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2010-07-26T12:08:00.000-04:00

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A Nahhamu Devar Torah from Rabbi DINDŠ

2010-07-26T11:49:00.005-04:00

Oh what the heck, anyone still reading this defunct blog is probably my friend — you can call me Rаν Ѕtеg. ;-) Anyway, I was going to a Shabbat meal this past Shabbos in Jerusalem (yup back there for part of the summer, leaving in a few days), and being all “revved up” and stuff now I thought I should keep a handy devar torah in my metaphorical back pocket. But I didn't end up using it, so I'm storing it here in not-fully-fleshed-out form on ye olde internet.

The question is, what's מבשרת ציון scared of, such that in the הפטרה of שבת נחמו she needs to be encouraged by the קול not to fear when she goes up onto the mountains to announce Redemption to a dry-grass world?

To answer, look back at the parasha, ואתחנן, in which Moshe begs God to let him into the Promised Land, but instead gets told to go up onto a nearby mountain to get a nice view of Cana‘an... because he'll never see it close up.

Maybe the מבשרת ציון is scared that if she goes up the mountain with her message of messianic peace and wonder, she'll never make it all the way there, like Moshe Rabeinu. But the prophecy continues with descriptions of God's transcendent greatness — measuring out earth and heaven, naming every single star beyond — to reassure her that this future redemption is being driven by a Force that knows what it's doing.

At first I thought it could mean that when redemption is enacted by God directly, every individual (like the stars) will not be lost, unlike with Moshe who was a human being dealing with the people on God's behalf. But we don't always think of the future redemption as Divine handwaving and handholding... so what would that mean for a process of slow human process towards the perfection that God has pointed us towards? Maybe it's an end to fear and worry. Maybe מבשרת ציון will never make it to ציון herself, but she should not give up hope. She's just a little piece in a big play, and everyone does their part to water the dry grass and weary minds so that they will sprout hopeful futures.

MASS RABBINIC ARREST 2

2009-09-23T23:36:00.013-04:00

Remember 2007?

mass rabbinic arrest
mass rabbinic a.c.d.
mass rabbinic impact
mass rabbinic closure

Well, they were at it again today!

About 50-100 rabbis (sorry for the vague number, didn't get to count them myself), most affiliated with the New York Board of Rabbis, obstructed traffic on First Avenue in Manhattan, NYC, just south of the United Nations, at 41st street. The police threatened them with arrest, and most of the protestors moved aside, but 11 stood (sat?) their ground and went all the way in order to highlight dramatically the danger that Pres. Ahmadinejad of Iran poses to his own people, to America, to Israel and to the rest of the world.

Please note: If you would like to make use of my photos, I am happy to contribute — but please email me at shtegosaurus you-know-what gmail etc. to ask for attribution information first! Thank you.

Preparing for the Protest

 
 

Protest Rally on the Sidewalk
With Speeches, Prayers and Tehillim

 
 
 

Stepping Out Onto the Street
and Obstructing Traffic

 
 
 
 

Sounding the Shofar

 

Final Warnings from the NYPD

Protesters Willing to Risk Arrest
Sit Themselves Down on the Street
and Refuse to Move

 
 

Arresting the Civilly-Disobedient Protesters

 
 

Loading the Arrestees into Police Vans

 

And a Few Self-Reflective Media Photos
because i admire real journalists
like Steven I. Weiss of The Jewish Channel

 

Also, see the following videos of the rabbis sounding their shofars and chanting "STOP HIM [=Ahmadinejad] NOW" as the NYPD orders them to stop blocking traffic, and of Shmuly Yanklowitz (of Uri L'Tzedek speaking passionately of the danger that the Iranian president poses to the world:

I'm just an amateur blogging photojournalist, but these real media reported on the civil-disobedience protest:

‘Arutz Sheva‘ HEBREW and ENGLISH and an INTERVIEW
Asbury Park Press BEFORE and AFTER
NY Post VIDEO
The Jewish Channel's Week In Review VIDEO
Yahoo! News PHOTOS

Another Thought on “Eli Tziyon”

2009-07-30T22:07:00.002-04:00

אלי ציון ועריה כמו אשה בציריה
וכבתולה חגורת שק על בעל נעוריה

The piyyut compares Zion to a virgin, girded in sackcloth, [mourning] the husband of her youth. When singing this caoineadh this morning, I noticed the incongruity of that line. If she's a בתולה, a virgin, how has she been married long enough to be widowed?

At that point I realized — Tziyon's metaphorical husband died before they were able to "consummate" their marriage. All the pieces were there, but the job was never finished.

We were living free in our Land.
We had a House for God.
We had self-government.
We had prophets and miracles.

The marriage had taken effect — all the pieces were there in the formal relationship between God, People, Torah and Land — but it was never finalized. We never created the holy and just society that we were meant to. We never truly became a mamlekhet kohanim vegoy ḳadosh. We never taught the world to aspire to Unity.

It's not just what was there that we lost — it's the potential that we lost, too. The uncompleted task.

Subverting Mourning

2009-07-25T23:41:00.003-04:00

Some people (such as Iconoclastic Litvaks) object to the custom to sing Lekha Dodi to the tune of Eli Tziyon on Shabbat Ḥazon, the Shabbos before Tish‘a b’Av. They think that it's an infringement by the mourning of Tishabav onto Shabbat, when public displays of mourning are inappropriate.

I was thinking about that this past Friday Night, as we sang Lekha Dodi to the tune of Eli Tziyon at shul, and I realized that it's not quite that simple. Lekha Dodi interweaves two themes — one is the approach of Shabbat, and the other is aspirations for Redemption. Matisyahu got the title of his album “Shake Off the Dust... Arise” from Lekha Dodi, after all, where it refers to the Jerusalem and the Jewish People, identified with each other, shaking off the necrotizing chains of exilic lethargy and rising to meet the Messianic Age.

Lekha Dodi is fundamentally hopeful — just as we stand at the end of the mundane week, on the threshold of the transcendent alternate universe of Shabbos, it looks out from Galut forwards, hopefully towards the Coming Days, and leaving the Valley of Tears behind.

When we foreshadow Tish‘a B’av by singing Lekha Dodi to the tune of Eli Tziyon, we aren't taking the mournful nature of the Fast and applying it to Shabbat where it doesn't belong — we're subverting and undercutting the entire mourning process before it's even had a chance to really get started. We go into Tishabav confident and hopeful, looking forwards towards the as-yet-unfulfilled prophecies of Consolation, instead of just looking back at the already-fulfilled prophecies of Calamity. Long before we read Eikha, we've already spun its message.

Complete and utter side-point:
You can also use the tune of Eli Tziyon to sing the song of the Dwarves longing for their dispossessed homeland in Prof. JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, both the English original and הנעמי's Hebrew translation. Which is pretty cool, considering the similar themes.

Star-K, Meet Star-H

2009-07-16T11:04:00.004-04:00

Walking down Broadway in Manhattan today, I came across a discarded cardboard food-shipment box. It was a fairly typical box for meat delivery, but it had a certification symbol I had never seen before...

It looks like the followers of Muslim Dietary Laws are finally following in the footsteps of us who keep Jewish Dietary Laws, and starting certification organizations with recognizable symbols. I hope the Va‘ad of Baltimore doesn't go after these guys for trademark infringement or something!

Star-K[osher], meet Star-Ḥ[alāl]!

Now the question is... how long until they too have certification scandals?

Two and a Half Poems

2009-07-13T23:43:00.004-04:00

Ḥozeh, Leikh Beraḥ (“Seer, Go Flee”) by Ḥ. N. Bialik, after ‘Amos 7:12

„חוֹזֶה, לֵךְ בְּרַח“

"לֵךְ בְּרַח?" – לֹא-יִבְרַח אִישׁ כָּמוֹנִי!
הֲלוֹךְ בַּלָּאט לִמְּדַנִי בְקָרִי,
גַּם דַּבֵּר כֵּן לֹא-לָמְדָה לְשׁוֹנִי
וּכְקַרְדֹּם כָּבֵד יִפֹּל דְּבָרִי.

"Go flee?" — a man like me does not flee!
My cattle taught me to walk softly;
But my tongue never learned to speak so,
My word instead falls like a heavy ax.

וְאִם-כֹּחִי תַם לָרִיק – לֹא-פִשְׁעִי,
חַטַּאתְכֶם הִיא וּשְׂאוּ הֶעָוֹן!
לֹא-מָצָא תַחְתָּיו סְדָן פַּטִּישִׁי,
קַרְדֻּמִּי בָא בְּעֵץ רִקָּבוֹן.

And if my strength was expended for naught — it's not my bad;
It's your sin, so deal with your crime!
My hammer did not find its anvil underneath,
my ax came into rotten wood.

אֵין דָּבָר! אַשְׁלִים עִם-גּוֹרָלִי:
אֶת-כֵּלַי אֶקְשֹׁר לַחֲגוֹרָתִי,
וּשְׂכִיר הַיּוֹם בְּלִי שְׂכַר פָּעֳלִי
אָשׁוּבָה לִּי בַּלָּאט כְּשֶׁבָּאתִי.

No matter! I will deal with my fate:
I will tie my tools to my belt,
And like a laborer stiffed of his pay
I will go back softly as I came.

אֶל-נָוִי אָשׁוּב וְאֶל-עֲמָקָיו
וְאֶכְרֹת בְּרִית עִם שִׁקְמֵי יָעַר;
וְאַתֶּם – אַתֶּם מְסוֹס וְרָקָב
וּמָחָר יִשָּׂא כֻלְּכֶם סָעַר.

To my home I'll return and to its valleys
And I will enact a covenant with the forest sycamores;
And you — y'all are rotten and decayed
And tomorrow a storm will carry you away.

I'm not running
I'm not running
I'm not running from today
If you meet me on the mountain
I won't be the one to pay
(You won't be the one to stay)

“Not Ready to Make Nice” by the Dixie Chicks

'Forgive' — sounds good
'Forget' — I'm not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I'm still waiting

I'm through with doubt
There's nothing left for me to figure out
I've paid a price
And I'll keep paying

I'm not ready to make nice
I'm not ready to back down
I'm still mad as hell and
I don't have time to go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
'Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is you think I should

I know you said
Can't you just get over it
It turned my whole world around
And I kinda like it

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don't mind sayin'
It's a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she oughta hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they'd write me a letter
Sayin' that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I'm not ready to make nice
I'm not ready to back down
I'm still mad as hell and
I don't have time to go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
'Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is you think I should

I'm not ready to make nice
I'm not ready to back down
I'm still mad as hell and
I don't have time to go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
'Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is you think I should
What it is you think I should

'Forgive' — sounds good
'Forget' — I'm not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I'm still waiting

Beyond Evolution

2009-07-01T23:07:00.002-04:00

Interesting and well-written article here:
"Confirmed: God is Slightly Gay"

It expresses what seems to be a very common view of spirituality today, the nature-centric "we are the universe made manifest" principle that many people have. It finds religious/moral value in the grandeur of nature and the rhythms of the natural world.

What the article doesn't seem to recognize is that some of us have spiritual/religious sensibilities that are based on the idea that humanity's sentience and self-reflective nature are a mandate to break with the rhythms of the brutal process of evolution. We're supposed to think and exercise altruism and self-restraint, not just give in to whatever urges and instincts lead to the tautological survival of the fittest.

Incredible Cosmic Power: a Shavuos ShulDrasha

2009-05-30T23:31:00.001-04:00

Our הפטרה this morning, for the Second Day of שבועות, was תְּפִֿלָּה לַחֲבַֿקּוּק הַנָּבִֿיא — the Prayer of the Prophet חבקוק, one of the ‘12 Minor Prophets’ called such not because they were less important to the spiritual history of Israel, but because so little of their prophetic-literary output was preserved for later generations.

All we have of חבקוק is three short chapters.

But תפילה לחבקוק is a hard-hitting masterpiece of praise, describing God as a divine warrior — the אִישׁ מִלְחָמָה of the Song at the Sea — whose power and glory cover the heavens and fill the earth, who shatters mountains and raises storms in both the upper and lower waters.

Reminiscent of the imagery used by our ancient polytheistic neighbors, חבקוק describes God as a wrathful storm-god, riding a divine ‘chariot of rescue’ into battle, casting flashes of lightning like arrows and spears, with plague and pestilence swarming along with God's heavy crushing steps.

But the battle that God is going out to fight is not a divine war or a metaphysical struggle. חבקוק asks rhetorically, הֲבִֿנְהָרִים חָרָה ה'؟ אִם בַּנְּהָרִים אַפֶּךָֿ؟ אִם בַּיָּם עֶבְֿרָתֶֿךָֿ؟ Is God angry at the rivers?  Is God raging against the sea?

No!

This is not a skirmish in some eternal struggle between Order and Chaos; this is not the Creator forcefully asserting authority over the untamed rebellious Ocean, although such motifs do periodically occur in our tradition.

הֲבִֿנְהָרִים חָרָה ה'؟
No. God is not angry with the waters.

The rays of light bursting from God's hand; the rent earth, the rushing torrents, the smashed mountains, the crackling lightning — what are they all for? What is the purpose of all this awe-inspiring violent pyrotechnics?

יָצָאתָֿ לְיֵשַׁע עַמֶּךָֿ לְיֵשַׁע אֶתֿ מְשִׁיחֶךָֿ
מָחַצְתָּ רֹּאשׁ מִבֵּיתֿ רָשָׁע עָרוֹתֿ יְסוֹדֿ עַדֿ צַוָּאר

חבקוק addresses God, answering his own question — “You have come forth to rescue your people; to rescue your anointed — you smash the head from the villain's house, razing it from foundation to neck.”

These tools of cosmic warfare, God's world-wrecking weapons, are not being used against cosmic enemies, against natural forces — but against the enemies of עם ישראל.

בְּזַעַם תִּצְעַדֿ אָרֶץ
“You tread the earth in rage”
— but God's enemy is not the earth —
בְּאַףֿ תָּדֿוּשׁ גּוֹיִם
“You thresh nations in fury.”

חבקוק speaks of his trembling fear, the rot in his bones at the enemy's approach — but אָנוּחַ לְיוֹם צָרָה he says, לַעֲלוֹתֿ לְעַם יְגֿוּדֶֿנּוּ “I wait calmly for the day of distress, for the arrival of the massing foe.”

It doesn't matter how powerful the enemy appears, because he is confident in God's power — incredible cosmic might brought down to earth, brought to bear against those who would do us harm.

וַאֲנִי he says, ,בַּה' אֶעְלוֹזָה אָגִֿילָה בֵּא'-ֵי יִשְׁעִי “I will rejoice in God, I will exult in God who rescues me.” וַיָּשֶׂם רַגְֿלַי כָּאַיָּלוֹתֿ וְעַל בָּמוֹתַֿי יַדְֿרִיכֵֿנִי “God makes my legs sure-footed as a deer, guiding my stride on my heights.”

It's not God standing there victorious over the slain body of some cosmic foe — it's חבקוק, it's the Jewish People, surveying deliverance from above and giving thanks for God's awe-inspiring power.

This isn't some cosmic metaphor —
it's the struggle of our own lives.

In the 89th Psalm, אֵיתָֿן הָאֶזְרָחִי sings of “God's eternal kindness” and he brings in this motif of God vanquishing the watery chaos. Only a few פסוקים later, though, he shifts the focus to דוד המלך to King David. Speaking in the voice of God, he says מָצָאתִֿי דָּוִדֿ עַבְֿדִּי “I have found דוד my servant” ... and then later, אַףֿ זְרוֹעִי תְֿאַמְּצֶנּוּ “my arm shall strengthen him.”

But what kind of strength is this, that God promises דוד?

וְשַׂמְתִּי בַֿיָּם יָדֿוֹ וּבַֿנְּהָרוֹתֿ יְמִינוֹ
Enough divine strength to have power over the sea and the rivers.

That same image of cosmic power — the strength of God the Creator and Commander of Nature, whom not even the most untamed force imaginable could resist — that is the power that God gives over to דוד, to a human being.

In חבקוק, God brings God's own power to bear to rescue us from our foes, and we stand there with the prophet, awestruck, as lightning rains down from heaven, the mountains quake, and the earth splits — as משה said before the Splitting of the Sea, ה' יִלָּחֵם לָכֶֿם וְאַתֶּם תַּחֲרִישׁוּן God will fight for you, while you remain silent.

In תהלים, though, God takes a step back.

God hands us the power, the strength, the cosmic force; the encouragement, the inspiration — and we become partners with God in fighting our own human battles and in confronting cosmic struggle.

However, this is not how Rabbinic Tradition reads תפילה לחבקוק. The reason we read this הפטרה today is because all the awe-inspiring pyrotechnics are not the sound of battle. As משה said, coming down from הר סיני —
אֵין קוֹל עֲנוֹתֿ גְּבֿוּרָה וְאֵין קוֹל עֲנוֹתֿ חֲלוּשָׁה
“It is not the voice of a call of victory,
and it's not the voice of a call of defeat” —
according to חז"ל, our Sages, תפילה לחבקוק is the voice of
וַיַּעַן כָּל הָעָם קוֹל אֶחָדֿ וַיֹּאמְרוּ
כָּל הַדְּבָֿרִים אֲשֶׁר דִּבֵּר ה' נַעֲשֶׂה
The call of the Israelite nation answering with one voice when they said ‘Everything which God has said, we will do.’

חבקוק's ‘wrathful storm-god’ imagery — the heavenly bolts — were the thunder and lightning, the heavy cloud that wreathed הר סיני at the Giving of the Torah.

The rays of light bursting from God's clenched fist — were the revelation of God's presence before the assembled people, and the glow of משה's face when he came down from the mountain after communing with the divine.

חבקוק's description of God's glory and power filling earth and heaven when God comes from פָּארָן — is the same as משה's reminiscing at the end of his life at the end of the תורה about God's appearance at סיני and פארן in the wilderness, when God came to give a living ‘firey law’ to עם ישראל.

And just as חבקוק stands awe-struck as heavenly power changes the world around him, קבלת התורה the acceptance of Torah by the people was an utterly passive act.

ר' אבדימי בר חמא בר חסא in מסכת שבת says that God lifted up the mountain and held it over בני ישראל and told them, ‘either accept the תורה or there you will be buried.’

The power was overwhelming; the evidence was overwhelming; the gratitude was overwhelming — God had just saved them from Egypt and from עמלק, sustained them in the wilderness through miraculous means — it was literally an offer they couldn't refuse, whether the mountain over their heads was physical, or ‘just’ psychological.

And then, when God did speak to בני ישראל, they were overwhelmed by the experience, and had to ask משה to be their representative, because they weren't strong enough to hear God's voice directly.

However, just as God in תהלים gives דוד the power to fight divine battles, to make a mark on the universe, so too God brings us in as partners in מלחמתה של תורה the “war of Torah” — the spiritual struggle to learn, to teach, to integrate, and to be creative. One of משה's final messages to בני ישראל at the end of his life is לא בשמים היא — the Torah is not in Heaven. It's not some faraway ideal or impossible feat, something whose divinity is limited to supernal realms.

It's right here, ready for you to take it and make your mark on it and let it make its mark on you.

בני ישראל needed to hear that message, after their passive, upturned-mountain acceptance.

רב יהודה in מסכת תמורה says that 3000 laws were forgotten during the days of mourning after משה's death. The people turned to his successor, יהושע, and told him to ask Heaven for answers. But יהושע refused. לא בשמים היא. It's not in heaven anymore. Figure it out yourselves. 3,000 laws were forgotten in just a few days, along with 1,700 rules of implication.

Our passive hands were too weak to hold on — until עתניאל בן קנז restored the laws and restored the rules through his own logical deductions.

He took hold of this cosmic power, this תורה, and became a partner with God.

We've just received the Torah once again.
We stood at the burning mountain,
wrapped in thunder and lightning,
and we heard God's voice.

And that burning mountain — that firey law — is ours now.
It's our responsibility.
It takes effort, and it takes struggle, to learn, to understand, to create to integrate and to apply.

This power was given to us so that we can impact it, ourselves, and all creation.

Just receiving Torah isn't enough —
it's time to take that next step.

And we have the whole rest of the year for that.

So let's get started.

Happy New Year! A Tazria‘-Metzora‘ DvarTorah

2009-04-25T23:17:00.001-04:00

The first משנה in מסכת ראש־השנה tells us that there are actually four ראשי שנה — four new year's days.

The first of ניסן is ראש השנה למלכים ולרגלים — the new year for calculating kings' reigns, and for counting months and holidays. Not long before פסח we read the parsha of החדש הזה לכם ראש חדשים, that ניסן, the month of liberation, is the first of all months.

Then there's the first of אלול, ראש השנה למעשר בהמה — the beginning of each yearly cycle for tithing livestock.

There's the first of שבט, or according to the other opinion in the משנה, the one we follow, ט"ו בשבט a.k.a. ראש השנה לאילנות, the beginning of each yearly cycle for tithing fruit trees.

And then there's the first of תשרי, the ראש השנה that we celebrate as "ראש השנה" — the New Year for years, for the שמיטה and יובל cycles, and for some other agricultural calculations, as well.

This past week I heard a lecture by ר' יובל שרלו. R' Cherlow is the ראש ישיבה of the ישיבת הסדר in פתח־תקוה in Israel, and one of the founders of צֹהַר, an organization that tries to help heal the divide between religious and secular Jews in Israeli society.

He said that in his ישיבה, he calls יום העצמאות, Israeli Independence day — which is coming up this coming Wednesday — ראש השנה למדינה. The New Year for the State of Israel.

Now let's just hold that thought — יום העצמאות as ראש השנה למדינה, the New Year for the State, and put it off to the side for a few minutes, while we discuss this morning's Torah reading.

One of the dominant topics in תזריע and מצורע is the mysterious malady known as צרעת.

The Torah tells us that צרעת — particularly-defined discolorations of the skin — can make a human being טמא, ritually impure.

Similar discolorations can have the same effect on clothing, and on houses.

רמב"ם and others see צרעת as a supernatural signal, warning the afflicted individual against speaking לשון הרע. The גמרא in מסכת ערכין brings a play on words — a person receives צרעת, and becomes a מצורע because they were מוציא שם רע, a slanderer.

In this view, the three forms of צרעת — on people, clothes, and houses — are stages of warning or punishment. When someone begins to spread rumors and libel, the first thing to go is their home. צרעת appears on the walls, as an early-warning system. If they persist in their destructive ways, eventually the house will have to be disassembled. If they still don't learn their lesson, the צרעת moves to their clothes, until the clothes need to be burned.

And in the end, if they still persist in misusing their God-given power of communication, the צרעת attaches itself directly to their body.

This is probably the most popular understanding of how צרעת worked. You'll find it in numerous parsha sheets and children's books.

But there are other explanations for the phenomena of צרעת and the rules of how to diagnose and deal with it — and I'd like to concentrate particularly on צרעת בתים, the impure discolorations that afflict houses.

In the same place in מסכת ערכין that includes the idea that a מצורע is a מוציא־שם־רע, a slanderer, one of the other opinions brought is that צרעת of houses isn't a punishment for misused speech, but for theft; similarly, another opinion identifies the relevant sin as stinginess.

As part of the house צרעת procedure, the building is emptied. All its contents are removed and placed outside. This way, if the house will be declared טמא, the contents will remain pure. However, while everything is outside, passers-by can — according to the "theft" opinion — identify their own stolen property, or — according to the view that blames צרעת on stinginess — they can see the wrench that the house's inhabitant denied owning when they asked to borrow it last week.

On the other hand, the צרעת of houses might actually be a good thing.

צרעת בתים can only occur in the Land of Israel, and רבי שמעון בר יוחאי claims that צרעת marked the location of buried Cana‘anite treasure that בני־ישראל inherited upon conquering the land. Breaking apart the walls of these houses wasn't a punishment but a challenge and a reward.

צרעת בתים, the צרעת of houses which can only occur in the Land of Israel, may be a guidepost, pointing the way to treasure and success, to better things to come; or it may be an alarm, an early-warning system alerting us that something is starting to go wrong. Theft, slander, selfishness —
society
our society
in our Land
may be beginning to break down.

So let's return to ר' שרלו and his ראש השנה למדינה.
יום העצמאות, he said, is not just about הלל or other newer synagogue rituals; it's not about concerts, parties, and barbecues in the park. It is about those things — because ראש השנה is a holiday, and so ראש השנה למדינה is a celebration of independence, creativity, and God-willing eventual complete redemption.

But ראש השנה is also a day of judgement — a day of looking back and looking forward.

And so ראש השנה למדינה needs to also be a day of paying attention, and of taking account.

The צרעת of houses could only occur in ארץ־ישראל — and it may have been a sign of coming good; or it could have been a sign
of developing danger; but it was always a signal to stop and think.

We don't have צרעת of any kind anymore. If you have Hansen's disease, psoriasis, mold on your clothes or mildew on your walls, and you're living in Israel, you don't have to go find a כהן because maybe it's צרעת and you need to know if you're טמא or טהור.

But we do have
יום העצמאות
ראש השנה למדינה
a day of celebration and of paying attention; a day to think about all the ways that things can and do go wrong; and all the ways to make sure that they go right. And when you get down to it, even the basic fact that Jews in the world today after two thousand years finally once again do have those challenges to face — is in itself a reason to celebrate.

חודש טוב
and שנה טובה.

My Sun Salutation

2009-04-08T09:59:00.000-04:00

No, I did not perform any yoga-esque stretches, but I did piece together my own liturgy for Birkat Hahhama, the Blessing of the [New] Sun, centered around the Mishna Berura's suggestions. It starts with some mood-setting texts about the sun and our relationship to it and to its Creator.

1. from Yerushalmi Berakhot:

מודה אני לפניך י' אלהי ואלהי אבותי שהוצאתני מאפילה לאורה!

2. Based on Qidush Levana:

ברוך יוצרֵךְֿ, ברוך עושֵךְֿ, ברוך קונֵךְֿ, ברוך בוראֵךְֿ;
הוא יברך את ישראל מקדשֵךְֿ.

