Should they be remembered & honored -- or forgotten, put aside & ignored?

We live in a "throwaway society." Everything is about youth! So many products are created or in most cases tweaked to push back the hands of time. Skin treatments, plastic surgery, body contouring, instant weight loss miracles. The latest craze is testosterone, the answer to everything.

Everything is done to avoid aging and getting "old." It seems when a worker reaches 50 years old, they are considered obsolete, useless, especially when a company can hire younger workers cheaper. There is a great difference between being smart and being wise. Hopefully we become wiser as we age. Being old is not a crime. The real crime is the treatment of these workers and people.

Corporations are always concerned about profit. By ridding themselves of older workers, they are shooting themselves in the foot. Older workers bring wisdom and experience to the market place. They know how to connect to clients on a personal level and build trust and integrity. They take responsibility and have loyalty. Think of how much money and the number of hours spent recruiting and training people who leave or are laid off every few years, or even months. Acting in this manner kills creativity. Everyone wants to be safe. There is no mentoring of younger workers by those with experience. 

There is a very high suicide rate for men in their fifties, men who used to be thought of as prime-age workers at the peak of their experience and ability.

● From 1999 to 2010, rates of suicide overall have gone up, but the steepest rise was for midlife men.

● In those years, suicide rate rose from 20.6 per 100,000 to 30.7 per 100,000.

Our nation has been promoting market solutions that pit midlife employees against younger (or overseas) workers to drive down wages, benefits and job protections in a race to the bottom!

 It is ironic, that despite our longevity, too many Americans are suffering from a very shortened working life. The message to younger workers is a dismal one. The American dream has faded.

This is an ethical and socioeconomic evil, leading to missed productivity and creativity, lost spending power, family disintegration, suicides and loss of hope. Is this what people risk their lives to get to this country for? Is this the model we want to present to our children of a bleak future?

Do not let "profit" destroy the richness that experience and wisdom can bring to our workplace, our society and our lives. If your lucky, you'll get old too!! 

Mark your calendar -- Thursday August 21^st -- is National Senior Citizens Day in America. It is the day to acknowledge the contributions made by senior citizens in communities across the USA. It is the time to recognize the longest survivors. When life is valued above profits in a society, those who have lived the longest are remembered and honored -- not forgotten, put aside & ignored. Maybe the fact that millions look forward to Black Friday, while most people don’t seem to know anything about National Senior Citizens Day, National Parent’s Day or Constitution & Citizens Day -- sends a message about the values of our society.

Choose Life by Doing TOV!

Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor

President

TOV Center, Inc.

Without a shared standard – who can you trust?

When I was growing up, there was a TV show, hosted by Johnny Carson called, "Who Do You Trust?" Back then, it appeared that there were many people to trust, the policeman, the fireman, the government, your doctor, your bank and banker, your religious authority, your neighbor, those companies and corporations whose products and services you bought with great loyalty. Today, we find we can trust none of these! How can we trust any of these entities when they all commit such terrible acts against us all? 

● Corporations have no problem creating unhealthy dangerous products because of the great profits they bring. They treat their workers as expendable because they can always find someone who will work for less.

● How can there be any respect for religious values when religious authority plays shell games trying to hide child molesters only concerned with their power and authority?

● Banks have always been involved in manipulating markets and history itself for their own gains.

● Politics and politicians are a Joke! I heartily agree with the tee shirt that says, " Politicians and Diapers need to be changed often... for the Same reason."

● And our neighbors? I cannot tell you how many people I run into that tell me about their neighborhoods growing up. They knew those people on their block, they would leave their doors unlocked, kids would be playing outside. If someone was in trouble, they would help. Now we have people standing around recording some crime on their cell phones while someone is being beaten or burning to death in a car!

What made that time different? What made the "greatest generation " great? They chose to live with common values. That does not mean they did everything right, but they took responsibility, they had integrity. They understood "community." There was what is known in Jewish tradition as "Yirat Shamayim", the fear of heaven. They knew that their choices would affect the rest of the community. Today there is only ME, the individual. There is no WE and without WE, there is no ME!

For many years, Jim Myers and I have been working together to find ways to change this situation. We found an important part of the solution in the Torah in Genesis 1 -- the TOV Standard. It is a values standard – a spiritual and NOT a "religious" tool. It is a yardstick of behavior and values for both the individual and the common good. I have become a "Communitarian." My actions are guided by the TOV Standard in the way I view myself and the rest of creation.

You will be hearing much more about the TOV Standard very soon -- and how it will help people repair and transform lives, communities -- and even our world.

It’s time to replace BS with VS

(BS = countless conflicting Belief Systems; VS = a shared Values Standard)

Rabbi Leynor

The Saddest Day on the Jewish Calendar

Tisha B'Av (the ninth of Av) is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. It was supposedly a pre-ordained day of tragedy for the Jewish people. Countless calamities are remembered: the destruction of both Temples, the expulsions from England and Spain, the start of World War I, the Warsaw ghetto uprising, to name a few.

