Final November Catch Up!

Day 328: Don't Stereotype Groups

There's been a lot going on in the world recently: the Paris bombings, a shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, a wave of stabbings and car rammings in Israel, and this is only what's been widely broadcast as news recently. In addition to this, the Westboro Baptist Church held protests at 2 schools in my hometown.

These things happen. I don't want to get used to it but I do have to accept it. Things like this happen, and when they do, they make us angry. We want to hate the people who are responsible. We say things we don't always mean that generalize Muslims, people with different political opinions, people of other religions.

I think (I don't want to generalize but I am an optimist so please excuse me) everyone knows that not all Muslims, Christians, Jews are bad. So how can we blame an entire population for tragedies caused by a minority?

Day 329: Shabbat

This week was so relaxing! I loved being in Chicago with my brother and his girlfriend, and getting to spend the rest of Thanksgiving driving south back to school with the rest of my family was really fun (even though the car was horrible). Now that I've had a bit of a break, I feel like I can sit down and focus and really do my best to finish out the semester strongly.

• Learning to Keep Your Envy in Check: N/A
• Don't Get Used to Other People's Suffering: I'm trying not to, see both Days 324 and 328
• What's Wrong with Your Life? What's Right?: I'm still so thankful, I've been gushing.
• Shiva, the Final Act of Gratitude: N/A
• Repentance Is Good--Overrepentance Is Not: N/A
• Don't Stereotype Groups: N/A

Day 330: Raising Your Children to Love Both Themselves and Others

As a pre-service teacher, I hear a lot in my classes about parents: how to deal with them, how they should interact with their children, how to survive conferences with them (we even had mock parent-teacher conferences last year).

One of things we learned earlier is that parents and teachers who compliment their children or praise children for being smart, are more likely to go to any possible length in order to attain their parents' praise which could mean cheating or bullying.

But! Parents and teachers who praise children for working hard or for having good ethics and morals raise children who are more likely to continue working hard or to continue doing good deeds and acts of kindness.

Day 331:Watch Your...Compliments

I was worried for a moment when I first started reading this section because I'm the kind of person who will compliment a stranger in passing because I like her shoes or his bike. When I continued reading, however, I found that those weren't the compliments Rabbi Telushkin was talking about.

His intentions instead, were to warn people that having a conversation with someone else about a person who isn't present, even when it starts out nice and complimentary of that person, will most likely turn into gossiping or hating on that person.

While we should be complimentary of others and respect and appreciate the value and skills of others, we should watch how much we compliment people who can't hear us.

Day 332: When Legal Doesn't Equal Moral

A personal struggle: this title explains the section and I'm not sure it needs elaboration. The section I read did not propose an answer for what one should do in cases where legality and morality don't match up but instead looked at cases in which this occurs.

Day 333: Using Your Evil Urge to Do Good

We are born with 2 inclinations: the evil inclination and the good inclination. The good inclination is what makes us do good things, the evil inclination leads us to do things that would be considered unholy or impure. These are your yetzer hatov and your yetzer hara.

Just because we are human and have an evil inclination does not make us bad people. It is what we do with those negative urges that says what kind of person we are. Negative urges can be turned into positive actions and there's nothing wrong with that.

"For Jewish ethics teaches that even when our motives are impure, the actions that result from those motives might be pure indeed" (457).

November Catch Up #6 and Almost Thanksgiving!

Day 327: Repentance Is Good -- Overrepentance Is Not

Okay so, hi, I'm the kind of person who feels really bad when she's messed up. Like, really bad. I focus on it too, which makes it worse. It might be because I tend to be anxious, it could just be my personality. I don't know, I just think about it a lot and want to do everything I can to fix it...even when I know I can't.

Okay, so here's the thing: we should repent. And then we should move on and do acts of goodness.

"The goal of repentance is to cleanse the soul;  once this is achieved, one should not continue to focus on those acts that sullied it" (449).

November Catch Up #5

Day 325: What's Wrong with Your Life? What's Right?

Though this value didn't arrive exactly on Thanksgiving, it did come 5 days before Thanksgiving and that's good enough for me! So here's a list of things I could complain about: occasional bodily discomfort, lack of sleep, too much homework, the inconvenience of taking lactase before dairy, etc. But rather than that, I'd rather share the following list with you.

Every year, I write in my diary a list of things I'm thankful for. I call it "My Annual 'Thankful For...' List":

1. A free country that allows me to express my religion, personality, and opinions
2. Schools that have always provided me with the education I deserve and teachers who have pushed me to be my best
3. A supportive family: loving parents, a great brother, and cousins all over the place
4. The existence of a Jewish state that, no matter how troubled, continues to fight and prove itself 
5. A functional body
6. The ability to see colors
7. Friends of all types who have helped me grow and have given me wonderful memories
8. Material things that keep me comfortable
9. A mind to think for myself
10. People who fight for the countries I love
11. The ability to dance and [to an extent] sing

Day 326: Shiva, the Final Act of Gratitude

I'm not a supporter or people who don't sit shiva for a whole week. It bothers me. The way I see it, the person we're all gathered to mourn has had an impact on us (whether positive or negative, it doesn't really matter). Their impact has been large enough for us to take a chunk of time out of our lives to devote to their memory through visiting their loved ones, attending their funeral, or just thinking about them after their death.

