Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis was born in Hungary and is descended from a great rabbinic dynasty that traces its lineage back to King David. Founder and president of Hineni, an international out-reach organization with centers in New York and Jerusalem, she writes a weekly column for the Jewish Press, has a weekly television program, lectures extensively, and has been featured in numerous national publications, among them The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, and People. She lives in New York.

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The search for meaning in our lives has become a particularly difficult quest. The high-pressure world we live in, with its emphasis on material goods, has eclipsed the timeless values of commitment and spirituality. Today success is measured not by what we are, but by what we possess: the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the trinkets we buy.

As a result, more and more people live with self-doubt, depression, ennui, and familial dysfunction. Relationships are stalled. Personal growth seems unattainable. In the end, the things we buy offer us no comfort. We grow old, lonely, and afraid, wondering how we could have done it differently.

The Committed Life teaches us a better way. Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis has been reaching out to people and helping others find happiness her entire life. By age six she was smuggling food and messages into Nazi detention camps during World War II, thereby learning her first lesson of the Torah: "You shall not stand idly by while the life of your brother is in jeopardy." Today she is a dynamic and inspiring leader who has devoted her life to combating the spiritual wasteland surrounding us.

The Rebbetzin knows that many of us are in trouble. She has heard countless cries for help escaping the emotional vacuums that have become our lives. Twenty-five years ago, she founded Hineni (Hebrew for "Here I am"), an outreach organization that has ignited the hearts and minds of people throughout the world. Her popular classes, based on the teachings of the Torah and focused on what is truly important in life, draw thousands every week.

Filled with wisdom as timeless as the Torah itself, The Committed Life is for anyone eager to connect with ancient wellsprings of faith. Each chapter offers its own riveting lesson on such pivotal subjects as responsibility, forgiving, banishing fear, gratitude, anger, commitment to marriage, depression, faith, and hope. This is a book that you will want to keep on your bookshelf and pick up again and again for help dealing with the many restrictions of daily living.

Written with the Rebbetzin's rare combination of honesty, love, and chutzpah, the stories here are universal and yet so deeply personal that reading them is like having her speak to you in your own home. This inspirational guide will give you the sustenance you need to lead a more fulfilling and committed life.

Drawing on the timeless wisdom of the Torah, Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis reminds us of the principles necessary for living a better and more committed life:

• Commitment

• Inviting G-D Into Your Life Responsibility/Accountability Charity--Tzedukah

• Prayer

• Forgiveness Banishing Fear

• Compassion

• Faith

• Hope Gratitude

• Time

• Gaining Control Over Yourself

• Committing To Marriage the Sabbath

• Creating A Family the Legacy Of Grandparents

"A Long Life is not good enough, but a good life is long enough."

"Let me share with you the formula our sages proposed for change and personal growth. `A man,' they teach, `is shaped by his deeds and actions' [Sefer Ha Chinuch, The Book of Education]. Now this may not sound like such a revolutionary idea, but it is diametrically opposed to that which our secular world believes--that it is our thoughts and convictions that mold and make us what we are...The mind is tricky, capable of rationalizing, playing games with ideas that the heart finds too demanding or too restrictive, and so Sefer Ha Chinuch advises us to bypass the cerebral, concentrate on our deeds and actions, and just do what we have to do. Through that doing, our personalities, our character traits, will be reshaped and molded until one day we will discover that we have become the new beings that we had hoped to become, that we are connecting to that goodness in our souls, and that we are on our way to fulfilling our mission in life."
-- from The Committed Life

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The Committed Life

Principles for Good Living from Our Timeless PastBy Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis

HarperSanFrancisco

Copyright © 1998 Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060191368

Commitment
"A long life is not good enough,
but a good life is long enough."

A Committed Life
My husband was a paradigm of commitment in public as in private life, in war as in peace, in health as in illness, in life as in death. His dedication never faltered. In forty years of marriage I never heard him utter an unkind word, raise his voice, or lose his temper. He was a true reflection of his name, Meshulem, which in Hebrew means "complete," and indeed, he was a complete man.
The Mishna teaches that there are things in life that have no prescribed measure, things to which we must commit ourselves with a full heart, without reservation, without holding back. They include gifts for the poor and offerings to G-d, acts of loving-kindness, and study of the Torah, all of which make for a committed life.
Unfortunately, this threefold formula eludes most people because we live in a world in which our priorities have become skewed. We indulge in excess where we should be disciplined (materialism and physical pleasure), and we stint where we should be openhanded. We fail to recognize our responsibilities to the poor, our obligation to be generous and kind, and our imperative to study the Torah, and because of that, we do not understand the challenges of a committed life.
My husband understood. He lived by these precepts. He gave of himself above and beyond. To him, each and every person was holy. He reached out to one and all with generosity and love.
Every Friday, before the Sabbath, he would empty my freezer and take little gifts of cake and challah to the widows and widowers and those in need. You might, of course, wonder how it can be that people were in need of challah and cake in a Long Island community. Thank G-d, such abject poverty was rare, but there are many forms of need. My husband heard the silent cries of lonely, broken hearts, and he responded to them. When he visited hospitals, it wasn't just a matter of discharging his rabbinic duties, and the story of little Yaffa is a case in point.
Yaffa, a kindergartner, fell from the monkey bars in her school playground. She was rushed to the hospital and needed major surgery. Every morning, before going to services, my husband would visit at her bedside, tell her stories to cheer her up, and then would call her parents to let them know that all was well. And this very same kindness was extended not only to Yaffa but to all those who were sick and hurting.
As for all rabbis, the High Holidays were an especially taxing season for my husband. He would return from synagogue exhausted, but he didn't permit himself to rest until he had visited every sick congregant so that they might hear the sound of the shofar. Remarkably, despite the overwhelming holiday turnout, he always knew who was missing from the services.
There are some people who extend kindness and consideration to strangers but for some reason fail to understand that acts of kindness must be offered to the members of one's family as well. My husband was the perfect father and grandfather. When the children were babies and would awaken in the middle of the night, he would say to me, "The reason why babies cry at night is so that their fathers should get up and learn Torah." With that, he would pick up the baby, put him or her in the carriage, and with one hand rock the baby back to sleep while with the other he turned the pages of the Talmud.
He was there to tell them stories and to show them how to draw and paint. He taught them the word of G-d, showed them the wonders of nature and made them marvel at the beautiful world that G-d created. When they started school, he was right there with them so that he might ease their way on that first traumatic day.
He would take the children to a pond near our house to feed the ducks. Years later, he did the same for our grandchildren. On the day of my husband's funeral, something incredible happened--the ducks crossed the road and stood at attention as the large procession, which included the Nassau County Police, passed. The police department came out in full force since my husband was their beloved chaplain. This was a sight that I had never seen in my thirty-two years of residence in the community.
My husband's pockets were always well stocked with candy so that whenever and wherever he met children, he would have something to offer them. He had infinite patience with every child, whether his own or those of a stranger. During the shiva period after his passing (the seven days of mourning for the passing of a spouse or blood relative), a little girl whose father was disabled cried to me, "The Rabbi helped me with my homework every night. Who will help me now?"
When I close my eyes, I see him with a baby on his big broad shoulders, but truth be told, he didn't only carry babies, he carried all of us, for such is the power of a man who lives a committed life. Even now I can hear his powerful yet gentle voice saying, "Worry? Negative thoughts? You have to banish them from your mind. Put a smile on your face even if there is no reason to smile, and G-d will give you every reason to smile."
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Excerpted from The Committed Lifeby Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis Copyright © 1998 by Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis. Excerpted by permission.
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