AM Inspiration

There are eyes watching you. When you get off the bus, when you open the door to the store, as your checking out of the grocery store and library. When you leave your hotel room in the morning and ask for room service, there are eyes watching you. They are monitoring your behavior for one simple reason,you are a Jew. Hashem is watching for we are His children and He cares what happens to us, so He is always watching..and that is something we have to keep in mind as well with elul coming up. but that's a different point. The world is watching us, because they want to know exactly how do the King's chosen people behave.   This week was a hard one at work. Not because of the extensive hours sitting in front of a computer screen, or because of difficult patients. it was difficult there was a blatant chilul Hashem, our office manager left with not so friendly feelings towards Jews though she previously had..and i was sitting there watch the whole scenario unfold before me and ther...

I know someone who never wears pants in the community. When she's in-town she makes sure her skirts cover her knees, elbows are usually covered..she basically attempts tznius while under the watch of the community. But ever should the need arises to leave her beloved home town..on slips the pants and it doesn't bother her at all...bcz where she is going no one knows here and the people who do wear pants themselves so its not an issue. I have often confronted her about this-does G-d not see you when u leave? Does it only matter what people think? Unfortunately, in this bad-for-shidduchim society that has been created most of what most people do is to curry favor in the eyes of the neighbors, the shadchanim and basically everyone else in between. You never know who you'll meet going to the grocery store-you cant wear THAT! Never mind the few times i did stroll down the vast aisles of Pomegranate everyone there is dressed to kill as opposed to here at home where i roll out i...

Tonight is the night. The saddest night of the year. Three weeks of progressively deeper levels of mourning culminate tonight. The night if T'sha B'av. We will sit on the floor and listen to Eicha being read. We will sit in darkness without smiling to our friends. Tonight we cry for we are sitting in a house of mourning. We are grieving the loss of something great. We are bemoaning the galus that we are on. The Galut that we perpetuate every year for the lack of ahavat chinam. We mourn the galut that the shechina is in, the loss of spirituality that has engulfed the world. We mourn the loss of the jewish souls, the assimilation rate that grows higher and higher every year. The loss is great, the sadness palpable, yet for some reason the tears don't come. We're told that this is the saddest day of the year. This is the day we mourn for all the tragedies that ever were bestowed upon Klal Yisrael. This is the day to cry. However, try as we might the tears don't come....

Time is a funny thing. If you think about it how cool is it that time is measured the same way all across the world. there is no conversion factor from an English hour to an American hour to a Israeli hour. Yes the exact hour calculation may be needed, its not the same time here it is in the holy land, even in one country we cross time zones. time is a funny thing. we aways seem to need more of it, yet for the few moments in our lives that for some reason we seem to have too much of it. Time can never be recovered, it is the worst commodity to steal for you can never return it no matter how much you try. stealing sleep is a most grievous sin for no matter how much you desperately want to give it back and no matter how much guilt you feel, that sleep is not coming back.. timing is everything. exactly what time you get outta bed, outta the house, into the car..in the Olympics a race is won by an eighth of a second. when telling a joke, if the timing is...

Choices make up every minute of our lives. We choose when to get up, if to get up, how to get up and what to do when we get up..and thats just the first minute of the day! we make big decisions, small decisions, decisions that matter and some that do not. Along the way we are apt to make the wrong choices but at the end of the day, the choices are in our hands. We are bochrim and as such we choose, and hopefully we choose life. we choose to live, how we live is just commentary. The choice to live is the biggest decision we ever make, and we choose to LIVE the second we choose to be above mediocre. The split second we choose to strive for something higher   than ourselves, to make ourselves better than we are now- that is choosing life. In choosing to strive higher it is inevitable that there will be struggles along the way. There will be moments of extreme difficulty, moments that are seemingly easy, moments that seem to turn everything you ever thought you knew about anything up...

The Magic Touch by Gila Manolson was widely popular when i was younger as I am sure it still is among teenagers who are struggling with the halachot of shomer negiah.Touch is a powerful that can be used in magnifecent ways to bring people closer, sometimes closer than need be. According to halacha males and females are not allowed to touch before marriage, especially when dating and according to my engaged/married friends- man is it hard to keep those halachos while one is engaged! but the abstinence of touch is what provides for the magic of it when it happens, it makes the first time a chosson and kalla hold hands so much more meaningful. Now i don't have any of that kind of experience but there are times in college when a guy will tap me on the shoulder or touch me in one way or another, and i am acutely aware of what is happening. its not the magical sparks between a man and his wife, but bcz the halachot of shomer negiah play a role in my life, then i am 100% aware of the fact...