The Naked Truth by Aliza Davidovit

These days people have become so shallow that they are more impressed by labels and icons than they are by substance. For instance, it was just found out that a French wine company sold 18 million bottles of a cheap Merlot to Americans passing it off as a pricier Pinot Noir from 2006-2008. No one ever knew. I can just see it now as some pretentious dude is twirling and sniffing the wine and giving the waiter the AOK that the wine is “just fabulous.” We have become so duped by labels and the superficial that it is no wonder our society is crumbling; there is no substantive foundation holding us up. Today, we are more defined by “who” you wear or what you buy than who you are. Chanel, Gucci, Pucci, Armani, Boss, Ralph Lauren, Prada, ect., are the identifiers by which we size other people up and evaluate our own worth. And if you can’t afford the real thing there is always the market for knockoffs as is so prevalent here in New York. People don’t care about the truth or the substance, they care about the show.

Who cares that once you get home you realize that the knockoff pocketbook doesn’t even say “Chanel,” it says, “Channel.” They gave you an extra “n,” and for a discount too. What’s the big deal if the knock-of Isaac Miyake cologne smells like parakeet pee, I think the real one smells worse. And so what if the “Tag Heuer” watch you bought for 15 bucks is just like the people in this town, it won’t give you the time of day. What’s most important is that everyone thinks you own an expensive item and that your worth and esteem in the world have been augmented by whatever fraudulent means. It shouldn’t really matter when the band starts corroding and your wrist becomes affected with gangrene. It’s also hardly relevant that the cheap plastic from your new “Prada” sunglasses is releasing lead into your brain. We only use 10 percent of our brain anyway, and if you’re in Congress, apparently your brain is dispensable altogether. But, I guess it’s like everything else in our country these days, even our bullshit is manufactured in China.

It was sad to read an article by Sharon Osbourne today in which she states that our youth is being destroyed by celebrity. The ambitions of our youth today is to be famous—another label. They just want the title and don’t really care if they have the talent or even care what they are famous for. YouTube moments and reality TV shows feed the beast. We are nurturing a world of empty vessels.

Even when I hear President Obama say at the health care summit that he can speak the length of his choice because he is the President, I get the same ill feeling that a label is being bandied about at the expense of true value. If you are the President, then start acting like it and stop advertising it. This “me”-gocentric labeling does not a president make. Even the secure handles on a real Gucci handbag couldn’t carry the weight of the debt he’s amassing. The hateful divide in this country is a better reflection of whether you are President or presidential.

Thus, when we read this week’s Bible portion, Moses’ greatness stands in contrast to the world and leadership we know today. As God declares He is about to destroy the Jewish Nation because of the sin of the golden calf, Moses says if You destroy the Jews, then blot my name out of Your Book. He wasn’t seeking name recognition. He didn’t say, “Okay, make me famous and to heck with them Jews.” He didn’t need a label, fame, or pretentious baloney to prove he was a somebody. As a consequence, in this week’s reading, it is the first time since Moses’ birth that his name does not appear in the entire section. Yet who he was and what he stood for was more powerful than ever, right there in his humility. He was a leader from the inside out. As such he didn’t need spotlights shining on him; it turns out the light shone out from him.

I’m not launching a war against designers here or Obama. I’m just saying let’s try hard not to forget what it really is that makes a man. Let's stop polishing the apples and start nurturing the fruit inside.
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Forgiveness Doesn't Pay--It Costs!

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I Love You Maybe Baby ©
By Aliza Davidovit

So tell me my dear friends are you seeing RED? Not the red of anger, but the red of love.
Storefront windows abound with heart-shaped decorations and red velvet boxes of chocolate. Victoria Secret is featuring pretty red lingerie in its stores.

Valentine’s Day is looming and love is in the air.
 But when all the accessories are stripped away, and the red satin ribbons have been untied, I question, what is love? Do we really know how to love? And what is the greatest love of all? Whether it be love of people, God, or country, what is the real proof that we love something?
Can you love your country if you don’t vote?
Are you really a loving husband if you don’t remember your anniversary?
Are you a person of faith if you never attend temple?
Can you really love yourself if you neglect yourself?

Who is to say how we should love and whether our form of loving is wrong or right?

The group Foreigner came out with a song in the 1980s, I Want To Know What Love Is. And I think they are not alone in that quest. Don’t we all want to know what love is? With on-line dating growing by the minute and divorces equally popular-- Can it be that we just don’t know what love is?

