do you stand for? What do you fall for? He asks them where they are because once they sinned their souls became unrecognizable.

As a journalist who interviews the who’s who, I have a staple question I ask: “Was there a price to your success? The answer is always, “yes.” And many, depending on their age, say the price wasn’t worth it--usually the older, the wiser. It evokes a term that stuck with me from my torturous economics classes: the law of diminishing returns—at a certain point producing “more” actually decreases the value of returns.

In last week’s Bible portion read in synagogues, we learn that the same God who commanded Abraham to leave his place of birth tells the patriarch Jacob to do the complete opposite: “RETURN to the land of thy birth.” For Jacob, unlike Abraham, home would be the uncompromising backdrop that would reveal if and how he had changed.

When Jacob left home he possessed nothing but his will to serve God. His propensity was toward spirituality, not materialism. Yet he returns with great wealth, with wives and children and herds of animals. This accumulation of worldly things was so uncharacteristic of him that when his brother Esau, who had not seen him for 20 years, saw Jacob’s entourage, he asked, “Who are these to you?” It was not the same Jacob who had left home. Leave it to family to remind you.

It is thus only upon Jacob’s return to the land of his birth that he wrestled with an angel-- a symbol of evil born out of his new found materialism. Now that Jacob had a foot in both worlds, the material and the spiritual, each was struggling to dominate him. In his fight with the angel, Jacob’s spiritual strength won, but his leg was injured and he walked forevermore with a limp. The biblical lesson is clear: The attempt to live life with our feet planted in two worlds so far apart is a hard way to travel and often extracts a painful price.

So many of us walked away from the Thanksgiving table popping antacids not only because we overate but because some annoying family members made us nauseous, criticized us, told us we changed, got on our case, or simply bored us. But perhaps the better remedy is to take a brutal look in that old and honest mirror and question how many miles and morals away from home we have traveled and what is the full price have we paid?


Sponsored by Wordsmithy Editing Services

Are You a Turkey or a Dumb Blonde? by Aliza Davidovit

Turns out that blondes may really not be able to walk and chew gum at the same time(although many do think they can drive, put on mascara, text and drink a latte concurrently). But it was just last week while I was on the treadmill listening to an audio book on my ipod when I literally forgot to walk for a moment and found myself nearly flying. Quantum physics is no easy subject to absorb even while sitting, but trying to take it in while trotting proved to be a painful experiment both to my ankle and to my pride. Literally so caught up in thought, I stopped walking. But as someone who goes through life packing my purse with life lessons and thinking that all things have a reason, I sought to find one here. “What could God be trying to tell me?” I asked my very practical mother, seeking guru-like profundity. But with her usual caustic wit she replied, “God is telling you that you have to keep on walking.”
Indeed, the answer was as simple and deep as that. In today’s very difficult times, so many of us are going through great personal hardships financially, psychologically, and emotionally. Many people find themselves without jobs or their beloved careers and are living on their last dime, getting increasingly depressed and demoralized. The “hope” and “change” many relied on has not panned out and from day to day, things seem to be getting worse. So many of us have just stopped!
The job search seems not to be worthwhile; getting dressed in the morning becomes a bigger chore; getting off the couch becomes evermore challenging, and hope, well hope, is just a taunting stretch of the imagination that only a skilled wannabe-president can evoke.
But are each and every one of you so “blonde” that while tuned into an ipod of despair you have become immobilized? Time spins by so fast that we cannot feel its passage, just as we cannot feel speed when we are in an airplane. But whether we perceive it or not, life is a treadmill and we have to keep walking no matter what--you cannot let it throw you off! Indeed, no hope will be found in the pockets of your bathrobe or in the cracks of your couch, at the bottom of your cognac or in idleness--Satan’s arms. Sitting around and waiting for things to change is the lazy accomplice of despair.
Which brings me to the subject of Thanksgiving.
Traditionally, Thanksgiving is a time of expressing our gratitude for all the blessings we have in our life. So, in effect, this holiday is badly named; it should really be called Thanks Taking, for we are the lucky recipients of God’s bounty and grace. And though this year many people will have “skinnier” turkeys because money is tight, perhaps this year can give us a true perspective of what the holiday may really be about.
Sages teach us that man is not measured by what he has in life, but rather by what he can give. Instead of fretting this holiday because we have less to be thankful for, be evermore grateful for all the things which you are able to GIVE. Can you play an instrument? Then volunteer at a seniors’ residence. Do have your sight? Then volunteer to help the blind. Do you have legs? Then commit yourself to help the handicapped. Do you have your health? Then visit the ill. In our giving not our taking we realize the depth of gratitude we owe our Maker. When we take stock of our personal inventories as human beings and acknowledge all that we have to “give,” we become more evolved than the ego-stuffed turkeys we so often resemble.
In the Bible segment studied in synagogue’s this week, we read about Jacob’s ladder upon which the angels were ascending and descending. Nowhere does it say the angels got tired or lazy, so they hung on a rung and chilled for awhile. In life you are either going up or going down; there is really no such thing as the status quo. And I’m not talking about the ladder to success that is rooted in BS and ascends to idolatry and sin. I’m talking about the ladder to God that the Bible tells us was rooted in the earth and ascended to Heaven teaching us that the path to God is planted in the mundane. We can elevate the nitty-gritty of life--our hardships, our pains, our trials--by facing it with dignity, decency, integrity and courage. Our duty is to keep climbing upward. Moses wandered the desert for 40 years, but you never heard him complain that his feet hurt. He never said I’m staying in my tent and watching Oprah today, I’ll deal with Pharaoh tomorrow.
Interestingly, the great patriarch Jacob’s name means heel (of the foot) in Hebrew. In terms of marketing a patriarch--the family head--certainly God could have done better. But Jacob’s name suited his God-given destiny. Jacob had to continually hit the pavement during his life. He was always running from one place to another in order to survive. In the end God changed Jacob’s stage name to reflect his next act in life: He named him Israel, who became the father of the twelve tribes and a blessed nation. The secret to his earned success is that he never ever got off the treadmill. Maybe he, too, had a mother who counseled him during the hardest of times, “Gods telling you that you HAVE TO keep on walking.”


