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).
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