With the New Year fast approaching, it’s time to consider the projects you didn’t finish in 2010 and make them a priority for 2011.What projects have remained on your to-do list all year long, part of the year, or even just this past month? It’s time to make them top priority. Consider them your “big rocks.”

Not long ago I asked someone I know how she managed to get so much done each day. She responded, “I always move the big rocks first.”

What are your big rocks for 2011? Make a list of the projects that are most important to you.

Now make a commitment to yourself that each day these will be #1 and #2 on your to-do list. If you move those rocks before you move the stones and the pebbles, you’ll find you’ve accomplished your big goals early in the New Year. You won’t be too tired from moving around all those little stones and pebbles all day to tackle the big rocks. In fact, moving the big rocks even a little bit each day will help you build muscle and feel more energized. That will help you develop the strength and endurance to meet your goals and complete your projects.

I know that my big rocks typically end up at the top of my to-do list, but I handle the pebbles and stones first. I never get time to move the big rocks. It’s a huge mistake. My important projects remain untouched because I want to get the stones and pebbles out of the way. By clearing a path, though, I never get to the big rocks. They keep piling up into a huge wall I feel I can’t climb.

After I spoke to this woman, I went outside to a place I had seen a large oval rock. I cleaned it off and brought it into the house and placed it on my desk right in front of my computer. It’s a reminder to move my big rocks first every day.

What will you do to remind yourself to move your big rocks in 2011? Or do you have some great strategies for moving them you want to share? I’d love to hear them.

Tonight marks the first night of Hanukkah. My daughter is in New York in college this year. My son and I will be alone; my husband just left on a business trip. We just got back from a trip ourselves and with Hanukkah falling in the middle of the week and no preparation made or presents purchased, the holiday doesn’t feel very festive.

However, I received an email from Idit Klein, executive director of Keshet.  Keshet’s mission is to ensure that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Jews are fully included in all parts of the Jewish community. The email talked about teens like Esther, Sasha, Aaron, and Sarah of the Gay-Straight Alliance at the A. J. Heschel School in New York coming together to light the first candle of the holiday with a kavannah (intention around the blessing). They provide a superb example of the fact that the most effective way to “make things better” lies in allowing young people to make it better for themselves and their peers, in their schools, congregations, youth movements, and communities.

Please take a look at the video they made for Keshet introducing themselves and using the kavannah below for the first candle.

We dedicate this first night of Hanukkah to knowing one’s identity and standing strong against external forces. As we light the first candle, we dedicate this light to each person in our community who needs support to be steadfast, to stay grounded in an inner space of calm and courage.

(Light your candle here)

Our tradition teaches us that each good act gives forth another, one spark makes others, and a string of candles awaits us this week. We hope you will join us this Hanukkah in spreading the light of hope and strength to everyone in our community.

(Adapted by Keshet from http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/1348517/jewish/Eight-Meditations-for-the-Eight-Nights-of-Chanukah.htm.)

In that email I mentioned, Klein wrote, “We’re grateful to youth groups like BBYO for taking a strong role and forwarding the Jewish Community Pledge to their 30,000 members. But we need your help to reach every corner of our community and ensure that no young person has to feel alone or have to hide who they are during this Hanukkah or any other time. Please pass this email along to your friends, and ask them to sign the pledge as well: www.jewishcommunitypledge.org.”

Keshet helped support students at Heschel in the planning of the first school-wide program about homophobia. Learn more about Keshet’s work supporting student and teacher efforts for GLBT inclusion.

I decided it would be my gift to children all over the world today to forward her request along and to share the video and candle-lighting intention above with the hope that others will take on this cause. No child should feel alone or different. Both my children have felt this way too often. As a mother, it breaks my heart. As children, teens and young adults, this experience has colored my children’s perception of who they are. Kids don’t have to be gay or lesbian to feel different or separate or to be teased or bullied. My son, in particular, has always felt most accepted at Jewish camp and in BBYO.

This Hanukkah, give the gift of your support to Jewish children all over the world who feel different in any way–and to help teach others to accept all types of people. It doesn’t cost a dime. I’ve already signed the pledge. (You don’t have to be Jewish to do this.) Will you do the same and share this post?

