Quotes

   

1. Prayer is not a "spare wheel" that you pull out when in trouble, but it is a "steering wheel" that directs the right path throughout.

2. So why is a car's windshield so large and the rear view mirror so small? Because our past is not as important as our future. So, look ahead and move on.

3. Friendship is like a book. It takes few seconds to burn, but it takes years to write.

4. All things in life are temporary. If it’s going well, enjoy it, that won't last long. If it’s going badly, don't worry, that won't last long either.

5.  Old friends are gold! New friends are diamond! If you get a diamond, don't forget the gold! Because to hold a diamond, you always need a base of gold!

6. Often when we lose hope and think this is the end, God smiles from above and says, "Relax, sweetheart, it's just a bend, not the end!"

7. When God solves your problems, you have faith in His abilities; when God doesn't solve your problems, He has faith in your abilities.

8. A blind person asked, "Can there be anything worse than losing eye sight?" He replied, "Yes, losing your vision!"

9.When you pray for others, God listens to you and blesses them; sometimes, when you are safe and happy, remember that someone has prayed for you.

10. Worrying does not take away tomorrow's troubles, it takes away today's peace.

YOUR 100% RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIP

                        People are more important then things

      See every problem as an opportunity

     Think every morning “how will I help this planet today?’

    Nobody can make you miserable without your permission

     Listen to another without ‘one’ interruption

    People respect us to the degree we respect ourselves

    We cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought

   Always put the challenge into perspective from 1-10

    You can give w/o loving but you cannot love without giving

                                                                           Failing to plan is planning to fail

•                 If you don’t like what your getting change your doing
•                Give w/o expectations youll never be disappointed
•                Future oriented  ‘I’ message . In the future…..
•                Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% we react
•                Extraordinary people do extraordinary stuff  101%
•                To have joy, one must share it
•                It’s nice to be imp. But its more imp to be nice
•                If you’re like everyone else, what do we need u for?
•                Focus less on why and more on what n how
•                Leave everything a little better then u found it
•               To the world u may be 1 person, but to 1 person ur
•               Stand up for something or youll fall for everything
•               What most of us need is, to need less
•              If not for the last minute nothing would get done
•              Everything will be ok in the end if its not, its not                  
•             Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
•             Be the change you want to see in the world
•             Friends are G-Ds way of apologizing for your family
•            Wish for what you want, work for what you need
•            If you carry your childhood with you, you’ll never    
•            Follow your heart
•          If you think you can or you think you cant, your right
•            If you give all you’ve got you’ll get all you’ve given
•           The trouble with trouble is it always starts out fun

R'eb Zalman Lipskier

 Rabbi Zalman Lipsker

"It happened in the summer of 1961, but I remember it like it was yesterday.  I was a young yeshiva student and had just returned to 770 Eastern Parkway, Chabad Headquarters, from my summer mission – Merkos Shlichus, the Jewish outreach program by rabbinical students.

 I wanted to catch a glimpse of the Rebbe, whom I hadn't seen for a couple of weeks. As it was about 2:00 a.m., I decided to wait in the study hall, hoping that as the Rebbe would leave 770 after his late night yechidussen (private audiences), I would be able to see him, however briefly. I found a table, and put my head down for a bit. Due to exhaustion I immediately fell asleep.

 I had just fallen asleep when I felt somebody tapping me on the shoulder. Totally exhausted, I decided not to pay attention. Again I felt somebody tapping me. I still ignored him, thinking, “If this happens once more, I’m going to let him have it...” And, sure enough, it happened again.

 I whipped around and was startled to see Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Aizik Hodakov, the Rebbe’s chief secretary. “Reb Zalman?” he asked – I was only a student, a regular yeshiva bochur, but Rabbi Hodakov addressed me as "Reb Zalman", as if I was a married respectable person, he was very proper. "Reb Zalman, when did you come back?” “I came in tonight,” I replied.

 “Do you want to do something?” Even though I was half asleep, I knew that when Rabbi Hodakov asked if you wanted to do something, it was probably coming from the Rebbe. I quickly became more alert. “Sure,” I said, and followed him to his office where he began to explain to me what he wanted me to do:

 “I will give you a pair of tefillin and you’ll take them to Long Beach, New York. There’s a man there by the name of Mr. Louis Shelder. You should bring him the tefillin and show him how to put them on. Make sure not to come before 6:00 a.m., because you might wake him up. But don’t come after six, because you might miss him!” I responded, “Fine.”

