Last night I had the privilege of being able to speak at the Chabad of Golden Beach’s famous Wednesday night shiur.  Rabbi Chay Amar has been giving a weekly inspiration shiur for years.  It was an honor to be invited as a guest speaker!

I spoke on the topic of “Traveling the World with G-d in my Backpack.”  I hope I was able to inspire someone by sharing stories from my own life.  I spoke a lot about the funny situations G-d has thrown my way and I told stories about how I dealt with Jewish challenges as I travel.  I shared stories like the one about losing my tefillin in Guatemala.

Once again, thank you all of you who came to hear me speak last night at Rabbi Amar’s Wednesday evening class. It was an honor and privilege to have the opportunity to share with you from my experiences. I hope you each got something practical to take away and that I had the opportunity to talk with you if you wanted to.

Florida coast from the airplane

Over Shabbat I was talking to friend who works in Airport Security. These guys have a rough time because it

seems that nobody likes them.

I travel a lot and there have been times when it seems like I am getting on and off airplanes every day. Sometimes I do get a slightly irritating feeling of having to take my laptop out of its bag, off with the shoes and the belt etc., all of course done while rushing to a plane for which I am late.

I remember this one time my carry-on bag came up positive on an explosive scan, not sure why. But I had to wait while a security officer took the bag and all its contents apart piece by piece. I was late for my flight and made it only because the airline had not yet located my checked bag to remove it from the plane.

At the end of the day the security is there for us. We don’t realize but as my friend told me, “At least once every few weeks in most major United States airports the security will foil an attempted terrorist attack. These attacks go unreported because the government does not want to scare people off from flying which would severely hurt the flight industry and the general economy.”

Airport Security

My friend said he would love to share the details about some pretty incredible terrorist attempts which he and his team caught, however he is not permitted.

I have always been happy when I get searched at an airport and I’ll often thank the security officer for doing his job and keeping us safe. At the end of the day, they are there for us. They are not getting on the plane - we are - and it is our well-being which they are protecting.

So perhaps next time you are being harassed by a security officer, maybe thank them.

Singing Yiddish songs for seniors in Florida accompanied by a 99-year-old violin player

Last week I had so much fun singing and telling jokes for a group of seniors in a home near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They have a Yiddish group that meets once a week and I offered to do a one hour show. They were fantastic, filled with good humor and spirit. The gentleman who played the violin along with my singing is 99 years old and sharp as anything. I sang mostly Yiddish songs which are classics, as well as a song in Russian and a song in Italian. This was for the few Italian and Russian speakers in the audience.

Entertaining old people runs in my family. My father, also a rabbi, goes every Friday afternoon to a seniors’ home to play his trumpet. It’s a win-win situation. He’s happy to play his trumpet, the family is happy that he is not playing the trumpet in the house, and the old people love to hear him play.

The faculty of music seems to be the last thing that disappears from a person’s mind. A person with Alzheimer’s and dementia may not remember much or recognize something but will join in to sing a song of their youth.

Please G-d I hope to have more opportunities to sing for older people and make them smile.

Rabbi Ben flying a remote control helicopter

Ever since I was ten years old I wanted a remote control helicopter. At the time the cheapest ones started at almost $1000 and you needed to join a flying club and take lessons to learn to fly the helicopter. It was explained to me that flying a remote control helicopter was more difficult than flying a real one.

In the last couple of years remote control helicopters have gone through some serious development. Using cheap materials, it is possible to buy one for a little as $20. These new helicopters are built with twin propellers and gyroscopic systems that enable the learner to fly the helicopter within a few minutes of practice. What once would take months of practice with the standard helicopter can now be learned in an hour.

Since we are staying in Florida in the same place for a month I decided to order one. I’m not yet sure what I’ll do with it when we pick up our backpacks and move again. A remote control helicopter will not fare well in a backpack.

So I was wondering what remote control helicopters have to do with Judaism or what can we learn from them.

20 years ago, if you wanted to study Talmud, halacha, or chassidut, it was a struggle to find a good printed copy with an English translation and illustrated pictures. You had to make the effort to go to classes or perhaps get cassette tapes, though many classes were not recorded onto cassette tapes.

In the last ten years we have seen the Jewish book market flooded with some incredible learning aides. For example, the ArtScroll Talmud and the many Chabad Chassidic discourses having been translated into English. It is now possible for a total beginner with no experience in learning Talmud to sit down by himself at home and study Talmud, enjoy it, and actually make sense of it. The same applies to shulcahn aruch, mishneh berurah, etc. And off course there are the countless podcasts and YouTube videos of shiurim.

It is like the new remote control helicopters that you can fly straight out of the box. But ultimately the real challenge and pleasure is to be able to fly the real remote control helicopter with a six channel remote and no double propeller system. Why? Because only with this type can you do all the maneuvers. The easy-to-fly straight-out-of-the-box ones have their limitations.

