Crawling to Uman

The Magic Mezuzah

2009-11-09T21:10:00.000-08:00

It is said that having a mezuzah on your door will protect your home, just as wearing the talit katan will protect your person. First let me say that I do not doubt either of these statements. What has puzzled me was what was meant by “protection” and how exactly that protection was affected. Was protection to be understood as a metaphor? Meaning to guard your behavior? Seeing the mezuzah or the tzitzit would then merely be a reminder to stay on track and behave properly as a Jew. Thus your life as a Jew would be protected from outside influences. Or perhaps protection is meant literally. The mezuzah functions as an amulet putting some sort of mystic shield around your home.

Now I hold with the literal understanding of protection, but as to how it functioned I did not know. Maybe angelic powers were invoked by the hanging of the mezuzah, maybe the parchment itself emitted protective energy. Then I came across this passage:

Rabbi Abba said, “In so many places the blessed Holy One cares for His children! A person builds a house; the blessed Holy One says to him, ‘Write My name and place it at the entrance. You dwell within your house, and I will sit outside at your entrance to protect you.’
Zohar 2:36A Pritzker Edition, Daniel Matt, p. 161.

Ah, Hashem Himself guards those that fulfill his commandments.

Flowering of Hadasim

2009-09-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

Every year after Sukkot I take the aravot and hadasim and stick them in a pot of dirt and try to root them, generally about half of them survive. The aravot do great here and have grown to about eight feet in height. The hadasim, however, do not do so well, it is probably not warm enough for them, our climate being the exact opposite of dry, warm, and semi-tropical. So they grow an inch or two a year and that is about it. This year the healthiest plant formed blossoms and flowered.

Different Day, Same Old, Same Old

2009-09-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

Not being able to concentrate on davening is nothing new, and it is a problem that I am not alone in. In the Talmud Bavli it discusses how long one must maintain their concentration during the Shema, with one commentator suggesting that only for the first word is adequate. That is about where I am most of the time. During the prayer service I find I start to lose my focus somewhere after the word Baruch. I am not talking about not maintaining the proper mystical kavanah for each letter, more on the order of mentally reviewing the day’s chore list. No matter what intentions I start out with, pretty soon I have drifted away. In line with this I recently came across the following passage:

From Likutey Moharan #30:7:
“..all the confusions of the mind and all the disturbances and all the foolishness which we at times experience, are all drawn into our prayers. For all the disturbances, etc., and all the thoughts which a person occasionally thinks, all come to mind precisely at the time of prayer. Precisely then, when he gets up to pray, he hears them all;…
This happens in two manners. One possibility is that they come to be rectified. Because they have seen that the person is praying with proper concentration, they therefore come to be rectified, as this is the time when such correction is possible. For they have in them holy sparks that are in need of rectification. Another possibility is that the person is not fit to pray, and they come to disturb him from his praying.
No matter what the reason, it is precisely then, at the time of prayer, that all a person’s confusions and all his disturbances come and make themselves heard to him.”

Now there is no way I can fool myself into thinking that anything has come by me to be rectified by my deep spiritual intent so that leaves me firmly settled into category number two. “Not fit to pray,” not really the statement that anyone wants to hear. But the elucidation to the passage gives back some hope.

Commentary based on this passage Likutey Moharan vol, IV, Breslov Research Institiute, p.307 :
“Rebbe Nachman taught that when a person sins and then wishes to repent, the Attribute of Judgment denounces him as unfit and puts obstacles in his way. G-d then has to hide Himself, as it were, within the obstacles, thereby holding out a hidden hand to the person to assist him in repenting. In our context, if a person is “not fit” – i.e., he has erred or sinned - Judgment indicts him and creates obstacles which do not let him pray. (Yet, G-d is also hidden within the obstacles to prayer. After all, it is a mitzvah; G-d wants a person to pray to Him even if he is not fit,...”

So all hope is not lost, I can keep hammering away, trying to concentrate, and ask for Hashem’s help, after all, “G-d wants a person to pray to Him even if he is not fit.”

Burning Down the House

2009-08-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

It seems that the yetzer has decided to mobilize in a full out assault this year. It is doing its best to reinforce all my bad habits, completely distract me, during davening and learning time, with the most inappropriate thoughts and ideas, and generally make my life miserable. It reminds me of a story:

A Rebbe and his followers are walking through a town when they see a man sifting through the ashes of his house. The man is picking through the debris trying to salvage anything he can use to rebuild. The Rebbe exclaims to his followers, “See how holy this man is, he grabs what he can to make a new start, and is not stopped by what has happened to him, he is only looking ahead. The yetzer hara is like this, it will oppose you to the point of burning you down almost completely in an attempt to destroy you. You must cling to the good points that you still have and not be deterred.”

Man. I can smell the smoke and feel the flames.

Synchronicity

2009-08-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

"All your downheartedness and depression too is all just another barrier setting itself in your way. It has to be broken. For above all, you must work to break depression, which is more harmful, G-d forbid, than anything else! Gevalt! Do not be afraid, my beloved son! Do not be afraid! G-d really is with you! Remember what our master, teacher and Rebbe, of blessed memory, said, "G-d is great and we know nothing of it at all. Even when it comes to you people and to wherever each one of you has fallen. But there is a phenomenon whereby everything turns into good, for His greatness is unfathomable." You must really believe and know that these words of the Rebbe's are also directed at you, the way you are right now! Even someone thousands and tens of thousands of levels worse, G-d forbid, is also included in these words. And were this worst person to hear these words, he too would inspire himself with eternal life forever, and would not throw his life away."

From: Eternally Yours, Collected Letters of Reb Noson of Breslov, Vol. II, pg. 198.

Waiting for Elul

2009-08-10T19:31:00.000-07:00

I am counting down the days until the beginning of Elul. I know that a person can do teshuvah at any time but Elul is like the moving sidewalks in the airport. You can walk all the way out to the departure gate, but if you walk on the moving sidewalk you can just fly through the airport. For me Elul is like that.
Last year I had let things really slip, my observance and learning level dropped way down and then Elul came and jolted me awake. I spent all of this year clawing my way up just trying to get back to my previous level and I still have a ways to go. So, I am looking towards Elul, waiting for that spiritual push to help me on my way.

A Virtual Sun

2009-04-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

After writing the previous post, on reflection, I decided that I was exhibiting a lack of emunah, faith. After all, surely it would be sunny on April 8th, if that was what Hashem intended, and my own efforts in traveling to somewhere the sun was shining would be pointless. This decision was aided by a forecast that showed cloud cover for about 1000 miles in all directions. So I decided to not travel and trust that the sun would be visible here. Also I figured that since the more frequent mitzvah takes precedence, the Pesach Seder should come before the sun blessing, and it was more important to have a proper Seder at home than to have a “take-out” Seder in some hotel.
As you can see from the photo, it was not sunny, not only could the sun not be seen, it was difficult to see the next hill. The hours passed, no clearing, not even lessening of the fog, the children were upset, they had been looking forward to the sun blessing. I was upset; I had been looking forward to the sun blessing. Then I had an idea, if I couldn’t see the sun where I was, and I couldn’t be where the sun was, maybe I could see the sun where the sun was where I was. We called my brother-in-law in Kansas City, was the sun shining there? It was! We connected with Skype, an internet based phone service that allows live conversations with real time images to be transmitted to your computer, he pointed his web cam at the sun and presto, there was the sun, shining in Kansas City and in our office simultaneously.
Now I am not sure that this fit all the halachic requirements, but we could see the sun just as if we were looking at it through a window, it’s just that the other side of the glass was 2000 miles away.

The Mitzvah of Wunderground

2009-04-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

On April 8th it will not only be erev Pesach but the one and only chance for the next 28 years to say the Bircas Hachama, the blessing of the sun. Since I missed doing this the last time it happened and don’t know if I will still be here to participate the next time, I am determined to do the mitzvah this time around. That being said, I should mention that in the part of the country in which I reside we have an average of 60 clear days out of every 365, so the odds of being able to see the sun on April 8th are not very high. So each day I have been logging on to Wunderground and studying the forecast for all areas within a 1000 mile radius. I am prepared to drive as far as Boise, Idaho. The problem isn’t loading the whole family into the car Tuesday night and driving until we get somewhere with clear skies, the problem is that Wednesday is erev Pesach which means cooking for the seders, a lot of cooking, a lot of cooking that can’t be done if on Wednesday morning we happen to be in Boise, Idaho. So, I humbly ask Hashem that wherever there are Jews that wish to perform the mitzvah of blessing the sun, there should be clear skies for them to say the Brachah. If it turns out my merit is not so good, my back-up plan is to cook all the food on Monday, pack it away in Tupperware in an ice chest, and have our seders in a Best Western somewhere in Idaho.

When Good Seders Go Bad

2008-04-21T20:13:00.000-07:00

During the meal portion of the seder, we had the following conversation. It concerned the prop blood used during the recitation of the plagues (see the above photo):

Little Rebbetzin: Daddy will you keep the blood and use it again next year?

Me: No, it will go bad, I’ll make new blood for next year.

Me: (musing aloud) I wonder how long this stuff will remain good? It’s still getting thicker, I’d better not pour it down the drain.

Mrs. Jude: Why?

Me: I think it will plug up the drain and then I’ll have to call the Rooter man.

Me: (dramatizing the conversation)
Me: Yeah, the drain is plugged, can you come out and fix it?
Rooter Man: Do you know what’s blocking it?
Me: Yeah, blood.
Rooter Man: What???
Me: Well we had a lot of blood left over after Passover……

Everyone dissolves into prolonged hysterical laughter.

Wherever You Go, There You Are.

2007-12-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

For me, traveling with the Little Rebbetzin is an object lesson in emunah, absolute faith.

When traveling I like to know exactly where I’m going, how far it is, how long it will take me to get there, and if possible where we are going to stay. If I’m not sure where we will spend the night, then the last half hour before arrival is always one of sweat inducing anxiety, will we be able to find a place to stay at our destination?
Meanwhile, the Little Rebbetzin sits happily in the car, all she knows is that we are going somewhere and that when we get there we will, of course, have a place to stay, and exciting things to see and do. She has absolute unquestioning faith that this will happen.

She is old enough now to tell when I am getting worried. All the signs say no vacancy, everything’s full. She smiles at me and says: “Don’t worry Daddy, I’ll ask Hashem for a good place, He wants us to stay here.”
Sure enough, when we ask, there actually is one last space available.

It usually takes a few days of traveling before I can start to shake off the old habits and be more in tune with the Little Rebbetzin. Each trip I need to relearn this lesson, to let go of my plans and just have faith that wherever we end up is where we are meant to be.

I want to have her emunah, her trust, that everything will always work out, no question. I aspire to the faith of my child.

Eighth Night

2007-12-11T19:59:00.000-08:00

Davening on High Places

2007-11-25T21:13:00.001-08:00

In many Hasidic tales an individual is sent upon a seemingly insignificant journey and upon his return discovers that the entire purpose of the trip was: while beside a particular stream or tree he was to say a particular blessing (perhaps the hand washing blessing) and thus elevate the divine sparks that had been imprisoned in that place since the time of creation.

Rebbe Nachman strongly encourages his followers to conduct their personal prayers (the practice of hitbodedut) out in the fields, or other natural settings.

Yet formal prayer outdoors, shacharit, mincha, mariv, is discouraged if not outright forbidden, especially if those locations are on mountaintops or under trees. This is because we were forbidden to take on the practices of the Cannanite nations and to destroy their high places and sacred groves. Since mountaintops and trees were used as places of pagan ritual, we are forbidden to pray in those same places.

My difficulty is: when I daven outdoors I feel so much more focused, more connected with the Divine. Perhaps this is because I feel more connected to G-d as El Shaddai, the aspect of the divine that operates in nature, the force of the hidden miracle in the natural world. When I take my annual summer camping trip, one of the things that I most enjoy is the davening in the wilderness. I love standing in prayer under the stars, or saying the morning Amidah just as the solar disc comes clear of the horizon. I can feel clarity pour into my soul. I have had more emotional upheaval and purging “out there” than I have ever experience in shul on the High Holidays.

Perhaps my journey is to elevate the sparks in our national parks.

Davening on the edge of the world,
Standing where the world falls away,
At the top of the mountains,
My prayers curve upwards into space.

Willkommen zu Diese Welt

2007-11-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

Hillel Anschel ben Netzach HaLevi

When Moshiach Comes?

