Simchat Torah

Simchat Torah, the end of the Yom Tov season, and usually a massive let down!
You see as kids Simchat Torah is the best day of the year, because you get to run around, and then you get to eat sweets, the sweets then make you run around more and eat more sweets, and this cycle continues ad nauseum climaxing with "mummy, i dont feel too good!"
so this idea of Simchat Torah being the best day of your life is projected onto every ST thereafter which is a problem when you are too old to run around and scramble on the floor for sweets, so you exchange it for booze and birds. but thats not as much fun, getting hold of booze can be tricky and girls are stupid. (throw stones at them) so every year you hope for a rocking ST and it never matches your expectations and you turn into an old man in shul, who wants hakafot to finish quickly, who wants there to be a decent single malt knocking around and wants to go home and sleep out the last yom tov for a few months.
ST became that for me, and then i started going to a Kiruv minyan, it is at one of the big names in Kiruv and its rocking. Alcohol is not flowing freely, there is a l'chaim to be had, but its all abuot the dancing. and the dancing is nuts. why, because you are with people who gave their lives for torah, looking around the room you see rabbis who have devoted their lives to spreading the good word and you see people who have literally given up the good life, to become an orthodox jew and when these people get a chance to dance, celebrating the one thing that defines their life, there is nothing else in the world that can match that.
there are other places which have a name of being "good" on ST, but they dont match it, they are good because there is a decent amount of people to shmooze with and there are good whiskeys, but that is't ST, it is what ST becomes when you miss the point.
and this year there was hakafot shniyot at the aforementioned kiruv minyan, and i went. admittedly i had danced for 24 hours straight and couldnt feel my feet but when the music came on, and the sifrei torah came out, we danced the night away.
next year look for a place where the people there prioritise torah and i guarantee that it will surpass all your childhood memories of running, jumping and sweet snatching!

Fasting

I know i am a bit behind, its was just something funny i noticed last night. I was sitting there and someone was eating some food next to me, and all i could think of was how that person could consume anymore food after two days of non stop eating. forget the four meals yuo had as standard, if you walked into anyone elses house they shoved food right infront of you and obviously, not wanting to offend you ate. so im sitting there yesterday, the smell of microwave pizza wafting towards me, and all i could think of, was never eating again! and i was thinking how exactly a week earlier i was sitting in shul at kol nidrei, thinking how i couldnt wait to eat. and then i realised something funny, something that i do every fast, i noticed how i always focus on what i could have eaten prior to the fast. i sit there thinking, "oh man, i should have had that slice of melon or that burger, it was just sitting there, nobody was having it....." but im sure loads of people do that.
what i want to know is, how far back do people go when dreaming about food, because this yom kippur i was thinking about food i should have eaten over the summer. i was thinking back to when i was in teaneck and how i should have bought the nachos, or how when i was in the local supermarket i should have bought some celery. i have wierd cravings.
it amused me slightly about how i was craving food from months earlier, which would have had zero effect on my fasting experience a long while later!

Yom Kippur

I'm aware I am a day late to be talking about Yom Kippur, this is more of a reflection.
So I am sitting in shul on Kol Nidrei, and just couldn't be bothered. Which is wierd because I was looking forward to Yom Kippur, I always do. But this year the early mornings, the mess my schedule had become trying to fit in an ealry night to accomodate those early mornings, had both taken their toll. And I just couldn't be bothered.
Then the rabbi spoke, he isn't the best orator but is a massive scholar, a tremendous fountain of knowledge and he mentioned how teshuva is a gift. That was not the focus of his talk but merely an aside. That got me thinking, I had been getting up before the crack of dawn for a long time, I was shattered but there was a point to it, i was able to claim a free gift. People will do crazy things, like queue up for hours to get a free gift, the nicer the gift, the longer the queue, and there I was, I was going to let a month of introspection and working on myself amount to nothing because i was tired. Its wierd, when i decided i was going to put more effort into it this year than i had done in the past, time FLEW, before i knew it i was at the gates, Neilah was upon us, and it was as amazing as it always is for me.
And now this morning, with the extra half hour i allowed myself in bed, its a shame. we no longer have the free gift of teshuva, The King is no longer in the field, our tephillot have to have the extra effort to get through, we dont have the V.I.P. passes any longer. and now its a fight, to keep that inspiration going, to make sure our new resolutions keep, through succot and the long winter ahead.

