Yom HaShoah Poem 2010

Vhi Sh'amda: Egypt and Eastern Europe

A poem for Yom HaShoah 2010 by Matt Rutta

Delivered at American Jewish University, April 12, 2010

Last week we celebrated our escape from Egypt

    Today we mourn our inability to get out of Eastern Europe in time

In Egypt Pharaoh killed our newborn baby boys and let our girls live

In Eastern Europe the Nazis and their collaborators shot and gassed men, women, and children with no mercy

From Egypt marched 600,000 men of the Army of God

    In Eastern Europe Six Million were left behind

We marched triumphantly with our heads held high from Egypt

    We were lead from the concentration camps on Death Marches

In Egypt we built the Treasure Cities of Pitom and Raamses to hold the spoil of Pharaoh's wars

In Eastern Europe we built the gas chambers and crematoria of Buchenwald and Treblinka where we would meet our own demise

In Egypt Pharaoh set Egyptian taskmasters over us

In Auschwitz the Sonderkommando were Jews forced to turn against their own people for the chance to survive a little bit longer

When we disobeyed in Egypt, we were forced to glean our own straw to make our tally of bricks

    When we disobeyed in Sobibor the SS would shoot every third Jew

In Egypt we were like an appliance

    In Eastern Europe we

In Egypt we were forced to build the pyramids, the glorious tombs of the Pharaohs in Giza

    In Eastern Europe we were forced to dig our own mass graves in Babi Yar

Of Egypt we joyously proclaimed "In every generation people rise up to utterly destroy us but but the Holy One Blessed be He saves us from their hand?

    Where was the Holy one in Eastern Europe?

When we were liberated from Egypt we left so quickly that our matzah had no time to rise

When we were liberated from the Concentration Camp we were so malnourished that even eating the Bread of Affliction would overwhelm our distended bellies, killing us.

In Egypt we went from sorrow to great joy

    In Eastern Europe we went from sorrow to more sorrow.

In Egypt we joyously sang "Who is like you God among the mighty?" as we marched across the split sea.

In Eastern Europe we joyously sang "I believe in perfect faith that the Messiah will come" as we marched into the gas chambers.

In Egypt the slaves' greatest worry was when they would be fed

    In Eastern Europe it was not "when" but "if"

They missed the fleshpots of Egypt, with the leeks, the onions, and garlic that they ate free in Egypt

In the Concentration Camp it was a small bowl of rotten onion floating in polluted water

In 210 years we increased from 70 to 600,000 men

In 6 years we were reduced from 14 million to 8 million humans

Our experiences in Egypt three millennia ago are believed by many religions and most of the world's population

Our experiences 65 years ago continue to be denied by those who seek to destroy us again, devour Jacob, and finish the job

In Egypt we cried out to God and He heard our cry and saved us with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm

    In Eastern Europe we cried out to You! Where were You?!

You who guided us through the desert and protected us with a pillar of fire

    Our flame was almost extinguished

You are our Shepherd and we are Your sheep,

    And we were sheep to the slaughter

Had they only stripped us of our citizenship and expelled us from their land,

    Dayenu, it would have been enough

Had they only destroyed our stores forbidding us to sell to gentiles

    Dayenu, it would have been enough

Had they only stolen our property to take as their spoils

    Dayenu, it would have been enough

Had they only burnt our Torah scrolls

    Dayenu, it would have been enough

Had they only forbidden the observance of Shabbat by punishment of death

    Dayenu, it would have been enough

Dayenu! Mir Hoybn Shoyn genug! We've had enough!

Protector of Israel, protect the remnant of Israel, don't let Israel be destroyed, we who proclaim "Hear O Israel!"

You have heard our outcry too late, but You have returned us to the land you Promised us, the Holy Land flowing with milk and honey,

Now fulfill your promise, save us from the hand of those who every generation wish to destroy us and let us fulfill our battle cry of "Never Again!"

Redeem us and save us and let us dwell in peace!

Oseh Shalom Bimromav, Hu Yaaseh Shalom Aleinu V'Al Kol Yisrael, V'imeru… AMEN!

Yom Tzom Kippur: Tzomany reasons!

We are on the eve of the single holiest day of the year. Now you naysayers may try to convince me that Shabbos is holier (as many have tried since I was a young child), but I'm referring to the SINGLE holiest. It is Shabbat Shabbaton, the Sabbath of Sabbaths. It is the only day of the year the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies, the only day which he would pronounce the Ineffable Name. It is the only day of the year we pray five Amidot. Should the Tenth of Tishri coincide with Shabbat it is the only day of the year one could fast on Shabbat. And if it doesn't coincide with Shabbat it is the only day of the year that has the same restrictions.

But there are even further restrictions that set this day apart (except for its opposite which we observed exactly 2 months ago, the day of mourning of Tisha B'Av). No eating, no drinking, no leather shoes, no bathing, no washing, no perfume or lotion, no sex. I have I have always been bugged by being wished an easy fast or "tzom kal" on Yom Kippur. The reason we forbid these things is because of the mitzvah of the day from the Torah is "v'initem et nafshoteychem", "and you shall afflict your souls". It's not just a spiritual thing, but also physical. We should suffer for our sins. I think it's the reason that we recite the Eleh Ezkera as the Chatanu Selichah of YK Musaf. This dirge really belongs among the kinot, the elegies of Tisha B'Av. Instead we recite the story of the Ten Martyrs, the accounts of some of the greatest Jews of all time, Rabbi Akiba, Chaninah ben Tradyon, Rashba"g, Rabbi Yishmael the High Priest, and others, all for daring to prevent the evil Roman emperor Hadrian (yesh"u) from snuffing out the flickering flame of Torah in this time of persecution.

But what I'm referring to is the suffering that we inflict upon ourselves on these two days. On Tisha B'Av, the black fast, we abstain from all of these pleasures because we are in deepest mourning, and in addition we sit the floor, praying a subdued state and without melody and are even forbidden to study Torah. On Yom Kippur, the white fast, we abstain for the opposite reasons. "Ki vayom hazeh yechaper aleychem l'taher etchem, mikol chatoteychem, lifnei HASHEM titharu". Today God has given us to atone for our sins. It is on this day Moses decended with the second set of Ten Commandments, a tangible symbol of our forgiveness. Today we become holy. Regarding Genesis 1:26, the verse in which God says "Naaseh Adam b'Tzalmeinu KiDmoteinu", "let Us make man in Our Image", the Ramban, Nachmanides says that humanity emerges from two separate souls: Nefesh Tachton, The nefesh that comes out of the earth from which all living creatures are created, and Nefesh Elyon, that neshamah which comprise the angels so they can perform the Will of God and possess the power of reason. The lower soul has limitations that are inherent in all of the animals, needs for food, sex, sleep,. On Yom Kippur we shed our gashmiyut, our physical needs that limit our potential. We become like the angels who have no such need for sustenance. We are like Moses who shed his body as he ascended into Heaven to plead with God on our behalf.

So we abstain because we are at the level of angels (and thus throughout Yom Kippur we recite the Kedushah that outside of this day is reserved for Shabbat and Festival Musaf, the only one in which we dare to join our words with those of the angels.

Though we definitely need to focus on the daunting task before us, I think we also need to suffer a little. And if fasting is easy for you anyway (as it commonly is for me - I never lost my first wind on Tisha B'Av and even watched the Food network for the last two hours to show my obstinance) then perhaps the Rabbi's sermon or cantorial arias will give you sufficient suffering.

