Very recently, we called Israel to wish my father a happy birthday – well, my son did him the honors. When the three year old got tired of wishing him a happy birthday, my father asked the next predicted question: “are you staying in Pittsburgh?”
With family so far away, it’s hard to make sense of emotional territory that goes along with immigranthood – such as the life I am living now. It is times like these I need a higher spiritual reign or order of things to provide spiritual balance and give perspective. So I turn to the book “It’s all a Gift.”
Miriam Adahan is one of my favorite all time non-fiction Jewish authors. It’s all a Gift was the last book I read by her while I was still in Israel more than 13 years ago. I brought it with me but didn’t have great intent to reread it again… not until now.
I love her opening lines: “But how do we remain loving when faced with rejection? How do we find joy when faced with loss, especially when the losses seem absurb, meaningless, and unfair? Why does G-d give us these events? And is He asking the impossible of us in requiring that we bless them?” (Adahan, It’s all a Gift)
There are many anecdotes in her book, which supports her torah commentary and her erudite and skilled wisdom of connecting biblical verse with modern syndromes of every day life. It’s almost as if the countdown begins to engaging in a better spiritual order of thinking. It is not easy however, for everybody to think that every mishap and chalenge is a “gift”. That is the challenge of understanding how to “bless the bad just as we bless the good” (Berachoth 54a).
I recommend reading this book from the practicality this book offers on a simple Jewish formula for understand complex things that are skinned with Talmudic teachings. There is a saying: “when the learners is ready, the teacher comes forth,” or something to that extent. I think now’s the time.