2007-10-18T19:47:00.000-07:00

The above photo was taken in Bodie, a ghost town in the Sierra Nevada. As you can see in the picture, when the people departed, they left everything behind.

I am not overly attached to my possessions, and over the years I have tried to whittle them down to a bare minimum (although I seem to have accumulated an alarming number of seforim). Still, I found this place really creepy. There was just something disturbing about people getting up from the table, leaving the dishes and silverware laying there, leaving their coat hanging on a hook by the door, heading out that door and never coming back.

I thought: "Is this what things will look like after Moshiach comes?"

Hooping for Hashem Redux

2007-10-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

This is the original post that I had planned for this title (see post of September 17 ).

This is a picture of The Little Rebbetzin and myself, hooping. Some may be disturbed by the non-tznius image in the foreground. If you found this offensive, my sincerest apologies. Some may question why I would take my daughter and myself to such a place, where such things might be seen. The answer is: It is not something that I find disturbing or troublesome. I do not see the dichotomy in leading a frum life and attending an obviously non-frum event. Perhaps this is because I am baal teshuvah and lived a life out in the world before entering the frum world. I do not view entering the frum world as entering a cloister. I view it more as carrying my frumness with me, a buffer that allows me to engage and participate in the world yet allows me to remain detached from the world, like a Teflon suit.
For some the question of why still remains, it challenges their notions of what is possible.
This can be illustrated by a conversation I recently had while attending a Renaissance Faire.

Bewildered Yid: Are you role playing?
Me: No, I’m just wearing a costume.
B.Y.: Are you supposed to be a medieval Jew?
Me: No, I’m just a Jew dressed in a costume.
B.Y.: (Not quite able to get his head around this) Are you playing the role of a Jew? I mean with the peyoes and all?
Me: Today I am wearing this costume for the Faire, I wear my peyoes every day. (I give them a good tug at this point to show that they are actually attached to me)
B.Y.: But you’re wearing a yarmulke and all.
Me: Yes, I’m an actual Jew, and I always have the peyoes and kipa, but today I am dressed up in Renaissance costume for the Renaissance Faire.

The conversation orbited around like this for quite a while before finally veering off into the standard “do you know the so and so’s from such and such?”

The man I was conversing with just couldn’t understand why an observant Jew would be attending a Renaissance Faire. For me there are two reasons:
1. These are things that I still enjoying doing.
2. I believe that it is possible to be frum and be engaged with the world, and by attending these events, dressed, and groomed, and acting as I do, I can show others that this is possible also.
We attended the event at which the above photo was taken on erev Shabbas. (Not to worry, we were home long before sundown.) Throughout the day, people broke away from groups they were performing with, or fought their way through crowds to shout “shalom aleichem” or just grab my hand and wish me a “good Shabbas.” I would suspect, from appearances and settings, that these people were Jews who were not currently engaged with their Judaism. Yet by my being there and being visually frum, it stirred something in them that caused them to come over and greet me.

I would like to believe that you could take any frum Jew, yes even one from Williamsburg or Borough Park, and drop them into some public gathering, and that they would be able to find something enjoyable there, or at the least be sociable to those around them. People have the idea, perhaps not unfounded, that if a person appears to be an “Orthodox Jew” they will be found only in the yeshiva, the shul, or the shtetl. I am doing my part to change this assumption. How can we be a light to the nations if we are not out there letting our light shine?

Why Does Hashem Hate Oregon?

2007-09-30T18:24:00.000-07:00

Translation by Philip Blackman, Judaica Press, Mishnayoth, Tractate Succah 2:9:
Throughout the seven days a man must make his Succah his principle abode and his house a temporary dwelling. If rain fell, when may he clear out? When a dish would be spoiled. They made a comparison: To what can the matter be compared? To a slave who came to fill the cup for his master and he poured the jug over his face.

Mishnayoth, Tractate Taanith 1:1
From what time should they begin to mention the Power of Rain?….Said R. Joshua to him, Since rain during the Holyday is but a sign of a curse, why should one make mention of it?

Once again it is Succoth and once again it is raining here in Oregon. Every year it rains. It rains a lot. It doesn’t matter whether the holiday falls early or late, or if we have had 90 consecutive days without rain prior to Sukkot, as soon as the holiday starts, so does the rain. Always. It usually rains for at least five days. Sometimes there are gale force winds too. One year I was forced to declare the sukkah unsafe for use when it began to lean alarming to one side after experiencing 60 mph wind gusts. Mostly it is just really damp. Even if it happens to not rain on one day, since it rained the two previous days everything in the Sukkah is wet and the schach is dripping continuously. This year the rain began on erev Shabbas, then it drizzled on and off on Shabbas, then it poured all day today, 2 inches so far. The forecast is rain continuing through next Shabbas. We invite the ushpizin to the succah and then I ask them to come join us in the house because that is where we are all immediately headed for.

So why, when it seems that Hashem absolutely does not what us to fulfill the mitzvah, do we even bother to put the succah up? For those one or two wonderful days each year when, bundled up in our hats and parkas, we do get to dwell in the sukkah.

Hooping for Hashem

2007-09-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

I had planned a different post to go along with this photo, but I just couldn’t seem to get it written. As you may have noticed I haven’t written any post for quite a while. My desire to post began to ebb when I realized that the trip to Uman that I had planned to make this Rosh Hashanah was not going to occur. Since the original purpose of this blog was to chronicle my preparations for that journey it seemed somewhat pointless to continue posting. As posting stopped, other things began to slip away as well. One by one the spiritual practices I had taken on from “the list” started to fade from my daily routine, there just didn’t seem to be enough time to accomplish everything anymore, and as I did less there seemed to be less time to do those things that I was still trying to do. So I did even less as a result. I guess this was a case of “being pushed in the direction you wish to go.” As I tried to take time back, time was taken from me.

Then today I got a message from A Simple Jew notifying me of his new posting about anger and about his Rosh Hashanah resolutions. As I read how ASJ had decided to scale his resolutions back to just the one thing that he felt needed the most work and concentrate on that, it suddenly occurred to me, Rosh Hashanah! The New Year! Like a hoop, the year had spun completely around to its end which was also its beginning, and it was going to continue spinning, round and round without stopping. Beginning and ending, over and over again, around and around. Had I made it to Uman, it would not have been the end of the journey. And not going was not the end of the journey either. Either way the hoop of the year would continue to spin around, I just had to spin with it. Here it is a New Year with new opportunities and challenges, a chance to begin all over again and try to get it right. Maybe for me, right now, right is to go out and put some Adi Ran on the ghetto blaster and hoop to Hashem with all the joy I can. Then with some joy as my foundation, I can start “crawling” forward again.

Thanks ASJ!!!

Paraphrasing Rabbenu:

The world is a rotating wheel. It is like a “hoop”, where everything goes in cycles…revolving and alternating. All things interchange, one from another and one to another, elevating the low and lowering the high. All things have one root.

On the Road Again

2007-06-06T17:22:00.001-07:00

photo courtsey University of Liverpool
The Little Rebbetzin and I are leaving on our annual summer camping trip so I will not be blogging until sometime in August. Take Care.

Fur Meine Deutscher leseren:

Meine tochter und Ich sind zelten gehen fur zwei monaten. Ich will dann blogging wieder beginnen.

The Things Are Mine

2007-05-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

Today is the forty-fourth day, which is six weeks and two days, of the Omer. Today is Gevurah of Malkhut. All our actions this day are influenced by our emotionally holding back. The aspect of judgment causes us to view everything critically and harshly and we are not disposed to grant any favors.

Being Nice to Everything

2007-05-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

Today is the forty-third day, which is six weeks and one day, of the Omer. Today is Chesed of Malkhut. This is when we show kindness in all our dealings in this world.

Can You Repeat That In English?

2007-05-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

Today is the forty-second day, which is six weeks, of the Omer. The essence of today is Malkhut of Yesod. This one is pretty esoteric. Yesod is the interface between our potentialities and our actualities. It takes our emotions and drives and transitions them into the physical actions and interactions of this world. Malkhut is this world and the receptacle for all the Divine energies. So Malkhut of Yesod would be the final or physical aspect of all our potential interactions.

Go In Beauty

2007-05-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

Today is the thirty-eighth day, which is five weeks and three days, of the Omer. Today is Tiferet of Yesod. We are perfectly balanced emotionally in all our personal interactions today.

Step Back

2007-05-09T20:58:00.001-07:00

Today is the thirty-seventh day, which is five weeks and two days, of the Omer. Today is Gevurah of Yesod.
This is the emotional restraint, or holding back, that we sometimes exhibit in our interactions with those around us.

Be Excellent to Each Other

2007-05-08T20:27:00.000-07:00

Today is the thirty-sixth day, which is five weeks and one day, of the Omer. It is Chesed of Yesod.
Since Yesod is the interface of the higher worlds with this world, it is also the interface of our drives and emotions with the world and people that surrounds us. Chesed of Yesod would be how we exhibit the quality of mercy when we interact with the world.

Islands in the Stream

2007-05-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

Today is the thirty-fifth day, which is five weeks, of the Omer. Today is Malkhut of Hod.
This how our sense of determination/resistance manifests in the world. Do we move through life with “irrational exuberance”, or do we make judicious use of our sense of holding back to ease the intensity of our Netzachian persistence. Do we hold out against all progress, firmly fixed in our current and past positions, stone-like, or do we allow the rushing river to move us forward.

Meat is Murder

2007-05-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

Kitzur Schulchan Aruch 59:13
It is customary to say to one who puts on a new garment: “Mayest thou wear it out and acquire a new one.” But we do not express this wish to one who puts on new shoes or a new garment made of fur or leather, even if the fur or leather be sewn beneath the cloth, and even if they come of an unclean animal because a garment like this requires the killing of a living creature, and it is written: “And His mercy is upon all His works.”

Because I am getting ready to spend a month out in the woods with the Little Rebbetzin my environmentalist sensibilities are stirring, so when I read the above portion of the Schulchan Aruch I recalled an interview about Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of England, and how she was espousing fairly radical environmental policies. Then the interviewee stated “Still, I don’t think we will be seeing her on the news, wearing a black ski mask and running out of a research laboratory with a beagle under each arm.” That is an image that I have always enjoyed, and if it would only hold true for some world leaders there might just be a few less monster suburban assault vehicles, with all leather interiors, on the road.

Holding at the Center

2007-05-03T20:50:00.000-07:00

Today is the thirty-first day, which is four weeks and three days, of the Omer. Today is Tiferet of Hod. Today when exercising determination it is from the emotional center, it is not full of regrets about the course of inaction that is being taken, Chesed, nor is it completely unconcerned with its impact on others, Gevurah. It is strong willed determination yet aware of the effects that it will have on others.

Putting Your Foot Down

2007-05-02T20:40:00.000-07:00

Today is the thirtieth day, which is four weeks and two days, of the Omer. The essence of the day is Gevurah of Hod. This is harsh resistance to action, by following strict judgment you have decided to become a complete impediment to any forward progress along the path that you oppose. This is really slamming your foot down. An interesting discussion of slamming your foot down can be found on onion soup mix. Further discussed at midianite manna and rabbi without a cause. Obviously this sort of action might have undesirable consequences.

Putting the Best Foot Forward

2007-05-01T20:40:00.000-07:00

Today is the twenty-ninth day, which is four weeks and one day, of the Omer. The essence of the day is Chesed of Hod. When the sefirot are arranged in the form of Adam Kadmon, the divine man, the sefirot of Netzach and Hod represent the right and left feet respectively. Whereas Netzach represented pushing ahead, stepping forward; Hod is more stepping back, or restraining the forward movement, putting the foot down. It is determination in the sense of “I am determined that I am not going to do that.”
Chesed of Hod is the difference between “We are not going to the park today, and I don’t want to hear any more about it,” and “We can’t go to the park today because everything there is wet because of the rain.”

A Word to the Wise

2007-04-30T20:55:00.000-07:00

Today is the twenty-eighth day, which is four weeks, of the Omer. Today is Malkhut of Netzach. Netzach means victory as well as endurance/perseverance. Today is when that quality of endurance is finally made manifest in this world, this is endurance leading to victory, winning through, overcoming the obstacles.
When we are manifesting Netzach, it is important that our perseverance be influenced by the higher sefirot of Chochmah, wisdom, and Binah, judgment. If we just plow ahead without thought, without guidance, blindly staying the course, then Netzach can lead to spectacular defeat, and destruction.

