Shalom All,

We are still re-introducing ourselves to all our surroundings, friends and family. For obvious reasons, our conversations always manage to come back to the subject of shlichut, namely - our connections with our larger family in the Diaspora, our responsibilities and relationships. And too many times, this is also part of the discussion:
"So you're really happy to be back?? Really?"
"Well, there's no place like home."
"But everything is so hard...it's so helpless...we can't do anything..."
At this point I always use a wonderful story that I heard from a good friend of mine, Carol-Ann Levine, from Palm Beach (I know many of you have already heard it, but it's such a beautiful story that I hope you'll enjoy it once more):

After a long, very stormy night, morning brought sunshine. A man went for a walk on the beach to see the world calming down. He noticed that during the night, the storm had washed all the starfish to shore. There they were, millions of them, lying on the sand in the sun, unable to rush back to the water, dying. The man was very saddened by this sight, and his heart cried for the poor, dying starfish.
Suddenly, he saw a little boy running around on the sun. Every few seconds the boy would stop, bend down, pick up a starfish and throw it back into the water. The man felt sorry for the boy, for he knew the boy would not be able to save them all. Gently, the man said to the boy:
"What are you doing? can't you see that there are millions of starfish and you can't possibly save them all...you should stop...you can't possibly make a difference..."
The little boy stopped, looked into the man's eyes and then very slowly bent down, picked up one starfish, threw it into the water and said:
"I just made a world of a difference for that one".

Another good friend once asked me the following question: If you were told that you have only 5 more minutes to live, what would you think about your life?
I would like to be able to say that I was in the starfish business.
And to this we say in Hebrew: Kol Hamosif - Gore'ah: nothing more needs to be said.

Shabbat Shalom

Liat