Monday, September 13, 2010
WHAT THE BLEEP ARE WE DOING!
By Zvi Bellin, Ph.D. (MHHQ)
A few years ago on Yom Kippur, I actually paid attention to the morning Hafotorah Poriton that is read from the Book of Isaiah after the Torah portion. When the reader came to the following verses from Chapter 58, I wanted to stand up on my pew chair and scream, “WHAT THE BLEEP ARE WE DOING!” Here are the verses:
4. Behold, for quarrel and strife you fast, and to strike with a fist of wickedness. Do not fast like this day, to make your voice heard on high.
5. Will such be the fast I will choose, a day of man's afflicting his soul? Is it to bend his head like a fishhook and spread out sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast and an acceptable day to the Lord?
6. Is this not the fast I will choose? To undo the fetters of wickedness, to untie the bands of perverseness, and to let out the oppressed free, and all perverseness you shall eliminate.
7. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and moaning poor you shall bring home; when you see a naked one, you shall clothe him, and from your flesh you shall not hide.
It is hard to believe that year after year we can disregard the plain meaning of these verses. Instead of sitting in synagogue all day, should we not be taking our Teshuvah (repentance) to the streets! I began to envision a huge festival in the middle of major cities set up on Yom Kippur where we all wear white (as is customary) and provide free food for anyone who needs. We set up swap clothing racks where anyone can give or take. There is free massage and Yoga, sessions on mediation and community reconciliation. A day where we allow ourselves to bypass the criticism of being “too idealistic”; dream big and manifest a society where people look out for one another.
Perhaps this Yom Kippur dream is on its way. I am glad that I got to share it with you. In the meantime, I feel liberated by these verses to explore alternative services and experiences on Yom Kippur which help me to focus on my relationship with G-d and the world. I invite you to do the same this year.
MH is teaming up with Next to spread awareness and address the pervasive problem of hunger in our communities. Check out break-the-fast.org for more information and download the Break-the-Fast
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Parshat Ha’azinu
D’varim 32:1 – 52
3 Tishrei 5771 / Sept. 10 – 11, 2010
Who’s to Blame?
By: Jeremy Moskowitz, MHHQ
Given the opportunity to speak to an audience in your last moments, what would you say? Would you praise your own accomplishments? Would you praise those who helped you do it? Would you take the opportunity to take a shot at those who wronged you a long the way? What message would you want to send?
In Parshat Ha’Azinu, Moses is given this very opportunity. Moses is told he is about to die. Due to his defying of G-d’s word by hitting the rock, he will not be allowed into the land of Israel. In his dying moments, Moses recites a long poem, steeped in earth imagery praising G-d for his greatness and lambasting the Israelites for the trials they put him through when he was their leader.
Admittedly, my personal feelings towards this parsha are negative. It is just hard for me to identify with Moses’ sentiments in this piece. For whatever reason, very likely due to his own human failings, G-d decided not to allow Moses into the land of Israel. It is clear from his final speech, that Moses clearly is unhappy with this decision. In my opinion, Moses has a right to be unhappy with this decision. He has led the Israelites through many trials and tribulations, and because of a moment of weakness, he does not get to enjoy the fruits of his labor. I know that this situation would leave me frustrated, to say the least.
My issue is with how Moses expresses these frustrations. It seems to me there are two sources where Moses can direct his anger, G-d for making the decision he disagrees with, or himself for his actions that stopped him from entering the Promised Land. Instead, he directs his rage, in my opinion unjustly, at the Israelites.
Corruption is not his---the blemish is his children’s, a perverse and twisted generation.
They provoked ME with a non-god, they angered ME with their vanities.
You could argue that it is admirable of Moses to praise G-d in the face of this decision, and I may inevitably agree. It’s difficult to criticize up the chain of command. However I cannot co-sign Moses’ decision to vilify his people. As a leader it is Moses’ responsibility to be an example to many. When your people test you, it is your job as a leader to maintain an even keel and through leadership show your followers the path to what is right. Perhaps these traits are why G-d decided not to allow Moses into the land of Israel. He may have been the leader they needed to get to the Promised Land, but he would not be fit to lead upon their arrival.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Shabbat Nitzavim-Vayelech
D’varim 29:9 – 31:30
25 Elul 5770 / Sept. 3 – 4, 2010
Standing Together
By: Dani Mor from MH Vienna
This week's Torah reading begins, “Atem nitzavim (You are standing here today).”