3. from Mishna Sukot 5:2(-4)'s description of the Simhhat Beit Hasho’eiva:

מוצאי יום טוב הראשון של חג, היו יורדין לעזרת הנשים, ומתקנים שם תיקון גדול. ומנורות של זהב היו שם, וארבעה ספלים של זהב היו שם בראשיהם, וארבעה סולמות על כל מנורה ומנורה; וארבעה ילדים מפרחי כהונה, ובידיהם כדי שמן של מאה ועשרים לוג, והם מטילין לתוך כל ספל וספל. [ג] מבלאי מכנסי הכוהנים ומהמייניהם היו מפקיעין, ובהם היו מדליקין. לא הייתה חצר בירושלים, שלא הייתה מאירה מאור בית השאובה. [ד] חסידים ואנשי מעשה היו מרקדין לפניהם באבוקות, ואומרין לפניהם דברי תושבחות. והלויים בכינורות ובנבלים ובמצלתיים ובכל כלי שיר בלא מספר, על חמש עשרה מעלות היורדות מעזרת ישראל לעזרת הנשים, כנגד חמש עשרה שיר המעלות שבתהילים, שעליהם הלויים עומדים ואומרים בשיר. עמדו שני כוהנים בשער העליון היורד מעזרת ישראל לעזרת הנשים, ושתי חצוצרות בידם. קרא הגבר, תקעו והריעו ותקעו; הגיעו למעלה עשירית, תקעו והריעו ותקעו; הגיעו לעזרה, תקעו והריעו ותקעו. היו תוקעין והולכין, עד שמגיעין לשער היוצא למזרח.
הגיעו לשער היוצא למזרח — הפכו פניהם למערב ואמרו, אבותינו היו במקום הזה "אחוריהם אל היכל ה', ופניהם קדמה, והמה משתחוויתם קדמה, לשמש" (יחזקאל ח,טז); ואנו, ליה עינינו.
רבי יהודה אומר, שונים אותה לומר, ואנו ליה, וליה עינינו.

4. from the Piyutim of Ne‘ila on Yom Kippur, based on the above:

אנו ליה ועינינו ליה.

5. Four verses about the sun, spelling out God's Name, from the OU's Text:

תהלים עב:ה
יִֽירָא֥וּךָ עִם־שָׁ֑מֶשׁ, וְלִפְנֵ֥י יָ֝רֵ֗חַ דּ֣וֹר דּוֹרִֽים׃

תהלים עה:ב
ה֘וֹדִ֤ינוּ לְּךָ֨ ׀ אֱֽלֹהִ֗ים ה֭וֹדִינוּ וְקָר֣וֹב שְׁמֶ֑ךָ, סִ֝פְּר֗וּ נִפְלְאוֹתֶֽיךָ׃

מלאכי ג:כ
וְזָֽרְחָ֨ה לָכֶ֜ם יִרְאֵ֤י שְׁמִי֙ שֶׁ֣מֶשׁ צְדָקָ֔ה וּמַרְפֵּ֖א בִּכְנָפֶ֑יהָ, וִֽיצָאתֶ֥ם וּפִשְׁתֶּ֖ם כְּעֶגְלֵ֥י מַרְבֵּֽק׃

תהלים צז:ו
הִגִּ֣ידוּ הַשָּׁמַ֣יִם צִדְק֑וֹ, וְרָא֖וּ כָל־הָֽעַמִּ֣ים כְּבוֹדֽוֹ׃

6. Tehillim 148:1-6, like in Qidush Levana:

הַ֥לְלוּ יָ֨הּ ׀ הַֽלְל֣וּ אֶת־יְ֭הוָה מִן־הַשָּׁמַ֑יִם, הַֽ֝לְל֗וּהוּ בַּמְּרוֹמִֽים׃
הַֽלְל֥וּהוּ כָל־מַלְאָכָ֑יו, הַֽ֝לְל֗וּהוּ כָּל־צְבָאָֽו׃
הַֽ֭לְלוּהוּ שֶׁ֣מֶשׁ וְיָרֵ֑חַ, הַֽ֝לְל֗וּהוּ כָּל־כּ֥וֹכְבֵי אֽוֹר׃
הַֽ֭לְלוּהוּ שְׁמֵ֣י הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם, וְ֝הַמַּ֗יִם אֲשֶׁ֤ר ׀ מֵעַ֬ל הַשָּׁמָֽיִם׃
יְֽ֭הַלְלוּ אֶת־שֵׁ֣ם יְהוָ֑ה, כִּ֤י ה֖וּא צִוָּ֣ה וְנִבְרָֽאוּ׃
וַיַּֽעֲמִידֵ֣ם לָעַ֣ד לְעוֹלָ֑ם, חָק־נָ֝תַ֗ן וְלֹ֣א יַֽעֲבֽוֹר׃

7. from Bavli Berakhot 59b, explaining what we're doing:

תנו רבנן: הרואה חמה בתקופתה, לבנה בגבורתה, וכוכבים במסילותם, ומזלות כסדרן, אומר „ברוך עושה בראשית“. ואימת הוי? אמר אביי, כל כ"ח שנין והדר מחזור ונפלה תקופת ניסן בשבתאי באורתא דתלת נגהי ארבע.

8. THE BERAKHA ITSELF!

בָּרוּךְֿ אַתָּה יי א'-נוּ מֶלֶךְֿ הָעוֹלָם עוֹשֶׂה מַעֲשֵׂה בְרֵאשִׁיתֿ!

9. The Piyut “Eil Adon” from Shabbat Morning:

אל אדון על כל המעשים
ברוך ומבורך בפי כל נשמה
גדלו וטובו מלא עולם
דעת ותבונה סובבים אותו

המתגאה על החיות הקודש
ונהדר בכבוד על המרכבה
זכות ומישור לפני כסאו
חסד ורחמים לפני כבודו

טובים מאורות שברא אלהינו
יצרם בדעת בבינה ובהשכל
כח וגבורה נתן בהם
להיות מושלים בקרב תבל

מלאים זיו ומפיקים נוגה
נאה זיום בכל העולם
שמחים בצאתם וששים בבואם
עושים באימה רצון קונם

פאר וכבוד נותנים לשמו
צהלה ורינה לזכר מלכותו
קרא לשמש ויזרח אור
ראה והתקין צורת הלבנה

שבח נותנים לו כל צבא מרום
תפארת וגדולה שרפים ואופנים וחיות הקודש

10. Tehillim 19:

לַמְנַצֵּ֗חַ מִזְמ֥וֹר לְדָוִֽד׃
הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם מְֽסַפְּרִ֥ים כְּבֽוֹד־אֵ֑ל, וּֽמַעֲשֵׂ֥ה יָ֝דָ֗יו מַגִּ֥יד הָֽרָקִֽיעַ׃
י֣וֹם לְ֭יוֹם יַבִּ֣יעַֽ אֹ֑מֶר, וְלַ֥יְלָה לְּ֝לַ֗יְלָה יְחַוֶּה־דָּֽעַת׃
אֵֽין־אֹ֭מֶר וְאֵ֣ין דְּבָרִ֑ים, בְּ֝לִ֗י נִשְׁמָ֥ע קוֹלָֽם׃
בְּכָל־הָאָ֨רֶץ ׀ יָ֘צָ֤א קַוָּ֗ם, וּבִקְצֵ֣ה תֵ֭בֵל מִלֵּיהֶ֑ם, לַ֝שֶּׁ֗מֶשׁ שָֽׂם־אֹ֥הֶל בָּהֶֽם׃
וְה֗וּא כְּ֭חָתָן יֹצֵ֣א מֵֽחֻפָּת֑וֹ, יָשִׂ֥ישׂ כְּ֝גִבּ֗וֹר לָר֥וּץ אֹֽרַח׃
מִקְצֵ֤ה הַשָּׁמַ֨יִם ׀ מֽוֹצָא֗וֹ וּתְקֽוּפָת֥וֹ עַל־קְצוֹתָ֑ם, וְאֵ֥ין נִ֝סְתָּ֗ר מֵֽחַמָּתֽוֹ׃
תּ֘וֹרַ֤ת יְהוָ֣ה תְּ֭מִימָה מְשִׁ֣יבַת נָ֑פֶשׁ, עֵד֥וּת יְהוָ֥ה נֶֽ֝אֱמָנָ֗ה מַחְכִּ֥ימַת פֶּֽתִי׃
פִּקּ֘וּדֵ֤י יְהוָ֣ה יְ֭שָׁרִים מְשַׂמְּחֵי־לֵ֑ב, מִצְוַ֥ת יְהוָ֥ה בָּ֝רָ֗ה מְאִירַ֥ת עֵינָֽיִם׃
יִרְאַ֤ת יְהוָ֨ה ׀ טְהוֹרָה֮ עוֹמֶ֪דֶת לָ֫עַ֥ד, מִֽשְׁפְּטֵי־יְהוָ֥ה אֱמֶ֑ת צָֽדְק֥וּ יַחְדָּֽו׃
הַֽנֶּחֱמָדִ֗ים מִ֭זָּהָב וּמִפַּ֣ז רָ֑ב, וּמְתוּקִ֥ים מִ֝דְּבַ֗שׁ וְנֹ֣פֶת צוּפִֽים׃
גַּֽם־עַ֭בְדְּךָ נִזְהָ֣ר בָּהֶ֑ם, בְּ֝שָׁמְרָ֗ם עֵ֣קֶב רָֽב׃
שְׁגִיא֥וֹת מִֽי־יָבִ֑ין, מִֽנִּסְתָּר֥וֹת נַקֵּֽנִי׃
גַּ֤ם מִזֵּדִ֨ים ׀ חֲשֹׂ֬ךְ עַבְדֶּ֗ךָ, אַֽל־יִמְשְׁלוּ־בִ֣י אָ֣ז אֵיתָ֑ם, וְ֝נִקֵּ֗יתִי מִפֶּ֥שַֽׁע רָֽב׃
יִ֥הְיֽוּ לְרָצ֨וֹן ׀ אִמְרֵי־פִ֡י וְהֶגְי֣וֹן לִבִּ֣י לְפָנֶ֑יךָ, יְ֝הוָ֗ה צוּרִ֥י וְגֹֽאֲלִֽי׃

11. from the OU's Text:

מודים אנחנו לך שהחייתנו וקיימתנו והגעתנו לברך ברכת הודאה זו, ויהי רצון מלפניך י' א'-נו וא'-י אבותינו, כשם שזכינו לברך ברכה זוֹ, כן תחיינו ותקיימנו לעבדך בלבב שלם. ותזכה אותנו ואת צאצאינו לברכהּ בתקופות אחרות הבאות עלינו לשלום, שמחים בבנין עירָךְֿ וששים בעבודתָךְֿ, ותזכנו לראות פני משיחָךְֿ, והיה אור הלבנה כאור החמה, ואור החמה יהיה שבעתים כאור החמה, ביום חבוש י' את לבב עמו ומחץ מכתו ירפא, במהרה בימינו.

12. from the text at the NeoHasid website:

והנה אנו יודים כי הבטחת על יד נביאך „הִנֵּה הַיּוֹם בָּא בֹּעֵר כַּתַּנּוּר“ ואינו משל כי אם אזהרה, כי נתת בידינו הכח להפוך סדרי בראשית. וכאשר הבטחת „היום בא“ הבטחת „וְזָֽרְחָה לָכֶם ... שֶׁמֶשׁ צְדָקָה וּמַרְפֵּא בִּכְנָפֶיהָ“, וכן ברחמיך תברכנו.

אמן סלה

Remember, You Were A Slave: A Shabbat Hagadol ShulDrasha

2009-04-04T22:00:00.005-04:00

[but not quite a Shabbat Hagadol Drasha]
(this drasha owes a lot to Ben Greenberg's Pesahh as a Liberation Imperative article and shiurim; this is also the first drasha i ever gave where i actually told people to 'get off their encounter-suited butts' and do something. and i reformatted it out of poem-style into prose-style for ease of reading in response to previous comments)

During the course of the סדר, we recite a משנה from מסכת פסחים that contains רבן גמליאל's list of the basic obligations of the Seder Night.

And he says that aside from the content of the Seder — the mention of פסח מצה and מרור without which one's obligation to retell the story of יציאת מצרים has not been fulfilled — the entire enterprise of telling the story of the Outgoing from Egypt boils down to one basic מצוה, one underlying obligation: בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עמצו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים. In every single generation, one is obligated to see themself as if they, personally, came out from Egypt.

And he bases this on a verse in the Torah, שנאמר — והגדת לבנך ביום ההוא לאמר, בעבור זה עשה ה' לי בצאתי ממצרים. Because it says, “You will tell your children on that day, saying: ‘It was because of this that God acted on my behalf when I left Egypt’.”

I, myself — I left Egypt. I was taken out of מצרים. I was rescued from slavery by God, with symbols, wonders, miracles and awe.

חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים.

And there's another version of this משנה. According to some traditions, רבן גמליאל didn't say that one is obligated לראות את עצמו to see themself — but להראות את עצמו to
show themself.

In every single generation we are obligated to show ourselves — to demonstrate practically — that we, personally, were rescued from slavery by God.

But what does that mean? What does it mean לראות to see ourselves, or להראות to show ourselves, as if we personally left מצרים?

What could it mean to have left Egypt ourselves?

Does it mean the סדר? The long, luxurious philosophical meal, reclining around the table and telling stories between courses?

Does it mean the Sephardic custom of wrapping מצה and holding it on our shoulders,
while walking around the room in imitation of בני־ישראל trekking through the wilderness?

Maybe to answer this question we should look back at the תורה.

What does the תורה tell us — not about the experience of slavery... but the memory of slavery? Not about leaving Egypt... but about having left Egypt?

According to the תורה, many of the מצוות that we are commanded are somehow
consequences specifically of יציאת־מצרים.

God tells us that we are obligated to engage in commerce in an honest fashion, and then self-identifies as ה' אלקיכם אשר הוצאתי אתכם מארץ מצרים God who took you out of Egypt.

A false prophet is put to death for inciting disloyalty against “God who takes you out of Egypt and redeems you from slavery.”

The ציצית that we put on our four-cornered garments, and the third paragraph of שמע
which describes them that we recite twice a day — all because God is the God who took us out of מצרים.

And there are many more מצוות written in the תורה and associated with Egypt than just those few.

There are the four times when the תורה warns us against oppressing the גר — the stranger, the convert, the immigrant — כי גרים הייתם בארץ מצרים because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt.

And in פרשת משפטים it goes further — ואתם ידעתם את נפש הגר it says, you understand their soul. You know what it's like to be a stranger, to be powerless, to be exploited and abused.

And so the תורה tells us, don't oppress the strangers in your midst, don't exploit or abuse them — protect them!

Four times we are commanded to protect the stranger because we were strangers in Egypt.

And another five times when the תורה reinforces particular מצוות by commanding us to observe שבת; to help an indentured servant regain self-sufficiency; to share our holiday celebrations with the less-fortunate; to seek justice for the stranger and the orphan; and to leave produce in the fields for the poor to take themselves — why? וזכרת כי עבד היית ב(ארץ) מצרים.

So that you will remember that you were a slave in Egypt.

You were oppressed, so don't oppress others.
You were exploited, so protect others from exploitation.
You were downtrodden, so lift others up.

Rav Soloveitchik explained that “without the experience of slavery, we would have remained unexposed to suffering, emotionally vulgar and insensitive.” The slavery experience is the root of Jewish morality, and that is why the תורה invokes שעבוד מצרים
and the memory thereof “whenever it speaks of our duty to respect the feelings of others, particularly the lonely and defenseless... Had we not been in Egypt,” he continues, “had we not felt the pain caused by the whip, we would not have understood the divine law of not oppressing the stranger or the law of loving one's neighbor.”

This is what God did for you when you went forth from Egypt. וזכרת כי עבד היית במצרים Remember that you were a slave. That is the obligation of the Seder Night. In every generation, עשה ה' לי God did it for me — for you — when God rescued us from slavery.

And although the הגדה makes a point of emphasizing — אני ולא מלאך, אני ולא שרף, אני ולא השליח it was God who rescued us, not an angel, and not the messenger — we know that God did not do it alone.

Why did the Creator of Worlds pick משה רבנו as the spokesman and the enactor of divine justice and divine mercy?

רש"י explains that when משה first went out to his people, a ‘Prince of Egypt’ as we say today, going out to encounter his enslaved brethren, he did it to look and to see and to feel their pain. And when he saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite, he killed the abuser
and rescued the slave.

That act of defense set a pattern of intervention.

Next, משה saw two Hebrews fighting with each other, and he intervened to protect the weak from the abusive strong.

At this point it became clear to him that his first intervention wasn't as secret as he had tried to keep it, and פרעה tried to punish him, so he fled to מדין, where he rescued יתרו's daughters from the herdsmen who attacked them.

נחמה לייבובֿיץ theorized that “had we only been told of the first clash, we might have doubted [...] his motive.” Maybe משה only intervened because it was one of his own people being beaten by the oppressor?

But then he attempts to protect an Israelite from another Israelite. No Egyptian taskmasters involved.

And then, she says, “came the third clash, where both parties were outsiders — neither brothers, friends nor neighbors.” And yet, as נחמה לייבובֿיץ points out, משה's “first deed on arriving in the land of his forced exile after having risked his life to protect the defenseless [—] was to repeat his action and champion the weak again.”

And why did he do it? How did משה רבנו start on his path of intervention, that very first time? The תורה tells us וַיִּפֶֿן כֹּה וָכֹֿה וַיַּרְא כִּי אֵין אִישׁ. He looked around, and saw no one — and רבי יהודה explains in מדרש ויקרא רבה:
ראה שאין מי יעמוד ויקנא לשמו של הקב"ה.
משה looked around to see if anyone else would stand up and take action on behalf of the honor of God, but no one would — so he stepped up himself.

And he did it once, again, and three times — no matter who was involved.

משה arrived in מדין and rescued יתרו's daughters, bringing justice to the untamed grazing land.

And in return, when יתרו arrives at the wilderness encampment of בני־ישראל at Mount Sinai, having heard about the wonders of יציאת־מצרים, what does he do? He ends up instituting a system of justice based on fairness and honesty — just as God commands us to deal honestly in commerce and measurements in consequence of the Exodus.

יתרו responded to God's great act of emancipation, liberation and justice with one of his own, on a smaller scale.

When רבי חמא ברבי חנינא in מסכת סוטה explains that we are obligated to ‘walk in God's ways’, all the specific actions he lists are acts of חסד and רחמים, of kindness and mercy.
Just as God clothed the naked, so must we clothe the naked.
Just as God visited the sick, so must we visit the sick.
Just as God comforted mourners, so must we comfort mourners.
Just as God buried the dead, so must we bury the dead.

So what does it mean —
וזכרת כי עבד היית בארץ מצרים,
חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים —
we are obligated to remember and to see ourselves as if we ourselves came out of Egypt?

It means חייב אדם להראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים — We are obligated to demonstrate that we ourselves came out of Egypt!

Just as God brought us out from slavery to freedom, so must we bring others out from slavery to freedom!

Today, in the year ה'תשס"ט, in the year 2009, there are about 27 million human beings
enslaved around the world.

27 million people is twice the number of individuals who were removed from Africa during the entire 250-year period of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. There are more people enslaved today than there were at any previous time in history.

‘Enslaved’ doesn't just mean ‘worked hard’.
It doesn't just mean ‘paid less than they deserve’.
It means literal slavery — one person completely controlling another person, through violence or the threat of violence, for the purpose of economic exploitation, and only paid with enough food to survive.

And over the past 4000 years of human history, across societies and cultures, the average price of a slave has been valued at the cost of between 4 to 8 oxen. Ten years before the Civil War in the United States, the price of an average slave was equivalent to about 6 oxen, or the price of a house. Think about that — the price of a house. Today, though, the average price of a slave is only 90 dollars. And just like anything else, when human beings become cheap, they become expendable.

27 million people without the freedom to walk away — even if it were only into a worse situation.

When משה first goes to פרעה, instead of listening to his divine message, and releasing בני־ישראל, the King of Egypt intensifies their labor, and worsens their oppression.

משה turns to God in frustration or despair, and asks
לָמָה הֲרֵעֹתָֿה לָעָם הַזֶּה לָמָּה זֶּה שְׁלַחְתָּנִי
Why have you made it worse for these people?!
Why did you even send me?!
וּמֵאָז בָּאתִֿי אֶל פַּרְעֹה לְדַֿבֵּר בִּשְׁמֶךָֿ
From the time that I came to Pharoah to speak in your name,
הֵרַע לָעָם הַזֶּה וְהַצֵּל לֹא הִצַּלְתָּ אֶתֿ עַמֶּךָֿ
it's just gotten worse for them
and in no way have you rescued your nation.

In מדרש שמות רבה, we see רבי עקיבא imagining משה not raising his hands in weakness and casting words at Heaven, but actually challenging God and holding God to God's promise — ‘You haven't rescued your people. And I know that one day you will — אבל מה איכפת לך אלו הנתונים מתחת לבנין? but don't you care about those right now who are crushed [to death] underneath the construction?!’

Other מדרשים describe how slaves would drop dead in the middle of their labor; how the Egyptians would wedge Israelites and Israelite babies between the slabs of their edifices; how children would be born in the mudpits where clay was mixed and end up integrated into the bricks with which their parents built cities for their masters.

‘There are human beings suffering right now’ — משה reminds God — ‘What are you doing about it?’

עבדים היינו לפרעה במצרים
We were slaves to Pharoah in Egypt and God took us out of there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm...

We are free.
Slavery is just a memory.
Exodus is just a memory.

וזכרת כי עבד היית,
כי גרים הייתם
Remember
God judged your oppressors,
so act with justice and honesty.
Remember
you were once strangers,
so protect the weak and vulnerable.
Remember
you were once a slave,
so release the oppressed.

At our סדרים we reimagine ourselves as if we, personally, were rescued from מצרים.

But the תורה tells us that if we really want to show that we ourselves were rescued from מצרים, we can't just sit around our dining room tables telling stories — just as God freed us from slavery, so must we too work to free others, as well.

What do we care about those human beings who, just as our ancestors were, just as we were, right now are being “crushed [to death] underneath the construction”?

What are we doing about it?

Free The Slaves
anti-slavery
Task Force on Human Trafficking [in Israel]
iAbolish
Vital Voices's How to Recognize a Trafficking Victim

Purification and Survival: A Ki-Tisa / Para ShulDrasha

2009-03-14T20:43:00.002-04:00

Earlier this week
we celebrated פורים,
the holiday of ונהפוך הוא —
of total reversal,
of paradox —
of God hiding in history
and human beings hiding in plain sight;
of, on the one hand,
the מצוה to always remember the evil of עמלק,
and on the other,
the practice of blurring the line
between ארור המן and ברוך מרדכי,
between cursed is המן and blessed is מרדכי.

And now this שבת
we read the special מפטיר
of פרשת פרה,
and may very well
have fulfilled a Biblical commandment
by doing so.

The פרה אדומה
was the pure red cow
which was processed into ash
and then mixed with water
to produce מי נידה or מי חטאת,
which the כוהנים in the בית־המקדש
would use
to purify the impure,
removing a person who had come into contact with the dead
from a state of טומאה,
from a state of impurity.

The פרה אדומה
is one of the greatest paradoxes in the Torah:
it is
מטהר את הטמאים
ומטמא את הטהורים
it purifies the impure,
and it makes those who were pure
taboo.
The פרה אדומה
can only be processed
by people who are pure
who are טהור —
but engaging in this holy work
makes them טמא
even as they busy themselves
with the literal production
of purity.

And yet
this paradox isn't just a quality of the פרה אדומה by itself —
the entire טומאה system is infused with this paradox!

As רבי יוחנן בן זכאי said
in the מדרש במדבר רבה,
טומאה is an inscrutable decree
declared by God;
it isn't objects or rituals
that make someone or something
pure or impure —
it's just a חֹק,
an inexplicable ruling
from On High.

However,
this doesn't mean
that we can't examine it,
or investigate it
to find patterns,
messages and implications
for our wider view
of Torah and Life.

When we look at the טומאה system
we see that
אבי אבות הטומאה,
the most powerful source of impurity
is a human corpse.

The medieval philosopher-poet
ר' יהודה הלוי
explains in his philosophical work The כוזרי
that טומאה
impurity
comes with death.
In distancing us from טומאה,
the Torah is warning us away
from an unhealthy obsession
with the grave.
A man on the subway in New York City on Wednesday
asked me whether Jews believe in ‘Hell’ —
and, among other things, I told him that our tradition teaches
that we are meant to focus on life
and what we can do in This World
instead of assuming
that what is spiritually meaningful or significant
can only be found in what comes after.

And yet,
even though טומאה is so intimately bound up with death,
there is something called טומאת יולדת.
A woman
who has just given birth
is impure.

This is the opposite of death —
a newborn baby, a new mother,
the creation of new life —
and yet
a woman
who has just given birth
is טמאה.

Here is our second paradox —
what does birth
have to do
with death?

A contemporary Israeli scholar,
,ר' יובל שרלו
suggests that childbirth is a source of טומאה
because birth and death
life and death
are inextricably linked.
This is a “grim reality”
which the Torah asks us to confront.

We know this from science, as well.
Evolution
in all its holy, dazzling variety
is driven by death.

God's creatures remake themselves slowly,
generation by generation,
through natural selection —
a process sometimes called
‘survival of the fittest’
because those who survive
to produce children,
survive
to produce children.

Creation and beauty —
life and what makes it worthwhile —
frequently come
through struggle and suffering.

The late-20th-century author
J. Michael Straczynski wrote that
“The future is all around us,
waiting, in moments of transition,
to be born in moments of revelation.
No one knows the shape of that future
or where it will take us.
We know only that it is always born in pain.”

Life and hope from pain and death
and pain and death from life and hope;
טומאה from טהרה
and טהרה from טומאה.

From our ultimate origin
in a טיפה סרוחה,
a putrid drop of primordial soup,
all the way to the goal of history,
the Messianic Age —
גזירה גזרתי says God,
according to רבי יוחנן בן זכאי.
‘That's just how it is.’

As reported in מסכת סנהדרין of the Babylonian Talmud,
three of our great sages,
עולא, רבה and רבי יוחנן,
said that when it comes to the messiah,
ייתי ולא איחמיניה —
‘let the משיח come
but let me not see him.’

רב יוסף, on the other hand, said
ייתי ואזכי דאיתיב בטולא דכופיתא דחמריה —
‘let the משיח come
and let me just sit
in the shadow of his donkey's waste.’

The matter of disagreement between them
is not whether the coming of the משיח
and the realization of an era of peace and holiness
would be a good thing —
but whether the light at the end of the tunnel
is worth passing through the darkness
it takes to get there.

חבלי משיח
the birthpangs of the messiah —
the eschatological trauma
that it may very well take
to turn this broken, marred world
into paradise —
עולא, רבה and רבי יוחנן
did not believe
that they personally could withstand the distress.
רב יוסף
on the other hand
knew that it would be hard,
and was willing to suffer the pain of transition
as long as he could see the other side.

When we come to our main Torah reading this morning,
פרשת כי־תשא,
we come to the story of חטא העגל
the sin of the golden calf.
בני־ישראל see that משה
is late coming down from Mount Sinai,
and in a frenzy of feelings
of confusion, abandonment and despair,
they gang up on אהרן
and demand
that he make a god to lead them
כי זה משה האיש
אשר העלנו מארץ מצרים
לא ידענו מה היה לו
“because that man משה
who brought us up out of Egypt
we don't know what happened to him”.

אהרן makes the idol
but stalls for time.

The Israelites
offer sacrifices,
and when משה comes down the mountain
already having been informed by God what to expect,
he finds them
in the midst
of an idolatrous celebration —
and he shatters the tablets
that were made and engraved by God.

