Can you identify what is in this photo?
Hint from Parshat Korach (Numbers 18:30) —
Therefore thou shalt say unto them: When ye set apart the best thereof from it, then it shall be counted unto the Levites as the increase of the threshing-floor, and as the increase of the wine-press.
Ilana-Davita (5.) was the closest thus far. I’ll post the answer with more photos and explanation next week.
Yesterday was Parshat Naso, a great parsha with laws of the suspected adulteress, laws of the nazir, the Kohen’s blessing and gifts of the tribes. Maybe next year I’ll write a post on this parsha, but some bloggers came up with some good divrei Torah (words of Torah) that I would like to present.
First, read Jack’s Haveil Havelim #168 Go Celtics Edition.
On Parshat Naso:
From Parshat Behar, Leviticus 25:10
“proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof”
וּקְרָאתֶם דְּרוֹר בָּאָרֶץ לְכָל-יֹשְׁבֶיהָ
The above phrase is written on the Liberty Bell. If you read it in the context of the Torah portion, you will realize that it is talking about freeing slaves. In the fiftieth year, one is supposed to free one’s slaves. So one could say the Liberty Bell designers got it wrong; it’s only slaves that are being freed, not everyone. But when you own another human being, you the master is not truly free, either. So indeed the freeing is for everyone.
Here’s a little more explanation of this idea of a master not being free:
The Pnei Yehoshua explains this with a profound psychological insights. Slavery does not only deprive the slave of his freedom, but the master as well. A person who dominates others is not truly free either, and the Talmud correctly states that one who acquires a slave acquires a master over himself (Kiddushin 20a). He who enslaves another becomes enslaved himself.
And here’s background on how the phrase on the Liberty Bell was chosen:
The Pennsylvania Assembly ordered the Bell in 1751 to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of William Penn’s 1701 Charter of Privileges, Pennsylvania’s original Constitution. It speaks of the rights and freedoms valued by people the world over. Particularly forward thinking were Penn’s ideas on religious freedom, his liberal stance on Native American rights, and his inclusion of citizens in enacting laws…
the line in the Bible immediately preceding “proclaim liberty” is, “And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year.” What better way to pay homage to Penn and hallow the 50th year than with a bell proclaiming liberty?
It would have been nice if I had posted this a week and a half ago, right before we read the Torah portion of Behar in the synagogue. However, that did not happen. So I will connect it with Memorial Day, which is tomorrow. On Memorial Day we remember those that died for freedom. We have freedoms today because what of others sacrificed.
Parshat Behukotai 26:37 says “each man before his brother as if from before a sword”. Please note the “as if”. This is analogy for something. For what? Rashi explains that each man will stumble over each other’s sins. We are all responsible for each other:
כל ‘שראל ערבים זה לזה
Shabbat Shalom.
Notable Links from the Internet:
The Best Overall:
On Israel:
Art Links:
Famous Bloggers:
From this article:
Male bloggers tend to write about politics, technology and money; women are more likely to blog about their private lives and use an intimate style of writing.
At some point, I may do a post about women bloggers. Especially on how they deal with conflict. If anyone finds any relevant links, feel free to leave them in the comments. Or any of your own experiences with conflict and blogging. (Jack tried to help me find some a few weeks back, but the ones he sent me didn’t seem to fit my idea. Thanks for trying, Jack).
He shall dwell in isolation; his dwelling shall be outside the camp (Vayikra Tazria 13:46)
From Twerski on Chumash, by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D.
One Friday, when R’ Aryeh Levin davened Minchah at the Kossel, he saw a woman crying bitterly. To his inquiry about her distress, she said that her son was hospitalized in isolation in a Jerusalem hospital for lepers. R’ Levin decided to visit the hospital, where he found that there were twelve Jews along with three hundred Arabs. Upon seeing him, the Jews burst into tears. “We have not had a visitor for years,” one man said. R’ Levin made it his business to visit them every Friday. One time they said to him, “Each time you come, we think this is the last time we will see you. All we do here is await death. No one has ever been discharged from this place.”
When the Jews asked for kosher food, R’ Levin’s wife would cook for them, and he personally brought the food to them. On Rosh Hashanah his son accompanied him to blow the shofar for them.
One time, R’ Levin asked the Rebbe of Sochachov to assist him in bringing food to the patients in the leper hospital in Bethlehem. He noted that R’ Levin went into each patient’s room to exchange a few words with them.
“Why do you take so much time to visit this Arab hospital?” the Rebbe asked. “Don’t they have their own clergy?” R’ Levin answered, “There is one Jewish patient there who needs my visit. Once I am there, I will not discriminate, and I will visit all the patients.”
