Misty Water-Colored

One day I want to write a book called Everything Know I Learned At Kiddush. It's not only Kiddush, but I do learn from hearing or reading in situations that I experience strongly. I think learning through experiencing is called kinesthetic learning.

I listen and take in speeches. Aren't we supposed to? Yet people seem to take for granted that you won't remember. But I do. Here are some examples:

Neal Turk speaking in the YIWP twenty something years ago about Betzalel representing the potential we each have. And from the same time range -

Rabbi Louis Bernstein talking about Zeh Keili Ve'Anveihu and how much art the world has produced in tribute to the beauty of Judaism . And I remember Rabbi Bernstein speaking about how touched he was every year by Yosef and his brothers. And the Kol Nidrei night when he told the story about the Shtetl that gathered in shul for an emergency meeting, because someone had been killed, and they feared that they would be blamed. Then someone runs into the shul and announces that it's OK, they don't have to worry, he comes with good new he says...the victm was a Jew...

Same era - Rabbi Louie Bernstein's speech at Neal Turk's auf-ruf, when he took a meaningful pause and directed himself to Neal and paused meaningfully and then said, "you are who you are because of your mother."

Late eighties - Rabbi Rapapport of Israel, before he was a household name due to his day schools, speaking at a Kiddush and saying that Lashon HaRah has two aspects - the damage to others, and the middot effect on yourself. That was the first time I heard that articulated.

Late nineties - Rabbi Saul Zucker speaking at Mark Spear's auf-ruf about how loshon hara is a displacement of judgment that comes from G-d and the auspices of judgment is given over onlt to certain people in a specific context.

Early nineties - Rabbi Moshe Eiseman saying at the West Side Kollel that it's amazing how much attention is given to fighting Loshon Harah today - more than ever before (in response to a questioner who suggested it's a losing battle.)

I remember a scene in The Book Of Lights in which the narator describes experiencing something strongly as the event unfolds. Later he revisits the moment with a friend who compliments him on his memory. But it's clear that it's not about memory, it's about how strongly he lived that moment. ..