YES WE CAN!

(Note: No matter what your political views may be or how you feel about the results, as the great Chassidic Master, Rabbi Yisroel Baal Shem Tov taught, " We must always learn from every event in the world ". Here are a few thoughts.)

History was made last night in the United States of America. The glass ceiling hovering over the country has finally been shattered. A man from a group once so oppressed and once denied the privilege to vote has seen one of its sons elected to highest office in the land. Barriers have been broken and the United States has its 44th president lined up.

This crushing defeat of bigotry and racism has lifted the world to a new level. Chassidus speaks often about the breaking of barriers. We are taught that simcha – joy – defies all natural boundaries and delivers people to a new height. Barack Obama inspired many with the happiness that is the country and rallied many millions behind “Change We Can Believe In” and “Yes We Can”.

Yes we can what you may ask?

Yes we can smash the border around us and make history. The same is true in Judaism. If we stand together as a nation, proud to be what we are, not ashamed to live the way we do, we will lift ourselves to a new level – a change in essence. A change we can believe in - and yes, we can!

I am sure you have many reflections about this epic campaign, yet if I had to characterize two words that led this Illinois Senator to victory it was his ENERGY and the PASSION he inspired in millions.

I am sure many young people (myself included) cannot define all of the nuanced differences and ideas Obama portrayed, yet they latched on to the excitement he offered - the excitement he attached to living and the excitement of making a world of change - and that precisely swept the hearts of so many millions.

Perhaps while the campaign is now over we can still capture some of that renewed energy into the way we go about our own lives.

What Judaism desperately needs at this point in history is not new ideas, rather renewed passion into the already existing.

The first words of creation are, Yehi Oir – Let there be light – bring energy into life!

In Judaism - A Jew cannot say a prayer, only sing a prayer.

You cannot read the Torah, the Bible; you can only sing the Torah.

Like the new-born baby that says to her mother "If you want to communicate with me, the only language that I know is the song. Sing to me!"

We should all hear G-d reaching out to us as if to say "display to me the energy, the passion and the excitement of life that is dramatized through living with Judaism and that truly will capture my heart!"