More on Rabbi Aryeh Levin and his biography, A Tzaddik in Our Time
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has a nice d’var torah on Parshat Tazria. Why is circumcision a sign of the covenant? First, he tells a bit about life during the time of Hosea:
Hosea lived in the eighth century BCE. The kingdom had been divided since the death of Solomon. The northern kingdom in particular, where Hosea lived, had lapsed after a period of peace and prosperity into lawlessness, idolatry and chaos. Between 747 and 732 BCE there were no less than five kings, the result of a series of intrigues and bloody struggles for power. The people, too, had become lax: “There is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, killing, stealing and committing adultery; they break all bounds and murder follows murder” (Hos. 4: 1-2).
He then contrasts the word Ba’al, which means husband in Hebrew but also refers to the idol of those times, with the word Ish.
[Ba’al] was also, of course, the name of the Canaanite god – whose prophets Elijah had challenged in the famous confrontation at Mount Carmel. Baal (otherwise known as Hadad, and usually portrayed as a bull) was the god of the storm, who defeated Mot, the god of sterility and death. Baal was the rain that impregnated the earth and made it fertile. In terms of myth, Baalism is the worship of god-as-power.
In contrast, Ish(man) and Ishah(woman) are explained:
Here the male-female relationship is predicated on something quite other than power and dominance, ownership and control. Man and woman confront one another in sameness and difference. Each is an image of the other, yet each is separate and distinct. The only relationship able to bind them together without the use of force is marriage-as-covenant – a bond of mutual loyalty and trust in which each makes a pledge to the other to honour one another and the reciprocal duties that bind them together in a moral bond.
His conclusion:
Now we understand why the sign of the covenant is circumcision. For faith to be more than the worship of power, it must affect the most intimate relationship between men and women. In a society founded on covenant, male-female relationships must be built on something other and gentler than male dominance, masculine power, sexual desire and the drive to own, control, possess. Baal must become ish. The alpha male must become caring husband. Sex must be sanctified and tempered by mutual respect. The sexual drive must be circumcised and circumscribed so that it no longer seeks to possess and is instead content to love.
Aside from me: so does this mean in Birkat HaMazon, the blessing after meals, I can say “Ishee instead of Baalee”? (Both mean my husband)
Cross-posted to Congregation Etz Ahaim’s forum (thank you, David Weintraub, for providing our community with another toy means of communication)
My husband reads the parsha in depth every week. This week, he said, he gets off easy. There is not a lot of Rashi commentary, because a lot of the parsha is repetition of what was previously said. So, my son wisely asks, why does it need to be repeated? “That’s tonight’s question, replies my husband. Easier to ask questions than to give answers.” A basic theme of this blog, too.
I found one Rashi commentary that is in this week’s parsha but not in last week’s, Ki Tisa. (This is with the help of Avigdor Bonchek, author of What’s Bothering Rashi.)
Exodus 35:34:
וּלְהוֹרֹת, נָתַן בְּלִבּוֹ: הוּא, וְאָהֳלִיאָב בֶּן-אֲחִיסָמָךְ לְמַטֵּה-דָן.
And He hath put in his heart that he may teach, both he, and Ahaliav, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan.
Rashi explains that Ahaliav, the son of one of Jacob’s maidservants, is on equal footing here with Bezalel, son of Leah, one of Jacob’s wives, in the holy work of constructing the Mishkan. This exemplifies Job 34:19: “He does not recognize the wealthy over the poor.”
Avigdor Bonchek explains that even though there is a very similar pasuk in Ki Tisa, that one does not get Rashi’s commentary, because that one uses the word “with”. “With” might mean Ahaliav is a subordinate. In VaYakhel, the pasuk uses “and”. “And” puts the two men on equal basis.
Finally, I had a little time on Friday to peruse the parsha. But then my company arrived, and I didn’t have time until now to write a post. Instead of coming up with one in depth dvar torah, however, I am jotting notes of what would be interested to explore more:
– Counting at the beginning of the parsha. Why men counted and not women?
Rabbi Buchwald writes: “since the Jewish women did not participate in the sin of the Golden Calf, they were exempt from giving their half shekel”.
– Lion of Zion writes about hokhmat lev, as possibly being a Hebrew word for art. I’m not sure about this. It’s kind of like elevating all art to the level of Betzalel, who built the mishkan along with other artisans and were imbued by God with a divine spirituality to do this craftsmanship. I’m hoping Lion of Zion will write more on this topic.
– If you have 51 minutes, you can listen to an in-depth podcast about different levels of the Torah by Esther Wein. She’s a good speaker. At a basic level, for example, you shouldn’t take the law into your own hands and murder. At another level, you don’t want to embarrass someone; it’s considered to be like murder. You have to listen to the shiur (lesson) for a while to hear her talk about Sugihara, who saved the Mir Yeshiva and many other Jews in World War II. He was dismissed from his post in his own lifetime, but posthumously he was honored.
