Life is not a trial like on this movie they were filming in Rajasthan India. They kept shooting the same scenes over until they got it right. With life we only have one chance to get it right.

‘Today is my birthday,’ or better I should say ‘today is my Jewish (Hebrew) birthday.’ As Jewish people we follow the lunar calendar and all the dates of our festivals are set according to this. The same is true of our birthdays.

Yom Kippur this year was on October 8^th, next year Yom Kippur will be on September 26th. Why the change? Why can’t we just have Yom Kippur on October 8^th every year?

The reason is that all holidays need to be on a specific date because this is when their energy is aligned in the spiritual realms. Having Yom Kippur on the wrong day would be like showing up to the courthouse for your case on a Sunday morning and there is no one there. Simply, it is the wrong day.

A birthday is a very special time. On our birthdays, our ‘Mazal,’ which in some ways is our Zodiac, is aligned and we can receive great energies and blessings for the entire year. I grew up only observing my Hebrew birthday which followed the lunar calendar.

According to the Torah it is actually forbidden for a Jew to count the secular months according to the solar calendar. We can name them but it is best not to count them. Thus when I fill out forms that want a date, instead of writing in a number in the box I’ll write the three letter abbreviation for the month.

Now back to the Jewish Hebrew birthday. A birthday from A Jewish point of view is not a time for a big party. It is a serious time to reflect on the past year and to make resolutions for the coming year. Just like we do on Yom Kippur. What is special is that, on our birthday we are given extra power to achieve the goals we set for the year, if we set them on this specific day. Our power extends beyond the self. On our birthday we should bless people with what they need and they should bless us.

Last night I had a small ‘birthday farbrengen.’ A ‘farbrengen’ is a Yiddish word. It is a Chassidic concept where a group of friends come together to make a few  l’chaims and to inspire one another. A birthday farbrengen has all that a normal farbrengen would have, like singing, sharing inspirational stories, and words of wisdom, and in addition, everyone goes around the table and blesses the birthday person. The birthday person then in return goes around the table one by one and gives a blessing to each individual.

To find out your Hebrew birthday you can use this calendar here.

Life is not a dress rehearsal, it’s the real thing! When shooting a movie you can do the scene over until you get it right. In life we only get one chance to get it right.

As we travel, Rabbi Ben and I experience miracles all the time.  One of my favorites is how whenever we arrive in a new place on Friday, we immediately find the best hotel and price.  Any other day of the week, we may have to spend hours checking dozens of places, but on Friday, erev Shabbat, we always get the best and nicest deal in the first place we stop.  The first few times it happened, we couldn’t believe it and still wasted several hours hunting around, only to return to that first spot.  But now whenever we arrive somewhere erev Shabbat, I walk into the very first nice place I see and bargain a good deal and I know we are set and I can begin to prepare for the Sabbath.

But you don’t have to travel to see incredible and unusual miracles.  They happen all the time, every day.  Sometimes they are hidden miracles, like swerving the car in time to avoid a collision – maybe without even noticing we’ve done it! Sometimes they are miracles we take for granted, like our eyesight, hearing, and limbs.  Yet sometimes they are overt miracles.  Over Sukkot I heard a story about just one of these miracles.

Aliza, one of the congregants at Newtown Synagogue in Sydney, Australia, has been telling me about her journey in exploring Judaism.  One of her biggest obstacles to increasing her observance and her connection to G-d has been her job.  Her boss would not let her off on Saturdays or most holidays.  But Aliza felt that keeping the Sabbath, being one of the most important commandments in the Torah, was important to her.  On Yom Kippur, she sat down on the floor at work and read the Torah and read the commandment to keep the Sabbath… and made up her mind to do so.

Later that week, she approached her boss and told her boss that she wants Saturdays off, and that she is happy to work Sundays instead.  Her boss refused.  So Aliza quit. She quit! Right there, on the spot.  What amazing courage!  Hashem should bless her so much in the merit of this amazing thing she did just out of her love for Hashem!  And He should bless us all that we should ALL have such courage!

