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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Family. Faith. Finance. Friendship. Fitness. Learn to balance and integrate these five critical areas of life. In The Holistic You: Integrating Your Family, Finances, Faith, Friendships, and Fitness, sought-after speaker and writer Rabbi Daniel Lapin delivers an inspiring and insightful discussion of how to bring joy and confidence to all of life's many challenges. Rabbi Lapin introduces you to his unique 5F system, weaving together family, faith, finance, friendship, and fitness. He demonstrates how to organize your life so that you're not neglecting one area to achieve success and connection in another. This book will show how happiness for most is found in family structures and the sexual relationships at their heart along with productive work and the money it creates. It reveals how to defeat false ideas that are projected into our brains about sex, gender, money, and health, both mental and physical, which imperil every aspect of our happiness. You'll discover how to stop treating life like a zero-sum game and how to apply your efforts in each of the five elemental areas in ways that support your efforts in all the other four. A recipe for balance and well-roundedness, the book also provides: * Universally applicable insights and strategies that have worked effectively for generations of enthusiasts of 3000 years of Jewish wisdom. * Strategies to achieve, peace, and tranquility in your daily life through balance and connection * Ways to benefit by strengthening unsuspectected connections between seemingly disparate parts of your life * Steps to improve life by integrating humanity's most fundamental institution and its most fundamental ambition An essential roadmap for sculpting our lives in an increasingly challenging world, The Holistic You will benefit anyone who hopes to simplify and integrate all the most important parts of their life.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Chapter 1: Meet the 5Fs
Ancient Jewish Wisdom
Introducing the 5Fs
The Lord's Language
The Secret of Jewish Success
How Holistic Systems Work
True Yesterday, True Today, True Tomorrow
Chapter 2: Connect for Success
What Makes Us Happy?
Connecting Through Time and Space
Fundamentals of Connection
Sex and Money
Bright Screens, Dim Minds
I Need You; You Need Me
Friends and Stuff
Yours, Mine, but Not Ours
Patterns of Connection
Chapter 3: Seeing the Invisible
The Blindness of Science
Does It Really Matter?
Why Do We Blush?
The Spiritual Aspect of Everyday Life
Five Permanent Biblical Principles
Biblical Principles Applied
Biblical Values as Obstruction to Progress
Faith Propels Us into the Future
Physical/Spiritual—Prescriptive/Descriptive
Chapter 4: Fitness: Bodybuilding
People Need People
Real Relationships
Healing the Soul to Heal the Body—Healing the Body to Heal the Soul
Smile, Smile, Smile
Food: Filling and Fulfilling
Breaking Bread
The Other End of the Mouth—The Indignity of “Crap”
The Spiritual Message of Sleep and Struggle
Chapter 5: Money and Morality
What Is Money?
How Is Money Created?
What Causes Inflation?
Let's Connect!
Different Attitudes, Different Results
Food and Finance
Earning Money Versus Receiving Money
Chapter 6: Sex: Pleasure and Pain
Unintended Consequences
Having It All
Male and Female He Created Them
Needing Each Other
Sensitive Does Not Mean Silenced
Biology Lessons for Spiritual Truths
The Physical Depicts Reality
Chapter 7: Some Tough Decisions
Platonic Friendships—Not
Good Fences Make Good Marriages
An Unexpected Aftermath of 9/11
Accepting Reality
Against the Tide
Are Children Optional?
The Flawed Premise of Equality
Money and Masculinity
A Different View
On a Mission
Majestic Motherhood
No Pain, No Gain
Knowing Why We Do What We Do Is Important
Closing the Circle
Chapter 8: Putting the 5Fs to Work
Closing the Circle
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Index
Wiley End User License Agreement
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THE HOLISTIC YOU
INTEGRATING YOUR FAMILY, FINANCES, FAITH, FRIENDSHIPS, and FITNESS
RABBI DANIEL LAPINandSUSAN LAPIN
Copyright © 2024 by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 750‐4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data is Available:
ISBN 9781394163489 (Cloth)
ISBN 9781394163519 (ePDF)
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Cover Design and Image: Wiley
We humbly dedicate this book to our extraordinary children:
Rebecca and Max Masinter
Rena and Yoni Baron
Rachelle and Zev Stern
Ari and Menucha Lapin
Ruthie and Asher Abraham
Miriam and Anshel Kaplan
Tamara and David Sasson
With limitless admiration for what you have all become
and
with boundless appreciation for all you have done
Preface
Our seven delightful but rambunctious children intrigued us with their interactions. Their play varied immensely depending on who was in the game that day. The same child behaved in one way in conjunction with three of her sisters, in an entirely different way when playing with two other sisters, and when her brother was involved, things went in an entirely different direction. The interactions were as interesting as the individuals. We began seeing the happiness of our family as the product of how well our system of individual components interacted. As important to us as the individual development of each child was, we learned that the way they interacted with one another was equally important. We realized that our family is a system.
We laughed at this observation during our date night conversations and began comparing it to other systems like the operation of, say, an airline. We never chose which airline to fly based solely on what jets made up their fleet. Neither did we make our travel choices only on schedule convenience, ticket price, or frequent‐flyer club affiliation. We somehow would integrate many of these factors, along with others such as safety records, and arrive at a choice because an airline is a system, and the interaction of all the components is as important as any component by itself.