To excel in one’s learning one eventually wants to be able to open any gemarrah with a study partner and be able to read and understand it. Learning it like this gives a whole new perspective because when one is not shown right away what is a question and what is an answer, they need to work and figure it out for themselves. This is how all the commentaries came up with their ideas based on their understanding that they gained through reading, not by having an understanding first presented to them.  For now, I’m happy to have my easy-to-fly remote control helicopter, but I know that some day it will no longer be enough.  Some day I will outgrow it and I will want the challenge and growth that the real thing brings.  So, too, with Torah learning.

In Miami, fancy, expensive cars are everywhere. They are just one more way that society encourages people to show off, catering to egos rather than building true self-esteem. Unfortunately, ego can eventually destroy you (as Korach discovers in this week's parsha), while true self-esteem builds you up from within.

Before I started my life as a traveling rebbetzin, I was living in Miami.  Miami is a fabulous place (we’re actually visiting right now) and I truly loved living here.  Unfortunately, it shares a seductive trap with many other trendy first-world cities: it is a place that caters to the ego.

It would be hard to deny that this is a superficial and ego-stroking type of place.  If you turn on the radio, at least half of the ads are for plastic surgery.  If you drive down the road, the billboards show beautiful and scantily-clad women.  The very society is shiny, with sparkling new cars, fancy jewelry, and haute couture clothing.  Living in Miami, these things are hard to avoid seeing… and just as hard to avoid absorbing.  This culture, like many in the affluent first world, is designed to stroke your ego – and to give you the tools to stroke it yourself.

So when Rabbi Ben whisked me off to travel in places like India and Nepal, I was in a bit of shock.  I went from a place where appearance is of ultimate importance to a land where nobody cares what you wear.  There could be no greater contrast.  I had to accept that I had given up my car, my apartment, my beautiful furniture, my job in downtown Miami… and instead learn to embrace myself.  I had to learn to let go of my ego and instead, present my true self to the world.  In other words, I had to begin the transition from ego to self-esteem.

This struggle isn’t new, not by a long shot.  In fact, we see it in this week’s parsha.  Korach is the embodiment of ego.  Seeing that Moses and Aaron are elevated to higher positions, he can’t stand the thought that he might not be so elevated.  His ego was wounded and he sought to defend it by lashing out at Moses, making the appealing argument that all the Jews are holy and therefore equal, with no need for a leader.  If Korach couldn’t be in charge, he felt that nobody should.  Even after he and his followers were swallowed up by the earth, the Jewish people still found it hard to resist his ego-stroking arguments… after all, Korach was telling them how holy and important they all are.

It seems pretty clear that G-d does not like ego.  In fact, this is a core concept in Chabad chassidus, which emphasizes self-nullification.  If G-d is willing to have the earth swallow up Korach and his followers for their ego-centricism and if He is willing to send a plague upon the whole Jewish nation for theirs, then it’s pretty clear that He isn’t a fan.  As Psalm 147 states, “He does not desire [those who place their trust in] the strength of the horse, nor does He want those who rely upon the thighs of man.”  In other words, G-d doesn’t want you to show off your fancy car (or horse!) and He doesn’t really care if you look the most attractive of all – He wants something deeper and more meaningful.

These kids live in the poorest region of India and grow up with virtually nothing, yet they are happy - as are the adults who raise them. Why? Because instead of judging one another by external, superficial trappings, people are judged for who they really are... and each and every person is a vital and beloved part of the community. Thus, instead of feeding egos, their spartan life actually contributes to their high self-esteem.

But this doesn’t mean we should feel bad about ourselves.  Self-nullification isn’t self-deprication.  Instead, we have to cultivate a healthy self-esteem.  Self-esteem is based on who we really are, what our purpose is in life, and our infinite value in the eyes of G-d.  Aaron successfully stopped the plague that was killing the Jews by walking amongst them with an incense offering.  Why did this work? Because incense represents the importance of all Jews, large and small, religious and not, no matter who, no matter what.

Included in the incense offering is a spice that smells foul, added to a delicious mix.  Combined, the incense offering transcends to a level it could not without the bad smell included.  That foul smell represents even those Jews who are far from Torah.  The incense served to remind the Jewish people that they were each unique, valuable, and important – whether leaders or not.

Which is a lesson we all need to learn.  Next time you get dressed, ask yourself why you’re dressing that way.  Is it just because it’s how you feel comfortable? Is it irrelevant to who you are? Is it an expression of your creativity? . . . Or is it because you want to look good? Because you want to show off? Because you want to prove something to someone?  We can ask ourselves these questions about so many things in our lives, from the jobs we pursue to the cars we purchase. At the end of the day, G-d loves us not for our wealth or our physical appearance, but for who we are deep inside.  It is time we begin to love ourselves for the right reasons, too.