BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

This article rang true for me and how I have spent the last 6+ years of my life. I hope you get something from it also. - Barbara The Point of Return by Rosally Saltsman We can take the most insidious penchant, and nurture it into a positive and restorative force. Frank Abagnale, the "hero" of the book and movie Catch Me if You Can , was one of the most infamous contemporary outlaws. He successfully eluded the FBI, Interpol and the Justice system of 26 countries for five years, while amassing millions. After being caught and serving five years in prison, he was offered a chance to redeem himself by working for the U.S. government, uncovering the kind of schemes that he himself had perpetuated. He went from master criminal to crime prevention, protecting companies around the world from people like himself. Moreover, he paid back all the money he stole. Abagnale's success story is paralleled in the Talmud. Reish Lakish was a successful bandit known for his unusua...

It is therefore the universal Jewish custom – some time before Yom Kippur -- to apologize and seek forgiveness from any friends, relative, or acquaintances whom we may have harmed or insulted over the past year. REPENTANCE Repentance is predicated on wanting to stop the transgression. To achieve this, we must first analyze the dynamics of transgression. How does it happen? There are four stages in the process of transgression: Dormant Active Situation Transgression To illustrate, let's use the example of someone trying to stop smoking. The scene is a man sitting by his desk at the office doing work. He has a history of addiction to cigarettes and has been trying to stop smoking, unsuccessfully, for three months. Let's observe him and see what happens... DORMANT At first the urge for a cigarette is DORMANT. It can be activated at any time but at this point the craving for a cigarette is nothing more than potential energy. ACTIVE The door to our smoker's...

The Lessons of Yom Kippur I n the Jewish tradition of midrash, there is the expression "davar akheyr," which means "another thing," a story. Rabbis have always told stories as a central part of their teaching. So today, I will tell you a story. It's not my story. But I can relate. Instead, it's a true story from one of my very favorite storytellers, Anne Lamott. This one comes from her book Traveling Mercies. I've abridged it just a little, but it's called "Forgiveness." **** The fruit of forgiveness. Annie says that God was trying to tell her, trying to point out that if she could just step back and allow a little forgiveness into her way of seeing, things would change. It's like that, though, forgiveness. Usually, we have to be forced to give it a try. But whenever we do, for whatever reason we might do it, things change. They always change. Oh, other people might not change. But we change. Our experience of the world changes...

The Jewish high holidays -- which end today on Yom Kippur -- are a time when many are called upon to repent and seek forgiveness from others. But in a world where the Internet has increasingly become a way to communicate, some are replacing one-on-one apologies with Facebook and Twitter updates during the Jewish holy days. That concerns Rabbi Jason Miller of Congregation T'chiyah in Oak Park, who sees some using the impersonal nature of the Web as a way to avoid real interaction. He plans to talk about the issue today to his congregation during services on what is known as the Day of Atonement. "We've lost the personal touch," said Miller, who also is the rabbi of Tamarack Camps in Michigan. "There should be an effort, a little challenge to go up to another person and seek forgiveness, to admit our wrongdoing." Miller often uses social media himself and blogs at blog.rabbijason.com, but cautions against overdoing it. He notes one Facebook update he got Frida...

Releasing Guilt We all know what it feels like to feel guilty about something and many of us struggle with feeling guilty all the time. Guilt makes us feel that we are somehow unforgivable. While this experience is common, it is detrimental to our overall well-being. Feeling guilty generally promotes a sense of powerlessness-an anguished agonizing over a past action that cannot be changed . The problem with this is that it doesn't inspire us to forgive ourselves, make amends for mistakes, and move forward free of emotional baggage. Originally, guilt referred to the fine paid for proven wrongdoing. Once you made the payment, in time, amends or money, for what you had done , you were free-free of the sentence and free of the guilt. The problem with guilt as it is often experienced now is that it becomes a permanent state of mind for some people. In this case, it is a neurotic preoccupation rather than a fair assessment of wrongdoing followed by a course of action that leads to repa...

by Lori Palatnik Everyone makes mistakes. The Torah is filled with people -- great people -- who made mistakes. Moses himself made mistakes. He was not allowed to enter the Land of Israel because of them. Our forefathers and foremothers were human, made of flesh and blood. Indeed, what made them great was not that they led perfect lives, but that they learned from their mistakes. When they fell, they got up and continued on the path toward God. What does God want from us when we make mistakes? Teshuvah. The word teshuvah means "return." It is often mistranslated as "repentance." When we are asked by God to do teshuvah, we are asked by God to return. RETURNING TO THE FAMILIAR If you are flying "return" to Chicago, you leave your home and fly to Chicago. After you complete your stay, you use your return ticket to get on a plane to go back home. Returning means going back to somewhere you've been, somewhere familiar. Teshuvah means we return to the path...

As we approach Yom Kippur in this New Year, we need to think about forgiveness. There's an awful lot of New Age psychobabble out there about forgiving & releasing guilt. But I don't believe in forgiving when the offender hasn't asked for forgiveness, made amends to you and you and the offender have worked things out. That's restorative justice. There were some people I knew since I was a little girl that I now haven't spoken with in almost 25 years. Why? Because they expect me to forgive & forget without them saying "I'm sorry" or admitting what they'd done. I can't be a phony. I was a good actor when I was working but that was work. I never practiced acting as a type of deception. In fact what I felt was that it was either portraying reality or some truth in a way that your audience could understand. Even in comedy I relished taking truth and blowing it up so big you couldn't miss it. Truth and honesty always resonate with...

by Sara Yoheved Rigler After crying intermittently for 36 hours, ever since the eerie wail of ambulance sirens carrying the dead and wounded from the terror attack at the Hillel Cafe woke me up last Tuesday night, I thought I had no more tears to shed. Then I saw the picture of the wedding dress. It appeared in an Israeli newspaper -- a photo of a long, white, taffeta and chiffon gown, hanging forlornly on a hanger on the door of the bride's bedroom closet, because the 20-year-old bride, Nava Applebaum, is clothed in a shroud instead. Nava was buried together with her father, Dr. David Applebaum, on the day that was supposed to be her wedding day. The photo next to it shows Nava's fiance Chanan Sand beside Nava's open grave, holding the wedding ring he had intended to place on her finger. He placed it instead on her lifeless body as it was lowered into the grave. There are other pictures in that day's newspaper: A picture of the handsome, smiling 39-year-old Yaakov Ben ...