J-Blogosphere

I've really got into my blogging this time around. As i mentioned in my first post this is probably my 4th attempt at a blog and this one is going very well. I guess I have got to thank Google reader, I have linked all the sites I frequent and it also has a handy tool for keeping upto date with blogs I follow. So in the past when I would have seen a blog I was interested in I would just keep the webpage open and then lose it when I had to reboot the computer. But now I keep upto date with all the blogs I am into.
I am currently reading about ten or so, some right pearls out there! It is just so interesting to see how other people relate to Judaism and G-d, to read of their struggles and their inspirations. Its amazing to read about an Australian Jews travails and then to read of a Brooklynites anticipation of the New Year!
There is one segment of the J-Blogosphere which I pay much attention to, that of those Jews who have, well, gone off the derech. Those, brought up in the fold who have now left. for whatever reason.
I must read several of these blogs now, for one reason, I don't want to start having a go at them for the reasons they don't believe or the reasons they were put off Orthodoxy, rather I read what they have to say, and I answer them for myself. They raise some tremendously valid questions and I keep asking myself, "how do I answer that?" be it questions on Evolution to enquiries on the validity of torah! I constantly reaffirm my beliefs and knowledge through this.
I don't know if this will annoy the various atheist J-Bloggers but i hope not, for they came to their conclusions by questioning again and again, and I remain a believer in my convictions not through some blind leap of faith but rather because I question and question and get the answers.

Time Passing Me By

My pops mentioned to me we would have to build the succah soon. Now succah building is quite the get together in our house. We have been using the same succah for about 6 years and every year we forget how to assemble it. This results in a lot of shouting and banging!
But I was not worried about the building of the succah, it was the fact that I only put it away, what seemed like yesterday. Quite the harrowing thought, this year has FLOWN by. Its nuts and very scary, because as I take stock of the past year there are some aspects where I've really advanced and grown, and some parts where I've just let things go unchanged.
Wow. This has really snuck up on me. Kinda taken my breath away.
Gotta make sure next year, I use time a little better.
Oh well, more tossing and turning.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

The Beautiful Struggle

Rosh Hashanah is approaching, and as a sefardi waking up at 6 am for selichot is taken its toll, Thank the Good Lord for caffeine!
Not blogged since July 1st, been out the country, been busy, been tired. excuses, its how i roll.

I think i have found what i am going to focus on this year, something that has kind of rounded off my philosophical advances in 5769.

I listened to shiur by Rabbi Yitzchak Berkowitz, of The Jerusalem Kollel, seriously he speaks to my soul, and i just felt he would be the right person to get me in the mood.

He mentioned how we ask for life on Rosh Hashanah, but are we asking for life i.e. breathing and eating and being healthy. Yeah, sure but we ask for more. We ask for the oppotunity to live life, not as an organism but as a man/woman, not as an animal but as a creature imbued with a neshamah, a creature able to make free will choices and to grow, to refine ourselves. Over Rosh Hashanah we ask G-d to let us choose, not like a cow chooses which patch of grass to eat or like a dog chooses who to bark at but to choose between life and death. When we ask G-d to inscribe us in the book of life we want to make choices, we want to fight, we want to struggle so we can grow as humans, we can grow as Jews, we can grow close.

My focus this year will be to push myself, to do things that are slightly over my head, things that i would have shyed away from last year. Because it is though the fighting that we realise who we are, the qualities that we possess and scarily, those that we don't. It is when we come out of the crisis, that we buzz, we have gotten to know ourselves and what we can accomplish. Hey, it may not be fun, but it matters. I can have fun when im older.

And a last note, why do we dip the apple in the honey? Because when we ask the Lord for a push, for a kick up the backside, we dont want it to be sad, to come through misfortune, we want it to be sweet, that at all times during the fight we know where we are going that we can be happy through it.

Hopefully, whilst it will be a struggle, it will be a beautiful struggle.

Jedi Mind Tricks

Jedi Knights are awesome, lets face it, they are uber cool. After watching Star Wars for the first time all i ever wanted was a Lightsaber, and in fact one of my friends with older brothers had a Lightsaber or two knocking about which meant endless hours of fighting aboard the Deathstar (his living room) and battling on Coruscant (his back garden). Shabbos afternoon was spent at eachothers houses pondering the big questions in life, such as Can they make a car that runs on water? and "is it true some of the top units in the army use lightsabers?" If one was ever a "goody" he was Luke/Obi Wan and the "baddy" was always Darth Vader.
But that was when we were kids, kids love guns and things that go bang! the flashier the better, but as i matured i realised the true power of a Jedi Knight, it wasn't his or her cat like reflexes and ability to perform mind boogling physical feats, it was their mind control, their mind tricks. They harnessed the power of the mind and used it to manipulate the physical, for example Yoda raising Lukes spaceship out of the swamp on Dagobah, or even other people, as seen demonstrated coutless times. If you were to ask a child what they love abuot Jedi Knights, they would squeal "Lightsaber!" but for me, it has to be the Mind Tricks.
Now, conspiracy theories and hoaxes aside i don't think we are close to such things, sure there are techniques such as NLP etc. but as hard as i have tried i havn't even been able to even move a pencil like matilda!
However in todays generation we have cell phones, the interweb, and mp3s, we also have such a convenient tools as blenders and sliding doors. the latter is where my inner Jedi comes out, for whenever i walk through sliding doors i flick my fingers aside and the doors open, and i fool myself into thinking that they did so at my bidding. For those few seconds, i am Darth Vader, Jedi Master.
Now to fool the guy at the checkout that i had paid using my newly acquired Jedi Mind Tricks.....

