Mishpatim

A few years ago I heard this story attributed to the Chasidic master, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. A notorious thief, after quite an active career, finally died, and was sentenced to gehenna. While sitting in the court room awaiting arraignment before the heavenly judge, he notices a large sack. Being a thief, his fingers are itchy, and he can’t help himself. He has to know what is in the sack. He inches over and peeks inside.

He sees as he pulls the top loose, that the sack is stuffed, packed tight, with the souls of the sinners of Israel. Realizing that it was for this moment that he was created, the thief deftly purloins the bag, sweeps it aside, and sneaks it to the gates of heaven, flinging them inside, freeing the poor souls from the clutches of Satan.

Seeeing what he has done, Satan is reaching for the thief, about to crush his soul, when all of a sudden, a messenger arrives for him in the court room, carrying the thief into the joy of God’s presence.

Close your eyes for a second and picture a hasid. Now, tell me, what do you think a Chasid looks like?

Okay – but - who sees themselves? Who sees the person next to you? Do they look like a hasid to you?

What is a hasid really? … in the Torah portion we read over the course of this week, culminating on Saturday morning, we are supplied with a series of laws. The laws set out in the portion of mishpatim are all, ultimately, discussions of value: the value of money and the value of what can be bought for money, and the value of human life. We begin with one who begins as a servant of another human, and who chooses to stay with his master; then the laws of one who kills another person; one who injures another; an animal that injures a person or kills them; then theft, and so on.

In the middle of these laws is a small section of just a few, on theft. Verses 22:37-23:1 read, “If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it; he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep. 23:1. If a thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall no blood be shed for him.” [It may be worth noting that the mishpatim are all laws that make sense to us. In other words, we can, usually, figure the rationale for them on our own

The Torah clearly takes crimes of property seriously, but what are these verses doing here, embedded in what is very clearly a section on laws that explain how to value human life?

When the hasidim commented on these verses, they did not concentrate on the legality of theft. I imagine they thought to themselves (a typical approach for a Hasidic commentary), “everyone knows that’s its unlawful to steal, so instead, what else could be meant by these laws? What is the purpose behind the obvious in including these laws here, in this section?”

On the first of these verses is a commentary by the famed Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Pshischa, known for his sweetness. He said, “There are three things a person should learn from a thief in how to serve God: a. a thief is not lazy, and even at night, in the cold and rain, he goes out to attend to his work; b. if he fails on the first attempt, he will try again, and will not rest until he has succeeded; c. he does not scorn small things, and will not refrain from stealing something just because it is small.”

1. Even the smallest of things has value. This is certainly a lesson worth learning. It is fitting that these laws are read on this shabbat. In fact, this upcoming shabbat, there are three events that all coincide. The first is the reading of this week’s portion, mishpatim; the second is the reading of the special maftir, for shabbat shekalim, and the third is the blessing of the upcoming month of Adar, whose celebration begins Saturday night, motzei shabbat.

Shabbat Shekalim is named for the maftir reading. The maftir describes a census requiring every Israelite to contribute a half shekel to support communal sacrifices in the ohel moed, the tent of Meeting, and later at the Temple. All pay equally: the Torah says explicitly, “the rich shall not pay more, and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel to make an atonement for your souls."

Why do we all owe a half-shekel, and why for atonement? If the shekel is as the Torah says, “A ransom for one’s soul” (30:12) then one soul is of equal value to any other, rich or poor. This is a reminder -and we are never poorer for the reminder, given as we humans are to evaluating people based on their income, but there is another lesson as well. The Talmud Yerushalmi also explains the Torah’s language of atonement: specifically, the half-shekel was an atonement for the sin of the golden calf.

But is our soul so small a thing? How can a half shekel redeem your soul?

We forget that in the scheme of the world, even the tiniest of creatures can have a big impact. Consider the mosquito.

Most commercials and ads stress that “bigger” is better. We sometimes forget that the little things are the important things Our Tradition is filled with little things doing big jobs: David vs. Goliath, the story of the “shamir” the little worm that chewed through the stone used to build the Temple because metal tools were forbidden. Here, it is not that our souls are worth only a half-shekel: it’s the fact that we bring the half-shekel, that we do something, even if it seems to be small. In Pirkei Avot (4:2) we are told not to do greater mitzvot at the cost of lesser ones because we don’t know how God weighs them.

2. A thief is not lazy. We think the world is full of walls, locked doors, that everything good is hard to acquire, but God tells us that this is not so. The thief doesn’t worry about that. If we are willing to put our minds and bodies to the task, we can scale any wall, break through any door.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov teaches that not only should be willing to work hard to obtain our desires, but that those obstacles themselves are part of our goal. God puts up obstacles when we try to draw close, but hides within the obstacles. Those who know God is everywhere, know that God is also in the obstacles and will search in them for God. SO, like a thief, we shouldn’t be deterred by obstacles, but treat them as part of the excitement – the challenge. Thieves, according to the magid of mezritch, Love what they do. We need to be like thieves—not deterred by obstacles, but curious as to what may be in them. Perhaps we ought to be like the cat burglars portrayed in thriller movies – slipping into our little black catsuits, determined to break into the building using only our wits and talents, to find our treasure.

The maggid of Mezritch said:
"Every lock has its key which is fitted to it and opens it. But there are strong thieves who know how to open without keys. They break the lock. So every mystery in the world can be solved by the particular kind of meditation fitted to it. But God loves the thief who breaks the lock open. I mean the man who breaks his heart for God. "

The thief breaks through the door. Or, I might add, goes around it, climbs the wall. God didn’t build those walls, we did. They aren’t real. Anyone can get over them. We perceive the walls as being in the way, an obstacle. However, the thief sees the wall as something good, the challenge that must be overcome to get her desire. Even when God makes the obstacle, we are not alone: God is always with us. Perhaps God is trying to get us to be more thief-like so when we break through a wall, God can jump up and yell “Surprise!”

Judaism gives us all the lock-breaking tools. It seems as if God is so distant that we can never reach the palace. All around us are distractions, and difficulties. The racket of television and advertising, of the temptations of thinking ourselves either too great, or too small, are overwhelming. We are worried about earning money to make sure we have food and homes and medical coverage – all legitimate worries, but they close us off to so many things when our worries about them expand into all our available time- and time which should be available for other things. We spend so much time worrying that we don’t have what it takes, that we waste what little time we do have. Some of us spend our lives trying to find the right key to open that door. Some of us try the same key over and over again; others just keep looking for a new key, any key, not thinking that different keys go to different doors. But maybe the secret is – we don’t need a key, or there is more than one door. Or maybe, we just need to try a window.

Those are the walls. But we have the Torah, and the Talmud, the laws of Judaism and the wisdom of the sages to teach us to see that everything we do can have holiness in it. . The thief has many tools – and so, too, do we: Judaism offers us dozens of ways to climb the walls and break down the doors: tefila, prayer; Torah study – and many different kinds of texts to learn from; art – like the artisan of the Torah, Bezalel, who is described as wisehearted in his work to create the mishkan; music, like King David’s harp; poetry, David’s psalms. Our tools are blessing before and after eating, community, and meditation; Kashrut and Shabbat, outreach and introspection.

When we live as Jews, we are using the tools, open to hearing God’s voice, to being infused with light.

3. The thief will not rest until he has succeeded. We have faith that our scientists can eventually solve any problem, answer any question. Let’s hope all the scientists working on the global warming problem don’t decide that it’s too much trouble, the problem is too big! But it seems like such a struggle to keep looking and coming to shul all the time, what’s the pay off? If you want an Olympic gold in gymnastics, it’s not enough to practice once in a while: Olympic medalists devote their lives to practice, and when they aren’t practicing their sport, they crosstrain.

And it’s important to realize that one’s coach can’t do it for them. Many of the Chassidic dynasties follow a leader who was there to tell them what to do and how to do it; to be their Moshe – but it’s dangerous to assume that Moshe is so much better at this than the rest of us that we can never measure up. That’s when those golden calves start being poured.

Unlike many other Chassidic communities, the Chassidim of Pshischa, and those communities who sprang from it, were different. They said the following of their rabbi:

כי הרים ועזר לכל הבאים לחסות בצילו, אבל הוא רוצה שכל אחר ירים את עצמו לבדו

“He lifted up and helped all that came to take refuge in his shade, but he wanted that everyone should be lifted up by himself alone.”

Many of us need a coach to help us get where we’re going, but each of us has a special gift to offer. If the coach is the only one with ideas, no one else will ever know what that gift is that they could contribute. The best leader is one who makes room to hear other voices, who can help everyone around them become themselves, and find their soul to offer to God in its unique glory. As Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotsk said: When I get to Heaven, they will not ask me, "Why were you not like Moshe?" But they will ask, "Why were you not like Menachem Mendel?"

