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Rosh Ha'Shanah and Yom Kippur 5777: Downsizing Reflections

(Sunday at sundown, October 2, 2016, is the beginning of Rosh Ha'Shanah – the beginning of the new year of 5777.)

Well, Here I am. My kids are grown and moving out and on with their lives. (Thank you Lord!) The home for the last 16 years is being readied to go on the market. We just don't realize how much "stuff" we accumulate over the years, PLUS, all the "important things" we've shlepped around with us from before! This period of my life was at once one of the happiest and saddest, highest and lowest. Everything accumulated here had a special meaning. This was Karen's home, I moved in when we married. This was "HOME!"

For many, going through all those "things" is a drag, for others, a nightmare, for others still, a trauma of letting go of anything! For me though, this experience was one of growth, wonder, pleasure and pain. I would say that the whole episode was cathartic, freeing and even spiritual. Bags and bags of recycling, shredding, garbage, selling off items and giving away what I didn't, or never used. It was like taking a huge, deep breath from my soul and expelling that breath, with all the things that needed to go.

One of my most awesome finds was a set of journals covering various years from 1982 to the 2000s. Reading through these was like traveling through time. I'm amazed at how many things and people I'd forgotten. In so many ways, I'm still that person from 40 years ago, but in other ways, now totally different.

It's an interesting exercise shedding things that at one time were so important, but now just extra un-needed baggage, projects, even dreams hopes and relationships. I've forgotten more people than I remember! I held on to a few letters and cards where the feelings gushed with thanks and praise from admirers and also letters which tore me new one! A great balance.

Over these years, I learned the meaning of real love and learned (still learning) to be more patient and forgiving (except when I drive), to acknowledge when I damage a relationship and take responsibility for repair and reconciliation when possible, to finally let go and divest those things I have no use for, or that no longer serve me. I know what I do well and now am able to do those things on a daily basis. I feel more hopeful, thankful, appreciative and grateful for my myriads of blessings and I am enjoying my life and looking forward to what awaits in a new place, with new adventures and experiences teaching and bringing people together to create TOV!

Rosh Ha' Shanah concludes  with a beautiful ceremony called TASHLICH, usually people come with bread to a stream, pond, river or ocean and toss the bread into the water to symbolically cast away "sins", the "baggage", reading the words of the Prophet Ezekiel. This is a time for renewal of commitment to Life, To TOV, to Loving more and growing more, to help do TIKKUN OLAM, REPAIR THE WORLD AND REPAIR OURSELVES!

In the New Year, please consider becoming a Friend of The TOV Center. It enables Jim and I to Teach, Train and Mentor People and Groups to join together to create opportunities -- TO PROTECT LIFE, PRESERVE LIFE, MAKE LIFE MORE FUNCTIONAL AND INCREASE IT'S QUALITY WITH TRANSPARENCY!!!

To everyone, L'Shanah TOVAH! A Good, Healthy, Successful and Happy year to come!

Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor

We Must Not Abandon Equality

“The Declaration of Independence matters because it helps us see that we cannot have freedom without equality. It is out of an egalitarian commitment that a people grows — a people that is capable of protecting us all collectively, and each of us individually, from domination. If the Declaration can stake a claim to freedom, it is only because it is so clear-eyed about the fact that the people’s strength resides in its equality.” Read compete blog at -- http://tovcenter.blogspot.com/2016/09/we-must-not-abandon-equality.html

We Must Not Abandon Equality

“The Declaration of Independence matters because it helps us see that we cannot have freedom without equality. It is out of an egalitarian commitment that a people grows — a people that is capable of protecting us all collectively, and each of us individually, from domination. If the Declaration can stake a claim to freedom, it is only because it is so clear-eyed about the fact that the people’s strength resides in its equality.

“The Declaration also conveys another lesson of paramount importance. It is this: language is one of the most potent resources each of us has for achieving our own political empowerment. The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence grasped the power of words. This reveals itself in the laborious processes by which they brought the Declaration, and their revolution, into being. It shows itself forcefully, of course, in the text’s own eloquence.

“When we think about how to achieve political equality, we have to attend to things like voting rights and the right to hold office. We have to foster economic opportunity and understand when excessive material inequality undermines broad democratic political participation. But we also have to cultivate the capacity of citizens to use language effectively enough to influence the choices we make together. The achievement of political equality requires, among other things, the empowerment of human beings as language-using creatures.

“Equality and liberty — these are the summits of human empowerment; they are the twinned foundations of democracy. . . .

