A number of years ago, someone, who I guess felt I could use some motivation, gave me a CD of Tony Robbins to listen to.  I was excited to hear what one of the most inspirational people of modern times would have to say and how it could change my life for the better.    He started his talk by saying that he has the secret to both happiness and success.  If you follow his advice and begin each and every day of your life exactly as he prescribes, he can all but guarantee you will find yourself both happier, and achieving your goals and dreams.  I, like everyone else, want to be happy and I try to be successful in everything I do.  I was therefore, very eager to hear, what would he say next, what is the secret?

What Tony Robbins said is exactly correct, but for me, and for you, and for Jewish 3 year olds around the world, it was nothing new.  The secret to happiness and to achieving success, he said, is to start every day of your life by expressing gratitude.  As soon as you wake up, before doing anything else, say thank you.  Be grateful and appreciative for being alive, having a roof over your head, having your health if you are lucky, your family, etc.  He continued that it isn’t enough to think appreciatively, but you need to start your day by verbalizing and actually saying thank you out loud.  If you do, the rest of your day is guaranteed to be successful and happy.

What Tony Robbins is teaching in the 21^st century, Judaism has taught since its inception thousands of years ago.  From an early age, we teach our children to wake up saying Modeh ani lefanecha, I am grateful to you God for the fact that I woke up, that I am alive to see another day, for the wonderful blessings in my life and for my relationship with You.   It has been inculcated within us from our youth that we don’t wake up feeling entitled, deserving and demanding.  Rather, we wake up with a deep and profound sense of gratitude, appreciation and thanks.

In my experience, Tony Robbins is absolutely correct.  How we start our day has an incredible impact on how the rest of it will go.  This coming Wednesday night and Thursday, we will celebrate Lag Ba’Omer, the 33^rd day of the Omer.  Each day of the omer is characterized by another kabbalistic attribute.   Lag Ba’Omer is Hod she’b’hod, the glory of glory, reflecting our appreciation of God’s greatness and glory.  Alternatively, though, hod can be understood as coming from the same word as hodu, or modeh, meaning thanks.  Lag Ba’Omer is a day characterized as thankfulness within thankfulness, or a day to celebrate gratitude.

The Chassam Sofer, Rav Moshe Sofer says that the miraculous manna that fell from Heaven began to descend on Lag Ba’omer.  On the first day, the manna was undoubtedly greeted with great enthusiasm and appreciation, but as time went on and there was an increasing expectation the heavenly bread would descend, it became much easier to take it for granted and to forget to be appreciative for it at all.  Lag Ba’omer therefore, is a time that we identify and say thank you for all of the blessings that regularly descend into our lives, but unfortunately, like the manna, that we take for granted.

It is so easy to fall into a sense of entitlement and to forget to be grateful.  Why should I thank my children’s teachers, they are just doing their job.  Why should I be so appreciative to the waiter, or the custodian, or the stewardess, isn’t that what they are supposed to do?  When is the last time we said thank you to whomever cleans our dirty laundry?  Do we express gratitude regularly to our spouse who shops, cooks dinner, or who worked all day to pay for dinner, or in some cases did both?

On Thursday, as we celebrate Lag Ba’Omer, let’s not just say modeh ani in the morning and then quickly transition to feelings of entitlement.   Let’s remember to say thank you to the people who do extraordinary things in our lives.  But even more importantly, let’s especially express gratitude to the people who do the ordinary things that make our lives so filled with blessing.

Now, I am not foolish, I know that I am not going to win. After all, the odds of winning the lottery is 1 in 175,711,536. There is a greater likelihood of being hit by lightning twice in the same day as there is of winning the lottery. So why play it at all? Moreover, is it halachicly appropriate to play or is it tantamount to throwing out money?

Interestingly, some Rabbis have suggested that there is nothing wrong with playing the lottery, but one should not buy more than one ticket. You see, buying one ticket represents human initiative to have a chance at scoring millions. However, the likelihood of winning only grows at a negligible, statistically insignificant rate when buying more tickets. Therefore, say some Rabbis, if you buy more than one ticket you lack emunah, faith, for if God wants you to win, you can win with the one ticket.

I agree that only one ticket should be purchased, but for an altogether different reason. The hope of winning is only a small fraction of why I bought a ticket. The real reason to play, is because that ticket gives me license to dream, to ask myself important questions and to reflect in a meaningful way. If you are playing the lottery, you cannot avoid asking yourself what you would do if you won. Would you continue to work? Would you move to Israel? Would you give a meaningful amount to charity and if so where would you direct your philanthropic dollars? How would you spend your newfound time? What luxuries, if any, would you indulge in? What would you change about your life?

