Everybody wants spirituality. To be a good person means to walk in G-d's ways. How does that translate to reality? The only guidebook to spirituality that has stood the test of time is the Hebrew Bible. The Bible says that the Jews will be a light onto the nations. But if you are not a born Jew, you have to convert, which is not so easy!! If you do convert, it is a lot of work to be a Jew (three times a day prayer, keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath).
This blog will show you how to be Jewish without the work!!
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Self Help Author Louis Hay dies at 90
Yehuda Lave, Spiritual Advisor and Counselor
Stop and Focus
The ability to concentrate is a prerequisite for acquiring wisdom.
Spend time mastering the ability to stop your "internal dialogue" in order to concentrate well.
Also, just realizing that your mind is wandering enables you to bring it back and focus on the activity at hand.
Louise Hay, one of the pioneers of the modern self-care revolution, has passed away today at the age of 90. According to her Facebook page, which broke the news just over an hour ago, she died of natural causes surrounded by her loved ones.
Hay is best known for her book " You Can Heal Your Life," which sold more than 50 million copies. She was the godmother of affirmations and intuitive self-healing, having used these alternative methods as healing tools while she had cervical cancer. This inspired her to write, paving the way for many who have gone on to heal themselves.
"You Can Heal Your Life is one of the most influential books in my own personal healing journey and the journey of many members of the larger mindbodygreen family. Her message of hope and healing have inspired millions and will live on forever," said mindbodygreen CEO and Founder Jason Wachob.
Gabby Bernstein, a motivational speaker inspired by Hay, tweetedin memorium, "Thank you Louise for your light." Author Kris Carralso Tweeted about her passing, "We love you. We really, really love you."
Rest in peace, Louise.
Heading 1
Text block at your service. Replace this text with yours.
Why Celebrate Judgement? By Rabbi Ephraim Sprecher
Rosh HaShana is a puzzling Yom Tov for us. On the one hand, we are facing an awesome judgment; on the other hand, we celebrate the day as a joyous holiday. One can hardly imagine someone facing a life and death judgment enjoying himself on that very day. Yet, the Halacha states that we must celebrate on Rosh HaShana by feasting on meat and wine.
What is even stranger, we not only celebrate amidst the judgment, we actually invoke the judgment on ourselves. According to the Zohar, our shofar summons the Judge to the chamber to begin the Judgement. Clearly we would only do so if we viewed that judgment as beneficial to us.
A Midrash concerning Rosh HaShana makes this point. Rosh HaShana falls on the first of Tishrei, says the Midrash, because it was then that Adam Harishon was judged favorably. That first favorable judgment serves as a hopeful precedent for our own judgment.
But how was Adam judged favorably? As a consequence of his sin, he lost his immortality and death was introduced into the world. Chava was condemned to suffer the pains of childbirth, and Adam to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.
The answer, the Midrash suggests, is that the very act of judgment itself was favorable because it showed that G-d still cared about the relationship. G-d visited upon Adam the consequences of his actions in order to preserve the overall system of consequences, and to emphasize that our actions matter to G-d. What we do in life is of major importance to Him.
Recognizing that G-d's judgment itself is a sign of our ongoing relationship does not, however, remove our anxiety about that judgment. To ignore those feelings would be insincere. Even as we rejoice in the larger context within which the judgment is taking place, we do not lose sight that we are on trial for our lives.
That uncertainty is hinted to in Nechemiah's instructions to the exiles returning to Israel from Babylon the first Rosh HaShana after their return. They began to weep when they realized that their sins had led to the exile. In response, Nechemiah told them, " Eat tasty meat and drink sweet wine… for joy in G-d is your strength." The Hebrew Language has many terms for joy. The word used by Nechemiah is CHEDVA.
We find a verb of the same root in the Torah to describe Yitro's rejoicing upon hearing of the miracles that accompanied the Children of Israel as they left Egypt, including the drowning of the Egyptians at the Sea: "And Yitro rejoiced" (Sh'mot 18:9). Yitro was a senior advisor to Pharoah in Egypt.