When we can’t seem to solve a problem, we turns to a supernal power that might provide a solution…or a miracle. Thus, more than two months into the Gulf oil spill crisis, four affected State Governors proclaimed this past Sunday, June 27th, A Day of Prayer. In other words, we turn to God for answers and for help.

While Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal declared “June 27th as a Statewide Day of Prayer for perseverance,” Texas Governor Rick Perry said “the people of Texas should join with their fellow Gulf Coast residents and others across the country and around the world to thank God, seek his wisdom for ourselves and our leaders, and ask him for his merciful intervention and healing in this time of crisis.”

According to Alabama Governor Bob Riley, “Throughout our history, Alabamians have humbly turned to God to ask for His blessings and to hold us steady during times of struggle. This is certainly one of those times.”

And Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour wrote, “Prayer allows us the opportunity to reflect and seek guidance, strength, comfort and inspiration from Almighty God…”

I urge all of us to join all those people in the Gulf who are affected—or not—and to pray for a speedy solution to this crisis. May a way to stop the oil spill be found and the birds, fish, waters, and coastlines be saved.

I spent many of my best summers along the Gulf Coast…I have many fond memories of walking along the beaches, watching the dolphins, seeing baby sea turtles hatch, watching other sea animals and birds. Even if I hadn’t, I would want this issue to be resolved…we all should. Please place the workers, the government, and all affected—human or otherwise—in your prayers.

Or try Dr. Masaru Emoto’s “Prayer for The Water,” which focuses intention on love, gratitude and healing. If you recall, Dr. Emoto is an author, water researcher and emissary for water and peace. He became quite well known for his book The Hidden Messages in Water,  which puts forth his claim that if human speech or thoughts are directed at water droplets before they are frozen, images of the resulting water crystals will be “beautiful” or “ugly” depending upon whether the words or thoughts were positive or negative.Dr. Emoto claims  this can be achieved through prayer, music or by attaching written words to a container of water.

Now Dr. Emoto has shared a powerful prayer for the healing of the waters of the planet. He explains that water is the divine conduit for spirit and all creation. By focusing our intentions, thoughts and prayers on the waters of the Gulf, we can help “heal” them. To recite the prayer, say:  “I send the energy of love and gratitude to the water and all the living creatures in the Gulf of Mexico and its surroundings. To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, fish, shellfish, plankton, coral, algae, and all living creatures . . . I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. ”

By participating in this prayer and setting an intention of love and healing for the waters, Dr. Emoto hopes to perform a miracle in the Gulf of Mexico. The belief is that together we are a powerful force. Speaking this prayer multiple times daily create powerful, positive change in the Gulf and on the planet. The power of love and gratitude is greater than any power active in the universe today. To participate, repeat Dr. Emoto’s healing prayer for the waters a few minutes every day.

Or prayer for the waters in your own way, but go to some sort of extraordinary measures at this time using thought, intention and prayer to consciously create change, healing, a solution — a miracle — in the Gulf.

Every day I wake up, come upstairs to my office, sit down in front of my computer, and begin working. Sometimes I manage only to accomplish a few minutes of time spent on my own projects. Other days, I spend many hours working towards my personal goals. Each day, however, my mind turns periodically from whatever I’m working on back to the real work I want to being doing–writing my books, composing articles related to those topics for publications, and speaking about the those topics to audiences to that I might uplift, enlighten, inspire, or help someone in some way.

On the days I don’t feel like I’m making any headway–especially on those days, I try to remember to look up at a greeting card my husband once gave me. It bears the words of Henry David Thoreau: “If one advances confidently in the direction  of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” I remind myself that I am doing just that…taking small (sometimes) confident steps towards my dreams and trying to live the life I have imagined. Therefore, I must eventually meet with success.

Too many of us give up on our dreams before they come true. Too many of us get frustrated and impatient. I say take the motto, “Never give up. Endeavor to live the life you imagine!”

