Overcoming

By Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie

On the very first Friday of all Fridays, Adam and Eve were created. But the world’s most famous couple was too overwhelmed by the sensory overload of Eden to notice that the sun had set on their first night. Saturday rolled around, first morning, then afternoon. As the sun sank in the sky, their stomachs sank, too—with a feeling that would one day be called fear. They thought the world has ended, that the looming darkness would mean their deaths.

The couple cowered and groaned with fear. The first “Oy!” in history was uttered. But then an angel came down and gave them fire—God's afterthought—and they were no longer afraid of the dark. Life continued! They waited it out, and when the sun rose again, they realized, this is just how it is.

What gets you through your darkest nights?

Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is the founding director of Storahtelling and the spiritual leader of Lab/Shul.

Going Wild

By Josh Lake

It was a canoe trip in Algonquin Park, Ontario. We found an isolated island, set our camp and watched as the sun sank into a lake that made it seem as if there were two sunsets. When the stars appeared, we swam in their reflection. It was a magical evening.

We ate dinner, built a campfire and were confident that we had inhabited the island. Only then did the wild night ring out: “AAAAAAWWOOOOOO.”

The hair on my neck stood up. “AAAAAWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOO.” I reached for my Swiss Army knife in defense.

It was the first time I had heard a wild wolf howl. I was scared; I knew that those wolves were going to attack; they were telling us to be afraid. Their noise meant to warn us.  “AAAAWWWWOOOOOOOOO.”

There was nothing to do but listen.

As I listened I realized my Swiss Army knife was little defense against the 20+ wolves howling. I put it away and was able to hear more clearly for it. They were not saying, “We are going to eat you, you relatives of little Red Riding Hood.” Instead it was clear that they were welcoming us. “This is wilderness, come and learn,” the wolves seemed to say. “Interesting seeing you here. Leave your preconceptions in the city, you are in our home and we welcome you.”

I returned home, changed by this experience and what it had taught me. I knew I had to help others hear what the wolves, and their wilderness, had to say.

What can you do to hear the call of the wild?

Josh Lake is a wilderness advocate and educator living in Portland, Oregon.

This piece was created in partnership with the Foundation for Jewish Camp, whose mission is to help Jewish camps achieve their mission: to create transformative summer experiences – and the Jewish future.

Nothing Twice

By Wislaw Szymborska

Nothing can ever happen twice.

In consequence, the sorry fact is

that we arrive here improvised

and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,

if you're the planet's biggest dunce,

you can't repeat the class in summer:

this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,

no two nights will teach what bliss is

in precisely the same way,

with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue

mentions your name by accident:

I feel as if a rose were flung

into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you're here with me,

I can't help looking at the clock:

A rose? A rose? What could that be?

Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day

with so much needless fear and sorrow?

It's in its nature not to say

Today is always gone tomorrow

With smiles and kisses, we prefer

to seek accord beneath our star,

although we're different (we concur)

just as two drops of water are.

Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow?

Wislawa Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Changemaking

By Sharon Waimberg

It’s Friday afternoon, post-lunch, at summer camp. We’re just starting “Hyde Park,” our weekly, open space discussion that allows each and every member of the camp community the opportunity to state whatever is on his/her mind.

The first camper stands on the speaker’s rock and proclaims, “What happened to Friday morning muffins? I want them back!” Everyone cheers, the staff takes note, and the next camper struts to the rock. And so it goes -- campers want more time for sleep, more sports, free time, dessert, and on and on.  Finally a very young, first time camper takes his turn. In a soft voice he says, “This was the best week of my life.”  Everyone cheers and the session ends.

The campers know what comes next. The staff will need to review, discuss, and decide how and what changes we can implement with them. The big idea we’re modeling is the entire community is empowered to make the changes they believe are necessary. And everyone knows it.

How can you create a change you want to see in your community?

Sharon Waimberg spent 15 years as Executive Director of Habonim Dror Camp Galil in Pennsylvania. 

This piece was created in partnership with the Foundation for Jewish Camp, whose mission is to help Jewish camps achieve their mission: to create transformative summer experiences – and the Jewish future.

Choices

By Oscar Wilde

God knows, I won’t be an Oxford don anyhow. I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious. Or perhaps I’ll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me, too.

What does success mean to you?

Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet.