I believed it.

If you are reading this it means you are on a computer, not only that it means you are on the internet. so the chances are you heard the news, no i'm not talking about the credit crunch or even the military coup in Honduras, the biggest news probably of the decade so far, judging on how the press has reacted was the death of the King of Pop, a Mr. Michael Jackson.
Facebook exploded, Wikipedia slowed down, websites simply broke. People cried tears of sorrow, Radio stations played his songs repeatedly, the only thing on peoples lips was the passing of MJ.

Now, i loved him when i was younger (using the word love freely here) i remember rushing out to buy his album HIStory and repeatedly listening to all his other albums. I drank any information on his i could and i was so eager to see him live in concert.
However when the news filtered through, initially on TMZ, and then the major news sites my response was a mere "oh" i wasn't taken aback, i wasn't in shock, and i most certainly believed it. many people twittered, (which also crashed) and changed their facebook statuses (statusii?) expressing their disbelief that he could die. I had no such quandry, over the past few years i got over my MJmania, (i didn't even try to book tickets for his London shows) and just saw him as a person, albeit a very talented person. And just to let you into a little secret, people die, no matter how many albums sold, or how many moonwalks walked.

But its not only the fact he was a person, its just he was so frail, he was not the superman people made him out to be, he was clearly not the most secure of people, with his plastic surgery and his skin bleaching, not to forget the private rides on his train in his private fairground. Of course one must not forget he led a clearly unique life, robbed of his childhood and thrust into the spotlight of superstardom, i cannot claim to know what it must be like, not really having any privacy and having everystep i take being reported in the media, but at the end of his life, he really showed us all a darker, frailer side of him, of what all of us could be like if we weren't in control.

On the flipside there has been one occassion on someones passing when i wouldn't and couldn't believe it, earlier this year a giant passed away, a torah giant. On one hand the secular world looked at Michael Jackson as their pinnacle, at the zenith of all that could be achieved, he was talented rich and famous, everything everyone in the world seeks and craves. However in the Jewish world our gedolim are at the top of the heirarchy, they are the "people" we are in awe of, those we seek to emulate. I wrote people in inverted commas because if anyone has spent any time around them, they were not people like you or me, rather they were giants amongst us.

When i got the phonecall that morning telling me of this certain Gadols passing i brushed it off, i didn't pay it much attention, because he couldnt die, dying is too human, and it wasn't a person we were talking about it was a great. Greats dont die. It took it a while for it to sink in and when it did the world changed. In my eyes the world got a little darker. You see our Torah Giants transcend the physical, they see the body as a vessel to something more important, the Godly spark in all of us, our roots, our souls. We can live our life focusing on the body which is finite, or we can focus on and uncover our eternal side, our neshama. The Gedolim i have met around the world have an aura, not because we place one on them but because they actually have one, their soul shines through. I will never forget meeting one Gadol HaDor in Bnei Brak and being lost in his eyes, they gateway to his eternal soul, the connection to the infinite. When these people die, we can't believe it because the spiritual doesnt end, its meant to live forever and we all know that.

When people spend their lives living in the physical, no matter how good they are, be it at singing, dancing, basketball etc. they remain physical, they are breakable, they are limited. They die quite easily.

In the Torah world children dont trade football stickers or baseball cards, our children don't grow up wanting to be Ronaldo or A-Rod. Our childrens superheros are the great Rabbis of our religion, the ones who defy all odds, and make a kinyan in the limitless, acquire Torah. We revere those who were in control their whole life, of body and soul, they controlled the body to shackle it, to restrain its animalistic desires. They sought to let their soul shine through, because given free reign the soul can take us to greater levels that any of us can imagine. The soul can take us, if we let it, to those lofty reaches where we can live forever.

