Walking is one of the healthiest and simplest exercises. When you walk briskly, you breathe more deeply and your mind clears. Your brain produces healthy biochemicals that make you feel better and enable you to think with greater clarity. Walking stimulates creativity, and you might think of better ways to reach goals. Many people take walks to come up with solutions to challenges.
You can utilize your walking time to increase your level of joy. As you walk briskly, repeat to yourself, "With each and every step, I am feeling more and more joy. With each and every step, I am feeling more and more joy. With each and every step, I am feeling more and more joy."
this is a lovely story. Take the time to read it.Simcha Jacobovici Simcha Jacobovici is a Canadian-Israeli filmmaker and journalist. He is a three-times Emmy winner for "Outstanding Investigative Journalism" and a … New York Times best selling author. He's also an adjunct professor in the Department of Religion at Huntington University, Ontario.
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At the 2014 Oscars, they celebrated the 75th anniversary of the release of the "Wizard of Oz" by having Pink sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", with highlights from the film in the background. But what few people realized, while listening to that incredible performer singing that unforgettable song, is that the music is deeply embedded in the Jewish experience.It is no accident, for example, that the greatest Christmas songs of all time were written by Jews. For example, "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was written by Johnny Marks and "White Christmas" was penned by a Jewish liturgical singer's (cantor) son, Irving Berlin. But perhaps the most poignant song emerging out of the mass exodus from Europe was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". The lyrics were written by Yip Harburg.He was the youngest of four children born to Russian Jewish immigrants. His real name was Isidore Hochberg and he grew up in a Yiddish speaking, Orthodox Jewish home in New York. The music was written by Harold Arlen, a cantor's son. His real name was Hyman Arluck and his parents were from Lithuania. Together, Hochberg and Arluck wrote "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", which was voted the 20th century's number one song by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In writing it, the two men reached deep into their immigrant Jewish consciousness – framed by the pogroms of the past and the Holocaust about to happen – and wrote an unforgettable melody set to near prophetic words. Read the lyrics in their Jewish context and suddenly the words are no longer about wizards and Oz, but about Jewish survival:
Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow.
Why then, oh why can't I?If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?The Jews of Europe could not fly. They could not escape beyond the rainbow. Harburg was almost prescient when he talked about wanting to fly like a bluebird away from the "chimney tops". In the post-Auschwitz era, chimney tops have taken on a whole different meaning than the one they had at the beginning of 1939.Pink's mom is Judith Kugel. She's Jewish of Lithuanian background. As Pink was belting the Harburg/Arlen song from the stage at the Academy Awards, I wasn't thinking about the movie. I was thinking about Europe's lost Jews and the immigrants to America. I was then struck by the irony that for two thousand years the land that the Jews heard of "once in a lullaby" was not America, but Israel. The remarkable thing would be that less than ten years after "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was first published, the exile was over and the State of Israel was reborn. Perhaps the "dreams that you dare to dream really do come true".
| | 10 Ideas Judaism Gave the World Some revolutionary concepts found in the Torah. | |
| | Many of the concepts espoused in the Torah and Jewish tradition seem quintessentially modern, yet go back thousands of years. Here's a roundup of some ideas that we take for granted today that are an integral part of ancient Jewish wisdom. 1. MonotheismJudaism introduced the powerful notion that one God created and rules the universe. This was a profound break with the idolatrous models that came before, in which an angry or capricious god was seen to govern events at random, and had to be appeased – often in horrible ways, like child sacrifice. The Torah, in contrast, provided a radically different model of the universe, which uplifts, instead of degrades. It taught that nothing was random; the world was created for a purpose, and so were we. We each have a divinely-mandated goal in our lives and are charged to reach our potential. This was a revolutionary idea. Ordinary people were seen as holy, important beings. The Torah describes every individual as being created betzelem Elokim, in the image of God. No matter what our circumstances or abilities, each life is holy and special. All of the elements that make up a civilized society flow from this realization. 2. The Weekend"Six days shall you work and accomplish all your work, but the seventh day is Shabbat to the Lord Your God; you shall not do any work" (Exodus 20:8). There is nothing inherently logical about breaking up the long monotony of human days: the seven-day week is found nowhere in the natural world. Yet, today, four thousand years after Judaism introduced the concept of Shabbat, the concept of a seven-day week is universal. The Jewish concept of Shabbat – of ceasing from work for one day out of seven – helped develop the idea of the week, and set society on the path to delineating a specific work-week – and periodic times for leisure. 