Later on, Yitro joined the Jewish People, as a Ger Tzedek. On one level, he rejoiced at the destruction of Egypt, for that destruction was the means by which G-d revealed Himself to the entire world. Yet he also felt sadness for the Egyptians who drowned at the Sea.
The Hebrew word CHEDVA conveys that sense of a deeper joy, with a mixture of sadness. And it is that mixture that we feel on Rosh HaShana. Indeed whenever "G-d is 'dealing' with us" we face the same mixture of sadness and joy. At the most immediate level, we are acutely aware of our pain. But at a deeper level, we experience satisfaction in the knowledge of G-d's ongoing concern for us and of His desire to bond and connect with us.
Therefore one of the most frequently repeated prayers during the High Holy Days is the recitation of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy. This is based on the Gemara Rosh HaShana 17b that teaches, G-d says, "Any time that Israel sins, let them perform before Me this procedure, and I shall forgive them." Why should the mere recitation of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy "magically" atone for our sins?
The Alshich HaKadosh states, that the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy bring about forgiveness only if we try to emulate them, and not just by reciting them repeatedly. He explains that this is the reason that the Gemara quoted above says, "let them PERFORM before Me this procedure." The Gemara chooses its words carefully and doesn't say, "let them recite these words, and I shall forgive them."
Only if we try to actively emulate G-d's Attributes of Mercy do we attain forgiveness. This is logical and not a magical incantation, because the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy describe G-d as being lenient and forgiving.
If we emulate these Attributes of G-d, then we will certainly be forgiven. Because the Talmud teaches, "Anyone who is lenient and forgiving, the Heavenly Tribunal forgives him for all his sins" (Rosh HaShana 17a). This is because G-d treats us "MEASURE FOR MEASURE".
Once we emulate G-d's attributes that are described in Sh'mot 34:6-7, "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger… forgiver of iniquity, transgression and sin", and we become lenient and forgiving, we will be forgiven, since G-d treats us similarly.
Therefore, the Talmud in Rosh HaShana quoted above teaches, that we can attain forgiveness by PERFORMING and NOT just reciting the 13 Attributes of Mercy.
The Cheesecake Factorywill reportedly begin selling cheesecakes in Israel in the coming weeks. According to Israeli daily Maariv, kosher certification is in progress and an actual chain of restaurants will follow in the future.
I Will Pay [Terrorists] Until My Dying Day,' Abbas Insists
MEIR KAHANE WRITINGS
1971-1973 5732-33
Wanted: A Jewish State
WHEN all is said and done and all the causes are separated from the effects, it becomes clear that the ultimate sin of the people who rule the State of Israel is that they have done everything to remove the significance, the magnificence and the sweetness of victory from the great miracle of Return and resurrection of the Jewish state. What they have done and do daily is to turn the miraculous into the ordinary, the hallowed into the profane and the truth of the matter is that, because of this all the miracles and wonders that have occurred to us in the nature of rebirth of the Land have come about, not so much because of the ruling circles, but despite them.
The decision by the government of Israel not to allow Jews to purchase land in that part of the Land of Israel known as the 'territories' (those lands liberated in 1967) is as grotesquely absurd as it is obscenely outrageous. Not since the Nuremberg laws and the years when their legislators held sway, has there been a land in which Jews, per se, have been singled out for a ban on land purchase. A Moslem, a Christian or a Buddhist may buy land in the Land of the Bible, but not a Jew. In the lands wherein strolled Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the children of Ishmael may do what they will with land but not the children of the Patriarchs. The thing becomes an unfunny joke. A Jew from Tel Aviv asks to buy land and is turned down. He turns around, enters a Moslem religious court and declares his fealty to Allah, emerges as a Moslem and can now buy land in Eretz Yisroel. At least Nuremberg had the logic of anti-Semitism behind it – the hatred of the gentile for the Jew. The madness of the present situation is that the ban on Jewish purchase comes from Jews. All that is needed to complete the farce is for an appeal from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the American Jewish Committee, to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, citing the State of Israel for discrimination against Jews . . .
