Tze u'lmad

When I was in rabbinical school, the morning of erev Rosh Hashanah of my second year, my car had a mechanical failure and it rolled off a cliff. Those of you who read my blog probably know this story already, and so I won’t repeat it – and in any case, it’s a Rosh Hashanah story, not a shabbat haGadol story. But what happened afterward, that is a shabbat haGadol story.
I walked away from that accident, and right after the chagim, returned to class to the wonder of my classmates, who had all seen my car, which was, off course, totaled. My classmates and professors were all a little ginger with me. Yet, obviously, I was physically unhurt, and so, after a few tedious rounds of “did you feel like God did a miracle for you?” (The answer, for the record is, “no,” which is probably yet another dvar for another day) most of us went back to normal. But after a few months, when everyone but me had forgotten about it, I felt compelled to go see one of my teachers.

This teacher is a bit eccentric, even by fairly generous standards of eccentricity. Yet, something about him let me know that there was something deeper to him than he wanted to let on generally. So I went to him one day after class, and told him that I had been having what were sort of wide awake dreams, or maybe something akin to a sense of déjà vu – I didn’t know what to call it, exactly: I would have moments when I was sitting in class, or was about to fall asleep at night, or I was shopping at the grocery, when I was convinced that I had not actually walked away from the car accident. That in fact, perhaps I was still falling at that very moment, and in precursor to my death, I was living out a whole life in my mind. Or that I had already died, and didn’t yet know it –I was a sort of ghost, still walking.
I didn’t really know how to explain it – perhaps I still don’t. After all, nothing really bad had happened to me in that accident. I had walked away from it – had I not? My rav asked me about the experience – he was surprised to hear that in fact, I hadn’t passed out while falling, but was conscious the whole way down, through all the rolling.

As you may guess, his answer did nothing to stop these moments of unreality. They continued for months afterward – in fact, I occasionally still have them, although not nearly as often as I used to.
You may by now be wondering what all this has to do with the portion. This week, we read the portion of tzav, which is about korbanot – sacrifices.

Most of us look at anything that has to do with sacrifices, and our eyes just glaze right over. A whole portion of nothing but this -well, it doesn’t bode well for those of us not inflicted with insomnia.
But, what are the sacrifices, really? The word korban, itself, comes from karev- to draw close to. And indeed, the purpose of korbanot are to help us draw close to God.

Why aren’t we close to God? What is it that poisons the soul? What is it that makes us too tired to live Jewishly, to pray with joy, to make our connections to one another and to Our Great Beloved Friend? What could possibly make us feel that it isn’t worth the bother?
The rabbis tell us that it is nothing but hirhurim – the murmurings of the heart. What are the murmurings of the heart? Turning aside from God? Idolatry? Some rabbis looked at them as an outside force – something that enters us to distance us from God.
I want to suggest that hirhurim aren’t really those things at all. Hirhurim, murmurings, are those things which fill up our minds with noise and static, and so distance us from ourselves, God and the world. This is why the rabbis viewed that as an embodiment of the evil inclination. They are those things that make us say, “what’s the difference?” or, “I’m busy right now – maybe later,” about talking to our children, God or our friends and neighbors; about doing mitzvot, making an attempt to ameliorate a large problem – like poverty, or Darfur. They can be caused by all kinds of things – big incidents, like an accident or trauma, or small details building up upon us so that we finally are buried under them, like housework, or our jobs and errands. They prevent us from seeing one another, ourselves, and God for all the dust they stir up, and the cobwebs they lay down over our vision.

The Chasidic rabbi Rabbi Shalom Noach, the Slonimer Rebbe, commented in Netivot Shalom that
The olah came to atone for the murmurs of the heart. And behold, it says … there’s a story that one person was in a great forest and wanted to cut down all the trees in order to build there a city, and he began to cut one tree down, until he saw that his days would end and still he would not have finished, since the numbers were beyond counting. What did he do? He lit a great flame of fire that burned and cut down all the trees at one time. So with a Jew whose bad thoughts wage war [upon him] behold, when this thought is removed, another thought will come to be beneath it and his days will end and the thoughts will not end, and his etzato (a pun on advice and trees) is to light a great flame, a flaming, blazing fire of God, and the holy fire burns and consumes all the ideas of bad thoughts. And this is the inyan (point) of fire of the altar, the fire of holiness, that this is the torah of the olah to atone for murmurings of the heart, by means of holy fire, fire of torah and fire of serving God, that only with the power of the holy fire of the altar that burns and consumes all thoughts is it possible to purify [oneself of] the murmurings of the heart.