3. CensusEngland's Domesday Book of 1086 is often referred to as the first national census, but 2,400 years earlier the Torah records a census of the Jewish people (Exodus 30). After leaving Egypt, Moses organized a poll of the Jewish people. It must have been a massive undertaking: he counted 603,550 adult men. 4. AsylumIn ancient Israel, Jews were instructed to build "six refuge cities" on either side of the Jordan River, to which people accused of manslaughter could flee before receiving their sentences (Exodus 35:6). In these cities, they were guaranteed protection from relatives of those they were accused of killing and were safe from vigilante justice. 5. Equality Under the LawAlone in the ancient world, the Jewish people proclaimed the dignity of every person: men and women, rich and poor. Ancient codes of justice routinely contained different laws for people of varying social statuses. Even in the present day, when human rights abuses around the world make a mockery of impartial justice, the Torah remains a beacon of light, insisting that all people – regardless of station – are to be judged the same: "You shall not commit a perversion of justice; you shall not favor the poor and you shall not honor the great; with righteousness shall you judge your fellow" (Leviticus 19:15). 6. Court SystemThe Torah contains one of the earliest systems of upper and lower courts. As the Jewish nation grew after the Exodus from Egypt, their leader Moses found it increasingly difficult to adjudicate all their disputes. Moses' father-in-law Yitro presented him with a unique solution: establish the world's first comprehensive legal system. Under his guidance, Moses established four levels of courts, from local precincts where people could go to petty disputes, all the way up to high courts that oversaw the lower courts and decided the most difficult cases (Deuteronomy 1:11-15). 7. Animal RightsThe movement for animal rights might seem very modern – current animal welfare laws began to be proposed in Western nations in the mid-19th Century – but they have their antecedents in Jewish thought. The Torah and Talmud are full of detailed instructions on treating animals with kindness: we are forbidden from muzzling an ox during harvests (this ancient practice was meant to prevent beasts from eating the crops) or yoking a strong animal together with a weak one (because it might cause undue strain on the smaller animal) (Deuteronomy 25:4). When we collect eggs, the Torah instructs that we first shoo away the mother bird (Deuteronomy 22:7). The Talmud even commands us to feed our animals before we ourselves eat. 8. Crop RotationNowadays, farmers know that to maintain nutrients in soil, it's effective to rotate crops and to leave fields fallow periodically. In Israel, this practice has a powerful spiritual dimension, as well. "Six years shall you sow your land and gather in its produce. And in the seventh, you shall leave it untended and unharvested, and the destitute of your people shall eat, and the wildlife of the field shall eat what is left of them; so shall you do to your vineyard and your olive grove" (Exodus 23:10-11). This practice – which is still followed by many Israeli farmers today – reminds us that it is God who ultimately controls the land and our lives. 9. Monetary DamagesWhen the Torah introduced the idea of paying for damages with money instead of one's life, it was a revolutionary thought. The Code of the Babylonian ruler Hammurabi (1795-1750 BCE) mandated the death penalty for most serious crimes; the 7th Century BCE Draconian Code of Athens made the death penalty the punishment for every crime. Even in the present day, some countries impose harsh physical punishments; in Saudi Arabia, people have been sentenced to have their eyes gouged out; Iran has also used blinding as punishment, sentencing a man accused of stalking a woman to have acid dripped in each eye. Both nations, as well as some other Muslim countries, have used amputation of hands and feet as punishment for crimes. Jewish law, in contrast, codified various categories of monetary damages for a range of crimes, allowing those convicted of theft or negligence to pay off their debt and resume ordinary life. 10. Public SchoolIn 64 CE, Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Gamla ruled that every Jewish child aged six and up should attend school, whether their parents could afford to send them or not. He even mandated a maximum class size – no more than 25 children per teacher. Jewish communities raced to put Rabbi Yehoshua's ideas into action, establishing subsidized or free schools in Jewish communities the world over. As Chicago educational philanthropist George Hanus has noted: "it is the first instance in recorded history of a people instituting compulsory universal education funded by the larger community…. Many scholars believe Gamla's model was the inspiration for free public education systems in the contemporary West, including the United States."
Author Biography: Yvette Alt Miller earned her B.A. at Harvard University. She completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Jewish Studies at Oxford University, and has a Ph.D. In International Relations from the London School of Economics. She lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. |
