6 | DECEMBER 21 • 2023 

student’s corner

Three Good Things Every Day
W

ith our days so busy 
and repetitive, we 
don’t always fully 
appreciate everything that we do. 
For example, we wake up, go to 
school or work, 
come home to a 
cozy house, eat 
dinner with family 
and go to sleep in 
a warm bed each 
night. 
But what if one 
day we weren’t 
able to do all those things? We 
would instantly become appre-
ciative of the things we lost. 
We should be thankful for 
everything in our lives, whether 
it’s having a good lunch or a 
warm bed to sleep in. We should 
stop and take just one minute 
each day to appreciate all that 
we have. 
This summer, I had the priv-

ilege of going on NCSY Jolt 
Israel, a five-week summer pro-
gram that tours around Israel, 
and includes a week of chessed, 
community service. While we 
were there, we had the oppor-
tunity to hear from Rabbi Leo 
Dee, who shared with us his per-
sonal tragedy. On April 7, 2023, 
his wife, Lucy, and two teenage 
daughters, Maia and Rina, were 
murdered in a terrorist attack 
while driving to Northern Israel, 
on their way to a family vaca-
tion. They were shot over 20 
times. Maya and Rina died on 
the scene, and Lucy passed away 
three days later. 
While talking with Rabbi Dee, 
we asked him, “How do you 
wake up every day after what 
happened? How do you get 
through life knowing that half 
of your family is gone and won’t 
come home?” 

 He explained that he tries to 
stay as positive as possible. He 
surrounds himself with people 
as much as he can. His most 
successful coping mechanism 
was to create a group chat with a 
few close friends, and every day 
they would text to the chat three 
good things that happened in 
their day that they were happy 
about or proud of. This created 
a positive mindset by focusing 
on the good things rather than 
the bad. 
After hearing Rabbi Dee’s 
story, one of my advisers on Jolt, 
Mo Berlin, a fellow Detroiter, 
created a group chat with every-
one from the program called “3 
Good Things a Day.
” Every day, 
people text deep ideas, such as 
challenges they overcame or cel-
ebrations as simple as sleeping, a 
good dinner or not having a lot 
of homework. 

 We are learning to appreciate 
the meaningful, the simple and 
everything in between. Our 
chat is still very active even after 
Jolt ended. These texts create a 
positive mentality and a sense of 
community. We are all coming 
together to raise each other up. 
It is very easy to get bogged 
down by the bad things that 
go on in our lives. We fixate on 
issues, and it becomes difficult 
to move past them. We need to 
stop and be thankful for every-
thing in our lives, even things 
that seem basic. 
People need to lift each other 
up and bring positivity into one 
another’s lives. Ask yourself and 
your friends and family, “What 
are your three good things 
today?” 

Naomi Doppelt lives in Huntington 

Woods and is an 11th grade student at 

Farber Hebrew Day School.

Naomi 
Doppelt

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