A Passover Post

Last week, I promised some serious posts and I will deliver. In addition to taking dance classes around the city, I've been to a couple of good lectures as well.

The first one I went to was almost 2 weeks ago on the West side. Holly Pavlov (dean of She'arim) gave a womens lecture about inspiration. We all get inspired and inevitably we lose that spark and we just go through the motions in life. There were some great ideas as to how to live inspired lives and the best thing is that we can easily implement these ideas in our own lives.

The first point mentioned was that if we are having trouble keeping a mitzvah or trying to take on a mitzvah, then do it for a flash. Think of a flash of lightning, at least for that moment you did the mitzvah. The second point was that our potential is endless, there is no limit to doing good deeds. Rebbitizin Pavlov also equated prayer as the breath of the world, which I liked quite a bit. I still find praying a little weird, I feel like I'm talking to myself instead of talking to G-d. That's something I have to work on. There are moments of lightness and darkness, you can't have one without the other. The last two pieces of advice were to make your life exciting in whatever way you can, think of every little good thing you do as exciting, whether it be smiling at a stranger, opening a door for someone, etc. Last but not least, she mentioned the importance of being humble and grateful, no room for arrogance. I enjoyed the lecture a bit, it was just what I needed to hear at that time.

This past Shabbas, I went to a dinner at my synagogue and heard a wonderful lecture on psychological and jewish perspectives on happiness. Due to the late hour the speech started, only 25% of the crowd showed up but we were treated to a great lecture. The speaker is a psychology professor at the Yeshival University Graduate School. A 30-minute speech felt like 5-10 minutes. The speaker mentioned a few situations in which someone found happiness, situations in which you wouldn't think that possible, i.e. a father finding out his son has cancer, 10 days later in synagogue for Yom Kippur he feels a wave of happiness; a young woman dying of a long illness finds happiness in her last moments of life looking at the sky and trees outside her window. He talks about the roots of the word happiness, hap (by chance, haphazard).Then, he mentioned a man who is making a ton of money yet is not happy because his co-worker is making more money. Yet, this same person could be happy making $40/month in Nepal living in a shack with no electricity. Basically, real happiness comes with connection and purpose, connection with your community, your family, and G-d. Again, it's something everyone knows but we all forget at one point.

I mentioned previously that I signed up for a lecture series over the phone with a rabbi from Israel and have learned about the deeper meaning of Passover. Why do we clean our houses from top to bottom? When we clean our houses for Passover, we are really cleaning our souls. We search our homes for chametz (fermented wheat, rye oats, spelt, barley), we search ourselves for any aspect of our personalities that need improvement, that are no good for us and need to be thrown out. Once we identify our yeud (purpose) and tikkun (what we need to fix in ourselves), we spend the next 7 weeks working to fix what needs to be fixed in ourselves so we can live up to our potential. It made the cleaning this year more bearable for me, also I have a small apartment so I really did not have it too bad : )

Time for me to get my laundry, I'm so grateful to have laundry facilities in my apartment so I don't have to shlep my laundry to the laundromat.