We aren't sure which one of us first raised the idea of our very lives being systems. That realization, the heart of this book, surged into being spontaneously like a burst of laughter between close friends. Of course, our marriage was also a system. Which meant that like any system, the quality of our marriage was also not just the sum of its parts, but it was the product of our interactions. It was not either one of us that latched on to that idea about a life system—it was us, our marriage. Similarly, it was not the engine or the steering wheel that got us to our destination on our recent road trip, it was our car.
For us, with our deep connection to two thousand years of ancient Jewish wisdom and to the individuals, families, and communities that this accumulated body of data has sculpted throughout time and space, it was easy to identify the five key components of a life system. We then catalogued hundreds of people we had helped to guide through times of tribulation and challenge only to discover that for more than 90% of the individuals we reviewed, their troubles were a direct function of failure to integrate the five key components of their lives.
It turned out that just as we strove to put each of our children on to his or her appropriate life path, they had astonishingly put us on to the productive path of understanding how life's key components, Family, Finance, Faith, Fitness, and Friendships all interact. At the same time, while our children granted us a stake in the future, we opened their eyes to the past. Not surprisingly our research quickly revealed that most of the perplexing puzzles of the 5Fs could be best resolved by looking backward in time rather than forward.
Many things, like raising children for instance, are best accomplished by consulting the past. Others, like designing anti‐lock braking systems for motorcycles, are best achieved by peering into the future. The past, for instance, has little to contribute in the quest for faster quantum computing. The future, however, is unlikely to shed any light on how best to civilize the human male's sexual obsessions. Technological development emphasizes how rapidly the world is changing, while at the same time it camouflages how little things have really changed. Human greatness born of handed‐down wisdom and experience still counts for something, although we confuse it with technical proficiency. The latter could, in principle, be programmed into a machine while the former is unique to human beings.
The 5F system at the heart of The Holistic You is a pathway to human greatness. Traveling that pathway is one of life's greatest adventures. We welcome you to join us as we move forward into the future while maintaining a spotlight on the past. We pray that the life of every reader of this book will be dramatically enhanced by implementing the principles herein.
Rabbi Daniel & Susan Lapin
Maryland, 2023
Acknowledgments
One reason it can be hard to teach a toddler to say “thank you” is because acknowledging gratitude is like declaring a dependency. In the Lord's language, Hebrew, the word for expressing gratitude is the same as the word for confessing. “Thank you” means that I confess I needed you and I needed and value what you have done for me. For little people, it can be hard to acknowledge a need for others.
We, on the other hand, joyfully acknowledge our dependency upon so many others and our delight at the privilege of collaborating with them on this book. Our family deserves much gratitude for so often having had to yield to the book's priority. Many is the family occasion that we missed or for which we arrived late on account of our dedication to the book. They understand our unquenchable desire to make ancient Jewish wisdom accessible to as many people as possible and uncomplainingly make allowances for it.
Kevin Harreld at Wiley is as much a parent of this book as are we. Without his vision, encouragement, and guidance it simply would never have come to life. We appreciate him greatly. Kevin's amazing colleagues at Wiley shepherded us toward the finish line. You would not be holding this book in your hands without the steady stream of directives and patient professionalism of Susan Cerra and her team.
Our editor, Sheryl Nelson, has known us for years and still agreed to undertake the task of polishing our torrents of verbal enthusiasm into this now very readable book. A great editor doesn't just change; a great editor improves, and this Sheryl certainly did.
Emma Fialkoff, an accomplished author in her own right, heads our production team and has shared many late night hours with us as we struggled with one or another aspect of the book's architecture. We recognize that we are not the easiest of writers to work with and she deserves much credit not only for what she did but for how she did it.
There would have been no chance of our having been able to concentrate for such extensive periods on this book exclusively unless we felt confident that our office would continue to run smoothly and effectively. That it did so is due to three remarkable women who are not only accomplished professionals but who have also become cherished friends. Crystol Garrison could easily be managing any large multinational corporation. That she has instead chosen to be the crucial lynchpin of our organization for so many years fills us with wonder and appreciation. We doubt that we could manage without her because in addition to all she accomplishes, she also brings out the best in us. Jessica Solberg Black is the personification of competence. Those words are often used to describe a soulless bureaucrat, but Jessica could hardly be more different. She is not only startlingly creative but successfully stimulates similar creativity among her team members. Ellen Joyce Garcia is the calm and experienced engineer deep down in the engine room of our ship. She keeps the machinery throbbing with purpose and power as our enterprise plows through the oceans and is a pleasure to work with.
Dina Bengio is our truly remarkable personal assistant who uncomplainingly makes problems vanish and frustrations evaporate. We are still trying to discover areas in which she possesses less than extraordinary experience and ability.
We close this altogether inadequate attempt at expressing our gratitude with a great big thank you to God Almighty without whom we doubt that we would have found one another and without whom nothing our marriage has achieved would have come to pass.