And so, the Holy Thief saves the souls of Israel, those who are waiting in the sack to be judged by helping them find out who they are, not who he is. But I want to point out one final thing about our thief: the thief is no one special. Or perhaps, the thief is only as special as everyone else created in the image of God. The image of the chasid that we have is [pantomime] the rabbi holding court, the wise giver of vorts around the shabbes table, full-bearded, stroking his grey beard with a wise expression on his gentle face. But like the 36 hidden righteous ones mentioned in the Talmud on whom the world depends, in reality, anyone could be your chasid.

Turn and look at the person next to you: in their heart, you will find a holy thief who can teach you at least one new way to break down the locked door.

And so we return to our verse in mishpatim: Ex. 22:1… “If a thief is found breaking in…” the words literally are in the Hebrew: “if breaking in, there is found a thief.” Once , some of the great Hasidic leaders sat with the Kotzker rebbe. The rabbi asked each of those to say something on the parshah... One commented, “If breaking in…” –if a person delves deeply, breaking into his heart, as it were, to examine his actions, “there is found a thief” – he will find a thief there.

Within all of our hearts is a thief.

A thief knows every opening, she knows the difference between one kind of lock and another, she knows where the gems are kept. She knows all the secrets of her object of desire, and nothing will dissuade her from it, once her plans are laid.

In our parshah, we read,

הִנֵּה אָֽנֹכִי שֹׁלֵחַ מַלְאָךְ לְפָנֶיךָ לִשְׁמָרְךָ בַּדָּרֶךְ

Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way (23:20)

A master thief, chevrei, is the one who uses every tool, and maybe even invents some new ones, to open all the locks, and let himself into the universe, where God waits, to receive our bag of souls, for liberating those souls is what we were put here to do. Perhaps the chasid is, after all only a master thief, the one who teaches you how to wield the tools, where to pick the locks, and what the treasures worth having are.

Science textbook disclaimers

From Colin Purrington at Swarthmore: Pro-science stickers tht mock the anti-evolution bias of some school districts attempting to present evolution as just one of a number of valid theories.



From his website:
Wording for the first disclaimer (top left) is taken verbatim from the sticker designed by the Cobb County School District ("A community with a passion for learning") in Georgia, which actually plagiarized Alabama's evolution disclaimer (view). Really, I'm not making any of this up. The other 14 are mildly educational variants that demonstrate the real meaning of a scientific "theory" as well as the true motivations of the School Board members and their creationist supporters. Ideally, the above stickers will deter other districts from using textbook disclaimers as a way to undermine the teaching of evolution. Please forward them to friends in school districts where disclaimers are likely to be discussed. Or make a big poster of your favorite and stick it on an easel in front of the school when nobody is looking. Or if you would like one of these on your car, bug Leighton over at Floating Point Digital Images, where you can get all sorts of pro-evolution stickerabilia. At the very least, print out the PDF version and send it to your kid's science teacher; if he or she is not amused, move immediately to another district, far, far away.

As of December 19th, 2006, the courts have upheld the initial ruling that the sticker was unconstitutional. The district is now on double-secret probation: it can't do anything that similarly undermines the teaching of evolution or that similarly supports the presence and activities of supernatural entities. Details can be had at the National Center for Science Education.

The website has lots of other nice things too. Visit here:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbookdisclaimers/

Hattip to BoingBoing

Why the Essenes Died Young

Cleanliness is next to... disease?
Recent findings show that the Essenes practiced some extreme forms of ritual hygiene which ironically, lead to them being a rather sickly bunch.
According to an article at Physorg.com,

In an article forthcoming in the next issue (winter 2006/2007) of Revue de Qumran, an international research team reports the results of an investigation of a suspected remote latrine site. Located by following clues in the ancient sources that specify the remote placement of latrines, the team positively identified the site as a latrine area through analysis of sub-surface soil samples.

University of North Carolina at Charlotte biblical scholar James Tabor suggested the investigation at a site outside the ruins of Qumran, noting instructions in two of the Dead Sea Scrolls (the “War Scroll” and the “Temple Scroll”) specifically requiring latrines to be located at a significant distance “north-west of the city,” and also to be “not visible from the city.” Tabor had also noted that the first century Jewish historian Josephus described very similar exotic toilet practices among the religiously strict sect known as the Essenes....

“I started thinking that in the scrolls they have these very explicit descriptions of where the latrines have to be,” Tabor explained. “It has to do with religious ritual purity -- the latrines have to be located in a place that the ancient texts designate as ‘outside the camp’. That’s a phrase used in the Torah, where Moses tells the ancient Israelites ‘build your latrines outside the camp.’ When you go to the toilet, take a paddle or a shovel with you and use the toilet and then cover it up,” he said, explaining that the ancient practice appears to have been revived at Qumran.

Late Night Altered-Consciousness Halakhah Conversations Come to Life

How many humorous anecdotes must there be about those drunken late night conversations that begin thusly,
"Well would it be kosher if you grew the meat in a vat?"
It turns out that we are not far from having to actually deal with this as a genuine halakhic matter.
Accoring to TimesOnline,

In different parts of the world, rival research teams are racing to produce meat using cell-culture technology. Several patents have been filed. Scientists at Nasa has been experimenting since 2001 and the Dutch Government is sponsoring a $4 million (£2 million) project to cultivate pork meat.

The idea may be stomach-turning, but the science for making pork in a Petri dish already exists.

Put simply, the process relies on a muscle precursor cell known as a myoblast, a sort of stem cell preprogrammed to grow into muscle. This cell is extracted from a living animal, and encouraged to multiply in a nutritional broth of glucose, amino acids, minerals and growth factors — Churchill’s “suitable medium”. The cells are poured on to a “scaffold” and placed in a bioreactor, where they are stretched, possibly using electrical impulses, until they form muscle fibres.

The resulting flesh is then peeled off in a “meat-sheet”and may be ground up for sausages, patties or nuggets.

Granted, this processis not yet what one might call reasonably priced...growing about a serving of the stuff costs around $10,000, butthe very fact that it is possible at all oughtto give us all pause.
It will at least certainly give us opportunities to debate endlessly whetheror not its ethical to eat, whether one could make it kosher if it's cells are those of an animal otherwise kosher, and if one might then reasonably (well, alright, putting aside marit ayin) eat pork cultured inthis way, and still have it be kosher. Oh and think of the Swiftian possibilities!

And if that doesn't offer you enough possibilities for new halakhic argument, consider this: tefillin made from animal-less leather!

Soylent Green?

Crossposted to Jewschool

Celebrating the multi-cultural world of spring holidays

My almond tree is flowering and Tu B'Shvat is but two days away. This year, Tu Bi-Shvat falls on the first Shabbat of February, which is, of course, International Ice Cream for Breakfast Day.

This truly serendipitous concurrence of happy events provides not only new ideas for toppings, and opportunities for kiddush, but also opens up many avenues for sermons, like: We know that Abraham ate ice cream when he was old, because we read: "ve-hashem beireikh et Avraham ba-kol" and the gematria of "ba-kol" is equal to the gematria of "glida". There are also the striking similarities between Ice Cream and Manna (mentioned in this week's parasha) [ e.g. both melt in the sun, both are served in round scoops (ve-hu ke-zera gad), white (lavan) and eaten in sugar cones (ve-ta'amo ke-tzapihit bi-dvash). For the more mystically minded, it might be noted that, strangely, the gematria of "ice cream" is the same as "tzli eish".

For information on the origins of this great international, visit: http://www.itzahckret.com/icecreamforbreakfast.html
The holiday is also celebrated religiously by our Masorti Nahal units at Kibbutz Ketura: http://ketura.org.il/culture.html (And now I'm off to stock up, as my eldest just informed me that Garin Sneh will be celebrating at our home).

Any questions on the various halakhot, minhagim, humrot and kulot of ICFBD can be sent directly to me. I will either answer them, or dip them in chocolate.

Happy ICFBD all.

Written by Rabbi Avinoam Sharon, crossposted to Jewschool

Molly Ivins זצ"ל

Molly Ivins, the cranky, irascible, cynical, liberal and brilliantly funny author and columnist died Wednesday at the age of 62, during her third bout with breast cancer. Texan to her bones, and salty in speech and manner, she will be sorely missed for her unreserved skewering of the deserving.
She was unflappable and witty, reminding us always that we are the American people, and this country is ours - to fix and to to insistthat our leaders be called to account. She left the world a better place, and not only that, but a funnier one.
I suppose God needs a laugh now and then, too.