In other words, the fire on the altar, is a fire that should light not sacrifices, but us – it is we who should be on fire.
Perhaps I heard a muted gasp about the comment that advocates burning a huge forest to the ground – but really it’s an apt metaphor- let’s say it isn’t a city that we want to build in its place, but a healthy forest: pine bush is a kind of environmental niche which requires fire very regularly in order to survive. Without fire, underbrush and dead wood buils up and prevents young plants from getting enough sun, and new life and growth cannot begin. The entire ecosystem begins to founder; it needs the fire to clean out the trash so that the young fresh life can have room to take seed and root and to grow.


The second verse of our portion reads,
זֹאת תּוֹרַת הָֽעֹלָה

This is the Torah of the ha-olah, the burnt offering. But the midrash reads it
( Vayikra 6:2) This is the Torah of the one who goes up - ha- oleh. Whenever someone raises himself up, his end is to go into the fire (Midrash tehillim 11:5). R. Moshe of Kobrin explains:
“This is the Torah of the burnt offering (Olah) – the way to ascend in Torah study is by remaining ‘on the altar’ – by studying with fervor – with a holy flame.”

This comment on the olah reminded me of a phrase which is used many times in the Talmud – the way that a rabbinical scholar is referred to in the Talmud is as a “tzurba merabbanan” – literally “one who is on fire from the rabbis.” In tractate -Ta'anit (4a), it says, “If a young scholar - tzurba mrabbanan- gets into a rage it is because the Torah inflames him, as it is said [in the Torah in Jeremiah], Is not my word like fire? said the Lord.(Jer. 23:29)”

What is the way to go up? It is to become tzurba merabbanan. To light oneself on fire, every day and not let the fire go out. To clean out our minds by means of passion, by studying – as a kind of meditation that focuses us on the dialogue between Jew and God.

We are used to thinking of scholars as rather dry people, alone in their hidey-holes, poring away at some arcane bit which can’t possibly have any relevance to one’s life. And it’s true that some are – but that’s not the Jewish tradition. The Jewish tradition of scholarship is, for one, not for the elite. It’s for everyone. That’s why the Talmud requires a scholar to live only in a place where there is a teacher for the young. That’s why Jews were one of the first cultures with public education.

To study is shmirat hanefesh – guarding one’s soul. For the soul is not something which need no tending. It is a gift, but a gift of a very special kind, like the pitch pines of Louisiana, which require fire to reseed itself. It must be burnt to the ground, and yet doing so, it never “goes out.” In order to grow, to see the sunshine, one must light a fresh fire, to release new seeds and begin new growth.

The sensation I had of being still stuck in that moment when my car went over a cliff – the feeling that perhaps I remain there, abandoned in the moment for ever - “being dead already and not knowing it” – could have become real hirhurim – murmurings so loud, so distracting that I became a sort of zombie, constantly distracted from the world by that feeling of distance – that false feeling of distance. But I was lucky to have been in the right place to cure that – a place in which study was a regular occurrence, a place in which those murmurings could be turned into yearnings that can be spoken and acted upon – making the chasm into which I was falling, an opportunity to experience flying.
The opening of the Torah portion, in describing the ritual of the olah, tells us that every morning, the priest must dress in special linen clothing and remove the ashes from the fire (Vayikra 6:3), and then reminds us that the fire on the altar must be kept continually burning, and not allowed to go out; thus every morning, the priest also has to put fresh wood on the fire to keep it going (6:5, 6)
The chasidic commentator Sfat Emet says that this fire which is renewed each day is like God’s grace which, says the prayerbook, “God renews each day in God’s goodness (from the first blessing before the shema shacharit : uv’tuvo m’chadesh bchol yom tamid maaseh bereshit). He adds, “The commandment here to remove the ashes hints that as we burn up the waste in our lives we are uplifted each day and then we are given new light. The redemptive process is with us every single day.”
The world offers us all kinds of mysterious things to chant and sing and burn and wave around to cure our hirhurim, but it turns out that there is a way which is simpler by far, and perfectly accessible to our understanding: it is opening a book and studying –just a little bit- every day.
In doing so we burn down the forest of tangled thoughts, and fill up the stuckness with the richness of here I am now, with God and my chevruta. We don’t just light a fire, we become the fire.
When we become the fire that stuckness becomes not clinging to emptiness, but being filled with something that purifies. There is a Sufi saying, “He is burnt who fears the fire, but the one who is fire, how shall he be burnt?”