We must have faith and continue moving forward, visualizing that life, believing it will become a reality, and taking inspired action towards manifesting it. These important tools require us to focus our thoughts, have a clear intention, imagine our goal or dream already created. For those who know about and believe in the power of conscious or deliberate creation (The Law of Attraction), this comes into play but with action added in. I’m not talking about simply sitting back and visualizing. I’m talking about doing something–”advancing confidently” via inspired action steps. I’m talking about “endeavoring to live the life” we imagine–that means exerting effort.

Will you do so? Will you join me in advancing confidently in the direction of our dreams and endeavoring to life the life you imagine?

Most people don’t realize that through its choice of words, the Old Testament places emphasis on goal setting. In fact, it seems that God expects us to set targets for ourselves and at least to try to hit them. In other words, we are supposed to take the time to come up with resolutions or intentions for ourselves.  While Jews often think about this on the Jewish New year, or Rosh Hashanah, it’s appropriate to think about the secular New Year from a Jewish perspective as well…at least if you are Jewish. Even if you are not, if you want to approach the secular New Year from an “Old Testament perspective,” you can do so with the following thoughts in mind.

No matter our religious orientation – or lack thereof, we can all learn something from the use of the world “sin” in the Old Testament and in Jewish liturgy. Let me explain why. The word for sin in Hebrew – chet – comes from the sport of archery. Hebrew has no real word for sin as we understand it. One or two other words refer to what we think of as sin, but none actually mean “sin” per se. The words al chet, usually translated as “the sin” and commonly used during the Jewish High Holy Days, which including both Rosh Hashanah and the Day of Repentance (Yom Kippur), really means “the missed mark.” In archery terms, this would refer to missing the target or not hitting the bull’s eye.

Interestingly, the word Torah, which refers to the Old Testament scrolls and the text they contain, also comes from archery. It means to take aim. Thus, the Old Testament teaches us to take aim, but sometimes we take aim and miss the mark, which in Judaism – and from a spiritual persective – is considered a serious enough offense to be called a “sin.”

Why do the Old Testament, Hebrew and Judaism use archery terminology for such important words as sin and Torah?  And why are these words associated with taking aim and hitting or missing targets? After all, sins are not something to be taken lightly, and the Torah is the sacred text of Judaism. The reason lies in the analogy between an archer missing his mark and a person repenting for wrongs committed.

Archery involves setting up targets in the middle of which are the bull’s eyes at which the archer aims his arrows. To hit the “mark,” archers must practice their aim until they become good enough to hit not only the target but the bull’s eye. On the Day of Repentance, Jews look at the past 12 months of their lives to see what targets they set up for themselves, how they practiced hitting that target and if their aim was true. We do the same thing, of course, on the secular New Year. Welook at the target to see if we managed to hit the bull’s eye. During this period of introspection we notice not only if we aimed our arrows and shot, but if we even got close to our mark. During the High Holy Days, the period between the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur provides a time to set up new targets – or to reexamine or study old targets – and to commit to practicing our aim. It’s also a time to set the intention – kavanah (another word that, while not related to archery, also means “to aim”) – to try harder to shoot true – to hit the bulls eye this year. On December 31st, New Year’s Eve, we have just one night when most people take a moment…or an hour…or even the better part of a day to pause and consider the past year and if their aim was true, if they need to reset their targets, and at which targets they need to spend more time practicing their aim.

Thus, we see that the Jewish New Year’s practice may come out of the Jewish tradition but is relevant for anyone from any religious background. And we can see clearly why archery terms are used to describe sin. God appears to be telling us that the sin comes in not setting goals for ourselves and in not trying to achieve them. At a minimum we have to set up a target, try to take aim, practice shooting that arrow, and then let it fly. We have to attempt to hit our mark. The sin lies not in simply missing the mark but in not trying to hit it at all. If we can sincerely say that we tried to hit the target – we aimed, we practiced our shooting, we shot, and we still didn’t get a bull’s eye, God forgives us. At least, that’s what we are told on Yom Kippur.

The importance of actually setting New Year’s resolutions or goals can be found in the answer to this question: What would happen if we never set a target for ourselves, if we never had any goals or aspirations or resolutions?  We would never change. We would never move forward.  We would never achieve personal growth. We would never accomplish anything. We would not fulfill our human potential or live our lives fully.  That truly constitutes a sin.

