Four Stars Great

Four Stars Great

Hello.

I’m Rabbi Brian.

This is a new year, and this is the new, first 2025 issue of The 77% Weekly Newsletter.

History!!!
Where did the name come from? Well, every Monday, except the last Monday of the month, I send you a spiritualigious article. The ratio of messages I send per year (40) to the number of weeks in a year (52) is 0.77, or 77%.

Moral
And, therein is a lesson I’m trying to both learn and teach—aiming for 100% is a little more striving than necessary.

What would happen if we allowed ourselves and others the grace to be good enough with a 4-star review?

77% is good enough.

It’s OK to not be perfect.

Let’s find freedom and peace—77%—being good enough, imperfect, and human.

Is this article great? Nope. And, that’s ok.

Let’s shoot for 4 out of 5 stars
💙rB

The Delay

January 14, 2026

2026 issue #03 — The Delay I’m in my buddy David’s car. He’s driving me from my mom’s apartment in NYC to Newark, NJ, where I’m going to catch a plane back home to Portland. David and I have been friends for fifty years. Amazing. My phone dings. I look at it. Nothing important. Just an alert from United. *

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Lifeboats. Summer. Bridges. Helpers.

January 10, 2026

Lifeboats. Summer. Bridges. Helpers. The rapid succession of a toddler-drunk-on-power messes is overwhelming. I’m exhausted by the sheer number of (what seem to me) reprehensible acts. My country is sickening me. federal agents shooting at (and killing) civilians actions against immigrants, federal workers, the environment, reproductive rights invading a sovereign nation and abducting its leader pardoning people who committed reprehensible

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A Friday Night Tradition

December 14, 2025

Religiously. Every Friday night, religiously, I do a particular tradition. I do the same ritual religiously every Friday night. I’m not misusing the word religiously to mean fanatically, as in the improper use of it in the sentence: She exercises religiously. I use the word religiously as it should be used—with more positive connotations—as in calmly, forgivingly, without rushing. So,

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