Gmar Chatimah Tov, may we all be forgiven and sealed in the Book of Life for goodness and for peace. May your fast and abstaining be meaningful and allow you to focus and reflect. May it merit the Geulah, the Redemption when we do not need to worry ever again.

(This wasn't meant to be a dvar torah, I originally conceived this as a facebook status update regarding my gripe with people saying Tzom Kal"

Shabbat Sha...bbaton!

Israeli Coalition Scenarios

Kadima wins but Bibi Netanyahu becomes Prime Minister.

This is how I called it last night before I went to bed. It sounds as crazy as Victor Krum catching the golden snitch but Ireland winning the Quidditch World Cup but it is quite plausable.

It's 5:15 AM in Israel and finally all of the votes have been tabulated. Centrist Kadima won with 23% of the vote (28 seats) followed closely by Right-wing Likud with 27 seats. I had expected Likud to win but apparently not. However I wouldn't count Likud out yet. President Shimon Perez will now call on the head of the winning party, Tzipi Livni to form a coalition. I don't think she can do it. To make A coalition government one must have a combination of at least 61 seats out of 120 seats in the Knesset, meaning a combination of multiple parties. If Kadima wanted to form a coalition government with all the leftist parties they would fall 6 short, and that's implying that all of the left wing parties join them (which they won't).

Left & center 28+13+3+4+4+3 = 55
Kadima 28
Labor 13
Meretz 3
Hadash 4
United Arab List/Ta'al 4
Balad 3

They NEED the right wing parties here. Likud trails by only a seat and within the entire right wing there are 65 seats. Likud could conceivably form a pan-right coalition/phalanx without the inclusion of Kadima.

Right 27+15+11+5+3+4 =65
Likud 27
Yisrael Beitenu 15
Shas 11
United Torah Judaism 5
Jewish Home 3
National Union 4

As long as Shas doesn't whore itself out to the highest bidder as it did last time (especially as their spiritual leader pronounces his next controversial statement), Likud has Kadima in a vice grip. Likud is likely going to hold out, as is far-right wing Yisrael Beiteinu and not immediately attach themselves to coalitions. The rest of these parties will follow suit.

When Tzipi Livni tried to form a coalition government after the special Kadima Primary after disgraced Premier Ehud Olmert stepped down last year she failed miserably. And now she has even LESS supportive parties. The Arab parties have said they would boycott any coalition that included anyone who demanded a loyalty oath so there is no way any Arab party (the viable parties being Ta'al/UAL, Hadash, and Balad).

About the loyalty oath. Avigdor Lieberman, head of the third place winning Yisrael Beiteinu party has demanded that all citizens of Israel need to take a loyalty oath to Israel just as one must take a loyalty oath to become a citizen of the United States (or in any elementary school classroom's Pledge of Allegiance). If one refuses to take this oath, they will be stripped of their citizenship, right to vote, and right to run for public office but will remain as permanent residents of Israel.

Labor, once the winningest party in Israel's history (they held control from the founding of the modern state until Menachem Begin's Likud finally wrested control in the 70s) has now fallen to fourth place, and although I like their leader Ehud Barak, I don't know if he will have that much of a role in the coalition.

So there are a number of scenarios that can play out, and as long as Shas stays out of trouble it will be a right wing government. Kadima now needs to decide how much it will capitulate to the right or risk being the head of the opposition. President Peres is mandated to appoint the person he feels most likely to be able to form a coalition to do so, but Livni might be passed over for Bibi Netanyahu because Tzipi is likely to fail once again. We shall see. Whatever happens, I hope it is for the best of Israel.

Oh, and Haaretz seems to agree with my theory

DVAR TORAH S3: Rosh Hashannah 5769: The Meaning of Life is a Life of Meaning

The Meaning of Life is a Life of Meaning

Rosh Hashannah 5769

Matt Rutta

Delivered before Congregation Beth Meier on Rosh Hashannah

“Hold fast to the spirit of youth – let years to come do what they may!” Emblazoned on the mantle of the fireplace in hallowed John Jay Hall, this is the toast of the Philolexian Society, my literary society when I was an undergraduate at Columbia. It translates into Hebrew as “L’chayim!” “To life!” is a very loaded statement, as we well know from Fiddler on the Roof, “If our good fortune never comes here’s to whatever comes”, “life has a way of confusing us, blessing and bruising us, drink l’chayim to life!”

Nothing captures the complexity of life like this past week’s Torah portion: The Rabbis mandated that Nitzavim always be read the Shabbat before Rosh Hashannah. Though one of the shortest parshiot in the Torah it repeats numerous times the importance of life: God places before us life and death, blessing and curse, good and evil. Choose life!

The ultimate philosophical question is, “what is the meaning of life?” “Why are we here?” Ma Anu? Meh Chayeynu? We ask this at the very beginning of Psukei D’zimra and it will be a central piece of the Yom Kippur liturgy. I believe that the answer lies in the second chapter of Genesis. “And the Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to till it and tend it”, today being traditionally the 5,769^th anniversary of this event. Be God’s gardeners and shepherds to make the world a better place. Though at first glance this may seem a good idea for the meaning of life, it is only the start: I believe it is the very next verse. “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die”. The choices of Nitzavim are here: The trees of Life, Good, Evil, and the threat of Death for partaking in any of them.

Now pay close attention because there will be a test on this: Adam and Eve had a major decision to make: Whether to eat or to not eat from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil:

If they don’t eat they will live forever in paradise and walk with God. They will never hunger with a guarantee of food and provisions forever, never get sick, never die. They will also never learn anything, never experience feelings or emotions. Ignorance is bliss. If they ate, on the other hand, they would be exiled from paradise, banished from the obvious Presence of the Lord. Their biological clock would begin to tick as they experience mortality, sickness, painful childbirth, barrenness. They will engage in backbreaking toil to attain bread (a successful harvest, food and rain are not even a guarantee). But they would feel emotions. Pain and sorrow, yes, but also love, happiness, and satisfaction.

True to my word there is indeed a test on this, in the form of an informal poll. With a show of hands, how many of you, if in the position of Adam or Eve would NOT eat from the Tree of Knowledge? How many of you would indeed eat from the tree?

If you tell a child they can have any food in the kitchen except for the cookies. “Don’t eat the cookies,” you scold. What is the first thing he is going to go for? The cookie! That is human psychology whether you are a child or an adult with or without the ability to reason. Eating from the tree was a natural choice.

As opposed to my Christian colleagues who call this the downfall of man and Original Sin, I actually find this to be one of the most positive events in History. I am firmly convinced that God actually intended us to eat from the Tree. The catalyst of human history is one honey-tongued serpent. If God is Omnipotent and Omniscient, then He must have placed the snake in that tree. God intended us to have a free will to make the decisions whether to follow or shirk His laws and ethics and not be his drooling Garden drones. There are consequences to our actions but we have the freedom to make these decisions.

We were removed from the garden which is eternally guarded by fiery cherubs lest we eat from the tree of life and live forever. So why choose life in these four options?

By eating from the tree we have already chosen Good, Evil, and Death (as the tree has given us both knowledge and mortality). There is only one more option we have not yet tried: Life. Now God finally gives us access to something which we have been denied since our expulsion from the Garden of Eden by locked gate, fiery cherub and ever-turning sword: The Tree of Life. We choose life by holding fast to the Torah, and the wooden Torah rollers are called Etzei Chayim. which we grab onto when taking an aliyah or lifting the Torah.