The commentaries explain that Nitzavim in Hebrew means "standing firm." This comes to teach us that our standing firm is conditional upon it being all of us standing together. Each one of us, from the highest to the lowest, has our part to play and our own potential to fulfill.
The Talmud's Ethics of the Fathers tells us, "Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot." Rather than worrying about why we are not standing in somebody else's shoes, our task is to fulfill our potential at the level we are at, in the situation where we are now, knowing that even if it may seem insignificant, each of us contributes on our own level and in our own way to the greater picture.
The story was told of Rabbi Aryeh Levin (known as "The Tzaddik from Jerusalem') who said to a doctor, "My wife’s leg is hurting us." This idea applies to all of us, as a community. When one person suffers, another feels the pain, even at a distance. When an event takes place in a distant country, this affects us as much as if it were to happen next door.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Parshat Ki Tavo
Dvarim 26:1 – 29:8
18 Elul 5770 / August 28th, 2010
First Fruits
Parsha Ki Tavo opens with God continuing his instructions of what the Israelites should do when they enter the Promised Land:
“And it will be, when you come into the land which the Lord, your God, gives you for an inheritance, and you possess it and settle in it, that you shall take of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you will bring from your land, which the Lord, your God, is giving you. And you shall put [them] into a basket and go to the place which the Lord, your God, will choose to have His Name dwell there. And you shall come to the Kohen who will be [serving] in those days, and say to him, "I declare this day to the Lord, your God, that I have come to the land which the Lord swore to our forefathers to give us."
For years, the Israelites had been longing to enter the land of Israel, a land that had been promised to them. However, even though the land is spoken of as if it is inextricably theirs – promised to them by God – the first fruits of its yield are not to be enjoyed by the Israelites. Rather, they are to be brought to the temple and made as a sacrifice for God.
The thought of not reaping the first benefits of a new possession, inheritance, or action – but rather setting them aside as an offering to God – is a lesson that need not be relegated to a distant moment in Jewish history when our people first entered the land of Israel. Each day we are given gifts, we acquire possessions, we have new experiences. While they may be small in relationship to the entrance of a people into their homeland, each of these moments can, too, be an opportunity to acknowledge that what may seem ours by birthright or acquisition is actually a part of a broader creation, of which we are only temporary stewards.
The act of bringing the first fruits from a new land to the Temple was a way of sanctifying the land. Judaism provides us a vehicle for continuing to transform the mundane to the holy, if only we maintain the intentionality to acknowledge that there is Godliness in everything.
Benjamin Bechtolsheim, Moishe House Silver Spring
Monday, August 16, 2010
Parshat Ki Teizei
11 Elul 5770 / August 13 – 14, 2010
Dvarim 22:5 – 25:19
In this week’s parsha I would like to consider why two scenarios are presented next to each other. The verse from Parshat Ki Teitzei are pasted below from Chapter 22. The first case is a prohibition about cross dressing and the second is an obscure law about sending a mother bird away before taking the young birds or eggs. The later mitzvah is known as Shiluach HaKen (שלוח הקן) Sending from the Nest.
5 A woman shall not wear that which pertains unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment; for whosoever does these things is an abomination unto the LORD thy God. {P}
ה לֹא-יִהְיֶה כְלִי-גֶבֶר עַל-אִשָּׁה, וְלֹא-יִלְבַּשׁ גֶּבֶר שִׂמְלַת אִשָּׁה: כִּי תוֹעֲבַת יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, כָּל-עֹשֵׂה אֵלֶּה. {פ}
6 If you happen upon a bird's nest on the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the mother is sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the mother with the young;
ו כִּי יִקָּרֵא קַן-צִפּוֹר לְפָנֶיךָ בַּדֶּרֶךְ בְּכָל-עֵץ אוֹ עַל-הָאָרֶץ, אֶפְרֹחִים אוֹ בֵיצִים, וְהָאֵם רֹבֶצֶת עַל-הָאֶפְרֹחִים, אוֹ עַל-הַבֵּיצִים--לֹא-תִקַּח הָאֵם, עַל-הַבָּנִים.