See-saw

2007-04-26T20:50:00.000-07:00

Today is the twenty-fourth day, which is three weeks and three days, of the Omer. Today is Tiferet of Netzach. Tiferet of Netzach would be the balanced point of my determination/perseverance, when the idea of relentlessly pushing through all obstacles is eased by consideration for others that may cross my path. You know, I haven’t really achieved this. I’m far enough out from the middle of the see-saw that the poor person on the Chesed side just got launched across the playground.

When the Going Gets Tough

2007-04-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

Today is the twenty-third day, which is three weeks and two days, of the Omer. The essence of the day is Gevurah of Netzach. Sometimes it can be difficult to maintain our forward momentum in the face of opposition. This is where Gevurah of Netzach comes into play.

The Little Rebbetzin loves to go canoeing, she constantly asks to go and is very excited about going, right up to the point of actually getting into the canoe. As soon as she needs to step into the wobbling canoe she has a massive panic attack and screams and sobs how she really doesn’t want to get in the canoe and she will just wait there on the shore. This happens every time. Now, I understand that some things can be frightening to a small person, but I also know that the only way to get beyond that fear is to confront it and then keep going. If I allowed Chesed to rule the situation, we would pack the canoe up and go home and try again when the L.R. was “ready.”
I am more the Gevurah sort. We came to go canoeing and we are going to do it, no obstacles will be tolerated. The L.R. is told that she is going to stop crying, RIGHT NOW, and she is going to, GET INTO THE CANOE. She does, we push off, and the L.R. says: “I love canoeing.” As she dangles her hands over the sides and rolls around on the bottom of the canoe.

All About Me

2007-04-24T20:26:00.000-07:00

Today is the twenty-second day, which is three weeks and one day, of the Omer. The essence of the day is Chesed of Netzach.
Netzach is called victory, it is the embodiment of perseverance, it is also my name, so this week is all about ME!

I am a task-oriented person, once I start something, I will keep at it until it is completed, I am not deterred by obstacles. Many years ago I had the following exchange at a job interview:

Human Resources Drone: What tricks do you use to do your job?
Me: What?
H.R.D.: You know, what games do you use so that you can finish your work?
Me: I just do it.
H.R.D.: Huh?
Me: I know what I have to do, and when it has to be done, and I work at it until it’s finished.
H.R.D.: But what do you do to motivate yourself, you know, when you don’t want to work?
Me: It’s my job, it has to be done, so I do it.
H.R.D.: Oh, I guess that works for you.
Me: Yes, it does.

While working on something I generally do not wish to be distracted, this can appear as if I am being rude or purposefully ignoring other people. Chesed of Netzach is the aspect of kindness that tempers the pure drive of perseverance, it prevents me from running roughshod over others while I am pursuing my task. It is the aspect of myself that allows me to stop what I am doing and patiently listen while the Little Rebbetzin informs me in great detail why she needs to borrow the car to drive to the moon because it is too far to travel by bicycle.

The Whole Truth

2007-04-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

Today is the twentyfirst day, which is three weeks, of the Omer. It is Malkut of Tiferet.
Today is truth made manifest in this world. When acting in truth, it is important to not be acting from our personal truth but from universal truth. It is the difference between mishpatim and chok. Mishpatim laws are ones that we can understand or rationalize a reason for observing, chok laws are the ones that we must observe even though we cannot see the reasoning behind them, we keep them because they are true.

Half Full or Half Empty?

2007-04-23T18:54:00.000-07:00

I came across the following passage during my learning. It made me think of the phrase “my cup runneth over.”

Talmud Bavli, Sukkah 46B, Schottenstein ed.:

The characteristic of earthly matters is such that an empty vessel can hold what is poured into it, whereas a full vessel cannot hold anything more. But the characteristic of matters pertaining to HaKodesh, Baruch Hu, is such that a full vessel can hold an even greater measure, whereas an empty vessel cannot hold things at all. As is stated: And if you will listen, you will listen. This teaches that if you will listen at first you will be destined to listen yet another time. But if you do not listen at first, you will not be able to listen later either. Another thing: If you will listen to the old, by reviewing again and again what you have already learned, then you will be able to listen to the new, but if your heart turns away and you abandon that which you have learned by failing to review it, then you will not listen subsequently, i.e. you will not subsequently be granted these insights.

The image of the cup overflowing is meant to indicate unlimited bounty being bestowed, but from the above quotation it would seem that the overflowing cup is in fact undesirable. Overflowing would mean that no more can be absorbed or accepted, perhaps, also, some of what is already received is being lost. Rather than asking that our cup overflow maybe we should request that we be given all that we are able to receive, and that we be granted the ability to absorb even more than that.
It also indicates that we should value that which we already have, and by using and cherishing what which we have already received we earn the privilege of receiving more in the future.

Just the Facts Mam

2007-04-19T20:31:00.000-07:00

Today is the seventeenth day, which is two weeks and three days, of the Omer. It is Tiferet of Tiferet. The truth of truth. Complete truth without deference to judgment or mercy. The truth that is not softened with kindness nor given with harshness to punish. It simply is. It is said that “There is no truth in beauty,” but there is beauty in truth.
Interestingly beauty is another term that is used to refer to Tiferet.

Keeping Count

2007-04-19T18:12:00.000-07:00

When I read the following passage I thought it an appropriate addendum to my post on Jewish time, it also ties in nicely with blogging the omer.

From Hayom Yom for the 1st of Iyar:

…someone said to my father, “The Alter Rebbe’s Chassidim were always keeping count.” My father took a great liking to the saying, and he commented: “That idea characterizes man’s avoda. The hours must be ‘counted hours,’ then the days will be ‘counted days.’ When a day passes one should know what he has accomplished and what remains yet to be done…

Sunburn

2007-04-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

Today is the sixteenth day, which is two weeks and two days, of the Omer. The essence of the day is Gevurah of Tiferet. Gevurah of Tiferet occurs when the culmination of emotions has favored the side of harshness over kindness. The sun can burn you, sometimes the truth hurts.

Time Isn't Holding Us, Time Isn't After Us

2007-04-17T20:47:00.000-07:00

This month's new practices.

Step 15 on Rav Breiter’s list: Every day recite a portion of the collected prayers of Rabbi Natan, Likutey Tefilot.

I do not currently own a copy of this work, so I will have to delay taking action on this one until October when I usually make most of my annual sefer purchases.

Step 16: Make fixed times each day for Torah study.

When I began to formulate what I was going to write on this post my original idea was to tally up the time that I spent davening and learning each day and then post that figure. A sort of, pat myself on the back, look and see what a good Jew I am, I spend X amount of time each day doing Jewish stuff. The more that I thought about it, the more uncomfortable that idea became. It seemed to impose a dichotomy, these hours of the day are my Jewish hours, and the other hours are my regular person hours. Did I really feel that during part of the day I was just like everyone else, and at other times I took on my “secret Jew identity”?
I decided to look more carefully at what I was considering “Jewish time”. Obviously the three prayer services were in this category, as was any time in my current learning schedule. What about the time spent saying grace after meals, or any of the various brachas before and after eating? What about other brachas said during the course of the day?
Was there an amount of time that was too small to be significant? Did the second it took to kiss the mezuzah when going out the door matter? Did that action influence the time immediately following it to make it somehow “Jewish”? If I started humming a niggunim while washing the dishes did the dishwashing become sanctified time?
Was there a minimum Halachic content in a conversation that made it more Jewish?:
Little Rebbetzin: Daddy, what do people taste like?
Me: I don’t know, I’ve never eaten anyone.
L.R.: Oh that’s right people aren’t kosher.

I realized that although sometimes I felt like “I’m not an actual Jew, I just play one on TV,” really there was no point in the day that was “regular time,” it was all “Jewish time” if that was what I made of it.

Sunlight

2007-04-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of SDAC, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Today is the fifteenth day, which is two weeks and one day, of the Omer. The essence of the day is Chesed of Tiferet. Tiferet, the blending of Chesed and Gevurah, is the middle ground between kindness and harshness. In Zoharic kabbalah Tiferet is known as Truth,the Great Light. It represents the male counterpart to the feminine Malkhut. It is the sun to Malkhut’s moon. Tiferet is the culmination of the emotional/mental qualities of Chesed and Gevurah. These two sides have each had their influence on any decision we have made regarding any action or speech we are about to perform, the combination of their influences is Tiferet. In Chesed of Tiferet that combination has favored kindness. Our resulting actions will show less of the analytics of judgment and more of the openness of kindness.

When the Whip Comes Down

2007-04-16T21:21:00.000-07:00

Today is the fourteenth day, which is two weeks, of the Omer. The energy of the day is Malkhut of Gevurah. Malkhut is the manifestation of the divine in this world. Malkhut has no innate quality or energy of its own. It receives all from the sefirot that precede it in the sefirotic tree, as such, today is discipline actualized, it is no longer merely a mental process that affects our decisions, but behavior itself, how we physically manifest the concept of discipline and judgment in our activities and interactions.

A Partner in Correction

2007-04-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

Today is the thirteenth day, which is one week and six days, of the Omer. Today is Yesod of Gevurah. Yesod is the point at which the downward flow of divine energy collects before it is delivered into this world. When the sefirot are arranged into the shape of a human figure, Adom Kadmon, Yesod is located in the position of the reproductive organs. In Zoharic kabbalah it refers specifically to the male sexual organ. Just as the sexual organ is the point of physical joining between two individuals, so Yesod represents the point where divine energy is connected and exchanged with the physical world. Yesod of Gevurah represents that condition that occurs when a person’s judgment/disciple encounters and has an effect upon another individual. Ideally we are not just heaping criticism upon an unwilling recipient. Instead the other individual is a partner with us, we offer corrective and helpful advice which the other gratefully accepts and acts upon.

Just a Love Tap

2007-04-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

Today is the tenth day, which is one week and three days, of the Omer. Today is Tiferet of Gevurah – the quality of the balance point of judgment and mercy. Similar to Tiferet of Chesed, Tiferet of Gevurah represents the times when the quality of righteous anger is moderated. Left untempered absolute judgment would destroy all it encounters. Balanced judgment recognizes that there are exceptions to the rules.

Ramban,Commentary to Bereishit 18:23, translation Rabbi Yaakov Blinder, Mesorah Pub.

But it is not appropriate even under the Attribute of Strict Justice, to bring death upon the righteous along with the wicked, for if such a thing were done the righteous would be punished like the wicked, “and people would say, ‘It is useless to serve G-d.’” All the more so would such action be inappropriate under the Attribute of Mercy, for G-d is the Judge of all the earth; He is the One Who does justice with compassion.

Mind in a Whirl

2007-04-11T21:02:00.000-07:00

photo courtesy of NOAA
Today is the ninth day, which is one week and two days, of the Omer. This day is Gevurah of Gevurah. The quality of absolute discipline. An unquestioning, and unyielding adherence to the exact letter of the law, no mitigation, no tempering.

Lately I have been having trouble staying focused during davening. Since I have not been able to concentrate I have been tempted to skip parts of the service in hopes of staying focused on the other portions. It seems that this is a case where extreme discipline is needed. Reb Natan writes in his commentary on the Talmudic tale of the Wise Men of Athens:

Likutey Halakhot, Shabbat 6
…even a person on a low spiritual level, who whenever he begins to pray immediately finds his mind distracted and preoccupied, must nonetheless remain firm and continue praying to G-d….This then was the question of the Wise Men of Athens: “What of the person who prays and serves G-d , only to find that what he does is confused and incoherent?” As mentioned, this is something which happens often to most people: even when they force themselves to pray, they can only manage a little bit before becoming distracted and incapable of going on…. “If that’s the case that his prayers and devotions are always confused,” the Wise Men asked, “why did he then pray again? After seeing that he is incapable of praying properly so that his prayers ascend, why does he keep trying? These latter prayers will also prove inadequate and leave him confused?”…. “don’t let this surprise you,” Rabbi Yehoshua answered them. “Even those who engage in Torah study and the performance of mitzvot are incapable of elevating their devotions without the true tzaddik..….This likewise applies to the person who whenever he begins to pray, immediately finds his mind distracted and preoccupied. He gets so confused that he cannot go on praying. Nonetheless, he must remain firm and continue praying to G-d, again and again, throughout his days. For the tzaddik, while elevating all the other prayers, will elevate also these confused and incoherent prayers.

Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end
-Robert Fripp

Stormy Waters

2007-04-10T20:59:00.000-07:00

Today is the eighth day, which is one week and one day, of the Omer. This week we enter the realm of Gevurah – the quality of judgment or discipline. Last week we experienced Gevurah of Chesed, when mercy and kindness was seen to have limits. There are times when it is necessary to restrain our expression of love. Today we enter Chesed of Gevurah, subtly different, when we render judgment, such as disciplining our child, it should not be done with absolute anger. Retribution must be tempered and applied with mercy.

Tehillim 32 : 6

Let everyone who is devoted to You offer this prayer at the moment You are to be found:
That when punishments are sent to scour him at least they should not come upon him like a swelling flood of water.

Middle of the Road

2007-04-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

Today is the third day of the Omer, it is Tiferet of Chesed. Tiferet is the balance point between the complete restraint of Gevurah and the the unlimited giving of Chesed. Tiferet is when the two are harmonized with each other. Each moderating the other to produce a harmonic whole. It is the middle path.

Kitzur Schulchan Aruch, vol. I, Chap. 29:

Men differ widely on their temperaments: Some area chronically angry, others are of a placid disposition who never become angry, or become so once in many years; some are too haughty and others are too humble; some are sensuous, never satisfied with pleasure, others are ascetic, having no desire even for small things which are the necessities of life; some possess unbounded greed, not satisfied with all the wealth in the world, as it is written: “He that loveth money will not be satisfied with money;” others are improvident, satisfied with the little they have, and they do not even seek to earn enough for their necessities; some are avaricious, afflicting themselves with hunger, while they keep on hoarding money, and whatever they do spend for their food they do so grudgingly, others are spendthrifts, spending all their money lavishly; and the same is true with other dispositions and views: the naturally melancholy and the gay; the villain and the noble; the cruel and the compassionate; the gentle and the hard-hearted, and so forth.

The good and right course for one to follow is the happy mean, and not the extreme….And so with regards to the other attributes, a person who adopts the middle course is called wise.

The Shulchan Aruch, as quoted above, advocates moderation in all things. It says that a person should be an Ish Tam, a simple man, the dweller in town, the one that quietly learns in the yeshiva, follows the rules, and is satisfied with his lot. My difficulty is that I have always lived as the Ish Sadeh, the man of the fields, the individual that craves the wild, that pushes the envelope, that tends to extremes, and wants to experience things with more intensity. I’m not sure how to achieve that state of moderation, as an Ish Tam I feel muddled and static, it is the excitement of the Ish Sadeh that actually brings me focus and allows me to access the calm inner center.

Boy, don’t you worry... you’ll find yourself.
Follow you heart and nothing else.
And you can do this if you try.
All I want for you my son, is to be satisfied.
And be a simple kind of man.
Be something you love and understand.
- Ronnie Van Zant

Letting My People Go

2007-04-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

Today is the second day of the Omer. The quality of the day is Gevurah of Chesed, the aspect of restraint within giving. The prune juice represents Chesed, it keeps things moving. Unlimited consumption of prune juice would not be desirable. The Shmura Matzah represents Gevurah, it is the aspect of holding back and retention. When Shmura Matzah is combined with prune juice there is neither endless flow nor complete constriction, but a necessary tempering of both effects.

Mercy, Mercy

2007-04-04T15:10:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of the Omer.
On the this day the quality of chesed of chesed is manifest. This is the aspect of absolute and unconditional giving. Giving all of yourself, your possesions, your emotions, without restraints or limits or questions.

Little Shtetl on the Prairie

2007-03-10T21:29:00.000-08:00

While chatting with folks during Purim, a 500 mile round trip journey, the non-question was: “of course your home schooling?” Even the clerks at the local grocery store state: “You are going to home school?” Again not so much a question but a statement of fact. The truth is no, we sent the Little Rebbetzin to public school. I went through the public school system and thought it was fine. Of course this was the New York City public school system and was at a time when good behavior was encouraged by Mrs. Silverman actually wacking you with the yardstick if you acted up in class.
I had failed to take into account that I now live in a state where 78% of the students fail to meet the no-child-left-behind standards and the response of the school system was to keep lowering the standards until more kids could pass them. And in this age of rampant PC hysteria the school won't disipline the students because that might "invalidate" them.
As a result we have not been pleased with the L.R.’s schooling experience. Her skill levels at reading, math, and writing have actually declined as the school year has progressed,as has her behavior. So when I read the following post put up by A Simple Jew,

"What Will The Neighbors Say?"
Please, please ignore your neighbors and societal pressure and l’maan Hashem do what is right for your child. I have seen far too many children sacrificed on the altar of "what will the neighbors say?" Keep your eye on doing what is right for your child. That’s all that really matters.
(Rabbi Yakov Horowitz)

and a few days later read this in a guest posting by Bob Miller,

The fact is that urban public school systems all over the country, the Midwest included, are failing in their mission to educate kids to become civilized, responsible citizens. Absenteeism, disinterest in learning, teaching of PC platitudes instead of real knowledge, bullying and other violence, drugs, sexual aggressiveness and other problems afflict these systems.

I said, OK, you don’t have to hit me in the head too many times before I get the point, so home schooling it’s gonna be. We just haven’t decided whether to pull her out starting with Pesach or allow her to continue till nearer the end of the school year.

Got that Covered

2007-03-06T19:50:00.000-08:00

Hashem takes pity upon me, since I am crazed with pre-Pesach preparations, this month’s additions to my daily practices are already covered.

Step 13: Study from the books of Rabbi Nachman everyday. Already doing this one.

Step 14: Say Tehilim, say at least ten Psalms everyday. Again, already doing this, I recite the Tikkun HaKlali every morning after davening.

Since I don’t have to add anything new this month, with Hashem’s help, I can use the opportunity to fine tune those practices that I have already taken up.

My Pesach Problem

2007-02-26T19:20:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, during a kinder and gentler era, I began to eat as a vegetarian. I was not trying to make a radical environmental statement, I just wished to eat in a more healthy way and consume a little lower on the food chain. Over the years and decades my body adapted to my new diet and for most of the year my family and I consume no meat,…except for Pesach.

There are those that will argue that you are required to eat meat on Shabbas, because the Gemara states that meat brings joy to the heart. I find that a well-prepared vegetarian meal can cause plenty of joy, especially when followed by a really rich dairy dessert (something you can’t have if you just ate the fleishig meal) ((because let’s be honest here, dairy substitutes taste like cardboard and have an unpleasant chalky consistency)).

Yes, there is a whole range of vegetables, grains, and spices that can be eaten once you get beyond the Ashkenaz idea, and my apologies to you if you are a big cholent fan, that the only vegetables to cook with are, carrots, potatoes, and cabbage, and the way to prepare them is to boil them for six or more hours until they all have the same flavor and texture.

Plenty of variety to choose from…except for Pesach. Because if you follow Ashkenaz minhag then about the only thing that you actually can eat on Pesach is meat. Sephard minhag permits rice and beans, and the Gemara actually states in accordance with this. But somewhere in time the Ashkenaz rabbis decided that during Pesach someone might get so crazed for dinner rolls that they would take some beans, but them through a grain mill, knead a dough of the resulting bean flour, leaven it, bake it, and eat some bean bread during Pesach. Believe me when I tell you, someone who would go to all that trouble is just going to head down to the gentile bakery and buy some warm, fluffy, wheat bread, fresh from the oven.

Since beans, rice, corn, peanuts, mustard??, and their derivatives are all forbidden, that leaves us with meat, and every Pesach we place an on-line order for several freezer chests full of meat, and since we live way out in the country the air freight costs are so high that it would probably be cheaper to buy an entire cow from the local farmers and shecht it myself.

After eating only vegetables for the previous 50 or so weeks introducing meat as the main dietary staple necessitates some digestive adjustment. And every year I feel each and every inch of the entire 26 feet of my intestines being readjusted...slowly.

So if any nice Sephardic family out there would like to adopt us before Pesach…

Ready,..Set,...Clean

2007-02-20T09:40:00.000-08:00

I couldn't take the anticipation anymore, I just couldn't wait, the pressure was too much, I couldn't wait until after Purim.

Yes, it's true....I have started cleaning for Pesach.

From the Nahe to the Rio Grande

2007-02-18T14:54:00.000-08:00

A while back Mrs. Jude put up a post on her own blog about being a Jewish pioneer, being Jewish way out in the country, and some of the joys and hardships involved. Last week The Forward had an article The Joys of Cedar Rapids by Mitchell Levin. Below is an edited version.

An old Jewish folk tale tells of two travelers who meet on the road while fleeing Tsarist Russia. The first traveler asks, “Where are you going?” The second traveler responds, “To America. And where are you going?” “I am going to Madagascar,” replies the first traveler. “But Madagascar is so far away,” exclaims the second traveler. “Far away?” says the first traveler, as he resumes his journey. “Far away from where?”
I never tire of telling this tale, because for more than four decades, Madagascar has been my home. Actually, home is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. But as far as most of my brethren are concerned, I may as well be from Madagascar. You see, I come from a place all but beyond the comprehension of most American Jews.
When I went to enroll my son in the Montessori school in Kerrville, Texas — Jewish population: zero — the teacher had a hard time controlling her excitement. She had studied in New York. She had met Jews there. Having Michael in her school would be “a cultural experience” for the other students. “Surely,” she asked in that questioning yet demanding tone so common to school teachers, “you will come and show the youngsters how you celebrate each of your holidays. It will be so good for them to hear Hebrew songs.”
Out here in small-town America, non-Jews assume that we know everything there is to know about Judaism and that whatever we say is “The Jewish Answer.” They cling to this notion, no matter how many times we tell them that if you ask two Jews the same question you will get at least three answers.
Observing the dietary laws, even in a limited fashion, is a challenge. Yet it is almost more imperative here than elsewhere, because it is a way of maintaining identity. If you run out of something, you can’t just run to the local store and pick it up. This is not Chicago, where the Jewel grocery stores sell fresh kosher meat, or Washington, where the Giant stocks items aimed at thousands of Jewish customers. This is Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
To be fair, while we still need to plan ahead, things are not as challenging as they used to be. Thanks to mass marketing, even in places with only a few hundred Jewish families you would be surprised at how many kosher products are available. And say what you will about Wal-Mart, but most of the cookies and crackers bearing their “house brand” are kosher. They even sell kosher bread at the discounter’s famed low prices.
When I came back to Cedar Rapids from my sister’s funeral, everybody in town — everybody Jewish, that is — knew that I would need a minyan for six out of the next seven days. This was no small challenge in a town with maybe 150 Jewish families and only one temple. On top of that, it was January, a time of ice and snow in Iowa.
Yet without fail, each and every night our little living room filled with people — men, women, traditional, Reform, it didn’t matter. One night the rabbi brought the confirmation class. And on more than one evening Jews drove up from Iowa City — a 60-mile round trip — just to make sure we hit the magic number.
Sure, it would have been so much easier in a big city. But there is a certain warmth and comfort that comes from community, that sense that out here in Madagascar we set aside what in a large city would be insurmountable differences in order to meet the human needs of our brethren.
When people ask, “How can you be Jewish in a small town?,” I remind them that Rashi lived in Troyes, a French town with a minuscule Jewish population. We may not be Rashis, but he certainly is an inspiration and a role model for what small-town Jewry can accomplish.

When people ask me now I can live out in the country, I point out that the communities such as Postville and Monsey started out with just a few individuals and grew from there. It just takes one person to start a community and G-d willing more will arrive. An example from my own family history.
Between 1860 and 1900 many of the Jewish families in the Nahe valley of Germany emigrated to England and America. Some of these were already related to my own immediate family, and would intermarry again after settling in America. One family, the Senders would settle first in Rockport, Missouri and then after traveling back to New York to marry a member of my own family would move to Trinidad, Colorado.

Temple Aaron, Trinidad, Colorado
There they would help build Temple Aaron, the oldest synagogue still in use in Colorado, and there they would be joined by cousins and others that had left the Nahe valley, and then as the community grew other individuals and families joined them. See, if you build it they will come.

The Story Behind this Picture

2007-02-13T16:49:00.000-08:00

One of the Little Rebbetzin’s favorite stories is the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit. I read these to her, in character, similar to the B.B.C.’s radio productions. She enjoys acting out the story. After accessorizing we usually have the following conversation.

L.R.: Do you know who I am?

Me: (the Little Rebbetzin’s actual name)??

L.R.: No! I’m Pippin. You be everybody else.

Me: I don’t want to be...everybody.

