AM Inspiration

We've all done it..gone to shul, school, work and put our phones on silent..and then forget. Suddenly hours later you notice that - being the popular person that you are - usually are constantly getting phone calls and its been really quiet...and then it hits you.." oh man! i left my phone on silent!" and you see that you have x amount of missed calls..all people who you would have loved to talk to if you had only heard the phone! (of course its possible no one called you in all those hours and that's just depressing :p) so this is a two part point 1) are you going to take responsibility for your actions..you are the one who changed the setting..you are the one who forgot..you are the one who had other priorities as soon as work was over besides changing your setting..which is all well and good..but we have to take responsibility.. for the consequences of our actions.. 2)The fact that you did not hear the phone does not take away from the fact that someone was c

Baruch Dayan Ha'emet. These are the words of a people of absolute faith. Even in the face of the most devastating news possible, what is our response? Blessed is the True Judge.. Tonight my family got hit with that kind of news. A son of close family friends passed away today. He was a 20 year old boy..or so we thought he had passed away..as i was writing up the beginning words my mother came to my room to tell me that BH he was still alive, though still very deep in a coma due to drug overdose.. (please have him in your teffilot-igal ben morvarid) The emotional roller coaster ride of the past few moments is palpable. Apparently someone had incorrectly put up a FB status message saying something to the extent that this boy had passed away when in actuality he had not. My first thought when i head the news that bH he is still alive, was that of "wow, techiyat hamaytim" talk about resurrection. this kind of news cannot hit a person so few days after RH and so few hou

we've all been taught from a very young age..teshuva is as easy as one, two, three..do teshuva everyday and more brachot will come your way.. we learn the three steps of teshuva 1)vidui-confession 2)azivat ha'chet-stopping from doing the aveirah 3) kabbala le'atid- making real steps towards making sure that this never happens again. we also learn that real teshuva is when you are placed in the same place that you were initially, but this time you choose differently. You choose connection with Hashem over separation and disconnection. This is a very easy concept to talk about and it is beautiful to bring in the circle of life (cue the lion king soundtrack). We go full circle when we reach the same place we started, this time making the right choice..but realistically how possible is this really? (we don't always get put in the same spot and if we do we are subject to fail as well..) The first two steps of teshuva are relatively easy..I'm sorry Hashem, I re

I don't know exactly how many people are aware of this, but once an email strand hits 100 on Gmail, it starts over again from one. meaning that emails 1-100 are archived and they no longer appear in the email strand. You only have the present email that you are working with visible and it goes on from there. I was discussing with a friend (with whom i have this email insanity with..) that all those emails have been lost in cyberspace, down in GMail history never to be seen again. But she remarked that this was not the case. the emails are still there..it just takes a little more work to get to them.. this was going to be a pre-Rosh Hashana post originally but then i thought it may work better after.. Hopefully, we all had an inspirational Day of Judgment. A day of connection. A day of intense prayer. A day of commitment to be better. For me the first day of RH was was easily a better day in terms  of prayer and shul and actual kavannah in my tefilla. By the time Mincha of Sha

What does it mean to be sorry? Sorry is one of those phrases that has been over used and sadly enough has begun to lose its power. It does not have the meaning that it is supposed to have. It doe not hold the weight it once did. Think about it, we say sorry all the time. I say sorry to inanimate objects  for heavens sake. Just think about the number of times you say sorry on a daily basis. Sorry I interrupted you Sorry I deleted that file Sorry I sat in your spot Sorry, but i really have to go now.. the list is endless... the idea of this post came to me tonight as i was washing my nth sink full of dishes. I had finally finished for the night, or so i thought. My mother was saying krias shema-shes not doing any more cooking..but yet she managed to find a few more dishes that had escaped the wrath of my sponge. "Sorry" she said as she dumped those escapees into the sink to meet their doom. i have no doubt that she felt bad that i was still washing dishes...she is

So this week i was sitting in traffic on the highway, just waiting for the cars to move. You know how when you are stuck in traffic it always seems as if the lane next to you is moving faster..and as soon as you manage to get into the faster lane its moving like molasses while the lane you were in originally is now speeding along. all that is besides the point.. I was sitting in the lane furthest to the right waiting to get out..and I did not know exactly how much longer I had till my exit. I wasn't exactly sure which exit it was, I mean I know what it looks like but that is about it. so I was stuck in the super slow lane waiting, on the look out for my exit...and I almost missed it too! the people who knew where they were going and knew that they had a while were in the left lane breezing along whilst the rest of us who had to get off soon were slogging along. It occurred to me that if I knew where I needed to get off exactly and knew the way precisely then I could have staye