Sponsored by Wordsmithy Editing Services

Something to Remember Me By

I saw a Mel Gibson movie the other day and in it his character said that the bad thing about not having kids is that there is no one to bury you when you die. I found it a painful sentence until I digested it and thought, no, the bad thing about not having kids is that there is no one there to keep you alive in seed and deed and memory. I couldn't help but think back to last week during Yom Kippur when all Jews who have a deceased parent were obligated to say a prayer of homage called Yizkor, which in Hebrew means "remember." Maybe it’s a silly thing to make it obligatory for descendants because who would ever really forget a parent? But there is a substantive difference between not forgetting and remembering. The former is easy and convenient for the lazy and passive, the latter involves actively keeping the person, their teachings, their legacy, their heritage, their sacrifices alive. And just as God breathes life into man in Genesis in this week's Torah reading, we have to continually breathe life into those who have returned to the dust.

But remembering is also a national duty for all peoples. Probably the worst slogan that grates on my sensitive ears is the one in regard to the Holocaust: "We shall never forget." First of all, who is the "we" that will never forget: the generation who lived through it or the one today that is being taught that the Holocaust never happened? Perhaps it’s the ones being told it was a gross exaggeration by Zionists fabricating a casus belli to snatch the Promised Land? Is it Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad who will never let us forget or revisionists like Mahmoud Abbas whose Ph.D. thesis denied the Holocaust as well and who aids those denying the legitimacy of Israel's archeological sites?

What is it exactly that we won't forget? Hitler? Or the number six million? Is that all we have to remember in order to never forget, in order to recognize the warning signs when a new massacre for our people is being fomented on the streets of the world? If we truly haven't forgotten, then please I invite you to ask the average teenager today what were the Nuremberg Laws or ask them if they know what Treblinka is. Just don't be shocked if they think it's an iPhone app. I'm sure few would know it was a concentration camp where 800,000 men, women and children were murdered simply because they were Jews. So please, who are we kidding when we say "we will never forget”? It's meaningless and trite.

This week marks 38 years since the Yom Kippur War when Israel was hit by an Egyptian and Syrian surprise attack and 2,688 Israelis lost their lives. So who cares anymore, who remembers? The history books have recorded it; it’s time to move on. Right? Wrong! Those who do not remember the past will be condemned to repeat it.

Yes, it is a tragedy when you don't have kids to keep memories alive, but the bigger tragedy today is that parents are not giving their kids WHAT to remember. They don't even know for what Israel is fighting and if they do they are ashamed of it. Two weeks ago I went to listen to Alan Dershowitz speak about the rampant anti-Semitism on campus and he said one of his students was afraid to let people know he was a Zionist because then he wouldn't be able to get a date. So, silently, he walks through his campus as Israel's enemies attempt to delegitimize the state and call for divestments and boycotts. I can't help but think of Menachem Begin and his contemporaries who as teenagers risked their lives over and over again to boast about their Zionism and who fought for a homeland’s existence until they held its soil in their hands and turned sand and swamps into the beautiful verdant Eretz Yisrael.

How come we are not firing up the souls of our Jewish youth anymore to make them realize that Israel is our proud birthright and fundamental to our survival? Christians are fired up and standing tall for Israel with pride, why aren’t we? As Netanyahu said, Israel is not what is wrong with the Middle East, it is what is right about it. Today's Jews, however, seem to have bequeathed to their children the materialism of the American Dream without also nurturing their Jewish pride, their sense of Jewish history, their Jewish place in this world and without honing their Jewish survival instincts. How dangerous it is in a time when Israel's enemies are indoctrinating their kids with a strong sense of purpose and history, albeit an invented one and we leave our kids with a vacuum of knowledge that Israel's haters fill with their poison. And I'm scared. I truly thank God for Israel's Christian friends who stand up for Israel when so many Jews are sitting down on the job.

The Jewish people are so quick to forget over and over again who they are and from whence they came when their very survival is in the remembering, in keeping the history alive just as Scheherazade kept herself alive by never stopping to tell her narrative. You see, I'm not worried that Jews will have no one to bury them, for that they will find many volunteers. I'm worried that Jews have squandered their best asset, their sole means of survival and justification for the Holy Land: Jewish memory. I'm not worried who will say Yizkor, I'm worried that soon will arise a generation that asks, "What is Yizkor?"
******
To see what you can do to get students involved or yourself check out this site. http://www.stepupforisrael.com/