A New Year With a Repost!

Hey All --

Since many of you might have missed last year's post regarding the Jewish New Year and the Ten Days of Awe.  So, in honor of this holiday, here is last year's post, with a few edits, and some emphasis added for good measure.

Gentlemen:

Some of you may be aware that this week is the Jewish New Year, and next week is the Day of Atonement.  This is the time of year when many devout Jews take into account their deeds and misdeeds, their successes and failures, and their strengths and weaknesses.  Many of you might not celebrate these holidays, but what I've got to say about it may be worth a read.

During the Ten Days of Awe, G-D is said to take into account each person's conduct throughout the prior year, and to decide what consequences he or she will or may not experience as a result of that conduct.  It is implied that if we've done wrong, we may face a comeuppance.  However, the liturgy of these days states that "Prayer, Righteousness, and Repentance avert (or lessen, depending on the translation) the severe decree."

You've seen me blog about misdeeds before.  The Four Principles tell us that we Exist, Matter, Belong, and Deserve, but they don't tell us that we're perfect.  Unless one of you is a divine super-being from another world, and chose not to enlighten me to this fact, then it's pretty obvious that we've all made mistakes this past year.  We've all opened our mouths and put our feet in them.  We've all forgotten things we should have remembered, and obsessed over things that were completely irrelevant, to our detriment.  We've all gotten too big for our britches and put our own desires over others' needs.  And we've all gotten so incensed in the heat of a disagreement, that we've done or said things that should not have been done or said, and can't be taken back.

The liturgy gives us a road map that might persuade the Almighty to grant us forgiveness:

PRAYER -- this can take many forms.  For those who are traditional, this could mean attending morning synagogue services and wearing tefillin as a "sign upon your hand and as frontlets between your eyes (see Deuteronomy Chapter 6)."  Or maybe going to church, mass, temple or mosque, and reciting the appropriate supplications seeking forgiveness.  Or maybe just finding a quiet park bench, overlooking a lake, and seeking a personal connection with G-D.

There's no one sure-fire request to make of the Holy One, but I would borrow the recommendation a good friend of mine once made.  Think of how it feels when you're with a good friend, you tell a joke, and your friend laughs.  If you can go to the park bench described above, and you can sense that a good friend is already there, listening to you, you may have already made the connection.  Depending on your surroundings, either out loud or silently, just ask for it.  Ask to be forgiven.  Admit that you're only limited, and did the wrong thing, and that you want another chance.  There can never be any assurance of what the outcome will be, but if you don't ask, it's guaranteed you won't get.

RIGHTEOUSNESS -- this is a concerted effort to do the opposite of whatever mistakes you made last year.  Did you zag when you should have zigged?  Zig and zig hard.  Did you forget too many details?  Plug some notes into your smartphone so you'll remember.  Did you chew out a subordinate at work?  PRAISE your subordinates and praise them well.

Did you insult someone just because you thought they were weaker or dumber than you?  Make respect and honor your watchwords, because you won't get as many free passes as you think you will.  

This part is separate from the prayer component because most of us don't need guidance to know right from wrong.  Most of the time, we just know.  Abraham knew that it was wrong to try to kill his son Isaac.  However, because he received a commandment from on high, and didn't know where He was going with it, Abraham didn't have the gumption to refuse.  Many of us have found ourselves in that predicament because someone "cool" wanted us to do something that wasn't.  Righteousness means standing up to those who would have you do the wrong thing, consequences be damned, and saying NO.

REPENTANCE -- this is the tough part.  This means admitting to someone other than G-D that you wronged them, and promising not to go that route again.  Only problem is, to borrow a cliche from several action movies, G-D forgives, but many people don't.  Some of them see repentance as a sign of weakness, and an invitation to browbeat, to upbraid, to rub salt in wounds, to take advantage, and to put you down in order to make themselves look more righteous than they really are.

Several of you have been reading my post from September 19, 2010 on New Day, entitled "The Fast He Wanted," which contains an even more concrete example of a refusal to forgive.  Here's the link, for those who haven't yet read it:  http://runninglawchunglee.blogspot.com/2010/09/fast-he-wanted.html

This is where the 24-hour Statute of Limitations can be used as a buffer.  Chances are, the bastion of self-righteousness that you're now facing didn't tell you that you'd offended them until days, months, or weeks had passed.  This means that any claim they once had against you is waived.  This means that you do not need to feel guilty over what they perceive to have occurred, and you are under no obligation to apologize.  However, to comply with the three steps outlined above, and just because it's good to "be a mensch," you must still apologize if you know you've done wrong.

The 24-hour Statute of Limitations does not prevent you from repenting for your sins if you choose to do so.  It does, however, bar the allegedly aggrieved from attacking you further, because they didn't timely state their claim.  And if they do choose to attack you at a moment of contrition, any obligation you may have felt to apologize and make whole evaporates.  That's right.  Their claim was waived ab initio, you tried to make good on it anyway, and they tried to take advantage of your good nature to state a claim untimely.  People who do that are completely undeserving of repentance, and over time, they'll learn that the hard way.

As for those who were timely, but are less callous and more accepting, don't let them down.  REALLY make good on whatever ails them.  Don't just say you're sorry, show you're sorry.  By money, by deeds, by actions, whatever it is, make them whole.  Even if you can't completely make them whole, your efforts and your intentions will be golden, and they will respect you for it.  And they themselves will be golden by their choice to forgive!

The reading of the Prophets for the Second Day of Rosh Hashanah comes from Chapter 31 of the Book of Jeremiah.  In that passage, Israel is compared to Rachel weeping for her departed children, and G-D tells her to stop her weeping, because her work will be rewarded, and Israel will be forgiven for its sins.  The message, according to some rabbis, is that as long as you have performed Prayer, Righteousness, and Repentance, there's no need to keep begging and groveling for forgiveness.  Without expressly saying so, Jeremiah is saying that G-D had his own 24-hour Statute of Limitations in those days.  Once you've said your peace go G-D, it's OK to feel free.

