Teaching Team

Meeting the Needs of Others: Boaz the Barista

By Toby Janicki  | Comments (1) | Posted on November 21, 2007

Often times in our Torah walk one of the most difficult things is being gracious with others whose standards are different from ours. Sometimes it means communicating with a fellow Torah believer that while they think something is OK on Shabbat and you have no problem with them doing it, you will not be able to participate in it. Other times the situation is reversed and we must be gracious back. It is a fine line as we in the Torah movement seek to reestablish Torah in our lives and this often looks different for various people.

Over the last couple of weeks one of our staff members Aaron Eby and his family were down with us in Missouri. He was taking a break fromm his normal Siddur work to help us solve some computer issues in the office. Recently Aaron has explored and is currently implementing in his family’s life a very strict standard of kosher. They not only separate milk and meat but have done this even on the level of pots, pans, dishes, and utensils. This posed a challenge for us to attempt to accommodate his family’s needs while he was down here visiting.

Probably one of the most creative attempts at this was Boaz’s hand made coffee maker he constructed one day at lunch while I was in the office. When he started poking holes in a plastic cup I thought he was letting his stress out about the computer system, but in actuality he was constructing a makeshift coffee maker, out of a coffee filter, a plastic cup, and a rubber band. I was impressed and wished we had taken a picture. I guess you could say he had, “skills to pay the bills.”

I think we all know what it’s like having people judge us for where we are at in our walk. Most of us just want to be able to do Torah to our standards without being talked about behind our backs. In these couple of weeks I think all of us down here in Missouri learned a lot about meeting people’s needs and the ability to be more open minded.

About the Author: Toby Janicki is a teacher, writer and speaker for FFOZ. He is also a writer for messiah magazine and the author of the Restoration Workbook and a new book on the Mezuzah.

Search in blogs...

Feeds

Use RSS feeds to track this section in your favorite reader.

FFOZ Blogs RSS Feed

Browse Entries

• « Hodu L'Adonai
• Blogs...
• » Yartzeit of Leon Levison

Select a Blog

• Events and Administration
• Founder’s Blog
• Guest Contributors
• Publications
• Shalom Tour
• Teaching Team
• The Siddur Project
• Site Info Blog

Most Recent Entries

• A Dead Sea Stone: In Three Days You Shall Live
• Our 4th of July Bang!
• America Believes in God
• Shabbat and Fireworks
• Plum Tuckered Out!
• Blind Ambition
• A Shot in the Dark: A Bulgarian Translator
• Obama and Dobson Talk Some Torah
• I Cried Today
• The World's Oldest Church?
• It's Summer...Now What?
• Help Wanted: Artist
• Forum people have faces!
• Shabbat Shalom is Coming!
• New Testament Burning In Israel

Select a Previous Month