Rabbi Bassous devoted his speech this past Shabbat to learning from the cemetery vandalism in New Brunswick. I missed the speech (my daughter had other plans for me), so I apologize in advance to Rabbi Bassous if I botch my summary of what he said. My husband related to me that he spoke about two topics:
1) Even when you are dead, you may still not be at rest. Vandals can still attack your grave.
2) It is important to raise children from an early age to respect property. This can start with teaching children to pick up a candy wrapper from the floor. Unfortunately, the teens involved in this incident were not raised to respect property.
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My husband pointed out that if the teens were tried in a Jewish Halachic court, they would be considered adults. In the American judicial system, they are considered juveniles.
In my searches on the web, I discovered that cemetery desecration is all too common a pastime for some teens. Clearly, there are a lot of parents out there NOT teaching their children to respect property, especially buried dead people. On one forum, I found young men bragging about their exploits, and saying the only reason why this is getting such publicity is because it is a Jewish cemetery. Sad. And scary.
This week my husband asked:
Why is the Korban Pesach (the sacrificial lamb) roasted?
You can come up with your own answer, but his answer was because it is a sign of a rich person. When you roast a piece of meat, much of the fat drips away. A poor person would lament the loss of much of the meat. But a rich person is OK with parting with all that fat. It is yet another sign of freedom.
Which reminds me that when I started this blog, I intended to write about food and “you are what you eat”. So I’ll get started here, by saying: pay attention to how you cook the food, as well. Quick broiling is a healthy way of cooking. I am a big fan of steaming vegetables; I own three steamer inserts for my pots.
So maybe I haven’t blogged much about food, food choices and cooking methods because it comes across too preachy. And also, if you think my family only eats healthy food, hah! We do (the adults, anyway) have a tendency to sit around and discuss the junk food after we eat it. My eldest son at a young age could read the sugar amounts on cereal boxes and complain that the ones I bought did not have enough sugar.
I’ll save my complaints about kosher bakeries and hydrogenated fat for another post.
When I was in 5th grade, I had to write a paper on a plague. One of the ten plagues. So I chose Darkness, חֹשֶׁך . I remember drawing dark figures on yellowy manila construction paper. Sort of the like the image on the right.
The inspiration for this is Rashi’s commentary that there were two three day periods of the darkness. Why should it say ‘three days’ twice? During the first period the Egyptians could not see each other. During the second, no man could arise from his place.
I remember trying to visual people being paralyzed in their places. I also have a vague memory of classmates joking about Egyptians being stuck on a toilet, if that’s where they were.
So now as an adult, I like viewing the division of darkness into three types: physical, emotional and spiritual. The physical is what I have already described. Emotional would be like depression; one feels in a deep, dark gloom, but then when the darkness lifts, the feeling is freedom. Finally, for the spiritual or moral darkness, I will quote Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:
The greatest god in the Egyptian pantheon was Ra or Re, the sun god. The name of the Pharaoh often associated with the exodus, Ramses II, means meses, “son of” (as in the name Moses) Ra, the god of the sun. Egypt – so its people believed – was ruled by the sun. Its human ruler or Pharaoh was semi-divine, the child of the sun-god.
In the beginning of time, according to Egyptian myth, the sun-god ruled together with Nun, the primeval waters. Eventually there were many deities. Ra then created human beings from his tears. Seeing, however, that they were deceitful, he sent the goddess Hathor to destroy them; only a few survived.
The plague of darkness was not a mofet but an ot, a sign. The obliteration of the sun signaled that there is a power greater than Ra. Yet what the plague represented was less the power of G-d over the sun, but the rejection by G-d of a civilization that turned one man, Pharaoh, into an absolute ruler with the ability to enslave other human beings – and of a culture that could tolerate the murder of children because that is what Ra himself did.
When G-d told Moses to say to Pharaoh, “My son, my firstborn, Israel” He was saying: I am the G-d who cares for His children, not one who kills His children. The ninth plague was a Divine act of communication, that said: there is not only physical darkness but also moral darkness. The best test of a civilization is: see how it treats children, its own and others’. In an age of suicide bombing and the use of children as instruments of war, it still is.
Newswire update:
New Brunswick, NJ – Four teenagers have been arrested in connection with the damage done to nearly 500 headstones at the Jewish cemetery, a rabbi from one of the two synagogues that uses the cemetery said.