משה defends the people
from God's righteous wrath
and punishes them himself.

And in the end,
משה goes back up the mountain
with two new לוחות for God to inscribe.
And he begs, challenges and reasons with God
to not destroy בני־ישראל.

And in return, the Torah describes —
וַיֵּרֶדֿ ה׳ בֶּעָנָן
וַיִּתְֿיַצֵּבֿ עִמּוֹ שָׁם
וַיִּקְרָא בְֿשֵׁם ה׳
God came down in a cloud
and stood there with him
and called out in God's own name.

And God taught משה
the thirteen attributes of mercy:
ה׳ ה׳ -ֵל רחום וחנון
ארך־אפים ורב־חסד ואמת
נוצר חסד לאלפים
נושא עוון ופשע וחטאה ונקה
The same words of compassion
that we recite dozens of times
over the course of the High Holidays —
God meets משה on the mountain
and teaches him those words
in the aftermath of the Golden Calf.

In מסכת ראש־השנה,
רבי יוחנן explains this mysterious
and anthropomorphic passage —
“God wrapped Godself up in a טלית
like a חזן
and taught משה the order of prayers,
and said:
Every time that Israel sins,
they should recite this sequence before me
and I will forgive them.”

This tremendous gift —
thirteen attributes of God's compassion
thirteen keys to forgiveness —
only came to Earth
in response to the tragic mistake
of the Golden Calf.

And so,
the calendar rolls along,
and we move
from the unadulterated joy of פורים
towards the complex emotions of פסח —
from a מגילה where good and evil,
atrocity and rescue,
are so clear and obvious
that only by losing control of one's senses
would it be possible to confuse
the heroes and the villains —
to a סדר where we remove drops of wine from our cups
and dilute our joy
in memory of the Egyptians,
our enemies,
whose painful downfall
was the price of our freedom.

And yet,
at the same time that we move
from the childish simplicity
of a world where the good guys are good
and the bad guys are bad
and everything somehow
ends up all right in the end,
to a grown-up world
of complexity and complications,
freedom and responsibility,
we also move towards a more complete redemption.

Menachem Leibtag
one of our greatest contemporary
teachers of תנ"ך
has shown
that the satirical tone of מגילת אסתר
is laced with a subtle but serious criticism
for the Jews of the Persian Empire
and how they remained
satisfied and self-assured in Exile
instead of participating
in the rebuilding of Jerusalem
and the construction of the Second Temple.

Yes,
they were rescued from destruction.
Yes,
in a dramatic ונהפוך הוא reversal
they prevailed against their enemies
on the very day
their enemies expected
to annihilate them.
But it was an unfinished redemption —
they remained in exile,
celebrating פורים every year afterwards
while only a small segment
of the Jewish community
tried to return and rebuild
their lives
in the Land of Israel.

Compare this to פסח.

בני־ישראל suffered in Egypt,
enslaved for hundreds of years.
This wasn't just a threat of destruction —
פרעה was putting it into practice!

Their sons were being thrown in the River,
and the מדרשים
have even more horrifying descriptions
of the slavery and torture imposed on the Israelites.

The מגילה,
where everything right
just falls into place,
where the Jews are shocked and scared
but in the end
come to no harm,
is a fairytale
in comparison.

For all its much-talked-about naturalism —
the lack of obvious miracles,
the lack of God's name —
מגילת אסתר
is a very unrealistic narrative.
Antisemites throughout the Persian Empire
planned on exterminating the Jewish People
and taking the spoils of their destruction —
that was, after all,
part of המן's explicit decree —
and then when the tables are turned,
וּבַֿבִּזָּה לֹא שָׁלְחוּ אֶתֿ יָדָֿם
the Jews didn't take
anything
from their enemies?
Now
that's
a miracle!

The story of the Exodus
יציאת מצרים,
on the other hand,
is a story of pain and struggle
moral ambiguity
and mistakes
that follow for years afterwards,
as the Israelites slowly work
towards embracing their new-found freedom.
חטא העגל, the Golden Calf,
was only the first
of many serious errors
on that long road.

But the liberation from Egypt
was complete
and irrevocable.
עם ישראל
was forged
in the furnace
of מצרים —
and that
can never be undone.

The prophet יחזקאל
describes the beginning of the Jewish People
using the image
of an abandoned baby,
unwashed,
uncared-for,
and lying in its birthing blood
in an open field.
And God passes by
and says,
בְּדָֿמַיִךְֿ חֲיִי
“live through your blood”.
Live through your pain.

And so we've come full-circle —

To birth and death,
and the paradoxical impurity
of childbirth,
and the ונהפוך הוא reversal
of the פרה אדומה
that makes the pure, impure,
as it makes the impure, pure.

Earlier this week
we got a short break from life —
a fairytale romance
where the threat of suffering
never comes to pass,
and everything works out in the end.

And while we do believe
that everything eventually will work out in the end,
we also know
that our Sages argued
about whether the attainment
of a perfected world
is worth experiencing the pain
of the birthpangs
of the Messianic Age.

That's just how life is.

But we can take some comfort in the fact
that that which is hard
is true.

That which is complex and conflicted
is real.

And as we leave פורים behind
and head towards פסח,
that the liberation of Passover,
and our covenant with God —
that which is gained through struggle —
is eternal.

God = [Musical] Artist

2009-02-15T23:01:00.003-05:00

See the sometimes-deep Sinfest comic, "AMADEUS"

(a long time ago, my brother showed me this one)

Darkness on a Sunny Day: A Bo’ ShulDrasha

2009-01-31T23:27:00.001-05:00

On this bright Shabbat morning
I'd like to talk to you
about Darkness.

When God created heaven and earth,
at the very beginning of the תורה,
there was Darkness
on the face of the deep.

And when God was about to tell אברהם
that his children would be
“enslaved in a land not their own”
for 400 years,
אֵימָה חֲשֵׁכָֿה גְֿדֹֿלָה
Fear and great Darkness
fell upon our first patriarch.

Generations later,
as the predicted oppression
and promised redemption
were winding up to their climax,
in our פרשה today,
swarms of locusts
like voracious clouds
blocked out the sky
and darkened the Egyptian landscape —
as if the eighth plague
were merely a hungry rehearsal
for the ninth.

Once again
פרעה reneged on his desperate deal
and refused to release the Israelites.

And so,
God instructed משה
to stretch his hand
out towards the heavens,
and Darkness
would descend on Egypt.
נְטֵה יָדְֿךָֿ עַל הַשָּׁמַיִם
וִיהִי חֹשֶׁךְֿ עַל אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם
וְיָמֵשׁ חֹשֶׁךְֿ

That last phrase —
וְיָמֵשׁ חֹשֶׁךְֿ —
has inspired speculation
for thousands of years.

The more naturalistic commentators
such as שמואל דוד לוצאטו
in 19th century Italy
understood וְיָמֵשׁ
to come from a root meaning ‘touch’
and explained that
the Egyptians had to grope their way
through the utter darkness
that no candle could counteract.

Others,
reading the verb the same way, ‘touch’
say that the plague of darkness
was so thick
that it was tangible.
Some of the great medieval commentators,
אבן־עזרא and ספורנו,
compare normal darkness —
the neutral absence of light —
to חשך מצרים,
which was a physical phenomenon;
not simply the lack of light, but some thing else.

Similarly, Zora Neale Hurston,
in “Moses, Man of the Mountain”,
her novelization of the life of משה
based on African-American traditions,
described חשך as a
“...living crawling darkness
that had a life of its own.
It had body like the wind
and it heaved in motion
like the sea.”

It's easy to see
where this image of מכת חשך
as supernaturally-pea-soup-thick, lighthouse-fog darkness
came from —
in the very next verse after וְיָמֵשׁ חֹשֶׁךְֿ
we're told
that not only
did none of the Egyptians see each other
for the three days of the plague,
but that they also
would not —
or could not —
rise from their places.
They were unable to move.
As the מדרש puts it,
those who were sitting could not stand,
and those who were standing could not sit.
Meanwhile,
לְכָֿל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל הָיָה אוֹר בְּמוֹשְׁבֹֿתָֿם
all of the Israelites had light in their dwellings.

In the words of Sam Reinstein,
the Egyptians lost their freedom of movement.
בני ישראל had independent mobility,
while the Egyptians were confined like slaves.

The Egyptians groped blindly in the darkness
while the Israelites could see clearly.

Two late 19th early 20th century commentators,
ר' ברוך הלוי עפשטיין and ר' יעקב צבי מעקלענבורג
have a completely different take
on the plague of darkness.

It was not a thick fog
that fell from the sky
or a smothering paralysis
that afflicted פרעה and his people —
it was a thin skin
or cataract
that blinded each one of them
individually.
According to these two מפרשים,
חשך was a very personal plague.

At the Passover Seder
we quote Psalm 78,
and describe how God afflicted Egypt with
חֲרוֹן אַפּוֹ
עֶבְֿרָה וָזַעַם וְצָרָה
מִשְׁלַחַתֿ מַלְאֲכֵֿי רָעִים
burning anger
wrath, rage and trouble
a delegation of messengers of misfortune.

ר' מעקלענבורג theorizes
that it was on the basis of this verse
that חכמת שלמה
the ‘Wisdom of Solomon’ —
one of the lost Jewish writings
of the Second Temple Period —
describes the plague of darkness
unlike any other interpretation so far,
as anything but empty
of light or sound:

“...they were scattered under a dark veil of forgetfulness,
being horribly astonished,
and troubled with [strange] apparitions.”
“...noises [as of waters] falling down sounded about them,
and sad visions appeared unto them
with heavy countenances.”
“...there appeared unto them
a fire kindled of itself, very dreadful:
for being much terrified,
they thought the things which they saw
to be worse than the sight they saw not.”

Darkness.
Smothering, physical darkness.
Personal blindness.
Hallucinations.

Out of all these options,
what is this חשך?
How is it an appropriate punishment?
And how does it relate
to the irrational stubbornness
of the king of Egypt?

פרעה is trapped.
His country is battered
and broken.
This God of the Hebrews
is too powerful for him.
All משה is officially asking for
is a few days' vacation
so that בני ישראל
can celebrate a religious festival
in the wilderness.

But פרעה can't see the hand
in front of his face;
and he can't see tomorrow, either.

His world ran on slave power.
Asking him to release the Israelites
would be like asking us
to give up all electricity.

Who would build his storehouses?
Who would build his monuments?
Who would be the scapegoat,
the eternal ‘fifth column’
to blame for all of Egypt's misfortunes?

פרעה is blind to the value of freedom,
and unwilling to consider a new day.
He sees no future without slaves,
and so he sees nothing.

He is paralyzed by fear
and uncertainty,
unable to rise from his seat
because he is unable to take a stand.
He alternatively cowers in fear
before the power of God
and then hardens his own heart,
breaking all promises.
The smothering darkness
that rolls over him
manifests his own indecision.

And the “delegation of messengers of misfortune” —
the images,
the noises,
the nightmares
that filled the darkness
with monstrous apparitions
and horrid whispers?
We all fill the dark with mystery.
We imagine danger lurking
past the edge of every streetlight.

פרעה was afraid
of the unknown.

He was willing
to doom his country
to plague after plague
because he couldn't imagine
life without slavery.
His people could starve,
they could suffer and die,
as long as פרעה
didn't have to face a new and different tomorrow.
His world was being ripped apart around him,
and yet he was too scared to let go.

The תורה tells us
that while everything was dark for the Egyptians,
בני ישראל had light.

They saw the world around them,
and recognized that it was wrong.

They heard God's promise to their ancestors,
and knew that it was true.

They saw the road out of Egypt —
and although they didn't know
where it would take them,
or what would happen on the way,
they were willing to trust משה
and trust God
and imagine a future
in a Promised Land
better than the present.

It's a sunny day,
and the winter is half over.
ט"ו בשבט is just around the corner.
Soon it will be Spring,
and פסח will come,
and we'll be telling this story
all over again
at shul
and at home
with מצה and מרור.

פרעה was right about one thing —
no matter how bright the present is,
the future is uncertain
and therefore dark.
But with trust in God
and in each other,
we can meet that future
with open eyes,
and there will be light
for all of Israel
wherever we are.

Silver Lining / Chocolate Covered: A Bo’ DvarTorah

2009-01-30T13:17:00.002-05:00

By the beginning of this week's parasha, פרשת בֹּא, we've seen
seven plagues so far —
seven punishments
seven challenges
to the authority of the king of Egypt
and to the power of Egypt's gods.

And finally,
after the seventh plague —
after his land
is rocked
and shaken
by bombs of hail
falling from heaven,
it looks like פרעה
is finally
going to give in.

משה
merely has to threaten
to bring the next plague,
the plague of ארבה,
and the image
of swarms of locusts
covering Egypt
like a voracious insectoid snowfall
sends פרעה's advisors
quaking in their sandals.

And they beg him,
הֲטֶרֶם תֵּדַֿע כִּי אָבְֿדָֿה מִצְרָיִם!؟
“Don't you yet realize
that Egypt is lost?!”

So פרעה is about to give in
to God and משה's demands —
but when he finds out
that they want him
to release the entire Israelite community —
the old, the young, men, women,
and their animals too —
for this ‘religious festival’ in the wilderness —
he changes his mind
once again.

And פרעה threatens them in return,
warning the representatives of בני־ישראל
that if he ever were to let them go,
or kick them out,
רְאוּ כִּי רָעָה נֶגֶֿדֿ פְּנֵיכֶֿם
“be aware that רעה—”
seemingly ‘evil’,
“—is against you!”

רש"י, quoting a מדרש,
offers the possibility
that רעה is the name
of an ill-omened star
that heralds blood and death;
similarly, Cassuto,
extrapolating on another מדרש,
identifies רעה
with the Egyptian sun-god Ra —
as if פרעה's silver lining
in this horrific plague experience
is that even if
he will eventually need to give in,
he's confident
that out in the barren desert,
his divine burning sun
would have the last laugh.

So פרעה refuses,
and the locusts come.

They come on an east wind,
חֵילִי הַגָּדֿוֹל
‘God's great army’
as the prophet יואל would describe them
hundreds of years later,
enough ארבה to cover the land;
in thick swarms that cast darkness over Egypt
as if to foreshadow the next plague,
חֹשֶׁךְֿ itself.

And as predicted,
the locusts eat all the food —
all the fruit and all the grain,
anything which had been lucky enough
to survive the earlier onslaught of ברד.

פרעה is seized by a momentary attack of conscience,
admits his sin,
and God reverses the wind,
blowing the ארבה out of Egypt,
back where they came from.

Why does God do that?
Why sweep the locusts away?
Why not leave them there,
to cover מצרים in rotting, stinking piles
like the aftermath of the frogs?
If it was good enough for צפרדע, why is ארבה any different?

When I was in sixth grade,
my נביא teacher, [name withheld for internet purposes],
told us a story
that her father told her
about growing up a little boy in Yemen.

Whenever there was a locust swarm,
the locusts would eat all the food;
and the people, left with nothing else,
would eat the locusts.
They would hold large baskets
under the trees,
and hit the trunks with sticks —
and the lazy, satisfied locusts
would drop from the branches
into the baskets below.

In מדרש רבה,
רבי יוחנן explains similarly
that when the ארבה came to מצרים,
the Egyptians rejoiced —
there was nothing left to eat,
and so they were very happy
to eat the locusts.

They gathered them
into pots and barrels
to cook and pickle them for food.

And then God said,
‘No. What do you think you are doing?!
You may not eat my plague!
This is a punishment,
not a smorgasbord.
This is my army of retribution,
not a crunchy snack.’

And so,
even the locusts
in the cooking pots
and the pickling barrels
hopped up
and flew away
on the west wind.

Part of being human
is confronting adversity
and making the best
of bad situations.

But being human
is only worth it
if it means
being humane.

When the ארבה were swept away,
God was telling the Egyptians
that there is no silver lining to this dark cloud.
Don't look for it. You don't deserve it.
I won't let you have it.

There is only one way
to make the best
of this bad situation,
and you already know what it is —
שַׁלַּח אֶתֿ עַמִּי וְיַעַבֿדֻֿנִי
“release my nation
so that they may worship me”.

Letting the Egyptians eat the ארבה
would have softened the blow of the מכה,
but it wouldn't have solved
the underlying problem.

Eating the ארבה,
as the saying goes,
would have been treating the symptom,
not the disease —
and in the end,
it took מכת בכורות,
the most drastic kind of amputation
to heal the cruel, merciless disfigurement
in Egypt's soul.

Inauguration Day

2009-01-20T00:09:00.003-05:00

From my friend LS —

What blessing do you say when you see [President] Barack Obama?

עושה מעשה בראשית

;-)

I'll let the people who are much more excited than I am to write the long speeches. I'll just say that even if you didn't vote for him, this should be a pretty darn cool day in American history (although I understand if you'd prefer it were someone else).

This is for the many thousands gone.

(Modern) Orthodox Survey

2009-01-18T11:58:00.002-05:00

This is a question for Modern (/Centrist/etc.) Orthodox Jews:

How old were you when you realized that to many people in the Non-Modern Orthodox world, "Modern Orthodox" is not a subcategory within Orthodoxy, but is actually a separate, Non-'Torah-True' movement?

I finally realized this in my mid-20's, not that long after I realized that growing up Modern Orthodox, I had/have no idea what Non-Modern Orthodox communities' religious standards, lifestyles and cultural norms are. Sometimes it's still surprising, though.

JNF Rabbinic Solidarity Mission

2009-01-12T19:35:00.004-05:00

Blogger's Comments:

This is awesome! The RCA and the IRF are co-sponsoring, working together for (as far as I know) the first time ever [and hopefully it won't be the last time]! Also, there are Non-Orthodox shuls sponsoring this solidarity trip of Orthodox rabbis! Look at the unity! Hopefully this Solidarity Mission to Israel will help create more solidarity among ‘Am Yisra’el as a whole, too.

It was also leaked to me that "Joe the Plumber" was asked to meet them in Israel and report on the mission... it was not leaked to me, however, whether he said ‘yes’. Just have to wait and see.

Update: They've got their own BLOG, too!

(it's a press release)

*For Immediate Release*

Jewish National Fund
Rabbinic Solidarity Mission Leaves for Israel

(New York) January 12, 2009 — As the world watches the People of Israel endure the hardships and anxiety of war, 19 Orthodox Rabbis from all over North America along with several lay leaders will lift off to study Torah with their brethren in the Yeshivah of Sderot adjacent to the Gaza Strip. Ten more American Rabbinic colleagues and 20 Israeli Tzohar Rabbis will join the group on the ground in Israel. Together, in addition to Sderot, they will be visiting Ashkelon, Be’er Sheva in Israel’s Negev region, and Jerusalem. They will visit wounded solders, bring clothing and supplies to school children, comfort grieving families and meet with Israeli political representatives.

According to the mission’s participants their aim is, “To comfort those who have put their lives on the line for the Jewish people and to show that American rabbis and Diaspora Jewry, though far from the difficulties of war, stand in solidarity with the Jewish nation and its defense forces, appreciate their sacrifices on all our behalf's, and pray for peace together with them.”
Due to the limited time rabbis have to be away from their congregations, especially on the Sabbath, the group will only be in Israel for two days, returning by the coming Sabbath to be together with their congregations and report on what they have seen and experienced.

The mission is sponsored by the Jewish National Fund and partnered with Rabbanei Tzohar of Israel. The Beer Sheva portion is sponsored by the Goodman Family Foundation.

The mission is co-sponsored by the Rabbinical Council of America, the International Rabbinic Fellowship, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Hadassah, Chicago Israel Philanthropic Fund, Rabbi Josh Lookstein, The William and Sarah Siegel Foundation, Robert M. Beren Academy of Houston, Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation (Chicago), United Orthodox Synagogue of Houston, Temple Sholom of Chicago, East Hill Synagogue (Englewood, NJ), Congregation Beth Yeshurun of Houston, Susan and Max Reichenthal, Anonymous for Jerusalem

All You Jews Bloggers Look Alike

2009-01-08T20:04:00.003-05:00

This past Shabbos, at the end of shul in the morning, I was folding my tallis and putting it back in its bag (permitted by R' Moshe Feinstein for those of us who don't like other people messing with our stuff! ahem), when a guy who had been sitting in the row behind me addressed me as follows:

“Excuse me, are you Rabbi Gil Student?”

Uh... no.

Step Up and Approach: A Miqeitz~Vayigash DvarTorah

2008-12-27T22:10:00.000-05:00

(for se‘uda shelishit)
Just a few minutes ago
we resolved
the greatest cliffhanger
in the תורה.

יוסף has turned the tables on his brothers —
accusing them of espionage;
sending them back and forth
between כנען and Egypt;
demanding that they bring down
בנימין, his youngest brother;
secretly returning their money;
hiding his silver goblet in בנימין's sack;
and finally,
threatening to keep the “thief”
with him in Egypt as a slave.

For a few hours
between שחרית and מנחה,
we waited to see
what would happen.

Have the brothers
repented?
Will they now defend
יעקב's favorite son,
instead of selling him down the river,
as they did to יוסף?

And then,
this coming week's פרשה begins
ויגש אליו יהודה.
יהודה steps up,
confronts יוסף,
and saves the day.

Last week's פרשה
also ended with a cliffhanger —
יוסף in prison.
Having descended into tragedy
as far as he will ever go,
יוסף waited for the שר המשקים,
פרעה's chief wine steward
whose dream he interpreted,
to tell the king about him
and rescue him from incarceration.
פרשת וישב ended
with the שר המשקים
forgetting
all about him.

And then,
at the beginning of this morning's פרשה,
יוסף waits two long years
before he is finally freed.

From our point of view
as readers of the תורה,
the cliffhanger is resolved —
but יוסף languishes in prison
all that time,
waiting in suspense,
expecting to be released
at any moment.

In this coming week's פרשה,
though,
the suspense is short
even from the point of view
of the people it's happening to.

יוסף gives them
a merciful-sounding ultimatum —
בנימין,
the accused thief,
will remain with him in Egypt.
The rest of the brothers
can leave in peace
and return
laden with food
to their father in כנען.

And then immediately,
ויגש אליו יהודה.
יהודה approaches.
יהודה steps up and takes a stand.

Where יוסף
languished in prison
waiting passively for release,
יהודה is active —
confronting this Egyptian official
who seems to take
sadistic pleasure
in alternately
acting merciful
and cruel.

יהודה himself
used to be like יוסף.
When his first two sons died,
he delayed,
pushing off his daughter-in-law תמר
until the third son, שלה,
would be old enough
to perform ייבום
and marry her,
to continue her family.

But תמר
took matters into her own hands,
tricking יהודה
into fulfilling the obligation of ייבום himself
instead of waiting around
for some unknown future
to solve all their problems.

And when יהודה admits
צדקה ממני
“she is more righteous than me”
he may be referring
not to תמר's innocence of the crime of semi-adultery,
but to her take-a-stand, get-it-done attitude.

And so,
when בנימין's freedom —
and bound up with it, יעקב's life —
are on the line,
יהודה steps forward,
as יהודה המכבי and his brothers-in-arms did
so many years later.
Not only would the Maccabees
not have won
the miraculous war
if they hadn't taken up arms
to defend Judaism
against the Seleucid Empire —
the miracle of the oil, too
would never have occurred
if they hadn't taken action.

 After all,
one day's worth of oil
could never burn for eight
if you don't step up
and light it
in the first place.

The Translator Between: A Miqeitz DvarTorah

2008-12-26T16:00:00.000-05:00

(for ma‘ariv)
יוסף's brothers come down to Egypt
to buy food,
to support themselves
and their families
through the famine
that struck both Egypt and כנען —
but which only the Egyptians
were ready for,
thanks to their new assistant-pharaoh
צפנת־פענח
or as we call him, יוסף.

Recognizing the brothers
who hated him,
who wanted to kill him,
who sold him into slavery —
יוסף turns on them,
singling them out
from all the other hungry foreigners,
and accuses them of being spies.

As everything begins to fall apart around them,
the brothers remember יוסף
thrown down
into the utterly empty pit —
and his voice,
begging,
which they ignored.

And the brothers
are terrified
that this
is their payback.

But they didn't know
that צפנת־פענח, vice-pharoah of Egypt,
understood
what they said to each other
in desperation
and self-incrimination —
כִּי הַמֵּלִיץ בֵּינוֹתָֿם
because a translator was between them.

This whole time
יוסף had been making believe
that he could only speak Egyptian,
and not Cana‘anite or Aramaic,
or whatever other language
his brothers had been using
to speak among themselves.

This translator
is identified by the מדרשים
of בראשית רבה
as מנשה,
יוסף's older son.

מנשה
was born in Egypt.
His father was יוסף.
His mother was אסנת, an Egyptian aristocrat.

Unlike his father,
who grew up in ארם and כנען,
insulated by family
who recognized their heritage
and their inheritance,
who had a sense of their relationship to God
and God's promise to them and their ancestors —
מנשה and his brother, אפרים,
grew up in Egypt,
surrounded by Pharaonic opulence
and the rich culture, history and faith
of the Land of Fertile Black Soil.

And yet,
as we will see in a few weeks,
יעקב considered his Egyptian grandchildren
faithful enough to the family's mission —
Abrahamic enough —
to be adopted by him
and upgraded
from grandsons
to Sons of Israel,
worthy of founding
entire tribes.

Rabbi Elli Fischer has pointed out
that every generation
and every Jewish group
has it's own חנוכה.
For the Secular Zionists in Israel,
חנוכה is about Jewish power
and military might.
For some contemporary חרדים,
חנוכה is about the victory
of the purity of fundamentalism
over pluralism and accommodation.
And in 20th century America,
the environment in which many
of us grew up,
חנוכה
was about religious freedom;
about multiculturalism;
about preserving and strengthening
Jewish identity
in sometimes hostile —
and if not actually hostile,
at least unsupportive
surroundings.

Like מנשה and אפרים,
we grow up in open homes.

Through our windows
come the ideas, values and influences
of the society in which we live,
both positive and negative.

Most of us are not outsiders like יוסף —
newcomers to a strange land.
We are more like his children,
at home in both worlds
and both languages.

We are translators
like מנשה,
the מליץ בינותם —
standing on the edge
between worlds,
interpreting and transforming
cultures, concepts,
languages and lives.

We enrich our relationship with God
and our understanding of humanity
when we search for the good and true
no matter where it comes from.

And we illuminate all of human civilization
like the חנוכיה in the window or the doorway
when we express the wisdom of our Tradition
in a way that the wider world can hear.

מנשה's job of translation
eventually led
to a reconciliation
between יוסף and his brothers.

Our task, though,
is more challenging.
We translate
not just to heal relationships between brothers,
but to heal the entire world.

We Count Up: A Vayeishev ShulDrasha

2008-12-20T19:33:00.007-05:00

This is the story of יוסף.
He was seventeen years old,
and he would herd sheep
with his brothers.

יוסף dreamed dreams
of power —
of bundles of grain
paying homage
to his own;
of the sun, moon and stars
bowing before him —
and his brothers
were jealous
and angry.