Crossposted to Jewschool

This week's quiz

And my parents have been teasing me about this for as long as I can remember. They used to pretend when I said "food," I must have said "feud." I still to this day find it weird that they tease me for my accent, seeing as how I can still hear Brooklyn when they talk - after they've spent decades in Maryland.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The South   That's a Southern accent you've got there. You may love it, you may hate it, you may swear you don't have it, but whatever the case, we can hear it.
The Midland
Philadelphia
The West
Boston
The Northeast
North Central
The Inland North
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

And just in case you didn't get that accent located....

How Maryland Are You? Your Result: You're 80% Maryland No doubt about it, you're from Maryland. You have a beach house (not a SHORE house)in O.C. and have the Preakness marked off in your calendar 6 months ahead of time. But let's not get carried away here, you're definitely not STUCK here.
You're 60% Maryland
You're 100% Maryland
You're 20% Maryland
You're 40% Maryland
How Maryland Are You?

Happy Birthday MLK. We're still working on your dream.

One of the great prophets of our nation, we often only remember the oft-quoted snippets of his speeches, but let's not forget what Dr. King worked so hard to remind us; freedom is not merely lip service to rights. Yes, race, and the perception of it, is itself important. but Dr. King recognized that it is the economic state of persons which has such great bearing upon their life.
Since today is his birthday, I challenge you to listen to the entirely of his speech, far more radical than we like to recall, and remember his full legacy: that he calls upon us to fight for economic dignity of all persons. That labor should make us able to support our families, and that organizing into unions is a force for freedom and dignity and allows the workers to receive their just due.

May we see a day when his dream of a nation -indeed a world- of free people, living in dignity, is achieved.



"I Have a Dream"

Dr. King's final speech (Mountaintop - graphics generic)

The full text of the MLK "I have a Dream" speech.
see also: http://tinyurl.com/yaet8m to download

History of the Middle East and religious conquest of the world

This is powerful. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves...

Hattip to Jewschool

The Chasid of the Masorti (so-called Conservative) movement

The yahrtzeit of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel זצ"ל falls this year on the evening of Sunday Januray 14th/ dayof January 15th (or, on the gregorian calendar, tomorrow, the 11th of January).


Here, in his own words:

Towards an Understanding of Halachah, reproduced in Moral Grandeur
I came with great hunger to the University of Berlin to study philosophy. I looked for a system of thought, for the depth of the spirit, for the meaning of existence. Erudite and profound scholars gave courses in logic, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics and metaphysics. They opened the gates of the history of philosophy. I was exposed to the austere discipline of unremitting enquiry and self-criticism… [But I came to realise] that my teachers were prisoners of a Greek-German way of thinking. They were fettered in categories which could never be proved. The questions I was moved by could not even be adequately phrased in categories of their thinking. My assumption was: Man's dignity consists in his having been created in the likeness of God. My question was: How must man, a being who is in essence the image of God; think, feel and act? … They spoke of God from the point of view of man. To them God was an idea, a postulate of reason. They granted Him the status of being a logical possibility. But to assume that He had existence would have been a crime against epistemology.

In those months in Berlin I went through moments of profound bitterness. I felt very much alone with my own problems and anxieties. I walked alone in the evenings through the magnificent streets of Berlin. I admired the solidity of its architecture, the overwhelming drive and power of a dynamic civilisation. There were concerts, theatres, and lectures by famous scholars about the latest theories and inventions and I was pondering whether to go to the new Max Reinhardt play or to a lecture about the theory of relativity. Suddenly I noticed the sun had gone down, evening had arrived.
From what hour is the Shema recited in the evening?
I had forgotten God. I had forgotten Sinai. I had forgotten that sunset is my business, that my task is to repair the world under God's dominion. How grateful I am to God that there is a duty to worship, a law to remind my distraught mind that it time to think of God, time to disregard my ego for at least a moment! It is such happiness to belong to an order of the divine will.

I am not always in a mood to pray. I do not always have the vision and the strength to say a word in the presence of God. But when I am weak, it is the law that gives me strength; when my vision is dim, it is duty that gives me insight.

Vayechi

This week’s portion is titled as is usual, after one of the first few words of the Torah portion, vayechi Yaakov, “and Jacob lived.” This is an interesting juxtaposition to the portion which contains both the death of Jacob, and of his beloved son Josef, and is, as well, the closing portion of the book of Beresheit.
The overwhelming focus of this portion is the blessings with which Jacob bestows his sons. The connection here is perhaps a bit obvious:
As the Talmud explains, (Taanit 5b) Rav Nachman said to Rav Yitzchak: "So said Rabbi Jochanan: Our father Jacob did not die."Asked Rav Yitzchak: "Was it for no reason that the eulogizers eulogized, the embalmers embalmed and the buriers buried?"Responded Rav Nachman: "I am only citing a verse. It is written, 'And you, my servant Jacob, fear not, says the Lord, and do not tremble, O Israel. For behold, I shall save you from afar, and your descendants from the land of their captivity' (Jeremiah 30:10). The verse equates Jacob with his descendants: just as his descendants are alive, he, too, is alive."
In other words, all that you are lives on through our children. It is thus no great surprise that Jacob spends what time he has left blessing his children.
But when we read the actual things that Jacob says, except for his words to Yosef, and Yosef’s offspring, his words seem far from what we might consider a blessing. Consider his words to his eldest son, Reuven, “Unstable as water, you shall not excel.”
The Talmud reminds us of an earlier event, (Shabbat 55b): After Rachel, Yaakov’s beloved wife, died, Reuven, the oldest son of Yaakov's first wife, Leah, took his bed and moved it to Leah's tent. Because Reuven interfered with his father’s relationship with his wife, the Torah considers him as if he had committed adultery. The midrash goes on to explain that Reuven is the first person who acted “l’shem shamayim” for the sake of heaven, thinking he was doing God’s will, and then doing tshuvah when he discovered it was not , in fact God’s will. The sages understood Yaakov’s words to his son to be a rebuke against his impulsivity. He didn’t stop to think through his impulsivity and so he acted rashly.
Rav Elya Lopian, in Lev Eliyahu, says, “Truth to tell, Reuven's act itself was not so utterly immoral. What established it as eternally infamous was the fact that he acted out of anger. He was impetuous. …”
The midrash Tanchuma, (Tanchuma, Korach, 12), teaches
אמרו רבותינו זכרונם לברכה, בשלשה דברים אדם ניכר, בכיסו, ובכוסו, ובכעסו
“The sages teach, “through three things a man is known, by his pocket ( how he spends his money, whether he gives to charity, whether he is generous), by his cup(how much does he indulge in alcohol) and by his anger.”
What kind of blessing is that? What Yaakov offers to his sons is not just a simple outpouring of affection at the end of his life. Rather it is something more complicated: Yaakov offers his sons an assessment of their characters. This isn’t simply to get a last word in at the end of his life – Yaakov introduces his blessings to them by saying, “Gather yourselves together that I may tell you that which will befall you in the last days (Ber. 49:1).
Yaakov’s words to his sons are not either something so simple as a blessing, nor are the a literal forecast of the future. Rather he is giving them the tools with which to measure themselves and so affect their destinies. An example of this is Yaakov’s words to Shimon and Levi.
The impulsive anger that drove Reuven to move his father’s bed was a sort of impulsive anger, but Reuven was not an angry person. In Shechem, Shimon and Levi enraged, simply acted on their own, and indeed against their father’s desires. Shimon and Levi are not men who occasionally have an impulse in anger; rather, they plotted out an entire strategy. Their anger was anything but impulsive.
To Shimon and Levi, Yaakov has harsh words. "Instruments of cruelty are their swords. For in their rage they murdered people... Accursed is their rage for it is intense, and their wrath for it is cruel.... (Bereishit 49:6-7)."
Shimon and Levi went after the people of Shechem and slaughtered them after their sister Dina was raped by the son of the prince there. Later, in the parasha Zot ha-Berakha, at the end of the Torah, Levi is blessed by Moses, but not Shimon . This seems to reflect a trait in the personalities of these two individuals which are later reflected by their descendants – the tribes. Yaakov’s blessing is a warning to them about their flaws, and they can use that warning to choose how they will go. And the midrash tells us that in fact, they do diverge in their actions. Shimon never repents of his action, but Levi is understood to take that anger within him and turned it into passion, which he uses for God’s ends, instead of his own. In Sifri Devarim (349), there is a maasei, a story:
It is like the story of two people who borrowed from the king. One paid back his debt to the king, and even lent him money. The other not only failed to pay back his debt - he borrowed even more from the king. So it was with Shimon and Levi who borrowed at Shechem, as it says, two of Jacob's sons, Shimon and Levi, took each his sword and went stealthily to the city and killed all the males (Bereishit 34:25). In the desert [during the sin of the golden calf), Levi paid back his debt, for it is said, and Moses stood at the gate of the camp and said, "Thus says the Lord: Let each man place his sword on his thigh,' and the Levites did what God had said (Shemot 32:27-8), and he [Levi] went on and lent it to God at Shittim, for it is said, Pinhas son of Elazar son of Aaron the Priest took back my anger against the Israelites, by being zealous for my jealousy among them, and so I did not destroy the Israelites in my jealousy. (Bamidbar 25:11).
The midrash understands that the actions of the tribe of Levi, responding to Moshe’s call after the golden calf, and the violent act of Pinchas –he kills a tribal chieftan of Shimon, in fact- to end the plague that was killing the Israelites at Shittim, were both expressions of a basic personality trait that Levi turned towards the good.
In Judaism, we have a long tradition of ethical wills, statements of values from one generation to another – the most famous is possibly Gluckl of Hameln, whose words make a book, and who is well worth reading to see what a Jewish woman’s life in the middle ages was like. We tend to think today of these ethical wills as an opportunity to say some nice things to our children so that they will feel our love, but Yakov’s example shows that the potential is much greater if we offer not simply love without stint, but words of criticism as well.
The Talmud (Tamid 28a): notes, “Which is the right way that a person should choose? Let him love rebuke, since as long as there is reproof in the world, ease of mind comes to the world, good and blessing come to the world, and evil departs from the world.”
No one really likes rebuke, but it is a gift to be able to tell our children who they are, warts and all. Not only does that honesty, offer them the reassurance that we love them, warts and all, but it is also a gift, in that it allows them to understand our values clearly, and finally, also to recognize within themselves the capacity to use whatever traits they have for their own purposes. Like many other traits, anger can be either righteous or destructive. When we tell our children what they are made of, we also offer them the chance to use themselves fully for the glory of God.
Vayechi, brings us perhaps the first instance we know of an ethical will. The best way to pass our values on, of course, is to live them. But Yaakov, like many of us, was a flawed man. He often didn’t succeed in living out the best of his own traits, and he passed on many of his worst ones to his children. But if he was not perfect, he was Yisra’el, the man who struggled with El, God, and won from him a blessing. And in his final words to his children, in his last gift, he passed that struggle on to them as well, with the tolls for them, too, to win a blessing from God.