L.R.: (sulkily) O.K., then you be all the orcs.

Me: O.K.

This is followed by about 30 minutes of my being stabbed, slashed, and poked by the L.R.’s sword.

Recently she has been listening to a series of story tapes about the Tzaddikim. These are really well done. There is also a certain similarity in plot line.

Lord of the Rings is a story about a small group of good individuals who, through great faith and perseverance, manage to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and vanquish the forces of evil that oppose them.

Tales of the Tzaddikim are stories about a small group of righteous Jews who, through great faith in Hashem, manage to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and vanquish the gentiles that oppose them.

Naturally they can be combined.

L.R.: Daddy can I put on your hat?

Me: Yes you may.

Some time later. See photo.

L.R.: Guess who I am!

Me: Legolas???

L.R.: No! I’m the good Rebbe from the Shire. You be the evil christian orcs.

Yikes!

Just One Word

2007-02-12T19:06:00.000-08:00

The next item from R. Breiter’s list is to study a portion of the Shulchan Aruch every day. This is actually a practice that I had kept previously but had discontinued after a few repetitions. Picking it up again I was surprised how much easier it was to understand some of the laws and their explanations and how much more interested I was in them. It could be that I am working with a greater knowledge base now. Alternatively, my level of observance is so much greater than it was, and now I am more familiar with some of the halachic intricacies and perhaps don’t have the mental opposition to learning and doing them that I may have had previously. The result is that I am enjoying my daily portions instead of just ticking off the required number of pages.

Item #12 on the list is Hitbodedut. R. Breiter says keep at least an hour a day. I try to have hitbodedut every day, although it’s something I find easy to slack on, because the whole confessional part is just very uncomfortable, because….well….I always have a lot, you know…..to confess, and who wants to go on every day about how big a screw-up they are. Thanking Hashem, making requests for my needs, that’s easy enough, but I really get waylaid by the viduy. Also, I don’t like to talk that much, given the opportunity I could go for days without engaging anyone in conversation, so it’s tough keeping up a one-sided conversation for an hour straight, picture a really, really terrible blind date. Fortunately Rabbenu has foreseen that there are people like me.

A Day in the Life of a Breslover Chassid, pg. 49:
Even if you can’t open your mouth at all, just the fact that you stand there and put your hope in G-d, lifting your eyes upwards and forcing yourself to speak, even if you only say a single word the whole hour – all this endures forever.

Stand and Deliver

2007-02-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

My previous post got me thinking about assimilation, and people drifting away from the way of Torah, and what could be done. A little inspiration was directed my way.
Expounding on the verse: Do not shame (her), although your mother be old..

From the Schottenstein edition, Talmud Yerushalmi, Berachos, 94A:

….T’ Zeira said: If your nation has become old, i.e. enfeebled in the performance of mitzvos, stand up and repair (the breach)! If they are lackadaisical regarding a certain mitzvah, invigorate them, just as Elkanah did…

and from 94B:

it is time to act for Hashem; they have nullified your law……R’Shimon Ben Yochai says: If you see that the people’s hands have despaired of clinging to the Torah, - stand and strengthen your hold on it exceedingly, and you will receive the reward of all of them.

Enough said.

Who by Fire?

2007-02-04T18:56:00.000-08:00

About a month ago A Simple Jew put up a post entitled conflicting emotions which dealt with his experiences and emotions while attending the funeral of a member of his family. In the post and the comments that followed there was discussion regarding cremation. This is a touchy subject with me. 60 years ago the majority of my family was lost to the flames. My grandparents and my parents wished to be and were cremated. This was their decision. Whether these two things are related, I cannot say for certain, but based upon the way I was raised I suspect that the general feeling was that G-d exists but maybe He was not so much Jewish. This is my opinion on the subject.
If you detect a note of hostility in some of my comments let me first say:
a) I do not deal well with people getting in my face about anything. Whether for my own good or not.
b) I get a little testy if anyone messes with my mispacha.

All things decay. Bones because of their composition can take thousands of years or more to decay. The heavier and denser the bone, the longer it will last. If you want to call the densest bone in the body the “luz” bone, that’s fine with me.

The heavier bones survive cremation and then are run through a crushing machine and the resulting fragments given to the family. If you believe that the “luz” bone is impervious to decay, then it is obviously one of the bones that survives cremation.

The idea that Hashem, Who is all powerful, is incapable of resurrecting a person unless there is a “luz” bone, is an absurd limitation upon His power.

I can not conceive that G-d, who sustains the wicked so that they have the opportunity to repent, would condemn the good to nonresurrection because they exercised the free will they were given and made a, perhaps misguided, decision as to whether their remains should be buried intact or after being reduced to ashes.

In the current Aish HaTorah newsletter there was an article about the first crematorium to be opened in Israel. The following is an excerpt from that article.

Burning, in Judaism, is a declaration of utter abandon and nullification. Jews burn leaven and bread before Passover, when the Torah insists no vestige of such material may be in their possession. The proper means of disposing of an idol is to pulverize or burn it.
Needless to say, God is capable of bringing even ashes to life again. But actually choosing to have one's body incinerated is an act that, so intended or not, expresses denial of the fact that the body is still valuable, that it retains worth, indeed potential life.

Perhaps if someone had taken the time to explain things to my relatives, and myself, in these terms, instead of the shrieking and hand flapping from the shtetl crowd, which drove them to the cold rationalism of the assimilated, different decisions would have been made.

Chag Sameach und Gut Shabbos

2007-02-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

The Little Rebbetzin says: "I love Tuberschplat!"

Me Too!!!!

A Collection of Fruits and Nuts

2007-02-01T19:07:00.000-08:00

Preparing for Tu B'Shevat

Moment by Moment

2007-01-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

Each day in the first blessing to the Shema we say: m’chdash b’chol yom tamid ma’aseh beraysheet, He renews each day, continuously, the work of creation. I have wondered, does this renewal take place every single millisecond, or every second, or some other unit of time, and if it takes place every second, does it take the whole second or just part of it?
Recently I came across the following passage that seemed to answer these questions.

During a discussion of the blessings that are said on rainfall the Yershalmi, Berachos, states:
Schottenstein ed., Talmud Yershalmi, Berachos, 91a:
R, Chanina said: Once every thirty days the deep rises and waters (this tree). And what is the basis for this statement? It is the following verse: I am Hashem, Who guards it; periodically, I will water it,….

The elucidation for this statement says:
Radal to Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer (Ch. 5:29, and Hagahos 4) proposes a brilliant explanation of how this verse demonstrates watering occurs once every thirty days. A verse states (Psalms 90:4) that G-d’s “day” is the equivalent of a thousand human years. Since a day is twelve hours long (see Radal ibid 7:55) this would mean that G-d’s “hour” is the equivalent of 83 1/3 human years (see Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer Ch. 48). The verse states that G-d waters these trees leregaleem, which we have rendered as “periodically,” but which translates more literally as “at each moment.” The term rega, a moment, refers to the smallest unit of time, which in halachah is the chelek, used in the reckoning of new moons and intercalation of years. There are 1080 chalakim in an hour; since G-d’s “hour” lasts 83 1/3 years, G-d’s chelek (which is 1/1080 of His hour) lasts a bit less that 30 days (28.1634 days, to be precise). The verse’s “moment” is measured in G-d’s time; it emerges that the watering takes place approximately once every thirty days.

Based upon this interpretation, it could be understood that although Hashem continuously sustains creation, He renews it (continually being understood as each and every moment) once every thirty days. The question then arises at which point in this period does the renewal take place. I am struck by the closeness of the 28.1634 figure and the 29.5, or so, days that are in the lunar cycle. Perhaps when Hashem stated: This renewal shall be for you the beginning.. (Shemot 12:2, as understood by Rashi) He was indicating that at the time of the monthly renewal of the moon all creation was also being renewed.

Spamming for Moshiach

2007-01-24T10:14:00.000-08:00

The following exchange was part of a series of comments from a posting on Dov Bear’s blog:

60 years ago it would have been inconceivable that Moses could have spoken to the entire Jewish people without a miracle. Now it's inconceivable that when the Messiah comes (it should be soon, bimheyra b'yamenu etc etc) (s)he won't send us all the same email at the same time. The way God is, is also the way WE respond to HIM.
SM | 01.18.07 - 6:50 pm

“Now it's inconceivable that when the Messiah comes (it should be soon, bimheyra b'yamenu etc etc) (s)he won't send us all the same email at the same time.”
Dot com or dot org? Or, perhaps even dot edu?
The Back of the Hill |

Lol. I bet he gets his own domain. Doesn't it depend on your affiliation?
Charedim - meschiach@shakenshockle
MO - meschiach@gushkatif.il
Chabad - hamelechhamoshciach@reborn.rebbe
Reform - mistake@turntheclockback.1842
SM | 01.18.07 - 7:08 pm |

Sure it’s funny, but what happens if Moshiach actually does e-mail everyone only to have the message deleted by msn spam blocker? I guess that would be conclusive proof that Bill Gates and Microsoft are, as some suspect, the agents of evil.

photo by Chris Pirazzi
Billgatus of Borg aside, I am of an age that I remember the beginning of manned space flight, and one of the big topics of conversation concerned radio waves and TV signals. We were told these signals just continued traveling out into space forever and if you could travel far enough and fast enough you could catch up with them and listen to programs from 30 years before. So I got to thinking if radio and television signals continued to exist and transmit their messages long after their initial broadcast what about the messages that are out on the web? Do they also have some kind of continued existence out in the ether, perpetually transmitting their messages? Do all the questions, and doubts, fears, and requests, that people write about in their blogs continue beyond the confines of the servers? Does Hashem read blogs?

It was said that we should make our requests to Hashem just as a child does. A child when it wants something, even something that it doesn’t need, will ask over and over again, it won’t take no for an answer, it will cry, and scream, and rage, until it gets what it wants. So should we. We need to make our requests over and over, not giving up. We should continually call out until our requests are fulfilled. We should spam Hashem. And just maybe if every single blogger were to post: “We want Moshiach now”, we could spam Hashem into bring Moshiach, may it be so, in our time, now.

Comments What Comments?????

2007-01-22T21:29:00.000-08:00

My sincerest apologies to any of you who may have attempted to leave a comment. It turns out that I had enabled comment moderation but neglected to specify an e-mail to send them to, so all comments disappeared into cyberspace limbo. Once again, I'm very sorry, I was not snubbing any of you, really truly.

This is the Letter P

2007-01-21T13:16:00.000-08:00

I have finally managed to learn the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet. My question is why can’t you use the letter P as the letter P. Example a) in the picture above shows the letter P on the left, in most of the western world this letter has the sound “puh”; in Ukrainian it has the sound “ruh”. The symbol to the left that resembles two capital I’s squashed together, that has the sound “puh.” Look at example b). If you thought the letter on the right has the sound “huh” you would be incorrect. That letter has the sound “nuh”; the little gallows pole to the left has the sound “huh”.
Why should this matter to me? After all, a person can learn to speak a foreign language without learning to read it. Except in my case. I have really poor hearing, caused by a combination of repeated ear infections, a family disposition towards hearing loss, and attending too many Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd concerts during my formative years. I can hear sounds, but if I don’t watch a person’s face while they are speaking to me, what they say and what I ear can be two completely different things.
As an example, last Yom Kippur, the rabbi, who is from Israel, and sometimes does not enunciate his English carefully, made the following statement: “On Yom Kippur, we are all like jellybeans!” Now in fairness to myself, I was not the only person who mistook the words “angelic beings,” for jellybeans, but everyone else realized right away what he actually said and I was sitting there for a good fifteen minutes with the following thoughts: “Wow, how are we like jellybeans? Are we all regular jellybeans or are we different flavors? Are we the really exotic jellybeans like Bertie Botts? Man, I hope I’m not one of those disgusting flavors, like mold, or vomit.”
So, for me to understand language tapes and speak the language properly, I have to have read the words first. Otherwise we could all end up as a bowl of candy.

Circle of Light

2007-01-14T20:08:00.000-08:00

Last week, while learning, I came across the following passage:

Likutey Moharan I, 19
Everyone can see his own face in the face of the tzaddik as he could in a mirror. As a result, even without rebuke and without reproof, he will feel remorse for his deeds just by having looked into the tzaddik’s face. This is because by looking into his face, a person will see himself as if in a mirror and realizing how he is immersed in darkness, will feel remorse.