And they threw יוסף
down
into an utterly empty pit.

And then
יוסף was sold to traders
who brought him
down
from כנען to Egypt,
where he was bought
as a slave;
where he narrowly escaped being raped
by his master's wife;
where he was then falsely accused
of attempting to rape her —
and was then
thrown down
into prison.

At the end of this week's פרשה,
פרשת וישב,
יוסף has descended
into tragedy
as far
as he will ever go.

Not only
is he in prison
in מצרים —
one of the תורה's prototypes
of the most immoral society imaginable —
but his last best hope for release,
the שר המשקים,
פרעה's chief wine steward,
the one who was supposed to remember יוסף —
supposed to tell the king
about this innocent Hebrew youth
who could interpret divine dreams —
the שר המשקים forgets all about him.

יוסף
is at the low-point
of his life;
the darkest period
of his story.

And while for us
it will only be one week
until next week's פרשה
and the continuation of the story,
for יוסף
it will be
two long years
before he finally
begins to shine.

In the Babylonian Talmud
in מסכת שבת
our Sages explain
the holiday of חנוכה
with the story
of the miraculous jug of pure oil
that lasted for eight days
when it should have only lasted
for one.

When the Maccabees
liberated the בית המקדש,
they found the Temple
stained
with spiritual darkness
and impurity.
Everything had been desecrated.
And then,
in the midst
of that thick dark cloud
of impurity and despair,
they found that first small jug of oil —
the first glimmering hint
of holy light.

But we find another explanation —
another layer of significance —
to the eight days of illumination
in the Books of the Maccabees,
which describe the first חנוכה
as a late סוכות,
celebrated by the victorious Jewish warrior-priests
in commemoration
of the סוכות they were unable to observe
when they were busy fighting
for the survival of Judaism
against the Seleucid Empire.

This other layer
of the Festival of Lights
is corroborated
by hints in the על הנסים prayer
and by the opinion of בית שמאי in the גמרא —
who taught
that like the bull sacrifices
of סוכות,
we should count down in candles
for the eight days
of the חנוכה holiday.

Just as the number of sacrifices
decreased each day of סוכות
from 13 to 12 to 11 and so on,
according to בית שמאי
we should kindle the חנוכה lights
8 on the first night
and 7 on the second
6 on the third
and so on,
all the way down
to one.

However
we don't rule
according to בית שמאי.

Instead,
following the opinion of בית הלל,
we start
at one candle the first night;
on the second night, two;
on the third night, three —
and slowly,
day by day,
work our way up
to eight.
As בית הלל put it, going up in holiness.

We increase light
we increase holiness
and we increase hope.

In מסכת עבודה־זרה
we are told a story
about אדם הראשון.

After he was kicked out of Eden,
Adam noticed
that the days
were getting shorter.
Every 24 hours
the amount of daylight decreased
and the amount of darkness grew.

אדם fasted and prayed
for eight days,
terrified
that it was all his fault —
that because of his sin inside the Garden,
the light of creation
was dwindling away
to nothing,
and the world was returning
to empty chaos.

And then
תקופת טבת came —
the winter solstice —
and אדם saw
that the days
were once again
growing in length.

When he realized
that light
was returning to the world —
that the universe
was not dissolving
back into the primordial darkness —
that what he was so frightened of
was nothing but a natural cycle,
instituted by God —
אדם celebrated
for another eight days,
from the solstice onwards.

אדם celebrated תקופת טבת
for eight days
as hope returned to his dreams
and light returned to the world.

Now, the calendar doesn't fall out this way every year, but...

Tomorrow
is תקופת טבת.
The winter solstice.
The shortest day of the year.

Tomorrow
we will stand
with יוסף
abandoned in exile
and forgotten in prison.

Tomorrow
we will stand
with אדם
watching the light of creation
dwindle away
into darkness.

And tomorrow
we will stand
with the Maccabees
in the Temple,
mourning a בית המקדש
mired and murky
with impurity.

And just at that point,
when all hope seems lost,
tomorrow night
we will light one candle.

And the next night,
we will light two.

And while each night
we increase the number of candles
on our חנוכיות,
adding to the illumination
in our homes
and in the streets —
counting up in holiness
according to the ruling
of בית הלל —
each following day
will last
just a little longer.
Each following day
the sun
will rise
just a little higher in the sky.

The Maccabees
will find
that first jug of pure oil,
and re-inaugurate
both the Temple
and Jewish independence.

יוסף
will be released from prison
and rise to second-in-command
of all of Egypt.

Think about this
when you light your חנוכה candles
this year.

As we add light to our homes,
light returns to the world.

As we add holiness to our observances,
holiness returns to the world.

And as we add hope to our lives,
hope returns to the world.

We count up
in ever-increasing illumination —
and the universe
counts up with us.

(idea of videoblogging originally inspired by Rabbi Josh Waxman, later stoked by Drew Kaplan, RIT, and reinspired by Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz and Rabbi Jeff Fox)

Divinely Romantic

2008-12-15T19:39:00.001-05:00

another "guest post" from my friend the wannabe-Abelard

This is from a letter from the real Abelard to his love, Heloise.

Abelard to Heloise:

Nam et tuae Dominus non immemor salutis, immo plurimum tui memor, qui etiam sancto quodam nominis praesagio te praecipue suam fore praesignavit, cum te videlicet Heloissam, id est divinam, ex proprio nomine suo, quod est Elohim, insignivit.

For the Lord hath not been unmindful of thy wellbeing, either -- indeed, he hath been very mindful of thee, for he even pre-designated thee with a certain presaging of name, to especially be his -- when he called thee Heloise, that is, divine (אלוהית), after his own proper name, Elohim."

Ethics and Kashrut Panel

2008-12-09T22:10:00.003-05:00

Tonight at Yeshiva University, a new student group called TEIQU: A Torah Exploration of Ideas, Questions and Understanding had a panel discussion about Ethics and Kashrut, ultimately precipitated by the Agriprocessors scandals of the last few years.

The speakers were:

Rabbi Avi Shafran of the Agudah
Rabbi Menachem Genack of the OU Kashrut Division
Rabbi Basil Herring of the RCA
Shmuly Yanklowitz, RIT*, of Uri L'Tzedek

It was very interesting — the speakers were fairly diplomatic most of the time, and there were a few funny points, such as jokes that various speakers made, and when R' Shafran tried talking to the mostly Modern Orthodox audience about "gedolim". Rav Soloveitchik was invoked on numerous occasions (including R' Genack talking about how before he makes major decisions, he thinks "What Would The Rav Do?"). But the most impressive part of the evening was listening to Shmuly Yanklowitz. The other speakers mostly talked in general terms about halakha and Jewish ethics — Mr. Yanklowitz, though, was like a machine-gun of Torah, rapid-firing and saturating everything he said with an unending stream of heavy-hitting halakhic sources about our moral-legal obligations to care about other human beings and ensure that our economic acts do not strengthen the hands of evildoers and oppressors. It was shocking, but awe-inspiring.

At one point, R' Shafran said “we are all rabbis — or rabbinical students, which is just as good.” Guess I never need to actually get semikha, then... ;-)

* RIT stands for Rabbi In Training, i.e. Rabbinical Student

"The Living Torah" is Awesome

2008-12-08T11:59:00.000-05:00

Recently, someone somewhere (probably on the Internet) claimed that R' Aryeh Kaplan's The Living Torah translation is the most natural-sounding English translation of the Torah, surpassing the KJV, JPS, Fox, and all the rest of them.

Here is an example I just noticed:

from Bereishit 38:16 —

“Hello there,” he said. “Let me come to you.”

I never thought I would read a Biblical figure saying "hello there"... just imagine the different expressions and intonations that could go with that greeting, especially in this context — the story of Yehuda and Tamar!

Downtown Arabic Politics

2008-12-07T17:26:00.002-05:00

This morning I was in a Downtown neighborhood of Manhattan, NYC, when I walked into a convenience store to buy a bag of potato chips. The guy behind the counter was not behind the counter at the moment — he was moving boxes around in the store — so I started looking at the Arabic newspaper lying there.

I took Arabic for a year in college, and even though I forgot most of what I learned, I can still sound out words and recognize a few of them.

So the [Arab immigrant] shopkeeper came over and told me that it's an Arabic newspaper, and then I said that I knew that already, and can read a little of it. He was sort of surprised that people study Arabic in college, but also asked me if I've ever been to Israel. I told him that I studied there for two years, and then he asked me whether I thought there are problems there. So I said "yeah, definitely — everyone keeps on fighting each other." I also told him that knowing Arabic didn't help me so much in Israel, except to know when the street-signs were misspelled.

He then started to give me his take on Middle-Eastern politics:

Sometimes the Falastinians are very stupid. It doesn't matter whether you're Falastinian or Israeeli, or Muslim or Jewish* — all that matters is that you are straight [=honest]. But the main reason they hate Israeel is because they're jealous* of the standard of living. That's why people in the Arab world hate Amreeka, too — they're jealous*. Even when I go there, they give me nasty looks because I even though I'm also Arab, I live in Amreeka and they're jealous* of me too.

*he actually pronounced these words Gooish and gealous, with a /g/ sound, seemingly because he was 'hypercorrecting' the fact that English /g/ sounds are usually borrowed into Arabic as "zh" or "dj" (since most Arabic dialects lack a "g" sound).

Destiny in a Bowl of Soup: A Toledot ShulDrasha

2008-11-29T23:00:00.000-05:00

I went to college in [Upstate New York];
and the way the kosher dining hall works there
is that you pay
when you come in,
and then, for whatever meal you're there for, it's all-you-can-eat.

One day
I was sitting there
at a table
about to start eating my lunch.

I had just sat down
with a bowl of lentil soup
when my brother walked in.

My twin brother —
my older twin brother —
who was born five minutes before me.
Not exactly grabbing his heel on the way out, but close enough.

My brother
looked at me.
And then he looked across the room
to the daily menu on the wall.
And then he looked back at me,
and at the soup
on the table.

And then he said
הַלְעִיטֵנִי נָא
מִן הָאָדֹֿם הָאָדֹֿם הַזֶּה
“Feed me
some of that red red stuff!”

So of course I said
“Sure —
if you sell me your birthright!”

To make a short story shorter,
I gave my brother
the bowl of lentil soup,
and he gave me
his birthright...
and then I immediately
went back to the counter
of the dining hall
and got myself a new bowl
of lentil soup. (Because I still wanted my lunch)

My twin brother sold me his birthright
for a bowl of lentil soup.
We did it for kicks
for fun
for the humor of the situation —
because we thought it would be amusing
to re-enact
what עשו and יעקב did
in this week's פרשה.

But that just raises the question:
Why did עשו do it in the first place?

Why would he sell his birthright
for a single meal?
Why would he ask to be fed
using a verb
that seems to mean
“to gulp down”?
Why would he,
as the תורה says,
dishonor
his birthright?

עשו was a hunter,
a man of the field.
While יעקב was sitting around the tents —
watching the sheep
according to some commentators;
learning divine and human wisdom
according to others —
his brother,
the big hairy hunter
was risking his life.

עשו was out there
fighting for survival —
hunting animals
to take away their lives
and sustain his own.

And עשו hunted for meat,
bringing home food
to feed his family —
after all,
צַיִדֿ בְּפִֿיו
the hunted meat in his mouth
was what caused יצחק
to prefer עשו
over his more passive, innocent brother.

And so
when יעקב offers him a trade —
a single meal for his birthright —
עשו answers
הִנֵּה אָנֹכִֿי הוֹלֵךְֿ לָמוּתֿ
וְלָמָּה זֶּה לִי בְּכֹֿרָה
“Hey!” he says,
“I'm going to die!
What use to me is a birthright?”

The commentator רד"ק
reads עשו's answer
not as the desperate plea
of an exhausted hunter
stumbling home —
but as a statement
about how עשו lives his life.
הנה אנכי הולך למות
“I am a person
whose entire identity
is bound up with death” —
He's out there in the fields,
risking his life,
fighting beasts and nature,
trying to bring home
food and resources
for his family.

Death
is his life.
Danger
is his life.

עשו is out there
day after day
just trying to survive —
and when your entire life
is centered around
just the continuation of that life,
centered around survival itself —
what use is a birthright?

What do you need it for?
Some abstract future promise;
something about
the “heritage of אברהם”
and eventual spiritual greatness and success?
Who needs it?

When you're confronting
the End
at every instant —
who has time
to think about
some long-ago
yesterday
or some hypothetical
tomorrow?

And yet,
when we look at
יעקב אבינו,
we see that he also
confronted Death.
A number of מדרשים
make the claim
that the lentil stew
which יעקב was cooking
when עשו returned from the field
was a meal of consolation
for the death of אברהם
his grandfather.

And when יעקב
later on in the פרשה
gets his own blessing from his father,
what he receives is
בִּרְכַּתֿ אַבְֿרָהָם
the blessing of אברהם —
the promise
that connects the past —
אברהם's contract with God —
to the future —
the ultimate fulfillment of that contract
and the inheritance of The Land
by יעקב's descendents.

While עשו sees Life
as a constant struggle against Death —
a ‘Danger is his middle name’ story,
a precarious existence
“living by the sword” —
יעקב sees the very same world
and refuses to disconnect
the present
from the past and the future.

We'll see next week
how even
while living on the run,
even while sleeping on rocks on the ground,
יעקב believes not just
in the immediate present,
but in the future as well,
when he wakes up
from his dream of angels
and promises to return
and dedicate that sudden place
as a House of God.

And יעקב passed
this Long View of Time
on to his descendents.
This recognition
that the present
is not just some
evanescent ‘now’ —
but is intimately
bound up together
with the past
that shaped it,
and the future
to which it leads,
is one part of that which has preserved the Jewish People
down through the centuries.

This past Thursday,
was a holiday — and probably not the one you're thinking of.
The 29th of מרחשוון is a holiday called סיגד.
Celebrated by the Jews of Ethiopia,
סיגד is a day of reflection —
an echo of יום כיפור,
a commemoration of Mount Sinai,
and a re-enactment
of the Return
to the Land of Israel and to Torah
by the exiles coming back from Babylon
in the time of עזרא.

In times of poverty, persecution,
and isolation from the rest of the Jewish People,
the סיגד celebrations
on Ethiopian mountaintops
stubbornly recalled the past
and envisioned a future
when סיגד could be observed
at the end of the exile, back home in Jerusalem.

The Jews of Ethiopia
refused to give in
to an עשו view of the world
where the struggle to survive
becomes an excuse
to live minute-to-minute
in an ever-transient
and meaningless present.
Instead
they remembered the past,
and were confident
in a future
which we have already seen fulfilled —
חג הסיגד
celebrated
in the streets of ירושלים itself.

And a bit closer to home,
on the first national Day of Thanksgiving
proclaimed by George Washington
for Thursday, November 26, 1789,
חזן גרשום מֶינדֶיס סֵיישַׁאס
the spiritual leader
of the Jewish community
of New York City
gave a sermon
in which he tied together
the past, present and future.

Like the Ethiopians
celebrating Sigd across the ocean,
Ḥazan Seixas encouraged his community
to observe מצוות
and to love תורה.

He spoke about the long history of Exile,
that since the Destruction
of the Second Jewish Commonwealth,
in his words,
“our predecessors have been,
and we are still at this time
in captivity
among the different nations of the earth” —
and he continued,
“we cannot but view ourselves
as captives
in comparison to what we were formerly,
and what we expect to be hereafter,
when the outcasts of Israel
shall be gathered together...”

He urged his community
to see the present
in light of the past and the future,
and to recognize the significance, in the midst of this long exile,
of the founding of a nation
based on ideals of freedom
where Jews, too, could be equal partners
in the benefits and responsibilities
of creating and maintaining
a truly just society —
and to thank God for that opportunity.

Now, עשו would tell you
that it doesn't matter —
eat when you can,
and fight when you can,
and don't think
about the promise of tomorrow
or the heritage of yesterday.
עשו was a man
who never paused to reflect;
his life was a string of verbs.

וַיֹּאכַֿל וַיֵּשְׁתְּ וַיָּקָם וַיֵּלַךְֿ
He ate and he drank
and he got up and left.
וַיִּבֶֿז עֵשָׂו אֶתֿ הַבְּכֹֿרָה
And עשו dishonored
his birthright.

עשו's life
was all about Now.
He had no time
to think about anything
but his immediate needs.
He threw away his birthright,
and with it,
אברהם's heritage,
because he thought
that it would be
nothing
but a distraction
from the business of survival.

But what יעקב taught us
is that the past sustains us,
and the future gives us hope;
that together
they give value and meaning
to this transient present;
and that if you remember that,
then not just nutrients
but Destiny
can be contained
in a bowl of soup.

A Latin Shabbat Zemer? (GUEST POST)

2008-11-17T00:01:00.004-05:00

A friend of mine who likes to think of himself as the early medieval French monk Abelard translated a poem by the historical Abelard into English. Seeing as how I don't speak Latin, I don't know how accurate the translation is (except for the Judaized features).

The real Abelard wrote a tune for the poem, too.
You can hear it HERE.

O quanta qualia / sunt illa sabbata,
quę semper celebrat // superna curia;
que fessis requies // quę merces fortibus
cum erit omnia // deus in omnibus

Oh, how great are those Shabbatot,
Which the heavenly court eternally celebrates;
What rest for the weary, what commodity for the strong,
When God will be everything for everyone!

Vere ierusalem // illic est ciuitas,
cuius pax iugis est, // summa iocunditas,
ubi non preuenit // rem desiderium,
nec desiderio // minus est premium.

Truly, Yerushalayim is the city there,
Whose peace is perpetual, the highest delight;
Where desire will not hinder the goal,
Nor is the prize any less than the desire.

Quis rex, quę curia, // quale palatium,
quę pax, quę requies, // quod illum gaudium
huius participes // exponant glorię
si, quantum sentiunt, // possint exprimere

What a King! What a court! What a great palace!
What peace, what rest, what great joy!
Those who participate in such glory will express it,
If they are able to express as much as they feel.

Nostrum est interim // mentem erigere
et totis patriam // uotis appetere,
et ad iherusalem // a babilonia
post longa regredi // tandem exilia.

For us, in the meantime, we should straighten out our thoughts,
And seek our homeland with all prayers,
And to Yerushalayim, out of Bavel,
At last return, after a long exile.

Illic molestiis // finitis omnibus,
securi cantica // syon cantabimus,
et iuges gratias // de donis gratię
beata referet // plebs tibi, domine.

There, when all troubles have ceased,
We shall sing songs, safe in Tziyon,
And the blessed people shall give to Thee
Perpetual thanks for Thy gratuitous gifts, O God.

Illic ex sabbato // succedet sabbatum:
perpes letitia // sabbatizantium.
nec ineffabiles // cessabunt iubili,
quos decantabimus // et nos et angeli.

And then, that Shabbat // will be succeded by another:
Perpetual joy // for the Shabbat-observers.
Nor will inexpressable joyous-songs ever cease,
Which we shall sing forth -- both we and the angels.

Perhenni domino.

For God, forever.

No I Didn't Yes You Did

2008-11-16T01:33:00.003-05:00

I heard a drasha on Shabbos from a kiruv rabbi, who talked about the importance of changing yourself upon repentence and becoming a new person. He hooked it into last week's parsha by quoting our ancestor Sara's denial of God's accusation that she laughed upon hearing the unbelievable news that she would give birth at such an old age. The idea was that when she said lo’ tzahhaqti, "I did not laugh" she was telling the truth — she was ashamed at her previous action, and transcended it, becoming a new person. The new "I" was not the same Sara who had laughed.

What the speaker forgot, though, is the end of the verse. Read it. God responds to Sara's denial, her supposed new identity, with three words: lo’, ki tzahhaqt. No, you did laugh. You can't deny your past. You can change yourself, you can move on, and you can improve. But you can never deny who you are, who you were, or where you came from. That's not what teshuva is about.

Voting Prayer

2008-11-02T10:47:00.003-05:00

Rabbi David Seidenberg of NeoHasid.org posted a non-partisan prayer to be said in the voting booth. I highly recommend it to my fellow American Jews who will be voting this Tuesday, no matter which issues your vote turns on or who you are planning on voting for. I will probably personalize it when I use it, so feel free to do the same, whether you keep it general or want to relate it to the issues or candidates you care about.

As I did not write it, I take no responsibility for grammar or spelling.

HEBREW-ENGLISH PDF

ENGLISH WEB PAGE

(link originally sent to me by my rabbi, with whom i am presently in the middle of a long drawn-out debate over email centered around the interpretation and application of Natan Shtsharansky's new book Defending Identity, which we both are big fans of even though we generally do not agree on political matters)

שיר מזמור לבני תובל־קין

2008-10-25T23:28:00.000-04:00

Today I got the alíya that contains my favorite minor Biblical figure — Tuval-Qayin, inventor of metallurgy and metal tools. That was pretty cool. And they didn't even know before they gave it to me!

Out In The Cold: A Bereishit ShulDrasha

2008-10-24T17:30:00.004-04:00

(complete with visual aids!)
There's a Holocaust poem by Dan Pagis
called “Written in Pencil Inside the Sealed Boxcar” —
in translation, it goes:
Here in this transport
I am Eve
With Abel my son
If you see my older son
Cain son of Adam
Tell him that I

This is a book called “Ishmael”
by Daniel Quinn.
A philosophical novel
in the form of a conversation
between the narrator
and a gorilla,
it uses the story of Cain and Abel
to categorize human societies
into ‘Leavers’
who live in harmony with nature
and ‘Takers’
who do not.

And this is a source book
for a fantasy role-playing game
where vampires believe
that they are descended from “Caine”
and that eternal night-time bloodsucking
was his curse and punishment from God.

And it's not like the game-designers
came up with that idea themselves —
a thousand years earlier,
the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf
features a monster named Grendel —
also identified, along with all monsters,
as a descendent of Cain.

What is it about the story
of Cain and Abel —
קין and הבל —
that intrigues us?

What is it about קין
that after he killed his brother
and was sent into Wandering by God,
his image continues to stalk us
down through the centuries?

How can we explain
the persistence
the power
of קין
in our cultural consciousness?

One answer might be
that קין is Inhuman;
that he represents the very edge
of what it means
to be a human being.

The very first comment of רש"י
on the story of קין and הבל
makes a very significant grammatical point —
the first phrase of the story
והאדם ידע את חוה אשתו
“the man ‘knew’ Hhava his wife”
doesn't mean and then he knew her, in chronological sequence,
after the just-finished story of the Garden;
it means he had already known her.
Already before the previous story —
before the story
of אדם and חוה's expulsion from the Garden.
And then רש"י goes on to lay out the logical implication:
that not only did the ‘knowing’, the conception,
occur in the Garden, in גן עדן before the sin —
so did the pregnancy and birth that followed.

קין was born in the Garden.

קין was born inside the Garden of עדן.

קין was there
when his mother was enticed to eat the fruit.
קין was there
when his father was enticed to eat the fruit.

קין was there, the whole time,
in the Garden —
but we're never told
that he ate the fruit, too.

אדם ate the fruit.
חוה ate the fruit.
But קין never ate the fruit
of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

And yet
he suffered the consequences.

Together with his parents,
קין was thrown out of the Garden.
Together with his parents,
he was kicked out of Paradise
onto the cold hard ground
of a Frightening New World —
ground which would only grudgingly
give up its grain.
The ground was cursed by אדם's sin;
it would only bring forth קוץ ודרדר,
thorns and thistles,
no matter how much he worked.

אדם and חוה were expelled from Paradise
for eating the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
And outside the Garden,
they produced הבל
קין's younger brother.
הבל, outside the Garden, was born with Knowledge in his blood.
And that very Knowledge which got them
tossed out into the cold
was the tool with which
they could transcend their situation and transform their world.

In fact, there are מדרשים
that describe how that first night outside the Garden
אדם knocked two stones together,
discovering fire,
and thanked God
for the solace of light
amidst the darkness.

The earth was cursed —
it would no longer cooperate
to support human life.
הבל understood that.
He knew that he would have to find
some new way to survive.
ויהי הבל רועה צאן
So הבל became a shepherd.
He created something new in the world.

וקין היה עובד אדמה
But קין was already (same grammatical form!) a worker of the land.
A farmer.
An agriculturalist.
He didn't understand
that to the rivers of Eden
there is no returning.
He didn't understand
that the soil was cursed.
He didn't have the knowledge,
the understanding,
that it was time to let go;
time to adapt to the new world.

אדם had originally been put in the Garden
לעבדה ולשמרה
to work it and to guard it.
אדם ate the fruit.
אדם knew that the Garden was over, although he personally was cursed to keep working.

But קין couldn't understand —
God had told them to work the land,
and so that's exactly what he's gonna do!

הבל moved on.
הבל adapted.
הבל was creative.
And הבל succeeded where קין failed — after all, God accepted his offering!
There's a saying that
“Insanity
is doing the same thing
over and over again
and expecting a different result
each time.”
קין failed and faltered.
He didn't understand
why the earth wouldn't
give him its produce.
And so קין became
frustrated,
and lashed out.
And killed his brother.

קין represents
the almost-human —
caught
between ignorance and understanding;
at the same time
stuck in Paradise
and living in a broken world;
unable to adapt
and unable to meaningfully create;
able only to lash out.

קין didn't even understand
what it meant to live in this new world —
how could he have possibly known
what Death was,
until he created it
with his own hands?!

And yet
on the other hand,
קין is more than human.
קין is Everyman.
קין is universal.

There's a מדרש in בראשית רבה
that records a מחלוקת
a disagreement
between a number of our sages
as to what exactly
קין and הבל were fighting about
before קין killed his brother.

My brother
likes to call this
the Marx-Hitchens-Freud Midrash —
because, as the midrash lists the opinions,
one rabbi claims
that קין and הבל were arguing over Property;
another claims
that they were arguing over the location of the Temple;
while others listed there say
that they were fighting over a Woman.

Marx, Hitchens, and Freud:
Wealth, Religion, and Sex.
The three ultimate sources
of conflict in human society,
as identified by thinkers of our own time —
those are the exact
points of contention
identified by חז"ל, by our sages,
as the trigger
that led to the first murder.
This מדרש is teaching us
that the struggle between קין and הבל
was universal.

And so
if קין represents
universal human concerns...
he must not be so Inhuman
after all.

So what is it?
What is this line across which קין hops back and forth, this line
between the human
and the inhuman?
Between the Garden
and the Real World?

There are many different interpretations
of what the story of אדם, חוה and the Fruit
is trying to teach us.
Here is just one possibility.

What makes us human
is Creativity.

And the Knowledge
that all of us were born with —
the Knowledge that הבל was born with,
but that קין lacked —
is the ability to move on;
to deal with adversity;
to adapt;
to overcome obstacles;
to take that Creativity
and apply it
to improve ourselves, our situation,
and our world.