Death of a fruitcake

Thank HaShem someone has finally figured out how to get rid of one of these things...

Chanukah Isn't Christmas

For those who deal regularly with the December Dilemma (that would be most of us in the USA, in one way or another) this video is really just spot on.
Three cheers for recognizing Christmas as a major and important holiday for those who celebrate it... and not for us. I wish all Christians a merry Christmas. You can wish me a Shanah Tovah, and an easy fast and you can admire my Sukkah in September/October, A chag sameach for Passover, and bring me a nice cheesecake for Shavuot.



Tip o' the hat to DovBear and also for the ref to this Slate article.

Funny, You don't look Jewish

A commentary on Jewish identity.

entertaining test of the week

Your Quirk Factor: 66%

You're so quirky, it's hard for you to tell the difference between quirky and normal. No doubt about it, there's little about you that's "normal" or "average."

How Quirky Are You?

James Brown takes the Night Train at 73

James Brown has left the building.
Dramatic to the end, he died the day before that big Christian holiday (did he think he could upstage it? If anyone could...) and the cause of death is unknown.





Thanks.

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Another of those mindless memes going around the internet. (What kind of dog are you, what's your porn star name, that sort of thing)

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Viscountess Alana the Innocent of Old Throcking in the Hole

Actually, I like this one better, I've always wanted to be Welsh (okay not really, but still):

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Duchess Alana the Spurious of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Hattip to D.Glenn Arthur

צִיּוֹן בְּמִשְׁפָּט תִּפָּדֶה וְשָׁבֶיהָ בִּצְדָקָה*

The Forward reported yesterday that the Conservative movement is beginning the process of creating a new ethical certification system for kosher food. The ongoing shenanigans in some of the country’s largest slaughterhouses last year (and previously) prompted the movement to set up a special commission to investigate working conditions at the AgriProcessorsInc slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa (See previous posts: Where’s the beef now? Kashrut update on Rubashkin’s; Another beef with kashrut in the news; Kashrut Brouhaha Has Legs all from earlier this year). Starting with PETA’s allegations of improper slaughter, following with federal subpoenas in connection with a criminal antitrust investigation and rounding up with allegations of improper treatment of workers, such an investigation has been long overdue.

According to the Forward,

The five-person commission, formed by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Rabbinical Assembly, was created following an investigative report in the Forward, which detailed a series of allegations about the treatment of workers at the AgriProcessors plant in Postville, Iowa. Members of the Conservative panel, who visited the Iowa plant in August and September, recently issued a report stating that “there are significant issues of concern at the plant, including issues of health and safety.”

The goal of the committee is to establish a “tsedek hekhsher,” or a oversight that includes justice as a guideline, to ensure that kosher food producers “have met a set of standards that determine the social responsibility of kosher food producers, particularly in the area of workers rights.”

This is the first time that any Jewish denomination has attempted to use labor as a guideline for certifying food and is also the first time that the Conservative movement would be involved in overseeing food nationally.

According to the Rabbinical Assembly Press release,

The commission intends to continue working with these and other kosher food manufacturers to ensure adherence to Jewish values in the production of kosher food and will be conducting other site visits.

As the humane treatment of animals is at the heart of the laws surrounding kosher slaughter, further visits may include assessments of the conditions and treatment of animals. Additional study may also include an assessment of the effects of their products on the environment by these same and other food processors.

The idea of this committee most likely sprang from ongoing conversations within the movement which called into question exactly what it means to certify something as kosher. As we have seen, the laws of kashrut (just for one example) have recently been taken to be exclusively about following certain ritual requirements, and have had less attention paid to other related laws which guide us as Jews to have respect for animals and their comfort, let alone to paying attention to business practices of Jewish organizations and businesses. It has been profoundly disturbing to those of us who take halakhah seriously, to see that Jewish organizations and businesspeople have selectively focused on certain halakhot and felt it within their their rights to ignore others, and still to call themselves observant.

The question arises, specifically in regards to kashrut (Although I wait with bated breath to see this sort of oversight to be directed at other Jewish businesses as well), as to whether ignoring those other, not directly related halakhot, affects in any way the status of the food that is produced by those businesses. This is reflected in a quote from the Forward,

Reached this week, the head of the Orthodox Union’s kosher division, Rabbi Menachem Genack, applauded the Conservative movement for looking at labor issues, given the weight of Jewish law dedicated to the topic. Genack also said he had spoken with AgriProcessors and the United States Department of Agriculture about the working conditions at the plant. But Genack said that the Conservative movement should be careful not to blur the line between Jewish law regarding worker rights and Jewish law regarding the kosher standard of food.

“There are lots of social issues that are really important that could be subsumed under some sort of super certification,” Genack said. “But if we just move away from strict concerns about kashruth — if we talk about what they pay workers — these kinds of standards can be less than 100% clear.”

Another question arises as well: in internal discussions the question always comes up, especially for Conservative Jews: as we are trying to increase the number of people keeping kosher and taking Jewish law seriously, what do we do when one of these places comes up short? Will we drive people away from eating kosher food?

In many places in the USA, there are no other options for meat than that produced by this company. It is no small likelihood that many people will simply take a stamp of disapproval of a kosher slaughterhouse as license to stop keeping kosher. While many of our more liberal colleagues from other movements may simply shrug and say “so?” or suggest vegetarianism, this keeps Conservative rabbis up at night, as we are already engaged in a very difficult balancing act to try and cajole, persuade, encourage, even beg people to be serious about their Judaism, and that part of being serious means taking seriously commandments which aren’t always so easy, whether that means keeping kosher, or it means paying your workers a proper wage.

But I also want to say this: this is potentially what the best of the Conservative movement is about. Conservative Judaism at its best is taking halakhah seriously - not simply confining ourselves to outward observance of ritual mitzvot. This is what we should be doing: serious observance of halakhah, asking people to commit themselves to God’s service broadly; not simply to keep kosher, but also to keep laws about employment and tzaar baalei chaim. To remind people that there are no minor mitzvot - they all count.

It is surely a coincidence that this has been announced shortly after our very difficult proceedings on homosexuality, but in my opinion, there is a connection. Both these matters deeply emphasize the struggle and balancing act of God’s service. Halakhah is not always obvious, and how we keep all the mitzvot is not simple. I don’t suggest that accepting homosexuality in the way that the Dorff/Reisner/ Nevins tshuvah did is necessarily equivalent to the tzedek hekhsher, but I do think that the parallel is the amount of struggle to do good and to do right. I believe that this is step in the right direction for the Consevative movement, and I hope that this initiative will be successful; this is possibly one of the most important steps that the movement has taken in years. May it be the first of many, and may this path be one of increasing observance for Conservative Jews, just as in this season we increase light in the surrounding darkness of winter.

