A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Shul

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Dear Peyton,
      I first feel the need to apologize to my thousands upon thousands of readers world-wide for not writing for a long time. To be totally honest, I have been too busy basking in the orange and blue glow of the aftermath of the Broncos Super Bowl Victory to feel compelled to write a new blogg post. But that all changed this morning. Because a funny thing happened on the way to synagogue. You see, dear Peyton, it was about 6:29 AM this morning, and as I hurriedly got out of my car,  my jaw dropped. I could not help but notice one of the most magnificent sunrises in recent memory. Usually when I observe a sunrise, I focus on the sun making its entrance into the vast sky from the Eastern Horizon. But today, as I was naturally headed west-bound as I approached my shul, I was looking at the western part of the sky, which contained one of the most beautiful clouds I have ever seen in my life. I was glad I had my camera handy, and I snapped a few pictures, and went on my way to my daily morning meeting with G-d.
      During my meeting with G-d I was able to reflect on an incredibly profound lesson from that experience. The first thing I realized was how grateful I was that I was awake to witness that surreal sunrise. And I thought to myself that, as a result of my being awake every morning, I pretty regularly am able to bask at the beauty of the vast colorful Colorado morning sky. And I thought to myself, how bad I feel for all of those people who never get to experience this because they are sleeping, or inside, or are otherwise too busy. And I realized, that unfortunately, this is a phenomenon that occurs in many other spheres of our lives. How many times do we miss out on a profound experience because we were either sleeping or too busy distracted with something else? I am embarrassed to admit how many times my Better Half has called my attention to something ridiculously cute my baby was doing, which I had been missing until that point because I was reading about how Marshawn Lynch has been spending his retirement rapping on camels in Egypt, (for more on Marshawn check this out), some absurd comments Donald Trump had made, or what he was tweeting about chockers and "little Marcio."
      I also reflected how, ironically, sometimes we miss out on experiences because we are too busy trying to capture them. I specifically remember this past summer, as I was hiking near a magnificent waterfall in the Golan Heights in Israel. I deliberately left my phone on the bus, so as not to risk breaking it. As we came out of the hike after a late afternoon swim in a natural spring of water, we were treated to a surreal Bronco orange and blue sunset. I instinctively tried to grab my phone to snap some pictures, but quickly remembered my phone was on the bus. With no other choice, I stopped what I was doing, and admired G-d's masterful handiwork. I experienced His magnificent sunset. And it was specifically because I do not have any pictures of that sunset, that I will remember it vividly for the rest of my life.
     All of us have the opportunity to experience profoundly magnificent events every day of our lives. The question is if we will wake up, and actually do so.

Forever Yours,
Danny Wolfe

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Rabbi D-Train's Dare

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Dear Henry,

     My name is Danny Wolfe, and I am extremely attached to my cellphone. I constantly am checking my email, regularly looking up useless articles on ESPN.com and spend way too much of my time staring robotically at my iPhone 6.0. 

      For people like me who are obsessively checking our phones, going to the grocery store can be a difficult chore. Because while we shop we are checking items off a grocery list, far removed from our email, Facebook or Twitter apps on our cell phones. That means that when we arrive at the counter, ready to check out, satisfied with our shopping experience, it doesn't take long until we realize that we have not actually checked our email in 25 minutes, or we haven't seen Facebook in that long. We might be thinking, "Oh golly, I haven't seen my email in the last half hour. Maybe someone emailed me telling me I won the lottery, or maybe I got a new 15 percent off coupon from Bed Bath and Beyond! I better check my email now to see if anything like that transpired. And, once I'm done I need to check Facebook because I am sure one of my 1600 "friends" has posted a new status update, and if I don't check now I might miss it! And while we are at it, I need to check Twitter. Adam Schefter might have a breaking update that the Broncos signed Adrian Peterson, or one of my friends may have tweeted about the beer they drank last night! And after that we might feel the need to check our Linked In app even though we don't know how to use it or why it always is sending us notifications. 

        Suddenly we wake up when the sweet cashier says,  "your total is $86.29. Will you be paying with cash or credit?" We then give a half smile and mumble "credit" as we pull out our American Express card which yields 6% cash back on groceries. We swipe the card, sign the receipt, and go on our merry way.

      I am embarrassed to admit it, but I am guilty of this on a regular basis. Let's dissect what happened here: While I was lost browsing useless information on my phone, a human being, created in none other than G-d's image was helping me by scanning and bagging my massive grocery order. And the whole time, rather than have the decency to engage them in conversation and acknowledge their humanity, I basically told them that I was waaaay too busy to acknowledge their existence with all the important business I had to take care of on my phone. And I ask, oh Henry, how would that make you feel, spending 40 hours a week scanning groceries, while hundreds of thankless people totally ignored you, taking your efforts for granted, not even bothering to lift their heads to speak to you?

