Is the poem about the irony of meeting your neighbor only when building a wall between you, or is it a metaphor for constructing social fences between people? Social fences make good relationships?

There are several religious Jewish families in our neighborhood. We’re even friendly with some of them. We recently saw some of these Jewish daughters hanging out with some teenage boys who are not Jewish. Normal for a secular teenage girl, unusual for a religious one. Then they were playing some kind of game that kids play. But one of the non-Jewish boys was overheard taunting one of the girls, “You can’t touch me because you’re Jewish!” I’m certain that he didn’t make that up. Good fences…. Maybe he meant good fences as opposed to bad fences. The narrator’s voice comes across as critical of the wall, but acknowledges that his neighbor’s belief in the wall comes from his father – that is, from tradition. He has a tradition that good fences make good neighbors, but he may not know why. Another Jewish fence besides the touching thing is the looking thing. If you have a significant someone in your life, man or woman, how do you feel when he or she looks at other women or men? How would it feel if you were absolutely certain that he or she never had eyes for anyone else?

How do you yourself feel when you're playing the seeker?

That feeling is totally physical. There is nothing spiritual about it. Once, after hearing me say this, some guy challenged me -”Isn’t it possible to look at a woman and just appreciate her beauty without it being sexual?” Well, I guess theoretically, but not practical for 99.9999995 percent of the men out there.
Meaning, there are approximately three dozen men on the entire planet who can pull it off. Judaism says that if you look merely at a woman-who’s-not-your-wife’s little finger in an aroused way, you are objectifying her, which is bad for you. Makes you more of an animal, less of a holy soul. What’s a poor fella to do? Well, he could start by finding a soul mate. And with her channel all of that physical energy into a synergistic spiritual fusion that can only happen when you’ve made a binding commitment to each other. A soul mate isn’t the solution, but she can help. Like any addiction, the surest way out of the wandering eye syndrome is a 12-step method. The first step is to admit you have a problem. So men (and women) should at least be honest. Instead of “just looking” they should say, “Just lusting”. It’s not going to make your partner feel better, but it’s the way to start. Here’s a little exercise you can do: next time you're out there – try counting how many times in one hour you wander after your eyes. Then challenge yourself to go an entire hour without seeking. As usual, please share your results below!

This is my final guest blog of the week. Thank you to Jewcy for inviting me and thank you everyone for welcoming me here. Your comments and feedback have been always interesting, at times uplifting and occasionally moving. I will continue to blog my Friday Table Talk over at my usual space, (if there is enough clamor, maybe the good folks at Jewcy will invite me back some time!) Please stay in touch, and don't forget to check out the book that everyone's talking about.

Wishing you a truly Shabbat Shalom.

PS – Does anyone remember Opus the Penguin?

The post “Just L—ing!” appeared first on Jewcy.

An investor wrote me that he stopped reading the financial section on Saturday morning. It works for him. For one day, he stops thinking about earning money. He has in fact liberated himself from a certain kind of slavery. So ask yourself and your friends and family: what’s one thing that you do all week that you would like to liberate yourself from? (Please let me know what you come up with.) Then give yourself and each other permission to stop doing that activity for 24+ hours, a few minutes before sunset Friday until a few minutes after sunset Saturday. Shalom means harmony. Shabbat Shalom means the harmony of mind you get when you allow yourself to stop.

What is one thing that you have a hard time stopping, that you know it would be good for your soul to take a break from once a week? Please share below.

The post Please Just STOP!!! appeared first on Jewcy.

• A mitzvah is not a good deed.
• A mitzvah is not a commandment.
• A mitzvah is not helping someone.
• There are not 613 mitzvahs or mitzvot.

I'm not saying that a mitzvah isn't related to good deeds, but they are not the same.

So what is it already? A mitzvah is a certain type of transcendent connection that you create when you do some actions (such as good deeds) with the right frame of mind. Let's take the most basic example: You're walking outside and a stranger asks you for a handout. You give him a dollar. Did you do a mitzvah? Let's say for the sake of discussion that he uses the money to buy food to stay alive.

Survey says: You definitely did a good deed. But you didn't do a mitzvah!

It's not a mitzvah until you have in mind as you had him the dollar that you're doing a holy act that unites heaven and earth and imitates God as it were. A person can spend their entire life helping others and never do a mitzvah. If you are doing good things without knowing it, without consciously choosing, it means that you had parents who gave you good habits. It doesn't make you a spiritually-oriented person.

Judaism says that you were put on this planet for a purpose. Actually, you have two purposes, your meta-purpose and your specific purpose. Your meta-purpose is the same as mine, it is the general purpose of human existence. Your specific purpose is the details of how you are going to realize that meta-purpose.