Forward story here

*Isaiah 1:27
Crossposted to Jewschool

I Hate Holiday Music

I hate holiday music. I really hate Christmas music. call me the grinch, but I just can’t bear to listen from Halloween to January to the incessant repetition of the same syrupy, sugary, indigestible brain destroying stuff. And Chanukah music. Don’t get me started. Songs about dreidels? Feh. Oh chanukah, oh chanukah? Oh, Ick. Even the so-called hip stuff that’s out there, let’s face it, mostly, what my father would kindly refer to as “dreck.”

So I am on a quest. Send me something I can listen to without gagging. It can’t be sugary, it can’t be something that a purple dinosaur would sing, and I can’t have heard it at all those public school holiday festivals as the token jewsong.

I have some hopes: I found KlezSka’s Chanukah Oh Chanukah here (hattip to Yo,Yenta!). Just because of the title, I almost didn’t listen, but yeah, it’s not bad. I admit, I laughed myself almost off the chair at the first few bars, but it grew on me pretty quickly. I actually sat through the whole thing, and thought, “hey, not bad!” I will probably listen to it again.
And please, yes, I saw the Hip Hop Hoodios video. Can someone please tell them that Sephardic Jews didn’t eat bagels (at least, not until they came here, I suppose)? That bikini- I may have to put out my eyes with a poker.

Crossposted to Jewschool


Well here's one answer, anyway: Hattip to Danya Ruttenberg/Jerusalem Syndrome!

Hold your nose

I'm indulging in a moment of parental pride.
Maiyan (2.5) has done the following things recently:
-Recited the Shema by himself at bedtime
-Saw a bunch of pvc tubing lying around on a soccer field and noted: "Abba, those are sukkah parts!"
-Offered to give me his entire chocolate scone (since I wasn't there, he sent it home with Abba, who probably shouldn't have bought it for him in the first place. Like he doesn't get enough junk food.)
-Pulled on my sweater towards him and insisted, "Ema, mine!" during amoment of grabby two year old ness.
-Zipped his own pj's up.

Women, Know your limits!

I've been posting far too many videos lately, I know. I suppose this is just the current fad for me (Daf snippets came and went. I think I'll try to get back to that soon, as it at least has some content to it). But this is really funny, an also a really terrific conversation starter if you want to lead a class on talk about brain differences. Okay, I know not everyone who reads this blog does that, but I have, and really I wish I had had this video then!

I can't imagine that I need to actually make a comment on this...

Better pray for "the rapture..."

OK, I know mash-ups are now the hot thing, but still where else will you get to read a mash-up of marvel comics and one of those wacko Christian religious tracts (they also are good for sving and handing out to door-to- door political blatherers. And vice versa. REcycling is very important, and it clears out your doorway quick when you produce political materials for religious folks, too, just invite them in to hear your theory of why they need to vote for your favorite nutty local candidate, but I digress).
Just remember: Galactacus is coming!



(Tip o' the hat to BoingBoing)

Complaint as Art form....no, really.

Thanks to Owlmother via Danya.

The Helsinki Complaints Choir
a choral work written by Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen.

The Complaints Choir invites people to complain as much as they want and to sing their complaints out loud together with fellow complainers. The first choir was organised in Birmingham followed by the Complaints Choir of Helsinki and Hamburg. The lyrics were written by the Choir, Music by Mike Hurley. Project by Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen. You can see the Birmingham choir here, but embedding is disabled. It's also got a cute little rap in the middle.

Speaking of Punk...

Well, sort of. Danielle Dax, whom I remember from the beginning of my interest in punk, was probably not really punk at all, or just the edges (although Wikipedia sort of thinks so...)still, she was experimental, and I still don't mind listening to her music, although it doesn't quite carry the punch that made Joan Jett an icon.

Here's a taste of what I could find.


Cathouse




A Cover of Tomorrow Never Knows. Not bad!

ROCKville grrls

So now that I live in Rockville (place about which REM wrote "Don't go back to Rockville") and have for some reason once again fallen in love with the punk I was listening to, hrmm, let's say at the tail end of DC's harDCore run in the late 80's, (the origin in fact of the riot grrl movement, so no surprise that we've spawned a lot of grrls here in DC -in Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital, Mark Andersen says Bratmobile member Jen Smith reacted to the racially charged riots in Mount Pleasant during spring of '91 by writing, "This summer's going to be a girl riot," and that's what is thought to be the origin of the entire phenom. According to Wikipedia, "The musical birth of the Riot Grrl movement centered in Olympia, Washington where the members of Bikini Kill and Bratmobile met, but soon also encompassed Washington DC. " and there was even a riot grrl convention in DC) and started listening to it again, perhaps not quite as obsessively, I have to post that OTHER (besides myself, I mean :) )Rockville grrl icon, - Joan Jett!

Hers was the first album I ever bought for myself (I Love Rock 'n' Roll)
First in her earlier incarnation as a member of The Runaways


School Days

and later Rock 'n' roll icon with the Blackhearts


Cherry Bomb



I Hate Myself For Loving You


Bad Reputation

And for those of us who grew up listening to the Orioles on radio (watch baseball? Are you crazy? Not unless I have seat in the stands) Cal Ripkin Jr is apparently also a fan (She sang the national anthem by request of Baltimore Oriole Cal Ripkin Jr. at the game where he broke Lou Gehrig’s record).


I love Rock N Roll

Joan Jett still rules!
(If only she was Jewish, too, I could have hit all my favorite topics in one post)

Finally, Someone non-Jewish has to worry about this question...

"...Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke cited Webster's Dictionary as well as testimony from a chef and a former high-ranking federal agriculture official in ruling that Qdoba's burritos and other offerings are not sandwiches.

The difference, the judge ruled, comes down to two slices of bread versus one tortilla."

The battle has raged on for some time now (especially in areas where Jews eat lots of tortillas), about whether or not tortillas are bread. I have always held that for purposes of motzi, they are, but now that civil law has taken this on, I am relieved that the question does not rest squarely on my shoulders and that of other rabbis.

Full story here...

Jewish Girls Really Love a Good Bra

I tell ya' what, I'm not even posting the vid here. But I'll give you the perma link where I saw it. It's really funny, but my blog is becoming just a little too risque these days.

Besides, her comments already say pretty much everything I would have added (So…many…reactions…
How offensive…
How true…
Hey, Australian JGirls sure are cute…
Did I pay my Victoria’s Secret bill on time?
Do The Buggles know about this?)

More than a tip o' the hat to Yo!Yenta.



Eh, wot. It's funny. I'm such a sucker for this sortof thing. Pretend I'm not a rabbi, okay?

Does she kiss her mother with that mouth?

My own connection to dear Babs comes only through the fact that as a teenager, people used to tell me that I looked like her and that my sister did a spectacularly funny imitation of the Saturday Nightlive routine (Why we love Babs: her thighs are like butta) back when SNL was still funny. But apparently the old girl has some life in her yet.
When someone recently heckled Babs (that's Barbra Streisand to you all non-fans out there) about her comedic portrayal of George Bush, she responded quite er, forcefully, with some words that mean something nice, but are only used in a not-nice way, shall we say. Now, Revolucien has set it to a beat, and you can dance to it.
Go Babs. Not for the easily offended, or probably even those who are in the mid-range. Also it goes on just a hair too long. Link at your own risk.

Ow! Don't cut me with that edge!

I offer only a question in this post. With all the debate about Judaism's viability, in the end, for most of us it comes down to God. SO I ask you, if we are looking to the future, -and let's assume for the sake of argumentthat Judaism is surviving, and perhaps even thriving- what is the future. What are the frontiers of Jewish thought, and where is God in them. I've been asked to write on this, and I have some firm ideas, but I want to hear from you.
Write to me and tell me what you think.

Today is apparently my day for humourous illegality

OK, no really, I'm not advocating growing pot anywhere. Especially not in your computer. But.... you've got to admire the ingenuity here.

It's as easy to love a rich man as a poor one

This post on Jewschool refers to an essay that appears this week in the New York Times (“Modern Love” ). It's a terribly sad essay, mostly because the author simply has no idea what it is she has given up. She quotes the old proverb that it's as easy to fall in love witha rich man as a poor one, and follows up with the comment that it's not easy to fall in love at all. And she's right, but also completely wrong. She's misunderstood the point of the proverb - that one should set up one's life in a way that will make it possible to live out one's values. If you want to fall in love with someone who is well-off, supposing that's your value, then don't date paupers, because paupers, too are lovable. If you think that Judaism is important, then don't date non-Jews, beause non-Jews are every bit as lovable as Jews are. The proverb is true -it's nothing to do with the person on the receiving end - it's all about the internal drive of the seeker. If you want to be a doctor, you have to at least set yourself up so that you can acquire the education, do the residency, take the exams.