       Pirkei Avos, the Jewish Talmudical tractate on ethics enjoins us to greet every person "with a kind countenance." The Talmud elsewhere instructs that it is better to give a poor person the white of their teeth (a smile) than white milk to drink. If we are going to reluctantly give a poor person a few coins with a scour on our face, we would be much better off smiling at them and saying "hello," even if we didn't end up giving them any money.  A great rabbi once said that a persons face is like public property; just like if I leave out any harmful objects extending from my property into public property I am liable to pay for the damages, so too a person's face is public property that hundreds of people encounter every day. If the frown on my face damages people, the damage is my responsibility. I will never forget how utterly depressed I felt when I used to take a train to work every day; everyone in the train appeared absolutely miserable, as if they dreaded going to work. How very sad, thought I, that by the looks on their faces, these people spend most of their lives doing something that makes them depressed.
      Thankfully my wife recently listened to a class online from her favorite rebbetzin, who discussed this at length, and mentioned how she is taking it upon herself to not use her phone in public. Hearing this inspired me tremendously, and I sadly realized how guilty I am of overusing my phone in public, particularly while checking out of grocery stores. I decided on that spot that I would take a sort of pledge to cold turkey, stop using my phone in the checkout line. If I would be offended as the oft-ignored cashier, odds are the guy behind the counter also might take offense. Let us try to make the world a better, happier, more meaningful place. I hereby dare all of my thousands upon thousands upon thousands of devoted readers across the vast expanse of the universe to make a commitment to stop using your phones in grocery stores. Heck, I triple dogg dare you. Whose down?

Forever yours,
Danny Wolfe

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Open Apology to Anyone Who Has Ever Texted Me

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Dear Henry, and for that matter, anyone who is ever sent me a text message,

      I have to apologize for being so very bad at responding to your texts in a timely fashion. You see, dear Henry, and thousands of readers out there, the other day I had to send out dozens of text messages to recruit for a program we were running. Doing this chore with the fancy shmancy IPhone 6 was no easy task, but there was a cool feature. Apparently, on the iPhone, when you type in a number that you texted before, it automatically pulls up the whole texting conversation, from the last time you sent a message. I quickly realized there were many people to whom I owed a response; some people 

last texted me several weeks ago, and I realized that over the last few weeks they were probably anxiously checking their phones just waiting for that long awaited text from me. I figured they were waiting with as much anticipation for my text as I am anticipating consuming my Better half's legendary shabbos desserts. I thought to myself, "Danny, your a pretty swell guy. Your a responsible dude. What's going on big guy? Why so many unanswered texts? Don't you know that is more rude than a very rude person? Do you not care about the other person's feelings? Do you think you are so special and such a big shot you simply don't have time for them? That's messed up dude."

         Then I thought about it for a few minutes and I said, "Hey Dan-o, don't be too hard on yourself. Let's think for a minute why you don't respond to these text messages right away. The reason appears to be that every day, you do what you love doing: sitting down, meeting with good folks. During your meetings, sometimes, you get texts. But, you think it is rude to respond to the text whilst speaking to other human beings, so you go ahead and wait to respond to the text message, so that you can give the person to whom your currently

speaking the full attention they deserve. That's a good thing dude, don't be too hard on yourself. Sure, you should block out fifteen minutes every night to respond to the days' texts so you don't get too far behind, but by responding to the person texting you right now, you are basically saying to the person with whom you are speaking, " sorry partner, but you simply are not so important. The mysterious person behind the buzz in my pocket is more worth my time than you are. Sorry for being so blunt."

      So, to all the thousands upon thousands of you reading this blogg who regularly wait in anticipation for my text messages, please forgive me, I sincerely will try to get better about this.  But not at the expense of the person speaking to me at the same time you decide to text me. 

