@fortelabs I can't emphasize how frustrated this is that this was scheduled for the Holiest day on the Jewish Calendar, Rosh HaShana, the new year. Many Jews, including myself, are going to miss out on this. I am really disappointed. @fortelabs
This is good mussar!
Giannis Antetokounmpo, a talented basketball player for the Bucks, was asked by a reporter if his year was a failure after being defeated in the playoffs.
His answer is what we should tell all of our yetzer haras and haters.
So well said.
“I am a Jew. As a Jew I carry with me the tears and sufferings of my grandparents and theirs through the generations. The story of my people is a narrative of centuries of exiles and expulsions, persecutions and pogroms, beginning with the First Crusade and culminating in the murder of two thirds of Europe’s Jews, among them more than a million children. For centuries, Jews knew that they or their children risked being murdered simply because they were Jews. Those tears are written into the very fabric of Jewish memory, which is to say, Jewish identity. How can I let go of that pain when it is written into my very soul?”
“And yet I must, for the sake of my children and theirs, not yet born. I cannot build their future on the hatreds of the past, nor can I teach them to love God more by loving people less. Asking God to forgive me, I hear, in the very process of making that request, His demand of me that I forgive others. I forgive because I have a duty to my children as well as to my ancestors. Indeed the former defines the latter. The duty I owe my ancestors who died because of their faith is to build a world in which people no longer die because of their faith. I honour the past not by repeating it but by learning from it – by refusing to add pain to pain, grief to grief. That is why we must answer hatred with love, violence with peace, resentment with generosity of spirit and conflict with reconciliation.” - @rabbisacks
Incredible moment from the Dee Shiva.
Sadigur Rebbe tells the story of the third Rebbe who was forced by Nazis to sweep the streets of Vienna to humiliate him.
The rebbe made a promise: if I ever survive I will sweep the streets of Israel.
When he finally made it to Eretz Yisroel, he would wake up early each morning and sweep the streets of Tel Aviv. ❤️