But in another way she's right, and the commenter on Jewschool was way wrong.
This has nothing to do with Indie minyans. For the most part those going to the indie minyans are the success stories. The problem is that this poor woman's parents never gave her a darn thing. She had to find, as an adult, a bunch of letters in a script she could not read that were a last call across the years of people she understood not at all. But she's right; that's not a reason to be Jewish. It has, in fact, zero relationship to Judaism. It's about nazis, not about Jews. The Holocaust obsession that we have developed amongst our tribe, here, in Israel, wherever it pops up, is not only not Judaism, it is biting us, quite sharply, on the A**.
Every person told that the Holocaust has something to do with Judaism is being misled about what Judaism is. It is no more Judaism than being kneaded is what it means to be wheat (not all wheat is kneaded into bread, and even if it were, that's tnot the defining characteristic). It's just a historical accident. It's not even an unprecedented one - in scope only is it staggering, not in intent. Our ancestors already struggled -more than once, by the way- with meaning to come out of senseless slaughter (just take a good look at our canonical writings - say, the Talmud, on the destruction of the Temple), every person who goes around saying that God has something special to answer for can be forgivin only if they themselves were directly affected by the loss, because grief is a great burden, but those of us who were one step removed ought to be reexamining (at most) our traditions, laws and writings for the meaning, which has been struggled with often before.
It makes me sad to see people like this poor woman, who is completely innocent of not what THE meaning of Judaism is, but of any meaning of Judaism. In my opinion, she is quite right to have married her Dubliner - those people who claim that Judaism is racist for not marrying out are correct - when they are talking about those who refuse to marry non-Jews *just because they're Jewish, but they don't know anything about Judaism.*
Jewish life has a purpose. Without that purpose then we are not anything more than Italians, or Irish, or people with any other interesting accent -lacking the accent, after assimilation, there isn't anything special about our heritage. Bagels and lox is not Judaism (not even, forgive me, whitefish). The holocaust is not Judaism. Israel (the state) is not even Judaism (although it is a necessary part of Judaism, as a place, and as people living in a place, and as our brothers and sisters, as our inheritance from God, but that inheritance comes with a price - it's not free). I'm not going to spell out what the mission is here - that takes more than a few sentences, because if it were easy, why would you need an entire nation set apart to do it?- but you can't do it without knowledge. The knowledge doesn't *have* to be instilled early - many have chosen new souls and joined themselves to our people -in fact, some of them have become the greatest and most holy of our people. But like learning a language, fluency can be dependant upon an early start - the earlier the better. This poor girl in the article - is a mute, when it comes to Judaism, who can only at best, hear the words echoing from an earlier time, but not speak back. She is no longer able to be part of the conversation between her ancestors and God.

Wish I'd thought of it first....

The Sukkot Shake


OK, I stole this from Yo! Yenta who herself posted it pretty quickly from another source, but hey, dang, it's great! This is the best of the high holiday flicks I've seen yet!

Baruch Dayan Emet

A friend informed me this morning that my former classmate Abby Spivak died. Abby and I weren't close - we knew each other from being in school together, from having mutual friends, and eating quite a few shabbat dinners together. Nevertheless, at a seminary as small as Ziegler, even people you don't know well, you know pretty well.

I have a class A bullshit detector. It's very sensitive. I can detect bullshit at 30 paces in a dark room of a perfume factory. Abby never set it off. Not once. Abby was one of the genuinely sweetest souls I have ever encountered. Sometimes things she said were naive, but her naivete was not the kind that comes from stupidity. Perhaps it was the Gillman second naivete. I'm not precisely sure, but I know that she spent a lot of her time as a rabbinical student - and long before- workingwith the very ill -AIDS patients - before AIDS was trendy, with children with very special needs, and with those who were ill.
Abby spent the last few years in and out of hospitals, having far too many surgeries on a body that she had struggled with even before she knew the extent of her illness. She was not, ultimately, able to be ordained, but Abby was certainly, and without question a rav.

In the Torah, Noah is described as an "Ish tzadik tamim b'dorotaiv" a righteous man, wholehearted in his generation. What is this tamim? Later, Jacob is described as an ish tam - a person unable to deceive - it seems to me that when we call a person "tam" we mean that they are undivided. Their insides match their outsides, they are genuine. Abby spent her life ministering to the very ill, to those who struggled to live, whose lives were difficult. Her own was no piece of cake, either, and she surely knew, after all that time spent with the ill and the dying, what the future held for her, but her soul was filled with light, and whatever has happened to her body, her "tam-ness," that wholeness that she brought to the world, continues to live and shine.

לְךָ דֻמִיָּה תְהִלָּה

Over the not yet too distant Yamim Noraim, I was taken by something I hadn't noticed previously. I don't quite know why not, it's pretty obvious when you start looking forit: Everywhere you look in the readings for not just Yom Kippur, but over the yamim noraim, the silence is palpable.
God is silent, prophets are silent, we are silent. What kindof silence is this, and why? Why is everyone so quiet?


The first two lines of the Yom Kippur reading come from Leviticus 16:1-2;

1 The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the presence of the Lord. 2 The Lord said to Moses:
Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud over the cover
פרשת אחרי מות[ א וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָֹה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה אַֽחֲרֵי מוֹת שְׁנֵי בְּנֵי אַֽהֲרֹן בְּקָרְבָתָם לִפְנֵֽי־יְהוָֹה וַיָּמֻֽתוּ: ב וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה דַּבֵּר אֶל־אַֽהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ וְאַל־יָבֹא בְכָל־עֵת אֶל־הַקֹּדֶשׁ מִבֵּית לַפָּרֹכֶת אֶל־פְּנֵי הַכַּפֹּרֶת אֲשֶׁר עַל־הָֽאָרֹן וְלֹא יָמוּת כִּי בֶּֽעָנָן אֵֽרָאֶה עַל־הַכַּפֹּֽרֶת:

These lines refer to a story that actually occurred three parshiot earlier (in the regular yearly cycle) the story of the death of Aaron’s sons in parshat shemini, which appers here:
Leviticus Chapter 10
1. And Nadav and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took each of them his censer, and put fire in it, and put incense on it, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. 2. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. 3. Then Moses said to Aaron, This is what the Lord spoke, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come near to me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.
וַיִּקְחוּ בְנֵֽי־אַֽהֲרֹן נָדָב וַֽאֲבִיהוּא אִישׁ מַחְתָּתוֹ וַיִּתְּנוּ בָהֵן אֵשׁ וַיָּשִֹימוּ עָלֶיהָ קְטֹרֶת וַיַּקְרִיבוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹה אֵשׁ זָרָה אֲשֶׁר לֹא צִוָּה אֹתָֽם: ב וַתֵּצֵא אֵשׁ מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָֹה וַתֹּאכַל אוֹתָם וַיָּמֻתוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹֽה: ג וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶֽל־אַֽהֲרֹן הוּא אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּר יְהוָֹה | לֵאמֹר בִּקְרֹבַי אֶקָּדֵשׁ וְעַל־פְּנֵי כָל־הָעָם אֶכָּבֵד וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן:



What is the relationship between these two parts of the same story? And what have they to do with Yom Kippur?
Aaron held his peace. Really what is says is "vayidom Aharon."
The first part of the story of Aaron’s sons ends with Aaron’s silence. וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן
The word "yidom" is from duma, or dumiya, both words referring to silence, or stillness.There are many words for silence in the Torah and Talmud. The Talmud for example offers the famous axiom in Baba metzia 37b
שתיקה כהודאה
Sometimes rendered Shtika k’hodaya damya – silence is like consent. Shtika – meaning quiet.
The medieval commentator Sforno teaches “When a person has the ability to protest and remains silent, his silence is similar to verbal consent. When you do not say something to disagree, it is as if you agree with what was said or done.”
And in fact some commentators accept this as Aaron’s response – his silence is assent to God’s awesomeness and power – he is accepting the fate of his sons as an act of submission.

We find an equivalence between this word shtika and that verb we find in Aaron’s response. In the Talmud Megilah 18a, we find the following:
דרש רבי יהודה איש כפר גבוריא, ואמרי לה איש כפר גבור חיל: מאי דכתיב )תהלים ס"ה( לך דמיה תהלה ־ סמא דכולה משתוקא. כי אתא רב דימי אמר: אמרי במערבא: מלה ־ בסלע, משתוקא ־ בתרין.
R. Judah a man of Kefar Gibboraya, or, as some say, of Kefar Gibbor Hayil, gave the following homily: What is meant by the verse, For you silence is praise?
The best medicine of all is silence.
When R. Dimi came, he said: In the West they say: A word is worth a sela', silence two sela's.

