Boker Tov, Good morning, Gut Yontif. Don’t you hate doing laundry? I do. But sometimes, when I’m tossing a heap of pillowcases and underpants into our clunky old GE washing machine, I feel a spasm of gratitude. How lucky I am to have a washing machine -- even an old *GE* washing machine -- to do the hard work of laundering for me! When I think of how people (women, mostly) have had to do laundry with nothing but washboards and elbow grease, I feel tremendous pity for them -- rachmones, as we say in Yiddish. But recently, I heard a story told by sociologist Brene Brown that made me reconsider. She spoke about a village where, by long tradition, the women would gather on the banks of a certain river and wash clothes together. Well, time went on in this village until a wonderful thing happened: All the women got washing machines in their homes! And then, something not so wonderful happened: An epidemic of depression broke out among the women. [beat] And no one could
Yom Kippur Evening 2021-5782 Gut Yontif, So, how are you all feeling? On this holy evening we step out of our daily lives for reflection and prayer. According to tradition, if we are healthy, we neither eat nor drink, don’t do work of any sort and refrain from wearing leather. All of this is to help us focus on matters of the heart and soul - or as some teach, ideally to be more like the angels, who don’t need to eat, drink, wear shoes or work to stay alive. That’s why it is also traditional to wear white on Yom Kippur. Today, we shed our pretensions and look at ourselves as we really are. So, let’s take a breath, let out a big sigh, and say: Hineini! Here I am, here I am, God. A year older, and a little more battered. Exhausted. Maybe depressed. Maybe melancholy. Can’t put my finger on it, but something is just off with me. My friends and colleagues talk about it too. It’s a feeling filling the world, and people are trying to name it: Psychologist Adam Grant shared the