Mamash

Teshuvah (te-shoov-ah), Hebrew: 1. Return 2. To turn  3. To turn around  4. Renewed, born again  5. Repentance 6. Commitment to change  7. A response or an answer

Teshuvah Take 8: ” The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”– Lao-tzu

It seems that an ancient mystical Chinese philosopher, and the father of Taoism, has some great words of wisdom when it comes to doing teshuvah. Especially since for some of us, a thousand mile journey on foot would be a walk in the park compared to the prospect of doing teshuvah.

Clinical social worker F. Diane Barth, in her blog post this past July on psychologytoday.com, agrees with this wisdom. In talking about barriers to change, even when the change is something we want, she says, “We look at the goal, at the end result, and we see how much work it will take to get there, and we feel overwhelmed by what we will have to do. We cannot imagine how we will ever manage it.”

Her solution? Take the first step. And have some faith, “that if you take the first step, the second one will become accessible. And then the third, and the fourth, and so on.”

The Jewish tradition offers similar advice. Read More »

Teshuvah (te-shoov-ah), Hebrew: 1. Return 2. To turn  3. To turn around  4. Renewed, born again  5. Repentance 6. Commitment to change  7. A response or an answer

Teshuvah Take 6: “They tried to make me go to rehab but I said ‘no no no’”

There’s an old joke: how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: one—but the light bulb has to really want to change.

Why is it so hard to stop the behaviors that are bad for us?

A study done in 2004 by scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that avoidable behaviors like cigarette use, poor diet, and lack of exercise were the underlying cause of half of the deaths in the United States in the year 2000. In that year, 435,000 deaths were caused by tobacco, 400,000 deaths were the result of inactivity and bad eating, and 85,000 were due to alcohol consumption.

Here’s some of the reasons we don’t change: we are focused on the pleasures of present rather than paying attention to the future consequences; we rationalize by saying ‘other people are doing it and it hasn’t hurt them so why should it hurt me;’ we are in denial. But mostly we don’t change because it’s hard to do so; it takes a lot of energy; it takes a lot of commitment.

We don’t change, even though the consequences of not changing can be dire. Read More »

Teshuvah (te-shoov-ah), Hebrew: 1. Return 2. To turn  3. To turn around  4. Renewed, born again  5. Repentance 6. Commitment to change  7. A response or an answer

Teshuvah Take 4: Tipping the balance

Why is it that kids love the seesaw? What is it about going up and down, up and down that they find so appealing?

Maybe it’s that on a seesaw, they have control. Maybe it’s because whether the seesaw goes up or down depends on how they position themselves and how hard they push. It’s a place where the outcome is up to them.

The Rambam, (a.k.a. Maimonides, the12^th century Jewish philosopher, doctor, Torah scholar and all around man about town we previously ‘met’ and will meet again in theses Mamash Minutes) also talked about ups and downs, but of a different kind. He said that throughout the year a person is generally balanced between merit and sin. He said that the world, too, is balanced between merit and sin. The Rambam therefore claims that if a person performs one mitzvah, one moral/ethical undertaking, that person tips not only his/her balance for the good, but that of the entire world. Read More »

Teshuvah (te-shoov-ah), Hebrew: 1. Return 2. To turn  3. To turn around  4. Renewed, born again  5. Repentance 6. Commitment to change  7. A response or an answer

Teshuvah Take 2: To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn turn turn

Most people know this hit song, made popular by the Byrds in the mid 1960’s. What you may not know is that while Pete Seeger wrote the music for it in 1959, he actually only wrote six words for it, in addition to his reprise:  “turn, turn, turn…turn, turn, turn.” All the rest of the words of the song are from the Bible, from the Book of Ecclesiastes (or Kohelet in the original Hebrew), although the sequence of the words was rearranged for the song.

Traditionally the book of Kohelet/Ecclesiastes is read on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the Jewish thanksgiving festival. That’s probably because reading about seasons and change and growth and death (“…a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to reap…”) seems fitting for a time of thanksgiving. But Kohelet/Ecclesiastes’ overarching theme is an even broader reflection on life and its ephemeral nature. And, if indeed, “To everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn…” well, then these 10 days are the season for turning; or in other words (well, actually, in the same word–see the definition of the Hebrew above) the season for teshuvah. For Jews, this is the season to contemplate the pirouettes of our past, and how we hope to execute them going forward. Read More »

A British artist paints 200 forgeries and delivers them to his accomplice. His accomplice then sells them to the auction houses of Christie’s, Phillips, and Sotheby’s, and to dealers in London, Paris and New York.

Sounds like an episode out of the TV series White Collar.  But it’s not. It’s a true story.

On February 13, 1999, John Myatt, was sentenced to prison along with his accomplice, John Drewe, for perpetrating what Scotland Yard called ‘the biggest art fraud of the 20^th century.’

But what’s so bad about forging art? If we like a painting, what does it matter whether it’s an original or a forgery, what does it matter what its ‘provenance’ is?

Lest we be so cynical to think it’s just all about the money, Dennis Dutton, in The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, explains that it’s about more than that. He says that establishing a piece of work’s authenticity  “enables us to understand the practice and history of art as an intelligible history of the expression of values, beliefs, and ideas, both for artists and their audiences.” In other words, it’s not just about a pretty picture; it’s about the true essence of the artist’s intention.

On the evening of August 29^th we begin the Hebrew month of Elul. Read More »