BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

B"H Make a part of your life an act that takes you beyond your bounds -- helping people that are not part of your family or circle of friends, doing something that does not fit within your own self-definition. Escape yourself. A Daily Dose of Wisdom from the Rebbe -words and condensation by Tzvi Freeman

I get asked a lot why I have "suddenly" come out in the last few years as very Pro-Israel and Zionist leaning. My progressive friends know I lean their way on politics in the U.S. -- but can't understand why I lean so right on Middle East issues. They figure I must have some personal agenda. But I don't. Neither was my support "sudden." My reasons are multilayered and to express myself I must digress and seem to go off topic but its the only way I can explain. I was raised by a narcissistic parent. They've been dead 10 years this next September and only a year or so after they passed did I feel safe expressing, let alone feeling my rage at them for what they had done to me. I have no intention of forgiving the unforgivable but I do feel pity for them and hope that Hashem is giving them the healing and help they need now that they're in His care. However, that upbringing made me a magnet for people with personality disorders. I didn't know ...

I tripped on this article while helping one of my kids with an over-the summer project. What it fails to do, scientifically - is account for those who SAY they have high morals and ethics or BELIEVE they have high morals and ethics... But their actions prove otherwise! (these are usually personality disordered pathological Cluster Bs... who pass for normal but lie like they breathe.) Hey Barack, Gov. Sanford, John Edwards -- you listening? Oddly, Hypocrisy Rooted in High Morals by Jeanna Bryner Morally upstanding people are the do-gooders of society, right? Actually, a new study finds that a sense of moral superiority can lead to unethical acts, such as cheating. In fact, some of the best do-gooders can become the worst cheats. Stop us if this sounds familiar. When asked to describe themselves, most people typically will rattle off a list of physical features and activities (for example, "I do yoga" or "I'm a paralegal"). But some people have what scientists c...

An article I posted: Tempered by Fire - got a tremendous amount of hits and links in. I wrote it early in the morning while my kids were getting ready for school, almost as a 'throw away' post. I got a lot of very supportive and fascinating mail from that post as well... and it made me think. I realize in not trying and just letting my thoughts flow organically (my favorite way of writing) I spoke something about myself. Something that has been true of me for as long as I can remember. My adherence towards altruism. Many times on this blog I have said that through helping others I have achieved a lot of healing and transcendence. I am one of those people who has always done whatever I could to make others feel better. I am now working through therapy, to do for myself as much as a I do for others. I would love to end suffering everywhere but since I can't, I do it for the victims I advocate for and for my friends, who reach out to me. Yes, I do feel their pain . ...

Rav Michael Laitman According to the World Health Organization, someone around the globe commits suicide every 40 seconds. In the year 2000 (a long time ago, but things have only worsened since), 815,000 people lost their lives to suicide — more than double the number of people who die as a direct result of armed conflict every year (306,600). For people between the ages of 15 and 44, suicide is the fourth leading cause of death and the sixth leading cause of disability and infirmity worldwide. Also, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, "Combined 2004 and 2005 data indicate that 8.88 percent of youths aged 12 to 17 and 7.65 percent of adults aged 18 or older experienced at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year." Millions of people the world over, and especially the younger generation, are committing suicide or suffering from suicidal tendencies, depression, drug addiction and violence because they're hopeless. They have real que...

I got my undergrad degree in English Literature. That included a heck of a lot of writing of long essays and reading some really dry books. I did my senior thesis on Herman Melville. Yeah, I like to do things the hard way. When I first moved to New York 29 years ago I did a lot of reading on the subway. I spent most Friday nights either at The Strand downtown or Coliseum Books ( which used to be at 57th & Broadway) . There were regulars there, we didn't even know each other's names but we did know what certain people liked to read. One night a nice, older man came up to me in the Philosophy section at Coliseum and said - "Ayn Rand. The section's over there. ( pointing ) You need to read her." So I sidled on over. First one I grabbed was Atlas Shrugged . I was transfixed. I tore through the book, written the year I was born, with vigor. While heading to an evening gig I was reading it on the subway and a man leaned forward across the aisle and said ...

Desires - the Engine of Change Rav Michael Laitman ReligionAndSpirituality.com Desires don't just pop out of the blue. They form unconsciously within us and surface only when they become something definable, such as " I want a pizza ." Before that, desires are either not felt, or at most, felt as general restlessness. We've all experienced that sense of wanting something but not quite knowing what it is. Well, it is a desire that has not yet ripened. Plato once said, " Necessity is the mother of invention ," and he was right. Similarly, Kabbalah teaches us that the only way we can learn anything is by first wanting to learn it. It's a very simple formula: When we want something, we do what it takes to get it. We make the time, muster the energy and develop the necessary skills. It turns out that the engine of change is desire. The way our desires evolve both defines and designs the entire history of humanity. As humankind's desires developed, they ur...

A Short History of Good and Evil and the Good You Can Do by Joan Chittiser Two stories happened in the same town: mine. In the first, a local man of limited mental capacity robbed a bank. Most shocking was that he had a live bomb attached to his body by a metal collar that somebody had locked around his neck. He was carrying a note written by his assailants ordering him to report to four different places after the robbery to receive instructions about what next to do in order to have the bomb defused. He never made it past stop number one. Police intercepted this simple man in a parking lot almost immediately after he left the bank. He clearly was not racing to escape. Instead, he was begging for help. He told the police that he’d been forced to perform the robbery because the bomb locked to his neck was on a timer. But the local bomb squad didn’t reach the site fast enough to defuse it, so, in clear sight, this man blew up in a main street parking lot of a small American city on a sun...