It is no answer to say that the political situation in the world demands that Israel act as she does. That very argument is the one that strips naked the secularism and the un-Jewishnesss of the Jewish government in Israel. For it is not true that the ghetto mentality of the Jew exists only in the Galut, the Exile. It is alive and sick in the Jewish State in the forms of a Jewish government which – on a dozen issues –reacts according to the yardstick: "What will the goyim say?" It is the measure of their Galut minds and their utter failure to understand the nature and destiny of the Jewish people.
When the government of Israel refuses to allow Jews to purchase land in the Land of Israel; when the government of Israel extradites Jews to non-Jewish areas, even when they are citizens, Israeli soldiers and Jewish freedom fighters; when the government of Israel refuses to ban missionaries who daily prey on the poor and the economically weak; when the government of Israel is stricken daily by the disease of Ebanism (from the root 'Eban' as in Foreign Minister)
It is a symptom of Galut mentality and the desire to create in Israel a carbon copy of the
Western, liberal, assimilated ideological state. Israel has become a state with Jewish people, not a Jewish State. Its reactions are assimilated ones for it has become like all the other states, learning from them, influenced by them, slavishly following their philosophical, ideologically a slave to the goy – but because of the ghetto mentality that makes it reject Jewish exclusiveness – in the end, a political subject too
The roots of the ultimate sin of the leaders of the State of Israel lie in that they do not recognize and never did recognize that the incredible survival of the Jewish people through two millennial of incredible exile was a simple miracle. (Usually, it is the miracle that is the more simple explanation rather than the torturous explanations that go into denying it and finding some other answer). Because they do not really believe in G-d (and let us not be put off by their evasive attempts to deny their denials) they also do not believe that the Jewish people are a people of G-d, whose past survival in the midst of seventy hungry wolves of the world was accomplished only through His power and whose incredible return to the Land, after centuries that saw the passing of every nation that once existed together with the Jews in ancient times, was part of the Jewish destiny as dictated by the hand of the All Mighty.
Everything that was miraculous, holy and special about the Jews was discarded and turned into an ordinary and profane story. Because they did not believe in G-d or in the Jewish destiny as being A Divine one that MUST be and that WILL be, regardless of "natural" or "logical" obstacles, these rulers fought against all the dreamers and the visionaries and did everything to impede the Return.
When the Nordaus demanded that Jews be thrust into the Land of Israel by the hundreds of thousands, those who then and who today, still, rule the Zionist Establishment – mocked him and exclaimed: "Impractical! Where shall we put them all? How will they live?" So they died.
When Jabotinksys demanded that Jews march out of the Exile and flee the ghettos and that the aim of Zionism be declared, openly, to be that of a Jewish State, the disbelievers, the men of "practicality", "logic" and political secularism brought forth all their mockery, the statistics and their skepticism to defeat the dreamers.
When the freedom fighters of Irgun and Stern demanded that the Jew rise up and fight for the Land of Canaan, the ruling circles of disbelievers condemned them – and condemned the entire people
In 1948, the ruling circles seriously considered putting off the declaration of a Jewish State and in 1956 they retreated from Sinai and in 1967 they listened for days to Eban and others not to go to war but rather trust the nations of the world.
The truth is, that the State of Israel, the return from Exile, the breathtaking miracles of three victorious wars, and the return to the Wall, to Jerusalem, to Hebron and to the Land of Israel, has all been miracles that have come to us not because of the rulers of Israel but despite them. For Israel is not blessed with the deep desire to be Jewish but rather with the disease of Ebanism.
Ebanism is that disease that sees Israel as a model Western, liberal, progressive state but that has no connection with the exclusive Jewish Destiny that is based upon a Jewish G-d, a Jewish heritage, a Jewish reaction and a Jewish Destiny that transcends Washington and Moscow, both.
