Most people assume that true prayer requires praying with tears streaming down their faces. People are concerned that if they don’t succeed in crying, their prayers aren’t sincere enough. True the Gemara teaches us that the gates of tears are never locked. However Rebbe Natan of Breslev teaches that prayer with joy surpasses prayer with tears. As it says ‘Worship the L-rd with gladness’ (Tehillim 100).

Rabbi Arush, Garden of Gratitude, http://www.breslev.co.il.

These daily lifts are inspired by Jonny Chippeck and dedicated to his ‘refuah shleimah’. Get well soon Jonny!

Please step up to the plate and contribute your own small nugget of Torah by sending back to me at terence@speedquote.net. The more people we have contributing, the higher this daily lift will go. Keep them coming.

Before he became a Rebbe,Rabbi Bunim of Parshisco was a merchant. He once went to the market to purchase grain. The polish farmer asked for a higher price than Rav Bunim wanted to give. ‘Do better’, the farmer said to him, Even though it was clear that the farmer was referring to a higher price for his grain,Rav Bunim used this as a reminder to improve his entire behaviour. Do better !

These daily lifts are inspired by Jonny Chippeck and dedicated to his ‘refuah shleimah’. Get well soon Jonny!

Please step up to the plate and contribute your own small nugget of Torah by sending back to me at terence@speedquote.net. The more people we have contributing, the higher this daily lift will go. Keep them coming.

Churchill defined success as going from failure to failure with enthusiasm

These daily lifts are inspired by Jonny Chippeck and dedicated to his ‘refuah shleimah’. Get well soon Jonny!

Please step up to the plate and contribute your own small nugget of Torah by sending back to me at terence@speedquote.net. The more people we have contributing, the higher this daily lift will go. Keep them coming.

Rabbi Dessler in his essay on Teshuvah disccusses ‘complete repentance’. Even when we have repented of our sins and failures and come back to Gd, our repentence is still not complete until Gd comes back to us. How can this be achieved? A person must do all that is in his power to remove the tendency to sin from his heart and in addition to pray with all his heart that Gd will draw near to him. Only then will Hashem complete the repentance and cleanse the sinner’s heart from all tendency to sin and he will be released from the burden of the past. “I will give them a new heart and a new spirit will I place within them” (yehezekel 36:26).

 Hashem will grant forgiveness but this depends on the attitide and sincerity of the penitent himself. However, a person may long for more than mere forgiveness he wants to feel Hashems love flowing towards him again as in the past. By appealing to Hashem through love; knowing that he does not deserve it and begging for kindness. Hashem will respond accordingly; Hashem will ‘complete the repentance’.

These daily lifts are inspired by Jonny Chippeck and dedicated to his ‘refuah shleimah’. Get well soon Jonny!

Please step up to the plate and contribute your own small nugget of Torah by sending back to me at terence@speedquote.net. The more people we have contributing, the higher this daily lift will go. Keep them coming.

♪ Ashamnu ♪ Bagadnu ♪ Gazalnu ♪ Dibarnu Dofi ♪

It seems strange that on Yom Kippur, when we confess our sins collectively as a congregation in the Viduy prayer, we sing the words out loud.

♪ We have trespassed ♪ We have betrayed ♪ We have stolen ♪ We have slandered ♪

Surely a more sombre, private tone would be more appropriate given the nature of our sins.

 

Rabbi Mitch Goodman gives the following insight.

We often sing when we’re in the shower. Why?  Because it feels good to get yourself clean, to wash away the dirt and start again, feeling refreshed and rejuvenated.

The same is also true for Viduy.  We are ‘washing away’ our aveiros, our sins, wiping away our mistakes and committing to a ‘cleaner’, ‘purer’ future full of mitzvos.

This cleansing process feels good, so we sing!

These daily lifts are inspired by Jonny Chippeck and dedicated to his ‘refuah shleimah’. Get well soon Jonny!

Please step up to the plate and contribute your own small nugget of Torah by sending back to me at terence@speedquote.net. The more people we have contributing, the higher this daily lift will go. Keep them coming.

R Levi Yitzchak would say ‘Our generation is not like previous generations. In previous generations nobody used to tell the truth when they prayed on Yom Kippur, they would confess and say ‘we have sinned, we have deceived’ but there wasn’t a word of truth in what they said , they never ever sinned! Not so in our generation. When we confess and say ‘we have sinned, we have deceived’ every word we say is the whole truth. For telling the truth alone, we deserve to be pardonned.’

These daily lifts are inspired by Jonny Chippeck and dedicated to his ‘refuah shleimah’. Get well soon Jonny!

