To Jacob - ON your bar mitzvah

Before I start, I would like to thank Alan and Lynn, my mom, Carol for their love and support.  I would also like to thank Nancy, because without her planning for the past 6 months, this entire day would not have taken place.  We even joked a few times, that if anything happened to her, I might not be able to pull today off since I was “still in Singapore”

I would like to thank all of you for travelling near and far to be able to join us for this special day.  Every single one of you has touched our lives in some way.  We would like to send our thoughts to Aunt Janet, who is unable to be here today and hoping she gets well soon.

Jacob -

They say that the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes. To them, I would like to add a third and a fourth.

It is CERTAIN that right now, your mother, is sitting quietly, thinking to herself, “Please don’t say anything EMBARRASSING.”

And so I won’t.

Or will I? (rubbing hands together gleefully).

The fourth thing that is certain, is that no father, in history, has ever been more proud of a son than I am of you right now.

A bar mitzvah is an important milestone in a young man’s life. It marks the passage from childhood to young adulthood. But being a “man” is far more than learning and reciting prayers in English and in Hebrew. Being a man, is demonstrating to yourself and others that you have learned and are living by the Jewish laws and values that will serve you well throughout your lifetime.

In your 13 years, you have already demonstrated these values, multiple times in various scenarios.  From the earliest years at Toquam, you were always recognized for your citizenship, your ability to interact with all the other students and help the other kids in your class with what ever they needed.   You were selected to do peer mediation, and helped the scholars in the lower grades mediate conflicts and disagreements. 

You then moved up to Rippowam Middle School.  You were a little nervous, and were not sure what to expect in the beginning, but as we expected you very quickly fell into the routine of the early morning bus and high honor roll, while still participating in baseball, stage crew, wrestling and marching band.  Each semester you found a new extracurricular challenge.  Your continued striving for constant academic improvement is something that makes us very proud though making you practice your haf-torah was torturous

When Mommy started working at JumpStart, you took the individual initiative to jump on a different bus to go to the JCC after school multiple times a week to help out with the program.  You went in, and immediately became an integral part of the program there was even one little boy who was often upset, until you would get there and you helped calm him down.  Your mere presence was enough to put this boy at ease, knowing that you were going to make everything all right, even just for a short time.  The fact that you wanted to do a different mitzvah project than JumpStart demonstrates that helping others is something that comes naturally to you, since you did not recognize that you were already doing this mitzvah for over 2 years now.  It was just what you did, not anything special.  If that is not a Jewish learning, then I don’t know what is. 

It is for these reasons, and knowing what you are capable of doing from this point forward, that makes me the proudest father ever.

If you have not done so, please remember to sign the puzzle pieces with a message for Jacob, enjoy the montage, which was lovingly put together by Nancy, and then feast on the desert.

Link to Jacob's Bar Mitzvah Speech

Here is a link to Jacob's D'var Torah

http://joshuahammerman.blogspot.com/2014/06/tbe-barbat-mitzvah-commentary-jacob.html

Shabbat Shalom!

 

            A duck and a rabbi walk into a bar, whoops – wrong speech.  That’s for the Jewish comedy club try-out next week.

 

This week’s Torah portion of Shelach Lecha talks about the tzitzit and it also tells the story of the twelve spies.  You know, the ones that went up and scouted out the land and ten of them came back with a bad report and the other two came back with a good report.  And what does this all have to do with me?

 

Nothing.

 

And everything.

 

It’s like a puzzle.

 

And that’s what’s like me, because I love puzzles.

 

I’m told by my mom that when I was in pre-school, the puzzles they had we so easy that I’d flip them over and do them on the back without the hints.  So then the teachers went out to get more puzzles especially for me… until I mastered those as well.

 

I love jig saw puzzles – for a 200 piece puzzle, it takes me maybe a half an hour.  I also love thinking games like Stratego, Scrabble and Chess.   I even love to solve math problems – coincidentally, we’re right in the middle of the book of Numbers.  Well, technically, not in the middle, because the middle verse is in next week’s portion. 

