אני קושית יפה/I’m a Cute Black Girl Pg 55…A Message From My Rabbi…

  I Opened to a message from my Rabbi in this month’s Jewish Chronicle. What Me? Change?  Ever watch or read something and feel as if the message in it was for you. Well that is how I felt when I read the passage. Obviously it wasn’t directed at me, but I I like to think that it’s message is something that I can take on. I have actually thought about the topic often before and have even written about it and tried to apply it.

In a few weeks; Jews across the globe will be going into a new year and starting fresh, and a week later we will be asking Hashem to forgive us of our sins and to inscribe us in the book of life, we are all thinking of things to change and make right now.  And  soon myself and many others will be makin vows to do right and to try and live by, even though we might not actually mean them all, for those 25 hours we will repent and cleanse ourselves and try and make amends. Of course just before the shofar is blown we do tell G-d not to hold us to these vows and to provisionally forgive us for when we break them. 

But…what does The Rabbi say…

….Change? Me? How hard is that? well 2 stories will help.

One is the teacher who asked her class, “How far from the East is West?” The sharpest student answered, “Forty thousand kilometers.” “And how did you get that?” Asked the teacher. “Easy, that’s the circumference of  Earth.” 

“Great answer. The one that I had in mind is one step. Start by facing East. Take one step, turn around and now you are facing West.” In the same way, changing ourselves does not require something radical or beyond ourselves. We don’t have to travel far. It might not need more than just a change in direction. 

The 2nd comes from the founder of the Mussar tradition, Reb Yisroel Salanter (1810-1883) and it goes like this, “When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself…” 

The passage goes on. But what I took from it, is something that I have often told myself throughout the years and throughout my collection of posts. I really need to focus on myself. I need to stop trying to change my husband and his decisions to drink or smoke and do things that bring me down and upset me. I need to starting focusing on myself and what I want. Focusing on making him what I want him to be and want him to do and not to do is hard. Him being what I want him to be isn’t going to really make me happy, because there are parts of me that make me unhappy and so by focusing on him I am turning a blind eye on myself.

And so I really need to work harder on me.