| Shabbat Parashat Vayishlach 15 Kislev 5773 November 29th 2012 Shalom, Anyone with an Israeli driver's license is also familiar with the points system. According to the points system, one is penalized for every traffic violation where the more extreme the violation is, the more points you he/she is given. In 21 years of driving, yours truly has collected two speeding tickets, and accumulated 12 points- meaning I needed to spend 20 hours in a course for traffic violators to clear my record. I decided to squeeze it into three long days this week and to then take an exam (which, by the way, I've passed ).
In the class, I met people from every walk of life; young and old, men and women, Sephardim and Ashkenazim, religious and secular, and people from every socioeconomic background. When you end up in a class like that, where you spend long hours with Israelis, you discover two things: one, they cannot leave their cell phones for even a second, and two, Israelis will immediately try to work the system to their specific needs. For example, before the instructor even walked in for the first session, someone had already suggested we shorten the breaks so that we could all leave earlier and a second suggested that we should cancel the breaks and start a bit later since too difficult to get to class during rush hour.
In the course, you don't learn anything you didn't know before. The idea is to refresh what one already knows and possibly forgot with time, or to highlight issues you've missed or forgot to pay attention to over the years.
Even though it's annoying, I think that refreshment course once every couple of years is probably a good idea for every driver (especially in Israel) who really wants to stay safe on the roads.
I was then wondering, in how many aspects of our lives would it have been beneficiary for us to take a "refreshment course"?!
In our professional lives we all go to conferences, take advanced courses, and try to stay ahead of the game, but what about our spiritual lives? Or our personal relationships with our loved ones?!
Perhaps, if we took an occasional refreshing course, even though we wouldn't learn anything new, we could benefit from rediscovering something we've forgotten over the years?
And wouldn't it be nice if we didn't need a threat or a point system in order to do that?!
Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem, Cantor Arik Wollheim
P.S It's now Friday morning and I'm about to send out this message. A few minutes ago, I received a phone call informing me of a funeral of a friend of mine that is about to take place in couple of hours. The deceased, Yisrael Munk, a 26 years old newlywed with a 9 months old baby, a talented musician, conductor, accompanist and a wonderful human being, left his home in Jerusalem on Sunday, and since then was missing until his car was found beneath a bridge last night near Tz'fat. It seems that he lost control over his car. I know that the rate of car accidents in the US is not as high as it is in Israel (where it's a real epidemic), but if there's one thing I relearned from the course this week, and even more so this morning, is that is far better to lose one moment in life than losing life in one moment.
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom and I'm looking forward to seeing you all in Shul next Shabbat,
Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem, Cantor Arik Wollheim |
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