 I washed up, and by then it was 3:30 in the morning. Wanting to follow the instructions to the letter, I departed for my destination with plenty of time to spare. By 5:30 a.m., I was waiting at Mr. Shelder’s front door. At exactly 6:00 a.m. I knocked, and sure enough, a man opened the door. I smiled and said, “My name is Zalman Lipsker. The Lubavitcher Rebbe sent me here to give you this pair of tefillin and to put them on  with you. 

 “Are you Mr. Shelder?”

He replied, “Yes, come in.” 

We made some small talk and then I did exactly as Rabbi Hodakov requested. As I was showing Mr. Shelder how to put on the tefillin for the first time, I distinctly remember there was a little girl sitting quietly in the room. 

Then he asked, “Where are you going?” “Back to Crown Heights,” I replied.

“And I’m going to Manhattan,” he said. “Let’s go together.” 

I agreed.

On the way he said to me, “Your Rebbe is really something special.” And then he told me what had transpired:

“Last night at around 11:00, I had an audience with the Rebbe. In the middle of the conversation, the Rebbe asked me whether I put on tefillin every day. I said I didn't and that I don't even own a pair of tefillin, and we continued to talk about other matters. A bit later, the Rebbe asked me, ‘If you had tefillin, would you put them on?’ I replied, ‘I don’t know how,’ and we continued to talk about something else. Then he again came back to the subject of tefillin: ‘If you had tefillin and someone showed you how to put them on, would you?’ I had no choice but to say yes. 

During the conversation, the Rebbe made sure to find out exactly what my morning schedule was – when I get up in the morning, when I leave the house to go to work, everything. And here you are, only a few hours later! He sent you with the tefillin. 

This is simply amazing.” 

Upon my return to 770, I reported to Rabbi Hodakov. 

 But that was not the end of the story. Many, many years later, I got a call from a woman in Israel, asking about this story. Apparently, I had told it to someone and it had been published in a magazine. This woman read it and decided to find me. Why? Emotionally, she told me that she was the little girl who was in the room that morning, as I lay tefillin on Mr. Louis Shelder – her father.  She told me that the family eventually became fully observant. She now lives in Israel with her husband, and her son is learning in yeshiva. After reading the story, she had to call and let me know the happy ending to this remarkable story."

                                                                                                                                         

                                                                           ****************************

 Imagine: The Rebbe at 3:00 in the morning, after a long night of the most strenuous sort of  work (as is well known the story of the Rebbe Maharash's "sweating" because of yechidus.) What does he do? What is his standard operational procedure? He calls in his chief of staff to discuss the ‘homework’, things which need immediate attention. And by ‘immediate’ we mean NOW!!  (In addition to things that have to be done in the next couple of hours etc.). The Rebbe tells Rabbi Hodakov to get a pair of tefillin (seemingly there must have been spare pairs of tefillin available for just such situations), go find a bochur and ask him to go, right now, at 3:30 in the morning etc., from Crown Heights to Long Beach, so that a yid should not miss even one more morning without putting on tefillin!! Only the Rebbe, filled with infinite love towards every Jew, coupled with the true appreciation of what a Mitzvah is, and what it can accomplish for a yid; has ‫מסירת נפש in his ‫עבודה to connect with others, and who also inspires the same sort of ‫מס''נ in all of his followers.

May the ‫זכות of The Rebbe, and the unbelievable awesome spiritual forces of this day, bring us all an increase of ‫ברכה, ‫הצלחה and ‫מזל, in all areas of our lives; in a Ge'ula'diker and Moshiach'diker way.

When The Rebbe Saved Three Lives

Boatlift Untold Story of 9/11

Forget what you know | Jacob Barnett | TEDxTeen

Beautyful Wife

Mom of 14

July 24 at 12:16am · 

What Happens When a Man Tells His Wife She Is Beautiful
BY RIVKA NEHORAI • JULY 21, 2015 • ESSAY
SONY DSC
The Theory

“Grounds for divorce,” bluntly warns the Mishna, through the mouth of Rabbi Akiva, “is if a man finds a woman more beautiful than his wife.”

“Say what?” clammer the Discontent.

And rising from the sea of flailing hands and angry faces, another voice shouts out in Chassidic intonations:

“What does it mean, on a deeper level?” the voice screams, and the crowd quiets down, listening. “It means,” the voice explains calmer, catching his breath, “ is that it is man’s avodah, man’s responsibility, to ensure that he finds his wife the most beautiful woman in the world.”

