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.