הבל understood
that he was cut off from the ground.
And so instead of trying
to domesticate plants,
(’cause the plants weren't going to listen to him)
he domesticated animals.
He created something new in the world.
הבל became a shepherd.

And then the brothers got into a fight,
קין killed הבל,
and קין was confronted by God.

And when God punishes קין,
and banishes him
not just from Eden
but from any connection to the soil whatsoever,
קין finally gets it.

גֵּרַשְׁתָּ אוֹתִי הַיּוֹם מֵעַל פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה
“You've driven me off the surface of the earth!”
That's how קין responds to God —
he finally understands!
This whole time,
קין was following a dead-end path.
But only now
does he finally realize
that he's hit the end of the road.

There's nowhere left to go —
except to blaze a new trail.
And so
קין
our man of the land
our stubborn farmer...
moves to the big city. He becomes a בונה עיר, a city-builder.
And he names his city חנוך
after his son.
קין finally sees a future for himself and his children —
and having already created death,
he now creates a new way of life.
קין learned his lesson.

And he seems to have learned it pretty well,
because the next time the Torah
gives us any details whatsoever about his descendents,
קין's grandson's great-grandchildren
are revolutionizing human civilization!
יבל reinvents the life of the nomadic herder
(that was cut short by the murder of הבל);
יובל invents music, and musical instruments;
and תובל־קין (my favorite minor figure in תנ"ך) invents metallurgy, and metal tools.

They are human;
they are us;
they bring new things into the world.

In the Babylonian Talmud
מסכת סוטה,
רִבִּי חמא ברבי חנינא
explains that there is an obligation
to “walk in God's ways”
and he brings four examples —
God clothed the naked
by אדם and חוה.
God visited the sick
by אברהם.
God comforted mourners
by יצחק.
And God buried the dead
by משה.
These four activities
are acts of חסד —
acts of kindness.
And remember, these are obligations!
Just as God visited the sick,
so must we visit the sick;
and just as God comforted mourners,
so must we comfort mourners.
But perhaps
the greatest act of חסד
was Creation itself.
And so
we can say, in the spirit of רבי חמא ברבי חנינא —
just as God created the universe,
so must we create worlds.

What makes us human
is the ability
to create and adapt;
to struggle and win,
or to struggle, lose, recover, and move on.
Adam and Eve
were too smart for Eden;
they ate the fruit,
they learned how to change and create —
but there's nothing to create
(nothing that needs to be improved)
in Paradise.

And so, on the outside,
in the cold hard world,
אדם and חוה and הבל
and even קין, in the end,
learned to survive
by walking in the footsteps of God,
the One Who Spoke The World Into Being.

And as we will do tonight,
at the end of שבת —
the first thing that אדם created,
as the מדרשים teach us,
was Fire
to light the darkness
and drive away the cold.

But it's still a cold hard world out there.
And it's still our job to make it warm.

Perfunctory Performance

2008-10-22T22:00:00.002-04:00

I love how on Shemini ‘Atzeres afternoon in NYC it rained. We said Geshem, and then as my rav and I were starting our long walk to where we were eating lunch, it started to rain on us. But it only rained a little bit... just to be yotzei’.

:-)

Those Poor Aravos

2008-10-16T11:55:00.003-04:00

Summary of a local rabbi's drasha, First Day of Sukkot 5769.

Famous midrash about the Four Plants:

taste = Torah knowledge
smell = mitzvot and acts of kindness

The Lulav, representing its date tree, has taste but no smell.
The Hadasim have smell but no taste.
The Etrog has both taste and smell.
The ‘Aravot have neither.

They represent different types of Jews.
Bring them all together, and they cover for each other.

But then what's the point of the ‘Aravot?
They're just getting 'covered for' by the other plants — why are these leaves without taste or smell added to the bundle, and what does that have to do with Jews who lack both study and action?

#1
Kol Yisra’el ‘Areivim Zeh Lazeh.
The entire Jewish People are responsible for each other.
We need to be concerned about each other's well-being, whether spiritual or physical.

#2
Hhaviv Adam Shenivra’ Betzelem.
People are great because we're created in God's image.
All human beings, Jews and Non-Jews, are significant. We're all created in God's image, and deserve to be respected and cared about.

#3
Ein Lekha Adam She’ein Lo Sha‘a.
No matter how "empty" you think a person is of learning or deeds, every human being has a role to play in the greater scheme of the universe, and every human being is someone you can learn from. There's always something there, you just need to find it.

Symbolic Rosh Hashana Foods in English

2008-09-29T10:35:00.004-04:00

SQUASH... so that God will squash your enemies!

TARRAGON... so that 'terror' will be 'gone'

CASHEWS... for monetary success ('cash')
[cashews not necessarily compatible with anti-nut customs]

MINT... also relating to money

SUNFLOWER SEEDS... for illumination

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES... for an end to Exile

POMEGRANATE... so that we will be strong like granite!

SOLE (the fish)... for spirituality

DATES... need no explanation.

Fundamentalism

2008-09-23T23:00:00.002-04:00

I've discovered what the definition of Fundamentalism is.

It has nothing to do with scriptural innerancy or literalism, idealizing the status quo, or nostalgia for a possibly-imagined past.

The true definition of Fundamentalism is:

“If you're absolutely certain that you're making the proper decision, and what you're doing is the right thing to do — it doesn't matter if you hurt people in the process. You don't even owe them an apology.”

Arami Oveid Ani: A Ki-Teitzei’~Ki-Tavo’ DvarTorah

2008-09-13T22:30:00.001-04:00

(a dvar Torah for The Third Meal of Shabbat parashat Ki-Teitzei’
right after reading the first alíya of Ki-Tavo’ at minhha)

It's not even ראש השנה yet
and I already feel like פסח.

At מנחה, we just read the first alíya of this coming week's פרשה,
also known as the ביכורים text —
step-by-step instructions
for the Israelite farmer,
how to present their first produce
to the כהנים and to God.

The ביכורים text is one of the centerpieces
of the Passover Seder —
much of the מגיד section of the הגדה
is devoted to an extended דרש,
taking this short summary
of Israelite history
and filling in the details
by connecting the verses here in כי־תבוא in דברים
to the story of the Exodus back in שמות.

And it all begins
אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵֿדֿ אָבִֿי.

The מדרשים on which the הגדה is based
understand this to mean
"an Aramean attempted to destroy my father" —
our ancestor יעקב and his entire family
were almost annihilated
by his uncle and father-in-law, לבן,
when he chased after them
in search of his missing idols.

The medieval פשטנים, on the other hand —
those first commentators to concentrate exclusively
on the straightforward contextual meaning of Scripture —
insisted that ארמי אובד אבי cannot be talking about לבן.
The grammar is all wrong. 

It actually means, they said,
"my father was a wandering, or literally ‘lost’, Aramean" —
and explained that it refers
to either אברהם
who moved from ארם to כנען,
following God to “the land that I will show you”
or to יעקב
who built his family there, in exile from that land.

This week, though,
I discovered another option.
There's a מדרש in ספרי,
quoted in the midrashic collection תורה תמימה,
that understands ארמי אובד אבי differently:
מלמד שלא ירד יעקב לארם אלא להיאבד
ומעלה על לבן הארמי כאלו איבדו
This teaches us, it says,
that יעקב only went to ארם to get lost,
and therefore לבן is regarded
as if he lost or destroyed him.

Our ancestor יעקב ran away from home.
His mother sent him away to save his life
since his brother wanted to kill him.
He was alone.
He had no camels loaded with treasure
as אברהם's servant had
when he went back to ארם
to find a wife for יצחק,
one generation before.

And לבן took advantage of him.
He tricked him into marrying the wrong woman,
he tried to cheat him out of his salary,
and he changed the terms of their contract multiple times.
It was only God's help
that enabled יעקב to succeed
and to return home to כנען.
And then it was God
who rescued יעקב's descendents from Egypt.

And so the ביכורים text goes on
to talk about Egypt, and the Exodus,
and settling the Land,
and it gives instructions for depositing the first fruits
and worshipping God —
and then it ends with one final instruction:
וְשָׂמַחְתָּ בְכָל הַטּוֹב אֲשֶׁר נָתַן לְךָ י' אֱ-ֹהֶיךָ, וּלְבֵיתֶךָ
אַתָּה, וְהַלֵּוִי, וְהַגֵּר אֲשֶׁר בְּקִרְבֶּךָ
And you shall rejoice in all the good
that God gave you and your house —
together with the Levite and the stranger who are among you.
The bringing of the ביכורים must be celebrated
with the weak and vulnerable of Israelite society —
the לויים and the strangers,
who — unlike our prototypical farmer —
lack the security of ancestral territory.

Unlike לבן,
who took advantage of יעקב when he was lost and lacking,
we are obligated to emulate God,
who protected יעקב, and then saved us from Egypt,
and brought us into the Land.
The ritual of the ביכורים teaches us
that we each individually
need to continue the cycle of justice and kindness —
and if I don't, then ארמי אובד אני —
I'd be the one who has lost my way.

Bli Neder / Just Do It: A Ki-Teitzei’ DvarTorah

2008-09-12T18:00:00.002-04:00

(a dvar torah for ma‘ariv, Shabbat parashat Ki-Teitzei’)

The month of אלול is quickly passing by.
ראש השנה and יום כפור are coming closer.

And many people
around this time of year
are beginning to think about
resolutions
for the new year 5769.

We look back at this year,
at all the mistakes we've made,
all the ways we've hurt others
and hurt ourselves;
all the ways that we haven't lived up to our obligations —

and very understandably,
many people
start to make promises.
We make promises to ourselves
to our friends, to our families, to God...

There are 74 מצוות in כי־תצא, this week's פרשה
and one of them is
the obligation to keep your word.

As the תורה says,
כִּי תִדֹּר נֶדֶר לַ-י' אֱ-ֹהֶיךָ, לֹא תְאַחֵר לְשַׁלְּמוֹ
If you make a vow to God,
don't be late in paying up —
כִּי דָרֹשׁ יִדְרְשֶׁנּוּ י' אֱ-ֹהֶיךָ מֵעִמָּךְ, וְהָיָה בְךָ חֵטְא
for God will require it of you,
and you will be guilty of a transgression.

וְכִי תֶחְדַּל לִנְדֹּר, לֹא יִהְיֶה בְךָ חֵטְא
But if you don't make a vow in the first place,
you won't be guilty of anything

מוֹצָא שְׂפָתֶיךָ תִּשְׁמֹר וְעָשִׂיתָ
Observe and perform
that which comes out of your lips.

Now, while this מצוה is primarily concerned
with the prompt fulfillment
of vows made to God,
it can teach us something
about everything that comes out of our mouths —
all the promises, pledges, and guarantees
that we make to others
and to ourselves.

Some people are energized by their vows —
they make a decision
and it's the force of their promise
that holds them to it.

Many of us, on the other hand,
are paralyzed by promises.
Resolutions fail.
Words are broken.
And once we take that first step
across the line we drew for ourselves,
all-too-frequently
there's no going back;
no way to get back on the track towards improvement.

But words
are powerful things.
Words build worlds.
With 10 declarations, the משנה says,
God created the universe.
And as we say multiple times
in the High Holiday liturgy,
ראש השנה is the birthday of the world.
But according to רבי אליעזר
who is quoted in a few different מדרשים,
the first day of creation was כ"ה אלול —
which makes ראש השנה the Sixth day of Creation
the birthday not of יהי אור, “let there be light” — but of the human race.

At the beginning of the תורה,
when God breathes life into Humanity,
and we become נפש חיה, a living soul,
the traditional Aramaic translation of אונקלוס
renders that phrase
רוּחַ מְמַלְּלָא —
a speaking spirit.

Speech is what makes us human.
The words we say create worlds.
Our vows and resolutions define reality.

And so the תורה tells us —
if you make a vow and break it,
you've committed a transgression.
So it's better not to make it in the first place.

Words are weighty things.
And as we get closer to ראש השנה,
and the pressure to change, to grow, to improve ourselves
gets stronger and stronger,
[...] let me suggest,
in the words of the Nike advertising campaign,
Just Do It.
Resolutions unravel.
Promises break.
Vows fail.
So don't swear to high heaven that you're “never going to do it again”
and don't promise yourself perfection.

Just take a single step in the direction you want to go.
And then take another.
The universe wasn't created in a single day,
and there are 18 days from now until ראש השנה,
and then 10 more until יום כפור,
and then 344 days from יום כפור until next ראש השנה.
If we just take one small step at a time,
with no illusions, and no assumptions,
who knows how far we can reach by then.

They Grow Up So Fast

2008-09-08T22:54:00.002-04:00

My father ע"ה once told me that when he was little and a relative of his was in the military during wartime (it may have been WWII, but that's doubtful because he was 3 years old when it ended) they used to wake up in the morning, do négelvasser (hand-washing), and say a prayer for the relative in the military.

I wish I knew what that prayer was.

I only taught high school for two years (up until a year ago, when i went back to school myself), but I now have a former student in the United States Army, and he's shipping off to ‘Irāq sometime in the next two weeks.

Oh. My. God.

From Among Your Brethren

2008-09-07T01:06:00.002-04:00

Notes reconstructing an impromptu devar Torah from Parashat Shoftim.

The Torah stresses that a King of Israel must be "from among your brethren." There are halakhic ramifications of this — the Mishna tells us, and the Gemara expands on the story, that King Agrippas of the Second Commonwealth would cry as he read this passage, because he wasn't אחיך 'enough', being descended from Edomite converts.

The Torah also seems to stress that a Prophet of God must be "from among your brethren." Interestingly enough, however, Rambam goes out of his way in his Letter to Yemen to hammer home the message that prophets don't need to be Jewish. When evaluating a prophet to see whether they are True or False, their identity doesn't matter. All that matters is their message. If their message is one that reinforces Torah, we can move to the next step of asking for miraculous signs. If their message contradicts Torah, on the other hand, they are by definition false — and just as there can be Israelite false prophets, such as Hhananya ben ‘Azur, there can also be Non-Jewish true prophets.

So why, when the Torah seems to say that both need to be "from among your brethren", do we only accept a King who is unimpeachably "one of us", but potentially accept Prophets no matter where they come from?

A king is a political leader. He needs to be able to identify fully with his constituents, and they need to be able to identify fully with him. A prophet, on the other hand, represents God. God is the ultimate Other. God makes the rules. So as long as you can verify — based on message and miracle — that the prophet is True, it doesn't matter whether they're related to you or not, and you can "accept the truth from whoever says it."

The Food Inspector

2008-08-24T21:13:00.003-04:00

When I was younger, a friend of mine's little brother nicknamed me the Food Inspector, because of my habit of staring intently at what's on my plate before it goes in my mouth. Right now I am blogging to you from a mashgiahh (kashrut supervisor) gig that I'm working for a week here at the end of the summer.

Sorry, not going to give any identifying information about the event, organization, or location in this forum.

Anyway, here are my short bursts from the front line of kosher food service.

Number 1 — if you want to be a good mashgiahh, you need to be nosey and paranoid. Lucky for me, I've got those qualities down; although I'm not quite as paranoid as the conspiracy-theorist I subletted an apartment from in Jerusalem a few years ago, who was convinced that the Mossad was out to get him. I used to wonder what would happen if they came to the apartment and found me instead of him. It might also be beneficial to be a megalomaniac, but I've heard that that's more of a chef kind of feature than a mashgiahh one.

Number 2 — We got in a whole load of chickens for a barbecue. There were 4 boxes. Two of them came from a chicken farm whose name I recognized from college, which has two hekhshers: the OU, and Crown Heights. The other two boxes came from Kiryas Joel. I found this very amusing. If you don't get what's funny about it, just ask.

In other news, they've got Staghorn Sumac trees around here, and I finally was able to make myself a cup of sumacade. Tasted like a combination of unsweetened lemonade and unsweetened tea.

Oh, and the internet access here stinks. That's why y'all haven't seen me around the Judeoblogosphere lately. Should be coming back in the middle of this week.

The Abominations of Egypt

2008-08-07T23:01:00.003-04:00

A friend of mine (let's give him the anonymous internet pseudonym of Tanur Empanadas, or TE for short, just for kicks) lent me his copy of Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods by Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks. Originally written in French, and translated by G. M. Goshgarian, the book “treats the ancient Egyptian gods as if they were an ethnic group that captured the fancy of ethnologists or sociologists” in the words of the back-cover blurb. It talks about their origins, qualities, interactions, biographies, inclinations, hobbies — anything you would expect in a description of a real live group of people. Except this is all from the perspective of the Ancient Egyptians... what we can learn from the evidence they left us about how they imagined their gods.

And now I think I understand why the Torah warns us away from the *abominous “doings of the Land of Egypt” — those people were complete pervs!

The Ancient Egyptian gods were all one big family, who married their siblings, raped their siblings, raped their parents, cheated on their [sibling] spouses with their other relatives... and these are their gods! It's not quite the Greek gods having sex with everything that moves and many things that don't, but it seems even worse — the long complicated stories about rape and rape back, and the magical machinations of divine spooj... ick. These guys were disgusting.

On a separate, but related, note —

I had a friend in college who was Jewish, but got turned off of Judaism when she was a girl and her Hebrew School teachers berated and insulted her for being interested in Egyptology. Somehow because God kicked their butts and freed us from their slavery, that makes them unfit for historical inquiry? They were still human, after all. And it's not like she was worshipping Horus's divine spew or something! It could have been a great educational opportunity to talk about the differences between Israelite and Egyptian ideas of cosmology, morality, etc. — and they just wasted it, and wasted my friend's Jewish potential along with it. Bad teachers.

Eden in Internet Fad Form

2008-08-05T19:39:00.001-04:00

Step One:

Go to BadgerBadgerBadger.

Step Two:

Replace "badger" with Adam.
Replace "mushroom" with Hhava (Eve).

Step Three:

You can leave the rest alone.

Wait for it... wait for it...

;-)

Ethics of Psaq, Policy and Pain

2008-07-22T21:32:00.002-04:00

Rabbis, teachers, and other types of communal leaders and authority figures frequently have to make decisions. These decisions affect people's lives. For example, if you are a rabbi, you may be asked for pesaq, for a halakhic decision. People may bring you shaalas and you will be expected to answer them. Or you may have to create rules, procedures, or boundaries for your community — things not necessitated by strict Halakha, but needed to preserve communal values or norms. Or you may have the responsibility of giving someone tokhahha (rebuke), and tell them that they're doing something wrong that could endanger themself or others.

The most basic thing to remember, though — the thing that shows whether you're actually a worthy leader for your people or not — is that you need to understand that there are human consequences to your decisions. It may be unassailable halakha; it may be the right decision for your community; you may be 100% correct in the choices you are making — but you may still cause someone pain. And if you cause someone pain — even if it was justified for the greater good, even if they're wrong and you're right — you need to apologize.

Pain exists distinct from logic and truth. It does not correspond to the abstract reality of what's right and what's wrong. And therefore it doesn't matter if you're right. If you hurt someone, you apologize. You don't need to apologize for the decision, if it was the correct one, the necessary answer for what was asked of you. But if it hurts someone, you do have to apologize for that.

Bad For The Jews News

2008-07-17T09:14:00.003-04:00

This morning, I happened to glance at the stack of free METRO newspapers as I exited the subway, and what do I see but this picture:

Some idiotic Jewish t-shirt designer, wearing his inflammatory controversial t-shirt, and a big frikkin' Jewish star. What the Hell on God's Green Earth and Gray Concrete do you think you're doing, "Apollo Braun"?!

Read the whole embarrassing shanda story here.

Ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu, dibarnu stupidity...

Because Adultery Jokes Are Oh-So-Tasteful

2008-07-16T19:56:00.002-04:00

What do you call it when they carbonate the מי המרים המאררים?

SOTA SODA!

In the Midwest, however, as I was informed by a former coworker, they call it...

Sota Pop.

What A Warlock Wants: A Balaq ShulDrasha

2008-07-11T18:00:00.001-04:00

חוצפא
אפילו כלפי שמיא
מהני.
Chutzpah —
gall
nerve
insolence
audacity —
Chutzpah(!)
is effective
even against Heaven.
So says רב נחמן
in מסכת סנהדרין
of the Babylonian Talmud.

He learns this from בלעם,
in our פרשה;
for בלעם was told by God
to ignore the summons
of בלק, king of מואב —
the summons
to come curse בני־ישראל —
but בלעם
through sheer stubbornness,
through chutzpah,
got permission from God to go anyway.

According to רמב"ם, Maimonides,
in דלאלהׂׄ אלחאיٔרין
his Guide for the Perplexed,
to be a prophet
one first needs to be perfect
in learning
in wisdom
and in ethical behavior.

This does not sound at all
like the foreign prophet בלעם
in this week's פרשה.
(who, for example, beat his donkey for turning away from the road)

Actually,
our Sages tell us
that בלעם was not a prophet at all.
In fact,
even though בלעם receives messages from God,
at no point
does the תורה
call him a prophet, a נביא, either.
Instead, he's called a קוסם —
an enchanter, or warlock.

בלעם was not a prophet —
a prophet's job
is to represent God on Earth;
to bring messages
of hope or warning
from On High.

Prophecy
was not
what he was known for.
בלק sent messengers multiple times
to summon בלעם
from hundreds of miles away —
not to teach God's will
to human beings;
and not to ask God for help
on their behalf —
but to curse.

Because that's
what בלעם was known for —
the use
of supernatural powers
for destructive purposes.

The 19th-century Italian commentator שד"ל,
,ר' שמואל דוד לוצאטו
wrote at great length
to prove that בלעם was not a prophet.
Even though he spoke with God,
he did not speak for God —
and very likely
did not even fully understand
to Whom he was speaking.

Even though he spoke with God,
he did not speak on behalf of God.
בלעם treated the Creator of Worlds
like a magic trick;
like some kind of paranormal mechanism.

He thought
that he could manipulate God
as he manipulated בלק's messengers
into offering him silver and gold.

,בלעם
we are told in פרקי אבות,
was grudging and greedy.
He was full of himself.
He wanted power,
and he believed
that he had the power
to bless and to curse,
to separate God from God's people
through magical means.

He thought
that his many sacrifices
would draw God
away from the Israelites,
leaving them undefended
from natural or supernatural attack.

Until God showed him
who's really in charge.
God took בלעם
this קוסם, this warlock
whose words dropped curses
like bombs —
and turned him into
a true prophet
whose words wove visions
of divine destiny.

And בלעם learned
that while he could not control God,
God could most certainly
control him.

בלעם wanted power
and he wanted glory;
he wanted the nations
of מואב and מדין
to shower him with riches
for cursing בני־ישראל.

And instead, God gave him power —
the power of true prophecy.

And hundreds of years later,
we gave him honor,
by opening our prayers with בלעם's own praise —
מַה טֹּבֿוּ אֹהָלֶיךָֿ יַעֲקֹבֿ מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶֿיךָֿ יִשְׂרָאֵל
“How good are your tents, Jacob;
your dwellings, Israel.”

And whereas
we call this week's Torah portion, בלעם's story,
by the name of פרשת בלק — after the king —
the Talmud in בבא־בתרא calls it
פרשת בלעם, or ספר בלעם;
and describes it
as its own independent book of scripture —
a book that משה wrote
along with, but separate from,
the תורה.

בלעם
welcomed בלק's messengers into his home
wishing for honor.

He traveled with them
wishing for wealth.

And he sacrificed on the mountaintops
wishing for power.

But then
בלעם
changed —
even if just for a short time —
from a warlock and a charlatan
to a true prophet of God.
He abandoned his נחשים,
his magic tricks and incantations,
and opened himself up
to experience God
and bring God's message
down to Earth.

There are two lessons
we can learn from בלעם.

Number one is:
Be careful
what you wish for.
You just might get it.

בלעם wished for power,
and God gave him power — of a completely different kind.

And number two is:
When you do get it,
and it's not what you were expecting —
lift up your eyes, like בלעם did,
and look out upon the wilderness,
the place of revelation;
and accept God's challenge
on God's own terms.

The Ultimate Appropriation

2008-07-09T16:00:00.002-04:00

From Bar-Ilan University's Weekly Page on the weekly parsha, #764, parashat Balaq 5768, by Dr. ‘Amos Bar-Deia‘ of the Life Sciences faculty:

In discussing the figure of Bil‘am and his legacy in Jewish literature, Prof. Bar-Deia‘ says...

דמותו של בלעם נהפכת לאנטיכריסט הישראלי ומזוהה עם ישו ואף עם מוחמד.

The character of Balaam turned into the Israelite Antichrist, identified with Jesus and even with Muḥammad.

Whoa.
Talk about appropriating someone else's terminology and using it against them!

Between the Living and the Dead: A Qorahh ShulDrasha

2008-06-26T22:00:00.002-04:00

(just imagine you're sitting in shul between Leining and Musaf)

Only a few minutes ago
we read one of the most dramatic verses in the תורה,
if not in all of our Scripture —
the point at which אהרן saves the day.

However, in order to speak about that point,
we have to start again at the beginning of the story.

We just read how קרח was משה and אהרן's cousin,
and he led a rebellion that challenged their authority,
couched in religious language.

קרח and 250 of his co-conspirators
claimed the right to make themselves כהנים
and to replace אהרן as the כהן גדול, the high priest appointed by God.

At the same time, דתן and אבירם,
two other influential men among בני־ישראל,
led a parallel rebellion —
couching their challenge in political terms instead,
and taking aim at משה as the leader of the Israelite Nation.
דתן and אבירם, and their people,
ended up swallowed by the Earth.

But קרח cloaked his rebellion in religious language.
“All members of the nation are holy!” he said,
כל העדה כולם קדושים
‘אהרן was not picked by God —
any of us could do what he does.’

And so משה responded with a challenge of his own.
‘Fine, קרח,’ he said,
‘You think you can do אהרן's job?
Why don't you try it.’
He arranged a showdown between אהרן and קרח,
and קרח's 250 fellow would-be priests —
they would each take a firepan,
and place coals in it,
and offer up קטורת, incense, to God.

And when the aromatic smoke of the incense
rose up to Heaven...
a fire came out from God
and consumed all of them.
All that was left was אהרן, untouched,
and 250 used firepans lying among the ashes.

The next day —
the day after fire came from Heaven,
the day after the Earth opened up —
כל עדת בני־ישראל
the entire community of the Israelite Nation
ganged up against משה and אהרן.
“אתם המיתם את עם ה!” they accused them —
“You have killed God's people!”

And then God's anger began to work against them, too.
It spread like a plague through the encampment.
And משה told אהרן to once again pick up his firepan,
and take up some fire and some קטורת,
and offer it
to atone for the people
and their misdirected rage.

And so אהרן ran out into the midst of the people,
and offered the incense —
ויעמד בין המתים ובין החיים
וַתֵּעָצַר המגפה.

He stood
between the dead and the living
and the plague
stopped.

