Channeling Champions
by Alice Johnson

First I must say there should be gold medals given for Torah scholarship, commitment to family and community, and feeding the hungry. Despite the fact that this doesn’t happen maybe at all here on earth, or at least not with the same financial backing and fanfare as the Olympic games, I still find the Olympics thrilling and beautiful. And they have made me think a great deal this year because they are about much more than scores and tacky uniforms.

King Solomon in Proverbs 22:6 says, “Educate the youth according to his way…”

For those of you who are too busy to watch the Olympics, Michael Phelps is one of the most astounding and terrifically gifted athletes alive today. He is an American swimmer. He could also kill a Goliath. I’m pretty sure.

Image left: US President Bush speaks with Michael Phelps after he won another Olympic gold medal in Beijing two weeks ago

I have a feeling that people all over the world saw the same interview with Michael Phelp’s mother. According to his mother Michael has ADHD (Attention deficit /Hyperactivity disorder) and as a child was constantly on the move, bouncing off the walls. She even says his mouth was constantly on the move. I thought that was a little harsh. But it paints a picture. We probably have all known or currently know a kid like this. Kids who are hard to keep up with are often irritating because they remind us of how lazy we can be. Sometimes God gives the tortoise a hare to raise. These kids often have low self esteem and fail because we are all too slow and fail to see their energy as a blessing.

Smart mom that Mrs. Phelps is, she got her son Michael involved in swimming to help him direct his energy. That’s code for ‘wear him out’. I’m kidding. Kind of. Most parents figure out that their kids’ behavior can change radically when they are given a healthy outlet for their energy. So instead of letting him drool for hours in front of a TV playing video games, she took him to the pool most days of the week, which probably wasn’t very easy given that she was a single mom supporting three kids.

At age eleven Michael’s swim coach told Mrs. Phelps that he had Olympic potential and that they should start training for the next Olympic games. She thought he was nuts but said OK. Now Michael at age twenty-three has more gold medals than any other athlete in Olympic history.

Instead of forcing her unique and wonderful kid into a mold too small for him, Mrs. Phelps put her son in a position to succeed. She channeled his energy and set him up to win. That’s a great trick. Without knowing it, she implemented King Solomon’s advice to the letter and educated her son according to his talents and aptitude. Many other mothers and fathers might have had a Ritalin-dependant loser but Mrs. Phelps channeled her child to championship by utilizing the positive side of what appears to be a drawback.

Instead of pretending that we know better than the Creator and breaking kids until they conform to a cookie cutter standard, look for their gifts, utilize them properly, and set them up for success. It seems to me this is honoring the child and honoring God at the same time.

By contrast, let us look at the Chinese government approach to training gymnasts. They have no use for King Solomon. What I have to say about the Chinese government’s approach to training gymnasts is not positive. I am in no way trying to impugn every coach in China or every gymnast in China, or every Chinese parent who allows his or her child to train for the international competition. I still don’t like what I have learned, really at all.

…¹

Michael Phelps is living proof of what proper child-energy channeling can do. This is an amazing lesson for parents and teachers alike. Conclusion? There’s no such thing as bad kids. When you see what appears to be a bad child, there are parents and teachers that have failed to channel the child’s God-given gifts into the right path. Let’s not forget King Solomon’s lesson.

(source: Alice Johnson
hat tip: Robert)

One of the toughest aspects of becoming religious later in life is coping with how friends and family respond to this big change.

There can be a major disruption in shalom. For a lot of people this is pretty frightening for all of the obvious reasons. I have tons of respect for people who are able to shout their new views to the mountaintops. What guts. I can’t do that a hundred percent of the time without feeling quite chicken. But I’m getting better.

The other night a dear old friend was visiting along with a bunch of other friends and acquaintances. After a delicious summer dinner everyone started talking about the big election in the fall.

I hate talking politics with most people for all the obvious reasons most people hate it. To me it’s a bunch of people who aren’t really experts on anything sitting around probably offending the heck out of each other for no particularly good reason. I mean how many people are seriously going to change their vote because of one of these arguments? Am I being too cynical? Perhaps.