Torah is ultimate knowledge, it is everlasting life. It links us to our past. Most of our liturgical additions for the High Holidays focus on life: “Zochreynu L’chayim, Melech chafetz bachayim, v’choteveinu b’sefer hachayim lemancha Elohim Chayim”, “Remember us for life, O King who desires life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life – for your sake O Living God.” Throughout the liturgy of these Ten Days of Repentance our liturgy is rife with pleas to be inscribed in the Book of Life.

Even in death there is life. If, God-forbid, someone dies we don’t focus on their death but talk about their life and when we come together to recite Kaddish there is not a single mention of death, only life, because shiva, mourning, comfort, these are all for the living.

Torah is the Family Tree of Life. It records the names and deeds of our ancestors, men and women of piety who, through our study, live forever. How will the world remember us when we are gone?

When burying their dead, the Ancient Greeks would place an obolus coin under the tongues of the deceased so they could pay the fare to Charon to ferry them across the River Acheron on their journey to Hades. Jews however are not buried with trinkets nor vested in designer suits but in a disqualified tallis and simple white shrouds, a feeling which the white robe I wear today is meant to evoke. We Jews believe that we cannot take anything with us. Our legacy is rather through our deeds. Whether good or evil this is how we will be remembered.

We were created B’tzelem Elohim, in the Image of God. But how can we take this literally if one of the basic tenets of our faith is that God is non-corporeal? The medieval commentator Nachmanides says that we were made of two Neshamot, like all other animals we are formed of the dust of the earth, thus like all other animals we are mortal, need to eat, sleep, reproduce, but also have a free will. And we are also like the celestial beings made in the Image of God we are made with an immortal soul with the ability to reason and understand and that thirsts not for water but for God. An amalgamation of the two, we can be at once dust and ashes and heavenly. Unlike angels we have a free will.

And yet, It is not in Heaven. One of the most famous stories in the Talmud, and the unofficial theme of the Conservative Movement Bava Metzia 59b quotes Nitzavim. Rabbi Eliezer, convinced that he is right on his arguments, causes supernatural occurrences at his command, the movement of a tree, the reversing of a flow of a river upstream, the collapse of the walls of the house of study, yet all are rebuffed by Rabbi Joshua and the rest of the sages as meaningless. When a Heavenly voice cries out “Rabbi Eliezer is right! He’s always right”. Rabbi Joshua responds, “It is not in heaven’, for since the Torah was removed from the realm of God when given at Sinai, we no longer pay heed to heavenly voices. It is up to us to make our own decisions whether to continue the divine work of Creation or to destroy.

Our great philosopher and codifier of Jewish law, Maimonides records that the Jews that left Egypt recited a blessing over the manna: “Hamotzi Lechem Min HaShamayim”, “Praised are You Lord our God, King of the Universe who brings forth bread from the sky”. This blessing makes sense, in the desert God cared for us and gave us ready to eat manna. This parallels the blessing we say over bread: “Hamotzi Lechem Min Haaretz”, “Praised are You Lord our God, King of the Universe who brings forth bread from the ground”. Have you ever pulled ready-to-eat bread out from the ground? No! The process is extensive getting bread from the ground to your table. We plant seeds in the ground, which with the help of sun and rain eventually cause wheat to sprout. Humans still cannot digest the wheat at this point. It needs to be gleaned and harvested, threshed, milled, mixed with water and other ingredients, kneaded, baked, all before it can be eaten. So why do we thank God for pulling bread from the ground? We do God’s work when we make bread just as we do God’s work when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help out someone in need, cry out against injustice. This is what it means to be made in the image of God. When Adam and Eve followed the advice of the snake and made that history-altering decision to eat from the tree, God said “now the man has become like one of us”. No longer do we eat the manna falling from the sky, but have become God’s partners in creation. So the meaning of life, my friends, is not merely to till and to tend, but to live. God wants us to eat from the tree.

May years to come bring what they may, but may this year be a year of health, love, life and peace. Shanah Tovah.

DVAR TORAH S3: Bechukotai/Lag BaOmer (Curses!)

Once I write this Dvar Torah I will be caught up. This week we read the infamous curses of the final parasha of Levitucus, known as the Tochecha, the rebuke. With filial cannibalism, and skies of lead, the curses are pretty bad. Once we exhaust our chances and continue on wayward paths, God condemns us to punishment that increases in severity sevenfold four times, 7⁴, ending up a total of 2,401 times more terrible than the initial punishment. Pretty crappy. But God will not allow us to be utterly destroyed.

A Lag BaOmer story. Shimon bar Yochai, known as the father of Jewish mysticism, has been condemned by the Romans for teaching Torah. He goes out and hides in a cave with his son for twelve years, sustained by a miraculous stream and carob tree and study the entire time. They finally emerge after the twelfth year. Rashbi finds people working a field. He is furious that people are fulfilling laborious pursuits and not studying Torah. He is so spiritually charged with rage that anything that he gazes upon is consumed in a fiery blaze (see my blogspot profile). A heavenly voice yells, "you emerged to destroy the world I created? Go back to your cave!" And so they returned to the cave for another year. They emerged to find a man carrying two omers (bundles) of grain. Upon their asking, he told them that they were in honor of the upcoming Shabbat, the mitzvahs of Shamor (negative commandments of Shabbat) and Zachor (positive commandments of shabbat).

Not only is this one source why we have two challahs on Shabbat and a good source for bonfires on Lag BaOmer, the holiday we are celebrating today, but it also could be applied to this week's Torah Portion. When they emerge from the cage they notice the neglect of Torah and through their strict interpretation of justice they destroy. God does not allow the world to work that way. Reward and Punishment was a real issue when God destroyed His world in The Flood and following it decided that a world judged strictly on justice could not exist. Instead mercy must abound. Innately, people are good. Not everyone can study Torah 24/7/365(353-385)/12 like Rashbi and son. The famous prayer of Rabbi Nechunya upon leaving the Beit Midrash is inherently flawed:

"I am thankful to You, the Lord my God, that You have placed my lot among those who dwell in the beit midrash and not with those who hang around street corners. They arise early, and I arise early. I arise early for words of Torah, and they arise early for idle matters. I toil, and they toil. I toil and receive reward, and they toil and do not receive reward. I run, and they run. I run to the life of the world to come, and they run to the pit of destruction."

This is R' Shimon bar Yochai's justice. This is not God's Justice. God will not utterly abandon us, no matter what we do. This is His promise. So we celebrate the cessation of the plague which destroyed 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva's students. We mourn but after the storm there is a rainbow (as was the incredibly strange case yesterday afternoon with an incredibly rare May rain and thunderstorm in Los Angeles). "Return us, God, to You and we will be returned, renew our days as days of old".

Shabbat Shalom and Lag BaOmer Sameach!
Chazak Chazak v'NitChazek!

