A s the Rabbi Said...
AS THE RABBI SAID... Sermon Excerpts Are Birthdays Jewish? We really don't know how to celebrate birthdays. We are squeamish about them; we are embarrassed by them. Read the words on birthday...
...Literally, you should save someone who is injured and desperately in need of being aided...
...To which I answered, "That's what I'm here to find out...
...I got three this year that said: "A friend is a person who remembers the day and forgets the year"—as if it were a sin or a shame to grow a year older...
...When the doctor recited the findings, I knew he would prescribe a diet...
...As the Phantom himself says: "Once they see my face, they can never be free...
...If so, encourage your rabbi to send a sampling to Sermons, MOMENT Magazine, 3000 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20008...
...We ought to celebrate them with two moods in our hearts...
...And so, throughout the story, the Phantom lives out his two separate selves, for he engages in angry and frustrated battle with the able-bodied...
...Byron Sherwin Spertus College of Judaica Chicago, Illinois Do your rabbi's sermons make you sit up and take notice...
...As I stepped on the scale I thought about all the second helpings, all the snacks, all the desserts I should have not had—all the times I should have said "No," all the wrong things I had eaten...
...What did we do right and what did we do wrong in the days we have had until now...
...We stand uncovered before God...
...Each year is an achievement, each year is a gift, and so each year is a reason to be grateful...
...A birthday ought to be a miniature Yom Kippur, a day for thinking abqVit such questions as: What are we doing with our days...
...If you look in the Torah you will see only one birthday mentioned—and that is of a non-Jew: Pharaoh (Genesis 40:20...
...And it is we, the able-bodied, who cannot and do not comprehend...
...Later on, it occurred to me that coming to the synagogue on the High Holidays means coming to the right place to find out how we are, spiritually...
...Jim Kaufman Temple Beth Hillel Southbend, Indiana Prescription for the Spirit I went into the examination room and the first question my doctor asked was—well, how are you...
...A Yahrzeil they knew exactly...
...Get undressed, and we'll look you over...
...The second thing we should do on our birthdays is make a cheshbon hanefesh, a spiritual accounting...
...And what are we going to do with the days we have left...
...at the same time he shows tender and sensitive love for his Christina...
...The Torah says that you should "not stand idly by while your neighbor bleeds...
...I think that we ought to celebrate birthdays...
...A birthday means that we made it through another year...
...And if we listen well, we hear God's diagnosis of and prescription for our spiritual health and well-being...
...Some people say birthdays are not Jewish...
...If asked, they would say: "around Chanukah" or "two weeks before Pesach" or something like that...
...It is not enough to follow the injunction "not to mock the deaf nor to place a stumbling block in front of the blind...
...God looks each of us over, inside and out...
...The first mood should be gratitude...
...Rather, it is vital that we be proactive, to move toward him or her lovingly and eagerly in order to help, not to save the person from the disability but rather to save the person from a death worse than death itself, a life without people...
...The emotional abuse that we, the able-bodied community, consciously or unconsciously, singularly or collectively, inflict upon the community of the disabled is beyond comprehension...
...To which he said, "Then you've come to the right place...
...I believe this Torah truth can also be understood this way: There are those in life who are bleeding within, whose hearts and minds suffer from a pain of rejection and isolation that surpasses any amount of physical pain...
...He dwells beneath the opera house, and when he emerges, he is wearing a plastic mask, protecting him from being mocked...
...Read the words on birthday cards and you will see how many make the same self-conscious joke...
...Jack Riemer Beth David Congregation Miami, Florida Reach Out to the Phantom Phantom of the Opera is the fictional story of an opera singer whose face, early in life, was significantly deformed...
...Our parents or our grandparents who lived in Europe had only a vague idea when they were born...
...It is not enough to be reactive, simply to be nice when a person with a disability approaches or passes by...
...Would I need a spiritual diet, a spiritual health regimen, a spiritual discipline to help improve my spiritual health...
...Later I thought, "How would I fare if I could see God's scales with all the good things I had done on one side and with all the bad things I had done on the other...
...We ought to give thanks—not only with a party and by saying Shehecheyanu (seasonal prayer of thanks) but by giving...
...I could fool myself and I could deceive others by wearing striped suits and larger shirts to hide the protruding evidence of my transgressions—but there and then, without clothes, with the slide on the scale being moved more and more to the right, there was no hiding from the truth...
...The next thing the doctor said was, "OK, get on the scale...
Vol. 15 • October 1990 • No. 5