Rabbi Daniel & Susan Lapin
Maryland, 2023
About the Authors
For nearly two decades, Rabbi Daniel Lapin and his wife, Susan, led the Southern California congregation they planted and where they met and married. After counseling crowds of young people through career crises, dating dilemmas, and marriage mysteries by applying ancient Jewish wisdom to solve contemporary problems, word of their work began spreading beyond their own community into both Jewish and Christian circles. Their seven best‐selling books, daily television show, weekly podcast, and the resources they create make their inviting, Bible‐based approach to life's challenges accessible to people of every background. They are well‐known speakers for Jewish, Christian, and business groups in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Korea, China, and throughout North America.
While Susan grew up in New York, Rabbi Daniel was born and spent his early childhood in South Africa. His parents, the distinguished Rabbi and Mrs. A. H. Lapin, dispatched him to England and Israel even before he turned 13 to immerse him in Scripture. Though not a particularly studious young man to start with, he did eventually find himself intensely intrigued by the Bible, economics, physics, and mathematics, which he subsequently taught at Yeshiva College. As he puts it, “These disciplines explain how the world really works.”
Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin have been blessed with seven children whom they greatly admire and who are now building their own young families. The Lapin children were homeschooled on Mercer Island, Washington, and the family enjoyed annual holidays boating off the coast of British Columbia. Several of the Lapin children joined their parents on an exciting Pacific Ocean crossing in their own sailboat, and some are now homeschooling Lapin grandchildren. The Lapins recently relocated to Maryland where they live in one of the most vibrant Jewish communities in the United States.
Chapter 1Meet the 5Fs
Imagine going to see the dermatologist, hoping to deal with the rash on your face. It is itchy and unsightly; you are desperate to get rid of it. After an examination, you are delighted when the doctor tells you that she has just the cream that will clear everything up. As she enters the prescription into the computer, you casually ask if the medication has any side effects.
“Oh, yes,” she says. “It can cause an irregular heartbeat and damage your kidney function. But your skin will be beautiful!”
You can't get out of that office fast enough.
On your way home, you stop at the garage to ask the mechanic why your car is accelerating slowly. He offers to rev up your motor. However, you may want to find a new mechanic if he doesn't confirm that your car's other parts will integrate with your newly tuned motor.
A motorcar is a complex system consisting of an engine, wheels, brakes, suspension, and many other components. These are exquisitely matched to work smoothly in conjunction with one another. A car with a wonderful engine but poor brakes and an underperforming suspension drives less well than a car with a weaker engine but with all its components designed to work together as a system.
Get a second opinion before signing the repair ticket.
The genius of any system is so much more than the quality of its components—it's really a question of how well all the components play together. Here is one more example.
Let's imagine you are an ambitious entrepreneur with a plan to start manufacturing and marketing widgets. You tell your executive recruiter to find you the very best production engineer available. You interview him and are quickly convinced that he could easily set up a widget manufacturing facility. Next, assuming the role of chief executive officer, you recruit the best marketing manager available knowing full well that he or she will become a wizard at selling widgets. Now you find yourself a qualified chief financial officer and finally you hire a chief operating officer. You sit back to watch the profits rolling in. With such top‐rated personnel in place, how could it fail?
Easy! During your first day, your financial officer bursts into your office shaking with indignation that the production guy spent 15% over budget for some new machinery. (The production engineer tells you that a plus or minus 15% margin of error in projections is perfectly normal.) Your sales manager informs you that there is no way she can market the flawed widgets that are being turned out by the factory. (The production engineer insists that all widgets coming off the line are exactly to design specifications.) All these competent specialists start developing deep antipathies toward one another. After all, each is perceived as preventing the others from excelling at their jobs. It now begins to dawn on you why chief executive officers are well paid. Pulling together all the disparate personalities and welding them into a unified team fully committed to a common goal is not easy. Though quality components are a great place to start, building a system is far harder than obtaining good components.
We sometimes see this when sports teams, businesses, or movie productions bring in a “star,” often for a cost of millions of dollars. For many years, the Seattle Mariners were a rather lackluster team in spite of having enjoyed the services of baseball greats like Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Alex Rodriguez. When they lost those three stars, the Mariners enjoyed a season such as they had never before experienced. They did this without a single star, just a team of good, solid players working together.
So too in our own lives. Happiness can elude us when we have a “star” player—for instance, a well‐developed professional life—if the rest of the team (family, friendship, faith, and fitness) have limited or no place in that picture. Having a relationship with God is hugely helpful, but even He insists that we need family, finance, fitness, and friends as well.
Overdeveloping one aspect of our lives, or putting another on hold because we think we can only focus on one at a time, is like trying to drive with an engine but no brakes. Our lives are fundamentally impaired when we take this approach. Instead, it pays to think about how we can invest in our life system as a whole—giving regular attention to all of its key components.
We have been fortunate, over the years, to meet and talk to many of the hundreds of thousands of people who have attended our speeches, read our books, and taken part in our mastermind groups and classes, both in person and online. Whether they live in North or South America, in Africa, Europe, or Asia, we find that many of their concerns are similar. Once basic physical needs are secure, people seek to find a life worth living. That is easier said than done.
Too often, students tell us of wonderful years they spent pursuing and achieving one goal only to wake up one day to the realization that they are older and have missed out on other vital parts of life. Other individuals, who aim at having it all, are baffled at how to balance the many different calls on their time and energy. Many people realize that the direction they received during their education and training and from the general culture was incomplete at best and largely faulty.
