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"Holding on to our Insights and Practices" By Rabbi David Lapin

I'm not sure about you, but I don't feel really ready to go back to normal. I'm not sure we should ever really be ready to go back to normal. I was thinking of the idea of teshuva, which means repentance or literally returning, going back. We go back when we've taken a wrong turn. When we've done something incorrect, we go back to correct what we've done. But when we've taken a right turn, we don't go back, we go forward!

And I can't help thinking but the world has taken so many turns to the right in many different areas. living in Israel, a country known for people who are impatient, I look around me and find people so much more patient. We see people around the world so much more caring of others. We see that we and others around us have slowed our life down from the frenetic pace at which we used to live. We're focusing more on local local communities, family home, we've invested or investing more in our hands. We've re calibrated our values and questioned our assumptions. Things that used to be important to us aren't as important anymore and things that were not that important to us, it became more important to us. We're using our time more wisely, we're learning more and commuting less. We're easy on the environment and we see the results.
We haven't taken a bad turn.
Let's not go back. We've taken right turns. It might  be helpful to make a note of all the new insights and practices that you've generated through this period. Hold on to those insights and practices. So that when normal returns, it's not something you go back to, but something to go forward to!

By Rabbi David Lapin

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