So Aliza left work and called her mother.  She told her mother what she’d done and only then realized that she now had no job.  Uh oh.

On her way home from work, before coming to Newtown Synagogue for Friday night Shabbat services, she got a phone call.  A previous employer she’d had was calling to offer her a job.  Not only did it include better pay, but the hours were Monday-Friday 9-5 or 10-6, giving her the flexibility to take care of her daughter and mother, AND allowing her to keep Shabbat completely!

There is only one explanation for this miraculous timing, a matter of mere hours: G-D.  G-d rewarded Aliza’s faith, love, and courage by extending His hand to her and giving her a position even better than what she had had previously.  This is proof that G-d cares for us and is involved with each of our lives individually… And it is proof that, as Rabbi Ben has mentioned previously in one of his stories, that your parnossa, your livelihood, is determined on Rosh Hashana and sealed on Yom Kippur and that cannot be changed.  The income you are meant to having coming to you will come – and keeping the Shabbat will NEVER stand in the way of this.

Kol hakavod to Aliza! You can join her on her journey, read more about her, and offer her words of encouragement at her blog, It’s a Long Road.

Korean klezmer band plays traditional Jewish Yiddish music at Newtown Synagogue in Sydney, Australia

When you think of traditional Jewish klezmer music, you probably think of old Jewish singers crooning away in Yiddish and plucking at their violins.  When I think of traditional Jewish klezmer music, I think of my husband, Rabbi Ben, sweetly singing me “Tum Balalaika” at our wedding.  But I’m pretty sure that nobody, when thinking of klezmer music, thinks of Koreans.

You just don’t expect to see trendy, young, modern Koreans, clad in the latest fashions (yet still tznius, modest), singing in Yiddish.  And you definitely don’t expect them to actually sound the way traditional Yiddish klezmer singers do.  Enter: The Korean Klezmatics!

Painting symbolizing Auschwitz at Culture Day at Newtown Synagogue in Sydney, Australia

On Sunday, Newtown Synagogue in Sydney, Australia hosted Culture Day.  It is the first in a series of Culture Day events, featuring a small Jewish modern art exhibition, complete with the artist, art historians, and other guest speakers.  For the opening Culture Day event, Newtown Synagogue even ordered sushi, sandwiches, and fruit – and hired the Korean Klezmatics!

The Korean Klezmatics did a great job.  They sang the Yiddish songs in a real traditional way and it sounded fantastic.  We also really enjoyed looking at all the artwork, inspired by all sorts of Jewish places and events, from Auschwitz to Tel Aviv.

You can check out Culture Day at Newtown Synagogue again next Sunday beginning at noon!

As we travel, Rabbi Ben and I are constantly moving.  Sometimes, we get the timing just right: we leave at the perfect moment, just when we are tired enough of a place to want to leave, but early enough that we still hold it fondly in our memories and wish to return one day.  But more often than not, and especially because we travel as a couple (and even though we became ‘one person’ under the chuppah, we do still have different feelings about things from time to time), we can rarely strike that perfect balance.  Either we leave too early and depart wishing desperately that we didn’t have to go, missing the place even before we’ve left it… Or we stay too long and we can’t get out of there fast enough, wishing never to see that place again.

Either way, we are leaving one place behind and entering a new one.  To leave one place necessarily means that we are entering another.  There is no alternative.  We leave Israel and enter Jordan, we leave India and enter Nepal, we leave Fiji and enter Australia.  No matter what our feelings about the place left behind, there is always something fresh and new and exciting in entering another place, even if it is one we have visited before.

This week on Simchas Torah we will read Parshas Vezos Haberachah, the last parsha in the Torah.  It is a powerful parsha, a description of Moses’s last day, where he gives his final blessings to all the tribes, gets one last, good, long look at the land of Israel he will never enter, and then dies.  It’s a heavy parsha and could even be understood to be a bit depressing.  After all, as we are reminded in the very last line of the Torah, never again has there been a prophet like Moses.  Yet, we read it on Simchas Torah, a day of joy and celebration of the Torah.  How can this be?