Ancient Jewish Wisdom
People of different ages and backgrounds ask us about dealing with sibling rivalry and inheritance squabbles. They ask us about resolving tension between work and marriage. They ask us about diminishing financial stress during inflationary periods. They pose questions about friendships, about marriage and children, about sex, about work and money, and about almost anything else really relevant to life that you can imagine. Do they turn to us because they think we are more intelligent or better educated than they are? No. They turn to us because they believe that we have had exposure to a valuable branch of knowledge that can change their lives.
What is that branch of knowledge? We call it ancient Jewish wisdom. And we specialize in this ancient Jewish wisdom that relates to the things that people care about on a very practical level. Ancient Jewish wisdom encompasses a vast body of data based upon the written Five Books of Moses and an accompanying multi‐millennial transmission of elucidation.
One reason there are five books is related to why there were Five Commandments upon each of the Two Tablets of the Law. While we have developed the habit in society of calling the stones that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai the Ten Commandments, that actually doesn't correlate with how they are referred to in the Bible. There, they are called the “Ten Commandments” (more accurately, the Ten Statements) only a few times. However they are called the Two Tablets more than 30 times. Two and five are more important numbers when relating to the revelation on Sinai than 10 is. The stone tablets actually supply only five principles, but those principles are explored on each of the two tablets, with two examples being given of each principle. Number one and number six show two facets of one principle, number two and number seven do the same for the second principle, and so on.
As an example, the second commandment on the first tablet not to have false gods corresponds to the commandment on the second tablet not to commit adultery. Both relate to the importance of not betraying sacred relationships. The only difference is that one relates to our relationship with God, the other to our relationship with a spouse.
Why five? The lens of ancient Jewish wisdom associates specific qualities with different numbers. Five is the number that converts the abstract to the realm of the real and tangible. It is a number associated with revelation, when something internal is brought forth and manifested in the world. Translating the immense catalog of theoretical principles that we find in the Bible into livable and practical guidelines requires distilling them into five dimensions.
The same transition from abstract to reality is signaled by the five fingers we have on each hand. Responding to the utterly abstract creative thoughts of our souls, the brain issues electronic signals that travel down our arms and culminate at the five fingers which move to actualize everything. Whether it is writing words with a pen or moving a mountain of mud with a mighty bulldozer, which responds to the operator's delicate hand movements, our hands concretize what we think of doing. Whether in poetry or in the Bible, the phrase “work of your hands” is familiar and resonates with us.
Not only does each number have a conceptual association in ancient Jewish wisdom, but Hebrew letters each have a numerical value. Even page numbers in an Israeli cookbook or novel might show letters for pagination rather than numbers. For example, instead of seeing 149 at the bottom of a page, the reader will see three Hebrew letters—a kuf, a mem, and a tet—with the respective values of 100, 40 and 9. Those fluent in Hebrew make the same type of immediate leap from the letter to its associated number value as do motorists when they immediately translate a red light to the command “stop.”
The fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the letter “heh” has a numerical value of 5 and is also the letter that, when added to a noun, converts the noun to a feminine one. One feature of femininity is translating the abstract into reality. There are few better examples of this concept than a woman's body receiving the potential life force transmitted by her husband and then transforming it over the course of 9 months into 7 pounds of real baby.
Similarly, as we sculpt our lives, we need to know how to act in order to align our lives with the abstract values we wish to live by. The actual behaviors we need to modify fall under the five main headings of Family, Finance, Faith, Fitness, and Friendship. These are the key life areas that when crosslinked with one another constitute the essence of a fulfilling and satisfying life.
These five categories form the core of this book.
Introducing the 5Fs
Following is a list with a brief explanation of each F. Admittedly, these explanations are meant to serve only to introduce the pillars, certainly not to explain them exhaustively. That is what we will do over the course of this book.
Family:
These are the relationships we have with parents, siblings, spouses, children, and other blood relatives or relatives through marriage. From another perspective, we speak of family as the relationships that result from sexual connection. When we share a joyful multigenerational family gathering, as awkward as it might be to contemplate, we sometimes forget that the only reason that we are there together with uncles and aunts, and cousins is because many years ago Grandpa and Grandma’s eyes met, they formed a bond, and found ecstasy in one another's arms.
Finance:
This covers relationships with our possessions and with our money in all its forms. It includes human connections that revolve around money. Employers, employees, customers and clients, work associates, professional associations, and vendors all contribute to this heading.
Friendship:
This includes friends or people we connect with through shared interests like hobbies or sports, church, or our children's education. Political and social groups with which we associate and charity organizations in which we actively participate also fall under this category. Likewise, the experience of “community” that many people feel through association with a religion is part of the friendship pillar. Most relationships with people who are linked to us through neither family nor money fall into this category.
Faith:
Faith refers to our relationship with things that cannot be measured in a laboratory. Faith may be a commitment to integrity, say, or the love and esteem of others that we feel. Whatever beliefs play a role in our lives or whatever set of values that governs our decision‐making fall under the Faith heading as does, obviously, a relationship with God.
Fitness:
This pillar refers to everything having to do with our bodies—our anatomy, physiology, and biology. It helps combat the common tendency of many of us to be overly cerebral. Fitness covers our health and how we maintain it. How we eat, breathe, excrete, drink, make love, and eventually die are covered in detail in ancient Jewish wisdom.