xposted to Radical Torah

Don't Drink Unhechshered wine

Actually, I don't so much care about the oak chips and oxygen - that's okay with me. But this just goes to show why it's unwise to rely on government oversight of unhechshered products.

Wine labels tend to focus on romance; the small amount of government-mandated information includes the percentage of alcohol, a warning against consuming wine when pregnant or driving, and a disclosure of sulfites.

It might be disenchanting if the label also listed the chicken, fish, milk and wheat products that are often used to process wine. And it would be hard to maintain the notion that wine is an ethereal elixir if, before uncorking, consumers read that their Pinot Noir or Syrah contained Mega Purple (a brand of concentrated wine color), oak chips or such additives as oak gall nuts, grape juice concentrate, tartaric acid, citric acid, dissolved oxygen, copper and water. The mention of bentonite, ammonium phosphate and the wide variety of active enzymes used to make some wines would end the romance.

Federal regulators are considering revamping the rules governing wine labels, and if changes are made, the information revealed may surprise many wine buyers. Additives that supplement what nature failed to provide in an individual wine — tricks of the trade that winemakers rarely talk about — could soon be listed in detail on the labels.

When the rabbis warned us, perhaps they knew what they were talking about. I guess the idol worship we need to bemost careful of today is Money.

xposted to Jewschool

This is the one bit of labor history that many Jews have actually heard of. Unfortunately, in these debased days* few Jews, let alone the general population, really has much knowledge of Jewish labor history, and why the labor movement was so incredibly important - and why revitalizing it, and fighting the cynical pro-business interests of this administration and its appointees to the NLRB, is so essential for the future of workers in the USA today.

Think the conditions that sparked the success of the labor movement -and its necessity- are “the past?”

Even today, sweatshops have not disappeared in the United States. They keep attracting workers in desperate need of employment and illegal immigrants, who may be anxious to avoid involvement with governmental agencies. Recent studies conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor found that 67% of Los Angeles garment factories and 63% of New York garment factories violate minimum wage and overtime laws. Ninety-eight percent of Los Angeles garment factories have workplace health and safety problems serious enough to lead to severe injuries or death.

from here (…just because I’m lazy. If you want more statistics on this, they’re everywhere. Don’t like garment factories? Restaurants, mines, chain stores - like - Wal-Mart. If you like a good scandal, try meat packing plants and slaughterhouses - including kosher ones, to our shame. מזעזע)

On March 25, 1911, 146 young immigrant workers died in a tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York’s Greenwich Village . Within minutes, the fire spread to consume the building’s upper three stories. Firefighters who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those workers trapped inside because the doors were locked and their ladders could not reach the factory floor. This tragedy galvanized a city to fight for labor reform and safety in the workplace.
Beginning days after the tragedy, the United Hebrew Trades [now the United Hebrew Trades - New York Jewish Labor Committee] marked the event with a memorial at the site. Each year, the UHT joins with UNITEHERE! [the union whose predecessor union had been organizing workers at factories such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the period of the fire] the New York City Fire Department, New York City public schools and others, to commemorate the lives of those who died.
Join us this year as we honor them and continue our fight for workers’ rights to safe working conditions.

WHEN Monday, March 26, 2007 — 12 noon - 1:00 p.m.
WHERE Corner of Washington Place & Greene Street - just east of Washington Square Park
UNITE HERE! Contact: Ed Vargas 212.265.7000

hat-tip to Arieh Lebowitz at the Jewish Labor Committee

*semi -joke

x-posted to Jewschool

Mothers who ran

From the Washington Post.
About time they published something that mothers might actually care about.