Please step up to the plate and contribute your own small nugget of Torah by sending back to me at terence@speedquote.net. The more people we have contributing, the higher this daily lift will go. Keep them coming.

In the aftermath of the destruction of the first Beit Hamikdash, Nevuchadnetzar, King of Babylonia, allowed a small remnant to stay in the Land of Israel, appointing Gedalya as his governor. The King of Ammon was hostile to Israel and sent Yishmael a Jew to assassinate Gedalya. Gedalya received Yishmael with great honour not suspecting that he would do him any harm. Yishmael killed him and murdered many of the Jews in attendance as well as the Babylonian guards Nevuchadnetzar had sent to protect his governor. Fearing the inevitable retribution that Nevuchadnetzar would despatch for a Jew killing Babylonian guards, the Jewish remnant fled to Egypt, leaving the land desolate.

Regarding this fast our Sages (Rosh Hashanah 18b) said:

This teaches us that the death of the righteous is equivalent to the burning of the House of G-d, for just a as a fast was ordained to commemorate the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash, so too was a fast ordained to commemorate the death of Gedalya.

Based on ‘The Book of Our Heritage’

These daily lifts are inspired by Jonny Chippeck and dedicated to his ‘refuah shleimah’. Get well soon Jonny!

Please step up to the plate and contribute your own small nugget of Torah by sending back to me at terence@speedquote.net. The more people we have contributing, the higher this daily lift will go. Keep them coming.

G-d remembers that which man forgets, while He forgets that which man remembers. How is that possible? If man transgresses and forgets that he has sinned and therefore fails to repent, G-d recalls that sin and judges man for it. But if man remembers his sin and sincerely repents for it, then G-d does not remember that transgression for it is not one that man has forgotten.

Wishing you all a Happy, Healthy and Fruitful New Year

Terence Livingstone

These daily lifts are inspired by Jonny Chippeck and dedicated to his ‘refuah shleimah’. Get well soon Jonny!

Please step up to the plate and contribute your own small nugget of Torah by sending back to me at terence@speedquote.net. The more people we have contributing, the higher this daily lift will go. Keep them coming.

‘A man does not see from the white of his eye, rather from the black.’ (Vayikra Rabah 31:7) So too in life, we learn much more from the ‘black’ times than from the ‘white’ ones. Reluctant as we are to go through them, it is usually the challenging times in our lives that help us to ‘see’ and appreciate what life is all about.

These daily lifts are inspired by Jonny Chippeck and dedicated to his ‘refuah shleimah’. Get well soon Jonny!

Please step up to the plate and contribute your own small nugget of Torah by sending back to me at terence@speedquote.net. The more people we have contributing, the higher this daily lift will go. Keep them coming.

One of my holy Rabbonim, Rabbi Moshe Rosenstein in Ramot Bet, made a shidduch last night between my neshama and a sefer kadosh called Tomer Devorah, by a contemporary and perhaps the Rebbe of the Arizal in Tzfat, Rabbi Moshe ben Yaacob Cordovero (1522-1570). It’s awesomely deep!

Reach for your Rosh Hashana Artscrolls and take a look at Tashlich (p630). At the start you’ll see the 13 Attributes of Mercy written over the text. This is Rav Cordovero’s work. In a nutshell the Rav demonstrates in this sefer how man can emulate Hashem through these 13 Attributes and connects them to these words in Tashlich.

Here’s a starter for ten. Take the first three words ‘מי קל כמוך’ ‘who G-d is like you’. The Rav explains that this refers to Hashem as the patient King and goes on to say that in Hashem’s mercy it is He who gives us the life force and the ability to move our limbs and muscles to sin when we choose to which is akin to a paramedic treating someone having a heart attack whilst the patient being helped is smacking the paramedic in the face! But he still continues to treat him! In effect Hashem allows Himself to be totally humiliated by this creature He created who utilises the power of life for evil YET STILL patiently and lovingly permits that person to live. What chesed and patience!

This is a virtue that man can make his own, choosing to be patient, accepting insults and still not refuse to bestow loving kindness on the one who curses him. Yes it’s a high level but it’s possible. Rav Kook z’tl excelled in this midda and would take all the abuse that the secular Jews gave him but still pour endless love upon them.

Shana tova, refuah shelema to Yonatan Yitzhak ben Channah Chippeck haTzadik

Love from the holiness of Yerushalyim

David Goodwin

These daily lifts are inspired by Jonny Chippeck and dedicated to his ‘refuah shleimah’. Get well soon Jonny!

Please step up to the plate and contribute your own small nugget of Torah by sending back to me at terence@speedquote.net. The more people we have contributing, the higher this daily lift will go. Keep them coming.