A few shorts

 

 

It opens up a bit of compassion to think of the people who are the hardest to like as needing the most love.

 

 

Love is unconditional positive regard.

Its attributes are recognition, acceptance, understanding, and response.

 

 

Certainty means you are certain.

Not that you are right.

 

 

Spiritual maturity is earned. No shortcuts. You have to live your way into greater patience, vulnerability, compassion, and awareness that our disconnection from others is our own doing.

 

 

Easy solutions to complex problems are most assuredly wrong.

 

 

As long as you are alive, there are infinite possibilities.

That never ceases to give me hope.

 

 

One rabbi asks another for a blessing.

 

“May you have many problems.”

“What kind of blessing is that!? May I have many problems?!”

“Well, when you have only one problem, something serious is wrong. When you have many problems, it’s that the dishwasher is leaking, the dog has fleas, the taxes need to be done, etc.”

“May we all have many problems.”

“Amen.”

 

 

Sometimes, when there is no right answer, it means there is also no wrong answer.

 

 

Stuff Gets To Me

✧✧✧ As I pack up to leave after my workout, someone asks me, “Hey, Rabbi, how are things going?” I’m not one for small talk. Especially after being called by my title. “Well,” I reply. “I’m sad.” “Why?” “I’m thinking about the girls who went to school in the morning in Minab, Iran—over a hundred of them—killed by a bomb.”

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My Letter to Habakkuk

✧✧✧ To my dearest pen pal, Habbakuk: First, let me say, no one remembers the prophets who did not deliver on the goods. Your predictions came true. And, 2500+ years later, you are still remembered. Do you remember Lenny, that guy? Kept going around Judea telling people “the goats will lay down in green pastures,” and, then, remember? It started

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Me, Rabbi.

✧✧✧   I am a rabbi.   I have a Masters Degree in Hebrew letters and a Doctorate of Divinity, and I am ordained as a rabbi.   I have each credential framed, in my office, just behind where I sit.   They’re not individually affixed to the wall—they lean against one another in a stack.   I like the

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