23/40

During the week-long session, the young prestidigitators strut their stuff and compete in a contest judged by the staff.

I asked a number of the participants if they could name the categories the judges used in determining their scores. (The criteria list is posted quite prominently.) What I found fascinating was that most could not even name half of the categories!

Isn’t this also true in our day-to-day lives? We’re constantly judging and determining our grade. But, do we really know the criteria we use to judge ourselves?

I decided to try to figure this out for myself. So, over a few days time, I compiled a list of categories upon which I found myself judging my self.
Here was my list:

• Listening (& not interrupting).
• Empathy for and kindness towards others.
• Seeming smart – including cleverness, wittiness and breadth of knowledge.
• Multitask-ability.
• Self-sufficiency.

By Friday I had learned a number of things:

• While I do judge myself on both how clever and self-sufficient I am, neither is a category upon which I want to base my self-worth.
• I often feel like I’m about to receive a bad grade and so I find myself frantically “performing” to improve my grade.
• I interrupt, a lot.

If you were to take an inventory of the qualities you judge yourself on, what would be on your list?

Should you choose to do this exercise, feel free to e-mail me and let me know what you learned after you graded yourself.

What I pray for every one of us is that we realize that we were passing before we even took the exam.

With love,



Rabbi Brian

A web version of this article is available here.
This article was also posted at Street Prophets here.