When psychologist Abraham Maslow tried to capture the totality of all the needs and drives of the human being, he came up with his hierarchy of five needs: physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self‐actualization. We also interface with the world through our five basic senses: touch, smell, taste, hearing, and seeing.
It is equally natural that the number of separate pieces that make up the totality of our lives should be five. In his 1890 work, Principles of Psychology, William James, often called the Father of American Psychology, wrote these words:
…a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank‐account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down, —not necessarily in the same degree for each thing, but in much the same way for all.
In James' words, we see all five of our categories; family, finance, and friendships are clearly listed, while fitness and faith are included in his phrase, “body and his psychic powers.”
Years before Abraham Maslow or William James, the Bible alluded to these five categories. After escaping from his less‐than‐holy father‐in‐law Laban's home and having conducted a scary meeting with his brother, Esau, Genesis 33:18 tells us that Jacob comes to the city of Shechem.
Here is the NIV translation of the verse:
After Jacob came from Paddan Aram, he arrived safely at the city of Shechem in Canaan and camped within sight of the city.
The Amplified Bible, Classic edition says:
When Jacob came from Padan‐aram, he arrived safely and inpeace at the town of Shechem, in the land of Canaan, and pitched his tents before the [enclosed] town.
This is the translation of the American Standard Version:
And Jacob came in peace to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Paddan‐aram; and encamped before the city.
Each of the translations we see above are valiantly trying to distill ancient Jewish wisdom on the word “shalem” into one English word. Does it mean safely? Does it mean in peace?
Yes and yes, but it means more than that as well.
This is how we would present the first four words of the Hebrew verse. (Translating the rest of the verse would take another few paragraphs!)
“And Jacob came SHaLeM to the city of Shechem.”
When Jacob comes “shalem” to the city of Shechem, ancient Jewish wisdom actually tells us that he came complete. It further details that he was complete in his faith (despite living in Laban's idolatrous home), complete in his body/fitness (despite limping after having wrestled with an angel only a few verses earlier), and complete in his finances (despite attempts by his father‐in‐law to cheat him and the gifts he lavished on his brother, Esau). His family, which at this point was his social circle and community, is with him as well. All five of our 5F areas are presented in that one sentence: family, faith, fitness, finances, and friendships.
The Lord's Language
To understand this better, we need to take a few minutes to explore more of the amazing properties of the Lord's language—Hebrew. You are probably familiar with the word we cite above, shalem, as it is used in its variation, shalom. You see, vowels are of secondary importance in Hebrew. In that language and in a Bible Torah scroll, SHaLeM is spelled exactly the same way as the word SHaLoM, the word SHLoM, and by adding a suffix, the word SHLeiMuT.
In English, we don't spend time trying to understand why we use one word, “bark,” to talk about the sound a dog makes and also about the outside of a tree. In Hebrew, however, when one word has multiple meanings, that fact is significant.
Consider the English words PiN, PaN, PiNe, PeN, oPeN, and PuN. Obviously a writing implement, pen, has no relationship to a cooking utensil, pan, and a pin has nothing to do with a pun. But in the Lord's language, Hebrew, those six words would all be spelled PN, and what is more, every variation arrived at by inserting different vowels would all be closely connected with one another in terms of the concepts they connote.
What does the previous verse from Genesis tell us that we can apply to our lives today? Let's zero in on the fact that this word, SHaLeM/SHaLoM, means payment as well as completion and peace.
If a customer simply takes a pair of shoes from a store, there is no completion and no peace between the customer and the seller. When she takes the shoes, an imbalance is created—she has received something from the store owner without giving something back in return. To achieve peace, she must first pay for those shoes. This levels the imbalance. She has made the store owner whole again by giving money in exchange for the shoes. Only then can peace reign.
Were she to walk out of the store without paying, there would be little peace. Instead there would be a charge of shoplifting and considerable turbulence for all involved. Peace is far preferable but can only be attained when we correct the imbalances that are naturally created when we give and receive from one another. Payment is one of the ways to correct this imbalance.
Not only does peace depend upon payment for things taken, but it has to be fair and market value payment. This is the genius behind the Fifth Amendment to the American Constitution. In it, we find the words, “nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” The wise Founders clearly understood how peace depends upon just compensation. In fact, in colonial America, many of the leading pastors and statesmen not only knew Hebrew but had correspondence and friendships with leading rabbis of the day. Given the familiarity with Hebrew that many of them enjoyed, it is likely that they also understood that peace and payment are the same word.
The meaning of shalom when used as a greeting simply flows from all these meanings. When we greet a new arrival or bid farewell to him by uttering the word shalom we are expressing the hope that we shall both enjoy the full tranquility that can only come from totality and mutually discharged obligations.
Think of your life as a system with five chief components: (1) the health and proper operation of your body; your physical Fitness; (2) your social relationships and community affiliations; your Friendships; (3) your close and intimate relationships; your Family; (4) your work, income, assets, and possessions; your Finances; finally, (5) your state of spiritual awareness; the condition of your Faith. The truth is that for every one of us, if we have a great and loving family life and a circle of good friends, good health with few money worries, and we also feel spiritually integrated, well, we have very little in life to complain about. We have found a way to maintain balance among the components of our lives. We are at peace and complete.