Now, my mind is saturated
with 21st-century ideas
of special effects.
And so I imagine this scene like it were a movie —
אהרן standing there, freeze-frame,
or maybe one of those ultra-slow-motion circling shots like in The Matrix,
and he's holding the firepan and the קטורת.
Before him are people in pain,
Anger of God flashing among them like lightning
or wafting among them like smoke;
while behind him are people in fear,
confused by death,
fresh out of slavery,
still unable to move from throwing tantrums
to taking responsibility.

And there stands אהרן,
the first High Priest of the Israelite Nation —
standing there between the living and the dead —
and the plague stops.

מדרש תנחומא
offers a number of attempts by חז"ל, by our Sages,
to describe this scene.

When אהרן runs out to stop the plague,
when he rushes out into the path of the wrath of God,
he confronts the Angel of Death, they say,
and he tells it,
‘You
cannot
pass!’

רבי יצחק describes
how אהרן bear-hugged the Angel of Death
and wrestled it
to a standstill.

רבי יהודה בר סימון
gives not just images
but words
to this confrontation.
When אהרן stands in the way of the Angel of Death
and tells it ‘You cannot pass!’
the Angel responds very simply —
‘Yeah? I'm on a mission from God.”
And אהרן says,
‘So?
I'm on a mission from משה...
and you know what?
God and משה are hanging out
back at their אהל מועד,
their Tent of Meeting right over there —
let's go ask them
which one of us wins this fight.”

And רבי אבהו
in the name of רבי שמעון בן לקיש
says
that when אהרן saw
that the Angel of Death refused to yield,
he raised his firepan of incense
like a shield in front of Death
or a mask before his face.

This very same pan of incense
that caused the death of קרח
and his 250 compatriots —
אהרן now used it to save the lives
of all of בני־ישראל.

A number of the medieval commentators —
רש"י, רשב"ם, חזקוני —
all point this out.

It was the very same קטורת.

And קטורת, they say,
is סם. A drug.
And like any drug —
any compound —
in certain circumstances it's a סם חיים,
a medicine that preserves life;
and in other circumstances it can be a סם מוות,
a deadly poison.

But it's not just קטורת
that leads this double life;
everything that God gives us in this world
can be used for the purposes God intended —
preserving life,
teaching truth,
performing kindness,
exploring knowledge,
developing a relationship with God —

But everything that God gives us in this world
can also be mis-used
to hurt, to kill,
to spread hate,
to mutilate souls...

We have the medical technology
to literally edit the genetic makeup of bacteria
and rewrite cells to produce life-saving insulin;
on the other hand, we've also seen the artificial harnessing
of horrific diseases for fighting human wars.

Even תורה can be mis-used against its own holy purpose,
as קרח couched his rebellion in religious language.

And all of us,
at one time or another
have used our power of speech
in ways that caused pain to others
whether intentionally
or by accident.

Each one of us
has their own powers, talents, and gifts
that were given to us by the Creator of Worlds.

So we're living in a state of Exile —
we don't have קטורת anymore,
or כהנים trained to use it.
We can't call upon God
and expect fire from Heaven
to incinerate God's enemies.

But we have strength and will,
we have knowledge and faith,
science and technology,
literature and art —
we have a world that's full
of Divine gifts
and full of creations
that we ourselves made
because we are created in the image of God.

And all of it can be turned into poison.

But that's not what it's here for.
'Cause that's not what we're here for.

Back in the very beginning of the תורה,
at the end of Creation,
God saw everything that God created
and it was all “very good” —
but it's our responsibility
to take that potential
which exists within ourselves
and within everything else in the universe
and turn it into reality.

Everything we do
is incense.
Everything we do
is the aromatic smoke of קטורת.

And just like אהרן,
who took his stand
in the midst of the people
with a pan of smoking incense in his hand,
we too can stand
between the living and the dead
and raise the smell
of life and holiness
in the face of despair.

Cracks in the Frank Fort

2008-06-25T18:02:00.006-04:00

Something's eating away at the foundations of "Frankfurt on Hudson", K'hal Adath Jeshurun, a.k.a. the Breuer's community, in Washington Heights, Manhattan.

From the Jewish Press —

Controversial Moments
At Rav S. R. Hirsch Memorial Celebration

Speaking at the 200th birthday celebration of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch this past Shabbos, Khal Adath Jeshurun’s Rav Yisroel Mantel declared that the philosophical credo of Rav Hirsch, Torah Im Derech Eretz, is not viable in the absence of its chief advocate.

...

Rav Mantel’s declaration, which angered many in the community, came at a sit-down kiddush at Dr. Raphael Moller Hall in Washington Heights after Shabbos morning services. He said that only Rav Hirsch, a great man who knew the fine boundaries between what is religiously permissible and what is prohibited, could make Torah Im Derech Eretz workable.

Our generation, he said, must follow today’s gedolei HaTorah (great Torah leaders).

After Shabbos, Dr. Eric Erlbach, KAJ president for over two decades, resigned.

...

Samson Bechhofer, a great-great-grandchild of Rav Hirsch, spoke first at the kiddush. The synagogue’s choir conductor and a lawyer by profession, Bechhofer lamented the educational policies of the community’s Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch school in recent years.

“If the goal of our kehilla and yeshiva is to have all of our sons and daughters end up in Lakewood – and I use Lakewood as a metaphor – then I submit that we are not being faithful to our founder’s philosophy or Weltanschauung, nor are we doing the future of our kehilla any great favors,” Bechhofer said.

Rav Mantel stood up and walked out of the hall at these words. He later returned and told the several hundred assembled that “grandchildren and lawyers” will not decide how to implement Torah Im Derech Eretz.

...

hhakhamim (and the rest of us too), hizaharu bedivreikhem!
also, you know what they say about what happens when you assume...

Declaration Drip Like Dew (Deut 32:2)

2008-06-17T22:10:00.002-04:00

This past Friday Night, I experimented with a new meditative davening practice. Now, this isn't usually the kind of thing I'm into, but the week before, I tried out some meditation with some neighbors at shul and had a surprisingly good experience. So this all just sort of percolated in my head during Minhha and Ma‘ariv at the beginning of Shabbat.

From a friend of mine in high school, my rav, and a few other people, I picked up the habit of sometimes clasping my hands together while davening. So that's the first step: Clasp your hands together in front of your belly or chest, but leave space between the palms. What you're trying to do is create an empty space between your hands as they come together, so that you can fill the empty space with the prayer.

The next step is to imagine the words of the siddur as a physical presence leaving your mouth as you pronounce them. You can imagine them as words, as images, as smoke or vapor, or as a liquid flowing or dripping. It could be steam like on a winter day wafting out between your lips; it could be stones or building blocks tumbling out over your teeth; it could be rain dripping or a stream flowing out of your mouth. Each berakha or prayer can have its own unique color, texture, or object visualization, or the visualizations could shift organically from word to word or phrase to phrase. It may help if you're synesthetic, but you don't need to be (I'm not).

As each word, phrase, berakha or prayer flows, wafts, drips, or drops out of your mouth, visualize it entering into the space between your hands, swirling together cumulatively into a swirling ball of light. Each new color or texture adds another shade to the glowing 'prayer-ball' swirling around in the gap between your cupped hands. It can rotate smooth and shiny with calm serenity, or roil with boiling passion — whatever you're feeling as you pray.

At the end of the exercise, unclasp your hands and visualize releasing the glowing ball of prayer, so that it can float away to God. I've been doing this exercise for the ‘Amida, and releasing it at the words יהיו לרצון אמרי פי והגיון לבי לפניך ה' צורי וגואלי — may the pronouncement of my mouth and the expression of my heart be accepted before you, God, my rock and redeemer, at the very end.

(isn't photoshop great?)

Crazy Jewish Linguist At Work

2008-06-12T09:19:00.002-04:00

Bheaidhhí bímé siophót haissophtaom, bheaidhhí rá'ábh bá'áraeots; bheaidhdhéleiach ís mibBéith Leiachaem Dhiohúdhá lághúr biaSdhaéi Mó'ábh — hú bhio'istó uistaéo bhánáibh. Bhiséim há'ís Elímeileiach, bhiséim istó Ná'omaoí, bhiséim sionaéo bhánáibh Machlón bhioChuieldheón, eiphráthaom mibBéith Leiachaem Dhiohúdhá; bheaidhdheábhó'ú Sdhaéi Mó'ábh, bheaidhdhuiohdhiú seám. Bheaidhdheámoth Elímeileiach ís Ná'omaoí — bheattuiesseá'ér hí, uistaéo bhánaeiheá. Bheaidhdhuios'ú láhaeom náisím Mó'ábhaoidheóth — séim há'achath Orpá, bhiséim haisséníth Rúth; bheaidhdhéisbhú seám co'aeosaeir seánaom. Bheaidhdheámúthú ghám sionaéheim, Machlón bhioChuieldheón; bheattuiesseá'ér há'isseá missionaéo dhioládhaeohá, úmé'íseá. Bheattácom hí bhiochallóthaeohá, bheattáiseobh miaSdhaéi Mó'ábh; cao seám'á biaSdhaéi Mó'ábh cao phácádh Adhónáidh eiath ammó láthaéoth láhaeom láchaeom...

Like Na‘omi Returning From Mo’av

2008-06-11T08:20:00.002-04:00

I walked over 300 blocks (=15 miles) this Shavu‘os, back and forth between different neighborhoods in Manhattan for purposes of Learning, Davening, Eating, Showering, Hanging Out, and Visiting. Not quite as far as Sinai, but close. And it was mad hot out, but not on those viaducts by the Hudson River at 6am. But I can't shake the feeling that maybe stepping into a pleasantly-airconditioned but frighteningly-upscale mall for a break might have an aura of mar’it ‘ayin about it. Also, did anyone else notice the sun being an incredibly deep dark orange color about half an hour before sunset, hanging over the Palisades set like a brooding emo kid in their chair?

בואי בשלום עטרת בעלה

2008-05-29T22:23:00.003-04:00

Did you know that if you arrive at shul while the congregation is facing the entrance and bowing towards the metaphorical presence of the Sabbath Queen at the end of Lekha Dodi...

...it makes you the Sabbath Queen for that Shabbat?

Agriprocessors (Rubashkin's) Boycott!

2008-05-28T16:59:00.003-04:00

The Jewish Week —
Pressure Seen Mounting Against Kosher Meat Giant

Interesting how they focus on the "Liberal" Modern Orthodox and the Conservative worlds. I can see why the Hhareidim wouldn't be involved in protesting, boycotting, or "anti-supporting" Agriprocessors — but where're the Reform? The Reconstructionists? The Renewalists? I'd think they'd be all up on this thing. Etho-kashrut is going to be the next big thing after Eco-kashrut!

Makes some nice (but divisive? i hope not) publicity for the International Rabbinic Fellowship, Uri L'Tzedek, and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, though.

And to the rav whose name is the first two words of the article, I give you a berakha — if the poo must hit something, may it hit the fan and not hit you!

The Jerusalem Post —
Agriprocessors announces new CEO

This article focuses on the Agriprocessors business side of the equation. It also mentions Uri L'Tzedek, based in New York, as well as two voices from the Mid-Atlantic — R' Shmuel Herzfeld of The National Synagogue in Washington DC (where i actually spent Shabbos ‘Erev Pesahh this year), as well as the Star-K in nearby Baltimore.

Glass Half Empty Holidays

2008-05-16T14:00:00.002-04:00

On Yom Ha‘atzma’ut I had a short discussion with some friends about the relative weight of Israeli Independence Day compared to earlier nationalistic Jewish holidays like Hhanuka. I claimed that Yom Ha‘atzma’ut has greater religious weight than Hhanuka because we know that Hhanuka ended up failing about a hundred years later, when the Second Jewish Commonwealth came under Roman over-rule, and then ended up being destroyed. The Third Jewish Commonwealth, on the other hand, hasn't failed yet.

Thoughts?

HELP AGRIPROCESSORS'S WORKERS' FAMILIES

2008-05-15T14:00:00.003-04:00

After the Monday raid at Agriprocessors (Rubashkin's) in Postville, Iowa, hundreds of undocumented immigrants who already were suffering under Agriprocessors's labor practices were detained. Many of their families have no one to turn to except for a local Catholic church — which has been giving them refuge, a place to stay, and food to eat.

Local Newspaper Articles:
Immigration officials conduct raid on Agriprocessors, Inc. plant in Postville
Scared relatives huddling inside Postville church
Anxiety high inside Postville church

And a post on Jewschool —
It’s Our Turn to Help

you can help them out by donating to:

St. Bridget's Hispanic Fund
c/o Sister Mary McCauley
PO Box 369
Postville, IA 52162

Watch Sister Mary McCauley of St. Bridget Catholic Church discuss the situation:

מה ענין שמיטה אצל המגדף؟

2008-05-09T00:34:00.001-04:00

I had to share my bar mitzva parsha, so I only ever learned to lein alíyas 1-3. This Shabbos, however, for the first time ever, I will (iy"H) be leining my entire bar mitzva parsha, parashat Emor, in my idiosyncratic semi-neo-Masoretic accent and mixed Eastern and Western Ashkenazic cantillation (trop) system. This is at my rav's shul, so if you know who/where that is and are going to be in the neighborhood, feel free to stop by and throw more-than-a-decade-old candy.

Since I started "reb school" (and, incidentally, stopped calling it that, since I picked up the term while working in a Conservative school and am now back in my native Orthodox cultural context where no one uses that abbreviation), whenever I stay by my rabbi for Shabbat he randomly throws rabbinical tasks at me, like "hey Steg, the guy who's supposed to run the beginners' service is stuck on the other side of the river — why don't you do it?"

So as I was learning the end of my parsha, which I had never learned to lein before, I was wondering what I could say if I got asked to give a devar torah at shalashudess.

I don't know how practical it is — since I haven't been at it for long — but I think that ideally, se‘uda shelishit divrey torah should involve the interface between the weeks; a theme of the end of Shabbos; or connections between last week's parsha and the coming week's parsha.

There's a famous question about the first line of Parashat Behar — ma ‘inyan shemita eitzel Har Sinai? Why does it say that God gave Moshe the laws of the sabbatical-fallow year specifically at Mount Sinai? What do they have to do with each other?

But my question about joining Parashat Emor and Parashat Behar together is: The very last passage in Emor is about the megadeif — the half-Israelite half-Egyptian man who gets into a fight with another Israelite and curses God. Why the juxtaposition? What does shemita have to do with blasphemy?

I think an answer might be in the way the Torah deals with the prohibition of noqvo sheim, cursing God's name, and with the consequences of murder and damage to animals — kageir ka’ezrahh, kageir ka’ezrahh yihyeh — “whether immigrant or native” the same rules apply. No discrimination in legal matters between newcomers and oldtimers (how such discrimination crops up in Halakha at other points is a separate discussion).

We then move on to Shemita. The institutions of Shemita every 7 years and Yoveil every 50 teach us that we are all immigrants and migrants in relation to God. This isn't our land; we just live here. God holds all the deeds. So in that way, we are all alike — everything in this world truly belongs its Creator, no matter how tight we try and hold on.

Dr. Marc Shapiro Urges On the Great Orthodox Schism of the 21st Century

2008-05-08T00:01:00.003-04:00

In response to the Rav Druckman Conversion Scandal...

An exerpt from his piece in The Jewish Week:

...The Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionist world should not seek to delegitimize the haredi form of Orthodoxy. But basic pride in one’s ideology would suggest that the Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionist world should not feel the need to follow the haredim and adapt its own practices in order that there be “one standard.” Whenever people urge the adoption of one standard, you can be sure it will always be the haredi standard, and this applies to conversion, kashrut supervision and any other matter you can imagine. In other words, as long as “one standard” becomes the goal, there is no longer a need for Modern Orthodox halachic authorities. Halachic matters can be left to the haredi world, all in the interest of preserving “Orthodox unity.”
Yet isn’t it time to ask why the Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionist world doesn’t model itself on the haredi world in at least one area? The haredi world follows its own authorities without regard for the non-haredi rabbinate. Isn’t it time for the Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionist world to do the same?
This would mean a complete break with the haredi halachic authorities and the establishment of religious courts that share at least some of the values and worldview of the community in which they serve. (I was struck by how, in his lengthy ruling attacking Rabbi Druckman’s conversions, the haredi dayan relies on the halachic decisions of a well-known posek who serves the anti-Zionist Edah Haredit. In other words, the writings of one who believes that the creation of the State of Israel was a terrible sin — and who clearly has no sympathy with the goal of helping ease the conversion of sincere non-Jewish immigrants — is helping guide the decisions of a dayan who works for the Israeli government and is supposed to have the best interests of the State at heart.)
I am sure some readers will protest that it goes against Orthodox unity to advocate this approach. Yet with such a step the Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionist world would only be acknowledging the situation that the haredim have created, and are now pursuing with a vengeance.
There are hundreds of thousands of non-Jews in Israel, many of whom are interested in conversion. There is also an enormous intermarriage rate in the United States, and there are many non-Jewish partners who are also willing to convert. Yet before solving the problem of who will be a Jew, we must solve the problem of who is a dayan and who is a halachic authority. The haredim have already given their answer to this question. One would that think that the Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionists would take the hint and realize that the time has come to go their own way.

Maybe he'll join my campaign to call the OU and tell them to get rid of R' Yisroel Belsky as one of their head halakhic decisors for his public defaming of the Modern Orthodox world.

Analogy

2008-05-07T12:58:00.002-04:00

תענית אסתר : פורים :: יום הזכרון : יום העצמאות

The Conversion Dilemma

2008-05-05T13:23:00.003-04:00

No, I'm not talking about the absurd retroactive nullification of all of a court's geirim by another court. You can read all about that and how it means that, in actuality, No One Is Jewish, over in that well-written article by Josh Frankel on Jewschool. Also see the reaction from R' Yuval Cherlow (שרלו) over at Arutz Sheva‘.

The dilemma I'm referring to is the question of geir qatan in a "not-observant-enough" family. A Jewish family adopts a child, and they want to convert the child to Judaism. It's sort of silly for a Jewish family to have a Non-Jewish child — although it has been done (someone I know has a Non-Jewish foster child), but that means that a beit din has to agree to convert the child.

Generally, the way it works is that you are allowed to do something for someone without their consent if it's for their benefit. So this baby, who has no da‘at or sense of anything at all, can get converted if it's for their benefit.

But what if the family that will be raising the child is not observant? Instead of giving the child the opportunity to fulfill many mitzvot and rack up "mitzva points" — you'd be making them Jewish and putting them into a situation in which they'll be violating so many prohibitions that used to be completely permitted to them! It'd be for the exact opposite of benefit!

One way to solve this is to assume that there's some intrinsic benefit in being Jewish. If you hold by an ideology that claims that Jews are metaphysically better, purer, or superior in some other way to Non-Jews, it's easy to justify making this Non-Jewish child into a Jew. Even if they're going to violate many Torah prohibitions, at least they're Jewish!

But you can't do that if you hold that all humanity is created in the image of God, and that the only thing that separates us from the rest of the world is our Contract with God and the mitzvot that flow from it. In that case, simply "being Jewish" isn't a benefit without mitzvot, just as Jewish identity in general doesn't exist without a mitzva framework.

Which puts us in the dangerous position of people who are more so-called "liberal" having less justification to do what they naturally feel is the right thing and unite these families in Halakhic Jewish status. I wonder how we get around that. I think I'll ask them.

Mekimi Moments and Riding High

2008-05-01T22:18:00.000-04:00

תהילים קי"ג ה-ח

מי כיהוה אלהינו
המגביהי לשבת
המשפילי לראות
בשמים ובארץ
מקימי מעפר דל
מאשפות ירים אביון
להושיבי עם נדיבים
עם נדיבי עמו

Tehillim/Psalms 113:5-8

Who is like YHVH, our God —
who rises on high to sit;
and sinks down low to observe
the heavens and the earth —
lifting up the poor from the dust,
raising the needy from garbage-heaps —
to seat them among the nobles,
the nobles of God's own people?!

These lines have been running through my head the past few weeks, in the musical version by Yosef Karduner linked to below. And so I started looking closer at the verses, and how they express their message.

There's a vertical axis at work here — not a temporal or geographical axis mundi around which space or time turn, like Shabbat or the Temple Mount — but a relationship axis of power in society. As Ribbí Yohhanan said, wherever you find God's power, you also find God's humility.

God rises on high... to sit down.

Not just to 'go up', 'stand up', or 'lift' — ג.ב.ה is the root of "tall". God rises on high — but sitting is a downwards motion. This isn't moving from a standing position to a seated one; it's walking up steps to the Throne, and sitting down in Judgment upon it. Upwards motion gathers strength and gathers power — sitting enthroned consolidates that power into a stable base, ready to apply it in action. The image here is of God rising up to the heights of the universe to take on the role of Commander, Judge, Ruler, Decider — not slumping into an easychair after a long day at work.

And from that upwards-and-yet-settling motion, the mizmor moves in the opposite direction.

Even from on high, God is intimately concerned with what goes on down below in the World.

We now have a completed axis — God rises up on high, to "sit down" in stability and power at the heights of existence; and yet what God is doing there is switching direction, lowering Godself down into our world to be concerned with what's going on in the heavens and the earth, from God's Throne-Seat in the heavens-above-heavens.

And what does God do, with this vertical axis linking the Physical and Supernal Realms?

God recreates it within our own reality, drawing the poor and weak up God's lifeline, raising them up from the dust and the dirt, the garbage and the refuse, and setting them on their feet. But like God, the point is not to be "on high" — the point is to seat them. Like God rising up to sit in power and majesty over the universe, God lifts up the downtrodden to seat them in power and judgment among the nobles. They are no longer weak and lowly; they are now decision-makers themselves, enthroned.

And so maybe the next step is for them to follow in God's footsteps, and themselves lift up the next batch of needy after them.

What is a 'Mekimi Moment'?

It's an incident in which you feel meqimi mei‘afar dal being applied in your own life. When you look around yourself and what you're doing in this world, and you see how far you've come. When you see God's lifeline pulling you out of the dust, and placing you unexpectedly among those who you never would have imagined yourself coming into contact with. When God stands you up, and you find yourself attaining things that you never even dreamed one day you would even set out to do. When you wake up one day and realize that God has placed you in the circuit of people with power, or even given you power yourself... just make sure you use it properly.

Even a poor kid from the shtetl can grow up to help change the world.

The Israeli Gay Religious Revolution

2008-04-28T23:30:00.002-04:00

It's late and I'm writing this without having taken the time to read carefully through the relevant articles, but I learned today about a new Israeli organization for religious homosexuals — הו"ד — and their campaign to force the religious establishment in Israel to recognize that they exist and deal with them and their issues in a human and compassionate halakhic manner.

Article on YNet about the website

Article on YNet about their conference
From skimming the article it looks like they got about 70 datí homosexuals together in Jerusalem in order to finalize a letter or statement of some kind that they are sending to rabbis all over the country. When it was described to me a few hours ago in person by a rabbi from Israel who has been interacting with them, it sounded like a large number of the men involved came out of the closet now 'en masse' specifically for this purpose of forcing the religious community and its leadership to recognize that they exist and that they have needs and struggles that can't just be solved with abstract platitudes.

But is it Kosher for Passover?

2008-04-17T15:29:00.003-04:00

Read this hekhsher VERY VERY carefully.
It does NOT say כשר לפסח

“Like a Goblin for Passover”?!

No More Auction Block For Me

2008-04-15T23:20:00.002-04:00

(Another Passover Hymn)

In college, I took a course entitled Blacks and Jews in American Cultural History. During the class, I encountered a Spiritual from around the time of the Civil War which was later recorded by the likes of Paul Robeson and Bob Dylan — “No More Auction Block”. I personally prefer Bob Dylan's version (which can be found in "The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3" or bought on iTunes); he actually took the music from No More Auction Block and later turned it into the basis for Blowin’ In The Wind.

no more auction block for me
no more no more
no more auction block for me
many thousand gone

The song seems to be from the point of view of a recently-freed slave, mourning all those many human beings who were oppressed, tortured, and dehumanized, but didn't live long enough to see freedom.

The stanzas of the song are very simple. The basic pattern above is repeated, with a different reference to slavery replacing the words auction block. In searching the internet for recordings and lyrics listings, I found the following variants: “master call” “pint of salt” “driver's lash” “whiplash” “peck of corn” “mistress' call” “hundred lash”

Ever since I learned this song, I've wanted to sing it at the Seder. Now you can, too. And it's definitely possible to apply the tune to passages in the Haggada, such as Dayeinu.

A version similar to Bob Dylan's:

Paul Robeson's classic version:

A slower, meditative-sounding version:

Creeping Death (A Passover Hymn)

2008-04-11T00:10:00.003-04:00

My Progressively More Yeshivish Friend pointed me to a somewhat inspiring and somewhat disturbing classic Metallica song. "Creeping Death" is a song about Makat Bekhorot, the final and most devastating of the 10 plagues that God brought against the Egyptians who enslaved our ancestors. The Slaying of the Firstborn. And it's not like Metallica is even "death metal" music...

for a video of just the music without the untzniusdik drummer, click here

Creeping Death by Metallica

Slaves
Hebrews born to serve
To the pharaoh
Heed
To his every word
Live in fear
Faith
Of the unknown one
The deliverer
Wait
Something must be done
Four hundred years

So let it be written
So let it be done
I'm sent here by the chosen one
So let it be written
So let it be done
To kill the first-born Pharaoh's son
I'm creeping death

Now
Let my people go
Land of Goshen
Go
I will be with thee
Bush of fire
Blood
Running red and strong
Down the Nile
Plague
Darkness three days long
Hail to fire

So let it be written
So let it be done
I'm sent here by the chosen one
So let it be written
So let it be done
To kill the first born pharaoh's son
I'm creeping death

Die!

Die by my hand
I creep across the land
Killing first-born man
Die by my hand
I creep across the land
Killing first-born man

I
Rule the midnight air
The destroyer
Born
I shall soon be there
Deadly mass
I
Creep the steps and floor
Final darkness
Blood
Lambs blood painted door
I shall pass

So let it be written
So let it be done
I'm sent here by the chosen one
So let it be written
So let it be done
To kill the first-born Pharaoh's son
I'm creeping death

The 14th Principle of Faith

2008-04-10T13:02:00.002-04:00

...of Geek Orthodox Judaism:

(of which I am the Geek Orthodox Patriarch)

God is not only a Trickster.
God is not only an Artist.

God is the Biggest Nerd Ever!

(click there to understand why)

Here's A Schism There's A Schism

2008-04-09T23:40:00.003-04:00

FIrst there was the Great Orthodox Schism of the 21st Century, which may or may not be being pushed along by the founding of a new Orthodox rabbinic organization, the Rabbinic Fellowship, by the team of Rabbis Weiss & Angel.

Then there was the Spiritual Communities Study of the Independent Minyan phenomenon, highlighting the diversification and democratization of much of active Jewish religious ritual life.

Sometimes it looks like everything's falling apart.

And then something happens to make you realize that yes, you're right.