– What are the בִּגְדֵי הַשְּׂרָד ? Rashi says they were used to wrap the items in the Mishkan when traveling. Somewhere I saw a discussion of the word ‘sered’; if I find it again, I will add a note here. Sered often means remnant.
– My father talked about how Moshe breaking the luchot, the tablets of the ten commandments, was Moshe’s greatest deed. Perhaps because Moshe did not want God to destroy B’nei Yisrael because of the Golden Calf, and by breaking the luchot he was teaching them a lesson and allowing them to do t’shuva and therefore saving them? (this one is really just a note to remember what my father told my husband and me on Shabbat).
– A fragment of a note: the word herut as engraving the tablets, relating the luchot to freedom (from my husband, who doesn’t remember the source).
– I have become a big fan of Avigdor Bonchek’s What’s Bothering Rashi series. On this parsha, he explains the insight of the Ramban on Betzalel. Betzalel, who had been a slave in Egypt, was considered a wonder as he mastered silver, gold, precious stones, wood carving, embroidery and weaving! God inspires this recently freed slave with uncanny God-given talents to build the mishkan.
Both Avigdor Bonchek and Nechama Lebowitz explore Exodus 31:13:
אַךְ אֶת-שַׁבְּתֹתַי, תִּשְׁמֹרוּ: כִּי אוֹת הִוא בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵיכֶם, לְדֹרֹתֵיכֶם.
Note the word אַךְ (akh). This is a limiting word, meaning something should limited…is it the building of the Mishkan or keeping Shabbat? Rashi and Ramban disagree on this subject. Rashi says we do not build the Mishkan on Shabbat. Ramban says there are times we do not keep Shabbat; even Shabbat has limits. From this our Sages learned, for example, that in cases were a life may be at risk (pikuach nefesh) we may break Shabbat.
Finally, Nehama Lebowitz has a lot to say about כִּי קָרַן עוֹר פָּנָיו . “…the skin of his face became radiant…” Michelangelo and other artists gave Moshe horns because of a mis-translation of this pasuk. Maybe by next year I will actually take the time to read this chapter, which she entitled: Moses Was Unaware His Face Shone.
This week’s parsha, Parshat Beshalach, is full of women heroes. We’ve got Miriam singing in the Torah portion. Then in the haftorah, Devorah leads the people, Yael tricks and kills Sisera, and Sisera’s mother cries:
“Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why don’t I hear the clatter of his chariots?”
She is just darn convinced her son is going to show up again. But he doesn’t. He’s dead.
Turns out, that we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashana 100 times because according to tradition, she cried 100 times. How interesting, that this woman about whom we know so little, other than she was the mother of the story’s “bad guy”, can have such an influence. Maybe it speaks to the power of a woman’s emotional world? And how if it’s a mother, even our rabbis can relate to her pain? Somehow, the crying at the loss of a son (or the not knowing where a son is?) is related to our crying unto God?
Yael Unterman wrote an essay on the topic of “The Voice in the Shofar: A Defense of Deborah” published in Torah of Our Mothers: Contemporary Jewish Women Read Classical Jewish Texts. Yael Unterman proposes that the only reason why we even know about em Sisera, the mother of Sisera, is because of Deborah’s song. Furthermore, Deborah knew that Sisera was dead, long before Sisera’s mother knew. Deborah is called “em beYisrael”, in parallel to em Sisera. Literally, em beYisrael means mother in Israel, but Radak suggests here it means mother to Israel. Deborah, too, is a mother…mother to all of Israel.
So why, according to Yael Unterman, is em Sisera chosen to take central role in associations surrounding the shofar blowing on Rosh Hashana, equal or maybe even superseding Sarah?
Sarah is crying for what has already happened… if she did believe her son Isaac is dead, she crying in grief; if she is aware he is alive, she is crying in shock. About em Sisera, Yael Unterman writes:
As we watch her, we know her son is already dead; and on one level, em Sisera knows this too and her signs and groans are, like Sarah’s, that of a mother who has actually lost her son. Yet on another level, she is still at a point in time where she may reassure herself, imaginging her son is still alive and is victoriously bringing home the booty.
(snip)
…em Sisera’s condition of dialectical emotions and time-frames is a model for us as we hear the shofar on Rosh Hashanah: it evokes grief and loss, but also hope. The groan of the shofar arouses deep feelings of alienation and lack of sense of self: on the Day of Judgement we are stripped of our standing and of the delusions we hold dear the rest of the year…
There is much more to Yael Unterman’s essay, but perhaps I got you interested enough to read it yourself. I took a peek at Yael’s website and discovered she is working on a biography of Nehama Leibowitz.
To finish up this post, I would like to remind (or inform, as the case may be) you of the ritual of dipping one’s finger in the wine cup on Pesach to take out a bit of wine. Even the though the Egyptians drowned in the sea, they are still human beings, and we cannot be completely happy at the death of our enemies.