Unlike Drs. Maslow or James, we are not psychologists. It is only fair to let you know from where we draw our approach. We are the fortunate recipients of a more than three‐thousand‐year‐old heritage that dates back to Mt. Sinai, called the Torah. In it, God revealed rules for best living in His world, a comprehensive theory of the totality of existence. As we noted, it comprises five volumes: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Moses actually received two component parts of the Torah from God: the written book known as the Five Books of Moses and an oral transmission that explains what the surface narrative truly means. Following Moses' time, the books of the Prophets (such as Malachi) and the Writings (such as Psalms) were added, forming what is known as the Hebrew Bible. This too has a written component and an accompanying oral transmission.
This vast body of Torah data reached my (RDL) father, Rabbi A.H. Lapin of blessed memory and my mother, Maisie Lapin of blessed memory, and in due course, over many years, they passed much of it on to me. In the years following our marriage, Susan was blessed to learn from them as well, adding on to her own family's transmission. My parents made great sacrifices so that I could study with many outstanding teachers, some of whom were my relatives at the great rabbinical seminaries in the United Kingdom and Israel. These included my great‐uncle, Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian of blessed memory, acknowledged as one of the outstanding Torah transmitters of his generation.
You might say that those of us who continue this chain are subjects in a continuing longitudinal study that has been in progress for more than two thousand years and has been closely observed as it has covered over one hundred generations. The Jewish people's triumphs and disasters, virtues and vices have been meticulously followed in many countries and in many eras.
The Secret of Jewish Success
It is incontestable that Jews consistently play an outsized role on the stage of world history. When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, there were about the same number of Sri Lankans as Jews in the world. Today there are considerably more people in Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, than there are Jews. Yet, whether in news, media, business, entertainment, or geopolitics, one hears far more about Jews and Israel than about Sri Lankans and their beautiful island.
From notorious anti‐Semites to venerable sages, and from scholarly academics of every national and religious background to neighbors down the street, pretty much everyone agrees that there is something unique about the Jewish people.
In his book Beyond Good and Evil, the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), wrote “…I have not met a German yet who is well disposed toward Jews …. The Jews, however, are beyond any doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race now living in Europe.”
Mark Twain likewise once wrote: “If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk….”
Mark Twain was wrong. Jews do not constitute even one‐tenth of 1% of the human race. But he was quite right to observe that Jews have survived and thrived in different epochs, different countries, and under difficult circumstances. Whether it is starting out in poverty and building wealth or maintaining strong families and communities, the Jewish people persevere. Unlike other cultures that span thousands of years, there is tremendous continuity. Only academically trained people can pick up Chaucer and easily understand his words written in Middle English. Being a modern speaker of English isn't that helpful. When my (RDL) father tried to use his high school Greek while disembarking from a plane in Athens, the customs official looked at him as if he was, well, speaking Greek—and not a variety that the official recognized. However, stop any modern Israeli Jewish child on the street and show him a verse from the Torah or the words of the prophet Jeremiah, and he will be able to read it fluently and translate it.
If our great‐great‐great (add as many greats as you'd like) grandparents were to walk into our house, they would not recognize many of the foods we eat and ingredients we use. Soy sauce? Artichokes? Spaghetti? These had no part in their diet. However, the only thing they would care about would be whether the food was in accordance with the dietary laws as given in the Torah and agreed upon through the ages. Being assured of that fact, they would happily sit down and join us for a meal. We would all start the meal with the exact same words of blessing and end it with exactly the same words. We trust they would feel at home.
This supernatural continuity and success comes not from genetics but from the strength of basic permanent principles that often remain part of the culture for a few generations even when, sadly, the Bible that is the source of these principles has been abandoned. The one and only thing that has played a consistent part in Jewish life for more than two thousand years is the Torah, which in Hebrew means the teaching. Jewish supernatural success comes from the strength of timeless truths that remain etched into the culture.
What about Jews who apparently have no connection with the Torah, you might ask? In fact, in most generations that includes the majority of those identifying as Jews. Many outwardly successful Jews are not religious and pay no homage to the teaching that we are suggesting is the true source of their success.
The answer is that the fumes in a gas tank last a long time. If we cut a beautiful flower off its plant and bring it indoors, we seem to have done a clever thing. No longer do we need to step outside to enjoy the bright colors and intoxicating fragrance—it's right there on the table. However, the next day we notice the flower is less colorful and its perfume a little fainter. Later the flower fades and shrivels. Its sisters out in the garden are still magnificent. This is the sad fate of the severed flower.
The first few generations of Jews who walk away from Jewish observances and practices while still feeling a warm connection to their origins often contribute magnificently to the world and, as a group, enjoy personal and economic success. They have strong values and morals, cherish family, and work hard even if they do not recognize that their views are Bible‐based. They are like our severed flower just after it has been brought inside.
Eventually though, their descendants no longer identify with the Torah, and they culturally assimilate into the larger world, moving further away from their heritage. Historically, this has often happened under coercion, as when about 50% of the Jews in Spain converted to Catholicism after 1391 under the threatening sword of the government. Nowadays, this is usually a voluntary assimilation. Individuals may retain a connection to the importance of education, charity, or community—ideas that give them a step up in the world for a bit longer—but slowly, they lose the benefits of their heritage. Sadly, they often become the biggest advocates of an anti‐God world view, promoting secularism in both politics and culture.