A hint can be found in the tradition that, at the end of the parsha, everyone in the congregation shouts, “Chazak! Chazak! Venischazeik!” (“Be strong! Be strong! And may we be strangthened!”)  We have reached the end and we need to ask Hashem to strengthen us.  And He does: by giving us the Torah and giving us a day to focus on celebrating it.  And so we spend the night of Simchas Torah dancing with the Torah, drinking l’chaims, and being joyful.  The Torah has ended, but yet it endures forever.

This year, Simchas Torah is followed immediately by Shabbat Parshas Bereishis and this too can teach us a lesson or two. First, we see that the Torah, which we “ended” the previous day, has not ended at all! Instead, we have simply started it again. We can learn from that that everything in life that seems to be an ending is not an ending after all… instead it is the start of a new opportunity, a new experience. We go from the death of the greatest prophet of all time to, the very next day celebration the beginning of G-d’s creation of the heavens and the earth.  It’s an amazing transformation!

Second, we see that the yearly Torah readings are cyclical, like our festivals and our holidays.  Indeed, all life events can, through the lens of Judaism, be viewed as cycles. In fact, in Judaism we even have the concept of gilgulim, or reincarnations, where a soul that still needs refinement can begin again as a new life in this world, seeking throughout generation after generation of life spans, to purify and perfect itself.  Even death, in Judaism, is not the end… it is just an opportunity to have a new beginning.

This is the reality of life.  Every end is a new beginning.  We may be leaving behind one place, one city, one relationship, one job or school, one stage of our lives… but we are always entering a new one.  Judaism teaches us that yes, the past is important, it shapes who we are and teaches us important lessons, but we are not to cry over something when it ends.  Rather, we are to look forward to the new beginning that is already starting.

Chag sameach and Shabbat shalom!

Chazak! Chazak! Venischazeik!

Sukkot at the Kotel (Western Wall) in Jerusalem, Israel

Please G-d, tonight, October 17, we’ll be at 8 Kenilworth in Lindfield/Sydney, Australia for a Sukkot, simchat beit hashoeva celebration. The Sukkot party will be around 8:00. I’ll be speaking about some of my travels around the world. All are welcome to join.

What is a Simchat Beit Hashoeva?

On Sukkot there was a ceremony where people would gather outside of Jerusalem and water was drawn from a spring. This was done with much celebration. So much, that the Talmud says, ‘one who did not see the water drawing ceremony on Sukkot, has not seen celebration in his life.’

It must have been quiet a party. I would love to have been there.

The Talmud says that during the “Simchat Beit HaShoeva,” or “The Water Drawing Celebration,” Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel would juggle eight fire torches. This is quiet impressive. Even today there are only a handful of jugglers who could juggle eight torches. I can juggle three, so I guess I’ve got a long way to go!

Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel was no ordinary man. At one stage he became the ‘nasi,’ a very high position in Jewish leadership, thus if he found it fitting to juggle than I believe that this was a very important celebration.

I used to go to Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York as a kid with my father and then alone as a teenager almost every year for the simchat beit hashoeva. The whole street was blocked off, and thousands of people from all over New York would come and dance.  The party went on every night of Sukkot from 9:00pm until 6:00am. I remember staying up every night for a week straight dancing until the sun came up.

It says that in the times of the Temple, people would grow so tired from dancing they’d fall asleep on each others’ shoulders. Because they were compressed so tightly they would keep moving in the circle while asleep.

On Sukkot we have a commandment to be happy and celebrate  and this is what Judaism is all about. Judaism is not about standing in the Synagogue and fasting on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. G-d wants us to celebrate and be happy. So find a simchat beit hashoeva to go to, and if not, find a Sukkah to celebrate in, and if not, just dance – you and G-d – because this is how we draw down the blessings for the year.

Moed Tov