Now I was familiar with the tzaddik being able to look at a person’s face, and thereby know the person’s history and what was needed to rectify his soul, and with this the idea that a person might hide his face from the tzaddik because he did not want the tzaddik to view the darkness within him. But, the concept that the person could view his own darkness reflected in the face of the tzaddik was difficult to understand. The next day this was presented to me:

Schottenstein edition, Talmud Yerushalmi, Berachos 84B, elucidation:
A human being gains awareness of the world around him only through the light that reaches his eyes from the outside; thus his knowledge is inherently limited to the present and the visible. G-d, however, has no need of external light, for “the (essence of) light i.e. absolute knowledge resides with Him.”

This seemed to touch on the previous passage. The elucidation is referring to the hiding away of the light from the first day of creation, to be used by the righteous in the world to come. It tells that a person’s vision, when dependent upon worldly light, is limited to the objects of this world, while Hashem “sees” with the light of Daat. It didn’t help me with the idea of the tzaddik as a mirror though.
Later that day, I read the following:

I Samuel 16:7
But Hashem said to Samuel “Do not look to his appearance or his stature, for I have rejected him. For it is not as man sees; man sees only what his eyes behold, but Hashem sees into the heart.”

Once again the idea that worldly vision is imperfect, judgmental, and superficial, while Hashem’s “vision” reveals the inner truth of a person.
The next day’s learning brought me this:

Bahir 187, trans. Aryeh Kaplan
It is thus written, “I will grant him a spirit of the fear of G-d, and he will not judge by the sight of his eyes, he will not admonish according to what his ear hears.” He will incline all the world to the pan of merit. From there counsel emanates, and from there health emanates to the world. It is also written “From there is the Shepherd, the stone of Israel.” This is the place that is called “There.” Regarding this it is written, “(He has rays from His Hand, and His hidden Force is there.”

Bahir 148
…What is “His hidden Force”? This is the light that was stored away and hidden,

Here was the key to my understanding of the original passage. In order to see what is hidden within, a person must have fear of G-d. With fear of G-d a person can merit the hidden light. This recalled an earlier lesson in Likutey Moharan:

Likutey Moharan I, 15
Anyone who wants to experience a taste of the Or HaGanuz (Hidden Light) – i.e., the mysteries of the Torah that will be revealed in the Future – must elevate the aspect of fear to its source. And with what is fear elevated? With the aspect of judgment.

The Torah tells us that when Moshe descended from Har Sinai his faced glowed. The Zohar explains that Moshe attained the level of Tiferet, which is known as, the mirror that shines, his face shone with the Divine Light.
The tzaddik who has elevated fear to its source and has merited to experience the Or HaGanuz, now shines with the hidden light, his face shines like a mirror reflecting light. With the hidden light he can “see” with true vision and view what is in the heart. This true vision can be seen, it shines out, like a mirror, showing the person, who looks in the tzaddik’s face, what is in his own heart.

Snowbodedut

2007-01-11T11:38:00.000-08:00

First snowfall in this area in the past seven years. A beautiful but chilly hitbodedut this morning.

Like a Moth to a Flame

2007-01-09T17:20:00.000-08:00

People have occasionally questioned me as to why I became a follower of Rabbenu, it is a decision that they often cannot understand. A choice that is made more difficult to explain as Breslov seems to be perceived as an unusual fringe group even by other chasidic sects. I have my own reasons for my decision, but when I came across the following quotation, it seemed the clearest explanation of all.
From: Hayom Yom, compiled by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, for the 13th of Tevet:

Where a lantern is set up, those who desire light gather around - for light attracts, brightness draws.

Gevalt, Never Give Up

2007-01-06T19:56:00.000-08:00

After writing the two previous posts, I was feeling a little low. Here I was calling myself a Breslover and on a list of 27 things that every Breslover should be doing I had already completely failed on two of them before I was even a third of the way down the list. Who was I fooling? Oy…..no…OY!!
To distract myself from feeling miserable I decided to go blog sufing. First I went to vist A Simple Jew who led me on to Mystical Paths which I followed to this:

Wow, this was rockin’. Emunah…..Faith…..I was up and dancing, I was singing along, I was re-energized and re-charged. And I recalled something that I had read in Meshivat Nefesh. On page 29, quoting from Likutey Moharan, Rabbenu said:

Use every ploy that you can think of to bring yourself to joy. Depression does tremendous damage. Make every effort to rid yourself of it completely. One way is to search within yourself for the “good points.” Another thing: remember the words of the morning blessing: “You did not make me a heathen.”

Rabbenu is saying that no matter how low you may have sunk or how great your sins, deep down inside there is still a good point from some mitzvah that you may have done, or if nothing else simply because you are still a Jew, and because of this one thing, Hashem still has great love for you, and this is a source of great joy.

Later on page 71, quoting from Likutey Halachot it says:

Always be joyful – even if you are poor and under pressure, even when your service of G-d and your prayers feel ragged. Always be content with your portion. Pay no attention at all to the rest of the world. It may seem to you that other people have an easy living and that their service of G-d, their learning, and their prayers are a thousand levels higher than your own, even though you never see them putting in the same effort and toil that you have to achieve your own low level. Pay no attention to thoughts like this. Be content with your portion and with every good “point” that is in you. Give thanks to G-d that he made you worthy of this. What do you care that your friend is greater and better than you? G-d is good to all.

Going back to A Day in the Life, I looked at step ten. Pray Shacharit, Hey, I do this already, WOO HOOO….maybe I’ve eaten already, and I’m unmikvahed, but I’m still davenning. Baruch Hashem, thank you Rabbenu, and thanks to A.S.J, Reb Nati and Akiva, and Avraham Abutbul and Rav Lazer Brody.

Take Me On Back to the Sea

2007-01-04T17:58:00.000-08:00

Step nine- Immerse in the mikvah everyday. I continue my downward slide. We live about 240 miles from the nearest uncontested kosher mikvah, a fact that Mrs. Jude brings to my attention every month. A person could immerse in the ocean, except on rare occasions, I am not that person.
As I explain to the Little Rebbetzin, “The Atlantic Ocean where daddy grew up is the nice ocean, remember when we went swimming in Florida when we went to visit Aunt Faye? The beach here is the bad ocean, you can’t go in the water, its dangerous.”
Don’t let images of Southern California's palm tree lined beaches fool you, the water here comes straight down from Alaska and never gets above fifty degrees even in the middle of summer. Average survival time without a dry suit is about 10 minutes. Then there are the waves, big frothy crashing waves with trees rolling around in the surf....trees....rolling. Wind too, thirty, forty miles per hour, all the time, everyday.
Sure, I know this shouldn’t deter me, don’t we read about the tzaddikim who would go down to the river in winter, shovel away the snow, chop a hole in the ice, and immerse. I tell myself: they were stout eastern European peasants; I am just a skinny city boy from New York. Yes, when I come out of the surf pummeled but intact I am very invigorated, shivering uncontrollably, but feeling very alive, but that doesn’t mean I want to risk my life doing this everyday, especially first thing in the morning.

Davening for Doughnuts

2007-01-03T19:49:00.000-08:00

Step eight, in A Day in the Life, is: don’t eat, drink, or talk before you pray. This one I fail at. The don’t talk is next to impossible as the Little Rebbetzin starts out chattering at full concert volume from the second she awakes, while it takes me about a half hour to regain the power of speech after I awake in the morning. This is very unsatisfying to the L.R. since I am not upholding my portion of the conversation. Her solution is to ask questions that require an answer more complex than grunting, to force me into recognizable speech, this is not the big difficulty.
My real difficulty is with the don’t eat part. If I don’t eat every four hours, I will get sweaty, start to tremble, and finally blackout. As if that wasn’t enough, this will also trigger a migraine. A night of sleep is longer than four hours so when I wake up I need to eat immediately. The obvious question to ask is what do I do on Yom Kippur.
Q: What do you do on Yom Kippur?
A: Nu, it’s Yom Kippur, I fast. I eat all the carbs and protein that I can manage to keep down, right up until the last second, then I fill my pockets with aspirin and migraine medications, which I eat like they were candy, all during the day. Because I can’t drink water to wash them down I dissolve them under my tongue until I can swallow them. The year before last I had to take so many I had chemical burns in my mouth afterwards.
With Hashem’s help I don’t pass out and hit my head on the bima.
Q: What about Rosh Hashanah?
A: Good question, every year I go crazy because it’s not a fast day, but we don’t break until about 3:30 PM. I think why not just go another 2 hours and call it good for Yom Kippur too.
Q: Why don’t you do the same thing that you do on Yom Kippur?
A: Stubbornness, because it’s not a fast day, also the pills only allow me to remain barely functional, and it takes me three or four days to recover. And who wants to spend Rosh Hashanah wondering if maybe they could just take a power drill and make a few little holes in their head if it would let the pressure out, but of course you can’t use power tools on Yom Tov so that wouldn’t work, and meanwhile, hopefully my head won’t explode all over the Torah.
Q: So what do you do?
A: Usually suffer, and try to sneak some food. Last year I left the shul about 11:45 had some fruit and bagels, went back and was fine for the rest of the day.
Q: And the point of all this?
A: The point is that if I don’t eat before Shacharit I may or may not pass out in the shul but I will definitely have a migraine for the next three days.

So I make use of the ruling: It is better to eat so that you can daven, then to daven so that you can eat.

Good Beard, Bad Beard

2006-12-30T19:04:00.000-08:00

My facial hair and I have an uncomfortable relationship. It is an unruly guest that resides on my face. It has lived there since it first appeared some 30 years ago, usually in a neatly trimmed form, although there was a period of a few years in the early nineties when it vanished completely. In the past decade it has alternated between trimmed and unruly in one-year increments, until about two years ago when I decided to see what it would make of itself if left on its own.

There are robust beards that mountain men wear with pride and birds can nest in, that small children point to with awe and envy, they can cover the entire chest or be tucked into the belt in ZZ Topian grandeur. My beard is not one of those. There are whispy yeshiva boker / Fu Man Chu beards that I could shave away with out a second thought. My beard is not one of those either. My beard tries and yet fails, some areas are thick and bushy, some are thin and whispy, and some have no hair at all. This tends to give it a hummocky unmowed lawn appearance. Also as Mrs. Jude gleefully points out, it does not fall gracefully but “sticks straight out like a garden gnome’s” beard. I was hoping for venerable sage, not wizened leprechaun.

So I occasionally consider reintroducing it to the razor, and was most recently inspired by a posting The Kapote Conundrum that was reposted on A Simple Jew's blog. Now we all tend to wear the uniform of the group that we wish to identify ourselves with, and to make a quick judgment as to which group a person belongs to based on how they appear. So if we see a man wearing a black suit, hat, and full beard, we assume that he is saying that he adheres strictly to halachah. A shiny, satin kipah, blazer and turtleneck, halachah maybe not so much. Sandals, crocheted head covering, and guitar, inventing new “improved” halachah. These, of course, are gross generalities, and may not hold true, but since we don’t know about a person’s level of observance when we meet them we assume based on their dress.
As a side note, let me say…. knickers. IMNSHO the only reason to wear knickers is if you are appearing in an eighteenth century costume drama set in Poland. I don’t believe that there is a special area of gehinnom for people who don’t wear knickers, or that wearing knickers will fast track you to olam haba.
Returning to topic. So while I see nothing wrong with dressing in a chassidische manner if that is what a person aspires to, even if his level of knowledge and observance is not quite there, so long as that is what he is striving for. In my own case, however, I do not know that I will ever achieve that level and worry that the beard may mislead others into believing that I am at a certain level that I actually am not. And so I consider trimming it.

Now every time I make up my mind that I am actually going to trim it, I end up reading something that usually goes like this:
Every single strand of your beard has great mystical significance and you should never cut even one hair, ever, never, ever, EVER…EVER….and those who know will understand.
Being a great believer in synchronicity and, that if you only listen, Hashem is always giving advice to you, I always decide to put off trimming the beard for a little while longer. But I really would like to know the “great mystical significance” beyond the chok “do not mar the corners.”

