Sunday, November 28, 2004

Let Your Light Shine - Keb Mo

A friend of mine recently told me very similar words. This song struck a chord for me. I can hear the cynics groaning from here.
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Let Your Light Shine
By Keb Mo

You say,
You want to get over.
What are you gonna do?
Watch the world go by
In a corner of the room?

I know,
None of my business.
But there's something I need to say,
If you could see you
The way I see you
You'd start flying on your own.

Step aside and . . .

Let your light shine.
Let your love show
It's a short ride
Down the long road.
When the rains come
And the winds blow
Let your light shine
Wherever you go.

This world is ready and waiting
For you to break on through.
It's time to recognize,
To realize,
You're the only one like you.
Step on up,
Step into your greatness.
Don't be afraid.
There's a place where you will rise up to;
No one else could do what you do.

Get out of the way

Let your light shine.
Let your love show
It's a short ride
Down the long road.
When the rains come
And the winds blow
Let your light shine
Wherever you go.


Get out of the way

Let your light shine.
Let your love show
It's a short ride
Down the long road.
When the rains come
And the winds blow
Let your light shine
Wherever you go.

Let your light shine.
Let your love show
It's a short ride
Down the long road.
When the rains come
And the winds blow
Let your light shine
Wherever you go.

Up, Down, and All Around

Once upon a time there was a man who was excelling in every way. He was quite wealthy and one day found a diamond in a garbage pail. It was evaluated to be worth millions of dollars and when he heard that he cried and no-one understood why he cried. As time went on he became poor and suffered from difficulties in every way. One day he hit rock bottom and was found eating a bowl of hot water in a hut and the roof collapsed and plaster fell in his soup. When this happened he laughed and no-one understood why. Then, as time went on, he regained his good fortune. At the end of his life he was asked to explain his odd laughter and tears. He explained that he cried when about the diamond because things had gone so high that he knew it could only go down from there. And he laughed when he hit his lowest point because he knew that from that nadir things could only go up.

Yaakov bowed before Eisav seven times, hinting to the idea that a tzaddik falls seven times and rises. As Rav Hutner explains this - a tzadik rises through falling seven times, not despite the falls.
The process of Yaakov becoming Yisrael included a great deal of difficulty. So too, in our lives our growth includes hardship. Not only is it inevitable that things will change from good to bad and back but moreso it's true that the good actually flows from what we percieve as bad.

As my father, he should live and be well, taught me - the only constant in life is change. As the Vilna Gaon puts it, our perceptions change constantly too. He said: we will laugh tomorrow over what we cried about today and cry tomorrow over what we laughed about today. May we all be blessed to see the hard times as times of growth and to always continue to improve in our love of and closeness to G-d.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Neil Fleischmann

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

experimental post

I want to see if I'm getting this. Can I post a link? I like to go to the Kotel virtually through www.thewall.org Does this mean you can just click here and go there. If the answer is yes, expct more to follow.

Monday, November 22, 2004

Update

NY's Funniest Rabbi

Latest Poem

Alone In A Nice Restaraunt

Sometimes I imagine myself a child
seeing videos of me now
And this is one of the scenes
that I couldn't believe


I stop doing what never works
Trying to relax
Put down the pen and breathe
and breathe and breathe and breathe

Sunday, November 21, 2004

What's The Damage?

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This blog is new but I have been writing, with G-d's help, for some time. I've been sending out an email every week for years. What follows immediately is what I sent out this week.
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This week’s “trivia” question is: what is the name by which the inspiration for this week’s thoughts, Rabbi Yaakov Kranz (1741-1804), is more famously known?


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Lavan informs Yaakov of a divinely inspired epiphany; Lavan was blessed by G-d for Yaakov’s sake. Lavan asks Yaakov what reward he desires. Yaakov replies, “You know how I have served you and how your cattle was with me, for the little which you had before I came is now increased to a multitude. And G-d has blessed you since my coming - and now when will I provide for my own house also.”

