You know you grew up Jewish when:

 You did not respond to the  teacher calling roll on the first day of school because you thought your name was "Princess". 

* You've had at least one female relative who drew eyebrows on her face that were always asymmetrical.

*  You spent your entire childhood thinking that everyone  calls roast beef "brisket." 

* Your family dog responds to complaints uttered in Yiddish.

* Every Sunday afternoon of your childhood was spent visiting your grandparents.

* You've experienced the phenomena of 50 people  fitting into a 10-foot-wide dining room hitting each other with plastic plates & forks trying to get to a deli tray.

* You  thought pasta was the stuff used exclusively for kugel and kasha with bowties.

* You watched Lawrence Welk and Ed Sullivan every Sunday night. 

* You were as tall as your grandmother by age seven.

* You never knew anyone whose last name didn't end in one of 6 standard suffixes (-man,-witz, -berg, -stein, -blatt or -baum).

* You grew up and were surprised to find out that wine doesn't always taste like year-old cranberry sauce.  

* You can look at gefilte fish without turning  green. 

 

* You grew up thinking there was a fish called lox. 

* You can understand some Yiddish but you can't speak it. 

* You  know how to pronounce numerous Yiddish words and use  them correctly in context, yet you don't exactly know what they mean.  

    e.g. Is that Kenahurra or is that kaninehurra?.

* You have at least one ancestor who is related to your spouse's ancestor. 

* You grew up thinking it was normal for someone to shout "Are you okay? Are you okay?" through the bathroom door if you were in  there for longer than 3 minutes.

*You have at least six male relatives named Michael or David. 

* Your grandparent's furniture smelled like mothballs, was covered in plastic and was as comfortable as sitting on sandpaper.

 

 

Baruch Hashem and G_d willing, may you have a day full of mazel and shalom!

   

There are many forms of Judaism:

Cardiac  Judaism ---------- in my heart I am a Jew.

Gastronomic Judaism --- we eat Jewish foods. 

Pocketbook Judaism ----- I give to Jewish causes.

Drop-off Judaism  --------- drop the kids off at Sunday School; go out   to breakfast.

Twice a Year Judaism -- --attend service Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

The Diet Guide to the Jewish Holidays:

Rosh  Hashanah  ------- Feast

Tzom  Gedalia ----------- Fast

Yom Kippur -------------- More  fasting

Sukkot  -------------------- Feast  for a week +

Hashanah Rabbah ----  More feasting

Simchat   Torah --------- Keep right on feasting

Month of Heshvan ----- No feasts or fasts for a whole month. Get a grip on yourself.

Hanukkah ---------------- Eat  potato pancakes

Tenth  of Tevet --------- Do not eat potato pancakes 

Tu B'Shevat ------------  Feast

Fast of  Esther  --------- Fast 

Purim ---------------------  Eat pastry

Passover  ---------------- Do not eat pastry for a week

Shavuot ------------------ Dairy  feast (cheesecake, blintzes, etc.) 

17th of Tammuz -------- Fast (definitely no cheesecake or blintzes)

Tish B'Av ----------------- Serious fast (don't even think about cheesecake or blintzes)

Month of Elul ------------ End of cycle. Enrol in  Centre for  Eating Disorders before High Holidays arrive again.Rosh  Hashanah  ------- Feast

Tzom  Gedalia ----------- Fast

Yom Kippur -------------- More  fasting

Sukkot  -------------------- Feast  for a week +

Hashanah Rabbah ----  More feasting

Simchat   Torah --------- Keep right on feasting

Month of Heshvan ----- No feasts or fasts for a whole month. Get a grip on yourself.

Hanukkah ---------------- Eat  potato pancakes

Tenth  of Tevet --------- Do not eat potato pancakes 

Tu B'Shevat ------------  Feast

Fast of  Esther  --------- Fast 

Purim ---------------------  Eat pastry

Passover  ---------------- Do not eat pastry for a week

Shavuot ------------------ Dairy  feast (cheesecake, blintzes, etc.) 

17th of Tammuz -------- Fast (definitely no cheesecake or blintzes)

Tish B'Av ----------------- Serious fast (don't even think about cheesecake or blintzes)

Month of Elul ------------ End of cycle. Enrol in  Centre for  Eating Disorders before High Holidays arrive again.

5 New Year Gems From Rabbi Sacks

I spend a lot of time with young people — pupils about to leave school, students at university and graduates about to start a career. Often they ask me for advice as they begin their journey into the future. Here are some of the ideas worth thinking about as we begin our journey into a new calendar year.

1. DREAM

The first thing to do is dream. Seemingly the least practical activity turns out to be the most practical, and most often left undone. I know people who spend months planning a holiday but very little time planning a life. Imagine setting out on a journey without deciding where you are going to. However fast you travel, you will never reach your destination because you never decided where you want to be. In fact, the faster you travel, the more lost you will become.

Dreams are where we visit the many lands and landscapes of human possibility and discover the one where we feel at home. The great religious leaders were all dreamers.

Within my own tradition there was Moses, who dreamed of a land flowing with milk and honey, and Isaiah who dreamed of a world at peace. One of the greatest speeches of the 20th century was Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”. If I were to design a curriculum for happiness, dreaming would be a compulsory course.

2. PASSION

The second rule is, follow your passion. Nothing — not wealth, success, accolades or fame — justifies spending a lifetime doing things you don’t enjoy. I have seen too many people enter careers to earn money to give their partners and children everything they want, only to lose their partners and become estranged from their children because they never had time for them. People who follow their passion tend to lead blessed lives. Happy in what they do, they tend to spread happiness to those whose lives they touch. That is a life worth living.

3. FIND SOMETHING BIGGER THAN YOURSELF

The third rule I learnt from the psychotherapist who survived Auschwitz, Viktor Frankl, whose Man’s Search for Meaning is one of the most widely read books of our time. Frankl used to say: Don’t ask what you want from life. Ask what life wants from you. The great lives are ones where people heard a call, had a sense of vocation. That is what set Abraham, grandfather of monotheism, on his journey and eventually it changed the world. Moses might have lived a life of ease as a prince of Egypt but he heard the cry of his people as they suffered under slavery, and God’s call to him to lead them into freedom.

There is a well-known story about three men who spent their lives quarrying rocks. When asked what they were doing, one replied, “Breaking rocks.” The second said, “Earning a living.” The third said, “Building a cathedral.” We don’t need to ask which of the three had the most job satisfaction. The late Steve Jobs spent his life making technology people-friendly. The creators of Google sought to make the world of information available to all. An overarching sense of the Why preceded the How. Where what we want to do meets what is crying out to be done, that is where we should be.

4. BALANCE

The fourth rule is: make space in your life for the things that matter, for family and friends, love and generosity, fun and joy. Without this, you will burn out in mid-career and wonder where your life went. In Judaism we have the Sabbath, a dedicated day of stillness each week, where we make space for all the things that are important but not urgent. Not every culture has a Sabbath, but life without dedicated time for renewal, like a life without exercise or music or a sense of humour, is a lesser life.

5. WORK HARD 

The fifth rule is work hard, the way an athlete or concert pianist or cutting-edge scientist works hard. The American psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, calls this the principle of “flow”. By this he means the peak experience you have when you are working so hard at a task that you are unaware of the passing of time. No great achiever — even those who made it seem easy — ever succeeded without hard work. The Jewish word for serving God, avodah, also means hard work.

There are many other rules but these are some of the most important. Try them and you will be surprised by joy.

(First published in The Times)

Is this balls?

The Great Lao-Tzu said:
 
"It is only when you see a mosquito landing on your
testicles that you come to realize that you can solve
problems without using violence.”