Time is of the essence

So two blogs in two days, I'm on a roll!
Recently I've been thinking about time, what I do to fill it, how not to waste it etc.
Not too long ago I read an article about Rabbi Avigdor Miller zt"l and one of the points it kept on pressing was how precious time was to him. He was real with the fact that time runs out, one day, any day. And what we have to do is maximise it when we have it.
Its a scary thought, but one of my best friends was zocheh to be close to Rabbi Noach Weinberg zt"l and he used to quote him the whole time saying "procrastination is death" and of course he's not wrong, when we don't use our time productively we may aswell be dead, because we don't have the opportunity to use it productively when we are gone.
It has helped, I have stopped reading fiction, have cut down my tv viewing, tried to use my time to learn more, but obviously I'm nowhere near optimum time usage, but we'll get there one day!

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Greatness

On a major coach ride at the moment, so been doing a lot of pondering. Rambam lays down the basics of Jewish Philosophy in his Perush Mishnayos (ch. 8) and in it he comes to a conclusion, that the world was created for mankind, and in specific it was created for us to become wise. I have thrown it around a bit and someone in the Beis the other night said "well yeah, G-d knows everything and in our mission to be like Him we should strive to know it all."
That line kinda lit a fire under my ass, and I've been obsessed with it, I just want to read and watch and learn anything, I want to know it all, and not just kodesh but also chol, its all about reading.
But I guess you have to do it right, there's no point studying non stop because you'll just become a veg, so its gotta be done slowly.
Its nuts, but I kinda get upset when people waste time, but I waste time, I'm a king of timewasting, but I need the constant reminder, so this shabbat just gone there was a mishna in pirkei avot that mentioned the type of people one should be around (its the third perek, more than that I can't say) and it said pretty much hang around with the right people, because if your crew is comprised of letzanim your just gonna sit down and talk about girls, booze and cars. However if we hang around those who are better than us, and we also have a modicum of anivus, we will learn from them and get the desire to learn, to know more.
And when you do know more find some other people and sit amongst them and they will blow you away. Find the biggest genius in town who gives a spitz shiur and goto it, be flabbergasted by his wide ranging knowledge and grasp of torah, and take that awe and turn it into desire, desire to be great. As it says (I can only reference the gemara in sanhedrin, 4th perek) it is better to be the tail of a lion than the head of a fox.
Peace and respect.
Fear From Love
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Crackberry Blogging

So in my first blog I made out I was a reinvented blogger, after many failed attempts of blogging I would make it through. That was weeks ago, and I'm still on one paltry blog!
Sad, I know, but I think I have worked out how to stay on top of things. The deal is that most of my inspiration comes when I'm out and about and by the time I get home I'm too shattered to commit my thoughts to the ether. But I recently got myself a 'berry and its got email, and with email I can blog on the go, whenever I find something I'd like to blog about. No more excuses......
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

4th time lucky......

this is the fourth blog i have started.
every time i sit there reading other jewish blogs on the interweb and sit there thinking "i can do this", "i have alot to say, just make a blog, and use it as a platform to tell the world" and i do, i get involved, i write one blog, and then forget about it.
however i have come to the conclusion enough is enough. time to do it, just jump in at the deep end, so here goes.....

first off i want to explain the story behind my blog name, fear from love, it is based on the fourth and fifth of the six constant mitzvot.
we are told to Love G-d and then to Fear G-d, obviously many people on a simplistic level are unable to get a true connection to these mitzvot, because people lack knowledge of the purpose behind them.

People tend to think the six constant mitzvot (from here on referred to as the 6CM) are six obligations to constantly have on your mind. The secret is deeper than that, the 6 are 6 realities that we shape our life around, these 6 define us, the fact we believe and know they are truth means we act accordingly. But more on this at a later date.

Today i want to focus on Love and Fear, its not that we should fear Him because we are scared of punishment (although i dont like the word punishment, but again not for now!(2 more blogs to come!) ultimately the two go hand in hand we Love G-d so therefore we Fear Him, and i have heard from a respectable Jerusalem based posek that when we Fear Him we fear losing Him.
Our Love for him is so strong that we do everything we can to keep the realationship going, and we Fear doing things that would disturb the relationship.

An analogy would be of a man who comes home from work and as he stands at the doorstep about to walk inside he realises it is his wifes birthday, and he has no gift, no flowers, no diamonds. He becomes worries, he fears the upcoming confrontation. does he fear his wife hitting him over the head with a frying pan, maybe, but if thats the only fear then his relationship is in truoble. the point is he fears his relationship with his wife suffering. so too we fear not because we want to stay away from the deep recesses of hell (3rd blog inspiration) but rather we fear losing our realtionship with G-d, and if we truly love G-d that should be enough to prevent us from behaving in the wrong way.....

gotta go, but more on this later.

peace
FFL