DVAR TORAH S3: Behar (Shemita during Shemita)

Every seventh year we are to have a remission of debts, freedom for slaves, and a chance to give rest to our land. Thus is the law in the land of Israel. This parasha is especially appropriate this year because it happens to be the seventh year in the Sabbatical Cycle, and is therefore the Shemitta year. One is not supposed to work the land nor sell their produce. This is literally a year of Shabbat, a year off from the back-breaking labor of being a farmer. One should only provide for their own family from the produce of the field. All other years we have certain mitzvot of the field for the poor, that we must leave the edges of the field for the poor as well as the gleanings that have been left after one pass for them. But this year it is basically a free-for-all. Everything is hefker, legally ownerless. I could go into anyone's field and according to Jewish law I can take anything I want. I don't know if this is the policy of the state of Israel and I don't know if a shoter, a police officer, would arrest me for trespassing or for stealing. I do know that some of my professors at Pardes mentioned that they keep signs in front of their fruit trees this year that say that anyone who wants can pick fruit from their trees.

There have been a few interesting legal fictions created for the Shemitta Year. Last year I lamented the lack of Wikipedia article on Prozbul. Now there is indeed an article. In fact, I wrote it. I have already written on prozbul, which allows debts to be collected and not cancelled. Another legal fiction applies to the state of Israel and is similar to selling Chometz on a massively grand scale. The entire State of Israel was sold to a Druze guy in the Golan. In this way the land can still be worked by Jews because it is not legally owned by us. Hooray for loopholes. The problem is what if Muslim extremists find this guy, whose identity and location are not disclosed? I imagine it being like on Family Guy when Peter Griffin borrows the "Free Tibet" sign from a protester and then calls China, offering Tibet in exchange for all the tea in China. There probably are also loopholes making this non-transferable.

However, this now makes my school, the American Jewish University, with its main campus, Brandeis-Bardin Institute, and Camp Ramah in California the largest Jewish landowner in the world for the year. Neat.

Shabbat Shalom.

DVAR TORAH S3: Emor (Who is a Jew?)

Time to play a little bit of catch up, as I have been quiet for a few weeks due to finals. Two weeks ago (sigh) we read Emor. This parasha is full of laws that apply to the purity of the Kohen and the series of Jewish holidays, including the mitzvah of counting the Omer, a period which we are always in when this parasha is read.

The narrative at the end is interesting. A man who is halachically Jewish (his mom is an Israelite from the smallest tribe of Dan) but his father is Egyptian gets into an argument with someone. It is interesting that they refer to one man as "an Israelite man" and the other one as "the son of the Israelite woman".

We define someone as Jewish by their mother, but this is due to gentile soldiers raping our women and causing them to conceive. Would these kids be non-Jewish? Mamzerim (Halachic bastards)? The Rabbis decided that Judaism must go by Maternal Descent so that no matter what happens, the child will be considered Jewish because of the woman. Whereas there are times you may have unanswered questions about paternity, it less likely you would have questions about maternity.

However, in the time of the Torah it seems that it is through the father. This man of Dan is part of the Israelite community but is also an Egyptian due to his father, not a whole Israelite. There are certain people whom Israelite women are forbidden to marry, such as Moabite and Ammonites. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, etc, marry non-Jews and yet their kids are Jewish. We don't hear of any sort of conversion until Ruth. The position of Karaites is still that of strictly Paternal Descent(see Wikipedia)

And yet the rabbinic Tradition is presented in Mishnah Kedushin 3:12, that is one of confusion and various traditions.

There are reasons for both sides, but I argue that we should maintain the status quo of Maternal Descent. It would create a great rift amongst the Jews throughout the spectrum. Reform and Reconstructionists accept Paternal Descent. Orthodox and Conservagtive only accept Maternal Descent. The change from current Conservative policy would change thousands of years of a general halachic definition of Who's A Jew and would create a further distance between ourselves and the Orthodox. Unfortunately, people are still raped and some people otherwise don't know who is the father of their child and there still can be confusion. I therefore support Maternal Descent to be maintained as the status quo.

For further information please see here ,here, and here.

Shabbat Shalom.

DVAR TORAH S3: Kedoshim/Yom Haatzmaut (Holy Horticulture in our Homeland (with Honi))

Parashat Kedoshim - Holy Horticulture in our Homeland (with Honi)
Matt Rutta – Delivered before AJU Hillel 5/2/08
This week we read parashat Kedoshim, also known as the Holiness Code. “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy!” There are over 50 mitzvot in this Parasha. Many of them have been over-analyzed and cliché: don’t put a stumbling block before the blind, love your neighbor as yourself, don’t steal, observe my laws, Harry Potter is liable to the death penalty... It goes on like this. The other mitzvot in this parasha include prohibitions of idolatry, agricultural laws, and sexual taboos. So I will discuss the subject I think you are the most interested in: agricultural laws!
A good number of the agricultural laws in this parasha apply in the land of Israel. When one can harvest, what one can harvest, the time one must wait after planting a tree before one can eat from the tree, and a promise that God is bringing us to a land flowing with milk and honey.
A story about Honi the Circlemaker who is probably best described as a mystical shaman from 2000 years ago. Besides the famous story of how he brought rain to the drought in Jerusalem, there is another story in which he has a real problem with understanding Psalm 126, which we will read tonight as Shir HaMaalot, the introduction to Birkat Hamazon: “A song of ascents, when God will return the exiled of Zion, we will be like dreamers.” The Talmud records a tale that he finds an old man preparing to plant a carob tree. He tells the man that he is foolish to plant a tree that takes 70 years to bear edible fruit, well past his lifespan. The old man acknowledges his mortality and says that he’s doing it so his future generations will have carobs to enjoy, just like his ancestors had planted for him. After Honi stopped berating the man he sat down to eat and fell asleep. Rocks concealed him and he slept for 70 years. He awoke because he saw the same old man and thought he had just taken a small nap, but then saw a gigantic tree overflowing with carobs, he asked the man if he had planted the tree and the man said that it was his grandfather who planted it 70 years ago, well before he was born, and Honi realizes he’s been asleep and dreaming for 70 years. I think the lesson Honi realized then that though the life of one person may be fleeting, the acts that we do can long outlive us. The old man had lived his lifespan, appreciating the contributions of his ancestors. Then the newly planted tree as well as Honi himself remained dormant for 70 years, which incidentally is the same amount of time that our ancestors were exiled in Babylon after the First Temple was destroyed and then we woke up from our exile. Our people were again removed for 2000 years, the song of ascents we may recite for this exile would be that we were in a nightmare. But finally we returned to the land of Israel and in 1948 we once again began to enjoy the fruit of the land.
The Haftarah this week, the ninth chapter of Amos, ends “Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord, when the plowman will meet the reaper, and the treader of grapes, him who holds the bag of seed, when the mountains shall drip wine and all the hills shall wave with grain. I will restore my people Israel. They shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine; they shall till gardens and eat their fruits. And I will plant them upon their soil, nevermore to be uprooted from the soil I have given them – said the Lord your God.”
We have been restored and have begun to rebuild, with bountiful and varied produce, the new vineyards are some of the finest in the world, and we have caused the desert to bloom. It has been sixty years since statehood, there are still ten years left until we can enjoy carobs that were planted since the rebirth of the State of Israel, reishit tzmichat geulateynu, the first sprouting of our Redemption, a land which our grandparents fought for so that we could live free in a land of our own. We must continue to fight for it, and plant in it, not just trees, but the seeds of peace. And much like a strong-rooted carob tree, we will never again allow ourselves to be uprooted from the land. For if we will it, it is no dream. Shabbat Shalom.

DVAR TORAH S3: Pesach (Our holiday has an egg too, sans rabbit)

I wanted to include some words I offered at the second seder about the egg.

