1.  Always call.  When you doubt (upon hearing of someone’s loss, or illness) whether you should call, don’t doubt.  Your silence is more likely to be seen as indifference than delicacy.  Even if awkward, call.

2.  Learn to say ‘no.’ Someone else’s legitimate expectation does NOT create in you a legitimate obligation.  My congregants have a legitimate expectation that the Rabbi will attend their event.  Since always attending would make it impossible to ever have a home life, I often find myself saying ‘no.’  I do not say it with glee, but try also not to say it with guilt.  One who cannot say ‘no’ is forever a slave.  Besides, your ‘yes’ means nothing if you really cannot say ‘no.’

3.  It is usually not about you.  Other people spend time thinking about you as often as you do about them.  In other words, they too are thinking about themselves, and not the cranberry sauce you spilled on your shirt.  It may torture you all night, but they are already on to their own considerations.  A gentle humor about oneself, taking yourself seriously but not solemnly, smooths life’s path.  

OK, I said three things; the fourth is not from me.  It is from the great writer Henry James, who said the three most important things in life are: "to be kind, to be kind and to be kind." 

Now, good luck; or as we say in Aramaic, B’seyata D’shmaya — with Heaven’s help.

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Here is a story about you.  Jacob wrestles with an angel and won’t let him go until the angel blesses him.  The angel declares his name is now Israel.  Of course, that is not exactly a blessing.  "You will have many children; you will be healthy; you will find joy" now THAT’S a blessing.  But a name change?

Here is where it is about you.  It is a blessing to be able to transform yourself.  My life has been a series of declarations that were wrong.  I would never be a Rabbi.  I would never live in Los Angeles.  I would never take a pulpit.  I was sure of all these things.  So either I am remarkably dense about my own nature, or capable of growth and transformation (no points for guessing which explanation I favor.)  We do not have to be tomorrow what we are today. Within all the boundaries of genes and environmentwe have infinite possibilities.

This has been a week of weird juxtapositions: time with my parents, who are both quite ill, and some national television spots, which were quite fun.  A lot of travel (fully voluntary) coupled with a desire to stay in one place.  We are not only capable of transformation, but riddled with opposing yearnings.  "Do I contradict myself?" asked Whitman.  "Very well then, I contradict myself.  I am large, and contain multitudes."

So did Jacob. So do we all. 

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Do I blame God?  Given the surfeit of blessings I have had in my life, it seems ungrateful, to say the least.  Do I deserve to be showered with blessings and never suffer?  It would be nice.  But I think the idea that we are owed only good is theologically childish.  Most of us – not all to be sure – are extraordinarily forunate.

I am not going to enter here the contentious question of why bad things happen, but I do want to say a word about prayer.  It isn’t to get stuff.  It isn’t magic.  True prayer, deep prayer, should be for relationship, intimacy, so that we are not alone.  Prayer has roots in the temple, with korbanot (sacrifices) from the Hebrew root "karov" – to draw close.  In prayer we draw closer to God and to the praying community.

At least we hope to, we try to.  In illness we come closer to God less because of sudden fear than because illness cracks something open inside us and God – and others – can slip into the cracks.  When we heal, we tend to heal inside too, leaving fewer or smaller openings.  Someone once said of the poet William Blake that he was cracked.  Blake’s friend, a preacher, answered, "Yes, but it is the kind of crack that lets in the light." 

Rabbi David Wolpe, author of Why Faith Matters, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

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When my younger brother was my little brother, he opened the door for Elijah each year at the Passover seder.  When he did, my older brother walked in.  The next year the dog ran in; the next year a broom, leaned against the door, fell in.  A good time was had by all except, perhaps, my younger brother.  Actually, he is a great sport.

Here is the point, however.  The next year, we did nothing.  Because now he was too old to believe that Elijah might actually come through the door so the joke had lost its point.  So much of what we take for granted – miracles, redemption, the certainty of prayers answered – simply passes away with maturity that we look at our emptying hands and wonder what is left?

It is almost Hanukkah.  Did the oil burn?  Does it matter?  After all, for the Creator of the universe to make oil last for eight days is hardly a shattering phenomenon; it is more on the order of an inventive housewife making the bit of hamburger meat stretch through the week.  Admirable, to be sure, but miraculous?

So we reorient our sense of the miracle.  Here is another version of what the miracle might mean, and how faith can matter:  British Rabbi Hugo Gryn tells story of being in a concentration camp in 1944.  At a certain point in winter he relates, "My father took me and some friends to a corner in the barracks.  Announcing it was eve of Hanukkah, he produced a small clay bowl and began to light a wick immersed in his precious, but now melted margarine ration.  Before he could recite the blessing I protested at his waste of food.  He looked at me, then the lamp, and finally said ‘You and I have seen that it is possible to live up to three weeks without food.  We once lived almost three days without water.  But you cannot live properly for three minutes without hope.’"

Is that a miracle?  Not if your definition is a breaking of the natural order.

In growing we start to look at what miraculous means, what our history and tradition mean, with different eyes.  I am tempted to say "with grown-up eyes."  There is a childishness to the theology that always accuses God when the world will not cooperate with us.  Tomorrow, how this theology got shaped in my life through my wife’s cancer, and my own bout with both a brain tumor and lymphoma.  No long stories of disease, I promise.  No unsubtle pleas for sympathy. 

OK, maybe a little.

Rabbi David Wolpe, author of Why Faith Matters, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

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Title: Man's Search for Meaning Author: Viktor Frankl Description: There are a handful of books that belong to the human race. A few such books emerged from the holocaust: Elie Wiesel's Night, Anne Frank's diary, and Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz. Alongside these distillations of the wisdom and brutality of human beings stands this short book by a psychiatrist, the founder of logotherapy. This is the book to hand to someone who believes life is empty, meaningless, worthless. One can truly say of Frankl, whose penetrating wisdom shines through these pages, what Andre Malraux said to Whittaker Chambers: "You have not returned from hell with empty hands." Recommended By: Rabbi David Wolpe is the Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, California. He lectures widely at universities, synagogues and institutes throughout the country, and he was named "one of the fifty most influential Jews in America" by the Forward. In 2004 he delivered the keynote for the General Assembly of Jewish leaders. Rabbi Wolpe is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers on subjects of Jewish and general religious interest. His columns run in Jewish newspapers throughout the country. His own writings, as well as profiles and reviews of his work, have appeared in such publications as Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, and many others. He has also been a frequent television guest, including appearances on PBS, CNN and CBS This Morning as a commentator on spiritual questions. He has been featured most recently in a series on A&E called Mysteries of the Bible. Rabbi Wolpe is the author of six books: The Healer of Shattered Hearts: A Jewish View of God, In Speech and In Silence: The Jewish Quest for God, Teaching your Children About God, Why Be Jewish?, Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times, and Floating Takes Faith: Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World.

The New Jew Canon is a long-term project that seeks to canonize essential Jewish (and some Non-Jewish) reads as recommended by extraordinary rabbis, experts, and cultural leaders. Suggestions are welcome via comments or tips.

Previously: A Tale of Love and Darkness, recommended by Danny Maseng

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