Shadows and Light

2006-12-24T18:44:00.000-08:00

This past week I celebrated my mother's yahrzeit so when I came upon this bit of learning it seemed particularly poignant. From The Zohar, Pritzker edition,1:218a:

"As a person's days draw near, for thirty days a proclamation is made about him in the world, and even the birds of heaven proclaim...During all those thirty days, his soul departs from him every night, ascending and viewing its place in that world. And the person does not know or perceive or control his soul during all those thirty days as previously, ....From the moment those thirty days begin, a person's tselem (shadow) darkens, and the image visible on the ground is withheld...Look, my soul departs from me every night and does not enlighten me with a dream as before. Further, when I pray and reach 'who hears prayer,' I look for my tselem on the wall and do not see it, so I conclude that since the tselem has disappeared and can no longer be seen, the herald has already gone forth and issued the proclamation, as is written: Only with a tselem does a human walk about - as long as a person's tselem does not disappear, a human walks about, his spirit sustained within him. Once a person's tselem passes away and cannot be seen, he passes away from this world."

The Eight Knights of Chanukah

2006-12-22T13:26:00.000-08:00

What every little rebbetzin wants for Chanukah, ... crusaders! Maybe they're cantonists, or undercover yidden on their way to really reclaim the holy land.

A Little Bitul

2006-12-17T14:19:00.000-08:00

Why have sufganiyot when you can have pfefferkuchen Yidden?

The Ferris Wheel of Life

2006-12-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

Last week I returned to the local school to give a talk about Chanukah to the kindergarten class. It went well, although I may have made the Assyrian Greeks sound a little like the U.S. under the current administration, you know, powerful nation invades others and imposes their system of government and morals. Anyway the kids loved the menorah lighting, hey who doesn't like to play with fire? And of course the spielen mit dreidels was a big hit.
Mrs. Jude thought I should have loaded them up with gelt too.
I said: "Why, do you think 20 years from now they are going to say ' I remember this wonderful holiday I heard about when I was in kindergarten.' and they will all decide to become Jews?"
So, some of the parents are telling me the the kindele are still going on about how wonderful Chanukah is and they want to celebrate it too. Maybe Mrs. Jude was right.
During the talk I gave a version of Rabbenu's teaching on the dreidel :
"The world is a rotating wheel. Its like a dreidel where everything goes in cycles...Everything goes in cycles, revolving and alternating. All things interchange, one from another and one to another, elevating the low and lowering the high.
To simplify this idea I compared it to riding on a ferris wheel at the fair, when you're at the top and can feel the breeze and see the whole fair you are very happy, but when you're at the bottom and have to get off the ride back into the heat and dust you feel sad, but really you should feel happy because if you are at the bottom it means that you have another chance to ride back up to the top. Mitzvah gedolah b'simchah tamid. Happy Chanukah.

The Yetzer Hara Gives Me Peaceful Sleep

2006-12-10T10:59:00.000-08:00

As I progressed through R. Breiter's list of things that a Breslover should perform daily, I thought that step 5 would be simple. Number five on his list is: the tikkun chatzot, the midnight prayer. Now I figured that this one would be easy because at no point in my life have I actually slept the entire night. I usually fall asleep for about four hours and then wake up. I mean wide awake. After about an hour of laying there I usually get up and do some chores, or some learning, or hit the internet. Then some time about 5 AM I go back to sleep for an hour or two or less depending on when the Little Rebbetzin gets up. So all I had to do was say the tikkun chatzot instead of some of the other things I was doing, easy right? After all I was going to be awake anyway. Of course things didn't work out that way because as soon as I made the commitment to saying tikkun chatzot I began to sleep through the night. Blissful uninterrupted slumber.
Rabbenu says that when you reach a new level you don't get to rest because the sitra achra opposes you more vigorously and you have to struggle even harder. But vigorous opposition in the form of peaceful sleep, this I wasn't prepared for, because it's kind of nice. So I am actually having to work hard at this and it was going to be one of the easier practices to take on.
Step six, saying Modeh ani, remembering the world to come, and rebinding yourself to the Tzaddik, when you wake up, was already happening.
Step seven, arising before dawn. This was actually already going on especially with the shift to standard time pushing sunrise back to 7:30. But the sleeping through the night continued on to sleeping through the morning too. When the yetzer says sleep, sleep it is. So now I'm struggling to get up at night and then struggling again to wake up in the morning, I hope I get bonus points for effort.

When We Crossed the Red Sea Did We Stop for Snacks?

2006-12-07T10:04:00.000-08:00

Last night at dinner the Little Rebbetzin fishes a piece of kombu (kelp, a type of seaweed) out of her dinner:
L.R. : Daddy, what's the blessing on this?
Me : Um....shehakol?
L.R. : No, it's ha adamah!
Me : But it's seaweed.
L.R. : It grows on the ground.
Me : At the bottom of the ocean. I'll look up the correct blessing.

I pull out Halachos of Brochos, by R. Bodner and there is no entry for seaweed.

Me : Um...it doesn't list it here, I guess Jews don't usually eat seaweed.

Now the kombu was not the main ingredient or the primary reason for eating the stew, so it was covered by ha adamah for the other ingredients, but seaweed can be eaten by itself or as the dominant ingredient in a dish, so I should know the correct bracha.

The Little Rebbetzin uses the argument the seaweed is growing from the ground, albeit ground covered with a lot of salt water, and should therefore be ha adamah.

My reasoning is that seaweed is generally held to a rock by a primitive root called a holdfast, and is not growing in the soil of the seafloor. I view that seaweed is similar to mushrooms which take a shehakol because the sages do not consider them growing from the ground but instead deriving their sustenance from the air (this is actually not botanically correct, but is the ruling). Similarly the seaweed is deriving its sustenance from the seawater and not from the rock it is anchored to.

If anyone knows or can find out what the actual bracha is, and the reasoning behind it, please let us know so.

G-d's Rocks

2006-11-29T10:18:00.000-08:00

In parsha vayetze we read, Bereshit 28: 11 :
He encountered the place and spent the night there because the sun had set; he took from the stones of the place which he arranged around his head, and lay down in that place.
Our sages comment that the word for place, makom, can be understood as a Name of Hashem, making this substitution the passage then reads:
He encountered Hashem and spent the night there because the sun had set; he took from the stones of Hashem which he arranged around his head, and lay down in Hashem.
Now the beginning passage is understandable as it stands and is even clearer if one using the translation of prayed instead of encountered. So we have:
He prayed to Hashem and spent the night there because the sun had set;
But how are we to understand the phrase: the stones of Hashem? The Zohar, Pritzker edition 1:147B, reads:
He took of the stones of the place. It is not written: the stones of the place, but rather: of the stones of the place - precious stones, fine pearls, twelve supernal stones, as is written, twelve stones, underneath which lie twelve thousand, myriads of hewn stones, all stones. So, of the stones of the place, not: the stones of the place-the place of which we have spoken.
Now the Zohar understands makom as The Lesser Light (Shekinah) and stones as angels, as elucidated:
twelve stones....symbolizing twelve angels beneath Shekinah...twelve thousand myriads....thousands of other ministering angels
The Zohar then continues commenting on "around his head" which it reads in the plural as "heads":
"And put them at his heads. At whose heads? At the heads of that place . What does at the heads mean? If you say, 'Like a person putting something under his head' - no! Rather at its heads, at the four directions of the world: three stones to the north, three to the west, three to the south, three to the east, with that place above them, arrayed upon them.
Now this phrase is familiar as part of the bed time prayers. Michael to my right, Gabriel to my left, Uriel before me, Raphael behind me and over me the Divine Presence. The elucidation comments:
The four heads or cardinal points, stemming from the Shekinah are each overseen by one of the four archangels.....each accompanied by two subordinate angels. Jacob's placement of the twelve stones corresponds precisely to the stations of these angels.
So now the passage can be read as:
He prayed to Hashem and spent the night there because the sun had set; he selected certain of Hashem's angels which he positioned at the four directions, surrounding the Divine Presence manifest on earth,
And the concluding portion of the passage can be understood in the following way: According to Zoharic thought, Jacob represents tiferet or the greater light. By uniting the greater and lesser lights, divine bounty is drawn down enabling Jacob to experience the vision of the ladder. So we now read:
He prayed to Hashem and spent the night there because the sun had set; he selected certain of Hashem's angels which he positioned at the four directions, surrounding the Divine Presence manifest on earth, and by these actions united with the Divine Presence. And he dreamt, and behold! A ladder....

That's freedom fries to you, buddy

2006-11-26T18:47:00.000-08:00

My new passport just arrived so it turns out that the Post Office actually can deliver the mail to another government agency (see post: the government that works). As expected the photo is really flattering and I fully expect to visit with Barney the sniffing Beagle the next time I go through passport control. How do I know that there is a beagle named Barney that is employed by customs and immigration? I have had the pleasure of spending quality time with Barney and his handlers when I was returning from France. Barney wears a rather dapper bright green jacket that is emblazoned with the words U.S. Customs. His handlers wear government issue dark suits and narrow ties. I was wearing wrinkled and smelly clothing after living out of a duffel bag for five weeks. My mistake was not keeping the ticket stubs to the Air France portion of my trip. I transferred planes at Heathrow and not needing to haul with me the used tickets, I threw them away during my layover. So when I arrived in Seattle and immigration asked where I was coming from and I said France and they said let's see your tickets and I said I didn't have them, and French immigration had not stamped my passport and had just waved me through, so other than a pocket full of Francs, I had no actual proof of having been to France, I got to visit with Barney and his friends.

My next step in trip preparation is to learn Ukrainian, I don't need to be anywhere near able to carry on a conversation, I just want to be able to get on the right train from Kiev to Uman, get a place to sleep, and tell people that I don't actually speak Ukrainian or understand what they are saying to me. Anything beyond that will earn me bonus points with the locals. I have found that making a little effort to learn the language of the place you are traveling to can make a big difference with the reception you get from the people that live there, as can the old fall back of identifying yourself as a Canadian. You, under no circumstances, want to be the florid, short-wearing, camera-toting, American tourist, who believes that everyone understands English if you only speak it loudly enough and add extra EE's to the end of your words. On one of the last days I spent in Paris I was having lunch in a small cafe when in came a middle aged couple matching exactly the above description. Within a few minutes the gentleman was screaming at the waiter: French Fries, I want French Fries, dammit they're from here, French Fries! Now for my part, I was slinking down in my chair hoping that no one would suspect that we were from the same country. I was also trying to send the words "pom frite" psychically to the red-faced gentleman. "pom frite, pom frite,....pleeease, just say pom frite." It didn't work, the florid couple left, probably when they got home they regailed their friends with stories about the ignorant French who didn't even know what french fries were. Now I suspect that the waiter was just yanking their chain since during the course of my stay in Paris I had been told, in perfect english, to "just speak english" so as not to do any more harm to the French language. Also there was a huge outburst of laughter in the cafe after the couple left. The first words that I plan to learn in Ukrainian? French fries. You just need to be prepared.

Amazing Grace

2006-11-18T19:28:00.000-08:00

Before I became a Baal Teshuvah I explored some other spiritual paths. While I was on those journeys I visited various "holy sites" around the world, and while in some places I did experience chien, mostly they were just a place. When people ask me if I have been to Eretz Yisrael, I always give a plausible reason why I haven't. But the real reason is that what if I go and the light does not shine down on me? What if I go and The Wall is just a wall? Will this alter my emunah? Will my emunah withstand that blow? So I don't test it, and I don't go.

Now the reason that I mention all this is that I am planning to make the pilgrimage to Uman this next Rosh Hashanah, G-d willing. And the word pilgrimage has a certain connotation of receiving chein at the conclusion of the journey. I've seen the photos and videos of people in Uman with tears streaming down their faces, people on their knees, with their open hands raised, screaming out to Hashem, people having a total emotional breakdown. I want to be one of those people. I have been touched by chein and have stood laughing and sobbing and crying out, all at the same time, and I long to experience that again. But what if I don't? What if I go to Uman, and ... well.. there I am in Uman?

So I have been thinking about this, and with that synchronicity that happens when Hashem pushes you in the direction that you ask to go, I just read this in Likutey Moharan 17:2 :

there are times when the tzaddik's light is obscured from a person and he does not merit understanding or seeing the tzaddik's great light. And even if he is by the tzaddik, he cannot taste, understand or see the tzaddik's great light......when the tzaddik's light is obscured from a person. This light radiates in all the worlds, especially in this world. Even so, for him it does not shine at all. Quite the reverse, for him it is dark. This comes as a result of shameful deeds and foolishness.....the rectification for this, in order to subdue and eliminate foolishness, is through the concept of the altar.....the altar is in a rectified state when eating is performed properly... by eating properly, foolishness is subdued and the intellect is elevated.

