Customer Reviews

Every Day, Holy Day: 365 Days of Teachings and Practices from the Jewish Tradition of Mussar

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Alan Morinis has done it again!!!
This book (his follow up to "Everyday Holiness") is designed to help one work on various character traits using an extensive collection on inspiriational and insightful quote for each day of the year. I can't even imagine all the work that went into collecting the quotes, but I can tell you that there are very few books written in English that give you such teachings at your fingertips.

Each page has a saying that relates to the given character trait of the week, a phrase that summarizes the idea and a practice to help you make each character trait part of your daily life. In addition, each page has space for you to write notes or keep a small journal.

The book unlocks the Jewish tradition of Mussar (self-growth/ethical improvement) in an easy to use and practical way. I've seen improvement in myself from just using it for three days (and my wife noticed, too).

For the price you can get it on Amazon, this is a worthwhile investment for yourself or a great "just because" gift for a friend.

If you have read "Climbing Jacob's Ladder" or "Everyday Holiness" you will see that Alan has moved from the arena of writing about his own growth and has now given his many students and readers an opportunity to make the tradition of Mussar their own!

In my earlier review of Alan Morinis's second book on Mussar, _Everyday Holiness_, I described what mussar did for Alan Morinis. Each time we encounter him, he has grown.

In his latest book, _Every Day Holy Day_, he shares this growth with us: he outlines the path he has taken so that we, too, can grow, a millimeter at a time, so slowly that we may imagine that we are standing still, until we find ourselves untempted by the tendency to laziness or to disorder (my own problems) or to anger or to impatience or to stinginess or to dishonesty or to whatever it was that had always dogged our steps before. We recover, not by working on the negative traits, which would be unproductive, but by working on the opposing positive traits of enthusiasm. orderliness, lovingkindness, patience, generosity, honesty, and so on.

I have now begun slowly walking through _Every Day Holy Day_ and recommend it to anyone interested in personal growth in the service of Gd and of our fellow-humans. So far I have done Joy for two weeks, Enthusiasm for two, Gratitude for two, Strength for two, and this week have begun on increasing Loving-kindness.

Each attribute has an explanation at the beginning, a mantra to meditate on each morning, and an activity to occupy us throughout the day, as well as a daily quotation from the classic Jewish texts.

Loving-kindness, for example, offers the mantra, "My life on selfless caring stands." The daily practice is, "Seek out opportunities to extend positive support to others, in any way that might be helpful." The introductory paragraph informs us that we need not wait to "feel" loving before we extend ourselves in loving behavior. If we begin with the behavior, the feeling will follow.

Each day of this attribute had a quote from classic Jewish texts. Tuesday's quote comes from Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, who died in 2005, and who said that Eve was fooled into thinking that "the power of imagination...gives one the Gd-like power of creating worlds. However...that ability comes from loving-kindness." Think about it. By acts of loving-kindness, we indeed do create worlds, for we create a reality different from what would have existed without such acts.

I absolutely recommend _Every Day Holy Day_ and expect to be able to say the same of any further books Morinis may write.