The egg is an underexplained part of the seder plate. We popularly know it as a symbol of spring, which is the season (and in the bible, month, Aviv) of Passover, and of rebirth. It's round shape (actually an oval, which is elliptical) which indicates the cycle of the year and of life. It is the first thing we eat during the meal as it relates to Tisha B'Av which ALWAYS falls in the calendar on the same day of the week as the first day of Passover. The holidays relate as the days of redemption and of exile and both holidays are the two most auspicious in the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people (such as strong traditions indicating the Messiah being born on Tisha B'Av and Nisan being the month of both the past and future Redemption).

But it also is a symbol of the Jewish people, according to Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz who, at his tisch at VBS a few months ago (and also written by Isaac Klein in "The Guide...", and I will add to both of them) spoke about the egg as the symbol of the Jewish people. Most foods soften as you cook them, but the egg hardens the longer it cooks. We Jews have been subjected to fire for millennia, from the time of Pharaoh to today and yet instead of weakening we have been forged through fire. We are known as an am kshei oref, the stiffnecked people. This has been detrimental when our stiffneckèdness caused us to wander the desert for 40 years. But it has also kept us Jewish. No matter what the world threw at us, we kept the course. All of these ancient civilizations who tried to destroy us are gone and we are still here. "For in every generation people try to destroy us, but the Holy One, Blessèd be He, saves us from their hands."

Gut Shabbos un Gut Yontif,
Matt

DVAR TORAH S3: Acharei Mot/HaGadol (Pesach and Yom Kippur? What a Great Shabbat!)

Interesting Torah Portion for Shabbat HaGadol, the week where the Rabbi traditionally explains the complex preparation for Passover. (Though this year as it leads immediately into the first seder and chometz is already cleaned and nullified, it is merely symbolic)

But this week's actual Torah Portion in the cycle is Acharei Mot, the reading which serves as the reading for both the morning and controversial afternoon reading for Yom Kippur, which explains the complex preparations and service of the High Priest on Yom Kippur. It mirrors the tradition that after the Destruction of the Second Temple, the home became the Temple, the kitchen the Holy of Holies due to the familial discourse, the kitchen table the altar, with the head of household standing in as the High Priest.

The psychological, spiritual, and physical preparation of the Kohen Gadol very much parallels our own preparations the week before Pesach. The success of preparation is critical. Incidentially both the sabbath prior to Yom Kippur (Shabbat Shuvah) and the sabbath prior to Pesach (Shabbat HaGadol) used to be the only two at which a rabbi would speak. If only...

A gut shabbos un a gut yontif!

DVAR TORAH S3: Metzora (Find a bad name)

Quickly on last week's Torah Portion, I have in the past I have mentioned that the word Metzora, a person affected with a impurifying skin disease of Tzuras, is possibly a contraction of Motzi Shem Ra, someone who "seeks a bad name". We are studying (or were studying at that point) something called ona'at dvarim, harming people with words. It is considered worse than killing someone or committing adultery, as examples. Rabbi Schulweis, for both Tazria and Metzora discussed this particular piece in the Talmud. To be continued when I write the contents of my Chevruta Journal where I discuss this...

Shabbat Shalom.

Bee-reavment

As I have been kashering my apartment for Passover, the building has been hitting high heats, combined with the fact that it is is the 90s outside and I am burning the stovetops after using industrial oven cleaner, so I have all of the windows open as well as the front door and the air conditioner running full blast.

About a half hour ago I saw a bee flying around my dining room table. As someone who doesn't react well to bee-stings, I decided I can't just have him flying around my apartment, but I also didn't want to hurt him (unlike mosquitos whose sole existences is to suck my blood and spread disease which I will dispatch without regret, and sometimes on Shabbat; for though it is forbidden to kill on Shabbat, because mosquitos may carry a host of deadly diseases, including West Nileand therefore Pikuach Nefesh kicks in), but the bee doesn't actually want to hurt me. So I turned off the lights, ended up crashing my leg into the coffee table which I had turned around in order to clean and so my leg started bleeding.

Anyway, I tried to direct the bee outside, spraying some scented air fresheners as bees rely heavily on their sense of smell (or so is my understanding). But instead he went into my window screen. I shut the window trying to figure out what to do with him. I got a long umbrella and tried to remove my window screen or use it to direct him to the two gaping holes that were in the window screen before I moved in. He was just running around frantically. I tried to dustbuster him and then planned on reversing it when I got outside, but he ran away from it. I accidentially crushed him with the umbrella tip after about 15 minutes, he was mortally injured at this point, so I put him out of his misery, feeling horrible about it, though needing to uphold the mitzvah against Tzar Baaleh Chayim, that you shouldn't subject animals to pain.

This is part of a trend of ways I have been feeling about living creatures as of late. I have been seriously considering vegetarianism recently. Some, such as my downstairs neighbor, may scoff at my suggestion (though he has recently dropped a ranking in the food chain, himself). I was somewhat affected by the class we did on Shechita as well as seeing a rooster sacrificed for Kapparot with my cousins before Yom Kippur.

I, in fact, have been having feelings regarding the wastefulness of our culture, how we waste food, electricity, water, fill the landfills, it's totally ridiculous. I am totally guilty of all of these things. As someone who, due to my job, goes to bar mitzvah and wedding parties beyond number I notice the sheer wastefulness of people, beyond money.

I think the way we slaughter animals is the most humane way to do it. After seeing "No Country for Old Men" I think the captive bolt pistol is just barbaric. At least in Kashrut we need to show respect for the animals (or ideally we should)

I don't know what I'm going to do regarding this. I do enjoy eating meat and don't see myself as a vegetarian. But I'm thinking of cutting back. I don't know. Time will tell. Besides, this is a poor time of the year to give up meat. What can a vegetarian eat during pesach because soy, beans, rice, seeds, and corn are all forbidden. I can't just eat flax seed for an entire week (for some reason flax is okay...)

Anyway, that's just another rant. Delayed Dvar Torah on Metzora soon... possibly...

DVAR TORAH S3: Tazria/Shabbat HaChodesh (Next, on a very special month...)

One of my fellow First Year Rabbinical Students asked me to quickly tell her what the Torah portion was about earlier this week. I smiled at here and said, "bodily excretions!". Luckily for us, this happens to be the fourth of the four special Sabbaths (there are really five, but we don't talk about that one) leading up to the Festival of Passover.

We learned in our parshanut (rabbinic analysis of the Bible) class that some say that the Torah should have began with the mitzvah recorded in Exodus 12, that "this month is to be the first of months for you". The month we know by the Babylonian name Nisan and was known in Biblical times as Aviv is supposed to be the one with which we start the year.

The Exodus is the central event in all of Jewish history. More than Creation, more than Abraham's realization of God or his Covenant with God, Isaac's binding on the altar, Jacob's fight with the angel and subsequent name change, the Building or the Destruction of two Temples, the Exodus from slavery into freedom. Passover is the first holiday given to the Israelites; it actually is celebrated by them as they prepare to leave Egypt and it commemorates this night that was a dawn of a new era annually.

As we recite the psalm of the day at the conclusion of morning services daily, for Monday we say "today is the second day of the Sabbath". Shabbat is recalled daily. So too, we are to actually count our months from the month of Nisan. In my opinion it makes more sense to begin a year in spring, with rebirth. However Rosh Hashannah begins on the exact opposite side of the year with the autumn. Mishnah Rosh Hashannah 1:1 records actually FOUR New Years in Judaism (all referred to as Rosh Hashannah), two of which are the 1st of Nisan (two days from now) and the 1st of Tishrei (that which we refer to as the holiday of Rosh Hashannah). The month of Tishrei is referred to as "the Seventh Month" in the Torah because Nisan is supreme.

