Building New Identities, Business & Education, Uncategorized, Wisdom Daily News / 24 Mar 2023
Where Everything New Is Old Again
“Old” connections create new paradigms
Uncategorized, Wisdom For Builders / 21 Mar 2023
Non-Linear Growth
Growth does not have to be immediate and exponential for things to have value…
This Week In Wisdom, Wisdom For Builders / 16 Mar 2023
The Adjacent Possible
Life has to be lived forward but can only be understood backward
Uncategorized, Wisdom For Builders / 16 Mar 2023
Ready… Set… Set…
It took G-d a mere week to create the world, but how often do we describe the eternity of preparation that must have preceded this watershed moment? Before G-d turned the light switch on, the infinite possibilities of what could be resided in an amaranthine packet of latent potential. None of it existed until G-d took that brave leap allowing the implicit to coalesce into the explicit. Hebrew has the same root for the word Universe (Olam) and Unknown (Alum). The margin between the abyss and genesis is both infinite and imperceptible. Perhaps this is also true, albeit in far more humble dimensions, for humans engaged in sacred work. Last year I finally launched The Amen Institute – an organization that brings art and Torah into conversation with one another. We have 4 programs that engage thousands of Jews around the world to achieve this in our: Rabbinic-Artist Fellowship High School Mentorship Program Weekly Art Circle Gatherings Educational Music Resources After spending a year and a half having conversations with artists and strategizing our approach, I witnessed my countless all-nighters materialize into an international center of Jewish culture. It felt like an eternity had preceded this landmark moment as I fine-tuned my vision and methodically made my pitch to prospective stakeholders – inviting artists, rabbis, teachers, synagogues, and funders to dream with me. We anticipated an explosive inventiveness that would result when Torah scholars are pushed to see new perspectives on the texts with which they were so familiar when the probing mind of a creative soul could animate their imaginations through the medium of art. Excitement is an infectious creature. As our tent widened and more keen individuals were introduced to our world, their enthusiasm egged me on and inspired me to think even more expansively. The possibilities kept…
Spirituality & Faith / 14 Mar 2023
Sisterhood Goals in the Torah
Here’s to an enlightening Women’s History Month for us all!
We are coming into the holiday season and something is badly out of whack in America – beyond our ongoing economic and political crises.? Take Hawaii State Representative Tom Bowers who, sledgehammer in hand, walks his district’s streets and parks looking for shopping carts used by homeless people, which, he then smashes to bits.? Bowers is “disgusted” by homeless people and is so proud of his tough guy approach that he allows himself to be filmed engaged in his grassroots effort to rid his district of the homeless. When asked if he......
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A recent study about people with relatively new significant others has come to the conclusion that being in love essentially makes you stupid – or, rather, less capable of distinguishing relevant from irrelevant information. We’ve all had romances, relationships or other emotional issues distract us from the task at hand. Is that type of preoccupation the equivalent of becoming dumber? Or could it be us getting smarter and re-focusing on our true priorities? According to one researcher, the results of the study prove that if you’re in a relatively new relationship, you’re......
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Spirituality & Faith, Wisdom Warehouse |
November 15, 2013
Thanksgivukkah: This November 28th, Celebrate Abundance and Possibility
Call it a simple coincidence, call it Thanksgivukkah, call it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to integrate the quintessentially American and the quintessentially Jewish, but whatever you call it, and whether you are Jewish or not, celebrate the abundance and possibility in your life this year, as Thanksgiving and Hanukkah overlap. From recalling a group of brave, hopeful, religious outsiders, the Pilgrims, who boarded leaky ships bound for a place they did not know, to a group of equally brave and hopeful religious outsiders, the ancient Israelite clan known as the Maccabees, who took......
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News & Politics, Videos, Wisdom Warehouse |
November 14, 2013
Video: Our Shrinking World and the Typhoon in the Philippines
From Odyssey Network’s Faith on the Record series: “Can our sense of neighborhood expand to those who are 10,000 miles away?”? That’s the question Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, President of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership asks in the wake of the typhoon in the Philippines which has taken the lives of thousands of people.? As the initial media coverage recedes in favor of front-page stories that are more immediately relevant to our lives as Americans, how do we respond to the humanitarian crisis that continues to unfold? Odyssey Networks......
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Truly caring for a person at the end of life requires conversations – about love and legacy, about bestowing and receiving blessings, about choosing life versus fighting death. I am a well-educated man, a rabbi who was trained and has experience in comforting individuals on their sickbeds.? My five younger brothers, also have good educations, some of us have multiple degrees.? Yet when my mother was diagnosed with late stage pancreatic cancer five years ago and told she had 12 weeks to live, neither my family nor I was prepared. We listened......
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Life is complicated. That’s a nice way of saying that, for most of us anyway, life comes at us faster, messier and with less clarity than we often long for. People often feel like there is not enough to hang onto, not enough that we can rely on, not enough that is certain. Don’t despair! You are not alone, the challenge is not new, and there are things we can do to make it better. It was this week — November 13, 1789 to be specific — that Benjamin Franklin wrote a......
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Relationships & Family, Wisdom Warehouse |
November 12, 2013
What’s In A Name? Perhaps A Great Deal!
We all know the expression ‘what’s in a name’. Essentially it means?what something is?called can never fully capture the full meaning of what that something?is.?This saying is particularly true for people,?who are surely more complex than any one name or label that gets slapped on them. ?But there’s still a lot in a name. While true that a person’s identity cannot be reduced to their name,?names?can?matter when it comes to expressing our hopes, dreams, aspirations and expectations. ?Just ask any parent who?has spent countless?hours?choosing a name for?their baby, or people wrestling with......
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Many Americans today who are asked about the role of faith in their lives identify themselves as “None” – no religious identification.? For me, if I’m honest, religion alone is increasingly not getting the job done (that it used to) of nurturing the virtues we all need in life to flourish: awe, wonder, humility, transcendence, responsibility, kindness and love. As an eighth-generation rabbi, this is a significant challenge! Lately I’ve been looking at the intersection of popular culture and science for new “sacred” wisdom that works to evoke and nurture these qualities.......
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Today is Veterans Day and whatever our politics or opinions of war, we need to respect, honor and most critically, care about our veterans. In reflecting upon the importance of Veterans Day, I came across some surprising and even shocking facts on the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: More than 6,600 dead. 2.5 million men and women have been deployed in these two wars – over 400,000 have done more than three deployments. If you do not know anyone who has served it is because we have made an......
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Wait! Before you skip over this post because you may not believe in God, substitute a term that does fall into your beliefs: “awe,” “wonder,” “inexplicable beauty,” or “a moment of transcendence.”? Don’t let the words get in the way.? Now ask yourself: Where do you find those things, and where are you when they find you? It turns out that we often discover the transcendent in the most unexpected or idiosyncratic places. It can literally happen any place. That’s actually really promising – because if God (or whatever) can be there,......
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Latest Video
Listen To The Names Of The Victims First
A video where Brad Hirschfield lists the victims names in the recent Orlando shooting. Because first we need to internalize a tragedy before we jump to speak.
