As synagogues do, our campus congregation at UAlbany has an annual Yom Kippur appeal. Only that ours isn’t about money, this appeal is usually for a mitzvah or mindset to try to focus on especially this coming year.
As we shared on Rosh Hashanah, “Frankie Focus” is NYS’ newly debuted school-cell-phone-ban mascot, a smiley, glass-wearing grinch-looking guy, head-to-toe in shaggy lime green fur. See our Rosh Hashanah post on the above link as to why a shaggy monster is considered to be a good mascot for FOCUS, but that’s another story.
Being that Frankie Focus came into being just before the High Holidays this 2025, it behooves us, in good Baal Shem Tov fashion, to learn valuable life lessons from it. After all, focus, intent and concentration are very helpful skills in the long high holiday services. The lengthy prayers are most meaningful when we focus better!
For our Yom Kippur Appeal this year, Matt B. appeared at the front of the congregation, in the closing moments of Yom Kippur, wearing a Frankie Focus outfit, in shaggy lime-green fur body-suit, down to the lime-green Yom Kippur slippers! Hopefully his good-sport costume dress-up made the appeal more memorable – unforgettable!
We do live in a very distracted world. It’s so much harder to keep focused these days. So many things vie for our time and attention and drain energy and talent from where ought to put it most.
So what’s the appeal this year?
FOCUS has two parts. You see that in the iconic image for focus in cameras:
(1) What NOT to focus on. To ignore or blur that which is outside the frame.
(2) What to focus on MORE. That target symbol in the center. Lock in on that primary priority.
This year, each day, let’s keep in mind what to focus less on and what to focus more on.
This is true in relationships, whether with parents or with friends, or even that special someone. Sometimes we get caught or tripped up by things that ought to be outside the frame, and we can mistakenly place our focus on things that really shouldn’t matter as much. What to care about and obsess over and what to ignore or let slide. Not having focus in our relationships can misplace our love, our passion, it confuses what matters more with what matters less.
It’s true of our studies, of course. It can be hard to concentrate, to get work done, to properly understand what’s going on or learn the skill if our minds are elsewhere, if we have too many tabs open, if we can’t think straight. Sometimes it can be substances that destroy our focus altogether. Gotta be able to lock-in, dig deeper, get a handle on it, get the work done.
And it’s true of our Judaism, of our Jewish involvement and commitment and observance. It’s easy to get distracted in college. These are formative years when we make choices that plant the foundations of our lives. It’s crucial to make choices as to what is in our frame and what isn’t, and within that frame itself, where to put our energy, our focus, our primary investments.
In these and in so many everyday matters – even when it comes to responding on Social-Media… try to remember the Focus Question: What to focus on more? What to focus on less?
On the back of our appeal card we listed 4 Hebrew words that express focus in Modern Hebrew, each with a slightly different focus. The last one may be most familiar!