Yaakov makes a point of restating how the cattle prospered under his watch. Rabbi Kranz explains that Yaakov was responding to Lavan’s subtext. Lavan insinuates that his material blessings were heavenly reward for Yaakov’s piety. Yaakov wants it on record that his hard work brought results. He wants Lavan to value his effort before he decides what to pay him. Rather than deserving a stipend for being the resident Jew, Yaakov was deserving of recompense for a great deal of labor.

This thought has many ramifications. The Hebrew expression for appreciation is “hakarat hatov.” When translated carefully these words mean “seeing the good.” Hakarat hatov is often understood as perfunctory expressions of thanks. But it is meant to be a true recognition of effort.

Lavan is the first boss that we read of in the Torah. He is the first supervisor and the first bureaucrat. When Yaakov asks to marry his young daughter Lavan sets down the line that many would borrow time and time again: “I’d love to help you, but my hands are tied. It’s not my fault, it’s company policy, simply not how things are done around here; there’s nothing I can do.”

Lavan minimized Yaakov’s effort by choosing not to see it. As Stanley Fishman says “perception is nine tenths of the flaw.” Lavan chose to perceive Yaakov as a nice yeshiva boy who brought him good fortune, blinding himself to Yaakov’s years of skilled shepherding. It was time for Yaakov to go. There was little he could do but state the truth.

In life we all meet situations where others are subjected to our judgment. While today it is in vogue to say that we should never judge, it is a basic human truth that we always judge. I dare anyone to find a statement of Chazal where they say not to judge. They acknowledge that we judge and ask us to do it as patiently and empathetically as possible.

When we judge we need to see the positive even if in the end it is outweighed by negative. Rabbi Fischel Schachter is a renowned lecturer who spends his days teaching young children. A rule he lives by is to never say a negative without surrounding it by two positives.

I have several dear friends who I will hint to. One is a supervisor in the field of computers. He once told me that if a supervisor needs to let someone go and it comes as a surprise to the employee, the supervisor hasn’t been communicating properly. I could tell from his words that he stays in touch, giving positive and negative feedback regularly to those under him. Another friend works as a school administrator and makes it a point to walk through every classroom daily – not to scare people but to see what needs to be seen, good and bad. The same man thanks his teachers before vacations and lets them know that their efforts don’t go unnoticed.

On the other hand another friend of mine once told me with what looked like pride that he makes his workers cry. He doesn’t like my theory of the need to see the good and let your workers know you see it. He feels that in some situations that may be appropriate, but not in the real cruel world.

Back to the parsha – may we be blessed to be better than Lavan. May our whiteness be real and not phony professional charm. May we be blessed to clearly see the efforts of others that bring us blessings and to acknowledge the good that we see.

Shabbat Shalom,
And thank you for reading,

Rabbi Neil Fleischmann

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And here's a hot off the press poem - new to a blog , but not new to me as I've been writing poems for some time.
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Saturday Night: Eleven Forty-Five PM

Self absorbed Vin Scelsa keeps talking
I tread the net and stop at Mimaamakim
"Idiot’s Delight" almost done I’ll need
distraction other than WFUV, because
"Group Harmony Review" isn’t my thing
So I visit this old friend of a poetry site
While Elton says he hopes I don’t mind
And I write like a Billy Collins wannabe


Filled from contentment of Shabbos rest
I am disappointed my latest isn’t posted
And Alejandro Escovedo sings of hands
As I notice eight mortgage ads posted in
spaces that should have held my poetry
and Vin riffs of TV and a random FCC
as I prepare to post these unsaved words
my way of calling G-d out of my depths

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Thanks to Esther Kustanowitz who I don't know personally, but who has a blog through which I discovered how to do this. I recommend her blog; My Urban Kvetch. And I recommend specific articles that I really enjoyed; this week's from the Jewish Week, called the Midos Touch and her pre YK piece on Al Cheits for singles. Also, it was through her site that I discovered a quiz that tells you a prominent literary work that you resemble. According to this quiz I am Orlando.

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