7 thou shalt let the mother go, but the young thou may take unto thyself; that it may be well with you, and that thou may prolong your days. {S}
ז שַׁלֵּחַ תְּשַׁלַּח אֶת-הָאֵם, וְאֶת-הַבָּנִים תִּקַּח-לָךְ, לְמַעַן יִיטַב לָךְ, וְהַאֲרַכְתָּ יָמִים
.
What might the Torah possibly be teaching us by juxtaposing these two commandments together? I would like to suggest that these two cases provide for an opening to talk about empathy and compassion as human qualities. In the first verse we are prohibited from dressing up like the other gender. Rashi commented that this is purely in the case where dressing up like the other gender is for the purpose of sexual deviance. For example, dressing up like a woman to sneak into the Women’s locker room for voyeuristic escapades. This is very different from a modern woman wearing pants or a transgender male to female wearing lipstick. The ability to assume another’s role or experience is an important piece of expressing empathy. While empathy is one key to human connectivity, complete enmeshment can be harmful. Thus, there are limitations to “walking in another shoes,” that seems to be a good protective measure for our world.
Similarly, shooing away a mother bird and stealing her eggs is not an example of compassion at first glance. But when we consider what a fox might do who happens upon a bird’s nest – goodbye momma bird and so long chickies! Perhaps this commandment gives us pause to recognize our base-animal tendencies and also our ability to act against them. Thus, shooing away momma is perhaps not better then leaving the chicks alone, but it opens the door for choosing with compassion and respect for our involvement in the chain of life.
Many Blessings!
Zvi Bellin, MHHQ
Monday, August 9, 2010
4 Elul 5770 / August 13 – 14, 2010
D’varim 16:18 – 21:9
Parashat Shoftim begins with God commanding the Jewish people to establish a legal system. God commands us to appoint “magistrates and officials” to “govern the people with due justice.”[1] Law is the modus operandi of an imperfect world. The functionality of society depends on the willingness of individuals to sacrifice a certain amount of autonomy in order to obtain the benefits of order; therein lays the logic behind the social contract. It is this social contract that creates the mandate for the rule of law, and our obedience to it. In democracies, the goal of this contract is to elevate man from his lowly individual existence and to hopefully create a just society. However, the very fact that the creation and practice of law are a human-led endeavour marks it with an inevitable fallibility, especially in its pursuit of justice. Since man is fallible and subject to unjust tendencies, so too the law he creates is also subject to such imperfection. In the image of man, law was made. Although intermittently unjust, law is our saving grace from the barbarity of anarchy, and necessitates obedience. As Justice Felix Frankfurter once said: Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that's all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feeling.
An Athenian jury convicts Socrates of corrupting the youth and heresy against the gods, ultimately sentencing him to death. Although Athens was a society that prided itself on democratic principles, its court system had decided it was prudent to put Socrates to death for speaking his mind. The hypocritical nature of the conviction and sentence leaves the reader with an interminable frustration. However, when Socrates is presented the option of fleeing and averting death, he refuses, presenting us with one of the most powerful arguments in the Western intellectual tradition. Socrates argues that to avert punishment handed down by the courts, however unfair, would be unjust. He claims that he entered into a social contract with the Athenian democracy through his residing and benefiting from the society before the sentence was issued.
Monday, August 2, 2010
27 Av 5770 / August 6 – 7, 2010
Dvarim 11:26 – 16:17
1. The actual law, in the Rabbinic writing, is that in ALL cases there needs to be substantial investigation into the matter. And in fact, the person who has been enticed should not kill the enticer right away, rather the enticer should be taken in front of the Beit Din (Jewish Court of Law). Still, the literal reading of the text needs to be addressed!
2. A simple answer is that it makes sense that if you are being enticed, then you know it to be true and you should take immediate action. In a way, this created a form of “Neighborhood Watch”. We are all responsible for protecting the boundaries of our community beliefs. The problem, of course, is that this seems like a precursor to the Salem witch trials. A person’s life should not hang on the balance of another person’s limited perspective.
3. When you read the verses about the individual enticer, possible relationships are also listed out: a brother, or step brother, your son, daughter, wife, your step mother, or “your friend who is like your own soul.”! These are people that you would probably NEVER think are trying to lead you astray. Perhaps the Torah is telling us that when a person who we would least suspect is clearly trying to unravel our faith identity – we should act to protect ourselves even before we create excuses for them. At that point, it might already be too late.