But how could this be applied to our situation? The verse quotes above from psalms is usually translated in context something like “Praise awaits You (O Lord, In Zion)” but here the word dumiya is translated as silence, rendering our verse: "To You, silence is praise" (Psalms 65:2)
לְךָ דֻמִיָּה תְהִלָּה

Onkelus renders the term Vayidom in our story as "silence:" Aharon was silent. However there is another tradition as referenced in the Torah shlemah with an alternative reading of the Targum; instead of ushatik - silence, "Ushavach Aharon" - Aharon praised God.
The Rambam (commentary to the Mishna, Avot 3:3, Kapach Edition) cites this reading of the Targum.
The Rambam compares this verse to Melachim I, 19:12 "And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still (D'mamah) small voice" - clearly not silence, but perhaps implying stillness or a sense of serenity and a revelation. Rambam understands the term as denoting a quiet or secretive communication; if this is silence then it is a silence with sound. Likewise the Rambam teaches that this is the understanding of the use of the word "vayidom" in connection with Aharon: "Ushavach Aharon" - Aharon softly praised God.
This approach is supported by a passage in the Sifri (Piska 58) that compares the verse in Melachim ("...and after the fire a still (D'mamah) small voice") and the phrase "Vayidom Aharon": According to the Sifri, both indicate a type of revelation. To paraphrase the Sifri, "when God speaks, man is silent". Aharon's silence seems to be a response to some Divine statement; what emerged was an inaudible word of praise.

But I find this at best far fetched. To me, Aaron's silence is the silence of the cowed. We love to sy, "Speak truth to power" but what about whenthe power is God - or at least, inthis case, Moses representing what he thiks God's opinion is.
I remember as a child, occasionally I would do something that my father did not like, and his response to was to yell questions like "What do you think you were doing?!" at me. Of course, there is no possible rational answer to such a question, but that's in part because the asker isn't really seeking information, but simply trying to impress upon you what they think you ought to have done.

Rashi links the silence of Aharon with a revelation, explaining that Aharon remained silent - something which was extremely difficult to do - and was consequently rewarded for his silence:
"And Aharon was silent" - He received a reward for his silence; and what was the reward he received? That the subsequent Divine address was made to him alone and not to Moshe also for to him alone was spoken the section (10:8-11) dealing with those who are intoxicated by wine.(4) (See Zevachim: 115b) [Rashi 10:3]
IN my opinion, this at least recognizes that Aaron was not silencing himself internally, not open to some great revelation, achieving great heights, but instead was permorming a kind of submission to God's will, understood or not.

The Ba'al haTurim points out that the only other time in Tanach that the word "Vayidom" is used with the same spelling is to be found in the book of Yehoshua:
"And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed" (Yehoshua 10:13)
The Talmud teaches that Moshe is compared to the sun:
"The countenance of Moshe was like that of the sun; the countenance of Yehoshua was like that of the moon." (Bava Batra 75a)

It's an interesting image, the two men unnaturally still, as if the sun and moon had ceased to move. Some have interpreted this connection as offering the idea that onthis one occasino Aaron rose to the heights of Moses, similar to Rambam's idea, but I think that this is unlikely. Rather, let's say the sun and moon actually stood still - what would that mean - that the earth had stopped rotating, and the moon's orbit becme fixed; this is not a scenario in which life on earth can remain very long. A stopped earth woudl quickly become uninhabitable, and it is this image that I take away: Aaron stunned into immobility, and Moses staring at him, also struck - until he stammers out some sort of foolishnes about God's will, and everyone is freed to go on, however damaged, the earth again begins to turn, the moon, to orbit.

I think that in fact, the dumiya of Aaron is more related to two other Biblical silences. The first is from the first Book of Kings.
Kings I
19:11. And he said, Go out, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

יא וַיֹּאמֶר צֵא וְעָֽמַדְתָּ בָהָר לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה וְהִנֵּה יְהֹוָה עֹבֵר וְרוּחַ גְּדוֹלָה וְחָזָק מְפָרֵק הָרִים וּמְשַׁבֵּר סְלָעִים לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה לֹא בָרוּחַ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָרוּחַ רַעַשׁ לֹא בָרַעַשׁ יְהֹוָֽה: יב וְאַחַר הָרַעַשׁ אֵשׁ לֹא בָאֵשׁ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָאֵשׁ קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּֽה:


The second is from the close of the book of Jonah, the haftarah for mincha on Yom Kippur.

Here are the last two chapters of Jonah – the whole book is only four, and there are only 21 lines, so although I won't include the whole story, thisis short enough to keep, so you don't have to go running off to look it up.:

Yona Chapter 3

1. And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying: Arise!
2. Go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I bid you.
3. And Jonah arose, and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. And Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in extent.
4. And Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Another forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
5. And the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
6. And word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he took off his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
7. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying: Neither man, beast, herd or flock should taste anything! They should not feed nor drink water!
8. And let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; let them turn everyone from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
9. Who can tell if God may yet turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, so that we perish not?
10. And God saw their doings, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, which he had said that he would do to them; and he did not do it.

Yona Chapter 4

1. And this displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
2. And he prayed to the Lord, and said, I pray you, O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I hastened to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and that you repent of the evil.
3. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I pray you, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.
4. Then says the Lord, Do you do well to be so angry?
5. And Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there he made himself a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he should see what would become of the city.
6. And the Lord God appointed a castor oil plant, and made it grow over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to save him from his distress. And Jonah was exceedingly glad of the plant.
7. And, when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm, and it attacked the plant so that it withered.
8. And it came to pass, when the sun rose, that God appointed a hot east wind; and the sun beat down upon the head of Jonah, so that he fainted, and wished to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.
9. And God said to Jonah: Do you do well to be so angry for the plant? And he said: I do well to be so angry, even to death.
10. Then the Lord said, You had concern for the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night;
11. And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, where there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

In the JPS Bible Commentary on the book of Jonah, Uriel Simon writes: "The designation of Jonah as the haftarah for the Afternoon Service of the Day of Atonement (B. Megillah 31a) reflects the view that this book depicts the concept of repentance so starkly and completely that it can stir hearers to repent their ways and even modify their conduct."1Uriel Simon, The JPS Bible Commentary: Jonah (Phila-delphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1999), vii.

The book of Jonah in Nevi'im (Prophets) is shorter than most other books in the Hebrew Scriptures. A mere four chapters in length, the book ends with Jonah's silence -- and the reader is waiting for him to respond.
And the story ends. Jonah is silent. What does his silence mean? Is שתיקה כהודאה ?

It is possible to interpret Jonah's silence as repentance?
On Yom Kippur, we read the entire book including Jonah's silence. Even though the rabbis include Jonah's silence as part of the Yom Kippur reading, the rabbis appended Micah 7:18-20 to the end of Jonah: "Who is like you, forgiving iniquity and pardoning the transgression of the remnant of Your people? You do not maintain anger forever, but You delight in lovingkind-ness. You will again have compassion upon us, subduing our sins, casting all of our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and enduring love to Abraham as You promised our fathers from days of old." By appending this Micah text, the rabbis made it appear as if Jonah is no longer silent.
But our original text doesn't tell us what Jonah thinks. Although God isn't silent, Jonah certainly is. And unlike the silence of Aaron we don't have the silence spelt out - it is simply an absence. Itis curioustht these two passages are linked by the Tanchuma to the Akedah directly. It essentially says thatJonah is a sulky little brat, expecting happiness - whyy shold he behappy, when even God's great friend, Abraham, was not?

Let’s go back to that section from the book of Kings for a minute.