Forever yours,

Danny Wolfe

EPIC RANT

Dear Henry,
      For a laundry list of reasons, I do not own a television. There are a whole bunch of reasons for why I choose to not own a television. One of them, is that I do not want to see the commercials, and have their messages and values seep into my soul.
      You see, dear Hank, I was recently tricked. I have a Iphone 4s. And on that Iphone 4s there is an incredible app called NFL Mobile. The nice thing about NFL Mobile is that it allows me to watch most Broncos games this season, the season when they will finally win that elusive Super Bowl (you heard it here first.) What the ITunes store neglected to warn me, however, when I purchased the app for free, was that with the Broncos games, came commercials. With the commercials, came very, very messed up values.
      For example, the following commercial promoting an app called NFL NOW probably airs 130 times a game on the NFL Mobile App. And about the 27th time, it hit me how convoluted it was. The commercial can be found here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om4AoXZEAVw
goes as follows:
"Now listen up NFL, I want the NFL the way I want it, and I want it now! I want my team, I want my own stream! I want highlights and breaking news my way...."
      Apparently, this app allows people to watch updated videos about their teams they root for. The message is clearly that I shouldn't be bothered and inconvenienced to have to wait for the NFL news that interests me.  If I want something now, I should get it now. I shouldn't have to wait. Not only shouldn't I have to wait, but I shouldn't have to undergo the nuisance of having to watch news about other teams that I don't care about. Like, who cares that Geno Smith throws the football like a third grade school girl? And why should I have to suffer through watching "highlights" from the Giants debacle against Jacksonville? Everything in the world revolves around my convenience. This ego mania promoting commercial is indeed very troublesome, and I believe antithetical to Jewish values.
       We live in a world of instant gratification, and we cannot be bothered to work or struggle for things anymore. We cannot wait for things any more.  Long gone are the days of sitting for 3 minutes waiting for your AOL 3.0 to dial up to the internet. Gone are the days of dialing 10 digits to reach someone on the telephone. In Judaism however, we assume that spiritual pleasure is the most intense, real, long lasting pleasure there is. When biting into a steak, the pleasure is immediate, but long forgotten 30 seconds later. It is fleeting. When visiting the elderly, doing a mitzvah,  or keeping kosher, the pleasure is not necessarily immediate-- but it is eternal. We believe in an afterlife in which we are rewarded for our efforts in this world-- even if that reward comes 120 years after the initial action.
        Now instead of having to bother speaking to someone I simply text them, in order to avoid the inconvenience of a real conversation. And if I do want to burden myself to speak to a person, Baruch Hashem there is a new app called Glide, which enables me to speak to them, leaving a video message, without having to go through the burdensome back and forth of a real live conversation in which I would actually have to listen and respond to what they say in real time.
      And furthermore, the other day I was speaking to my friend who was complaining to me about the very unfortunate reality that when using an Iphone in order to respond via text to a missed recent call, you have to press two buttons, in essence moving your right index finger a tiresome two times. In contrast, the new, handy dandy Droid, enables you to only have to suffer through one click, instead of two. Similarly, the Droid has the nifty Glide feature when texting, which means that its users no longer have to suffer through picking up their fingers between typing individual letters. I personally am strongly considering switching over so I won't have to continue soaking my index finger in a bag of ice, after it is so sore from a long day of moving up and down between letters of text messages.
      Lets say that swiping instead of typing, and one click instead of 2,  saves a person 1 minute a day, or 7 minutes a week. I hear the value of such time saving technology if we ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING WITH THOSE 7 minutes! But what are we doing with the time saved? Are we using it to go pick up the trash littering our streets, helping old ladies cross the street, going out and having a meaningful conversation with a homeless person, visiting the sick, saving the whales, making a blessing, or baking blueberry muffins for our new neighbors? Or are we egregiously wasting them reading ridiculous articles on ESPN about how Lebron James decided not to toss some baby powder in the air any more before his basketball games?
      I suffer from this more than anyone. And that's why today was a blessed day-- when I arrived at work, I saw to my utter  horror that both my Ipad and my Iphone were out of battery, and I forgot my battery charger at home, and no one except for me still uses the Iphone 4S, so no one had a charger to lend me. So something weird happened-- when I spoke to people, I didn't rudely, constantly stare down at my phone like I usually do. Between meetings I didn't throw my precious time out the window by reading nonsense on the internet-- I actually used my brain. I thought. I tried to figure out where I stand on current events, relevant issues going in in Furgeson, Israel, and across the globe. It was mind-blowing.
     I encourage you, my thousands upon thousands of devoted readers across the vast expanse of globe to think about this epic rant, and figure out how it can apply to you. Maybe you also suffer from ego-mania. Maybe you waste more time than you should. Maybe you try to take every shortcut you can rather than truly toiling and working for something. Whatever it is, in life we need to try to identify areas in which we can improve, and to grow to become better people.
    Forever yours,
    Danny Wolfe