Knowledge

By ANT

You can see the sparkle in my eyes I live to shine

I believe in faith I took off the blinds

Creation understanding of a nation the golden child I teach with dedication

I walk with knowledge I never went to college

but I can hold my own with any scholar

I am Spartacus blood and sand the gladiator protecting the holy land

David and Goliath the book of Samuel the truth without lies

can you see the sparkle in my eyes the seven seals

and seven trumpets shall be revealed

the vision is real be the diamond in the rough

change the world giving free meals is not enough touch their soul

with the knowledge of old

give your love God knows the sparkle

I see it in your eyes it brings out your smile

you can live free and wild love life shine brighter than starlight

give yourself a chance to be bright

stay away from negative energy it would pull you away

from positive theory kindred the embrace

we're spiritually connected through faith

be the sparkle not hate

judge with kindness life is precious

no more whining only happiness.

What’s the best thing you learned this week?

ANT (full name Mark Anthony Adams) is a lifelong resident of Watts who has been involved in several community groups and is currently an ambassador for L’ocol.

Balance

By Dan Crane

A few years ago, I had lunch with the guy who created MacGyver. No, he didn’t teach me how to defuse a bomb with a stick of bubblegum and a paperclip. He did, however, teach me something interesting about creativity and energy.

“Whenever I have a script to write,” he told me, “I’ll write a question on my whiteboard. For example: 'What happens in Act Three?' Or, 'How would MacGyver escape having to have lunch with this young man?'”

I didn't know what to say to that. I said nothing.

“After that,” he said, “I’ll go build a model airplane.”

It might not surprise you to learn that the guy who created MacGyver builds fleets of model airplanes; but it might surprise you that he does it instead of writing scripts. Let me repeat: INSTEAD OF WRITING SCRIPTS.

He explained: The mind, he proclaimed, does its best creative work while at rest. Posing a question, then going away to do something else, was a way to level off, rest the mind, and let the subconscious take over. Basically, it’s like meditation—with the help of model airplane glue.

“It’s why people say they do their best thinking in the shower,” he said.

After our lunch, I went out and bought a model airplane. One day, I swear I’ll get around to building it.

Is there enough play in your work?

Dan Crane is a journalist, author, comedian, host, musician, and retired competitive air-guitarist. He is the author of To Air is Human: One Man’s Quest to Become the World’s Greatest Air Guitarist.

Building Community

Nicki Pombier Berger

A friend of mine on Facebook has some extreme political views and an extreme interest in expressing them. We were once friends in real life, more than a decade ago, but now he is just a voice online, a welter of words and opinions. In the wake of every outburst I always wonder: what happened?

He was my first college friend. We met in the dorm elevator, Day One. He lived one floor below me, and we evolved a system of communication. He’d blast a song he knew I liked; I’d feel its bass in the cinderblock walls; I’d send a bucket on a string out the window down to him, with a note requesting another. I don’t know whom I hear in our exchanges these days. Sometimes I think I hear the undoing of our past communication, or its unmasking. I thought it was conversation, but maybe he was only ever down there, in the blare of what he wanted to hear, alone.  

How do you build a community without consensus?

Nicki Pombier Berger is a writer in Brooklyn and the co-founder of the Underwater New York literary salon.

Defining Moments

By Wayne Koestenbaum

I’m trying to figure out why — or how — or if — I became intellectual.

One place to begin: the time my mother “pulled a knife” on my father.

The expression “pulled a knife” — is it correct?

I think a kitchen knife.

Certainly a knife from the kitchen drawer.

Probably not a steak knife.

Perhaps a bread knife.

Just a soft-edged, relatively harmless butter knife.

Let’s say she was making a statement.

Her performance had two direct witnesses.

One, my father. He saw her “pull the knife.”

Two, my father’s aunt, Alice.

Seated in a black chair, she was waiting for my father to drive her home.

My father and his Aunt Alice often spoke together in German.

My mother didn’t understand German.

I imagine that she “pulled the knife” as a performance directly aimed at the aunt.

The act — “pulling a knife” — had two other indirect witnesses.

My sister saw it. I saw it. We were standing in the hallway. Later, we talked about the incident.

It has become, for us, a touchstone.

“The time Mom pulled a knife on Dad”: that scene is a card we sometimes play; a trick we pull out of our hat; a piece of evidence.

[From “Heidegger’s Mistress,” Guilt and Pleasure, Issue 2, Spring 2006]

What is a childhood experience that became a touchstone for you?

Wayne Koestenbaum is an American poet and critic whose works include The Queen's Threat and Jackie Under My Skin.

Being Aware

By Carl Jung

Anybody whose calling it is to guide souls should have his own soul guided first, so that he knows what it means to deal with the human soul. Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people. It would not help you very much to study books only, though it is indispensable, too. But it would help you most to have a personal insight into the secrets of the human soul. Otherwise everything remains a clever intellectual trick, consisting of empty words and leading to empty talk. If you have a close friend, try to look behind his or her screen in order to discover yourself. That would be a good beginning.