This is why I don't understand why, especially for parents, children would not sit shiva for a week. Our parents have given us everything from the moment we were born, why can't we take the time out of our lives to give back to them and to honor their memory?

November Catch Up #4

Day 323: Learning to Keep Your Envy in Check

We are commanded in the 10 Commandments not to covet, not to envy what doesn't belong to us; not to steal. It doesn't get more relevant than that in a world where there's always something new we might want more than what we already have. And I have definitely been in positions of want and have definitely coveted other things that don't belong to me (Pinterest and Etsy, for example, are easy ways to covet). I think now it's just a matter of changing my mindset from "I want that" to "wow, that's nice, maybe one day" and eventually to "wow, that's awesome!" and leaving it at that.

Day 324: Don't Get Used to Other People's Suffering

Beware, what you are about to read his negative. Imagine it was written by Debbie Downer, and not by me.

Horrible things happen in this world every day. Every hour. Every second. Why, just last week, there were 2 sexual assaults on or near my campus, multiple terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, and the shocking and horrible terrorist attacks that struck Paris.

It is hard not to be in shock or to resist feeling the increidlbe amounts of sadness that come in the wake of bad news.

Last week, an 18 year old whom I had many mutual friends with, was killed in a terrorist attack in Israel. Up until the moment I read the news, I had somehow gotten used to seeing headlines about the stabbings, shootings, and other attacks that have plagued Israel since its modern founding. Up until that moment, I had gotten used to it. How awful is that? Bad things happening in Israel no longer surprised me, they were the status quo and that hurt.

But when I read of the death of Ezra Schwartz, I could not contain myself and burst into tears in the middle of the lecture hall I was about to have class in. Sometimes, I think we need an extra push to remember that pain and suffering are not things we should be getting used to. They are things we should feel things about. We should react. We must react. Suffering should never be commonplace.

November Catch Up #3

Day 321: Don't Speak Lashon Hara About Yourself

How many times have we been complimented and, instead of accepting the compliment, turned it down and in doing so insulted ourselves? That in itself is Lashon Hara. I know I am certainly one to diminish a compliment... maybe instead we should be figuring out modest ways of accepting compliments rather than turning them down altogether?

A reminder: when we are commanded to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, we are commanded also to love ourselves.

"And just as you would not wish to hear others speaking ill of someon e whom you love, so too should you not speak ill of someone you are supposed to love: yourself" (442).

Day 322: Shabbat

It's been nice having this week off to relax and take my mind off of school for a little. I've enjoyed bonding with my brother and his girlfriend and exploring the city they call home. Though it is cold, I find myself warm, more often that not. I'd like to think Hashem is smiling on me and showing me that even though this year was difficult, I will recognize all the wonderful things in my life more easily in the future, and perhaps those things will fill me with happiness and warmth.

• A Time for Silence: N/A
• When Praising Someone Is the Wrong Thing to Do: N/A
• You and Your Ex: I reiterate the quote from yesterday in my own words: anyone I have loved in the past, I still love a little bit now. No matter what, nothing can erase the reasons I loved a person. Though sadness or anger may take over sometimes, they don't taint memories I've made.
• Solomon's Sword: How to Determine a Child's Best Interests: N/A
• The Special Obligation of Adoptive Parents: N/A
• Don't Speak Lashon Hara About Yourself: Just yesterday, I was walking around the city with a friend and we were sitting in a piece of public art. A random lady came up to us and was interacting with us (albeit very awkwardly) and she took out her camera phone and started taking pictures of us. We were very weirded out. However, she looked at me through her phone, and said "tell me you don't know you're pretty." I didn't respond. She repeated "tell me you don't know it" over and over. Then she said "tell me you don't look in a mirror and tell yourself you look good." My response? "I guess every so often, yeah." It was weird and flattering, but I could have just said thank you.

November Catch Up #2

Day 319: Solomon's Sword: How to Determine a Child's Best Interests

If you haven't heard of King Solomon the Wise, the story this section is based on can be found here: http://www.jlaw.com/Commentary/solomon.html

Essentially, according to Judaism, "the person who shows that what matters most to him or her is the child's interest is the one to whom custody should be awarded."

Day 320: The Special Obligation of Adoptive Parents

I don't know who you are. I don't know where you come from. I don't know what your childhood was like. But, if you're anything like me, you come from a family with 2 loving parents who provided a comfortable childhood for you. So, if you would, please follow my lead in taking a moment and thanking, blessing, and [again] thanking your parents.

