Rabbi Yitzchak Goldman, who serves as speaker and outreach coordinator for the Seattle Kollel, an institute for the promotion of Jewish learning and experience, outlined the concepts in his book “The Soul Diet”, in a speech and workshop sponsored by the St. Louis Kollel, which was attended by about 100 people last week at the Center of Clayton.

“The St. Louis Kollel is proud to present and host Rabbi Yitzchak Goldman, who has developed a practical program to deal with sensory over-stimulation in our daily lives,” said Rabbi Sroy Levitansky, executive director of the St. Louis Kollel, whose mission, similar to that of the Seattle Kollel, is “to allow accomplished rabbis to perpetuate the study of Torah, and to provide an exceptional learning experience to Jewish men and women of all backgrounds and affiliations.”

Originally from South Africa, Rabbi Goldman received his rabbinic training and ordination in Jerusalem. He is the author of two allegorical novels and has taught many adult and youth groups, along with being a featured speaker on various topics throughout the Northwest.

Rabbi Goldman described today’s American way of life as “jumbled and cluttered,” leaving us “overwhelmed and unfocused,” calling modern reality “the outcome of a society with state-of-the art promises and dreams.” He added that the current technological reality is “relentless in invading our every quiet moment, and a media that has succeeded in shaping our thoughts and aspirations, a culture that has left us drained of real clarity and focus.”

Too many people, Rabbi Goldman believes, “are led to set grandiose goals that massage the ego and ignore the protests of others, to shape our ideas around ethereal promises of self-actualization and advancement, and to lose ourselves in the hype of commercially-spun trinkets of wisdom. The end result: We are a little lost.”

Rabbi Goldman said that his book and the 10-step program it contains “were several years in the making, and it does not propose to be an easy process; it is designed to help “those readers who are weary of cosmetic and clich éd solutions to deeply ingrained thoughts and behaviors, who seek a rediscovery of themselves.”

Rabbi Goldman noted that “we all have the day after syndrome. On Yom Kippur we prayed for something to change in our lives, something inspires us, but how do we put it into practice? It is difficult when we are all on a 24/7 schedule, or 24/6 for those of us who are Shabbat observant. With e-mail and the Internet, even when we are asleep we can keep working. It does not matter what setting we find ourselves in, there is no way that we can avoid constant outside influences.”

Rabbi Goldman cautioned against the quick-fix approaches offered in countless self-help books now on the market. “You can go into Barnes & Noble to its self-help section and see hundreds of books that promise things like, ‘You can achieve your goals now! We can ask, are such books really good for us? Surveys show that 95 percent of Americans go on diets to lose physical weight. How many of us have gone on a soul diet? We must first ask ourselves if the goal we have set is really a healthy or unhealthy goal before we decide to pursue it. Achieving an unhealthy goal can be destructive.”

One of the major steps proposed by Rabbi Goldman to cut down on the excessive amount of information coming in on people today “is to go on a two-week media fast. There are some facts that are important or helpful to know, like the weather, traffic or the stock market. But we don’t need to know the latest information on who the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby is. We need to go on a two-week media fast.”

In the workshop portion of his presentation, Rabbi Goldman distributed a questionnaire to the audience, containing such questions as “How many times a day to you check your personal email? Choices included 0, 1-3; 4-10; 5-20 or more than you can count. Another question dealt with choices of food, asking if respondents generally try to stay away from unhealthy food; eat both healthy and unhealthy food, but tend to overeat; eat mostly unhealthy food, or eat strictly healthy food, and try to keep up with the latest information on food studies.

The common denominator among the “correct” answers, according to Rabbi Goldman are those “which lead to order and fitness, which seek a correct balance” between extremes. He added, “there is no happiness like the resolution of doubt, according to our sages. Happiness comes from defining with clarity what the challenges are and how to meet them. Keep your goals doable. If you have too many things in your garage, get started for just an hour one day; getting started is more important than trying to do it all at once.”

Among specific suggestions contained in Rabbi Goldman’s program for The Soul Diet are: order and fitness; anger control; speech control, avoiding loshen hara, the evil or gossiping tongue; the giving factor; intimacy; goal control, setting realistic and achievable goals and “the happy factor,” taking note of one’s blessings.

Rabbi Goldman’s book has been praised nationally for its insights and suggested goals. Akiva Katz, M.D., author of Letters to a Buddhist Jew and Anatomy of a Search, called “The Soul Diet”, “perhaps the best book of its kind.” Eric Slocum, Emmy-award-winning broadcast journalist at Komo 1000 News, said, “”The Soul Diet” is so much more than a simple, how-to guide. It is an exacting map that allows one a way to discover purpose, joy and fulfillment. The process is redeeming and beautiful.”

The hard-cover book, published by Neeman House Publishers LLC, sells for $24.95 in hardcover. For information visit [email protected], or write to Neeman House Publishers, 5135 S. Garden Street, Seattle, WA 98ll8, or call 206-721-1915.