Nisan is possibly the most important month in the calendar. One might say that Tisrei with its many holidays which include Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur as well as the holiday which the Talmud refers to as "The Holiday", Sukkot, is the ultimate month. However, Nisan is the month in which we were redeemed in the past and according to legend is the month in which we will be ultimately Redeemed again through the Messiah. The month is so joyous that we don't recite the penitentiary service of Tachanun throughout the month. Fasts and eulogies are forbidden for the duration of the month, something which cannot be said about Tishrei.

So Shabbat Shalom, Chodesh Tov, and indeed Shanah Tovah, on this Biblical New Year.

DVAR TORAH S3: Shemini/Parah (The smell of burning death)

Speaking of things wholly burnt up, my laptop burnt up via the fan. Hopefully they can fix it. I actually bought a new one from Dell but now it looks like they will fix the old one. Sparky lives another day (A name which I have just dubbed it just now, due to its fire-like tendencies)

So this past week we read Shemini where Nadav and Avihu, Aaron's eldest sons were killed by God for offering an alien fire. Also Kashrut laws a'plenty, but since I will be dealing with Kashrut ad nauseam in the coming days I will not focus on the main parasha (which I have already done in depth last year)

We also read as Maftir the mitzvah of the Red Heifer, the Parah Adumah, the prepared ashes of this cow will purify those who have the ultimate impurity, Tumat HaMet, coming in contact with a dead body. This, I believe, is the one ritual impurity that cannot be remedied by immersion in a mikvah bath and/or waiting in seclusion (something which will come up in the coming weeks in terms of the Metzora). It is near impossible to have the animal required for the mitzvah of Parah Aduma. I believe it has to be a perfectly red female (ie: no white hairs), be three years old without a single imperfection nor seeing a day of work in its life. The animal basically must be raised in order to fulfill this mitzvah. As I think about it, it is somewhat similar to trying to identify the messiah. There are so many requirements that eliminate so many possibilities. It is expensive to raise a cow, especially one that can never do work nor injure itself or be unhealthy. According to statistics I received in my halacha class last semester, it probably won't be an American cow -- very few cows in America are entirely healthy because of the way they are treated and what they are fed. The cows in Argentina however are considerably more likely to be glatt (ie: their lungs are completely healthy and therefore the rest of them is probably healthy. It is assumed that everyone in this day in age has Tumat Hamet. Whether you've been to a funeral or have been in a cemetary or a building with a dead body, or even been in an airplane that flies above a cemetery (because Tumat Hamet is the one impurity where the sky's the limit -- literally, there is no limit to how much death ascends to the heavens creating impurities. Nobody, Israelite or Kohen is considered free from this impurity and therefore nobody is able to ascend to the actual area of the Beit HaMikdash, the Holy Temple (though many will go to the outskirts of the Temple Mount, but only after going to the mikvah, not wearing leather shoes and abstaining from sexual relations between the mikvah and the ascent. The reason we read this maftir now is because the Pascal Lamb involves the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and an ascent to the Temple, which requires ritual purity.

I love the haftarah that corresponds to this maftir. "I will sprinkle upon you pure waters/waters of purity and will purify you of all your impurities and from all your idols I will purify you. And I will give to you a new heart and new soul I will give within you and will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a fleshy heart. (and so forth from Ezekiel 36). Good stuff.

Shavuah Tov and may Hashem grant a Refuah Shleyma to Elan Shlomo ben Smadar.

A new twist on agunot: chain the husband!

I posted this a few moments ago to the Ziegler listserv but I realize that not everyone I know that this would interest are students in ZSRS. See wikipedia for a definition of Agunah.


An Israeli Rabbinic Court issued an interesting ruling, upheld by the Rabbinical Supreme Court on appeal, that could set a precedent for recalcitrant husbands in cases of agunot. They found this guy hiding out in a Yeshiva who has chained his estranged wife for years and now they're imprisoning him. If he doesn't give her a get soon, they will put him in solitary confinement.

Although I fully support what badatz is doing -- these monsters who refuse to divorce their wives deserve all the punishment in this world and the next, but is a get given under extreme duress considered valid?

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3523781,00.html

Matt

Rabbinical court send divorce recalcitrant to solitary confinement

Supreme Rabbinical Court sets precedent, orders a man refusing to grant his wife divorce, pay alimony, be held in manner reserved for extremely dangerous convicts – in complete isolation
Yoram Yarkoni

A religious rarity: A rabbinical court ordered a man refusing to grant his estrange wife a divorce be sentenced to solitary confinement, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Wednesday.

The ruling was rendered as part of a bitter divorce battle: The wife asked to divorce her husband of 10 years, he refused and she ended up issuing a restraining order banning him from their house.

The rabbinical court then ordered the husband to grant his wife the divorce and pay her alimony – but he refused to acknowledge the ruling.

Later on, and following several arrest warrants issued against him for failing to pay alimony, he dropped out of sight.

After a several-years search the man was discovered hiding in a Jerusalem yeshiva. The rabbinical court sentenced him to one year in prison – unless he grants the divorce. He preferred to go to jail.

Faced with the man's ongoing refusal to grant his wife a divorce, the Supreme Rabbinical Court was called into play, ruling that at the end of the man's 12 months incarceration – and should he still refuse to grant the divorce – he will be sentenced to four additional years in prison.

A religious first

The Supreme Rabbinical Court then set a religious precedent, ruling that those additional four years be served in solitary confinement.

Solitary confinement in a penalty usually reserved for the criminals deemed extremely dangerous, or those who may be in mortal danger if they came in contact with the general prisoner population.

Prisoners sentenced to solitary confinement are held in complete isolation and are denied any contact with the outside world: They are not allowed to receive visitors, send or receive letters or have any personal possessions.

The court further ruled that in order for the man to understand what he might be facing – and providing he failed to grant his wife a divorce by mid April – he will have to spend a week in isolation.

"A man refusing to grant his wife a divorce cannot be an observant Jew," stated the court.

The man demanded his immediate release as a pre-condition to him making and decision on the divorce. The court denied his requests, further ruling he serve his sentence in a general population ward, not the religious one.

DVAR TORAH S3: Tzav/Purim (So long, and thanks for all the fish)

Okay, this is late, relatively short and I have an admission, not much about purim, but I have a whole bunch of Purim Divrei Torah archived up that you can read if you search the blog.

In this past week's Torah Portion I noticed something interesting in Leviticus 7:26. According to the old JPS translation: "And ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings." I happened to have my Torat Chayim with me during services this week and had the sudden revelation that this may be another reason we consider birds fleishig. The blood of the bird is treated just like that of mammals: completely forbidden! As I had hoped, Rashi commented on this verse and said that it specifically excludes fish and kosher insects. As I feared commentary on the commentary said that the reason is that fish and insects have no blood (you win this one, Max. see Kritot 21a). I know this to not be the fact, however, and fish and insects do indeed have blood. I don't think that changes anything. On the totem pole of life, in my opinion Torah places fish below plant-life. It says in Parashat Noach that "you may eat of the beast of the ground, the birds of the sky, the goodness of the earth (ie: flora) and the fish of the sea". I think this is a pecking order.