A new Jewish political advocacy organization, the J-Street Project, is an alternative to what some see as the Rightist or Far-Rightist orientation of AIPAC and its allies.

Interesting development.

Jeremiah: Man of the People

2008-03-31T16:45:00.004-04:00

(based on a shiur i gave at the timestamp of this post)

Yirmeyahu/Jeremiah 26

It was the beginning of the reign of Yehoyaqim, king of Yehuda, and God told Yirmeyahu to stand in the courtyard of the Temple — right in the middle of the public plaza of the Beit Hamiqdash — and rebuke the people for their sins and crimes.

The prophet's message is simple — if they repent, God will not punish them; but if they continue to ignore the warnings that God has sent them over and over again, by many prophetic messengers, they will lose God's place in their midst. This place, says Yirmeyahu, will be like Shilo. Destroyed. Abandoned. Forgotten.

And so he stands in the middle of the plaza, surrounded by the throngs of worshippers and visitors, and curses the place where he stands. This structure is worthless if it does not reflect God's will and God's desire for good will among humanity. Sacrifices mean nothing when given with bloody hands. The same message that has been proclaimed over and over again by prophets. But Yirmeyahu has entered into the heart of the corrupt religious establishment, and challenges them on their home turf. Yirmeyahu is an outsider, a kohein from the town of ‘Anatot in Binyamin; a country boy coming in to the big city.

And how do they respond to his message of rebuke and warning of punishment?

The kohanim and the nevi’im — the priests and the prophets — and “all the people” grabbed him, and declared their intention of putting him to death. This upstart priest, this upstart prophet — coming in to the House of God and threatening it with destruction?! He must be a false prophet. He must be a renegade priest. Yirmeyahu is challenging the religious-institutional and religious-moral authorities of the nation. He must deserve death.

Luckily, the political authorities intervene. Sarey Yehuda — the officers of the country — come up from the palace, and sit in the gate (the place of judgment) and assert their authority for law and order. No more mob rule. You think this man deserves death? Prove it.

And so the priests and the prophets declare to the officers and all the common people gathered in the courtyard — you heard what he said! There is no other proof necessary!

Waitasec. Weren't “all the people” — the common folk, the masses — on the side of the religious authorities? Why are they now standing in judgment, as supposedly impartial decisors, like the royal officers of the court?

And then Yirmeyahu makes his case. He repeats his message — improve your ways, and God will improve your fate. And then he throws a little good old Israelite preemptive guilt trip their way: “I'm in your hands, and you can do to me whatever you want,” he says — “but if you kill me you're just spilling more innocent blood and sealing your fate.”

And it works. The sarim and the multitude reject the accusation brought by the priests and the prophets. Yirmeyahu is a true prophet. He does not deserve to be killed.

The voice of the common people just flipped completely. Did Yirmeyahu address them in particular, give them power equal to the royal officers in their gate, in order to get them to think for themselves and take control of their rapidly deteriorating lives and society? Or is this just mob mentality switching sides, following whoever sounds the most convincing at the time?

Whatever their motivations were, a new faction appears, either from among the masses — the mental decision-making of the people embodied in representatives — or possibly from among the government officials.

Some of the Elders of the Land — anashim miziqney ha’aretz — stand up, and give conflicting precendents.

It may be that the first elder to speak is trying to back up the ruling of the sarim by giving a real-life case: the story of Mikha Hamorashti, who prophesied in the days of the great and righteous King Hhizqiyahu. He declared in the name of God, Yhvh of the Battalions, that Tziyon will be plowed as a field, and Yerushalayim will become piles of rubble, and the Temple Mount will be a forested hilltop if the priests and the prophets continue to do evil, accepting bribes and trusting that God would back them up no matter what. I find interesting a point that a teacher of mine in high school pointed out — these elders quote this prophecy from memory, almost exactly, over 100 years after it was given! Might say something about the impact and knowledge of prophetic discourses in Ancient Israel.

Anyway, back in the time of Hhizqiyahu and the Prophet Mikha, his prophecy did not get him killed. Instead, the king and the people repented of their evil and in return, God didn't bring the threatened punishment upon them.

On the other hand, there was another prophetic precedent — Uriyahu ben Shema‘yahu of Qiryat Ye‘arim, who King Yehoyaqim (who is still in power!) sent soldiers after all the way to Egypt in order to bring him back and execute him for giving prophecies similar to Yirmeyahu's divine threat.

Nevertheless, the story ends, Ahhiqam ben Shafan was on Yirmeyahu's side, so that he was not given over to the people to be killed.

Ahhiqam ben Shafan was one of the sarim, the government officials who set up court in the gateway to maintain order. He was the son of the Scribe Shafan ben Atzalyahu ben Meshulam, who was one of the important figures in the religious reforms of Yoshiyahu, bringing the people back to God. And Ahhiqam himself went to the Prophet Hhulda along with other officials to get the Found Book of God validated!

And it's only his power or standing that protects Yirmeyahu from getting killed by the mob? It certainly looks like it. Our hope in the people, it seems, was misplaced. They didn't support Yirmeyahu because he put the responsibility of deciding his fate in their hands — they were simply swept along with whoever sounded more convincing; whoever spoke last. When Yirmeyahu spoke, they backed him; when the precedent of Uriyahu was brought up, they went with that. The people were weak. Their leaders had made them complacent. No wonder they assumed that everything would be fine anyway... they had forgotten how to take responsibility for themselves.

In Case You Missed It

2008-03-18T22:59:00.004-04:00

On Sunday Night, leil 3 Adar-B, 5768 (March 9th, 2008), my hhevruta and I made a siyyum on masekhet Sanhedrin for my father's "second First" Yawrtzait (it's a leap year).

(picture courtesy of drew kaplan)
((and yes, all the people who are not me have been blurred out))

We then moved on to start some Hhulin.

People seemed to like it, so I'm adding here what I said. You may recognize some of it from various things I've written here over the past year.

We started the siyyum by singing Nigun Le’Aví, also known as Lama Tomar Ya‘aqov, the song for my father.

The Prophet Yesha‘yahu 40:27-31

“How could Jacob say, and Israel state
‘my path is hidden of God;
from my God my account passes away’?
Don't you know? Haven't you heard?
God is the lord and creator of all eternities of time and space —
never tiring, never becoming exhausted,
and whose understanding is beyond analysis.
[God] gives strength to the tired
and multiplies power for those who lack might.
Youths may tire and become exhausted,
and young men may surely fail —
but those who have hope in God will renew their strength,
rising and soaring on mighty birds' wings;
they will run without exhaustion, walk without tiring.”

About two years ago,
I wrote out these words
from the prophet ישעיהו
on an index card,
and carried it with me
to the funeral of the mother
of two of my students.

For some reason
it seemed a whole lot more comforting
when I wasn't the one who needed to sprout wings in freefall.

The tune
entered my head after my father entered the hospital,
about a week before his death.

That's why it's ניגון לאבי, the song for my father.

But before we move on to the main business
of commemorating my father and celebrating this learning,
I would like to speak personally for a few minutes and thank people.

First of all,
i'd like to thank everyone who's here today,
and everyone who was supposed to be here but couldn't make it.

And i'd like to thank everyone who,
in one way or another,
helped me to get through this very difficult year.

שבעה ended
and then שלושים ended
and then i finished saying קדיש after 11 months
and then the 12-month mourning period ended one month ago;
it was my father's first-first yawrtzait
and i was no longer an אבל
and i lost the normative structure that defined my life.
But there's still a hole in my universe;
feelings come and feelings go
regardless of halakhic status
and as we know from geology, monster movies, and ספר יונה,
what disappears below the surface
will very likely one day re-emerge.

And so i'd like to thank all the people who've come with me this far.

There were the people who taught me
that human beings in pain
have an inalienable right
to express that pain
and to be comforted.

There were those who brought food to the שבעה,
and then again, a few months later,
when my mother was in the hospital before סוכות.

Those who taught me נוסח for leading davening,
and the people in many different communities
who gave me opportunities to use it.

There were all the people who forgot
at one time or another
that there were certain activities
that, as an אבל, i couldn't participate in,
and invited me to parties and concerts —
and thereby reminded me when I was lonely
that I have friends who care.
not to mention my friends who got married & struggled hard to find a way to share their שמחה with me even though i couldn't attend.
And there were those few particularly perceptive people
who knew when something was wrong
even if no one else noticed.

But there are two individuals who I would like to thank especially
and recognize them
before moving on to the סיום.

Both of these individuals are people
who I barely knew a year ago,
when this all began —
who maybe I had encountered
here or there
once or twice or a few times
over the first year and a half
since I returned from Israel to New York.

And from being just people
who I maybe recognized when I saw them around,
over the past year
these two individuals became
two of the most important figures in my life,
without whom I wouldn't be up here
introducing this סיום
in more ways than one.

One of them
I've very possibly thanked too much already;
and the other one
I definitely haven't thanked nearly enough.

So I thought I would publicly acknowledge them both now
to thank them
and even out the balance,
even though the math makes no sense.

The first
is my rabbi and my friend
רִבִּי וידידי
[name withheld for internet purposes]
in whose shul, in case you didn't know,
we are having this סיום.
He probably had no idea
quite what he was getting himself into
when he agreed to be my halakhic consultant
and פוסק on אבילות matters —
but nonetheless succeeded
in knowledgeably and compassionately
answering what at times was an almost literally constant stream
of questions, shaalas and inquiries
about the laws, customs, and philosophies of mourning.
And that was just a small part of it.

The rest of it —
the emotional and spiritual support,
and everything else —
there is no way I know
to weave words that would adequately express my gratitude.

The second
is my friend and חברותא
[name also withheld for internet purposes].
Although this סיום is in memory of my father,
I hope it's clear to everyone
that the achievement of this learning
is as much [his] as it is mine,
if not more.
He persevered through all the accidents
and all the delays —
all the times i was unexpectedly stuck in Brooklyn
or he had to pop out to Teaneck; (for instance, to get engaged!)
all the times one of us slept late on Sunday morning
or on שבת afternoon;
the months when we lost every Shabbos
because I couldn't stay in Washington Heights —
and he kept it all ordered and scheduled,
making sure that we would reach the end on time.
[He] is a living embodiment of the philosophy of תורה עם דרך ארץ,
and whether we were actually learning
or, to be honest, goofing off at any particular moment,
consistently demonstrated that you can apply any knowledge
and any cultural experience
to the study of תורה,
and vice versa.
And not just דרך ארץ in that sense —
also in the colloquial sense of being a mensch.
He also jumpstarted
my very rusty גמרא skillz
just in time for me to start rabbinical school,
so there are a number of other people here
who should probably be thanking him also.

The way this is going to work now
is that I'm going to speak about my father,
and then [my hhevrusa] is going to speak about מסכת סנהדרין,
the tractate of Talmud that we learned,
and then we are going to finish the learning,
making the סיום itself.

My father knew everything
and what he didn't know
he wanted to

he got this from his mother
who was a teacher

my father noticed everything
and what he didn't notice
he knew he should have

he got this from his father
who was a detective

my father could fix everything
and what he couldn't fix
he knew someone who could

but i don't know where he got that from

i do not know everything
and frankly
there are certain subjects
that i have no interest
in knowing anything about
no matter how much he pushed me to explore them

i do not notice everything
i'm actually pretty oblivious
to most details of what's around me
it's amazing they actually let me drive
especially since i drive like my father
who also grew up in boropark
and he used to drive cabs

and i can't fix much
i used to know how computers worked
my father taught me that
until i went away to college and forgot it all
unlike him i have no idea
what goes on inside a car
or through telephone wires

this is what we call yeridat hadorot
the diminution of generations

but my father took me out on the tidal flats of plum beach
during the winter
and up perkins drive on bear mountain
during the summer and the fall
and took me to build relationships
with friends and relatives
whether they were religious or observant
or not
jewish
or not
and him and my mother moved
from spring valley to west hempstead
and from west hempstead to brooklyn
so that me and my brother
could get a good jewish education

and my father taught me
to love God's world
and to love people
and to love yahadut

and i love him.

That was the eulogy I read at the funeral.
And like all such things,
it was true
but
my father was a human being
and human beings are complex.

My father was a human being
and if you've ever discussed with me
what passes for philosophy in my head
you may know that being human
is both the least bare minimum expected from anyone
and the greatest praise that anyone can earn.

My father was proud
and stoic.
He never wanted to admit when he was in pain
or ask for help.

During the last years of his life
I would ask him how he's doing,
and he would say
"I'm holding on"
and i used to get mad
and ask him
what kind of an answer is that?
I only understood what he meant
after he died.
people asked me how i'm doing,
and i had to invent linguistic strategems
to side-step the question
because i couldn't answer it truthfully
and i couldn't lie.

Yes, my parents
moved the family so that my brother and i
could go to good Jewish schools,
but Jewish learning wasn't high on my father's list of priorities
after 8th grade.
The reason i picked מסכת סנהדרין to make this סיום on
was because this edition of Sanhedrin
with my father's old notes in it
was the only volume of Talmud we ever had around the house.

A common origin-story for kaddish
says that רבי עקיבא met a ghost
and the ghost asked him to teach his son
to lead prayers in his merit
in order to save the ghost
from punishment in גיהנם in the afterlife.

חז"ל said that the maximum length of time
that someone can spend passing through גיהנם
on their way to reunion with God
is 12 months,
and the common custom of saying קדיש for only 11 months
is explained as a preventative measure
for the deceased's reputation —
we're all human
no one is perfect
but saying קדיש for a full year
would imply
that the person you're saying קדיש for
actually needed to spend that much time
the maximum sentence
in the cosmic self-clean cycle
in order to be purified.

So, mourners say קדיש.
I said kaddish for my father.
But there's no mention of death in Kaddish,
and no mention of the dead.

It's all about God.

God is Greater Than All Songs.
God is Greater Than All Praise.
God is Greater Than All Words.

So why do mourners say Kaddish?

God is Greater Than All Consolations.

Kaddish is an act of faith.
Kaddish is a declaration of hope.

that Even when life sucks, God is Great.
and Even when life ends, God is Greater.

When life sucks,
עִמּוֹ אָנֹכִֿי בְֿצָרָה
God is with us in our pain.

And so i said קדיש for 11 months
for my father
as if to expiate my own pain
and reduce his time
at the cosmic laundromat
for the purification of souls.

But my father never needed it.
We're all human
we all make mistakes
I got into arguments with my father
and at least one of us, if not both of us
had to have been wrong.

I'm still waiting to find out
what it was he did in the military
that was so secret
and so classified
that he couldn't even tell us
less than 24 hours
before he died.

But it's now been (not just 11, not just 12, but) 13 months, and i know
that my father never passed through גיהנם.
Some people die
because their souls are weighed down with muck.
Some people die
so that the scars on their souls will be scoured and healed.
Some people die
and their soul is as clear as the day they were born.

And my father?
They pumped my father's soul through machines
to clean it before he died.

It worked the first time.

When he finally went in to the hospital
thinking he had a hernia
in addition to being too tired to eat
or barely get out of bed,
they found out that he had a huge mass
of tumor in his abdomen;
and the doctor estimated
that it would be what got him
sometime after 2 weeks
and before 2 months.

And they also found that his heart
which had been slowly weakening
for the past 15 years or so,
was too weak to pump his blood
adequately through his kidneys.
And his kidneys were starting to shut down.

We know from multiple places in the תורה
that הדם הוא הנפש —
your blood is your soul.

My father's heart weakened further.
He became more and more tired.
The doctors took him out of his hospital room for dialysis,
and brought him back exhausted.

They pumped my father's soul through machines
to clean it before he died.

The second time they took him out for dialysis
his heart was too weak to cooperate
with the machines.
And he was more tired
than he had ever been before.

That night,
ג' אדר, ה'תשס"ז
my father,
ארי'ליב בן אברהם שמעי
went to sleep in his hospital bed
and woke up in שמים.

What's So Evil About Evolution?

2008-03-16T10:41:00.002-04:00

This Shabbos I finally realized why many religious Jews object to the theory of Evolution. It has nothing to do with the text of the Torah, or with Talmudic pronouncements. It's not about counting years, or the Scientific Method.

Survival of the Fittest is a tautology.

Evolution is not a pre-planned system, where the fittest survive because they knew what they were getting in to. Those who survive and reproduce are "fit" because they were able to survive and reproduce.

Those who aren't "fit" enough get weeded out.

They don't survive.

If you're not fast enough, strong enough, smart enough — you end up dead, and your unique assortment of genes and characteristics don't get passed on to the next generation.

Evolution sneaks up from behind, and picks on the slow, the weak, and the less intelligent. It takes those who can't fight back. It weeds out the back of the herd.

Sound like anyone else we know?

Women Rabbis: No Problem?

2008-02-26T23:48:00.002-05:00

That seems to be the opinion of a prominent Orthodox poseiq!

Read and listen for yourselves (see link there).

Just when you thought you could pigeonhole people into acronyms... ;-)

Left Wing Modern Orthodoxy

2008-02-22T00:01:00.000-05:00

I decided to make a blog post of my definition of Left Wing Modern Orthodoxy so I'll always be able to find it when once again I will need to explain the difference between the halakha-observant philosophical stream of LWMO and the sociological phenomenon of lax observance and lax philosophical inquiry known as MO-Lite.

For a more detailed essay explaining LWMO, see Rabbi Avi Weiss's article on Open Orthodoxy, although I don't necessarily agree with all the details there — which is probably why while I self-identify as Left Wing (or sometimes Left-Leaning) Modern Orthodox in general, I usually don't self-identify as "Open Orthodox" in particular, institutional affiliations notwithstanding. ;-)

So here's Steg's Short Explanation of LWMO:

Left-Wing Modern Orthodoxy is...

a generally positive view of general society (i.e. asks the question “what’s out there that can make me a better person/jew?” as opposed to “what’s out there that i should avoid in order to be a better person/jew?”)
a preference for lenient halakhic opinions over stricter ones, especially for the sake of preserving community
a differentiation between halakha and sociology; i.e., just because something “hasn't been done” doesn’t mean it’s forbidden, and if it’s not forbidden, and there are good reasons for it, do it! (this tendency is commonly found in issues of gender and women’s roles)
a valuing of integration over isolationism, both in cooperating with other Jewish groups and in views on interacting with Non-Jews
an acceptance of academic methodology as part of learning Torah (such as Critical Talmud study, and Literary Analysis of Tanakh)

Finally Finished the 3 Hours Waiting Post

2008-02-21T01:00:00.000-05:00

And it's down here...

Happy Purim Qatan!

2008-02-20T16:36:00.002-05:00

For this Purim Qatan and Shushan-Purim Qatan, God (who, btw, is a Trickster Deity), is giving us a particularly unique kind of mishloahh manot — a TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE!

End of Year Prayer

2008-02-07T21:42:00.000-05:00

בָּרוּךְֿ הוּא הָרַחֲמָן הָרַחוּם¹
אָבִֿינוּ בוֹרְאֵנוּ יוֹצְרֵנוּ² הַצַּיָּר הָעֶלְיוֹן³
בּוֹרֵא עוֹלָמוֹתֿ וּמַחֲרִיבָֿן⁴
מֶלֶךְֿ מֵמִיתֿ וּמְחַיֶּה⁵
מוֹרִידֿ שְׁאוֹל וַיָּעַל⁶
הוּא יְנַחֲמֵנוּ מִמַּעֲשֵׂנוּ וּמֵעִצְּבֿוֹן יָדֵֿינוּ⁷
הוּא יְנַחֲמֵנוּ מִצַּעַר הַשֶּׁבֶֿר
וּמֵחִסָּרוֹן עָמֹק כַּתְּהוֹם
הוּא יְעִירֵנוּ בַשַּׁחַר
וְהוּא יַשְׁכִּיבֵֿנוּ בָעֶרֶבֿ
בָּרוּךְֿ הוּא הַדַּיָּן דַּיַּן הָאֱמֶתֿ⁸
שׁוֹפֵֿט כָּל הָאָרֶץ⁹
מַשְׁפִּיל הָרִים וּמֵרִים בְּקָעוֹתֿ¹⁰
מַשְׁקִיט תַּרְעֹמֶתֿ יַמִּים¹¹
וְצוֹרֵר רוּחוֹתֿ עוֹלָם¹²
הוּא צָרַר אֶתֿ אָבִֿי בִצְרוֹר הַחַיִּים
וְהוּא בְעִתּוֹ יִצְרוֹר גַּם אוֹתִֿי
יִתְֿבָּרַךְֿ שְׁמוֹ לָנֶצַח עַל מַעֲשָׂיו
יִשְׁתַּבַּח שְׁמוֹ לְעוֹלָם בְּפִֿי בָנָיו

וְעַתָּה יִגְֿדַּל־נָא כֹּחַ אד׳ כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבַּרְתָּ לֵאמֹר
זְכֹֿר רַחֲמֶיךָֿ י׳ וַחֲסָדֶֿיךָֿ כִּי מָעוֹלָם הֵמָּה

לפי הפתיחה של בני־דודינו המוסלמים „בסם אללה אלרחמן אלרחים“ (בשם האלו׳ הרחמן הרחום)

לפי הברכה הרביעית שבברכת המזון — „הל׳ אבינו מלכנו אדירנו בוראנו גואלנו יוצרנו קדושנו קדוש־יעקב“

לפי בבלי ברכות י:א — „מאי ,אֵין צוּר כֵּא׳ ֵנוּ‘ [תפילת חנה, שמואל א:ב:ב]? - אין צייר כאלקינו.“

לפי בראשית־רבה ט:ג

„מלך“ במקום השם לפי ברכת גבורות שבעמידה

זו והשורה מעליה מקורן בתפילת חנה, שמואל א:ב:ו

לפי בראשית ה:כט על הולדת נח

לפי נוסח הברכה לשמועות רעות

לפי בראשית יח:כה — „הֲשֹׁפֵֿט כָּל הָאָרֶץ לֹא יַעֲשֶׂה מִשְׁפָּט?!“

לפי ישעיהו מ:ג־ד — „קוֹל קוֹרֵא: בַּמִּדְֿבָּר, פַּנּוּ דֶּרֶךְֿ י׳; יַשְּׁרוּ בָּעֲרָבָֿה מְסִלָּה לֵא׳ ֵנוּ. כָּל־גֶּיא יִנָּשֵׂא, וְכָֿל־הַר וְגִֿבְֿעָה יִשְׁפָּלוּ; וְהָיָה הֶעָקֹבֿ לְמִישׁוֹר, וְהָרְכָֿסִים לְבִֿקְעָה.“

כמתואר בשיר „התרדוף נערות אחר חמישים“ של ר' יהודה הלוי

בניגוד לחוסר־יכולתם של בני־אדם המתואר בקוהלת ח:ח — „אֵין אָדָֿם שַׁלִּיט בָּרוּחַ, לִכְֿלוֹא אֶתֿ־הָרוּחַ, וְאֵין שִׁלְטוֹן בְּיוֹם הַמָּוֶתֿ...“

I Am Crazy Frum... Because I Wait 3 Hours

2008-02-01T13:44:00.003-05:00

Expect an explanatory halakhic discourse when I return from spending Shabbos in the fabled mile-high (but incredibly flat) city of Denver, Colorado.

Denver's a nice place... if you're a yeti.

Or even if you're the Goblin King.

Have a good Shabbos!

Anybody seen Amishav?

Sorry I haven't updated this post since I got back... been preoccupied with the end of the year of mourning for my father. I hope to reveal the halakhic punchline some time this week.

Sorry it took so long to get back to this, I've been unusually busy and bombarded with RL stuff lately.

Anyway, here's the scoop, in the spirit of Purim Qatan and venahafokh hu’ (everything getting turned upside down)...

In the Babylonian Talmud, masekhet Hhulin 105a, Mar ‘Uqba makes the following statement:

When it comes to this issue [waiting after meat before dairy], I am like vinegar made from wine compared to my father. If my father were to eat meat now, he wouldn't eat cheese until this time tomorrow; but me, it's just within this [meat] meal that I don't eat [cheese] — but I eat it at the next/other meal.

This is the basic source for waiting after eating meat before eating dairy, and there are two schools of interpretation and application:

Rambam, in Mishneh Torah, book of Qedusha, Laws of Forbidden Foods 9:28, says:

One who ate meat first — whether that of a land-animal or a bird — may not eat milk afterwards, until there will have passed the amount of time for another meal, which is about six hours...

The Tosafot, commenting on Mar ‘Uqba's statement, say:

But I eat it at the next/other meal
Not [necessarily] at the next regular meal, one in the morning and one in the evening — even immediately, if one clears away the table and says the Blessing [After Eating], it is permissible...

So basically, there are two opinions — when Mar ‘Uqba says that he "waits until the next meal" before eating dairy after meat, R' Moshe ben Maimon claims that this is a quantitative measurement of time between the morning meal and the evening meal, “about six hours”. The Ba‘aley Hatosafot, on the other hand, explicitly reject that view, claiming that "until the next meal" means exactly that — until the next meal, whenever that occurs (even immediately!).

Now things get a little tricky.

R' Moshe Isserles, in his mapa ("tablecloth") to R' Yoseif Karo's Shulhhan ‘Arukh ("set table"), testifies that the common custom in his part of the world, i.e. Ashkenaz, particularly Poland, is to wait one hour. In his more detailed Darkhey Moshe, though, he quotes the Hagahot Sha‘arey Dura:

Many people are accustomed to act more leniently [than the Rambam's requirement], and make a compromise of their own invention, waiting one hour after a meat meal. They clear off, bentsh, and then they eat cheese even though we have found no reason or hint for this time limit [in any authoritative work]... Anyway, who could stop them, since after all the Tosafot and the Ra’avya (R' Eli‘ezer ben Yo’eil Haleivi) allow [to not wait at all]!

Now, what about waiting 3 hours?

The source of this custom is unclear, but it very likely may be a further development of a compromise between the Tosafistic and Maimonidean lines of reasoning — waiting the length of time from one meal to the next, but not necessarily between the big morning meal and the big evening meal; just from lunch to afternoon tea, for instance, according to the culture of various Ashkenazic countries.

So let's add it all up.

Why do I claim that waiting 3 hours makes me crazy frum, frummer than almost everyone else?

There are two opinions: Rambam and Tosafot.

If you wait 5, 5h1m, 5½, or 6 hours, you're holding like the Rambam.

If you wait 3 or 4 hours, on the other hand, you're basically holding by Tosafot. But Tosafot don't care if you wait at all, just that you clean out your mouth and your eating area and start a new meal! So you're holding by Tosafot... and then being mahhmir and following the baseless stringency of the common folk of Ashkenaz to not just clean up and clear off, but to wait as well. And not only are you waiting (at all, for no reason!) — you're waiting until the amount of time passes for the next naturally occurring meal instead of artificially jumping the cultural gun and starting a new halakhic meal before it's actually time to eat. Waiting 3 or 4 hours is holding like Tosafot plus two levels of hhumra — that's much frummer than simply holding like the Rambam!

