Tzedaka- Charity
The Greatest Return on Investment (ROI)
Investors, managers and executives look to the ROI of a project or endeavor because this measure indicates how successful a venture will be.
Companies often use ROI to measure the success of a specific project. If a business owner were to invest money in an advertising campaign, they’d analyze the sales generated by the ad and use that information to determine the ROI. If the money generated exceeded the amount spent, then a business could consider it an acceptable ROI.
Ahavat Yisrael- Love your Fellow
Love Vs. Respect
Why is it that it is sometimes challenging to like and respect the people whom we love?
Love is an emotion of the heart, respect is an intellectual appreciation for the positive qualities and values of another person and understanding their unique needs. While emotions are expressed more powerfully, they can also become destructive if they are not contained and given the proper context and boundaries. Intellect, on the other hand, may be more rational and less passionate, but it enables a person to develop a genuine appreciation and respect for those they love.
Mezuzah
Feel at Home
Have you ever wondered what is the most important part of a home? Is it the roof and exterior walls which provide shelter from outside elements? Or is it the interior design and aesthetics which impact the function and ambiance of the home? Perhaps it's the furniture and appliances which enable us to make use of the home itself?
While all those aspects serve an important purpose, they do not define the ultimate nature of a home. For one can find shelter or even enjoy quality hospitality and luxurious amenities while staying at a hotel as well, but, of course it's still not quite the same as one's home.
Jewish Education
The Secret to our Eternity
A couple years ago, the Wall Street Journal published a heartwarming article, titled "The Shul That Rose From the Ashes," written by Josh Nass. In it, he describes his grandfather's childhood in Malakhovka, a suburb of Moscow, and his eventual emigration to America in 1972 after surviving the horrible persecutions of pogroms, the Holocaust, and the communist government's attempts to stifle Jewish observance.
Josh recalled, "Speaking only Yiddish, he took the first job he could land. His most ardent wish was for his three children to be raised with a Jewish education and values - something impossible in Russia. He eventually lived to see his hopes fulfilled. All of the next generations in our family received a Jewish education."
Mikva- Family Purity
A Happy Marriage
When Yigael Yadin, an Israeli archaeologist and former military Chief-of-Staff, came to Masada in the 1950s and first laid eyes on a three-pooled plastered bath system carved into rock, he did not realize that he had just made the first-ever discovery of an ancient Mikvah, a Jewish ritual bath. Hundreds more were subsequently found all over Israel.
The purpose of building a Mikvah is so that Jewish family life can continue and children can be born. This demonstrates that the Jewish rebels came to Masada not to die but to live and create new life. They understood that along with their need to provide food, shelter and other basic necessities for their families, a Mikvah was vitally important to ensure the continuity of the Jewish people.
In fact, Jewish law teaches that “building a Mikvah enjoys priority over building a synagogue, purchasing a Torah scroll, or any other Mitzvah.”
Kosher
College Dining
In the early 1960s, the global Jewish community was facing a severe crisis. Many Jewish men and women who were going to out-of-town colleges were losing touch with their Judaism and intermarrying. At first the number was three percent, but this number was going up rapidly at an alarming rate.
Rabbi Ephraim Sturm, CEO of National Council of Young Israel at the time, related: “I called together the officers of Young Israel and I said, ‘We have a problem!’ We agonized over it, and we decided to ask a number of Jewish leaders what to do.
Tefillin
Tefillin
Our personality has three layers to it - intellect, emotion and action; what we think, what we feel and what we do. One of the greatest challenges in life is to try to overcome this mind-heart-body disconnect - to develop the right attitude in the mind, positive desires in the heart and to then live up to it and do the right thing.
The Tefillin helps to achieve a spiritual alignment of mind, heart and body, uniting our thoughts, feelings and actions towards a power higher than all three.
Shabbat Candles
The Power of Light
For many years in the 90's there was a small advertisement that ran every Friday on the bottom corner of the front page of the New York Times. It read, “Jewish Women: Shabbat candle lighting time this Friday is ____pm.” It not only served as a reminder of this eternal mitzvah, but it also expressed Jewish pride.
The advertisement ceased after the sponsor ended it, but it reappeared once.
On January 1, 2000, the NY Times ran a Millennium edition. It was a special issue that featured three front pages. One had the news from January 1, 1900. The second was the actual news of the day, January 1, 2000. And then they had a third front page, projecting future events of January 1, 2100.
Letter in a Torah Scroll
Uniting for Peace
Six F-15 escorts and eight F-16 fighter bombers roared off the runway from Etzion Air Force Base in southern Israel. The air was thick and tense. Prior to take-off, Lt. General Rafael Eitan briefed the pilots. "The alternative is our destruction," he said, displaying unusual emotion.
Israel's intelligence had recently confirmed that Iraq had intentions of producing weapons in their Osirak nuclear facility. The atomic bombs which the Iraqi reactor would be capable of producing from enriched uranium or plutonium could be as fatal as the one that landed on Hiroshima. Realizing the mortal danger facing the people of Israel, the Israeli government decided to attack. At 3:55 PM, while the country innocently bustled about its daily activities, the fighter jets secretly took off.