Netzach

I was handed a gift last Friday with a simple word on a sticky attached to the wrapping paper. The word was Netzach. I could tell it was a book, but which one? The author is Alfred Lansing and the book is entitled: Endurance: Shackelton’s Incredible Voyage. It tells the story of Sir Ernest Shackelton […]
Counting the Omer: The Week of Netzach

Your blueprint is set down on paper and you have “signed off.” A blueprint or plan though is just a map, an outline for growth. You may have started down a path and begin to see the obstacles that you encounter or create. Choices abound and there are many potential course corrections. Questions that often […]
Help Is On The Way

“Crystallize your goals. Make a plan for achieving them and set yourself a deadline. Then, with supreme confidence, determination and disregard for obstacles and other people’s criticisms, carry out your plan.” Paul Meyer This week of Tiferet (the third week of the count) is our time to create a plan for change. There is a […]
Counting of the Omer Week Three: Tiferet

“Crystallize your goals. Make a plan for achieving them and set yourself a deadline. Then, with supreme confidence, determination and disregard for obstacles and other people’s criticisms, carry out your plan.” Paul Meyer This is the week of Tiferet (Day 15 is Chesed in Tiferet which starts Saturday night and ends Sunday evening). The first […]
Gevurah: The Strength of Setting Boundaries

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Genius will not. Education will not. Persistence and determination alone will solve the problems of the human race.” Calvin Coolidge This second week of the counting of the Omer (taking us from Day 8-Day 14) is connected to the Sefirah of Gevurah. […]
Counting of the Omer Week Two: Gevurah

A reminder: As many have asked—we count each day of the Omer starting at nightfall. So, the first day of the week of Gevurah will start this Saturday night (and the entire next day until nightfall on Sunday is Day 8). If you forget to count one (entire) day you continue to count—each day is […]
What’s Love Got To Do With It?

This current week of the counting the Omer is the week of Chesed (the day to day intention is included in the more detailed blog). This week of Chesed is a reflection on love—our capacity for love, how we share it, how we can lose our balance in love and how it serves us to […]
Counting of the Omer: Week One

Our counting of the Omer this year will pick up on a theme we began to address in last year’s count. This year our intent is to develop the idea of the seven week count as a seven week step program for change. With the end in mind, the final week of the count, corresponding […]
Productive Counting

We are just over a week away from counting the Omer—a fifty day count from Passover to the holiday of Shavuot—commemorating the journey the Jews traversed from Egyptian slavery to becoming a nation with the Torah as its religious covenant. This year we will again look at the fifty day count as a step program […]
Providing Definition

A number of our students subscribe to word of the day and today’s word, appropriately, is vernal. Vernal stems from the Latin word vernus meaning “pertaining to spring.” It is related to the word “verdant.” My love of language and words has instilled a curiosity in how words come into being. For instance, what is […]