Our meta-purpose is to transcend the auto-pilot and perceive the hand of God in every transaction of Nature and of Man. What makes this constant awareness so hard is that we have these bodies that have physical cravings and distract us from the spiritual awareness. One solution to this problem is to unite body and mind by focusing like a laser on the transcendence of the body's action. To put it simply, when I do a mitzvah with the proper focus – called kavanah – I am fulfilling my purpose in this life (in at least the general sense).

Now, how many mitzvahs are there? As I mentioned above, if you say 613, then you've come to the right blog to get your head fixed. Before I tell you the actual number, let's clarify one point: regardless of the number, the fact that there are a set number of mitzvahs means that there are x number of channels through which you can connect your physical existence to the Source in order that your existence be meaningful and not a pointless sham.

Each one of those channels is a unique opportunity to give your life transcendent meaning. So, for instance, giving tzeddakah gives you a different connection than not eating meat and cheese together.

But the uniqueness of a mitzvah compared to another mitzvah is only one facet. Another facet is the way you give tzedakah (or any other mitzvah). Your way is different from the way in which I do it. In order for us to bring the world into harmony, the world needs both your expression and mine of that mitzvah. If either of us fails to do a mitzvah, then our collective karma is lacking one connection that it would have otherwise had.

Therefore the true number of mitzvahs is really 613 times the number of Jewish people. Your mitzvahs affect me and mine affect you.

A mitzvah to the soul is like food to the body: it's good for you to do, but how you do it is just as important as what you do.

Below are three videos to compare and contrast. The first is a player piano recording of Scott Joplin himself playing "Maple Leaf Rag". It's undoubtedly a work of genius.

The second is a human being playing the same song. Which is more enjoyable for you to watch?

The third is a different human playing a different fast song.

What do you think? It seems to me that the contrast between these performances compares to doing a mitzvah on auto-pilot versus with all your heart and soul. You can test this: In the next 30 minutes, try to find a mitzvah to do, and do it with the awareness that you are creating a transcendental connection while you do it. Then let us know below on how it went.

The post What’s a Mitzvah and What’s the Difference? appeared first on Jewcy.

A. Idolatry B. The destruction of the Temple C. Persecutions D. False messiahs E. Economic prosperity F. None of the above

What do you say? I vote for F, none of the above. This is because I believe that the greatest stumbling block to Jewish spirituality in all of Jewish history was… A guy named Michelangelo. Well, it wasn’t really him as much as something he created: Michelangelo gave us (quite literally!) a cartoon image of God. Do you know what I’m talking about? The Sistine Chapel image of God creating Adam? God is depicted as an old man with a long white beard:

So for the past 500 years we have been saddled with this cartoon image, and the word “God” has become for many associated with the old man and long white beard. If you think about it, though, didn’t Michelangelo have a point? After all, it says in Genesis that God made Man in His image….So doesn’t that mean that God looks like us? Well, no. The God that Jews have always imagined is an Infinite, unknowable…something. I don’t even want to say “being” because the word “being” like any word, begins to define or limit God and we’re talking about something that is non-definable, not finite, a.k.a., infinite. So, when Moses asks to see God in Exodus 13, God says, “No one can see my face and live” – this limit of human perception is consistent with an Infinite God. A close reading of Genesis leads to an even deeper idea about God. Genesis describes humanity as made “in the image of God”. So according to the Torah, it is we who have God’s characteristics, not the other way around. Yes, God has a “hand”, but our hand is only an image of that. We don’t know what God’s “hand” looks like because our entire perception is trapped within the framework of this physical realm, and God is transcendent.

Therefore, the only way for us to glimpse what is meant by God’s hand is via some kind of transcendental technique, such as meditation. That’s what Micah and Isaiah and other sages were doing when they glimpsed God. But they weren’t seeing God’s essence, only a spiritual projection that is more subtle than this finite world (which is also a projection) but not God’s true essence, which is likened to seeing God’s face.

In other words, God isn't anthropomophic. We are theomorphic.

I’ll end these holy thoughts with two tools, one practical and one amusing. The practical tool is a superb on-line test you can take at beliefnet.com to determine your religious affinity. It is remarkably well-designed; someone put a lot of thought into it. Here’s the online test. After you take it, please share your results in the comments section below. My own results were a surprise, which I'll share after a few other people get a chance to comment.

The amusing tool is this video series on youtube – the later episodes are not quite Jewish, but the first one (below) is universal. If you subscribe to my Friday Table Talk blog then you saw this already.

Roll over Michelangelo. The God of the 21st Century wears black-rim frames and sports a goatee. Tomorrow: What’s a mitzvah and what difference does it make?

The post Your Greatest Stumbling Block appeared first on Jewcy.