So the topic of Israel comes up. And the fact that I have made it clear that I am a single issue voter. I vote for the person I think will do the least amount of harm to Israel. This is not the most popular viewpoint in this circle of friends.

My dear old friend says something like this: “Are you seriously going to tell me that you believe that God spoke to this one group of people and gave them a specific piece of real estate and all of that craziness! Where is my old Alice? Where did she go?!”

I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that because I have always been a passionate supporter of Israel, which he knows. I guess he meant that there is a religious component now.

Being a hundred percent honest, that comment kind of made me want to cry because I really like this person. I looked at him and thought, “Wow. Is he drawing a line in the sand? I don’t want him to go. I hope this isn’t the end.”

So I said, “X, you have known me for fourteen years. I certainly hope I have evolved and changed as a person over that many years. You have and I love you anyway. You can believe whatever you want. I can believe whatever I want. And if you don’t like it, that’s really just tough. Go ahead and think I’m crazy.” He made it clear he does think I’m way off my rocker and loves me anyway. I think we’re OK.

Ideally, a Torah-loving person loves his fellow man, and by this I mean not just the people it’s easy to love. Ideally the more religious a person becomes the more humble they become, the more in awe of all of God’s creation they become, and the more they see that we need to be really, really exceptionally nice to one another. I love my friends, truly. I really love people in general. And the more spiritual I have become the more I feel this way, by the Grace of God.

I wonder if part of the tension between newly religious people and our friends and family who see things differently stems from fear. Maybe old friends are worried that the old you is dead. Maybe they are worried you are critiquing them. (If we actually are, maybe we should be super careful with that because it can get ugly and hypocritical.) Maybe they are worried that it’s going to get irretrievably awkward at some point. Perhaps they are worried we will try to shove our views down their throat. Maybe they need to be able to share their views with you, no holds barred, or else the friendship will be kind of fake.

Speaking of fake, maybe they are worried that you will only like them, because now you are somehow supposed to, not because you truly appreciate them for the beautiful, unique person they are.

Bnei Noach struggle often because there is very little community for us in the traditional sense of a religious community. There isn’t a building where we can check in with one another once a week to be around like-minded people who are in exactly the same position.

That’s tough for the people who were once Christians or Muslims who are accustomed to having that place and that connection to others. It’s also tough for people who are maybe looking forward to finally having that after spending their whole life without it.

Here’s a flipside to this, as I see it. This lack of community, as it were, has forced me to see the whole world as my community and to see the whole world as my house of worship. I think in many ways this meshes nicely with a Torah-centered view of the universe.

Judaism is not about checking in to a building once a week. Ideally it is in the home with you, at work with you, on the subway with you, at the restaurant with you, and, not to be gross, but with you when you leave the restroom and thank God that your body is working correctly. It is everywhere you are.

Most of my friends see the world in very different ways than I. Nevertheless, they are my community. I am so blessed, gigantically blessed, to know so many unique and fine people. I’m glad God has put me in this position. I really can not find very many people who think like me, because there are so few who do. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have community.

My community consists of people who like and love each other in spite of the fact that we don’t see the world the same way. I think that is true shalom and is a profound and beautiful thing. We are a community because we love each other for who we really are.

(Source: Nava)
The author of this post is a very holy woman who often has remarkable dreams that have led her on journeys across the world, and have impacted thousands of people.

Ever wonder why a dog barks “arf! arf!” or a large dog barks “roof! roof!”? Or a bird chirps ‘tzif tzipf”? Or a sheep says “baaaaa! baaaaa! baaaa!”? And why do cows go “moo”?