Our goals and resolutions give us something to move towards – something quantifiable. And the New Year – either secular or Jewish – provides the perfect time to turn over a new leaf, begin again, think about what we want to change or accomplish, how we want to grow, to set up those new targets so we can reach our full human potential and live our lives fully.

(If you are interested in a workbook about setting resolutions – or targets – based on these principles that can be used for either the secular New Year or the Jewish New Year,  please click here.)

As Jews all around the world prepare for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, astrologers are watching as the new moon rises and six planets align in Virgo. What does this mean to us?

It means that not only are we entering into the most holy 10 days of the Jewish year, a time of introspection, soul searching, repentance, and intention setting for the coming year, but we are doing so at a time when the energy is right for doing so. The Jewish mystics would say this is always true at this time of the year. However, astrologically speaking, it seems to be truer than ever this year. And for those of us who believe our thoughts and intentions have a creative power, which the Kabbalists surely did, now-during the High Holy Days-we have a unique opportunity to create a new year filled with all that we desire-inscription in the Book of Life, prosperity, abundance, good health, peace, serenity, love, joy, happiness, friendship, balance, connection to Source.

According to the astrologers, we are in an extremely potent period, called the “Dark of the Moon,” or the Virgo New Moon. This provides a superb time for going inward-just what we will be doing. At this time seeds germinate in the darkness. Whatever we plant with our prayers and intentions is deeply supported by the strength of Saturn, which creates a strong root structure for healing we have completed during the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and whatever new intentions we have set or new goals and realities we want to manifest in the coming year.  Indeed, we are planting the seeds of these desires at this time and the energy of the period in which we find ourselves is fertilizing those seeds.

Additionally, as you go inward during holiday services or at home, think about whom you really are and who you want to be or become. Astrologers say this time is infused with energy that helps us become our most authentic selves. If you want to live your truth and purpose, now represents the time to put out the intention and take action. The energy of the stars will help you achieve the personal growth you desire and achieve your full human potential.

An acquaintance of mine sent me just the details of the new moon and planetary alignment. She wrote, “Say prayers, make wishes, and state your positive intentions to the Universe as it can become your reality for the next few years.” I then went and did just a little research to see what she was talking about, because I was struck by the fact that this was happening just as Rosh Hashanah and the Days of Awe were about to begin.

This year, indeed, they are Days of Awe in so many ways…and they can be for so many people (Jewish or not) if they use the energy to their advantage. Yes…look inside, evaluate who you have been, who you are, who you want to be, and what you want to create in your life. Then pray, set intentions and take action towards all that you want to create in your life henceforth.

May everyone who reads this blog be blessed with a healthy, happy, prosperous, abundant, peaceful, and transformative year!

L’shana Tova! (To a good new year!)

So be it, so it is. Ken yehe ratzon (May it be God’s will).

While I was at the Aleph Kallah I had the opportunity to participate in a Red Heifer ritual led by Rabbi Shefa Gold. This ritual is not one normally performed…at least not that I know of, and it likely has not been performed since the days of the temple. We, of course, in Jewish renewal style, created a ritual for those of us at the kallah to purify ourselves not from having come in contact with the dead – the stated reason for the ceremony – but to cleans ourselves of the fears that cause us to become impure in other ways.

Shefa explained to us that she sees the Red Heifer as the mother of the Golden Calf. Of course, the Gold Calf was created out of the Israelites fears. As they waited for Moses to return from atop Mt. Sinai, they lost their faith and turned back to idol worship, creating the Golden calf out of that fear. So, we got in touch with our fears by getting a “spirit buddy” and asking each other, “What are you afraid of?” Then we placed our fear into the fire pit to be burned along with cedar, hyssop and crimson. We allowed ourselves to do this with humility while raising ourselves up to our highest selves. And to the ashes we added living waters and then we anointed each other with the water and ash mix. During the ritual we sang and we drummed and we chanted while the dark clouds gathered outside the windows, the sun setting golden behind them, as if we were dancing at the foot of Mt. Sinai itself with a priestess leading us through our purification ritual and God’s presence hiding behind the clouds.

