And my daily gratitude and thanks to God who works this universe with wonder.
 | |
Knock! Knock!
Who is it? Hello, this is Dorice. Dorice Horenstein. Thank you for inviting me in. I know I am not your friend yet, but I want you to know me. This will make your reading of this book so much more enjoyable and meaningful. Let’s prepare a cup of tea, and let me share who I am and why I am writing this book, my first book.
I came to America from Israel at the age of twenty-one. I grew up in a wonderful family, with four other siblings and two terrific parents. We were not financially wealthy. I remember my mom worked three jobs at times just to keep the family afloat while my dad built homes as a contractor. I remember wearing hand-me-down clothes (which, by the way, I love doing with my girlfriends nowadays). I shared one room with my three sisters growing up, and I fondly recall talking late into the night, sharing secrets and crushes on boys as well as heart-wrenching love stories that went as quickly as they came. This sisterly intimacy affected how bonded we became, and there is not a week that goes by now without a phone call to my siblings or my parents.
I have always loved and felt proud of my homeland. At the age of eighteen, I enrolled in the army service. I was serving in the Israeli army when I met my husband. It was not love at first sight, but at second sight, as we often joke. Looking back at that time period, I can wholeheartedly say that my role in the army solidified who the young girl from a small town in central Israel would become. Through my service, I began to understand the complex fabric of the different personalities around me. I learned what makes a leader and what causes a leader to stay a leader. I experienced the great feelings of teamwork and togetherness, and I also saw the results and consequences of being alone and rejected from the group. Today I am the product of the experiences of that young soldier from decades ago.
Shortly after I arrived in America, with only a suitcase and $600 to my name (and with no coat in the middle of December in Portland, Oregon), it was obvious to me that I would need to do something related to my background. I earned my bachelor’s degree in English literature because I love languages (as you will see shortly) and a certification to teach English as a second language. Despite this, I actually began my professional career by teaching Hebrew and all aspects of Judaism to both children and adults.
One of the accomplishments I am most proud of is that I have three wonderful children and a supportive spouse. My husband and I raised our children (who are now more adults than children) to become independent, healthy, and contributing members of the communities in which they all live.
For the last sixteen years, I worked as an education director at a synagogue. This experience provided me with fertile ground to explore issues of ethics and morality with blossoming teenagers prior to their Bar/Bat Mitzvahs as well as with their parents and other adults. I have taught classes and led group discussions about various works by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and others. I was fortunate to help families with their existential life questions, daily struggles, and successes! I took situations that happened to me, my children, students, parents, and other congregants and viewed them through the lens of Judaism—what would our rabbis say? Rabbi Akiva, Maimonides, Rashi, Nachmanides, Rabbi Gamaliel, as well as Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, Nechama Leibowitz, Rabbi Netter, Rabbi Joshua Stampfer and so many others were the teachers in my classes and at the Shabbat table with my children and my husband, a table we often shared with dear family and friends.
Living in America, I also have been privileged to learn from forward thinkers such as Oprah Winfrey, Gabrielle Bernstein, Brené Brown, and so many other spiritual teachers and mentors. I treasure the feeling that I stand on shoulders of giants—Jews, as well non-Jews. All of these individuals contributed to who Dorice Horenstein is.
And with that, I come to you with a new suitcase this time—this one full of advice from what I have learned by watching, doing, reading, and hearing. My suitcase full of experiences is now my gift to you. Let’s open it!
Explanation of the Four Chambers
This book is about the heart: our collective hearts and our individual heart. Rabbi Hillel Hazaken said, “To the place that my heart takes me, that is where my legs lead me” (Talmud Bavili, Sukkah, 53a). Our heart has a tremendous influence on how we view life, how we act, and how we build relationships. In the Bible, the word heart—or in Hebrew, lev (
Our heart is crucial to our existence. To stay sharp we need our brain, but without the heart pumping the blood, our brain may not function.
During biblical times, our heart was considered the seat of the intellect, and, through time and history, the heart has gained another dimension—the seat of emotions. The receiving of the Torah on Mount Sinai was a monumental event in history that forever changed the human relationship with God. Imagine Moses’s anticipation of the changes to come for the Jewish people. Up to this point in the Bible, we based our relationship with God through our ancestors’ connection to God. At the moment of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, we stand and declare: “WE will do, and WE will listen” or “Na’aseh v’nishma” (Exodus 24:7). We took the responsibility upon ourselves to be partners with God—partners in making this world a better place. This moment of establishing a deeper relationship with God is so monumental in the Bible that we now celebrate this event through the holiday of Shavuot, known in the non-Jewish world as the holiday of Pentecost. To be full partners with God, we need to engage our hearts.
The last letter in the Torah is “lamed” in the word Yisrael (Israel). The first letter in the Torah is “bet” in the word beresheet, meaning “in the beginning.” If you put these two letters together, the word lev is formed. How beautiful to think that the entirety of the Torah—the stories, the morals, and the miracles—all fit inside the collective heart of the Jewish people!
As I was thinking about the development of our relationship with God in the Torah, the central prayer in Judaism, the V’ahavta, came to mind: “You shall love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4). There is so much symbolism in the heart, the life-sustaining force of all bodies.
The human heart has four chambers, which to me represent four different types of relationships we experience—hence the four chambers in this book!
The first chamber represents our relationship with ourselves. How do we view ourselves and how do we become the best humans we are capable of being? I selected this chamber as the first for this book because the relationship we have with our own self is the foundational block for all that follows. If we do not love ourselves (I do not mean in a narcissistic way, but in the deep sense of internal appreciation), can we expect others to love us? This chamber serves