The Nobel Prize. Its Origin And Profound Lesson!

The Nobel Prize came to be by chance – a twist of fate. 

When Alfred Nobel's brother died, a newspaper mistakenly ran an obituary of Alfred himself, believing it was he who had died. Nobel was given a rare opportunity: to read his own obituary while alive. What he read horrified him. The newspaper described him as a man who had made it possible to kill more people more quickly than anyone else in history.

Upon reading it, Alfred Nobel realized two things, that this was how he was to be remembered, and that this was not how he wanted to be remembered. Shortly thereafter, he established the Nobel awards. 

All too often we spend our time “sweating the small stuff,” and neglecting the things that really matter: the good we do, the love we give, the mitzvot we perform, the difference we make to other people’s lives. None of us knows how long we will live. Life is too short to waste. Every day is a gift from G-d and we should use it to the fullest: to celebrate life and be a blessing to others.

What do you want to be remembered for?

It's Not What We Always Think

A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside. "That laundry is not very clean; she doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap." Her husband looks on, remaining silent. Every time her neighbor hangs her wash to dry, the young woman makes the same comments. A month later, the woman is surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and says to her husband: "Look, she's finally learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this? " The husband replies, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows." And so it is with life... What we see when watching others depends on the clarity of the window through which we look

Judiasm 101%

In Crown Heights, there was a Jew, Yankel, who owned a bakery. He survived the camps. He once said, “You know why it is that I’m alive today? I was a kid, just a teenager at the time. We were on the train, in a boxcar, being taken to Auschwitz. Night came and it was freezing, deathly cold, in that boxcar. The Germans would leave the cars on the side of the tracks overnight, sometimes for days on end without any food, and of course, no blankets to keep us warm,” he said. “Sitting next to me was an older Jew – this beloved elderly Jew - from my hometown I recognized, but I had never seen him like this. He was shivering from head to toe, and looked terrible. So I wrapped my arms around him and began rubbing him, to warm him up. I rubbed his arms, his legs, his face, his neck. I begged him to hang on. All night long; I kept the man warm this way. I was tired, I was freezing cold myself, my fingers were numb, but I didn’t stop rubbing the heat on to this man’s body. Hours and hours went by this way. Finally, night passed, morning came, and the sun began to shine. There was some warmth in the cabin, and then I looked around the car to see some of the other Jews in the car. To my horror, all I could see were frozen bodies, and all I could hear was a deathly silence.

Nobody else in that cabin made it through the night – they died from the frost. Only two people survived: the old man and me… The old man survived because somebody kept him
warm; I survived because I was warming somebody else…”

Let me tell you the secret of Judaism. When you warm other people’s hearts, you remain warm yourself. When you seek to support, encourage and inspire others; then you discover support, encouragement and inspiration in your own life as well. That, my friends, is “Judaism 101”.