Holy Day Olympics 

People often set aside a time and place for an extraordinary occasion or event as a way of making it special. This is the case with both the Holy Days and the Olympics. We schedule them into our lives because we find something about them intriguing and feel they offer us unique opportunities.

If people are just running around a track in a cornfield, or diving off a tree into a country pond, it wouldn’t capture the world’s attention. But pick a time and place, put everybody in the light, add the hype… and Wow! It’s amazing! People become so enthusiastic at seeing participants performing at their best.

And I would imagine this is somewhat the way we would like to be viewed right now, hoping to have the best of who we are representing us at this holiest of times.

Just like the athletes, who train regularly throughout the year, putting in the necessary time and effort for their chance at a medal, Jews have all year to prepare for the experience of the Holy Days.

Our High Holiday Olympics are our attempt to achieve our peak condition, our most consciously aware, mindful, and spiritually connected self.

If this is something we have prepared for by living our lives properly throughout the year, now’s the time when we should excel at being our best.

This is the time when Jewish people everywhere come together to bond in our unique life experience and to confirm the preciousness of our team legacy as a people whose destiny it is to increase the quality of life for all people and our world.

However, our team goal is far greater than winning an Olympic gold medal. Its value is far beyond whether we are the fastest runner, swimmer or greatest diver or acrobat, or whether we can score more points or goals than another team.

Our efforts have real, meaningful life value, because we are actively participating in the game of life!

Everyone on our team is an MVP, a Mitzvah Valuable Person, and our All Star team is made up of those who take a universally “wholistic” approach to Judaism, one that recognizes the benefits Judaism has to offer for positively contributing to a better, healthier future for all life.

Our Jewish team welcomes all other individual players and teams whose members are caring life forms, and share in our common goal of improving all our places in the “life standings” by joining together to enhance the quality and health of all people’s lives and our world.

This is the only “game” where our life team, and all of us, can come out winners!

Before Shofar Blowing 

The life growth aspects of Rosh Hashanah suggest that it is to our benefit to have reviewed our efforts over the last year, with an eye for improvement; and to celebrate the opportunity we have now,  now that we are a year older, more experienced and supposedly wiser, to improve on our choices. 

Rosh Hashanah, spiritually, is like the ultimate Mikvah cleansing. We get a “do over,” a chance to start again with a clean slate.

In Biblical times one of the main reasons for sounding the shofar was to gather the people together. It’s the same today, right here, right now. Let the calling of the shofar gather us together and bring us to this moment.

So just for right now, let go of all the other things going on in your life, take a few deep breaths and try to connect with your most loving, enlightened self; your place of wholeness and peace… your sacred space.

Time to open our hearts in the hopes of improving the quality of our lives, those of our loved ones, Israel and the world.

The closer this sound of sounds helps us get to our heart, the more successful the time we have spent here will be.

Listen to the sound of the shofar call, the resonance of energy and vibrations, past and present, manifesting the wonders of the Creative genius influencing our existence.