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Repair Yourself / Repair Jacob

To my dear long term friends and new visitors, who hopefully will become long term friends:

In 2004, I created a group of people called the Tikkun Jacob Forum because I hypothesised that each of us need repair and that our oldest book, the Bible, could lead us to this repair.

Tikkun means repair. In the Bible Jacob becomes (is renamed) Israel (Genesis 32 vs 29). Jacob is renamed Israel by God after he strives to find God. I believe that we are all on an iterative path from Jacob to Israel, ie I move from Jacob to Israel in my understanding and then seek to enhance this understanding by moving from Jacob to Israel again and again in a process of rebirth or enlightenment or in my way of life or in my behaviour. I liken this to an Olympic athlete who achieves his best place of 4th in a race, but is satisfied with this place knowing that it is his personal best and he can do better. Even when the athlete achieves Gold, he can still do better, and so he tries to find other ways of bettering himself, either training harder, finding a new costume, finding a different exercise, practicing other skills so that he can enhance himself as an Olympic athlete. I understand that athletes cannot compete without judges and justice and that justice, righteousness and peace go hand in hand. I understand that a judge should always seek to find a compromise solution as this will always be the best path forward in the give and take and potential win-win nature of life.

I now extend this "I" to "we" and make the assumption that this is something that everyone wants to do. So please reread the second paragraph substituting I for we and me for our.

In the process a group of people was formed and I now wish to turn these discussions into a blog so that I can share what we have learnt with a wider audience.

In Hebrew, Peace is translated as Shalom. Shalom is used as a form of greeting meaning Hello and Goodbye. Shalom comes from the world Shalem which means whole. In achieving Peace we achieve Wholeness. It is my ambition in this Blog that we achieve Shalom and Shalem. Note that GoodBye is an abbreviation for God Bless You. I bless you in your coming and your going and pray that you will return to share in this mission of Repairing your personal world again and again.

This blog will also deal with issues related to how we can make our homes better places; our friendship circles better places to be in; our living environments better places and eventually our very small, unique and beautiful world a better and more beautiful place.

I will sign using Love instead of Regards and extend unconditional love to everyone who arrives at this blog.

If you wish to read more about me and some of the things I am interested in, please go to http://www.orbital.co.za/text/whatwedo.htm and http://www.orbital.co.za/text/davidsthoughts.htm.

Love and Goodbye
David

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