This time last year, I did not feel ready for Yom Kippur. I just couldn’t get into it. I didn’t think I had done any semblance of a proper teshuva. And I just wanted to stay home from shul. I called up one of my role model/friends and asked her to give me whatever chizuk came to mind. These …
It’s Elul. Wow. I’m signed up for two personal development courses for Elul. The first is Rabbi Aryeh Nivin’s Elul Chaburah, which is a short series of classes on taking stock and setting goals for the coming year. I actually did this Elul course three years ago and it was incredible. It costs $1 (but you have to cancel …
I just joined an easy learning program that I have been gaining a lot from. Each week, I get a recording of a short class on Chovos HaLevavos Shaar HaBitachon, given by Mrs. M’nucha Bialik, a dating coach in Ramat Beit Shemesh (and a very dear mentor). The classes are about 15-20 minutes long. Mrs. Bialik started this program after …
This is just a brain dump of thoughts and questions I’ve been thinking about, regarding how to define myself and my standards in different areas where there is a choice in how much of a connection to have to secular culture. Often it feels like I’m walking a tightrope between the purity of Torah and the offerings of the …
A recent quandary (shidduch-related, naturally) had me questioning my very identity. And what it came down to, when the dust settled, is this: if I’m going to consider myself a spiritual person, I had better be sure to involve myself in spiritual pursuits. Not that I haven’t been, per se, but this feeling — that spirituality is only kind …
I haven’t been inspired enough recently and I’m looking for shiurim to listen to. Preferably a series so I can just go from one to the next for a while. My Partner in Torah and I are now up to Parshas Mikeitz. It’s really nice to be learning with her but I’m looking for a teacher for me. …
I just reread a journal from around Pesach time, and I found something I had written after going to Kever Shmuel HaNavi. As I sat at the kever reading Parshas Chana, two images stood out to me, something like bookends to the story of Chana and her son. The first was the image of Chana at the beginning of the …
Tonight I did a free writing class for Chanukah from Yocheved Rottenberg of Write Your Way Home. (I’m sure if you contact her through the site, she’d send it to you). The following is what I wrote for one of the exercises, a Captured Moment from a Chanukah gone by. I walk across the expansive dining room to the …
Rav Dessler writes in Michtav Me’Eliyahu that it’s natural for someone to start a Y”T on a high and then slowly lose enthusiasm over the course of the chag. (Think about the difference in the atmosphere on the first night as opposed to the last afternoon of a Y”T, if you can relate). Not so for a Jew who is …
Continuing on in Parshas Lech Lecha, the past week when we were learning, I got excited over a few things we read in Rashi. I just felt that they were things I had learned more than once before but never understood deeply and related to my own life. Hashem promises Avraham Avinu that he will have children, “[a]nd He took …