“Political philosophers have generated the view that equality and freedom are necessarily in tension with each other. As a public, we have swallowed this argument whole. We think we are required to choose between freedom and equality. Our choice in recent years has tipped toward freedom. Under the general influence of libertarianism, both parties have abandoned our Declaration; they have scorned our patrimony. Such a choice is dangerous. If we abandon equality, we lose the single bond that makes us a community, that makes us a people with the capacity to be free collectively and individually in the first place.”

Source: Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality by Danielle Allen © 2014l Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York, NY; pp. 21, 23.

Dr. Danielle Allen is a professor of government at Harvard University and director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. We highly recommend this book.

“TOV” is one of the most important words in the Bible

It is one of the most important words found in the “The Torah’s Wisdom of the Beginnings” (Genesis 1 – 11:9). TOV will appear seven times in the first chapter of Genesis. If you're reading any section of the Hebrew Bible and notice a word that comes up a lot, count the number of times. The sevenfold or the tenfold repetition of a word is called a leitwort -- a recurring word that becomes thematic.¹  These words are important and provide clues that reveal the purpose behind the message of the author. Read the complete article at -- http://www.tovcenter.org/tov.html

Local Heroes Doing TOV in Dallas Texas

Today I had the honor and the pleasure of meeting some outstanding people who are clearly doing TOV and want to tell you about them.

Richard Miles founded Miles of Freedom – “Bridging the Gap from Prison and Promise.” Richard was wrongfully convicted of murder and aggravated assault and spent 15 years in prison before being exonerated. Miles of Freedom provides training, guidance, mentoring and a whole host of other things for people making the adjustment to life outside prison -- Job Readiness program, Professionalism, Financial Literacy, Group Therapy to EQUIP, EMPOWER AND EMPLOY ex-cons. He is a mensch with a beautiful heart and soul who is making such a tremendous difference in so many lives. My friend Brad Boa introduced us and brought us together to see how we can work with one another to move Dallas forward. I hope to bring the TOV Center mission and TOV Model to others as a new option for bringing people together to solve specific problems and resolve issues.

Also met Alex Gillan of Vertical Life Farms, working on helping people learn about producing their own food using Urban Aquaponics – solutions that grow food in an urban environment.  

Visited one of my former students, Danny Nanasi and his great crew at Think Branded Media doing excellent videos and other projects -- “We blur the line between an advertising agency and video production company. Our core competency is conceptualizing and creating video content. A decade of experience producing for brands and agencies allows us to tell your story uniquely and authentically.”

I learned about Cafe Momentum, run by Chef Chad Houser who teaches at risk kids every aspect of running a restaurant. Café Momentum’s program teaches critical skills that allow youth to apply what they have been taught in pre-release programs in a safe, real-world environment of nurturing accountability. By participating in our program, at-risk young people rotate through every aspect of the restaurant from waiting tables to washing dishes, while working side-by-side with established chefs.

I will keep you updated on all the TOVMAKERS I meet – people who are PROTECTING LIFE, PRESERVING LIFE, MAKING LIFE MORE FUNCTIONAL, INCREASING THE QUALITY OF LIFE and PROMOTING TRANSPARENCY OF ACTIONS.

Conflicting and unexamined Beliefs, Opinions, and Truths will never bring people together to make the world better. A TOV EMERGENCE – Networked People with Shared Time-Tested TOV Values and Standard that puts Life First – has the potential power to produce systemic changes on that magnitude! 

If you liked this blog, please take a moment to visit the TOV Center Facebook Page and “Like It” -- click here .

If you would like to help us do this work by making a donation or becoming a TOV Team Member and becoming part of the solution – click here.

Shalom,

Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor

Perfection, Perfection

Krista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster and New York Times bestselling author. In her latest book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, she tells a story about Father Kilian McDonnell, the monk of St. John’s Abbey. He had become a globe-trotting theological ambassador after growing up in the backwoods of South Dakota. In his seventies, he became a fairly successful published poet. Ms. Tippett included the poem below in her book (pp. 20-21).

Perfection, Perfection

I have had it with perfection.

I have packed my bags,

I am out of here.

Gone.

As certain as rain

will make you wet,

perfection will do you

in.

It droppeth not as dew

upon the summer grass

to give liberty and green

joy.

Perfection straineth out

the quality of mercy,

withers rapture at its

birth.

Before the battle is half begun,

cold probity thinks

it can’t be won, concedes the

war.

I’ve handed in my notice,

given back my keys.

signed my severance check, I

quit.

Hints I could have taken:

Even the perfect chiseled form of

Michelangelo’s radiant David

squints,

the Venus de Milo

has no arms,

the Liberty Bell is

cracked.