Mrs. Sharon Ra'anan: "Life - Take it Personally"

Sharon Ra’anan made Aliyah from Los Angeles in 1993 with her husband, and together they raised 3 daughters in the Nofei Aviv neighborhood of Beit Shemesh.

Sharon received her Master’s degree in Teaching Tanach from Herzog College, and has taught topics related to Tanach and T’fillah in Matan Beit Shemesh, Midreshet Amudim in Modi’in, and in the Etta Kossowsky women’s Nach shiur. Currently during Corona, she is teaching both under her pergola outside, and by Zoom. For information about her courses, she can be reached at sfraanan@gmail.com. 

בס"ד

What was a place, person or event that transformed your ideas, thinking, or perspective?

•                  When I first started studying the Netivot Shalom of the Slonimer Rebbe, I felt transformed. He gave me the message: “Your soul has been brought down to this world because you have a task to accomplish that only you can do.” I never thought of myself as having a personalized mission, and this changed everything for me.

What Jewish message does the world need to hear?

•                  When you die and are standing in front of the Kadosh Baruch Hu, He is not going to ask you if you were like Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov or Sara, Rivka, Rachel and Leah. Rather, he is going to ask you: have you accomplished what I sent you down to earth to do? It is worth taking the time to figure out what that is.

How do you handle failure?

•                  I felt very frustrated that I wasn’t finding jobs as a Jewish teacher. B”H someone gave me advice that my degrees were from America, in English, from 25 years ago. Long story short, I went back to school – Herzog – and got a Master’s Degree in teaching Tanach. After that, I was able to find jobs in teaching.

If you were to give advice to your younger self, what would it be?

•                  All of the challenges that God is giving you – they are intended to make you stronger. Be patient – you’ll get there!

What is one way that you spoil yourself a little?

•                  Taking a bubble bath and reading a historical novel.

How do you get back on track if you have had an unproductive or distracted period?

•                  This is not usually my challenge… I tend to err on the side of being overly driven and productive, and it’s hard for me to relax. I have to remind myself that sometimes it’s OK to just “be,” I don’t always have to “do.”

•                  But… if I had a period of distraction, I would probably sit myself down, remind myself of my goals, and then make an action plan for accomplishing them.

What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?

•                  When you are involved in performing acts of chesed, you receive as much as the person you are giving to. If you make a lasagna for a family that’s sick with Corona; if you go shopping for a friend that’s in bidud; if you drive an older person to the doctor to receive their inoculation – although this requires your time and effort, you will be “rewarded” by the feeling of satisfaction that extended yourself for another person. (In fact, there are studies that show that people who spend time giving every day are happier than people who spend all day satisfying their every desire.)

What do you consider as your biggest achievement in the last 5 years?

•                  Writing my master’s thesis on “Why Ezra Banished the Foreign Women” (while I was working 4 days a week as a technical writer…)

What area do you see that people in your profession do not stress enough?

•                  T’fillah. Most people daven on automatic pilot, not paying any attention whatsoever to the words they are saying, because they know the siddur practically by heart. I teach courses in t’fillah – the Shmonah Esreh, and T’fillat Shacharit, where we slow down, read the words, look at the sources that Chazal used when they composed these t’fillot, and figure out how we can connect to them.

What part of Jewish learning is your main focus or favourite? How would you recommend people to get more deeply into it?

•                  My two favorite books on t’fillah are: Rabbi David Aaron, “Soul Powered Prayers” (English) and Rav Ezra Bick, תפילת שמונה עשרה ויסודות האמונה"” (Hebrew)

I have often thought that we in the modern orthodox community are walking a tightrope between different worlds both of which we want to belong to and be active in which may detract from our full attention to one or the other particularly to the Jewish side. Can you give some ideas or direction how to connect more deeply to the Torah and Hashem? (Books, ideas, programmes, activities)

•                  In general, I think we all have a touch of “situational ADD” – we sit down to focus on something, and we are bombarded with pings from our what’s app messages, emails, phone calls, reminders, and breaking news stories.

•                  There are two important things we can do to counter this trend to help us focus on Torah and Hashem:

·                 Turn off your phone! Give yourself a mini-Shabbat for an hour every day when your phone is OFF.

·                 Commit to 10 minutes a day of Jewish meditation. I find that when I sit for 10 minutes and focus on my breathing, when the meditation is over, I am so much more alert and energetic, and able to concentrate once more.