So let it be with you all.  Get it right with G-D, get it right with yourself, and ask to get it right with others.  Everything else should be a piece of cake!

A good holiday to those that observe.  And may those that don't observe take something good away from this week's entry.

Day And Night -- A Thanksgiving Post

Yesterday was Thanksgiving.  A completely American holiday!  An old friend of mine on Facebook recently described how this day should be considered the perfect holiday:  no annoying music, nobody getting drunk, no exclusion based on religion, and the option of watching three football games featuring some of the best teams in the NFL!

I've commented in the past how Thanksgiving appeared to be evolving into a two-day holiday, following the lead set by Jews in the western hemisphere, who celebrated several holidays that had originally been celebrated as one day, for two.  However, it appears that the retail industry has taken advantage of this trend, to the point of infringing on the holiday itself.  Accordingly, this expected two-day holiday is splitting into two completely separate halves, and they couldn't be more different than day and night.

"Black Friday" has become the unofficial first shopping day of the Christmas/Holiday season.  When this term because part of our culture, there was the understanding that this would be the opportunity for all the aggressive early-bird types to buy all the gifts they needed for Chanukah/Christmas/Kwanzaa as soon as Thanksgiving was over, to avoid the last-minute insanity of buying gifts on Christmas Eve itself (those who celebrate Chanukah, an 8-day holiday, could argue that the gifts could be given on the last night, and not the first night, but that only delays and extends the last-minute insanity).

Most retail outlets would acknowledge these early birds by opening their stores early.  Maybe at 7am, maybe at 6 am.  That is to say, at dawn, or maybe a few minutes beforehand, on the morning of the day AFTER Thanksgiving.

So what do we now have this year?  Stores opening at 3 a.m.  Not good enough?  2 a.m.  Still not content to camp outside in tents until then?  Midnight at Target (tar-ZHAY)!  But now, thanks to Walmart, Best Buy, and Geek Squad, we have the final insult -- 10 pm on Thanksgiving ITSELF!

Employees had to put the kabosh on their own Thanksgiving dinner, and all the happiness that goes with it, for the sake of material things!  Early-bird types were now prepping to go to retail malls and outlets late at night, or in the "wee small hours of the morning," to grab the best deals they could off the shelves, with the knowledge that if they were not fast enough, someone else could yank it away from them.

Excuse me . . . is this not the same insanity that the idea of Black Friday was intended to prevent?  Shopping for presents at insane hours??  Whatever happened to the image of being thankful for what we've already been given -- have we rejected that so quickly to grab and snatch what we don't already have???

Even if Thanksgiving one day becomes a two-day holiday, let's please make it two days of Thanksgiving, and NOT Black Thursday And Friday.  Yes, it certainly is a tradition to give gifts to loved ones during the December celebrations that follow Thanksgiving, but it's not a life-or-death obligation!  Gift-giving is meant to make the holidays happier and more enjoyable, and not to usurp, overtake, or obliterate the true meaning of the holiday!

So my recommendation is this:  The day after Thanksgiving, if you don't have to work, use it as you would any other vacation day.  Sleep late!  If you want to make sure you're not forgetting to buy gifts for the loved ones in your life, wait until the weekend AFTER Thanksgiving.  If you can't wait that long, do it the SUNDAY after Thanksgiving!  The recipients of your gifts will (hopefully) be a thousand times more concerned with the thought that went into your choice of gift than the manner in which it was obtained (or how much it cost you).

As I said above, the tradition of gift-giving at this time of the year is meant to make the holidays happier and more enjoyable.  What you choose to give is not a measure of who you are as a person, and neither is the price of the gift you purchased.  However, there are still those who think of gift-giving as a mandatory requirement and a dollar-for-dollar obligation, and continue to use it as an excuse for demeaning tit-for-tat attitudes towards others.  As a result, the joy of gift-giving is sometimes ruined because it becomes something that is motivated less by caring and happiness, and more by a desire to appease someone else.  All I'll say on that subject is that those of us who choose to express our friendship, affection, and love for others through gifts are welcome to do so because they choose to give that way, not because some unseen force tells us we MUST purchase it at 2am to get the best deal, not because "everyone's doing it,"  not to make ourselves look good, and not so we can demand something from the recipient later!  It's a gift, not an obligation -- that means that the recipient is not required to reciprocate anything.  If they choose to do so, that's great -- but it's their decision to do so, and not yours!

In conclusion, let's remember that the message of Thanksgiving should temper the gift-giving season with a little wisdom.  We cannot be defined by gifts.  Gifts are important, but the people in your life matter a thousand times more than gifts do.  The fact that we have these people in our lives, and that they hopefully love us as much as we love them, is the greatest gift that there is, and it cannot be priced or put on sale like material objects.  If you really wanted to rush out there and snag all the gifts you could, I'm glad I didn't stop you.  However, life would be a little more balanced if we rushed out to be kind and respectful to others just as quickly and just as intently as we did when a corporate giant told us to buy something when we should have been sleeping.

DISCLAIMER:  The above post was not meant to impede or decry our capitalist system, to state that gifts should never be purchased, or to imply that anyone who looks forward to receiving gifts in December is wrong.  Any misperception of insults or besmirchings is entirely the responsibility of the reader of this message, and the author bears no responsibility for same.

For those who read and like this blog, I am thankful for you.  Just as I am already thankful for my health, my earnings, my family, and my friends, I am thankful for you.  Please keep reading, and don't be afraid to comment!