A Long Five Days

Day 140: Shabbat

I apologize for the lateness of my Shabbat post. My family was away for Memorial Day weekend doing things that were completely military related and I was having a blast.

Last week was really nice. I've been searching for jobs and seeing friends and keeping in touch (which is funny because people you keep in touch with are too far away to actually touch...) I'm sorry, I'm still in the whole "morning groggy" phase, so if something makes no sense or sounds ridiculous, please blame it on the sand in my eyes.

• "Educate a Child According to His Way": I was thinking more about this and about my parents and my brother. My brother has a much better understanding of real world things like money than I do. This still sometimes frustrates my dad when he's trying to explain things like IRA's or how CD's and my eyes glaze over. But either way, my dad will spend an hour on a subject just to make sure I understand it and I really appreciate that.
• Don't Threaten Your Children with Physical Punishment: N/A
• Enter a Mourner's Home with Silence: N/A
• "Don't Take My Grief from Me!": N/A
• "You Shall Not Carry God's Name in Vain": An Unforgivable Sin: Obviously not on the scale of terrorism, I always try to avoid using God's name. Again obviously, I don't really believe that calling God "God" is His real name; nonetheless, I try to say ohmigosh or oh my goodness or things along those lines rather than saying the alternative. And I will never ever say "damnit" with a G-d before that. I realized recently that I was saying ohmigosh's alternative more and more than I was saying ohmigosh itself. I've trying to correct that.
• When It's Good to Be a Fool: I LOVE this value and I've been thinking about it a lot. I think it also applies to teachers. Parents are probably the most likely to become foolish for their own children, but teachers are kind of like parents to full classes of kids. I love thinking of all the foolish and funny things my teachers did for my classes and imagining ways to be foolish for my future classes.

Day 141: Helping Non-Jews

This shouldn't need saying but we were all created betzelem Elokim, in the image of God. Though sometimes I question what He was thinking....

Anyway, we are all people, all deserving of the help of our peers. Of course we should help Jews, because in the world if we don't help Jews, who will? But that doesn't mean we are allowed to shirk our responsibilities to our other fellow images of God.

"the purpose of the entire Torah is to establish peace" -Gittin 59b

"We must provide help for the non-Jewish poor as well as for the Jewish poor; we must visit non-Jews when they are sick as well as our fellow Jews when they are sick; and we must attend to the burial of their dead as well as the burial of our own dead; for these are the ways of peace" -Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 61a

Day 142: Schedule  Kindness into Your Day

I had a hard time trying out this value in real life. It's whole purpose is saying that unless we have time scheduled into our days, we will miss out daily on the ability to help other people. I really don't think this is true! Unless you volunteer somewhere or are a foster parent or in some kind of that work, I believe that opportunities to be kind and helpful tend to fall into our laps at unscheduled times.

Life is busy, we can't always set aside a certain amount of time at a certain time every day to do something like that. Maybe if I lived a more pious lifestyle I'd see it differently. But every day I'm handed the opportunity to do good things for others, from there it's just a matter of doing them.

Day 143: Don't Be a Pious Fool

"Any time you assume that what matters more to God is how you act toward Him than how you [...] treat human beings, you are acting like a 'pious fool'" (205).

"God demands from us piety and goodness. Jewish ethics teaches that when your piety exceeds your goodness, God is not impressed. The world could do with more piety--but not with more pious fools" (206).

Day 144: Don't Serve Liquor with an Overly Generous Hand

This is bigger than it seems people! We aren't just talking about open bars at celebrations that entice people to drink to excess and possibly become injured, we're talking about other things that we could possibly possess that could cause harm to other people: a missing piece of cement in our front walk a vicious dog, or a rickety ladder. It is our obligation to ensure the safety of those we care about by not causing "bloodguilt upon your house."