Meaningful Life Skills with Rabbi Simon Jacobson

What price would you pay for a formula that will help free you of your fears, insecurities, and inhibitions—the inner forces that restrain you and prevent you from becoming who you were meant to be?
Each of us is shaped—and often trapped—by powerful influences: peer pressure, parental critique, childhood wounds, adult trauma. These forces can lock us in place, keeping us from spreading our wings and living with full confidence.
There is one question that has the power to set you free. A question that doesn’t demand a quick answer, but an honest one. A question that cuts through the noise, dismantles fear, and reconnects you with the core of who you are.

This life-transforming question is: why were you born? 
Please join Rabbi Simon Jacobson as he explains how living with purpose turns your life into a proactive one instead of a reactive one. And that makes all the difference. Purpose— knowing why you were born—creates direction and urgency, which in turn counters all fears and challenges that come your way. It allows you to take control of your life, instead of circumstances controlling you. It helps reframe your past, clarify your present, and redirect your future, reminding you that you are not here by accident and that your life carries a unique responsibility only you can fulfill.

As we enter a new year, consider this powerful question: What potential within you has yet to be revealed? What would it mean to draw from your inner resources something unprecedented, to become more than you have been until now?
That is a transformative way to enter a new year.
Life lives in three dimensions: past, present, and future. Growth means honoring where we’ve been, understanding where we are, and daring to envision who we can become—materially, emotionally, spiritually, and in our relationships.
So on this threshold moment, standing between what was and what can be, ask yourself: What is waiting to be unleashed?
Please join Rabbi Simon Jacobson for this special New Year’s program as we explore how to unlock the potential within you that has yet to be expressed. This is your moment to step beyond who you were and begin becoming who you are meant to be.

When my uncle was a small child, he once woke in the middle of the night, gripped by fear of the dark. Trembling, he ran to his mother, my grandmother, and said, “Mommy, I’m afraid.” She embraced him, soothed him, and then gently told him, “Go back to bed and remember: be afraid of nothing but G-d.”
Calmed, he returned to sleep. But half an hour later, he was back shaking. “What are you afraid of now?” she asked. He answered simply, “I’m afraid of G-d.”
That story captures something deeply human.
We all encounter nights in our lives—moments of darkness, loneliness, uncertainty—that make us tremble. Darkness has a powerful hold because it conceals, it obscures, it feels mysterious and threatening.
The mystics ask: Is darkness merely the absence of light or does it have its own substance? Either way, it confronts us and demands a response.
Please join Rabbi Simon Jacobson in this fundamental conversation about facing those darker corners of our lives and discovering a profound truth: even in the dark, you are never alone. And that ultimately, darkness is the greatest light of them all.

I speak to you with a heavy heart in the aftermath of the cold-blooded and brutal murders of our brothers and sisters—colleagues, friends, families—on the first night of Chanukah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. We are all shaken, shocked, and devastated by the sheer evil inflicted upon innocent men, women, and children.
Our hearts ache for the sacred souls taken from us, and for the shattered families left behind. We offer our deepest prayers for the wounded to experience a complete and speedy healing.
Yet beyond the pain, an agonizing question confronts us. How could such darkness erupt on the Festival of Lights—at the very moment when we celebrate the triumph of light over darkness? At that moment, it seemed as though darkness had prevailed.
We find ourselves at the threshold of a new year, a season when we seek meaning, love, and hope amid the many challenges of our lives. And now we are compelled to ask: How do we look directly into the face of such evil and not turn away? How do we emerge stronger, more resilient, and more deeply defined by our values than ever before?
This is a challenge we face in every generation, but it becomes especially urgent in the wake of such senseless tragedy.
I invite you to join me as we explore how to carry the light forward—how to cross into the new year with purpose, courage, and moral clarity, and how to discover a deeper, more enduring light even within the abyss of pain and loss.

I speak to you with a heavy heart in the aftermath of the cold-blooded and brutal murders of our brothers and sisters—colleagues, friends, families—on the first night of Chanukah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. We are all shaken, shocked, and devastated by the sheer evil inflicted upon innocent men, women, and children.