Lights From Jerusalem

#Gratitude #Perspective

With the birth of her fourth son, Leah felt that she had received more than her fair share. So she named him Yehudah, saying, "This time I will thank Hashem." This teaches us something essential about gratitude. Gratitude is a function not of how much we have, but rather of how much we have relative to how much we feel we deserve

#Gratitude #Awareness

Once, years ago, I was traveling on a bus with Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller. We were discussing the anguish of children's suffering, a subject that was my obsession at that time. “Look at that tree,” Rebbetzin Heller said, pointing to a cedar tree outside the bus window. "Its leaves, with nothing more than sunlight, air, and mud, manufacture food to sustain itself, and it also gives off vital oxygen into the air. If it were the only tree in the world, people would be lining up to see this wonder. But because there are zillions of trees in the world, it's commonplace and therefore ignored. The very multitude of Hashem's kindnesses conceals them from our awareness. The reason that we notice the tragedies is because there are relatively so few of them."

#EretzYisrael #SpiritualGrowth

Even in ancient times, Eretz Yisrael was a sliver of land mass surrounded by large empires. Our rabbis tell us that rechavah is not meant as a geographical description, but rather as a spiritual description. Eretz Yisrael is "expansive" because it expands the person who lives there.

#Strategy #Teffilah #JewishHistory #War

When Yaakov Avinu and his family faced the danger of being slaughtered by Esav, who was rapidly approaching with 400 armed men, Yaakov responded in three ways: he sent gifts to Esav; he employed strategy by dividing his camp into two; and he prayed. The Ramban wrote that Jews must employ this triple approach throughout the ages whenever danger looms: Diplomacy, Military strategy, Spiritual response

#Validation #SelfEsteem

Validate every accomplishment

#RoleModels #Authenticity

Much of the Talmud is devoted to recounting anecdotes from the lives of the sages so that later generations could model their behavior after them. The idea is not to mimic holy people, since Hashem is not into carbon copies, but rather to recognize a clear ideal and to strive toward it. Following in the footsteps of the great does not require wearing the same size shoe but only walking in the same direction.

#Teshuva #Identity

Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller points out the true Jewish attitude toward teshuvah: Not, "How wicked I am because I did that," but rather, "How could someone like me have done something like that?" Teshuvah is an affirmation, not a rejection, of our highest self. Rather than being characterized by our lowly actions, we repudiate our lowly actions as being unworthy of the holy souls we inherently are