 

We can learn a lot about how to solve puzzles from this Torah portion.  Take the spies for example.  The ten were not able to see beyond the moment.  They only saw the bad things about the land instead of looking for the good things, potential, for instance.  Joshua and Caleb not only noticed the good things, but they embraced the possibilities of what they would be able to do in the future.  They could see outside of the box. 

 

Going to Israel is considered to be “going up.” We call it aliyah, just like when we go up to the Torah.  When you go up to a high place, you can look out and see not5 just what the next step will bring, but several other steps into the future.

 

That’s exactly how you play chess and the best way to solve a puzzle.  You can’t get stuck on the here and now.   You have to look ahead and figure out what is coming next and how to figure out what else is going on around you.

 

The ten spies also made the mistake of thinking they were telling the truth simply by reporting what their eyes saw.  Joshua and Caleb understood the deeper meaning of what was going on and the importance of not spreading panic among the people.  The ten spies didn’t think of the consequences of giving a bad report.  When you are playing one of my favorite games, Stratego, and you make a wrong move, you can’t un-do it.  You’ve always got to be looking ahead to anticipate the consequences of what you do.

 

My portion ends with the laws of fringes, or tzitzit as they are called in Hebrew.  The Torah says we should look at the tzitzit and be reminded of the commandments, the mitzvot.  But how can looking at a bunch of strings remind us of commandments.  It’s amazing how my portion ends with an actual puzzle.

 

You see, every Hebrew letter has a number connected to it.  It is called gematria. So if you total up the letter of the word tzitzit, it adds up to 600.  Then, if you add in the eight strings and five knots you get 613 – or the exact number of commandments in the Torah and also the day my bar mitzvah weekend began – June 13 – 6/13.  Coincidence?  I think not!

 

I also figured out that if you take my Hebrew name, Yaakov Sha’ul and you add the word PACH, you also get 613.  The word pach means a garbage can.  So what does this mean?

 

Well let me tell you. The moral of the story is that you can find goodness even in garbage.  One man’s trash can be another man’s treasure.  And that’s interesting because legend has it that the Torah was rejected by every country except the Israelites. 

 

For my mitzvah project, I’ve been working with kids at Jump Start at the JCC.  These are kids ages 2-3 with various challenges.  I really enjoy doing it. It’s fun playing with the kids and seeing them look forward to me coming.   I am also helping an organization in Israel called Sulam.  The children in this program also have special needs, but they range in age from 6 months to 17 years old.  I want to thank all of you who made donations to help me with both of these very special programs.  

Happy 13th Birthday Jacob

So I don't know how the past 13 years have flown by.

It seems like just yesterday I was taking Nancy Pearce Herz to the hospital when my life would change forever.

 I would no longer just be a man, or a husband, I would now be a father.

There is not one moment that I have would changed.

One Small Spark Ignites Profound Change

One of the fundamental goals of Mother May I is to spark social collaboration , to identify people with a common cause, organize them to accomplish something of value and then allow those concepts to grow and prosper without limitation. There’s a great TED talk with Clay Shirky from 2005 during which he illustrates this concept.

In order for anyone to collaborate, people need to come together to discuss and plan out how to move forward. Prior to the Internet, this required the creation of some kind of institution¾a company, a committee, an action group¾to achieve their desired common goal. The institution was at the center of the problem-solving paradigm and forced the participants to move toward it.

Conversely, with social collaboration you can essentially put people at the center of the value proposition and remove the inefficiencies of the institution. The process allows loosely coordinated groups to leverage each other to drive significantly more value. 

This is a profound change in the way we do things. And we’re excited to put the process into practice with our three powered-by-mom projects over the course of the coming year. So read, get inspired, and share your thoughts in the comments¾Kathleen, Katie and Ameeta want your input!