Received through a synagogue email:
The Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County stands with the community in expressing shock and sadness at the desecration and vandalism at the Poile Zedek Cemetery in New Brunswick.
Federation has teamed with Congregation Poile Zedek, Congregation Etz Ahaim, Rabbis, cemetery officials and the organized Jewish community to assess the damage and provide the support necessary to begin to heal and rebuild. We have approached law enforcement officials, the Mayor of New Brunswick, and the county prosecutor’s office in an effort to maintain open lines of communication. Federation, representing a united Jewish community, is in pursuit of a full-scale, rigorous investigation into this heinous crime, which is an affront to us all.
As we examine all avenues of effectively providing aid and comfort to those impacted and concentrate on putting together a formal plan of action, we are confident that we can count on your support during this trying time for our community. In that vein, we have established a fund for the repair and restoration of the cemetery. Donations can be sent to the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, earmarked “Cemetery Restoration Fund”. 100% of your donation will be directed toward this fund. Our address is 230 Old Bridge Turnpike, South River, NJ 08882. If you need more information, contact us at 732-432-7711 or [email protected]. You may also donate on line by logging onto our website at JewishMiddlesex.org.
Headline: Vandals tip tombstones, trash graves
Are we in Eastern Europe? The former Soviet Union? No, no, this took place right here in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Nathan Reiss of Congregation Etz Ahaim said Sunday’s vandalism at the Poile Zedek Cemetery came days after a similar incident was discovered on Thursday. Families of the buried will have to pay for all this damage. Many of these families are descendants of immigrants from Salonika and Turkey, hard-working people who became model American citizens. Read more about some of the families in Voices of Etz Ahaim. Others are Holocaust survivors, such as Menachem Simcha.
My husband said it will cost $200 and up just to repair one headstone. Some are not repairable. 499 headstones toppled.
Finally, the police is now calling this a bias crime. See the comments on Dov Bear.
“To say it was premeditated is an understatement,” said Poile Zedek administrator Caryn Lipson. “It had to be hours and hours of work by several people.”
From the Star Ledger:
Jack Oziel picked his way through the ruins of the vandalized Jewish cemetery yesterday, surveying hundreds of headstones toppled like dominos or lying in crumbled heaps.
He managed to locate the fragments of a granite Star of David that had marked his father’s grave lying on the grass. His mother’s tomb had cracked in half. And everywhere else Oziel looked, he saw more headstones of family and friends knocked down.
“I knew them all. I buried all these people. Now they are all in pieces,” Oziel, 91, said with red eyes as he surveyed the damage at the Poile Zedek Cemetery in New Brunswick.
And I know Jack Oziel. So I feel like I know all of those people buried there, too.
How can this be prevented? A surveillance camera? And who would do something so nasty?
One morning when Paro awoke in his bed
There were frogs in his bed, and frogs on his head
Frogs on his nose and frogs on his toes
Frogs here, frogs there
Frogs were jumping everywhere.
Listen to my daughter singing the song …
(Frog is drawn by me…a quick sketch with the pencil, then scanned into the computer and the greens were added in Photoshop.)
This post is dedicated to my dear friend Heidi Rosen and her mom, z”l (may her memory be a blessing). Hamakom yinachem otah b’toh avlai Zion v’Yerushalayim…
Heidi’s mom died after a long battle with cancer. This is also for all dear moms and daughters everywhere.
“Shemot is the best parsha in the universe!” declares my daughter. And no wonder…it’s action-packed, with women heroes, defiance of a totalitarian dictator, and the Children of Israel enslaved, but not for long. For her, the best part is how little Moshe is taken from the water by the daughter of Pharaoh. Miriam is standing nearby, and the daughter of Pharaoh’s servants are close by as well. Miriam will soon get her mother, Yocheved, to come nurse her own baby. See my daughter’s rendition of this event by clicking on the thumbnail.
When Moshe is born, Yocheved sees that he is “good”, ‘ki tov’. Aren’t all little babies good? Rashi explains that when he was born, the whole house filled with light. Rashi is referring to a midrash that it was supernatural sign, and therefore she hid him. He is alluding to the light from Breishit, where it also says ‘ki tov’, and it was good.
