Let you not be defined by the effect of your wrong choice

Leah Houseman, writing as Sophia Bar-Lev writes:

as we continue to make our way through the Hebrew month of Elul which is dedicated to repentance in order to prepare our hearts for the approaching Festivals of the Lord (Lev. 23), this is the time to take an honest look at our personal acceptance of responsibility.

A big difficulty for a lot of persons is that they never want to take up the blame for something that went wrong. Most people prefer to give others the fault. When they themselves did something wrong they are fast to find somebody else to blame, even when they can put it on an imaginary figure like a devil.

These days of reconciliation and looking at the transition of the old into the new year it is time to look into our own heart. When we are prone to blaming others for our problems, we should reconsider and wonder if it is not high time to change our attitude.

Our world is still at war. Also in the Torah readings for this week the Jews find wars, at the beginning and the end. In the Weekly Torah Commentary — Ki Tetzei September 5, 2014 the author wants us to look at the cause-and-effect relationship, something which is too often overlooked.

From the writings we can get that the clear absence of unity between parents breeds rebellious children. today we do find lots of families with problems between partners and children. Many adults forget how their actions, their way of treating others, affects their children.

how parents live affects their children far more than what they say.

How many times we do see today that partners are not honest to each other and betray the people around them? In how many cases negativity becomes a bigger facto in the family life than positivity. Parents saying to their children they are not doing well enough. Family-members shouting at each other. Are the parents willing to remember the stupid things they did themselves when they were children? Are they willing to accept that their children learn by their mistakes?

We are not born parents we have to learn how to be parents (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a household each member should help each other to make it work. Together they should aim to go united on the path to greatness by choosing to learn the lessons of every experience we have in life.

The lesson for all of us is unavoidable: Human beings – children and adults -are too easily tempted to blame others for their own shortcomings. The Torah sets a higher standard, one consistent with how we were created.

Every human being has Free Will; regardless of what has happened to you, what parents you had, what hurts you’ve experienced, what hardships you’ve endured, You – and only You – have the responsibility for your decisions. It is ‘we’ not ‘them’ who have the ability and the power to choose whether we will wallow in negativity and in the past; or will we have the wisdom to learn from every life experience, using each one as a stepping stone to greatness. Cycles of abuse and pain can and must be broken. Amon and Moav, as well as Lot, has so many opportunities to learn from their experiences and become great men. It was for choosing to focus on their own feelings of disenfranchisement, their experiences of cruelty and selfishness, their own anger and sense of fatalistic doom, that they were forever barred from the congregation of Israel.

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Please read the exhortation by Sophia Bar-Lev: Weekly Torah Commentary — Ki Tetzei September 5, 2014

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Find also to read:

1. Running away from the past
2. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #15 Exposition before the Creator
3. Being Religious and Spiritual 7 Transcendence to become one
4. The Existence of Evil
5. Satan the evil within
6. What is life?
7. Elul Observances
8. Never making mistakes because never doing anything
9. We all have to have dreams
10. Youngster all over the world with the same dream
11. 30 things to start doing for yourself – #6 is vital.
12. Not holding back and getting out of darkness
13. It is a free will choice

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