The Practice

Tonight, he stops to look at me- like really look at me.

Except I sense that his eyes are also looking through me, to somewhere halfway in-between my skin and the deep inner recesses of his warmly kept memories. His gratitude of a recent meal rumbling in his stomach combined with the ease of slipping into his freshly laundered black man-socks, gives him a rooted sense of belonging in this world, allowing him to take it all in, everything, that he has been given, that he has worked for. His eyes roam around his home, as if it is the first time, tracking his stomping grounds, his comfortable chair, his rightful territory. Something gently stirs from within, and he comes to stand next to me, the words congealing and rising determinedly to the surface.

His voice becomes quieter, softer, slower.

“You’re beautiful,” he finds himself realizing and saying, and I, too, stop, slowing down to his rhythm, to the rhythm where time passes around us. I’ve stopped in between my trek from couch to kitchen to bedroom to-suddenly, we became two trains that have found themselves on the same track, dead center, with nowhere else to go. We’ve even forgotten that we are trains. We’ve just remembered that we are really people, and this is really what life is about: not just moving physical space, but staying still, and moving within.

My face forms a question, a “c’mon, really, in these clothes?”– but his face doesn’t move an inch, his expression unflinching,

“You’re the most beautiful in the world.”

Pressure, sensing it has other places to attend to now that I’ m occupied, seemingly gives up. As it disappears from my cerebral cortex, task upon worry upon errand stops weighing upon my shoulders.

Caught as the star in this glorious mixture of fact and fiction, I finally ease into my skin and relax. Not because I’ve won any major prize; I’m not kidding myself into believing that I’m the thinnest, the smartest, or the most alluring. Let’s be real: in the grand cubits of the world, I don’t measure up one iota. Forget heaven and earth and the distance from me to the angels; compare me to a fellow human and I’ll always feel wanting.

But, here, now, in his mind, I have arrived.

Here, now, in this small space, in these couple hundred square feet, I reign supreme.

He says “you’re beautiful,” and I feel a sudden urge to throw the laundry off my back, chuck the week’s meal plan, forgot all checklists, and sink down into couch cushions ,throwing up my feet and drinking some pina colada from a straw with a little yellow umbrella. I feel suddenly, that despite my flaws and failings and tasks, I am enough. I am free.

Just the feeling is enough to get me tipsy.

The stark reality: For a man to find his wife the most beautiful takes a lot of work.

The flow between his words and my reaction – train to train, person to person – reflect hours of effort, mountains of dialogues, upon which an emotional relationship emerges. For it is only through the emotional relationship that physicality can be transcended: reworked and re-envisioned to seeing something beyond the flesh, to transforming the flesh. It is only in the sweat and tears of an emotional relationship that a man can hope to arrive at this desired conclusion.

I used to not sense the importance of being called beautiful, throwing it off and insisting, tell me something else, something that has nothing to do with the plain, unimportant, physical attributes upon which I was endowed. Tell me something to do with my efforts and talents in life.

But really, when a husband calls a wife beautiful, he’s telling her that everything she worked for and everything she values, is all wrapped up in a brilliantly lit radiating package he calls her radiance, and he can sense it and he feels drawn towards it.

So tell me today, tell me everyday. See in me beauty and help me see the beauty in myself. Find beauty in me and your worth and beauty will overpower me as well. You see, then I see. I see, then you see. Isn’t that our task here, anyways? To find beauty in this little home of ours? To find beauty in each other? Running into each other, stopping each other in our prescribed tracks, blindsided by each other’s beauty and letting life pass us by.

When a husband finds his wife beautiful, the most beautiful, it is as if heaven and earth become entwined, at last able to rest, a Shabbos of Shabbosim, and Gd’s shechina rests upon their little castle in this world.

“We see things not as they are, but as we are,” gravely spoke Anais Nin.

And as husband and wife, in sensing each other’s beauty, in offering words of encouragement and value and honor and respect, in receiving words of encouragement and value and honor and respect, we say, “We are one, tonight. Tonight, we are one.”

And entwined, we appear radiatingly, heartbreakingly beautiful.