Can you help others understand themselves before you understand yourself?

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychoanalyst and author.

Coincidence

By Ben Greenman

I dreamed there was a painting called James Brown’s Prison Shoes, and it showed just a bunk and then six pairs beneath it, each pair squared off so perfectly that they were like one thing, and the six things parked like cars in a rich man’s garage, green leather, red leather, brown leather, black leather, black leather, black leather. It was a strange thing to dream about: a painting. In the dream I was just standing in front of it, wondering whether I would be shown other paintings as well. I was not.

A few weeks later I read a poem by Terrance Hayes that also mentioned those same shoes. Were I more rational or less interested in invisible wires making invisible networks, I would have assumed that he had run across a mention of the shoes in a news article, or biography, or television special at roughly the same time that I had, and that the seed had produced two sprouts in two different minds. But I was not particularly rational that day, and so I wondered if he had dreamed the same dream.

Do you think two people can have the same thought at the same time?

Ben Greenman is a New York Times-bestselling author who has written both fiction and nonfiction.

Awakening

By B.J. Miller

We all need a reason to wake up. For me, it was 11,000 volts of electricity. One night, sophomore year of college, a few friends and I were out on the town; one thing led to another, and we decided to climb a parked commuter train. Fun, no? I scurried up the ladder on the back, and when I stood up, whammo!  The current arced to my metal wristwatch, entered my arm, and blew down and out my feet. I lost half of an arm and both legs below the knee. I spent a few months recovering in the St Barnabas burn unit in Livingston, NJ. One day, several weeks in to the affair, it began to snow. I was told it was coming down hard and pretty. Around that time, a friend of mine smuggled a snowball into the burn unit for me. I cannot tell you the rapture I felt. The sensation of coldness on my skin, the miracle of it as I watched it melt to water. In that moment, I was amazed enough to be any part of this planet in this universe that whether I lived or died became irrelevant.

Are you awake—really awake—right now?

B.J. Miller is a pain doctor and the Senior Director and Advocate of Zen Hospice Project.

Talent

By Nicole Spector

As a child I never cared for poetry because I felt I couldn’t write it right. It employed structures that felt menacingly mathematical. Stanzas and couplets—how could I remember all that? I preferred the straightforward sloppiness of prose. But when I was 13, I discovered Sylvia Plath and became obsessed. I wrote poems that mirrored her style exactly and gave them to my mother, who read mostly Anne Rice. “Read this Sylvia Plath poem,” I would say.  

She would. “I think you wrote this,” she would say. Bad answer.

Eventually I went to the Ouija board to share my newfound talent with dead relatives. One had helped me find lost jewelry in the past.

“Stick to stories,” a spirit told me.
 

When is the last time you tried or dedicated yourself to something that doesn’t come easily to you?

Nicole Spector is a writer and journalist living in New York. She is the author of Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray.

Communication

By Theodore Dreiser

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. Here were these two, bandying little phrases, drawing purses, looking at cards, and both unconscious of how inarticulate all their real feelings were. Neither was wise enough o be sure of the workings of the mind of the other. He could not tell how his luring succeeded. She could not realize that she was drifting, until he secured her address. Now she felt that she had yielded something—he, that he had gained a victory. Already they felt that they were somehow associated. Already he took control in directing the conversation. His words were easy. Her manner was relaxed.

In the century-plus since this passage was written, how has technology changed the way we communicate? 

Theodore Dreiser was a novelist who wrote such works as Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy.

Family

By Andy Corren

Mom has a plus-sized can of Maxwell House Coffee clutched to her bosoms, one of those Costco-sized cans you buy for your office, or your camper, or for visiting one of your sons at the Hyde Correctional Institution. Which she has had to do once. Okay, four or five times. Mom doesn’t drink coffee—it makes her paranoid. I sense things are amiss. Why would she carry an entire barrel of coffee on the plane, all the way from Miami to Newport News to Kill Devil Hills? She knows full well you can buy whole beans at the Food Lion for $4.99 a pound. Renay Mandel Corren clearly has a plan.

All I want to do with what’s left of this non-celebratory Passover day is curl up on the couch, watch TV with my probably-gay nephew, gently program him with correct homosexual diction.

I’m too old for my mom to plan for me. So I pretend I don’t see “Free Haggadah With Purchase!” written on the front of the coffee tub. I pretend I don’t see her ripping open a cellophane bag filled with tiny little Jewish hand booklets, and strewing them over the table, her eyes glowing with an unaccustomed religious fervor.