In his book Exploring Exodus Nahum Sarna points out the language here is not only an echo of Breishit, but later, when Yocheved places Moshe in a basket, it is called a ‘tevah’, echoing the language of parshat Noah.
These two literary allusions tie the book of Shemot (Exodus) back to the book of Breishit (Genesis). Just as God created the World, so He is the one who saves Moshe and will take the Children of Israel out of Egypt.
Sarna writes further about the word ‘suf’:
The container that held the infant Moses was placed among the “reeds”, in Hebrew suf, a term borrowed from the Egyptian for “papyrus/reed thicket.” The idea of the mother was to make sure that the infant would not be carried downstream. It may well be that the rare word suf has been selected in the present text because it is allusive, prefiguring Israel’s deliverance at Yam Suf (Sea of Reeds).
And for your listening pleasure, be sure to check out Ka Ribon by Pharaoh’s Daughter.
Attention local history buffs! Here’s a book you won’t want to miss:
Voices of Etz Ahaim. Nathan Reiss and Seth Rubenstein paired up to create a wonderful collection of biographies of many of the diverse congregants of Congregation Etz Ahaim, a Sephardi Orthodox synagogue in Highland Park, New Jersey.
Learn about how Rabbi David Bassous was born in India, grew up in London, became a rabbi in Israel, had his first pulpit in Vancouver, and then came to Highland Park. Liselle (Elisheva) Badache grew up in war-torn Algeria. Behzad Hakakian, brother of Roya Hakakian, speaks of growing up Jewish in Iran. One of the oldest members of Etz Ahaim, Al Benzilio, whose parents were from Salonika, reports on the original building in New Brunswick, and how the synagogue was named after one in Salonika.
Pictures enhance each of the biographies. Twenty two people of varying ages and backgrounds were interviewed for the book.
The book was available via the Etz Ahaim website, etzahaim.org; you can probably contact the webmaster to see if you can still get a copy. There is one copy in the reference section of the Highland Park Public Library.
A beautiful song is in this week’s parsha of Vayechi. The scene is Yaacov on his deathbed, blessing his grandsons Ephraim and Menashe. Part of the blessing has become a pretty song that parents often sing to children at bedtime.
Translation in English:
“May the angel who redeemed me from all harm bless the youths, and may they be called by my name and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, and may they grow into a multitude in the midst of the land.”
Transliteration:
Hamalach hagoel oti,
Hamalach hagoel oti mikol ra
yivarech et hana’arim v’yikaray bahem sh’mi.
V’shem avotai, V’shem avotai Avraham v’Yitzchak,
v’yidgu larov, v’yidgu larov b’kerev ha’aretz.
Rashi states that “the youths” refer to Ephraim and Menashe. But I like to think of the youths as any kids that are in the room at the time the song is being sung.
For a hilarious post on how someone argued that children are supposed to get into trouble, because after all, the angel isn’t preventing the children from harm but redeeming them, see Maggid of Bergenfield.
For a scholarly post on how we Jews don’t usually worship angels, please read Josh Waxman’s post.
This is a continuation of The Golden Compass — Dust
I am pleased to say I could find no relationship between the Jewish concept of dust and Philip Pullman’s Dust. First, more on Philip Pullman’s Dust: it seems that there is some similarity between Pullman’s Dust and Buddhism’s dust. And Pullman will be producing a new book called ‘The Book of Dust’.
And now, back to Breishit for some thoughts on dust or afar(עָפָר):
Rav Frand has a post on the simile of dust :
The blessing of “k’afar ha’Aretz” represents the history of the Jews. Everybody tramples over the dust of the earth, but in the end the dust of the earth always remains on top. That same dust ultimately covers those who trample it.
One can read about Adam being made of clay, which is originally made of dust but then formed to become man in this post on Parshat Breishit:
Man was formed of the dust of every place on earth, and then kneaded into clay—whereas dust is diverse, yet uniform, clay is united.
Balashon has a post on the etymology of the word ‘Africa’, the source of which may be the word ‘afar’.
There is a Jewish concept called ‘avak lashon hara’, or the dust of evil language, but this uses the term avak and not afar. Avak lashon hara generally refers to traces of talk that may incite lashon hara, such as saying excessive praise.
Finally, on this Kol Torah post on Parshat VaYechi, Doniel Sherman explains how “For you are dust and to dust shall you return” refers to burial, in reference to Yaakov’s burial.