Perhaps we can learn something from this week’s Bible portion in which God gives exact details with one commandment after another of what he wants from the Jewish nation. God does not leave his love affair with a people to chance, He explains explicitly what He wants from them. The burden is now upon His people to prove their love. According to Halacha it is not sufficient to merely be a cardiac Jews meaning, we have G-d in our hearts but when it comes to actions our proof of love is MIA.
The Torah tells us we have to love God not only with all our hearts, but with all our souls and all our might.
I think Whitney Houston was very wrong,
learning to love YOURSELF is NOT the greatest love of all. I think too much self-love is what’s actually ruining people these days. It’s learning to love others and God how they want to be loved, not just how it’s convenient for us to love them that is the greatest love of all. Perhaps love is not about giving what YOU want to give or giving all you have, 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.

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.” 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?

In my heart I feel The Bible is the best love story ever told. It’s a stormy love story bwn a God and his chosen people, one that  often extends beyond rational, reason and self-justifications. You want to know what love is? Let the Torah show us. It is the best valentine’s card ever written and God has never whispered a sweet nothing in our ear.

Image is Everything?!!! by Aliza Davidovit

Many of us have an image we feel we have to upkeep in order to face the world. So maybe we wear a little too much makeup, buy a car we can’t afford, or show a brave face when we are crying inside. Images are only skin deep. For instance, the Titanic may have had an image of great elegance and imperviousness but the iceberg wasn’t too impressed and as a result 1500 people died. The Wizard of Oz, had the image of an all-powerful magician, but when the curtains were pulled, he was nothing more than a little man with a megaphone. Image is the bait that ensnares us, hypnotizes us, and lures us down the Yellow Brick Road-- often to find disappointment at its end. It is unfortunate that we try and put our best face forward at the expense of what is really going on behind it.
Even the TV we love to watch is all about improving life aesthetically and superficially. It is the trend these days in reality TV to renovate the externals of our existence, thus the barrage of makeover programs, such as What Not to Wear, Nip & Tuck, The Biggest Loser, Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, Supernanny, Nanny 911, Restaurant Makeover, From G's to Gents and Extreme Makeover, just to name a few. I question why there are no shows that force people to be nicer. Why don’t they take some mean yutz and put him through the process of attending church, doing acts of kindness and in the end showing how his life has been changed for the better because of it.

We apathetic viewers allow media image makers to shape the mindset by which we evaluate people and events. A perfect example is President Obama, who came upon the national scene with a nice smile and a gift of gab. As a result, most of America was hypnotized by a manufactured image that promised to “fundamentally change” the country. We failed to insist that the media dig deeper and to uncover the depth and breadth of a man who would be president.

But how can we demand more of others when in a large measure we evaluate ourselves superficially as well? At the end of most days we bash ourselves if we are overweight, if we didn’t make enough money, if we aren’t as successful as the other guy or gal. But how many of us take ourselves to task at the end of the day for not doing enough charitable deeds that day or being a kinder person? Few of us engage in a makeover that starts on the inside.

In this week’s Bible portion the Israelites gather at the foot of Mount Sinai to witness Moses descend with the Ten Utterances (Commandments). God does not pick a fancy building or the highest mountain to bring his laws into the world nor does he ask His people to adorn themselves with jewels and expensive garb, but rather he addresses them in the wilderness, where they have nothing and are nothing more than a wandering people. The Jews had humility after leaving Egypt—after all, what pride can a former slave have? As such they were prime candidates to receive the word of God. Pharaoh had pride and haughtiness and thus could not absorb God’s laws. He was impressed with his own image and all the makeovers that Egyptian idol makers and beauticians could conjure. But gilded armor does not a mensch make.

A rabbi once asked his young student where can God be found? The student proud to know the answer said, “God can be found everywhere.”
“Wrong,” his rabbi replied, “God can only be found in a humble heart, not one that is filled with ego, for two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time.”

Biblical scholars teach that it is relevant that the Ten Commandment were engraved in stone and not inked on parchment or gilded with gold letters. Something engraved shows humility because it is able to surrender a part of itself and allow something meaningful to be etched in its stead.

So my dear friends, when we look at our lives and contemplate “makeovers” and image boosters, close your eyes! Look inside yourself beyond the mirrors, choose substance over surface. When we reach the end of our days it is only our good deeds that will gain us entry into God’s kingdom, and at that heavenly gate, there is no bribing the doorman.

Finding Light in the Darkness ©

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"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.”
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This week's blog is dedicated to the memory of the 13 killed at FT. Hood, patriots whose chances at happiness were mercilessly murdered.


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Bible Talk: Green-Eyed Monsters

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