For those who are less fortunate and don't have the comfort of caring or biological parents, Daniel Mosesman wrote: "I would like to say something to all adoptive parents. Please give your child all the love you can. Please hold them and hug them all the time. Please listen to them. Most of all, please let them know that their birth and their life has blessed your life."

November Catch Up #1

I'm almost disappointed in myself for how my consistency with keeping up with these entries has diminished. I shouldn't be able to go 10 days without writing. Plus, being almost at the end of the year, I just want to keep up the stamina so I can finish off the year on a high note

Day 317: When Praising Someone Is the Wrong Thing to Do

Do you fan the flames or dump water on the fire? Honestly? You don't have to do either, but try not to encourage it.

Okay, I know, I kind of lost the fire metaphor there but hear me out.

If you're in a group of friends and a person who isn't present comes up in conversation, and you know that someone who *is* present doesn't like that person, don't compliment that person. Don't encourage their continued hatred of that person either, but it isn't your job to list all the wonderful qualities of a person at the risk of angering a person you're with.

I hope that made sense...

Day 318: You and Your Ex

"Anyone whom I once loved a lot, I still love a little."

It isn't every day that I feel a connection so powerfully to one of the values in the book. No, I haven't been married (I thought we'd gone over this?) but I was recently broken up with.

I know I don't really share super personal things on this platform, but here I am: I was just broken up with. And yes, I loved him. And yes, I was surprised. And yes, I think it was for the best. And no, I don't think I would have done it myself, so I respect his strength in doing it.

And I'm not going to stop respecting him because he made a choice about what was right for him. I think I'm allowed to be sad that that chapter is over, but I'm not going to hate him for it. Why waste the energy on a person I don't actually hate? He's a good person, we just weren't right together.

And I think the quote at the top is right, I think anyone I once loved a lot, I will probably always still love a little.

November is Half Over. How???

Day 313: The Most Perfect Act of Kindness

I had a conversation not too long ago with one of my friends about doing good deeds. She asked me if I thought it was possible for any good deed to be at all unselfish, because even if we do something good for someone else, we feel good about what we did and, therefore, we benefit from the action.

While I don't necessarily think this takes away from the good of the deed we have done, I don't disagree that seeking that good feeling we get isn't the point of doing good deeds. So what is a perfect act of kindness? One for which we expect nothing in return. In Jewish tradition, these mitzvot usually involve the deceased.

Day 314: A Ritual Way to Make Each of Your Children Feel Special

Every Friday night (a.k.a. Erev Shabbat), we are required to light 2 candles, but we aren't provided a maximum number to light so the sky seems to be the limit! But why not consider the suggestion brought to the table in this book by Rabbi Telushkin: "Tonight, when you light the Shabbat candles, your children alongside you, make yourself aware of something they did in the past week that has brought light into your life." Light that extra candle for them.

"How edifying it was for me to know that our home was brighter on Friday nights because I was in existence!" -Rabbi Abraham Twerski

Day 315: Shabbat

Whew, is this week over already? This is crazy! November is flying by right before my eyes. It's been a good week, though. Just productive enough with a good mix of fun thrown in. This week I joined a book club that will explore Jewish identity through books. Our first one came in the mail today! A Letter in the Scroll by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. It's been on my list for a while so I'm excited to read it!

Let's see, other than that, I've just been hustling and bustling to wrap up my work before finals season begins and I'm weighed down with things to learn.

• When a Half-Truth Becomes a Whole Lie: N/A
• Is Your Blood Redder?: This title became more and more relevant to me as we studied slavery in American History class this week.
• Should There Be a Limit to Parental Love?: N/A
• Teach Your Child Survival Skills: N/A
• The Most Perfect Act of Kindness: N/A
• A Ritual Way to Make Each of Your Children Feel Special: I'd really love to do this with my own family some day.

Day 316: A Time for Silence

Ecclesiastes teaches in chapter 3 verse 6 that "there is a time for silence and a time for speaking." This is in regards not only to being either noisy or quiet, but to encourage extra thought and conscientiousness before we speak. Is what we're about to say meaningful? Does it add anything to the conversation? Will there be ramifications or negative consequences for me or someone else if I say this?

Love and Marriage, Baby Carriage

Day 310: Is Your Blood Redder? 

I don't know how I personally feel about this story, so as I work to process and think about it on my own, I invite you to do the same: "Even as one who came before Raba²⁷  and said to him, 'The governor of my town has ordered me, "Go and kill so and so; if not, I will slay thee"'. He answered him, 'Let him rather slay you than that you should commit murder; who knows that your blood is redder? Perhaps his blood is redder." (Text from: http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedrin/sanhedrin_74.html)

Day 311: Should There Be a Limit to Parental Love?