Last night in a dream, 26 Tamuz, I saw a large herd of cows loudly ‘mooooooing’. Although I thought that it was extremely funny to see a large herd of cows loudly ‘mooooing’ in the dream, I realized that it’s not funny at all and there is a strong message in their mooing. During the dream, a unique thought came to me and it suddenly dawned on me why cows say “mooooo”. In Hebrew, Mooooo is spelled מוּ and its gematria is 46. The Roshei Tevot (initial letters of the consecutive words) of Moshiach ben David is MBD - מבד and its gematria is also 46! In the dream, the cows were mooing because they too are excited that Moshiach ben David is coming to redeem us.

The sheep says ‘baaaaa!’ In Hebrew, baaaaa is בא and it means ‘coming’ - who is coming? Moshiach ben David.

It says that the animals will be spiritually elevated and stop preying upon each other when Moshiach comes. As the prophet Isaiah, zs’kl, states, “The wolf will lie down with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid goat; the calf, the young lion, and the fattened ox will flock together, and a young child will lead them… The knowledge of G-d will fill the earth as the water covers the sea.”

Animals offers us great possibilities in deepening our connections with HKB’H (the Holy One Blessed is He). So next time you hear any animal species barking, chirping, growling, yapping, bellowing, mooing, etc. know that also the animal are all anxiously yearning for Moshiach.

Guest Post by Noahide Alice Jonsson
Source: BreslovWorld.com

I’m going to go out on a limb and declare that there is an experience that unites all B’nei Noach. Regardless of age, race, socio-economic strata, gender, or nationality; Democrat, Republican, Cherokee, Israeli, former Christian, former Atheist.

It is the confused — nay, incredulous — face a person makes when hearing about B’nei Noach for the first time.

“So what religion are you?”
“Well, OK, so you know what a Jew is right?”
“Oh, so you’re Jewish.”
“No. I believe in Judaism but..”

“So you’re not a Jew.”
“Right. See Jews have to follow 613 commandments and…”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, I know, it’s a lot. And B’nei Noach follow only seven. So..”
“Banana who?”
“No. OK, so you know who Noah was, right?”

“The guy with the boat.”
“Yeah! So there are some laws from the time of Noah, and…don’t go! I’m not crazy!”

When I first became a Bat Noach these reactions bothered me. I’m not the kind of girl who appreciates being looked at like I’m a religious wacko. I like my religion Orthodox and old school. No make-it-up-as-we-go, new-fangled stuff. When someone looks at me like I’m a member of a cult, not good. Not confidence inspiring. However, as wobbly as I was, I recovered from these awkward moments quickly. Why? Because Hashem reassured me with concrete, visceral results from my prayer - custom fit for my predicament.

When I started talking to Hashem, I felt I had plugged in to a source of power that was alarming to me. Previously, I thought religious people were talking to the sky or to something in their heads and that this somehow had a therapeutic effect. I thought some of them were clearly bonkers. And that most of them were a little bonkers. What they believe in sounds like fiction, weird fiction.

But when I do what our rabbi says, even when I cannot believe it will actually work, it works so thoroughly — and often with such speed — I know this “fiction” is true, like I know my mother loves me. Example: When my husband and I were doing in vitro fertilization — I’m talking the kind that costs as much as a new car — the doctors were throwing bills at us like confetti.

“Ma’am, we’ve decided to give you an ultrasound today. That’ll be $464. Cash. Now. And that’s the discounted price so wipe that look off your face.”

We had tried for many years. This was our chance. Rabbi said to go for a walk and to tell God we need some help and that we need some money. Truthfully, this seemed really tacky to me. I mean money is dirty and God is clean and there are hungry people. Surely a lightning bolt would fry me the second I opened my mouth to ask. But I go and I explain the situation to Hashem, apologetically.

The walk was uneventful. Feeling slightly embarrassed, I closed the sliding door, at least feeling refreshed from the cool fall air, brushed the grass and the burrs off my jeans, meandered around the house for maybe ten minutes, and the phone rings. It’s the mail order pharmaceutical company the doctor recommended to acquire the giant box (literally) of drugs that I would be administering from home. The patient woman who’d been helping us decided to resubmit our drug order to the insurance company one more time, just for the heck of it.

