Task 4-Find Silence

Hello Group Aleph,
I want to preface this weeks "Task" with withing all of you a L'shana Tova! I hope this year brings each of you love, happiness, and good fortune. I am thrilled to be writing this weeks task, as it so clearly relates to Rosh Hashanah and what I feel is the most wonderful part about the holidays. So often we lose touch with family, friends and all the people we claim are so important to us, but during the holidays we all find a way to come together to share in our own individual holiday experience. To me that is what I find most exciting about the holidays, is knowing that I will be breaking bread with family that otherwise I am unable to see on a regular basis. There are however so many other people that we lose touch with.
Think back to your childhood, a time when you would go outside and know all of the children on your street, you parents knew all the parents of your friends, and when you were bored you just walked next door to ring the doorbell. Consider now that we have a Shabbat experiment to instruct us to avoid technology (because we rely on it to much), to get outside (because we spend to much time indoors and forget the beauty of the outdoors) and so many other things we will do over the next 7 weeks. Even in our jobs we have become used to using our technology to contact people, including people like our neighbors or even the person in the next office.
This Shabbat I challenge you to find silence, the silence you have let happen between you and another person and to break it! This weekend take the time to knock on your neighbors door, or to call and spend time with a person you have not spoken with in a long time. Call them, take the time to actually call them and see how they are doing, and make a plan to see them this weekend. Start this new year with an act of kindness, and when you see this person do something nice for them. Go to your neighbors house, knock on the door and hand them a bottle of wine to wish them a happy new year (it doesn't matter if they are Jewish), just do something that will break the silence that has formed between you and someone else.
Please when you have done this go online and write just a few words about what their facial expression said to you. Were they shocked, appreciative, or just freaked out. Take the time to write about the feeling you get from reconnecting and doing something nice for another person.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy New Year!
-Benjamin Fogel