There is a bit of Purim here, as fish, Dagim (Pisces in Greek) is the Mazal of the Month(s) of Adar and has come to symbolize the holiday of Purim. I finally located the book in which I learned the astrological signs relating to the Hebrew calendar, "Jewish Days" by Francine Klagsbrun:

[Pisces] is an appropriate sign for a month known for fun and frivolty, because as the rabbis said, in joyous ways Israel can be compared to a fish. How so? Just as the evil eye has no power over a fish in water, the evil eye has no power over the people of Israel. Moreover, although fish live in water, when a drop falls from above they catch it thirstily as if they had never tasted water before. So it is with the people of Israel. Although they grow up immersed in the waters of the Torah, when they hear a new Torah lesson they drink it in as if they had never heard the Torah expounded. (93)

.

Plus fish are inherently funny. Speaking of Kashrut, stay tuned for next week, Shmini which is full of Kashrut...

DVAR TORAH S3: Vayikra/Zachor (Remembering Moses)

This Dvar Torah is dedicated to the memory of Moshe Rabbeinu, of whom we are observing today, the 7th of II Adar 5768 his 3280th yahrzeit (d. 7 Adar 2488 AM). He would also be celebrating a milestone birthday, today Moses turns the big 3400 (b. 7 Adar 2368). Happy birthday to my original namesake! Oh look, he's blushing, he's so humble.

Moses was exceedingly humble; whether motivated by fear or humility, he repeatedly rebuffs God's order from the midst of the Burning Bush to deliver God's people from slavery in Egypt. He also gave up everything when, as a prince of Egypt, he slew an Egyptian taskmaster who was punishing an Israelite slave. Moses didn't think an Egyptian taskmaster was more important than a lowly Israelite slave, and though he'd grown up in the palace indoctrinated that Egyptians were supreme and that the life of an Israelite was worth less than bricks or horses, he realized that even from his high station as adopted son of the pharaoh he could not ignore injustice. Though his anger and anguish caused him to smash the Tablets of Law upon gazing upon the Israelites worshiping the Golden Calf, he fasts for months upon additional ascents to heaven and prays on behalf of God's chosen nation, and when God tells Moses He will destroy Israel and create a new nation with Moses as its progenitor, Moses begs for his own life to be taken if God refuses to forgive (for this God says, "salachti kidvarecha", "I have forgiven according to your word", one of the rare occasions in which God's edict has been swayed. Moses allowed his name to be excluded from the Passover Haggadah, allowing God full credit for the Exodus.

In this week's Torah Portion Moses begins the transference of priestly duties to his big brother Aaron, and Moses is happy for him and allows Aaron to have an everlasting dynasty while Moses' fell into disuse after a wayward grandson named Jonathan ben Gershon ben M^nashe, a priest of idolatry(the Nun here is the only letter I know of which is elevated in the Bible, indicating that the letter was added later to not associate Moshe with an idolater). The very first word of this week's torah portion and the very first word of the third book of the bible (and its namesake) is Vayikr_a, this time with a smaller letter aleph. Again a sign of the humility of Moses, that wanted to downplay that God called out to Moses. A treatment of this verse can be found at my last year's Dvar Torah for this week's Torah portion.

Now I want to examine Zachor. Because we will be celebrating Purim this coming week, we read a special Maftir, which we call Shabbat Zachor. There is a very hard-to-understand mitzvah within: that we must remember and not forget to wipe out the remembrance of Amalek. The Rabbis of the talmud think this is not meant to be taken literally. We take the wiping out symbolically, that we stamp out the name of his most well-known descendant, Haman (yemach shemo uzichro). The three words that I appended to the name of the evil villain of the Purim story means "may his name and memory be wiped out". But we are also supposed to remember! We should recall the sage words of poet-philosopher George Santayana who wrote a little over a century ago, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". We cannot forget the Holocaust and we cannot forget the perpetrators nor can we forget the lessons lest, God forbid, we forget and allow it to happen again. How can we who were attacked by Egypt and Amalek from Haman, Hitler and Hamas, allow genocide to go on under our watch. Wiping out the memory means we can't allow the tyrants and evildoers to proliferate wickedness without attempting to stop them.

Remember and forget at the same time. Memory is a very strange thing. When our ancestors left Egypt they consistently complained that they missed the vegetables and meat they got for free in Egypt. This is memory but not reality. They kind of forgot that they didn't get this food for free but that they had to work as slaves for sub-par food. This is why we must daily remember we were slaves in the land of Egypt, lest we forget.

Shabbat Shalom.

DVAR TORAH S3: Pekudei/Chazak/Shabbat Rosh Chodesh/Shekalim (bittersweet completion)

This Dvar Torah is dedicated to the memory of the seminarians murdered yesterday in the terrorist attack in the Holy City yesterday. May their memories be for a blessing and may the Omnipresent comfort their families and us among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

We have upon us a very interesting Shabbat. Outside of the holiday of Simchat Torah, there are three occasions I can think of when we would need to read from three Torahs: when Rosh Chodesh Tevet, Adar (II in leap years, as this one), or Nisan fall on Shabbat. On these Shabbats, in addition to the regular Torah reading, for which we read the sixth and seventh aliyot together as the sixth, we read a passage from Pinchas for Shabbat Rosh Chodesh from the second Torah, and from a third we also need to read the special reading for that day of Hanukkah, the reading for Shabbat Shekalim, and the reading for Shabbat HaChodesh respectively as the Maftir. While this is an exciting time on the rare occasion when it happens, the Torah cycle happens to have us at one of the four weeks of the year when we conclude one of the books of the Torah (the conclusion of the fifth book, Deuteronomy is always on Simchat Torah anyway), so after the sixth aliyah we will happily recite "Chazak! Chazak! V'Nitchazek!", "strength, strength, and we shall be strengthened!"

This aforementioned phrase is recited as we complete a book of the Torah, in great joy. This year it also coincides on the day when we are commanded in the Talmud to increase our joy. As Adar is entered, joy is increased (as we sing endlessly Mishenichnas Adar Marbin B'Simcha) (Babylonian Talmud Ta'anit 29a).

There is something else completed here. In a parasha devoid of Mitzvot (according to Rambam which in turn is according to Wikipedia) Moses completes the Mishkan. There are many feelings that one may simultaneously go through when they complete something on which they've been working hard and for a long time. There is a sense of accomplishment and pride at having been able to overtake a task so daunting, and yet some wistfulness edging on sadness on not having it anymore to work on. Not that I'm an expert, and l'havdil, but some women following pregnancies will be so happy to have a new baby and yet go through something called post-partum depression. Again l'havdil, but if I'm working on a long paper (and I have many on which I should be working right now...) I may punish my self to continue working on it and refining it. I wrote a poem last week for an underground night (which can be found here on the Philolexian Socity Phlog). I continued writing and refining the ten syllable-per-line poem until I was at 18 quatrains (72 lines). A couple of minutes before the event I added two more quatrains for good measure, resulting in 20 quatrains, 80 lines, a total of 800 syllables. I would have added more to the ending, but decided against it. I kept trying to perfect it. Polishing silver and scrubbing metal too much will ruin it, as I learned the hard way with a kiddish cup and one of meat pans respectively. And yet the Mishkan was perfect. It didn't have hte limitations of the human devices, but rather was a perfect structure with its instructions sent by God to divinely-inspired humans (sort of like the Torah *cough* JEPD, *cough*). Betzalel and Oholiab themselves didn't need Moses' instructions because they were also transmitted perfectly directly from God to them and Moses was able to, in a single sweep, put the entire building together.