בתאבון

Disclaimer:
The halakhic analysis in this post is serious;
the tone of discussion is meant for entertainment only.

"Baruch Hashem" Usage at Epidemic Levels, Baruch Hashem

2008-01-23T19:03:00.000-05:00

(forwarded to me by someone else)

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK - [TheKnish.com] Pyschologists and rabbinic leaders are warning about the prevalence of Honorifics and Frum Idiom Confusion Syndrome in the Jewish community, bli ayin hara.

Over the past several years the number of honorifics and superstitous idioms added to the frum vocabulary has been increasing exponentially, k'niyna hara. This has caused some confusion to occur, baruch Hashem, especially to those with more simple minds, kein yirbu.

Typically the syndrome starts with overuse of the terms, b'chasdei Hashem, then quickly turns to usage of the terms in the completely wrong place, shlita. In more advanced cases, nisht auf Shabbos geret, idioms foreign to the frum world, l'havdil elef havdalos, are used as well, praise the L-rd.

In addition to the number of such terms, zy gezunt, the prevalence of usage of such terms has increased exponentially as well, yasher koach. For example, 20 years ago, mamesh, the term "baruch Hashem", was limited to a portion of Maariv that most people did not say, gezundheit. Today it constitutes 23% of a typical frum male's spoken word and 27% of a typical frum female's, im yirtzeh Hashem by you. It has been added to most kosher menus, thank you - come again, and has replaced "all of the above" on standardized tests given to yeshiva bochrim, lo aleinu.

Family and friends of those afflicted with this disease, chas v'shalom, are advised to use caution when asking simple questions such as "How are you?" This may cause the afflicted person, zt"l, to reply with a stream of unrelated frum idioms that usually have nothing to do with how they are doing, may Allah strike you down with the strength of 1000 elephants. The best option, in the opinion of the professionals, Hashem yinakem damam, is to stick a tehillim in front of them, ad meah v'esrim. This should keep their mouths busy until such time as a permanent cure is found. (David Friedman)

[David Friedman used to play with the margins to make his articles longer. This is more fun.]

© 2007 TheKnish.com. All rights reserved. This material may be published, broadcast or redistributed as long as all the content remain intact, including this paragraph.

(as requested in the final note, all typos in the above humorous article are the original author's/website's)

A few times I've responded to someone's having answered the question "how are you?" with barukh Hashem by saying ...le‘olam, amein ve’amein, I know — but how are you?

Some more popular responses, attributed to R' Elie Silverberg, R' Dr. Chaim Brovender, and/or R' Yehuda Parnes, are variations on I didn't ask how frum you are, I asked how you're doing!

No Touchee

2008-01-18T00:56:00.000-05:00

A question from my college days:

Why, when you identify as shomer negi‘a, do people think they can't sit within 5 feet of you — and when you identify as not shomer negi‘a they think you're a whore?

Just wondering.

Kevod Rabo Komplications Return

2008-01-14T22:49:00.000-05:00

I recently learned in masekhet Sanhedrin, in the last chapter — Pereq "Hheileq", with all the theological/philosophical statements and crazy aggadas — that according to Rav Nahhman, one definition of an epiqoros who 'has no share in the Coming World' is one who calls his rav by his name, even when just referring to him in third person, as the proof-text from the Prophet Elisha‘'s unworthy assistant, Geihhazi, indicates.

Various Jewish legal texts (in .doc format), including the ‘Arukh Hashulhhan, delineate the obligations and prohibitions that one has to their rav. Most, but not all, are the same for your parents, including the prohibition on using their name [instead of title] to refer to them (name+title is fine for non-parents).

So it's asur to call your rav by their name, even when refering to them in talking to other people. And not only that, but if you do such a disrespectful act, you can lose your share in the Coming World!?

This is quite a dilemma when your rav is a friend of yours, who you had sort of already met in purely social situations once or thrice back before the world fell apart. If I hadn't suddenly needed a rabbi to get me through all this aveilut (mourning) stuff, we probably would have just ended up hanging out more with all our mutual friends and getting to know each other anyway, as did actually happen, except it would have been on a purely peer level instead of on an awkward mix of the peer paradigm and the pseudocongregant/rabbi or inquirer/decisor paradigm.

Luckily, all the laws about respecting one's rav only really apply to a rav muvhaq from whom you've learned most of your Torah knowledge — and not to just any teacher, poseiq or communal rabbi you may have. So that at least deals with the strictly legal and eschatological problems, if not the awkward relational issues.

End of Kaddish

2008-01-13T10:48:00.000-05:00

Why do some people think it's appropriate to say "mazal tov" when you finish saying kaddish? This isn't some kind of happy occasion or proud achievement. This is one step further away from my father.

11 Months of Kaddish

2008-01-10T00:01:00.000-05:00

וְ עַ תָּ֕ ה יִ גְֿ דַּ ל ־ נָ ֖א כֹּ ֣חַ Δ׳֑
כַּ אֲ שֶׁ ֥ר דִּ בַּ ֖רְ תָּ לֵ א מֹֽ ר ׃

זְ כֹֿ ר ־ רַ חֲ מֶ י֣ ךָֿ Ƶ֭׳ וַ חֲ סָ דֶֿ י֑ ךָֿ
כִּ ֖י מֵ ע וֹ לָ ֣ם הֵ ֽמָּ ה ׃

And now, let Lord's power grow great,
as you said...
(Bemidbar 14:17)

Remember your compassion, God, and your kindness,
for they have always been.
(Tehillim 25:6)

God is Great.
God is Transcendent.
God is Beyond.

There is no mention of death in Kaddish.
No mention of the dead.

It's all about God.

God is Greater Than All Songs.
God is Greater Than All Praise.
God is Greater Than All Words.

Why do mourners say Kaddish?

God is Greater Than All Consolations.

Kaddish is an act of faith.
Kaddish is a declaration of hope.

Even when life sucks, God is Great.
Even when life sucks, God is Greater.

When life sucks,
עִמּוֹ אָנֹכִֿי בְֿצָרָה.

יִתְֿגַּדַּל וְיִתְֿקַדַּשׁ שְׁמֵהּ רַבָּא...

א׳ לחדש שבט

2008-01-08T00:01:00.000-05:00

Happy Hug a Tree for Beit Shammai Day !

Although, considering Shammai's reputation, maybe it's actually
Smack a Tree with a Yardstick for Beit Shammai Day.

(why this is supposed to be funny)
(why this is supposed to be funny enough to shake a stick at)
(multiple sticks at, to be precise)

Glatt Yosher!

2008-01-06T01:05:00.000-05:00

K'hal Adath Jeshurun
is removing their hashgahha
from Agriprocessors!

I guess the big question is: Why?

Some rabbis feel that the way Agriprocessors's flipping pens dump the animals out after shehhita is halakhically problematic, in that it may dislodge signs of sickness that would render the animal not kosher. But KAJ doesn't seem to be worried about that, since they say that their removal of hashgocho is not due to kashrus concerns, and "no inference to the contrary regarding the kashrus of the products should be made." Could it be because of fears of Chabadian Mishichism? Or just not wanting to be associated with such a sketchy company that's constantly getting into scandals for how it treats its animals, its workers, and its governmental obligations?

(gray hat tip: an apartmentmate)

Imitating Other Peoples

2008-01-03T20:43:00.000-05:00

Babylonian Talmud, masekhet Sanhedrin 39b —

Ribbí Yehoshua‘ ben Leivi threw two verses against each other:

AND YOU DID NOT ACT
ACCORDING TO THE ORDINANCES
OF THE NATIONS SURROUNDING YOU

and

AND YOU DID ACT
ACCORDING TO THE ORDINANCES
OF THE NATIONS SURROUNDING YOU

In these two quotes, God's message through the prophet Yehhezqeil is a message of rebuke and sentencing. The Israelite People has committed too many horrific breaches of its contract with God, and therefore punishment is on its way.

The only problem is, these two entries on our national 'rap sheet' contradict each other. What's the problem? Did we copy the practices, social mores, laws, or culture of the surrounding nations? Or did we not do that, and that's the problem?! For those of us raised on a steady (or even intermittent) diet of חוקות הגויים, the question is shocking — did the First Israelite/Judean Commonwealth fall apart, was the First Temple destroyed, was ‘Am Yisra’eil cast into exile... because we didn't imitate foreign ways of doing things? And what about the more expected pasuq, the one that says that punishment comes for doing the imitation itself?

Ribbí Yehoshua‘ ben Leivi answers the contradiction:

כמתוקנים שבהם לא עשיתם
כמקולקלין שבהם עשיתם

YOU DID NOT ACT
ACCORDING TO THEIR PROPER WAYS.
YOU DID ACT
ACCORDING TO THEIR IMPROPER WAYS.

RYB"L is representing a worldly integrationist Judaism. One that goes outside, like Ribbí Mei’ir learning from Elisha‘ ben Avuya — eating the fruit and discarding the peel. We go out into the world and make choices. We delineate holy from mundane, pure from taboo, permitted from forbidden. There's so much out there — so many people, cultures, sciences and histories — to learn from, and we aren't going to hide our heads in the sand, living in an self-isolated world and hoping that everything else would just disappear and leave us alone. We need to be experiencing and evaluating — this we can learn from; this we can't — seeing God's world and God's children through God-colored lenses, instead of seeing everything that comes from Outside through a lens of suspicion.

And God will consider us liable if we don't...

Not My Pictures

2008-01-02T11:09:00.001-05:00

In case you were wondering, these are not my pictures:

steg the dinosaur's photos

It doesn't even look like a stegosaurus!

Cute idea, though.

(gray hat tip to mar gavriel)

Nittel Nacht

2007-12-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

That "Carol of the Bells" song?

Spookiest 'holiday music' ever.

And they say Jewish music is melancholy...

Jacob Our Father Did Not Die

2007-12-24T22:08:00.000-05:00

Bereishit/Genesis 49:33 —
And then Ya‘aqov finished commanding his children,
and then he pulled his feet onto the bed;
and then he expired, and then he was gathered to his peoples.

The word I translated here "and then he expired" — following the 1917 JPS at Mechon Mamre — seems to be used for the process of dying, primarily that which leads up to the final moment. By our Ancestors Avraham and Yitzhhaq, as well as by Uncle Yishma‘eil, two words are used in sequence: ויגוע וימת. He *expired, and then he died.

The second, more common word for death — מות — is not found by our Ancestor Ya‘aqov. This lead Ribbí Yohhanan, as recorded in the Babylonian Talmud masekhet Ta‘anit 5b, to hyperbolically claim that Jacob our Father did not die. After all, sure it says ויגוע... but the Torah never says about Ya‘aqov וימת!

After being challenged by the realia of the verses — after all, even though it never says that he "died", it does say (later on) that he was mourned, embalmed and buried — Ribbí Yohhanan backs up his audacious claim with another פסוק, this time Yirmeyahu/Jeremiah 30:10, that equates the individual Jacob/Israel with the nation of his descendants. As long as they live, so does he.

Which brings me to my point.

Let's take a closer look at the embalming.

Who does the embalming? רופאים, healers. I can see how healers, doctors, physicians, would be involved in a biological procedure, but why call them 'healers'? Why not 'embalmers'?

At the end of פרק מ"ט, quoted at the top of this post, who dies? Ya‘aqov. And at the beginning of the next chapter, who is embalmed? Yisra’eil. Why the change in name here, in the middle of the story?

Jacob died, but Israel — his children and their descendants, the nascent nation — remained alive. And when the healers embalmed Jacob's body, they were preserving Israel, tempering the people, taking the body of an individual and making of it the body of a nation. The embalming of Ya‘aqov prefigured the slavery and oppression that would overtake his descendants not that long afterwards in that very land — the struggle that would forge them into a people that would one day be freed to accept the Torah.

What's Your Name?

2007-12-23T13:43:00.000-05:00

I just spent a nice Shabbos in the Spring Valley (incl. Monsey etc.) area, including going to my family's old shul, the Young Israel of Spring Valley. It hit me in the middle of Musaf that I hadn't set foot in the shul for more than twenty years. Wow.

The other thing I noticed during my sojourn in Greater Jewish ~~Monsey~~ Spring Valley is that Hhareidi Orthodox Jews have no problem conceiving of 'Steg' as a name. My gracious hosts would introduce me as Steg, and the Hhareidi people I met wouldn't even blink. Which is a big change from the usual, when Modern Orthodox Jews, or other non-Hhareidi people, always ask "whatwhatwhat?" and then I have to explain that Steg is my nickname, and my actual name is «BEEPnotforpublication». And then there are all the questions about how I got it, does it mean anything, does it have to do with dinosaurs, blah blah blahdee blahdee blah.

Any theories why Hhareidim are less fazed by unusual names than others are? Could it be because 'Steg' sounds Yiddish? Any other theories?

Dilemmas in Dressing for Davenning 2

2007-12-20T22:49:00.000-05:00

Wearing a jacket and tie (and sometimes a hat, too) to shul during the week is no longer culturally-appropriate for me in my present life context.

Which I guess makes my 'experiment' in cultural norms and 'flipping out' a success.

In case you were wondering. Which you weren't. ;-)

I am, however, wearing my father ע"ה's tallis (the blue-striped one, as opposed to the black-striped one he was buried in). Since I was davening very frequently in Yekkish shuls, and have been davening "fore the ‘amud" in various places even more frequently than that.

A Rant About Love And Hatred

2007-12-15T22:10:00.000-05:00

I stayed by my "grandrav" for Shabbos, which was really good. We talked a lot about all kinds of topics having to do with Torah and the Jewish community — geographically, philosophically, religiously, socially, as well as unfortunately some politics too. I also saw another learnèd friend of mine over there too, which was cool.

Anyway, some of these discussions got me thinking.

I know many people who want to go out and change the world. Some of them are still just dreaming. Some of them are laying plans. And others, H' yishmereim veyatzlihheim, are already out there, taking charge and changing the world for the better.

I have one particular wound in the Jewish communal body that I want to sew up. One particular tumor that I, personally, need to see excised. There are way too many people out there who think that being Jewish is about being superior to the rest of the world. About us being important and everyone else being shit. About six billion living breathing human beings, created in the image of God, having the sole purpose of servicing us, being used and abused?

That's not what being mamlekhet kohanim vegoy qadosh — a kingdom of priests and a holy nation — is about. Zarim, non-kohanim, aren't there to be utilized and abused by priests. Everyone knows that. Maybe in some theocratic feudal society, where the religious functionaries are in charge, and everybody else is a serf... but not in Yisra’eil! Kohanim are there to serve the zarim; priests — and rabbis, teachers, leaders, anyone with a communal job — are there to serve the people, not the other way around!

As my brother condensed into a convenient-sized soundbyte,אהבת ישראל
cannot be based on
שנאת הבריות
You cannot create Jewish pride, attachment to Judaism, or concern for other Jews, by teaching hatred or contempt for the rest of the human race.

You cannot save your community by mutilating your soul.

Being Jewish is not about being 'special' or 'better' than everyone else. It's not about being good while everyone else is evil. It's not about having some kind of right, or dream, of using other people like tools. If you think you're that kind of 'special', you're not special at all. You're just another two-bit egotist, like all the rest.

Being Jewish is about having a contract with God. It's about inspiring the world. It's about being moral, caring, and productive. It's about being a mensch.

If you think that being Jewish means that only you matter, and that the rest of God's children are there to be used by you, you're not just using other human beings — you're using God, using Haqódesh Barukh Hu’ for your own self-aggrandizement and self-inflation. We have two terms for that. One is מעילה. The other is חילול השם. The first can be atoned for. The second cannot.

It says in the Babylonian Talmud masekhet Yevamot 79a that this nation has three identifying characteristics — those who are merciful, those who have a sense of shame, and those who do acts of kindness. What the heck ever happened to that?

Torah and Hhokhma

2007-12-05T20:40:00.000-05:00

There is Tora min Hashamayim, ‘Instruction from Heaven’.

We call this Torah.

And there is Tora min Ha’aretz, ‘Instruction from Earth’.

We call this Hhokhma ("Wisdom").

Torah is given in Revelation;
it needs to be delved into, to understand its Godly secrets.

Hhokhma is built on Logic, Emotion and Experience;
it needs to be constructed, to develop its human truths.

When we say that Instruction from Heaven is holy and that Instruction from Earth is not, we're only talking about degrees. We were created in the image of God. Our world was built by God, piece by piece, eon by eon. When we examine our world, we are examining God's creation. When we examine ourselves, we are examining shadows cast by God's flame.

Torah comes down from Heaven to Earth.

Hhokhma rises from Earth to Heaven.

If you've only got one, you've only got half the picture.

Adventures in Jewish Bigotry II

2007-11-30T00:38:00.001-05:00

Why am I posting to my blog this late at night?

Because I had a fairly disturbing experience tonight when learning with my hhevruta in a beit midrash with a number of somewhat Yeshivish high school students around.

One of the students called another one the N word, and my hhevrusa objected. So we got into a long annoying conversation trying to explain to these kids why using racial slurs is inappropriate. Luckily, some of them understood what we were saying and may have even gotten the message. Others, though, were completely racist, and justified their use of the slur by claiming that it's fine to say accurately-negative things about people who "deserve" it. A few tried to pull that Hham was cursed nonsense out, but I smacked them down by quoting the actual verse and revealing to them the fact that Cana‘an, who was cursed, actually looked just like us and not like Sub-Saharan Africans or African-Americans.

For some strange reason, the crazier ones of them seemed to think that sticking up for the humanity of human beings is something that only "leftist treehuggers" do, but I corrected them when they asked my hhevruta if he is such a person — he's actually a Republican, while I'm the Leftist Treehugger. Which brought up other political issues which I wasn't interested in discussing, such as the War in ‘Irāq, Gay Marriage, and Gun Control.

I'm hoping that we changed a few minds, at least a little bit, and impressed upon some of them the need for sensitivity and recognition of humanity. Even if you insist that the ethnic slur you're using is only being used to refer to the "bums" of that group, that doesn't excuse it — because that's not what people think when they hear it. Slurs are nivul peh (linguistic self-degradation), and using them even to refer to a supposedly "appropriate" subset of a group is mar’it ‘ayin (causing other people to suspect you of doing something wrong even if what you're doing may technically be okay).

But what shocked me the most was one kid's insistence that there's no value, need or obligation to be a nice person. It's like the idea of being a mensch wasn't even on his radar. I blurted out "Are you [even] Jewish?!" when he said that, which probably wasn't the right thing to say (because it may imply that other people don't also need to act human), but there's a reason why we in particular call it "being a mensch" — acting like a caring, mutually-respectful member of a human civilization is one of the primary goals of Yahadut! It always shocks me when people don't understand that what God wants from us is to care about and respect each other.

So I'm just going to go with the hope that the fact that they call me "Mr. [LastName]" is a sign that they consider me a respectable adult (as opposed to it being because they don't know my firstname, or my simply being older and balding or something), and somehow that might give my and my hhevruta's words more weight than if it were just him, who they grew up with and probably consider just one of the guys. Even if I am an UnYeshivish Leftist Treehugger. And when I (iy"H) get semikha and become a rabbi, I can claim Da‘as Torah, and they'll have to listen to me!...

Me And My Cosmic Secrets

2007-11-28T23:35:00.000-05:00

איצטגנינות
astrology!

I remember when I was in high school wondering why the Hebrew word for "astrology" was itztagninut and not something expected like asterologya. I discovered a possible reason why a week or few ago, when my hhevruta (study partner) and I encountered the word איצטגניני "astrologers" in our study of masekhet Sanhedrin, and I pulled out the Steinsaltz to see if he has one of his very interesting and illuminating (at least if you're a linguist like me) comments on etymology.

R' ‘Adin Even-Yisra’eil Steinsaltz explains that the origin of the word itztaginut (or istagninut) in its various forms is unclear, but some see it as a borrowing of a Greek word meaning "hidden" or "concealed", which I happen to know comes from a root meaning basically "cover" or "roof" (and which is distantly cognate to the English word thatch) —

σ τ ε γ ά ν ο ς
s t e g á n o s

«coughcough»

I'm a poor student... how asur do you think it actually would be to make some extra cash working for Miss Cleo? ;-)

"This" Little Midrash Went To Market

2007-11-27T00:16:00.000-05:00

Even when God brings tragedy to earth — whether as a well-deserved punishment or an unexplained piece in the great puzzle — God is there to comfort us, as is written,

עמו אנכי בצרה
I am with him in his distress,
and as is written at the birth of Noahh:

זה ינחמנו ממעשנו
ומעצבון ידינו
מן האדמה אשר אררה יייי
This will comfort us from our labor,
and from the pain of our hands' efforts —
from the ground which God cursed.

ואין „זה“ אלא ה'!

And "This" is none other than God, as we know from the Song at the Sea, when the Israelites pointed with their fingers, identifying their Rescuer, and sang,

זה א-לי ואנוהו
This is my God, whom I will glorify...

Turkey For God — 'Cause It's Good!

2007-11-22T10:19:00.000-05:00

הודו לה' כי טוב
(כי לעולם חסדו)
[credit must go to habib of kiwijewpundit]
(note: תרנגול־הֹדּוּ doesn't actually have anything to do with the verb הוֹדֿוּ)
For the second year in a row I davened Shahharit this morning at the Spanish-Portuguese Shul of New ~~Amsterdam~~ York. No Tahhanun. Prayers for the governments. Semi-pseudo-Hallel at the end. Cupcakes and hot chocolate...

...The wonderful display of his [=God's] divine providence, “in the course and conclusion of the late war;” the happy consequences derived therefrom, by an establishment of public liberty; the recent mercies conferred on these states, by the general approbation and adoption of the new constitution, are (ALL) blessings that demand our most grateful acknowledgments to the Supreme Ruler of the universe; more especially, as we are made equal partakers of every benefit that results from this good government; for which, we cannot sufficiently adore the God of our fathers, who hath manifested his care over us in this particular instance; neither can we demonstrate our sense of his benign goodness, for his favourable interposition in behalf of the inhabitants of this land, and for every other kind dispensation bestowed both on them and us...

...From that period [=the destruction of the Second Commonwealth] even till now, our predecessors have been, and we are still at this time in captivity among the different nations of the earth; and though we are, through divine goodness, made equal partakers of the benefits of government by the constitution of these states, with the rest of the inhabitants, still we cannot but view ourselves as captives in comparison to what we were formerly, and what we expect to be hereafter, when the outcasts of Israel shall be gathered together...

...From the foregoing, you will naturally observe the duties we owe our Creator: it now remains to point out the duties which we owe to ourselves, the community to which we belong.

In the first place, it is necessary that we, each of us in our respective stations, behave in such a manner as to give strength and stability to the laws entered into by our representatives; to consider the burden imposed on those who are appointed to act in the executive department; to contribute, as much as lays in our power, to support that government which is founded upon the strictest principles of equal liberty and justice. If to seek the peace and prosperity of the city wherein we dwell be a duty, even under bad governments, what must it be when we are situated under the best of constitutions?...

from the Thanksgiving Day Sermon
of Hazzan Gershom Mendes Seixas
of Congregation Shearith Israel, New York
November 26, 1789
(as printed in the New York Daily Gazette)
The only downside was after davening, and getting a tour of a friend of mine who's a teacher at Beit Rabban next door's classroom, I headed outside on the synagogue's porch to watch The Parade... and then immediately realized oh wait, it's a parade... with marching bands and stuff... not so aveilut-appropriate... Ohwell. Maybe next year (if the weather's as nice as it is today).

יהא שלמא רבא מן שמיא
חיים ושבע וישועה ונחמה
ושיזבא ורפואה וגאולה וסליחה וכפרה
וריוח והצלה
לנו ולכל ישראל

ולכל יושבי המדינות המאוחדות האלו

Overheard in the Beit Midrash

2007-11-21T18:32:00.000-05:00

“Just because you
can't taste ta‘am after shishim,
that doesn't mean God can't!”

ta‘am טעם = 'taste', a recognition attesting to the presence of a substance
shishim שישים = 'sixty', the 1-to-60 ratio at which ta‘am legally disappears

There is a dispute in the Gemara as to whether identical substances can be בטל bateil 'nullified' in each other, the way that one substance can be nullified in a different substance by a ratio so overwhelming that the taste can no longer be discerned.

The source of the opinion that מין במינו אינו בטל, 'a substance in its own type is not nullified', comes from Vayiqra’/Leviticus 16:18, where after mixing together the blood of a goat sacrifice with the blood of a much larger bull sacrifice, the Torah describes the Kohein Gadol utilizing "the blood of the bull and the blood of the goat" — as if they are still distinct! — instead of just "the [blended] blood".

Hence, just because you can't taste the difference, it doesn't mean that God can't.

MASS RABBINIC CLOSURE

2007-11-15T18:54:00.000-05:00

mass rabbinic arrest
mass rabbinic a.c.d.
mass rabbinic impact
mass rabbinic closure

Well, it's over.

Seven months ago, 22 people — mostly rabbis, with a few rabbinical students and a non-rabbinic community leader or two — were arrested in an act of civil disobedience obstructing pedestrian traffic outside the UN in order to protest the government of Iran.

Six months ago, those same protesters appeared in court and were granted Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal — an automatic retroactive dismissal of charges contingent on staying out of trouble for six months.

Today was their ACD day.

However, I think it's safe to assume that the story doesn't quite end here. The government of Iran's terrorist proxy machinations and nuclear aspirations continue. How will Jewish leaders take a stand next time? Stay tuned...

A Friend's Midrash On Jacob's Awakening

2007-11-14T18:56:00.000-05:00

Bereishit/Genesis 28:16-17 —

וַיִּיקַץ יַעֲקֹבֿ מִשְּׁנָתֿוֹ וַיֹּאמֶר
אָכֵֿן יֵשׁ –ֲ –ֹ –ָ – בַּמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה
וְאָנֹכִֿי לֹא יָדָֿעְתִּי:
וַיִּירָא וַיֹּאמַר
מַה נּוֹרָא הַמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה
אֵין זֶה כִּי אִם בֵּיתֿ אֱ–ֹ –ִ ים
וְזֶה שַׁעַר הַשָּׁמָיִם:

“And then Jacob awoke from his sleep, and said,
'Truly, God is in this place,
and I did not know.'
And then he became awestruck, and said,
'How awe-inspiring is this place!
This is nothing other than a house of God,
and this is the gate of the heavens!'”

אל תקרא „משנתו“ אלא „ממשנתו“!

Do not read “from his sleep” —
instead, read “from his learning”!
Many times in learning we can get lulled into an intellectual relay-race, and lose sight of the divinity, meaning and values that are buried in and grow out of the texts of our tradition. There is a midrashic claim that Ya‘aqov spent many years in the "Yeshiva of Sheim and ‘Eiver" on his way from home to Hharan... but it took the kind of kick-in-the-pants that you can only get in a dream of ladders and angels, where God stands over you, to make him finally wake up and realize that truly, God is in this place.

For more contemporary midrashic action,
check out the team at Sefer Ha-Bloggadah.