Business Trips and Stupid Cellphones

7-21-2013

Dear Henry,
       Tomorrow morning I embark upon another 'business trip' which requires flying somewhere, and saying goodbye to my family for a few days. This morning, as I received a call from a computer who works for United Airlines, kindly asking me if I cared to have him/her check me in, (see my post for a more vivid account of computers who talk to me http://rabbidannywolfe.blogspot.com/2013/02/life-lessons-from-humble-virtual.html ), I was reminded of the last time I went away on a 'business trip' away from the family. Heck, it was only like 10 days ago, so its hard to forget.
       Basically, two weeks ago I attended a conference with over 100 other immensely talented rabbis not unlike myself,  and then had some other internal meetings. I began to notice as I went away, that it was very hard to keep in touch with my other half, my lovely, beautiful wife, (see http://rabbidannywolfe.blogspot.com/2013/04/stay-at-home-dad.html for more on this), and my delicious sweet, precious children. Paradoxically, I found it even harder to keep in touch with them on my local business trip, than when I go to Israel for birthright trips. On a birthright trip, with my wife seven-hours behind me, by the time my day was over, and ready for bed, she was available to talk, just having fed the kids dinner. And I would be able to see (via Skype) my beautiful family before falling fast asleep, after a jam-packed day shlepping around Israel. I would then set my alarm to a very early hour in the morning, so that I would catch my wife right before she goes to sleep, and she would catch me up more on what happened in the last 6 hours, and I would catch her up, on what happened in my last 6 hours--admittedly, not too much.  I would thus cap my mornings, and my evenings with the daily hi-lights of my trip-- seeing my beautiful family. Henry, right about now, you might be asking where exactly I am going with this whole shpiel. Heck-- I'm asking myself where I am going with this whole thing. The point is, that not being on the same schedule--being an ocean apart-- made it easier to be in touch-- precisely because we were not on the same schedule.
       Two weeks ago, being in meetings and sessions all day, it was darn near impossible to be in touch with my wonderful, beautiful, sweet, adorable, and adoring, wife and kids. Being in the same time zone, we were both going, nonstop, all day.  By the time I was ready to shluffie, she had been sleeping for a few hours. I would call her early in the morning, but she is physical unable to speak, or move, in the mornings. Six and a half of the best years of my life (marriage) has taught me that not everyone is a chipper morning person like yours truly.  However, while I was on a trip to Israel, we didn't have this problem, because when I was waking up, at 6:00 AM, so was she- at 11:00 PM.
      The point of that awkwardly long introduction was that I learned from my last trip that it was darn hard to be in touch with my beautiful, adorable, loving family. And that was very hard. So on Thursday morning, after having been gone since Monday morning, I made sure to be at the airport super early, as I could not physically wait anymore to see my family. My kids were pumped up for me to pick them up from camp, and my wife was just as excited to see my beautiful, aging face. All of us were ecstatic to at long last catch up on the last 5 days. When I finally got to the gate, after waiting in a very long line, they were advertising that the flight was overbooked, and they were offering a $500 flight voucher if anyone would volunteer their seat. My flight was leaving at 8:30 AM- the next one was leaving at 3:00 PM, getting to Cleveland at 5:00. Apparently, no one was all that impressed with the $500 offer, so United bumped it up to offering $700 to anyone who gave up their seat. I didn't blink. It wasn't worth it. I told my kids I would pick them up from camp- golly-- I was going to pick them up from camp, and no amount of money was going to deter me. I later realized that my flight got in at around 10:30 AM. My kids got out of camp at about 3:00 PM. Thus- if I would have taken the $700, and gotten in at 5:00-- I would have only missed out on two hours of quality time with my kids, who would be eagerly waiting in the car to pick me up from the airport, if I opted for the later flight. And yet, as I look back, those two extra hours with the kids was worth every penny of the $700 that United tried to give me in order to sacrifice those two precious hours. I would choose spending two hours with my children, all day, every day, over a lousy $700 flight voucher from United.
       Once I made this realization, oh Henry, I learned a very valuable lesson that applies not only to my own life, but likely also to the lives of those thousands of my devoted readers out there in Canada, Israel, Turkey, India, and the United Arab Emirates. And that is, Henry, that time in general-- and quality time with loved ones in particular-- is a very, very valuable gift. Certainly more valuable than a $700 flight. So I asked myself when I caught myself reading ESPN on my Iphone 4S, while playing with my kids-- what the heck am I doing? Now I have the privilege of interacting with my delicious children, and I am reading about a Gators Linebacker who got arrested for barking at a police dogg? Are you kidding me? How can I waste such a precious gift-- this valuable time with my children? How many of us don't know our loved ones because we are too busy watching TV with them, instead of interacting and communicating with them? How much of us would only have a conversation with a loved one, if only we both wouldn't constantly be checking our text messages? How many of us are spending more time with angry birds than we are with our increasingly angry loved ones and family members? Its time that all of us-- yours truly especially included-- leave the phones upstairs, and start enjoying and experiencing the ones we love.
       If I can pass up on $700 at the expense of losing two hours with my family, doesn't it make sense that I should also be able to pass up on Facebook for a few lousy hours? We all cognitively know what's really important in life. Its about time we start living according to this basic understanding. Henry, For a MINIMUM of thirty minutes a day, commit to turn off your stupid cellphone. It will change all of our lives.
         My name is Danny Wolfe, and I approve this Message.

         Sincerely,
         Danny Wolfe