Meaningful Life Skills with Rabbi Simon Jacobson

Jack, Charles, and Henry — three successful business colleagues — go out on a rowing trip. One is a financier, another a high-tech executive, and the third a prominent attorney. As they row across the water, Jack suddenly falls out of the boat.
Charles and Henry panic. They stretch out their hands and cry, “Jack, give me your hand! Give me your hand!” But Jack doesn’t respond.
Then Charles changes his words. “Take my hand!” Immediately Jack grabs hold, and they pull him to safety.
Henry turns to Charles, puzzled. Charles smiles and says, “You have to understand — Jack doesn’t know how to give. He only knows how to take.”
And that raises a profound question for each of us: Are we takers, or are we givers?
It’s not an easy question. We live in a world driven by survival, competition, and self-interest. We are conditioned to believe that the more we take, the more secure and successful we become.
But perhaps the opposite is true.
Perhaps the tragedy of being a taker is not only what it does to others — but what it does to us. Because when you only take, you never truly discover who you are.
Giving is not weakness. Giving is the ultimate expression of strength. It is the way we actualize our deepest potential. A giver is not defined by what they lack, but by what they possess within — the ability to contribute, to nurture, to illuminate, to transform. The more you give, the more you become.
Please join Rabbi Simon Jacobson in this vital discussion and discover: How do we move from being consumers of life to creators of life? From takers to givers?
And that makes all the difference. That change of attitude and direction -- from the inside out, instead of the outside in -- changes everything.

Do you believe in love that lasts forever?
It’s a beautiful idea—the language of films and novels. We all long to find that one person we can love endlessly. But is that truth, or is it just a dream? After all, everything in this physical world changes. It ages, it fades, it comes and goes.
So what makes love different? Why would love be the exception?
This is not just a philosophical question—it shapes everything. The choices we make, the commitments we’re willing to fight for. If everything is temporary, how deeply do we invest? Why give ourselves fully to something that won’t last?
And yet, we can’t let go of the idea. Something in us insists that love can be eternal.
So is it real—or is it illusion?
The answer depends on one thing: what do you mean by love?

In trying to take the pulse of our times, one senses a deep tension in the air — both personally and globally. It’s a strange paradox. On one hand, humanity is experiencing unprecedented prosperity, technological breakthroughs, breathtaking advances in AI, longer life expectancy, and medical miracles once unimaginable. Each day seems to unveil another revelation.
And yet, beneath it all hangs a cloud of uncertainty.
Perhaps it became most acute during COVID in 2020, but the tremors began even earlier — rapid technological change, political upheaval, social disruption, a world shifting beneath our feet. We are living through an age defined by one word: disruption. And disruption unsettles the human spirit.
Because human beings long for stability. We want to know where we stand. We seek coordinates, direction, predictability. When so much feels unknown, anxiety quietly settles beneath the surface: What will tomorrow bring? What kind of world are we handing to our children?
And so the question becomes: How do we navigate in such times? How do we remain balanced and grounded when the world around us feels increasingly unstable?
This is not merely a personal struggle. It affects our families, our communities, and the global human family.
Please join Rabbi Simon Jacobson in exploring timeless wisdom and immortal tools that have guided human beings through uncertainty, upheaval, and crisis for generations. Discover the method to living with strength in unstable times.

Two boys grow up as best friends. They share their childhood, their classrooms, their dreams. The bond carries them through their teens, their young adult years, even into their thirties.
Then something happens. A disagreement. A rupture. And they stop speaking.
Years pass. Decades. They grow old and, by some twist of fate, find themselves in the same nursing home—still silent, still distant.
Their children plead with them: “You were once inseparable. You don’t have many years left. Why not reconcile?”
One of them responds, “If I speak to him, he’ll think he was right.”
They ask, “What did you fight about?”
Neither of them remembers.

Oil plays a pivotal role in today’s battles in the Persian Gulf—between the United States, Israel, and Iran. It is not merely a resource; it is the lifeblood of the modern world. Whoever controls its flow, especially through the Strait of Hormuz, touches every corner of the globe. It fuels economies, and in many ways, it fuels this very conflict.
But the story does not end there.
As we explored last week, the deeper dimension—the Kabbalah of Oil—reveals that beneath the visible battles lies a hidden one. A spiritual struggle, ancient and ongoing, that oil itself comes to embody. What appears as geopolitics is, at its core, a contest over deeper forces shaping our world. The story begins with Abraham and his children, Yishmael, Isaac, Esau and Jacob -- who were all born and bred in this Middle East region. It should therefore not come as a surprise that a  disproportionate concentration of oil is hidden under the ground of this region -- reflecting the vast potential contained therein.
The response to last week's discussion was powerful, and it calls for us to go further.
In this second part of The Kabbalah of Oil, we will dig deeper into the spiritual root of oil; why it is so concentrated in that region, how it has shaped history for thousands of years, and what it means for us today, both globally and personally.
Please join Rabbi Simon Jacobson as we uncover not only the power beneath the earth, but the power within ourselves—the inner resources waiting to be unleashed. Because to understand this battle is to begin to understand how it can be transformed.
And ultimately, how true and lasting peace can emerge—for that region, and for our world.