“I didn’t buy it for the coffee!” she triumphantly exults, “I bought it for the free Passover kit!”

Have you ever had a total holiday fail? What did you learn from it?

Andy Corren is a talent manager and playwright in Los Angeles.

Reflecting

It’s time to take stock of your year. It’s happening this week in a financial sense, as you pay taxes. But it’s also happening right here in the Friday sense, with the help of these five questions. Answer them quickly and accurately, and then spend your evening thinking about your answers.

This week's content is brought to you by 10Q, a Reboot project that engages you annually in a series of contemplative questions around the Jewish High Holidays.

----------------------------

Describe a significant experience that has happened in the past year. How did it affect you? Are you grateful? Relieved? Resentful? Inspired?

Is there something that you wish you had done differently this past year? Alternatively, is there something you're especially proud of from this past year?

Think about a milestone that happened with your family this past year. How has this affected you?

Describe an event in the world that has impacted you this year. How? Why?

Have you had any particularly spiritual experiences this past year? How has this experience affected you? (“Spiritual” can be broadly defined to include secular spiritual experiences: artistic, cultural, and so forth.)

Moving On

By Jonathan Ames

I was going to write that my heart feels less now that I’m older. I thought this because I was recalling how I used to weep while listening to Cat Stevens. I was eighteen and my heart was broken and I was driving my car on a long trip and for hours I would just play over and over my Cat Stevens album, which was, I believe, Tea for the Tillerman, and all the while I would cry, thinking about the girl I had lost.

So as I sat down to write just now, I didn’t think I could cry like that any more. But I put on a Cat Stevens greatest hits album to reacquaint myself with the music, and maybe because it’s first thing in the morning and I’m tired, but, in my mind, I was back in that car, I was eighteen again, except I was imagining what it would be like to lose someone now, and I felt the tears coming. I felt like I could weep. I didn’t, but I could have. I turned off the music and the water left my eyes and my heart closed; that is, it went back to normal.

There’s something a bit seductive, though, about crying. I sort of wish I hadn’t stopped myself. But I guess it would be melodramatic to cry about a heartbreak that hasn’t happened. Recently I was terribly worried about something that could possibly occur in the future — something that could go wrong, a small personal disaster — and a friend of mine, quoting some Hindu text, said, “The problem that hasn’t happened yet does not exist.” I like that quote; it’s been very helpful lately. [From “Cat Stevens,” Guilt and Pleasure, Issue 6, Fall 2007]

Do you allow fear of the unknown to impact your decisions?

Jonathan Ames is the author of a number of books, including Wake Up Sir, and the creator of the HBO show Bored to Death.

Tech

By Ben Greenman

Everyone knocks technology, especially social networking. Everyone worries that the Internet is giving us a false sense of connection while in fact creating new kinds of separation and isolation. Everyone worries that sites like Twitter and Facebook are encouraging us to curate our lives rather than be honest about them, to present ourselves in a favorable light to others rather than keep our own counsel. Everyone wants to lament that children today are harmed by the immediate gratification of sites like Wikipedia. None of this is true. The Internet and particularly social networking is the greatest means ever invented to represent ourselves authentically. The notion of human identity—of the individual—is stronger than it has ever been, thanks to the Internet.

Is this an April Fool’s piece?

Ben Greenman is a bestselling author who has written both fiction and nonfiction.

Creating a Ritual

By Allan Gerson and Daniela Gerson

A Shabbat haiku:

A shot of lightness

Sent to all your dearest ones

Before sun goes down

How do you do a Shabbat haiku?

Write what's on your mind about the week that was, or the moment that is now. Don't worry about style or conforming to haiku's ancient rules. Keep it short and sweet. Prepare for your day of rest by spreading warmth to those you love. Maybe even send your haiku to friends and family.

Allan Gerson is a retired attorney and author; Daniela Gerson, his daughter, is the community engagement editor at the Los Angeles Times.

Waking Up

By Julie Hermelin

I picked at the bandage of my new tattoo. When we decided to get the tattoos that morning, I sketched something quickly on a napkin while we ate our eggs. “What’s that?” Joy asked. “Just something I’ve been doodling.” I didn’t mention that to my eyes the six points made up an abstract Jewish star bursting open. When the tattoo artist offered to put special “glow in the dark” ink in the center, I eagerly accepted.

How do you awaken?

Julie Hermelin is a storyteller, idea generator, filmmaker, and co-founder of Momstamp. She lives in LA with her three monkey children.