This time, I want to bring a little more of the passage:


ט וַיָּֽבֹא־שָׁם אֶל־הַמְּעָרָה וַיָּלֶן שָׁם וְהִנֵּה דְבַר־יְהֹוָה אֵלָיו וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ מַה־לְּךָ פֹה אֵֽלִיָּֽהוּ: י וַיֹּאמֶר קַנֹּא קִנֵּאתִי לַֽיהֹוָה | אֱלֹהֵי צְבָאוֹת כִּֽי־עָֽזְבוּ בְרִֽיתְךָ בְּנֵי יִשְֹרָאֵל אֶת־מִזְבְּחֹתֶיךָ הָרָסוּ וְאֶת־נְבִיאֶיךָ הָֽרְגוּ בֶחָרֶב וָֽאִוָּתֵר אֲנִי לְבַדִּי וַיְבַקְשׁוּ אֶת־נַפְשִׁי לְקַחְתָּֽהּ: יא וַיֹּאמֶר צֵא וְעָֽמַדְתָּ בָהָר לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה וְהִנֵּה יְהֹוָה עֹבֵר וְרוּחַ גְּדוֹלָה וְחָזָק מְפָרֵק הָרִים וּמְשַׁבֵּר סְלָעִים לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה לֹא בָרוּחַ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָרוּחַ רַעַשׁ לֹא בָרַעַשׁ יְהֹוָֽה: יב וְאַחַר הָרַעַשׁ אֵשׁ לֹא בָאֵשׁ יְהֹוָה וְאַחַר הָאֵשׁ קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּֽה: יג וַיְהִי | כִּשְׁמֹעַ אֵֽלִיָּהוּ וַיָּלֶט פָּנָיו בְּאַדַּרְתּוֹ וַיֵּצֵא וַֽיַּֽעֲמֹד פֶּתַח הַמְּעָרָה וְהִנֵּה אֵלָיו קוֹל וַיֹּאמֶר מַה־לְּךָ פֹה אֵֽלִיָּֽהוּ: יד וַיֹּאמֶר קַנֹּא קִנֵּאתִי לַֽיהֹוָה | אֱלֹהֵי צְבָאוֹת כִּֽי־עָֽזְבוּ בְרִֽיתְךָ בְּנֵי יִשְֹרָאֵל אֶת־מִזְבְּחֹתֶיךָ הָרָסוּ וְאֶת־נְבִיאֶיךָ הָֽרְגוּ בֶחָרֶב וָֽאִוָּתֵר אֲנִי לְבַדִּי וַיְבַקְשׁוּ אֶת־נַפְשִׁי לְקַחְתָּֽהּ: טו וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֵלָיו לֵךְ שׁוּב לְדַרְכְּךָ מִדְבַּרָה דַמָּשֶֹק וּבָאתָ וּמָֽשַׁחְתָּ אֶת־חֲזָאֵל לְמֶלֶךְ עַל־אֲרָֽם
9. And he came there to a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? 10. And he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword; and I am the only one left; and they seek my life, to take it away. 11. And he said, Go out, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. 13. And it was so, when Elijah heard it that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entrance of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice to him, and said, What are you doing here, Elijah? 14. And he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; because the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword; and I am the only one left; and they seek my life, to take it away. 15. And the Lord said to him, Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when you come, anoint Hazael to be king over Aram; 16. And Jehu the son of Nimshi shall you anoint to be king over Israel; and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah shall you anoint to be prophet in your place.

What do you notice that’s odd about the passage?
The curious thing is that God doesn’t really respond, quite, to Elijah’s complaint. He wants God to make it better and stop people from persecuting him, but does God promise this? Later in the verse, God promises Elijah the idolators will be killed but he doesn’t really offer any safety to Elijah, at least not obviously

Rabbi Noton Sternhartz talks a bit about silence in his
Likutei Halachos, Hilchos Shabbos, Halachos 6 and 7
http://www.nachalnovea.com/breslovcenter/articles/article_shabboswithin.html
This is good advice for all the difficulties we may encounter: we should simply nullify ourselves for a time, and remind ourselves of the Ultimate Reality. Anyone in the world, without exception, can accomplish this, and thus merge into the Infinite Divine Light. It is impossible to explain this further; for "everyone must understand according to what remains in his heart" (Zohar I, 103b). Nevertheless, all Israel believes that this is the ultimate spiritual goal, and our hope for all eternity. Every person, whatever he may be, whatever may happen to him, can nullify himself to God, even in the midst of his confusions and problems. This is the paradigm of Shabbos, the paradigm of rest (sh'visah) and cessation. Through this, we can destroy all disturbing thoughts, all intellectual entanglements and false wisdoms, and direct all of our doings toward the Ultimate Reality that is beyond time and change. This is the aspect of Shabbos and the principle that "the mind is nourished first." That is, our eating and mundane activities, even the necessity of attending to our physical needs, should be directed to the Shabbos alone: to true wisdom and the Essence of the mind.
For the Shabbos transcends speech  yet all speech comes forth from the Shabbos. It is the supernal silence above speech, the paradigm of "the fence for wisdom (chochmah) is silence" (Avos 3:13). Kabbalistically, this corresponds to the Sefirah of Kesser ("Divine Crown"). In terms of our Divine service, it corresponds to the quality of waiting. For speech is bound up with the Sefirah of Chochmah (wisdom), as the verse states, "God will give wisdom, from His mouth..." (Proverbs 2:6). However, [wisdom and speech] spring forth from the Sefirah of Kesser, the transcendent silence, the "fence for wisdom." This is why we must be silent before we speak, when we need to collect our thoughts. Similarly, we must pause between words, however slightly. As our sages state, "If a word is worth one coin, silence is worth two" (Megilla 18a); for silence is both the source of speech and its tikkun (spiritual rectification). This concept also is suggested by the verse that refers to "a wise man (chacham) among the silent, understanding whispered mysteries" (Isaiah 3:3). Thus, speech is elicited from the paradigm of the Shabbos that corresponds to the Sefirah of Kesser, the aspect of the "covering of coverings," which is the mystery of silence.

I don't really know how to finish here. We have recently become interested as Jews inmeditatin and eastern -especially Buddhist- spirituality. IN these religions, silence, quiet mind, meditation, are positive goods, the eradication of the self and the conquering of desire. But I'm not sure that -despite Rabbi Noton's words- thatsilence is much more complex than we wantto credit. Silence is not always quiet mind, and even if one might find it good, in my opinion, byu labelling silence as an unmitigated positive, we lose track of theother kinds of silence that we encounter in our lives: the silence of oppression, the silence of fear, thesilence of shock - and all of these are silences that we live with in this imperfect world.

On the other hand, we often talk about God’s silence when we have to struggle with difficult things, but I think it’s worth also thinking about our own. We are silent all the time, to God, and though we often try to cast it as neutral, or even positive, I think more often, when we say silence is worth two selas, we are covering up shtika k’hodaya- we are covering up our acquiescence in the way things are. I wonder what Aaron might have said to God, what protest he might have made in his heart?
I also wonder, if that lack of protest is in fact, why in our reading on Yom Kippur morning, the memoy of Aaron’s silence is revisited, if not mentioned. And how does God respond to Aaron’s silence on Yom Kippur morning?
The Lord said to Moses:
Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud over the cover
Then he gives him explicit directions as to how he can come into the holy of holies…with the sacrifices not only for the people, but first for himself. SO perhaps our last question should be, what is God’s response to Aaron’s silence?


It’s worth noting that the connection between Yom Kippur and silence falls in another way as well.

VII. Psalm 115 (17) (is one place among others) which we read daily, makes explicit the connection between silence and death
. יז לֹֽא־הַמֵּתִים יְהַֽלְלוּ־יָהּ וְלֹא כָּל־יֹרְדֵי דוּמָֽה
17. The dead cannot praise the Lord, nor can any who go down into silence.

Yom Kippur makes that tension evident

But perhaps the most profound connection between death and Yom Kippur is the mysterious claim The Talmud makes for both of them. Yom Hakippurim atzmo m'caper, u'mitah mcaperet. Both Yom Kippur and death themselves, atone. We say the vidui, the final confession, on two occasions in our lives -- on Yom Kippur and on the day of our death. The word for atonement -- caparah -- means a covering over. Death is a covering over. And Jonah, Abraham and Aaron, all in their silence are covered over, in their pain, in their protest, and maybe we in ours, on Yom Kippur, when we are shocked into silence, are also staring death in the face, struck mute, our hearts struck mute, made silent so that we can face death, and in silence and pain, find forgiveness.

Capitol of Punk

There's a fabulous site at Yellow Arrow which offers an interactive I dunno, what would you call it, cyber walking tour of the 70's and 80's locations for the Washington D.C. punk scene. It has video podcasts with interviews and music, and reminds me of many an ill-spent teenage night with my first love. We've still friends, and thankfully memories remain sweet, so I'll make sure we reminisce of mosh pits and sweat until late into the morning.

Not to be missed. via BoingBoing

D.C.'c harDCore scene birthed among others Bad Brains, Void, The Faith, Dag Nasty, Black Market Baby and Minor Threat, and later Fugazi was a major player. I have to admit, I haven't done the whole tour yet, but I am mystified by the apparent absence of the Slickee Boys - someone: fill in this gap! I also want to give a second-hand shout out to Ian Svenonius, who in addition to his musicianship, is also the son of the infamous philosophy professor, Dr. Lars Svenonius.

HardCore seems to be enjoying a mini revival, as a book came out a couple of years ago (2003)
Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital by Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkins (Paperback - Aug 1, 2003), which mentions my favorite bands promiscuously.

There's also a 1988 book on the DC punk scene:
Banned in D C: Photos and Anecdotes from the Dc Punk Underground by Cynthia Connolly, Sharon Cheslow, and Leslie Clague (Paperback - Nov 1, 1988) although I can't vouch for whether it's good or not.