These questions are not easy to answer and require some serious soul searching. If you won the lottery and you stopped working immediately, what does that say about what you do? Is it a profession or a calling, just for the money or also for the contribution to society? If you won the lottery and remain living outside of Israel, is money the real reason you aren’t making aliyah right now? If winning the lottery meant quitting your job and having more time, how would you spend it – with your family, exercising, learning Torah, volunteering? What really matters to you and if it is truly important, why not find the time to do it now?

Without that ticket in your hand, these questions remain too theoretical to be contemplated seriously and so the way I see it, a dollar is a small amount to pay for the license to dream. However, since the likelihood is that the license to dream is all the dollar will get you, buying more tickets won’t expand your license and won’t meaningfully increase your chances and therefore, would be a waste of money.

So far my dollar has been well spent as Yocheved and I are having fun figuring out the answers to those questions. But, don’t get me wrong, we haven’t given up hope that our dreams can become a reality.

The principle my father shared is not limited to learning opportunities, but in fact can be applied to most virtuous things in life. Even if we would never initiate a particular noble act or activity, would we go so far as to turn it down or walk out on it when it presents itself to us?

Perhaps the greatest expression of this distinction is in our attitude towards chessed. We are blessed to live in a community that performs chessed in ways I have never seen before. Our incredible chessed infrastructure comprised of the anonymous people who do the ‘little’ things behind the scenes are truly remarkable and extraordinary. But we, like every other community, nevertheless still struggle to expand the list we can turn to when a meal needs to be cooked, a ride needs to take place, hospitality needs to be offered, or a Shiva minyan needs to be made.

Recently, a member of our community was sitting shiva and a few of the scheduled minyanim fell short of the requisite quorum. On consecutive days, Rabbi Moskowitz and I came to a minyan scheduled to begin at BRS and asked for volunteers to help complete the minyan at the shiva home. We both received the same response to our initial ask – essentially nothing. It took my reminding everyone that if we can’t get a few people, someone will not be able to say kaddish for their parent, and the next day Rabbi Moskowitz’s threatening not to start the minyan at shul until we have a minyan at the shiva house, for people to respond. Of course there are legitimate reasons why many couldn’t go, but it is frankly humiliating that in a Shul of hundreds of families and in a minyan of dozens of people, we had to essentially grovel to recruit people to perform this basic chessed.

The very next day, I received an email from a woman who works with a committee to make sure that nobody in our community eats alone on Shabbos. She expressed her shock and disappointment by the limited list of people that have offered their hospitality. Even more troubling to her, was that when she specifically calls, emails or texts individuals directly asking them if they can host someone for the coming Shabbos, almost all say no and many don’t even have the courtesy to get back to her at all.

Chessed, showing selflessness in helping others, is a fundamental and core value of our people, tradition and sacred Torah. It is a pillar upon which the world leans, no less critical and supportive than Torah and davening. And yet, so many of us struggle with instinctively and intuitively leaving our comfort zones and extending ourselves to help others.

Real chessed is almost by definition inconvenient. Having someone when you are having many guests anyway, visiting someone when you will be at the hospital anyway, hosting families or singles that are your close friends, are all meritorious and admirable, but they shouldn’t be confused with the highest form of chessed. Real chessed is doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done and for whom it needs to be done, even, and perhaps especially, when it is not convenient and brings no glory.

Many older people take a pass on chessed opportunities, saying that they have put in their time when they were younger and many younger people don’t participate saying that their children’s needs and their personal lives leave them no time to help others. So who is left to do chessed? Does one ever graduate or complete their obligation and duty to extend themselves for others? Would it not be the greatest education we could provide our children to invite them to participate in our acts of chessed for others so that chessed is not taking away from our children, but rather it is enhancing and enriching them?

Many are not predisposed to seeking out chessed opportunities and looking for ways to help others, and perhaps that is even understandable. What is not understandable, however, is not answering when an opportunity presents itself to us directly.

Even if you don’t seek out or look for chessed, I beg you not to look away when chessed seeks you out. If it was us, God forbid, needing a minyan for shiva, or our family member needing someone to host them for a meal, we would be terribly disappointed if nobody would step up. Next time, when asked to do a chessed, please step up and save someone else that same disappointment.