Reading the histories of many peoples, I find many celebrations of victories, but few that recall defeats and calamities. In ancient times, kings would create grand monuments of their victories in battle and their accomplishments, but not their defeats or losses. 

Judaism has a practical approach to these matters. It recognizes both the wins and the losses. This reflects our own humanity and the ebb and flow of our lives. We suffer and celebrate, win and lose.

Both provide valuable lessons for the choices we make. It is not the victories, but the defeats and failures which have the most influence and enable us to be resilient. It is wonderful to be able to celebrate a victory with joy, but only a grown up adult man or woman can find and utilize the losses for personal and spiritual growth by reframing what went wrong, adjusting to the situation and walk away with a life changing approach and action.

The TOV calendar advocates a day or days that confront our defeats, losses and failures. Psychologically and emotionally this helps us to be healthier by facing the darkness and the fears we encounter. It brings us together with others who are not afraid to confront the darkness and do the activities that will create light.

Those who can face loss and learn, are the ones who progress as people and bring the world closer to redemption by committing to do acts of TOV, acts that meet the Creator’s Standard:

Acts that protect human life, preserve human life, make human life more functional, and/or increase the quality of human life.

We do acts of TOV whether we win or we lose.

Tisha B'Av begin today at sundown and last until tomorrow at sundown.

Choose Life By Doing TOV!

Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor

Standing at our Trees of the Knowledge of TOV & RA

As I was reading Genesis 1, I noticed something that had not occurred to me before. Adam and Eve are standing in front of the tree of the knowledge of TOV (good) and RA (evil). They know that they are told not to eat from the tree. That was their boundary. When I was very young, I used to think that there was some type of magic in the fruit. I later understood that there was no magic. What they learned, was that they could disobey. From that moment on, every choice they made led to anger, violence and death.

It is interesting, that for each of us, we stand before that tree every day and make our choices knowing that even when we make a choice for TOV, there are consequences. Making the choice to create TOV or RA is an everyday affair.

This approach allows us to learn a valuable lesson from a very ancient story. We need a standard, a yardstick with which to measure our actions. We need to understand that our decisions have great impact on our lives and the lives of others. The message of the TOV Standard – acts that are pleasing to the eye, protects life, preserves life, makes life more functional, and/or increase the quality of life -- established in Genesis 1, repeats itself throughout our common Biblical heritage.

In Jewish tradition, we as a people and as individuals stand at Sinai and accept the instruction of Torah not only at the Festival of Shavuot, but every day. In the same way, all humans stand before the tree and decide whether they will choose TOV or RA, light or darkness, life or death every day. We have the instructions – let’s choose life.

Choose Life By Doing TOV!

Rabbi Leynor

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The calendar reflects the seasons of our lives

I was teaching someone who is in the process of conversion about the Jewish calendar and I mentioned that in a number of ways, the calendar reflects the seasons of our lives. It is an all-encompassing journey which includes birth, life, death and rebirth.

● We are required to "remember" those things we have forgotten, those who are no longer by our side and incidents we'd like to forget.  

● We celebrate victories and dance with the Torah, we sit on the floor and by candlelight we read Lamentations and recognize and accept our losses.

● We are required to address the "victims", those we have wronged and be open to others asking for forgiveness for the pain they have caused us.

● We are obligated to reconcile relationships, that's not YAH's problem! We are supposed to recognize injustice and establish Tzedek, righteousness, and bring light and warmth to the cold darkness of winter.

● We celebrate the spring and the life giving rains. We cope with the expulsion from what is familiar to the wilderness.

● We stand before the Creator at the mountain and accept responsibility for ourselves and the rest of creation.

● We recognize that we must recharge our souls every week to maintain our humanity and learn to be grateful, thankful and appreciative for all our blessings and gifts every day. 

Choose Life By Doing TOV!

Rabbi Leynor

If you like this & would like to see more -- 

please "Like" the TOV Center FaceBook Page

by clicking here!

TOV Wisdom - Sex

Imperfect people with issues and imperfect relationships choose to have sex for many different reasons without first considering, discussing or planning for the consequences of that decision.

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please "Like" the TOV Center FaceBook Page

by clicking here!

Leaders and Managers Have Nothing in Common

Managers are one of the core Business Diseases of the Industrial Age. They are a sacred cow that have only been around for a little over a century, but should go away as quickly as possible. Few things are as disruptive, unhelpful, and unproductive in the workplace as managers. 

The manager's worst habits are to a) solve things and b) decide things. No other actions are as debilitating to others. When a manager solves and decides, the only thing left is to delegate tasks to be executed--"put this nut on that bolt, at this rate". But when we delegate tasks, people feel used. Managers who solve and decide things are fundamental in the dehumanizing of the workplace, because tasks are for machines. Leaders do it quite differently. Read the complete article at -- http://www.inc.com/chuck-blakeman/leaders-and-managers-have-nothing-in-common.html?cid=sf01001