I must say, this was one of the most powerful rituals in which I’ve participated. I got in touch with some very deep-seated fears that have been holding me back and not allowing me to unfold and reach my fullest potential. I believe not living our lives fully, not fulfilling our purpose…these are sins indeed.

We may not have stuck to the letter of the ritual as outlined in our sacred Jewish texts, but it worked for me. And maybe Shefa’s interpretation of the Red Heifer isn’t classic, but that, too, worked for me.

If you’d like to know now a bit more about the traditional ceremony, lots of sources exist on line. The rarity of the animal, combined with the mystical ritual in which it was used, have given the Red Heifer special status in Jewish tradition. It is cited as the prime example of a chok, or biblical law for which there is no apparent logic, and is, therefore, supposedly of absolute Divine origin. The state of ritual purity obtained through the ashes of a Red Heifer, which was burned as a sacrifice, is a necessary prerequisite for participating in any Temple service. For this reason, efforts have been made in modern times by Jews wanting to rebuild the Temple to locate a red heifer and recreate the ritual. Most recently, a cow that was considered a potential candidate was disqualified because it sprouted several black hairs. Just two are enough to disqualify the cow. The ashes of the Red Heifer are combined with pure living waters to purify a person who has become ritually contaminated by contact with a corpse.

If you are wondering, we had no Red Heifer. We had no fire pit. We had no herbs. We placed paper into a dollar-store roasting tin, we symbolically spoke our fears into that tin, we symbolically added the herbs with a different chant and drum beat for each one. Then, someone took the tin outside and burned the paper. The ashes were brought back in and combined with living waters collected earlier in the day. We did anoint ourselves with that concoction.

You can do the same. And you can ask yourself what you fear and what  you create in your life out of your fear. Look at your life. Look carefully. What have you erected as a testament to your fear? What do you worship each day as part of your faith in your fear? How do you uphold your faith in your fear each day? How do you stay stuck in that fear, bowing to the statues you’ve built in its honor? And what would happen if you tore down those idols and began to worship the truth in yourself, the part of you created in God’s image? What would happen if you moved through your fear to create something new…a connection to God built on faith that allows you to be your true self? What would you have to leave behind? What would you gain? What new things would you create and would you create them in the name of God instead of in the name of fear?

You might say the ritual in which I participated at the kallah wasn’t “real.” I say, it’s all about the kavanah…the intention. And, I can tell you it felt awfully real to all the people in that room.

Today while I was on Twitter, I watched video someone posted called “How Jews Pray.” I found it very interesting.

(Wait for the commercial to end and you’ll be able to watch the WeJew.com video.)

I’ve often thought about how we, as Jews, pray…or how anyone, for that matter, prays. Most religions have prescribed prayers, those written out for us, that we recite on certain occasions, such as when someone dies, during a wedding, or during morning or evening prayers. We may also have specific prayers we say or read during church or synagogue services. And then we have personal prayers, those we simply create on the spot with words formed from emotions born in the heart. These tend to represent an outpouring of the soul and may have elements of traditional prayers but are more often simply stated in our normal spoken language.

The question then becomes, does God hear us no matter how we pray? Or does God hear us better – more loudly and clearly – when we pray in one form or the other? One person in the video mentions that traditional prayers were written by someone else, therefore, they might not really offer “up” the words of our own hearts.

I think that sometimes the prescribed, traditional prayers offer us a nice “form” for our prayers. They are known and easy to use. If we can fill them with meaning and spirit, thus making them meaning-full and spirit-full, then they work for us. If not, then we need to use a more personal form of prayer. (Or we can use both depending on the situation, perhaps.)

I like to use Rebbe Nachman of Breslov’s form of prayer. He taught that people should go out into the fields and walk and talk to God. He called this ‘hitbodedut.’ This Hebrew word means “self-seclusion,” and basically involves time alone talking to God in an unstructured, spontaneous, and individualized manner about your deepest concerns, the things you appreciate, your frustrations, what makes you happy, etc. Rebbe Nachman felt that nothing was too mundane to discuss with God during hitbodedut. You can talk about work, money, relationships, desires, your behavior and motivations, struggles to correct character flaws, how to achieve your human potential, your efforts at personal growth, your goals for the future, your sense that you cannot connect with God. You talk to God intimately and informally, like a friend to a friend or a child to a parent. Rebbe Nachman’s primary disciple, Rabbi Nosson said, that since we are all children of God, (Deuteronomy 14:1), “It is good to express your thoughts and troubles to God like a child complaining and pestering his father.”

