Rabbi, I need a tikkun

Rabbi, I need to do a tikkun.

Once again, I blew my interview at HUC. As we say in Hebrew, ��� ������ �����. The etymology of this expression has been explained as a mistranslation of “third time I’ll scream”, which seems apropos my predicament.

I spent the following days hashing and rehashing the interview, a sure sign of the presence of the yetzer hara (see Rav Twerski’s article on Innernet).

Sunday night, I was thinking that HaShem didn’t want me to go to HUC, and that is the reason I flubbed the interview every time. As if HaShem purposely tied my tongue. Then I thought that what HaShem really wants is for me to study with Aleph. Then the phone rang, and there was Reb Gingy. I knew right away what he was going to tell me.

Eliza said I need to own my own desires. It was me, not HaShem. Whichever, the result is that my options are either to pack up this kibbutz life and move to Boston or Philly, where the Rabbinical programs accepted me already last year (this is what my shrink thinks I should do), or work the Aleph program into my life.

Yesterday, I had another moment of great clarity – the kind that tells me that HaShem is with me: I should spend next year here, finish my MA thesis with the same kinds of grades that I have been getting, begin the Aleph program, teach my Arava program Eco-Judaism/Eco-Zionism class that I have been preparing, celebrate Amalia’s bat mitzvah on the Kibbutz, and prepare to go to the US in the fall of 07 for two years, during which I will continue with the Aleph program, and work on a Ph.D. at the same time.

Of course, since then, the yetzer hara has been attacking with all its strength and guile. E.g. I have again been filled with self-doubt. At least I know where it’s coming from.

So, I know where I’m going, but I still have a big tikkun left to do. I’m open to suggestions.

Technorati tags: judaism israel kibbutz interviews failure hassidism jewish renewal rabbi aleph tikkun self-doubt

Ask and you shall receive

The beautiful thing about Performancing is that you can blog a webpage while looking at it.So on that mind mapping page, I saw a little link to “accessories” – and there it was! Blaine Kendall has already figured it out!

Well – that’s great, because I am not a code monkey, wonk or whatever you call it. I would just wish until it appeared.

Technorati tags: judaism mindmaps mapping data storage software del.icio.us

Mind Mapping

Main Page – FreeMind – free mind mapping software

So you want to write a completely new metaphysics? Why don’t you use FreeMind? You have a tool at hand that remarkably resembles the tray slips of Robert Pirsig, described in his sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance called Lila. Do you want to refactor your essays in a similar way you would refactor software? Or do you want to keep personal knowledge base, which is easy to manage? Why don’t you try FreeMind? Do you want to prioritize, know where you are, where you’ve been and where you are heading, as Stephen Covey would advise you? Have you tried FreeMind to keep track of all the things that are needed for that?

Mind Mapping is great. You know, I learned this stuff in college, way back when, in the days when the best computer you could buy had like, maybe 8k of memory.

I was riding the bus with my daughter, who is thinking a lot about what she wants to get for her bat mitzvah, over a year from now. Which is, what else, an iPod, or whatever equivalent. So, a neighbor pulled out her player, and we asked what is it, and she told us, mentioning that it is 20Gb, and she can download from her camera onto it.
My daughter asked “is that 20 million bytes?” “No, honey, that’s twenty billion,” I said. Is it? I can’t keep track, maybe it’s 20 trillion. It’s a whole lot, isn’t it.

What I want, you know, is an app that will take my knowledge and map it. No, not alone. del.icio.us is close, but now I want to get that information back from the web, and squeeze it into a page, a mind map, so that I can squeeze that out into a document that might be useful.

Crossing the boundary – between me and you. That’s the ���� – the boundary crosser. That’s me – Like father Jacob, I fight all my fights at the river’s edge, never sure whether I am wrestling with myself or with my G!d.

Love with might.

Technorati tags: judaism mindmaps mapping data storage software del.icio.us