Because Ebanism looks at the world through secular eyes, it also sees Israel's destiny in that world as a secular one. Because there is no place for G-d and the miracle of the Jewish destiny, every political question is based not on "what should Jews do and how should a Jew react," but on "what will the goyim say?" Because the Ebans of the Israeli cabinet do not really believe that there is a G-d, let alone a Hand of G-d that has returned His people and that will preserve their state under all circumstances, they refuse to allow Jews to buy their own land because of fear of Nixon. They return Jews to gentile prisons because of fear of Nixon. They refuse to limit the soul-snatchers of the Missions because of fear of all the Nixons, Catholic or Protestant. There is really no need to go to the trouble and expense of electing a new president of Israel. We already have one and he resides in Washington. . . No, there is no need for a new president of Israel – we need the old G-d.
We waited so long for the miracle of return and, finally, when it occurred we were cheated. We were robbed of the sweetness and the deliciousness of its pleasure. The state for which we waited centuries became just as any other state, and the uniqueness of the Jew does not lie in a tank or jet – even if they are better than those of the gentiles. We waited for the return to the true lands of the Bible and now we have them – and no Jews can live there. Ebanism has taken a miracle and profaned it, taking it an ordinary thing. It has taken Eretz Yisroel, the unique and special land of the Jews and made it into any state, acting and reacting on the basis of realpolitik and power politics, making decisions on the basis of western secularism rather than on Judaism. This is what happens when Ebanism rules, when the waters that sprinkle the fields of policy making are drawn from the wells of Oxford and Cambridge rather than Jerusalem and Hebron.
The time is long overdue for the malady of Ebanism to be overcome with the healing herbs of Judaism. It is time for Israel to believe in G-d so that it can stop fearing man. On that day we will begin to allow Jews to purchase land in their own country; on that day we will allow Jewish freedom fighters to arrive in Israel without fear of extradition; on that day Israel will return to its true role – its only role – the servant of the Jewish people.
Written: May 18, 1973
One day an Irishman, who had been stranded on a deserted island for over ten years, saw a speck on the horizon. He thought to himself, "It's certainly not a ship."
As the speck got closer and closer, he began to rule out even the possibilities of a small boat or a raft. Suddenly there strode from the surf a figure clad in a black wet suit.
Putting aside the scuba tanks and mask and zipping down the top of the wet suit stood a drop-dead gorgeous blonde! She walked up to the stunned Irishman and said to him, "Tell me, how long has it been since you've had a good cigar?"
"Ten years," replied the amazed Irishman.
With that, she reached over and unzipped a waterproof pocket on the left sleeve of her wet suit and pulled out a fresh package of cigars and a lighter.
He took a cigar, slowly lit it, and took a long drag. "Faith and begorrah," said the castaway, "that is so good! I'd almost forgotten how great a smoke can be!"
"And how long has it been since you've had a drop of good Bushmill's Irish Whiskey?" asked the blonde.
Trembling, the castaway replied, "Ten years." Hearing that, the blonde reached over to her right sleeve, unzipped a pocket there and removed a flask and handed it to him.
He opened the flask and took a long drink. "'Tis nectar of the gods!" shouted the Irishman. "'Tis truly fantastic!!!"
At this point the gorgeous blonde started to slowly unzip the long front of her wet suit, right down the middle. She looked at the trembling man and asked, "And how long has it been since you played around?"
With tears in his eyes, the Irishman fell to his knees and sobbed, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Don't tell me that you've got golf clubs in there too!"
See you Tomorrow
Love Yehuda Lave
View this email in your browser You are receiving this email because of your relationship with Yehuda Lave, Spiritual Advisor and Counselor. If you do not wish to receive any more emails, you can unsubscribe here.
This message was sent to loveheced.lovehesced@blogger.com by yehudalave@yehudalave.co Jerusalem, Israel, California, 92106
No comments:
Post a Comment