Close to Home | It Can Wait

Two Sibling, Separated by Holocaust, Reunited at Last | The Jewish Standard

Two Sibling, Separated by Holocaust, Reunited at Last | The Jewish Standard

Love

“All You Need Is Love”*

It was a warm day in May when Gertrude Hollander (details changed) left this world.

Gertrude and her then future husband Manfred were born in the German city of Fulda in 1928 and immigrated to these shores after Kristallnacht. 

They settled in Washington Heights where eventually they married in 1949. 

The couple moved to Cleveland where they raised three daughters in the path of Torah Im Derech Eretz. 

In 2005 they moved back to the New York area to be closer to their daughters.

Since one of the daughters is a member of my Shul, I have had the privilege of becoming ‘close’ to Manfred Hollander. I say the word ‘close’ somewhat hesitantly as I am not sure if anyone could be considered ‘close’ to Manfred.

Perhaps it was caused by trauma experienced before the war; perhaps it was his stoic ‘Yekkishe’ upbringing which prided itself on its taciturn and reserved outward presentation; or perhaps it was just ‘him’. Whatever the reason, Manfred Hollander was one of the most dour and restrained individuals you have ever met.

Despite his outwards manifestations of being laconic and almost brusque, I knew he was filled with pride when a grandchild would accompany him to Shul; provided of course the child was properly behaved.

Manfred and Gertrude were married for 66 years.

At the funeral he was the paradigm of dignity and placidity and he remained restrained throughout the Shiva.

When he called me at the conclusion of the Shloshim, I was sure he wanted to discuss the disbursement of his estate; why else would he insist that all three daughters who were in town at the time be present at the meeting?

As everyone filed in to my office, one could feel the awe which the daughters – notwithstanding the fact that all were already grandmothers- felt when they were in their father’s presence.

All looked to Manfred Hollander to speak first and no one dared speak before him.

Manfred straightened his tie, cleared his throat and began to speak.

“The purpose of my requesting all of you to gather here this morning in the presence of our esteemed Rav is for me to state something which I believe is halachically mandated.”

I was wondering which aspect of Hilchos Yerusha he was about to cite.

Manfred looked at each of his daughters and continued.

“During the period of time when your mother and I lived here, one of you came to visit our home daily. If one of you could not make it, you always arranged for a grandchild to visit daily and the visit lasted minimally one hour. I have observed over the past month that the daily visits have decreased to a ‘twice a week’ ritual; and the duration of the visit has been cut in half.  Please allow me to state unequivocally that although I understand that the major focus of the visit was your mother, you should realize that I too treasured them!”

Suddenly, Manfred Hollander, the man who never shed a tear and who maintained his composure under the most difficult circumstances began to cry. 

As large tears trickled down his cheek he said in an emotionally chocked-up voice, “I humbly request of you that these visits be reinstated immediately; after all, I enjoyed them immensely and they were the highlight of my day. Remember, even though I am not a schmoozermyself don’t think I don’t enjoy hearing others schmooze and laugh and don’t think I don’t enjoy company!”

And then Manfred Hollander burst into uncontrollable sobbing as he pleaded with his children, “Do not cast me away at the time of old age”. (Tehillim: 71:9)

You can put on a face of aloofness and even appear be distant; however, when all is said and done, we all need love.

“If Not Now, Then When?”-Hillel

Ron Yitzchok Eisenman, Rabbi, Congregation Ahavas Israel, Passaic, NJ 

Tree

We all Need a Tree!

I hired a plumber to help me restore an old farmhouse, and after he had

just finished a rough first day on the job, a flat tire made him lose an

hour of work, his electric drill quit and his ancient one-ton truck

refused to start.

While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence. On arriving, he invited

me in to meet his family. As we walked toward the front door, he paused

briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both

hands.

When opening the door he underwent an amazing transformation.. His face

was wreathed in smiles and he hugged his two small children and gave his

wife a kiss.

Afterward he walked me to the car. We passed the tree and my curiosity

got the better of me. I asked him about what I had seen him do

earlier.

"Oh, that's my trouble tree," he replied "I know I can't help having

troubles on the job, but one thing's for sure, those troubles don't

belong in the house with my wife and the children.. So I just hang them

up on the tree every night when I come home and ask G-d to take care of

them. Then in the morning I pick them up again." "Funny thing is," he

smiled, "when I come out in the morning to pick 'em up, there aren't

nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before."

THIS ONE IS WORTH SENDING ON.

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might

as well dance.

We all Need a Tree!

Wishing you a wonderful day!