Yet, since the days of Moses on Mt. Sinai, there has always been a portion of the Jewish people who remain planted in the soil of the Bible. In the twenty‐first century, as in every earlier century, a core group of Jews, perhaps 15% of the overall total number, still confine their diet to the kosher rules of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses. In this, what they eat and what they refrain from eating is the same as what Jews in the time of Jesus did. Likewise, each spring (in the Northern hemisphere) these Jews celebrate Passover just as Moses Maimonides celebrated it in Spain more than eight hundred years ago and just as Rabbi Akiva and his friends did about two thousand years ago.
When Jews of this type in twenty‐first century Montreal, Canada, marry or divorce, they do so in exactly the same way that Jews in tenth century Mainz, Germany, did. The same is true with prayers and how they teach children to read and understand the Hebrew of the Bible. All of these rules, rituals, and restraints, along with many more, spring forth from the Torah and its accompanying oral tradition. While perhaps not every single Jew in this category thrives, in each generation this group seeds the core group that continues the picture of exceptional Jewish continuity and success.
Much of what built Western civilization is based on this heritage. Both John Selden and John Locke, English scholars of the seventeenth century upon whose work the Founders of the United States of America depended for their ideas, and upon whose writings indeed much of Western jurisprudence is based, were knowledgeable students of this ancient Jewish and Hebrew wisdom.
Since we married, our life's work has been to teach timeless truths and core values from this tradition, making them accessible to anyone interested. We have found that people can immediately apply many of these principles to benefit their life regardless of their background or faith. This wisdom can be thought of as a general theory of the totality of all existence—a set of theorems or permanent principles that apply everywhere and in all times.
How Holistic Systems Work
As we introduced earlier in this chapter, one crucial life principle that often gets overlooked is the idea that the core areas of our lives do not each stand alone.
We (sometimes painfully) learn of the importance of the 5F system by accident. Newly minted dentists find out that having the best equipment and the finest degree means little unless they also know how to manage the business side of their offices and can put patients at ease. Couples who are deeply in love face the reality that being in debt strains relationships.
On the flipside, we may accidentally discover that success in one area of life often helps other areas. Since people like to do business with those they know, like, and trust, having many friends helps increase one's bank account. A healthy bank account, in turn, gives one breathing room to engage in civic activities that then increases one's circle of friends.
Not only does healthily developed Finance assist in the creation and maintenance of a healthy Family, but the counterintuitive reverse is equally true. Married men dramatically outperform their single brethren on the financial front.
Orison Swett Marden's name rings very few bells today. However, he was a household name in late nineteenth century America, and his influence still lingers. In a brilliant, best‐selling book on motivation, he wrote these words:
Over the door of every profession, every occupation, every calling, the world has a standing advertisement: “Wanted—A Man.” …Wanted, a man who is symmetrical, and not one‐sided in his development, who has not sent all the energies of his being into one narrow specialty and allowed all the other branches of his life to wither and die….
There is an inherent love in the human mind for wholeness. In a healthy body, the lungs and heart are both working well, and the minute electrical impulses that trigger the pumping of the heart's ventricles hum along reliably at about 70 impulses a minute. The kidneys are doing exactly what they should be doing, and all other organs are also operating normally. Nobody would suggest that as long as the heart is behaving properly, we need not pay attention to the lungs or brain. We all recognize that our bodies are complex systems. Not only must all components effectively interact, but the appropriate and balanced development of one aspect of health actively enhances the operation of another. Improved diet may reduce weight and also boost energy. Small improvements in posture may enhance digestion. Exercise may increase cognitive performance. In all, when we look to grow in one area of health, it is more appropriate to think of our efforts as improving all of our health through one particular avenue.
The challenge is that many of us are not in the habit of viewing life in a holistic way. Sometimes, we make the mistake of thinking only sequentially. A person inexperienced at how the world really works might mistakenly assume that it is best to first focus on making money and only then, having achieved a measure of financial security, focus on marriage and family, perhaps leaving friendships and faith for later in life. Alternatively, a young person might think that college and life during her 20s are a time to focus on friendship and fun. Life will get serious soon enough. Relationships and making money can wait. The journey we're on together in this book will take us into compelling explorations of how our 5Fs interact and how we can achieve successful living when we develop all five holistically.
For the sake of clarity, we will mention that each of the 5Fs has many components that are appropriate at different times. Our family means our parents and siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, before we move on to a spouse and children. While the Torah transmitter, Maimonides, advises men to prepare their field—meaning having a way to earn a living—before getting married, one needs to pay attention to refining one's character as one attacks that financial pillar. Knowing that one will soon be looking for a wife and anticipating having children keeps a person focused on the broader picture rather than just examining one's bank account.
Certainly at times we have to hunker down and focus our attention disproportionately on one area. However, knowing that we are working within an inclusive system changes how we approach even those phases of our lives. When we keep the bigger picture in mind as we tackle what is appropriate at the time, it keeps us on a straighter path.