Rebbe Nachman taught that the best place for hitbodedut is in the forests or fields; I often combine this prayer practice or time with a daily walk. He said, “When a person meditates in the fields, all the grasses join in his prayer and increase its effectiveness and power.” He also suggested practicing hitbodedut in the middle of the night, when our worldly desires tend to be at rest.

When I consider how we should pray for our prayers to be heard, I always remember one story that speaks to the fact that the most important thing about prayers is the kavanah, or intention, with which we say them. So, let me relate that story to you:

There was a shepherd who sat on a rock and prayed every day while his sheep grazed. He prayed in the only way he knew. He would say such things as: “God, I love you so much that if I had only one loaf of bread, I would give it to you. God, I love you so much that if it were raining, I would give you my raincoat.”

One day a rabbi came along and heard the shepherd praying. He stopped the poor man and said, “You are not praying correctly. Let me teach you how to pray.” Eager to be able to pray in a way that could be heard by God, the shepherd spent the day learning the prayers the rabbi taught him. In the evening the rabbi went away and left the shepherd alone.

The next morning, the shepherd sat down on his rock and opened his mouth to pray in the way the rabbi had taught him, but he had already forgotten the words of the prayers. Try as he might, the words would not come to him, so he sat silently on his rock and never prayed again.

After a few days, God noticed that he no longer heard the shepherd’s prayers. He asked several of his angels to go down to Earth and discover what had happened to stop the shepherd from reciting his daily prayers. When they found him sitting silently on his rock, they asked him why he no longer prayed. Shocked that God had even noticed that he was not praying – that God had even heard his initial prayers – he answered, “A rabbi told me the correct way to pray. I didn’t want to pray incorrectly, and I believed that God would not hear my prayers if I did not recite them with the right words.”

The angels looked at each other and smiled. “We are going to make an exception for you,” they said, “and allow you to see and hear a little of what goes on in Heaven. Come with us.” And with that they took him by the arms and took him to where God sat surrounded by angels. “Listen to how the angels pray to God,” they instructed the shepherd.

To his amazement, he heard the angels saying, ”God, I love you so much that if I had only one loaf of bread, I would give it to you. God, I love you so much that if it were raining, I would give you my raincoat.”

The moral of the story is clear: No matter how you pay, if you pray with a true desire to connect with God and out of love for God and from your heart, the words don’t matter. (And, yes, there are many more stories like this, such as those where people simply recite the Hebrew alphabet, that show the importance of intention. This is just one I happen to like a lot.) So, choose your own words or those written down for you by someone else. They all work if you fill them with meaning and spirit.

Today was April Fool’s Day. No one played a joke on me. I didn’t play a joke on anyone else. Well, maybe God played one on me…All I know for sure is that despite the name of the day, yesterday I was a fool, but today I am wiser.

You see, I did something foolish. I didn’t actually do it yesterday. It took a while…several months…for me to acrue the amount of foolishness that made me into a fool. These actions, however, came to a head yesterday. Although I didn’t mean to be foolish, thoughtless, hurtful, inappropriate, I was. It wasn’t my intention. In fact, my intentions were good.

I didn’t stay focused on my intentions, though, at least not well enough. I didn’t stand back and look at the big picture. I didn’t think through my actions, words, deeds. I didn’t foresee their ramifications. And that made me a fool…of sorts.

But, having said that, it also put me in a dark and narrow place — a personal Mitzraim (the Hebrew word for Egypt). Passover is right around the corner, and we often talk about how our lives are like Mitzraim, which means a tight or narrow place. It’s a place that could squeeze you, almost like coming through the birth canal when you are born. I had to look at myself, my deeds…I felt horrible. I felt sorry. I confessed. I apologized. I still felt horrible.

But I came out beter for it. I know better now. I will do better now. I can’t repair all the damage done, but I can hope it will repair itself. I can hope the apologies will be accepted and that time will cause all to forget and have a new sense about things — like the Israelites after many years in the desert (although I hope it won’t take 40 years!). My work will be better for this. I have learned.