That being said, it is nothing but a building without people. As I quoted a few weeks ago (Trumah), v'asu li mikdash v'shachanti btocham, make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them. "Them" being the people Israel. In the next few weeks in the book of Leviticus we will discuss their role in the Tabernacle. In the house of gold, silver, and, um, dolphin skins dyed red we don't truly have perfection until we have the people Israel involved. Stay tuned.

I will leave you the closing prayer I gave to my Talmud class yesterday. Mishenichnas Adar Marbin b'Simcha. May we no longer have reason for sorrow but only have occasion for joy and happiness. Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov.

DVAR TORAH S3: Vayakel (Cholenty Godness)

I am going to deliver this to the AJU Hillel this Shabbat, so please understand the esoteric nature of some of my statements... For your mouth-watering pleasure, I also present various pictures of cholent I found on the internet and a "before" picture of the first one I ever made.

This week's Torah portion is Vayakel, the penultimate Parasha in the book of Exodus. It is usually joined with the final parasha, Pekudei, but because it is a leap year (in the Hebrew calendar) we separate

Today I want to talk about cholent. If you've never had cholent, you're missing much. If you've had cholent, you probably also have high cholesterol and heartburn. You might think of cholent as the Jewish chili, they even sound alike! Cholent is tasty, cholent is meaty, cholent is a religious imperative.

Wait, what?

Cholent older than the Kol Nidre prayer. It has roots in both Ashkenazi and Sephardi cultures (the latter's version is called Chamin, which means hot) and it has a fascinating history. Cholent was originally developed to prove you were a true blue Jew. This easy, tasty, and deadly dish made by throwing barley, beans, potatoes, beef, potatoes, beer, kishke and whatever else you happen to have lying around, like rice, hard boiled eggs or even Coca Cola into a crock pot and originated as a litmus test to your allegiance with Chazal, the sages who composed the Oral Law and that you believe in the Talmud. You put the mix into a pot in the oven or into crockpot before Shabbat, cooking it on low heat and by Shabbat lunch you have at the same time the greatest and worst food ever

At the very beginning of this week's parasha we have a law that prohibits burning a fire in the house on Shabbat. As Rabbinic Jews this is a prohibition against KINDLING a fire. In fact, one of the seven Rabbinic Mitzvot* (that are in addition to the 613 Torah mitzvot) is to light Shabbat Candles. It was created as a Is a shibbolet, a matter to prove one is not a Karaite, a sect who believe that lights are forbidden on Shabbat and will sit in the dark. It has the full status of a mitzvah to light at least candles to usher in the Sabbath, symbolizing shamor and zachor, observe, and remember, encompassing the many negative and positive commandments that go into observance of Shabbat.

We don't just require illumination, but food. On Shabbat one is commanded to feast! Unless the holiest day of Yom Kippur coincides with it, fasting is absolutely forbidden. We need to eat good food, hot food. But we can't cook on shabbat! We can reheat, however, a mark of a distinction between mainstream and Karaite Jews. We don't have the wars with Karaites anymore, but we still have these tasty leftovers in the form of Cholent. It may have lost its ulterior reasons but has become identified as the part of the ultimate shabbat meal, along with warm loaves of challah, gefilte fish, steaming bowls of chicken soup, and meat. I've had a number of good vegetarian cholents too, because it's not the meat, it's the heat! If you take a look in the B'kol Echad little blue song book we use, you will see about half of the Shabbat songs are about food. Lobby for Cholent in the Berg for Shabbat Lunch to prove you're not a Karaite. Eat cholent and you will fulfill the original mitzvah of Shabbat, because after you have this thick beef stew you will be taking what we refer to as the afternoon cholent nap, the only real way to observe the Day of Rest.

Shabbat Shalom!

*The seven Rabbinic Mitzvot corrrespond to the Mnemonic נע בשמח"ה
- נטילת ידים Netilat Yadayim - Washing hands before eating, waking up, after using the restroom, etc...
ערוב - Eruv - Shabbat Boundaries, whether physical walls or food-relate
ברכות - Brachot - Saying blessings for various occasions (besides Birkat HaMazon which is in the Torah)
שבת-Shabbat - Lighting Shabbat Candles (the mitzvah is not literally "Shabbat" which is both negative and negative mitzvot in the Torah already)
מגילה - Megillah - Reading the Scroll of Esther on Purim
חנוכה - Chanukkah - Lighting Chanukkah Candles
הלל - Hallel - Saying certain psalms on certain festive occasions

DVAR TORAH S3: Ki Tisa (11 secret herbs and spices)

I love this week's parasha as there is so much to discuss. In Ki Tisa we have the Half-Shekel Tax "to atone for your souls" (a hint to the IRS to make April 15th more interesting for us...), the Veshamru which has made its way into our Shabbat liturgy, that we should keep the sabbath as a sign of the covenant between Israel and God, the giving of the stone tablets and their subsequent shattering at the Sin of the Golden Calf, Moses' ascent to heaven and actually seeing God more vividly than anyone who has ever lived and learning the Thirteen Attributes and recieving atonement for the sin of the people. It's looking pretty good when for the past couple of weeks we have been dealing with esoteric architectural blueprints. We still get a little bit of it here with cinnamon, galbanum, frankincense and myrrh and the other spices that go into the Ketoret, but still exciting stuff as we get the names of our architect Betzalel son of Uri son of Hur (Cliff Note: Hur is about to get murdered in the mob...) of Judah and his assistant Oholiab son of Achisamach of Dan. W00t, fun.

At this point I realize I forgot to finish and post before Shabbat. Oops.

As we've realized, there is a lot going on here, enough to fill a couple of years of sermons (unlike Terumah and Tetzaveh, those are a little harder. It won't get easier after this week either). Perhaps it is the myriad of topics which makes Ki Tisa so difficult on which to commentate; which should I pick? I'll hold off on the Half-Shekel for two weeks until we reread this account on the special Shabbat Shekalim which precedes, or in this case falls on Rosh Chodesh Adar (II, this year) as Pekudei has less to talk about.

Alright, with all of the fun stuff here, I will challenge myself to talk about the boring portion of this... portion: the spices. We have a long list of spices which will be included in the Ketoret HaSamim, that which will be offered on the Gold Altar in the Kodesh. We get a bouquet of interesting spices that include one called galbanum (which incidentally is not even recognized in FireFox's dictionary. Galbanum is putrid smelling and sulfuric. There is something which is done at the end of Shabbat Musaf in many Orthodox communities that we do not usually do within Conservative Judaism, that being the recitation of Mishnaic and Talmudic passages relating to the Ketoret. In it we recite all of the spices and ingredients that go into the ketoret and that omitting any of them would cause liability of death. Even foul-smelling galbanum must be included. I think this symbolizes people. You might be sweet as cinnamon, sugar and spice and everything nice (see: girls), but you could also be odious and unpleasant as symbolized by galbanum. All are part of our community, people we like, people we don't necessarily like, kind people, sweet people, agreeable people, argumentative and stand-offish people, removed people, jerks. We have Four Sons on Passover and Four Species on Sukkot that also represent people, and all elements in all of our examples, as much as we may not like it, are indispensable parts of the whole. We are all in this together. There may be detractors, but we are all still part of the community, and casting anyone out, as much as they may get on your nerves, is a grave matter indeed.