ESSAYS| 2017

ESSAYSss|

Marijuana and Chassidus: Should Jews Get Chai?

By Carly Meisel, Washington DC

Essays 2017

MyLife Essay Contest 2017 It’s 12pm on a Tuesday in sunny Washington, D.C. Four college students sit on a bench in the center of their university’s campus, howling with laughter while passing around a joint of marijuana. As I walk by, I observe that none of them are telling jokes. They are laughing at something unnoticeable to the

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You Don’t Need to Become an Artist

By Rivka Nehorai, Brooklyn, New York

Essays 2017

MyLife Essay Contest 2017 I see so many people around me who want to be artists, craving to express themselves well. Real artists.To reach inside, through their confusion, fear, and pain, and grab out the pearls of insights they’ve gleaned from their tribulations. They want to be told how to pick out the colors that will reflect

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Consistent Kavanah: Keeping Daily Prayer Alive

By Yehudis Fishman, Boulder, Colorado

Essays 2017

MyLife Essay Contest 2017 THE CHALLENGE Once in my twenties, I attended an OU convention during the Torah portion of B’haaloscha. A prominent rabbi was referring to the opening comment of Rashi, about Aharon’s lighting the menorah in the same way every day. Rashi says, ‘to tell the praise of Aharon that he did not

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Silence in a Crowded Room

By H. Schild, Spring Valley, NY

Essays 2017

MyLife Essay Contest 2017 INTRODUCTION “Talking during davening” formally known as “Sichas Chulin” שיחות חילין [mundane conversation] is not a recent lapse that just started to plague our shuls, distracting the speaker as well as others in the congregation from connecting to HaShem as they should during prayer, taking it as given that this is the goal of

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Seeing through the Darkness

By Aharon Shollar, Far Rockaway, NY

Essays 2017

MyLife Essay Contest 2017 Today we find ourselves in a terribly dark world. Immorality and corruption are rampant. People are forgetting the definitions of right and wrong. In such a seemingly bleak time, it may become easy for one to lose faith. If G-d is good then why is the world so bad? With the weight

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In Pursuit of the Pathway
דער וועג איז דאָס ציל

By Gerald Rosenberg, Tel Aviv, Israel

Essays 2017

MyLife Essay Contest 2017 דער פראָבלעם   אין אלע צייטן, אָבער ספעציעל אין אונזער דור האָט דער מענטש געשטרעבט נאָך הצלחה סיי אין מאטעריעלע, גשמיותדיקע, סיי אין גייסטיק, רוחניותדיקע ענינים. וואָס אָבער טוט מען אויב אפילו מיט די גרעסטע כוחות און האָרעוואניע קומט מען נישט צו צו דער אויסגעבענקטער הצלחה? מען מוז זיך א פרעג

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The Congruent Life

Author wishes to remain anonymous

Essays 2017

MyLife Essay Contest 2017 As a girl growing up in a chassidishe non-Chabad home, my exposure to Chabad was mainly through the stories in the Yiddishe Heim, a Lubavitcher periodical delivered to our home. I found myself especially drawn to the stories of the rebbeim, early chassidim and mashpiim. Somehow I sensed that there was a common denominator

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Overcoming Perfection

By Chavah Golden, Chicago, IL

Essays 2017

MyLife Essay Contest 2017 Standing in the park one day, looking up, I was wondering why a Frisbee looks larger, the closer it gets….then it hit me. …Many classes later, I was wondering why I wasn’t perfect yet… then IT HIT ME! To be perfect and know everything is not the goal. Neither is fixing other

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The Power of Thought

By Mushkie Blesofsky, Brooklyn, NY

Essays 2017

MyLife Essay Contest 2017 In every situation in which we find ourselves, we have two options. We can choose to think the best or worst about our reality. Other than changing our mood, how much of an influence do our thoughts really have? Through exploring the Chassidic perspective how we should channel our thoughts, we

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True Feminism

By Chava Hinsey, Brooklyn, NY

Essays 2017

MyLife Essay Contest 2017 The Issue If Hillary Clinton had won the Presidential Election, a good percentage of the country would have celebrated the first female president of the United States.  True, there would have been a woman in the Oval Office. Practically, however, nothing about her way of ruling the country would have been

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