On the one hand, that is why wine is associated with Purim. It is a holiday of integrating the revealed and the hidden, that which is on the surface and that which is buried beneath. However, on the other hand, it is also one reason why Judaism looks so unfavorably on the misuse and abuse of alcohol and why we must be so careful, cautious and vigilant over the holiday of Purim not to drink inappropriately or irresponsibly.

In many ways, the internet parallels wine. Both are intoxicating and addictive. Both can be used to advance friendship and camaraderie, or God forbid if used without mindfulness, can lead to ignoble and dishonorable activities and consequences.

The internet has done remarkable things in drawing out hidden aspects of people that might otherwise remain latent and buried. Sometimes, this can be for the good. For example, I know a number of people who in person are shy, reticent, withdrawn and quiet. And yet, in their online personalities such as through twitter, facebook or a blog, they are outgoing, opinionated and sometimes even quirky. However, in other ways, the anonymity of sitting behind a monitor seemingly alone can provoke curiosity and seduce almost any individual to access sites, pictures and places they should be staying far away from.

Just this week, Google implemented major new changes to their privacy policies, including the integration of how you use their search engine, what you watch on youtube, your gmail account, and more. In other words, until now, each of those services operated independently, but now, they talk to one another and what you search for, the topics of your email, the videos you watch are all integrated so that google can create a total picture or profile of who you are and what you are looking for.

Many have objected on legal grounds claiming this new policy invades our privacy. Indeed, 36 State Attorneys General have written to Google to register their concern. But, interestingly, a number of articles have appeared claiming that the general public is very upset for a very different reason.

You see, many people have very segregated lives, at least in their own mind. They have their email and the ‘kosher’ things they search for or watch on youtube that they would be comfortable with anyone discovering. But then, a surprisingly high percentage of people also have a secret, private world of sketchy, inappropriate and graphic material that they search or watch and that they don’t want anyone to know.

Under this new integrated system, if a woman is innocently searching for something on google, it may pull up results reflecting what her husband had been emailing or watching on youtube the night before. As you can imagine, this has many people anxious and concerned.

Though secular society often espouses the opinion that looking at immodest material is benign and no big deal, the truth is that porn addiction is a growing phenomenon and a damaging and destructive one at that. I, and many of my colleagues, have counseled serious situations of marriages dissolving and families destroyed over this horrible malady that does not discriminate in its seductive ways between men and women, religious and irreligious, those on the left and those on the right.

A relatively new website, www.guardyoureyes.com is an excellent resource for, as they say, “Maintaining moral purity in today’s world.”

As we approach Purim, the time has come to be like google and to integrate our lives so that we don’t have a personality on the surface and a hidden lifestyle buried underneath. If you struggle in this area, don’t be ashamed or despondent. It is never too late to conquer an inclination that relentlessly pursues almost everybody.

L’chaim to a wonderful Purim for you and your family. May the month of Adar bring the simcha of feeling whole and may we all lead integrated lives that we can be entirely proud of.

Good Shabbos and a freilichen Purim

I am not suggesting that we become intolerant of those who think differently or observe differently. Nor am I suggesting that we not keep a relationship with those who have strayed with the hope that they will return. However, if a person has acted in a unambiguously immoral, or unethical way, when we maintain a friendship, a closeness and an accepting stand, aren’t we impugning our own character and integrity?

We read every Friday night, ohavei Hashem sin’u rah, those that truly love Hashem, hate and reject evil and wrongdoing. Dovid Ha’Melech does not encourage us to hate the individual, but rather his choices. However, there are times when we can’t separate the person from the choices they make and if we truly love Hashem, love justice and honesty then we cannot and must not tolerate or accept the perpetration of that wrongdoing.

To be blunt – if a man refuses to give his wife a get, if a woman has had an affair and continues to hurt her family, if a person cheats in business, or if an individual perpetually and consistently speaks negatively about others, how can we remain friends with them? What does it say about us if we are buddy-buddy with them, invite them to our simcha or have them over for a bbq? What message do we send our children by accepting the unacceptable and tolerating the intolerable?

When confronted by this question, many respond, ‘I am not getting involved,’ or ‘I am not taking a position.’ What they don’t understand is not taking a position is also taking a position and it is one that is deeply offensive and hurtful to the victim of that friend’s behavior. We cannot afford to take the path of least resistance or maintain relationships because it would be too complicated to raise our voices in objection of their choices.

The Rambam writes – a person is a product of whom they surround themselves with. We are defined by our friends. Let’s choose wisely.