Not four kinds of Jews in Israel, but three.

More Pesach fun!

By the way, that's "Tzipporah" to you, Bub.

Pesach and Maneshevitz
hat tip to my chevruta, Rabbi Barry Leff
and more recently my חותן
that is, my father-in-law also emailed it to me; Rabbi Leff remains no one's father-in-law at this time - AFAIK)

Puffed up date
I know, I know, we've all used this drash a million times...

Sorry for the lack of embedding - I hate to send people off to AISH's website, but it is a nice vid.

I'm back, at least with a vid

Ok, so I know that the entire idea behind this is completely offensive (at least to me - where the h$()&# is Dad, anyway? shouldn't he be doing some cleaning and cooking?), but I have to admit, it's really funny and well done.

And just FYI, if it's not food, it's not chametz . Not even your dog will spend time trying to eat bathtub rings.

Hat tip to Yo, Yenta!

Slacking

I know it's been something like a month since I've last posted - apologies to all. I'm not dead yet - just resting. It's been a rather full month, and I have a list of topics that I'm thinking abot taking on... just as soon as I get a little more sleep.
See you soon - I promise.

In the meantime, a litle taste from er, last week's portion. (I told you I'm tired. But I'm just a little behind...)

I wonder if it is possible to think view Ki Tissa in terms of a unifying theme. There is, after all, an awful lot going on this week – and that is before we even get to adding on the special reading of the maftir for Shabbat Parah.

If I were to attempt to discuss all the various events and commandments… well, this post would be a liot longer, and certainly would not qualify as "a taste."

But when all the different pieces are put together: the census, the anointing of priests, the commandments of shabbat, the people’s worrying that Moshe had not reappeared after 40 days and nights and creating the golden calf, Moshe’s ongoing talks with God panim el panim – face to face, as the Torah says, “as a person speaks to his friend” (ex.33:11), Moshe’s request to see even more than that – to see God’s Kavod, and God’s offer of a partial assent to this request, and then Moshe’s return to the mountain, from which he returned with his face alight – it seems to me that there is indeed a theme that runs through the portion: God’s presence and absence, and how we go about engaging with God.

After Moshe had come down from the mountain, he asked Aaron what the heck happened. And he gives a very peculiar response: Aharon says that he said to the Israelites,

לְמִי זָהָב הִתְפָּרָקוּ וַיִּתְּנוּ-לִי וָאַשְׁלִכֵהוּ בָאֵשׁ וַיֵּצֵא הָעֵגֶל הַזֶּה

“Whoever has any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me; then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.”

One’ s immediate thought is “Sheesh, Aaron is lying through his teeth so as not to look bad.”

But on further reflection, maybe Aharon wasn’t lying. There is an interesting commentary (32:14) by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotsk. The Torah tells us, “And the Lord repented of the evil which He had thought to do to His people.” The Kotsker rebbe asks, “Why is it that God forgave the sin of the golden calf even though they did not repent, while He did not forgive the sin of the spies, even though the people had repented? The reason is that the sin of the golden calf at least had a spark of holiness, a thirst for a supreme force –‘make us a God,’ whereas in the sin of the spies all that they sought was a better material life.”

When Aharon says that the calf came out of the fire, perhaps rather than attempting to imply that he was blameless, perhaps he really was saying was that the sin of the calf came out of the people’s desire to be close to God. They were burning with the desire to be close to God – that was the fire- and in the meantime, Moshe was off having a private conversation with God.

Moshe speaks to God face to face – but every time the Israelites get a taste of this intimacy, it’s too much. We end up asking for a mediator. But still, in our hearts, that desire to be close to God is there, and it never leaves us. We can see that someone else has been able to make that connection, and we’re burning for it.

In Shir ha shirim (3) we read:

1. By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but I found him not.

2. I will rise now, and go around in the city; in the markets and in the broad streets will I seek him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but I found him not.

3. The watchmen that go around in the city found me; Have you seen him whom my soul loves?

4. I had just passed them when I found him whom my soul loves; I held him, and would not let him go...

Israel had shown that they were burning for God; One who seeks God must be prepared to get up and look for God. But in searching, we surely will find the one whom our soul loves.

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...