National Challenge 5780

All of us have so many areas of our lives where we need to judge ourselves. How can we possibly even consider judging anyone else? It’s like running to paint a third coat of charcoal grey on your neighbor’s house while your patio is rotting away.  

The Universal Way to Unity 

Take a look at the huge events at Uman where at least 50,000 men gathered to celebrate Rosh Hashana.  

Breslever and Chabad chassidut focus on uniting through one goal: Acceptance. They don’t judge anyone. As a result, they are the best at gathering "lost and stolen children" like us. It’s not only them, but the countless initiatives by Jewish Outreach organizations that carry on acts of  nonjudgmental  kindness  that shines Judaism's brightest light among our people.  

Take a look at the big tables attended all over the world set by Chabad emissaries, where Jews of all backgrounds find a place to celebrate Shabbat, eat a kosher meal, and hear a word of Torah. When we began our journey to Hashem and His Torah, nobody asked what we did the previous Friday night or if we could read Hebrew. They didn’t ask us who we voted for in the last election.  

They just opened their doors and fed us with lots of Torah and heaps of cholent. 

The Battle for Each Other 

Today we have too much hatred going around. Propaganda is disguised as news and is poured upon our heads. We seldom read beyond catchy headlines meant to rile us up with snap judgments that are usually wrong.  

Today’s media forces us to refer to swaths of our brothers and sisters as “those people.” It goads us into hating them as if they are no longer our own but are aliens that can just waste away. It demands we pass judgment, not on ourselves – taking personal responsibly for the reason the world is not in a spiritual place where such “outrages” aren’t possible – but on others.  

Our National Challenge for 5780 

The Torah is a celebration of life. It’s a celebration of G-d. It’s a celebration of the relationship between our Father and His Children, the Jewish People. It’s hard to join the celebration in front of people who stare at you judgmentally. It makes you feel like you don’t belong in the one place Hashem intended for you.   

Our generation’s mouth may be filled with judgemental evil speech, but behind all that anger are people who want to be accepted. 

That’s our challenge for 5780 – in Hebrew, the year Taf Shin Peh. In Hebrew, Peh is both a letter and the word for mouth. This should be the year of the holy mouth – turning away from evil speech (lashon hara) and lies, and instead filling our mouths with love, Torah, emuna, and truth. 

It’s up to all of us to accept our brothers and sisters without any judgment. Rush to find something good about them and forcefully blind yourself to everything else. Build any relationship on this. Think of how good it feels to be loved with no preconditions and give that blessing to someone else.  

Someone once told me the key to making new friends is to approach them while thinking to yourself, I really like you. If you have the attitude that this person is already a friend, they will quickly become one.  

This is how we turn all of our anger and frustration into celebration and joy.  

Evil is an exhausting energy. It takes and consumes but produces nothing.  

Joy and love are energies that increase and grow and underwrite everything good we want to do in life. Let’s put those good emotions into our mouths, and into our speech, and make this year the one that is truly filled with baseless love and holy speech – and bring the long–awaited Redemption, amen.