This was a bill for an amount so large it’d pay for a few classes at an Ivy League school, for a procedure not covered in our state. Period. And guess what? Despite the fact that the insurance company had just the day before categorically refused to pay for the drugs, they had agreed to cover our request. She calculated how much money we saved on the first few items on the list and it was at two grand in a few seconds. She was laughing and bubbly and was clearly loving the moment right there with me.

Ten months later, a very chubby little boy was born. And our lives went from black and white to color.

What tickles me most about how that specific event went down was how perfectly God knows me. He knows that I can be quite shallow and that a sure-fire way to get my attention is to make money fall out of the sky so I can pay a bill. There is nothing theoretical about a bill being paid. And most importantly, there is nothing theoretical about the gorgeous toddler hanging out in our living room. It all makes awkward religious discussions about bananas and Noah feel like nothing. Knowing that Hashem will meet me right where I am, (with no pretense) and that sometimes He even likes my plans, is everything.

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Guest post by Reb Ari

I recently verified this story from the grandson of the couple involved.

My friend’s elderly grandmother, Miriam, remarried a number of years ago to R’ Shalom. They live in Jerusalem. R’ Shalom is now in his mid nineties and in his youth he studied in yeshiva in Mir in Poland and had the opportunity to spend a week at the home of the Chofetz Chaim (R’ Yisroel Meir Hacohen Kagan, zs’kl). A few nights ago, in the middle of the night he woke and told his wife that the Chofetz Chaim had appeared to him in a dream and simply said that Moshiach will be here soon. The Chofetz Chaim said that it is time to get ready and to spread the message. My friend’s father (Miriam’s son) asked his rav, Rav Asher Weiss if this is something to take seriously. His response was that we are clearly standing right before Moshiach, and it certainly should be taken seriously and we should undertake to do Teshuva.

The second story I heard directly from the people involved.

There is a young girl about eight years old who needs a refuah (אביבא מלכה בת לאה) - she is currently in the hospital with loss of vision. Please pray for her. She has been in and out of the hospital for chemotherapy, and she has had multiple complications. A few months ago she had been in a coma for an extended period of time. When she finally came out of the coma, one of the first things she said was, “Did I miss the weddings? Did I miss Moshiach coming?” Her two older sisters were not engaged yet (I don’t even know if Aviva knew they were dating), but both became engaged and were married over the following few months. I was at the sheva brachos (post-wedding celebration).

May Hashem heal Aviva Malka bat Leah along with all the ill people of Israel with the coming of Moshiach, Amen.

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Reb Ari wrote a beautiful inspiring song about the coming of Moshiach: To listen, click here

Lyrics of “Finally Here”
As he walked home from yeshiva,
a sound reached his ears
clear and majestic, unmistakably near
Joy filled his heart
HE’S FINALLY HERE!!! Moshiach’s finally here!!!
He ran all the way home
said to his dad,
“Did you hear it - the shofar
or am I going mad?”
“Not now, my son,
can it wait ’til later, when the business news is done.”

CHORUS:
Where is our hope, our faith, our pride?
Where’s the desire, the love deep inside?
When we say we want Ben Dovid to come
We can’t fool ourselves or the Holy One.

She heard it, at first faintly
a note long and clear
steadily the sound grew
’til it was all she could hear
Joy filled her heart
HE’S FINALLY HERE!!! Moshiach’s finally here!!!
She rushed to the kitchen,
got on the phone.
“Sister, can you hear it
or is it me alone?”
“Can you call back tonight?
I’m facebooking now, so I hope it’s alright…”
CHORUS

When we finally hear the shofar
After all these many years
Our emotions can run deeply
moving us to tears
Joy will fill our hearts
WHEN HE’S FINALLY HERE!!! When Moshiach’s finally here!!!

We must strengthen our hope, our faith, our pride.
We can find the desire, the love deep inside.
When we say we want Moshiach to come
We can reconnect to the Holy One.