The elucidation states that eating properly consists of: eating slowly with dignity, eating kosher food, washing hands before and after eating, and reciting the blessings before and after eating, with kavanah. Now prior to reading this I would avoid eating bread just so I didn't have to slog through birkat hamazon afterwards, now, to the puzzlement of my family, I have become Mr. Grace-after-meals. I say bring on the toast and sandwiches just so I get to bentch some more.

Now this takes care of eating from here on, but what about prior to this when my eating was maybe not so good? In L.H. 17:5 Rabbenu says:

by giving charity to more people, a larger area of tranquil and pure air comes into existence. Accordingly, the more he gives to greater amounts of people and acquires additional friends and loved ones - as "wealth adds many friends" - the greater and greater the area of tranquil and pure air grows and increases, Therefore, the main thing is to give charity to genuine tzaddikim and deserving paupers the elucidation says: Giving charity to more people creates a greater tranquility, allowing more people to hear the words, (of the tzaddik) until the tzaddik's words can traverse the entire globe. But when hatred exists, the storm-wind prevents even a person standing right next to the tzaddik from hearing the words of faith. Therefore, the first act one should perform to rectify his foolishness (i.e. blemishing the altar by improperly eating) [i.e., to clear the air] is to give charity

"I ain't often right, but I've never been wrong"

2006-11-16T19:12:00.000-08:00

Now that a few weeks have gone by the new additions to my daily spiritual practice have stabilized. The next two items from Rav Breiter's list were: saying the K'riat Shema before going to sleep, and making a reckoning. Now the first wasn't completely a new addition since I had already been saying the Shema before sleep, but I hadn't been doing all the nighttime prayers that went with it. The only difficulty I experienced was staying awake through it all. By the time bedtime has arrived I'm ready to go to sleep almost immediately so it was a little tough keeping the eyes open those extra 15 minutes (have I mentioned how slowly I read Hebrew?) that I needed to complete the nighttime prayers.
The second part, making a reckoning, had me a little puzzled as Rav Breiter lists it after the nighttime prayers, which seemed to indicate that it was said after completing them. I had always understood that after concluding the nighttime prayers one was not to speak between the prayers and falling asleep. In fact it was best if you could fall asleep while mentally repeating the Shema or Tehillim. I usually lose consciousness somewhere around Boruch Shem. So I asked Rabbi Dovid Sears about this and he responds:

Teshuvah and cheshbon ha-nefesh are part of Kriyas Shema al ha-Mitah. I never heard anything special about at what point you should do it: before saying the Shema or after, such as during the Tehillim, etc. As for speaking after the final berakhah, I assume that one should have finished any words of hisbodedus that were part of the cheshbon ha-nefesh by the time one has recited the berakhah.

So this would indicate that the reckoning is done out loud and during the nighttime prayers.

Rabbi Ozer Bergman, in his book Where Earth and Heaven Kiss, writes:

Some people practice a limited form of hitbodedut - namely, the "accounting" part. They set aside a time to review their Jewish successes and failures vis a vis the outside (i.e., mitzvah observance) and the inside (i.e., their faith, trust and integrity). This is usually done silently.

This seems to be a description of Rav Breiter's "taking a reckoning" and if done silently could be conducted after the bedtime prayers. So I tried that approach, and guess what, I fell asleep in the middle of it everytime. That obviously wasn't going to work, so I kept the accounting silent but inserted it just prior to the final brocha and that seems to be working well.

As a side note, A Simple Jew has a review, of Rav Bergman's book on his blog. I would also recommend this book and not just because Rav Bergman quotes from Scarlet Begonias and a number of other Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia songs.

Seeing is Believing

2006-11-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

Relating to my comments on binding oneself to the Tzaddiks (see the post of Oct. 28), I came across Reb Noson's comment on Likutey Moharan 17:1:

Anything which one sees with the eyes makes more of an impression on his soul than his merely knowing it intellectually, without actually viewing it, as is explained in the writings. For example: When a person is told about the king's greatness, even though he knows these things clearly, his soul is not moved to fear the king as much as when, with his own eyes, he sees the king's greatness

The Little Rebbetzin Critiques NPR

2006-11-08T18:40:00.000-08:00

Following the broadcast of an opinion piece, by NPR commentator Aaron Freeman, comparing Judaism and particle theory, the little rebbetzin issued the following rebuttal:
Paraphrasing Einstein, the little rebbetzin opens with:
"That's not true, G-d doesn't throw dice out all over the top of the sun."
And closes with: "Those people aren't telling the truth, G-d is not a stranger, everybody knows G-d, ...well...everybody knows His name!"

Play that Funky Music, White Boy

2006-11-07T17:21:00.000-08:00

This is a learning about the shofarot, a little late for this Rosh Hashanah, but maybe just a little early for next Elul. I have added some explanatory comments in parenthesis.

From the pritzker ed. of the zohar, 1:114b

"Come and see: Similarly, on Rosh Hashanah - when judgment looms over the world - he (the satan) stands poised to accuse. So Israel must arouse (divine compassion) with a shofar, arousing a sound blended of fire (gevurah), water (chesed), and air (tiferet), becoming one (the breath that sounds the shofar is warm, moist air, symbolizing the combination of the three sefirot just mentioned), trumpeting that sound from the shofar. The sound ascends to the throne of judgment(shekinah), impinges on it and ascends. As soon as this sound arrives from below, the voice of Jacob (tiferet) is attuned above, and the blessed Holy One is aroused to compassion. For just as Israel arouses below a single sound blended of fire, water, and air, issuing as one from the shofar, so too above (binah) a shofar is aroused, and that sound blended of fire, water, and air harmonizes - one issuing below, one above: so the world harmonizes compassion prevails (based on the principle that any action in this world is met by an equal or greater reaction from the higher worlds). Then the accuser is confounded. Whereas he expects to accuse the world and prevail in judgment, once he sees compassion aroused, he becomes confounded, his strength sapped, unable to do anything. So the blessed Holy One judges the world compassionately. For if you say that judgment is eliminated, not so! Rather, compassion joins judgment(tiferet unites with Shekinah), and the world is judged compassionately. ....So the blessed Holy One judges Israel compassionately, pities them, and makes Himself available throughout those ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to receive all those who return to Him...."

How's Your Kavannah?

2006-11-04T18:35:00.000-08:00

Shavua Tov.
Today I was learning in the Yershualmi, Berachos, Shottenstein ed.; and came across the following passage: 49B
R' Eliezer says: If one makes his Prayer a fixed recitation, his Prayer is not a genuine supplication. R' Abahu said in the name of R' Elazar: As long as one does not recite his Prayer as one who reads from a letter - i.e. in a dry, unemotional manner - his Prayer is not regarded as a fixed recitation.
The parallel text in the Bavli, 29B reads:
What is the meaning of fixed? R' Yaakov bar Idi said in the name of R' Oshaya: Anyone whose Prayer is like a burden on him.

The elucidation comments:
he does not recite the Prayer in a supplicatory manner, meaning in a pleading tone, like one begging for mercy...This is what is meant by "as one who reads from a letter"; i.e. he does not pray in tones of pleading and supplication.... Alternatively (this) describes a person who does not concentrate on the words of Prayer...Others explain that this refers to one who recites Prayer quickly
and in the Bavli:
His attitude is that of one who is saddled with a chore and seeks to be done with it..Alternatively, he manifests such an attitude by praying at a hurried pace

For those of us whose understanding of Hebrew is limited, but still want to daven in lashon kodesh, this can be a problem. One can easily end up merely repeating sounds without comprehending the meaning behind them and thus fail to put feeling into Prayer. Of course even when praying in one's native tongue, it is easy to slip into the "davening by rote" routine. Should a person not daven in lashon kodesh, if their understanding of the language is somewhat lacking, to avoid as much as possible a "fixed recitation?"

"Oh You Mean Your Drainpipe!" -a quote from the little rebbetzin

2006-11-01T19:38:00.000-08:00

The Little Rebbetzin

So, I was a little nervous about reaching parsha Lech Lecha again since last year while reviewing the parsha with the little rebbetzin, who was then four years old, I was asked the meaning of the word circumcised, and had to try to explain it. Since the final chapter of the parsha repeats that word about 30 times I didn't think it would slip by no matter how fast I tried to read through that section. Well, we read all the way through to the end and I was just getting ready to congratulate myself when I heard the dreaded words, "Daddy what is circumcision?" I tried, "Don't you remember from when I explained it last year?" No, she didn't. So I bumbled my way through the explanation about the cutting and removing the skin over the end and remembering we had just watched Ushpizin used that as a reference:

Me: "Remember at the end of the movie when they were all dancing in the shul with the little baby?"

LR: "Yes, I do"

Me: "Well that little boy had just been circumcised."

LR: "And they were all happy that he was finally able to pee!"

Horns? They Are Under My Hat.

2006-10-30T20:15:00.000-08:00

Today I was invited to speak about Judaism to the seventh grade class at the local school. They invited me because in the area where we live I am THE JEW. Not that I am the only one of the chosen people around here, but the others are deep undercover. So I was prepared to get the usual questions about why we don't celebrate "the other holiday" and why don't we believe in "the rabbi from palestine." But I was surprised by some of the others. "Do women have to wear Peyoes?" No they don't. "If horses had split hooves would you eat them?" If horses had split hooves and chewed the cud then we could eat them, but they don't so we don't. "If you went out somewhere would you have to bring your own food?" Yes you would, and yes we do unless we wanted to drive 240 miles for a snack. This reminded me of Disneyworld on Chol HaMoed which is full of families standing in line for the rides while holding enormous shopping bags of food, usually with the long suffering zadie muttering "bittul Torah" over and over again. A big concern seemed to be over the age of the animals brought for sacrifice in the Beis Hamikdash. I must have been asked that one three times. Why I'm not sure.

Can You See the Real Me?

2006-10-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

Along with preparing physically for the trip, I am preparing spiritually as well. To keep myself on track and to give myself a paced framework, so that I don't try to do everything at once and have a religious melt down of some sort, I decided to follow the steps outlined in "A Day in the Life of a Breslover Chasid," by Rav Yitzchok Breiter ztl. He gives 27 chronological activities that a Breslover should be doing daily. I figure since I have 12 months, I can do two or three a month, adding something new or fine tuning something I'm already doing, and have them all under some sort of control by next R.H..
So I'm almost done with the first month, which was: 1. Binding yourself to the Tzaddik; and 2. Davening Mariv. Now number two wasn't an issue since Mariv is the service that I seem to have the most connection with and am best able to hold my focus through. Number one, however, required more effort. Not that it was difficult to say the four lines or so that comprise the oath, but the psychic weight of responsibility that came with it was another matter. What a way to instill Yirat Shemayim. In "The Palm Tree of Devorah," Rav Moshe Cordovero states that as our life originates with Hashem and it is constantly sustained and renewed by him, any action we perform we are in essence compelling Hashem to perform also, so when we sin we are forcing Hashem to sin along with us, since he is supplying the life energy that we are using improperly. Now knowing this should be enough to keep us in the best of behavior, but the truth is that understanding something intellectually isn't always the same as carrying it into physical practice. But by physically speaking the words "I hereby bind myself in my every thought, word, and action all through the day to the true Tzaddikim....," I have not only externalized my thought but have given my word as to a course of action, and tied that action to the merits of the Tzaddikim. So if I blow it, I'm now impacting way more than just myself and my own soul.

The Government that Works

2006-10-25T21:54:00.000-07:00

The physical preperations for the trip begin with the unpleasant discovery that my passport has expired and must be renewed. I fill out the required forms and prepare to have a, probably very unflattering, photograph taken. Then I notice the fine print, no head covering may be worn in the picture unless you submit a signed and notarized affivdavit explaining that it is necessary for religous purposes. While I didn't have a problem with wearing my kippah for the passport photo, I find that I do have a problem with telling some government agency that I am a Hasidic Jew. Why is this? I don't have any problem wearing my kippah when traveling in places where it is unsafe to do so. In fact I live in one of the new strongholds for the arayan nations and wear my kippah and my tzitzit out all the time ( of course I also figure that those folks aren't intelligent enough to know what the funny strings and beanie really are). Anyway the whole government affivdavit really knocks me on my butt and I end up whipping the kippah off right before the flash. Yes, it was a beautiful picture, it said potential terrorist all over it. So I head to the Post Office to mail off application, check, old passport, and photos; the clerk asks "do I want to send it registered mail" I reply, "No, I trust that one government agency can get it to another government agency ok." The clerk replies, "Oh no, you really should send it registered!"