And I will remember that I always strive to do good…even if I don’t succeed. And I will forgive myself. We all make mistakes. We can only correct them and move on.

The Kabbalists, or Jewish mystics, used to say that just as the grape when squeezed produces wine and the olive when pounded produces oil, humans when challenged come forth with wisdom. I know that I have been squeezed, pounded, challenged. I’ve been in a tight place — my Mitzraim. But I have come out the other side, reborn…

Things won’t be the same. They never are. Change is good. Everything happens for a reason.

April Fool’s Day? I don’t know. I think maybe God played a trick, or better named a game, with me the day before, so today I wouldn’t be a fool.  My eyes would be open. I would see the reality of the situation. I would know the truth. And I would move forward with wisdom and knowledge.

It’s Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath.  Technically, religiously, halachic-ly (by Jewish law), I shouldn’t be writing, since writing constitutes work, and work is forbidden on the Sabbath. But I’m not that observant. I’m a spiritually observant Jew…but these days, despite the fact that I write about Shabbat and how to make it meaningful and spiritual, I’m having a bit of trouble even observing this weekly holiday – the most important Jewish holiday – at all.

You see, I have two teenagers. And those teenagers have activities – dance and synchronized swimming. These activities require them to go to practices and rehearsals often on Friday nights. And now that they are in high school, often their social life takes precedence over their spiritual or religious life. And since I don’t want them to hate Judaism or being Jewish, I don’t force them to come home for Shabbat dinner or to go to services on Friday night. (Ah well…I can’t remember when we made it to a Friday night service, but we do have Shabbat dinner at home as often as possible.) And as for Saturday morning services, these are nonexistent, a thing of the past. Shabbat has become my son going to dance, my daughter going to swimming. They go at different time and to different places requiring two parents to drive.

Even when my husband can drive them and I am able to go to services by myself, I find myself not wanting to go these days. It feels too lonely. I used to go with my whole family every Friday night…well, almost every Friday night (3 out of 4). And we went on many a Saturday as well. And then Friday night Shabbat dinner was a bigger deal as well, with more time and energy spent on filling what I saw as empty rituals with meaning and spirit. But These days if I go, I go alone. And that feels terribly sad and lonely.

My husband also used to like to go with me – kids liked it, too, for the most part, but he’s taken a detour off the spiritual path in general, and that includes Judaism. That makes me even sadder, since he was my partner on that path. So, going to services alone feels just a bit lonelier still these days.

And tonight I’m home alone. It’s Shabbat. We had to be out driving kids. And now I’m waiting for everyone to get home. I made it home first. And it’s lonely. Shabbat shouldn’t be spent alone.

So, I’m writing on Shabbat, so that anyone else that is out there feeling lonely on Shabbat might feel less alone, might know that there are other people out there just like you (and me) wishing they were not alone on Shabbat. Wishing they could go to services with someone. Wishing their family members weren’t so busy or were more interested so they could share a meaningful and spiritual Shabbat candle lighting and dinner with them or go to services together or simply…well…not be alone on the Sabbath.

And I’m writing on the Sabbath to say, it’s okay if your life takes a turn and suddenly you can’t make it to Shabbat services or you can’t light candles or when you do you just don’t have the time or energy to fill that ritual with meaning or spirit. As long as you are aware of your desire to have things be different, that’s what really matters. If your intention is to get back to that place where you have the time and take the time and really get something out of Shabbat and its rituals and prayers, eventually you will. But sometime we just aren’t in that place. And it’s okay.

That said, it makes me sad to not be in that place now. I love Shabbat. I love lighting candles in a meaning-full and spirit-full way. I love taking time to “do Shabbat.” I love being at services with my family and my spiritual community.

But beating myself up over not being able to do that won’t help, and it won’t bring me Shabbat shalom – Sabbath peace. That comes from connection to God, and that come from loving myself as much as I love God and God loves me. Judging myself will never give me Shabbat shalom.

So, judge me, if you will, for writing on Shabbat. I wish you – and myself – only Shabbat shalom.