In a recent chat with my Father, we compared notes on the unrequited criticality and necessity of community.
This is against the acute backdrop of our proud Jewish identity and how it's so much easier to hate than to love. While love is preternatural, hate is taught consciously, maliciously, and intentionally.
Our species' predilection to blind dogmatic conformity is a shameful antediluvian relic of barbaric primal society, long before the age of reason, critical thinking, and civility.
"Tzedakah," a fundamental tenet of Judaism, is a Hebrew word meaning "righteousness," but commonly used to signify charity. The very DNA of our Jewish identity is advocacy, ensuring the next "you" has the opportunities you did not so they may live with less hardship and suffering.
Although my career was unintended, I was raised in a Jewish household that practiced Tzedakah daily, whether raising money for the Synague or volunteering for community projects. My parents, both public school teachers, gave back to society, educating thousands of children while earning sub-par wages and using personal money to pay for school supplies so their students may achieve their highest potential.
Tzedakah has been at the core of everything I have done with the time I have been given on this earth. Twenty-eight years later and well past my expiration date, from LIVESTRONG to Stupid Cancer to OffScrip Health, and now with Matthew Zachary Worldwide, I believe a life unlived is not worth examining, and a life spent hating is no life at all.
After a 20-year career that has touched all aspects of Healthcare and Life Sciences, my Father has also stated that I have "Good Lint In My Roller," embodied by a unique set of inherent and learned skills, coupled with an extraordinary network and community of friends and peers.
Why? Because I practice Tzedakah every day, endowing and infusing those social mores to lead with kindness, empathy, and without prejudice.
As I stand upon the ledge of my life en route to the next version of myself as an Author, public speaker, consultant, and consciously skeptical prognosticator, I'm in the market to take on a few select contract gigs.
I invite my community to take advantage of the skills, influence, and experience I've accrued (said "Good Lint") to give back further, help others, and endow your own personal practice of Tzedakah.
"Now, we are forced to recognize our inhumanity
Our reason coexists with our insanity
And though we choose between reality and madness
It's either sadness or euphoria."
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