I'm sure we've all heard of cases in which children do things their parents wouldn't endorse. In many cases, this leads to conflict and puts parents and children farther apart in terms of their relationship.

According to Rabbi Telushkin and Jewish etiquette, what parents would consider misbehavior should draw parents to their children. They should be showing their children more love and supporting them, trying to help them through whatever it is they are going through. The one exception to this is when loving this child would put the parents' other children at a disadvantage. Remember, don't play favorites!

Day 312: Teach Your Child Survival Skills

My parents taught me how to drive, how to care for an injury or sickness, how to cook. But most importantly, they paid for swim lessons for years and years (even when the only problem with my swimming became not wanting to put my head under water).

More than just being wonderful parents and good things to do for your children, my parents taught me survival skills. Whether they knew it or not, they were fulfilling the talmudic teaching: that obligates parents to teach their children to swim, because their life may depend on it.

How Do You Like Them Apples?

Day 307: When Pious Words Are Irreligious

When something happens to us that we need to cope up, sometimes we'll tell ourselves that it's for the best, that G-d is watching over us, that He has reasons we will never understand. And it's all well and good to think like that, but the second you try to use words to help soothe another person, they lose all meaning.

"If a person comes to you for assistance, and you tell him 'God will provide,' you are acting disloyally to God. For you should understand that God has sent you to aid the needy person, not to refer him back to the Almighty." -the Leover

Day 308: Shabbat

What a crazy month! Full of travel every weekend, November is promising a lot. A lot of simchas [I hope]. These first two weekends, I'll be traveling home and back to school for two different b'nai mitzvah and then with Thanksgiving, I'll be visiting my brother and then some cousins. I'll be all over! The downside is, it's taking away my time to write and to get ahead with my homework, so I'm here now trying to catch up in between classes!

• Learning to Say "I Need": N/A
• When Anonymous Giving Is Important, and When It is Not: N/A
• When Silence Is Criminal: How does this relate to accounts of sexual assault/rape on campus? If someone has been raped, but they don't report it, is that criminal?
• If You Learn That Somone Is Intending to Hurt Another: N/A
• "You Are Not as Good as You Think You Are, and the World Is Not as Bad as You Think It Is": N/A
• When Pious Words Are Irreligious: N/A

Day 309: When a Half-Truth Becomes a Whole Lie

If you're like me and saw the title of this section and immediately thought "oh no, have I been doing this wrong too?" you're in luck, and off the hook (for now).

Have you ever gone to the grocery store and looked at the apples? The ones on top are bright and shiny or waxy and smooth. These top apples are the ones you want to take a nice bite out of, dip in honey or peanut butter or caramel. These apples are the ones you dream of. Too much? Okay, my apologies. But look at the next layer of apples, the ones right under the ones you wanted. Are they bruised? Moldy? Generally unappealing? Chances are, 9 out of 10 doctors would not recommend eating those apples.

This is one example of a vendor telling us a lie. We are led to look at those apples and think about how wonderful they'd taste and how beautiful they look and we want to buy them all, but in reality, we wouldn't even notice the apples no one wanted to buy.

Sellers are cautioned to tell consumers about the defects of their product in addition to the benefits. Otherwise, they are lying to us.

It Is What It Is

Day 306: "You Are Not as Good as You Think You Are, and the World Is Not as Bad as You Think It Is"

Are you a cup-half-full kind of person? You might be a cup-half-empty kind of person. Heck, I don't know you, you might just be thirsty.

Can I let you in on a little secret? I've never felt like I was either a cup-half-full or a cup-half-empty kind of person. I'm realistic in how I see myself, I think. There are some days where that cup, though appearing to be half-full, seems close to overflowing, and there are some days where that cup, though appearing to be half-empty, seems to barely have a drop left.

These moments don't define us.

It is how we use these moments and how we use metacognition (there I go using terms I learned in class) when we reach these moments. When we feel most critical, most pessimistic, it might be a good time to remind ourselves of the words of the Chasidic rebbe Wolf of Strikov: "You are not as good as you think you are, and the world is not as bad as you think it is."

Welcome to November and Late Nights!

Day 304: When Silence Is Criminal

Americans are only required to serve in court when they are subpoenaed, Jews, however, have the obligation to free innocent people when we have useful information. We cannot remain silent even if we are not directly asked. This would violate what we learn in the Torah: do not stand by while your neighbor's blood is shed.

Day 305: If You Learn That Someone Is Intending to Hurt Another

Building off of what we learned on Day 304, we must not only speak out when we have information, we must inform people of threats being made against them if we have reason to believe they are true.

Recently, we've been talking in my Educational Law course about responsibilities that fall on teachers and schools. In terms of harassment, teachers should recognize true threats, threats that students can carry out because they have the means. True threats aren't protected under First Amendment free speech rights.