There is no such thing as “having it all worked out.” Life needs constant attention. Bicycling around Stanley Park in British Columbia is one of our family's favorite activities. We experience gorgeous vistas, observe boats entering and exiting Vancouver Harbour, spot seals, and are serenaded by birds. We also come across what seem to be gravity‐defying rock formations by the shore. Talented artists spend hours patiently balancing rocks, forming mesmerizing structures. Some of the rocks they use are large, and some are small; some are smooth, and others are cragged, but all the pieces intersect, and the formation stands.
These rock‐creations may last for hours or days, but eventually, they fall as the result of crashing waves, roaring winds, or the malicious action of a human being. After all, gravity is a reality.
There can be minutes and hours, sometimes even days or weeks or months when our lives resemble those rock structures. We love and are loved, we are at peace with ourselves, others, and the world. Our bank accounts are solid, and we are challenged just enough by activities and work to feel stimulated, but not so much that we are overloaded. We picture God smiling at us (we may call it karma or fate), and our bodies function smoothly without calling attention to themselves. Yet, those moments do not last.
Our goal in this book is to provide guidance both for maximizing those stable times in our lives and for coping with the internal and external winds that inevitably assail us.
Please note that we are not merely observing that a full life must of necessity contain a number of different elements. We're going much further. In fact we are introducing the reality that growth in each element facilitates progress in the others. Omitting one because it is considered less important results in harm to all the other four as well. One important permanent principle is the compelling reality that the many departments of our lives are all essentially unified. If you're not feeling well, it is really difficult to put your best foot forward at work. If you are estranged from your family, romantic relationships are more difficult to form. If you are severely short of money, some of your friends will avoid you almost as if they can smell your desperation. If you ignore your body or your spiritual needs, everything will be more difficult. The most important tool available to us is simultaneously advancing the different areas of life. Integrating these five important parts of life will take you to new levels of achievement.
In order to avoid a sense of prioritization that is almost inevitable when presenting items in list format, we prefer placing the 5Fs, Faith, Finance, Family, Fitness, and Friendship, equidistant to one another on the circumference of a circle. This way, there is no recommended order. Furthermore, we view each F point on the circumference as joined by straight lines to each of the two Fs opposite it. In other words, each of the 5Fs links with each of the other four categories.
True Yesterday, True Today, True Tomorrow
It is a natural tendency to view our own times as unique. In every epoch people think that things are truly different. After World War I, people believed that wars would never again be fought. They even named it the War to End All Wars. After World War II, people promised that genocides would never again be allowed while the world looked the other way. After the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, people said that the world would never be the same. After the stock market collapse and the international recession in early 2009, people said that everything had changed. During the COVID‐19 epidemic of 2020, we heard once again that the world will forever be different. All these statements were correct while at the same time they were all wrong.
Of course, things do change. Change is a constant. However, the more that things change, the more we need to depend upon those things that never change. With two of its words for the passage of time, the Lord's language, Hebrew, reflects precisely this contrast between gaining freedom to change while being anchored to the unchangeable. The two words are shana and chodesh, year and month, respectively. The Hebrew year, in contrast to our civil calendar or the lunar one followed by Islam, is based both on the solar cycle and on the lunar cycle. Perhaps not surprisingly, the word for year, shana, also is the verb to repeat. This is exactly what a cycle does; it repeats again and again. In other words, the year suggests unchanging cycles, each year following on the one earlier in exactly the same way.
In contrast, chodesh, the Hebrew word for month, also means new, fresh, and different. The moon grows and shrinks, waxes and wanes, looking different each and every day. In this way, ancient Jewish wisdom teaches the necessity of viewing time as both an opportunity to maintain continuity by remaining anchored to the constants of life while simultaneously grasping each opportunity for change and renewal.
Timeless truths never change. War and genocide are not becoming obsolete. People will always travel and trade. Diseases come and go. Human beings are social creatures who thrive when surrounded by loving family and friends. It is mainly the superficialities that change. Occasionally they change dramatically. For instance, modern technology has changed exponentially since the start of the twentieth century. That sometimes camouflages how little the permanent principles have changed. My grandfather traveled away from home for business about the same number of days a month as I do. He and I both felt the tension between wanting to earn a living and wanting to be home with family. That important reality is unchanging. All that changed is that he traveled by noisy buses and slow trains while I travel at airline speed in air‐conditioned comfort. He ranged up to a few hundred miles from home, while I regularly travel thousands of miles. He spent nights on the road in boarding houses and nondescript inns, while I stay in comparatively luxurious hotels. But the bottom line is, like me, he was traveling in order to bring money home. The details are very different, but the needs and motivations are the same. Though a hundred years and two oceans separate us in time and space, our lives are remarkably similar. What is important is learning what is a timeless truth and what is merely superficial change. That is exactly what Bible‐based, ancient Jewish wisdom does so well.
Have you ever struggled to do something only to discover later that a bit of knowledge would have made your efforts so much easier? We have, ranging from the inconsequential to the notable. Certain trivial things that stymied me (SL) for years, such as how to fold fitted sheets, became easy once I watched, paused, and rewound an online video. To be sure, my inability to fold fitted sheets barely impacted my life. I get a short‐term kick out of seeing an orderly closet, but the appearance of my linen closet makes little difference in important or even minor aspects of my day‐to‐day existence. Life was going along just fine without that.
