I love the small word so often said after we have made some shopping: "Titchadesh (m) - titchadshi (f) = renew yourself" which means "come back soon and buy more next time”. I used to kid my friends in Scandinavia. In Denmark, guests who meet their hosts who had invited them to supper or to spend an evening with friends at their home use to say "Tak for sidst - thanks for last (time)". Of course, I used to answer in accordance with the speech in force, lol, but also to kindly add kidding: "Tak for naest - thanks for the next (time)". What is over is over, by Jove. But by God's finger, everything is open, so let's look ahead and there is no need to take any appointment. Things will be nicer and cuter than last time if we don't plan too much. Scheduling is a working requirement. It also includes a part of intuition, personal readiness to any sorts of events. The future is more than any past.
The present is made of overleaping micro-seconds. Last year, the title of Rosh HaShanah’s blog was “Chidush”. Greek has it: “hapax” is a unique element, not only a one-shot, but something that is and only can be singled out. Thus, it is (brand) new. “Titchadesh / titchadshi” don’t sound very singling out. When I leave the shop with my new purchases, they might firstly be old rags and recurrent “on sale anachot, bargains”, absolutely impossible to sell out anywhere, like “ten-hand clothe shmattes”.
This may be considered as brand newness for a lot of people. Not only fashion, but Jews love fashion-creativity and it is a part of this one day excited then depressed impression to be in… like having butterflies in our stomachs. We love when new habits or events get fixed and ritualized. This is just impossible for the Jewish tradition. Look how the present tense is so often marked by the addition in a word of a “vav” /o, u/ that connects tiny instants with immediate, short and long-term periods. It hooks up with forwardness. Israel is not interesting because it is so young and foxy, clever and witty, appealing and nagging, whining without going hay wiring. Israel is not even yet a young maiden like Isaac B. Singer’s Yentl of about 60. Beer, wine and chickpeas will never replace fresh apples dipped in pure honey and glasses of tea or our local cow milk. But “Titchadshi, Israel = renew Israel” is a must.
The parshat hashavua or reading portion of the Shabbat “Haazinu (and “Shuvah") is short: it is the song sung by Moses before he died and was buried in an unknown place in order to gather together with his ancestors. It has a glimpse of resurrection, eternity, a taste of connectedness with the forefathers. The text is read in Devarim/Deuteronomy 32:1-52: “Haazinu hashamayim va’adaberah – Give ear, heavens, and I shall speak”. The song is very special and rhythmic in Hebrew. It ought to be written with width and breadth on two separate columns on a scroll.
It rolls up and down fate and destiny, good luck and mainly miracles worked out by God for the community of Israel. Baal HaTurim pointed out that Moses intends to say that heavens will listen to God’s words, which, according to the gematria, corresponds to 613, i.e. the number of Mitzvot. It is a good manner to tell the Israelites that the Lord had done magnificent prodigies for their sake and that they should appraise these terrific deeds, “giving ear to the 613 Mitzvot or Commandments”. Instead, the Israelites appeared to be rebellious, stiff-necked and stubborn, churlish, spoiled, odious. Indeed, Moses had spent his life swallowed in a glitch, risky and not so reputable affair.
In the present, “maazinim/ot – listeners” are required “on air” in all sorts of programs. I feel at home when, in the middle of the night, Mimi Karmi anxiously asks “yesh lanu maazin, maazinah al hakav? – do we have a listener online?” And looking for her glasses, she would write down the name of the maazin/ah carefully spelling out the letters… The memory of singing Israel on Reshet Bet, living history made of battles, struggles, joyous songs, old released hits that still echo in the heart of good ol’ folks Eretz Israel. Songs can really be bests: The Song of the Song is definitely the weekly best. Still, over and over again we shall have Group Abba till they will be 120. Mimi Karmi’s program is mixing up Palmach and freshness of the first days, showing the newness of Hebrew. Singing, as music, is the pen of our souls as we say in Yiddish.
Yes, a lot of people make a lot of criticisms about Israel. Some are skeptical with regards to her future. Skepticism has always reigned at this point. Would the young maiden have lost her mythical and naïve innocence? Did she grow insane, bewildered, unreasonably lost? This is at the core of the reading portion of this Shabbat Haazinu / give ear! We use the old Father language (of God) and our thirst for new conquering our own identity should invite us to open our capacity to full openness, always more openness in order to avoid developing our old / new defects described and sung by Moses.
Are we “a nation void of sense / goy ovad etzut – without understanding in them / ve’eyn bahem tevunah”(Deut. 32:28)? In the tradition, it means that the Jewish community may step down and behave like any pagan nation that put aside or abandoned the ways of discernment. This is a real danger. We can plant trees and beautiful flowers and forget to exercise perspicacity. Moses warned: the Mitzvot constitute the living body. We cannot change the Mitzvot into some instrumental utilitarian elements. Israel is challenged in 5768 by the birthing power of the Divine Presence in this Land during this year of shemittah/remittance and rest of the grounds. These Mitzvot are not our property. They are God’s releasing words to conceive and materialize what may lead to the betterment and repair of what is wrong. Each small letter of a mitzvah is like the heart-blazing - not consumed bush at the Sinai. The Commandments are the big treasure that allows the humans to get to their fulfillment.
Prisons are full of gangsters, thieves and murderers. Yet they are captive. Just as Moses who was unsurpassed by the prophets in Israel and still would not die in the Land because he had killed an Egyptian in order to save a Hebrew. Hospitals are also full of patients affects by heavy diseases, injured – apparently destroyed destinies for the rest of their lives. A generation died of sickness in the wilderness in order to allow an ethical nation to enter into the Land of the ancestors. Moses has brought two Luchot – agendas –Tablets showing the essence of God’s utterances to the rescued. They were grilling their gold into a calf and Moses broke the first Tablets. This is great because, as the Jewish Sages point out, God is not in stone tablets. He is the time and eternity Scheduler.
Trekking around the world, young Israelis try to discover other cultures and ways of living in India at the moment, but also throughout Asia. It has often been a great problem for other religions to envision deities linked to human beings in a chronological and coherent time system. in Hinduism, “Brahma’s minute” “deploys” billions and billions of years that can expire by the sole goodwill of a divinity.
On the other hand, Christianity is based upon the six days of the Creation and a fulfillment that continues its development. Christianity may hesitate between total achievement and the coming of Jesus in glory “to judge the living and the dead” (creed). The inestimable value of Jewishness is to deliver each soul from any kind of burden. This is the meaning of new years. If we can give an ear (“ozen”) we may receive some insights about the value of this New Year.
Two modern rabbis, the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Rav J. B. Soloveitchik, shared a real concern. Is a Jew allowed to leave Eretz Israel if he returned to the Land? This is a pending quest / sheilah. This year of remittance and resting of the grounds should allow interrogating as to why there is a State of the Jews.
For the Muslims, Ramadan, the month of fast, has also started on September 12th or 13th, a time of return to God and God seeking. With regards to Israel, her existence cannot be limited – though it is important – to providing a shelter for the Jews. As the Land should be resting for better growth in the future, the spiritual response is how we show the value of times and periods, without appropriation or pretence. I always considered that I am given an immense blessing to be living in Eretz Israel and help connecting beyond cultural and spiritual estrangements.
Shanah tovah – chatimah tovah to the readers, bloggers and the Jerusalem Post teams.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Shemittah: Relax, Eretz Israel
All these hurricanes, storms, thunderstorms, tsunamis, earthquakes, snowfalls, defrost of the Arctic cap, monsoons, typhoons and cyclones whirling around the planet with more and more intensity make people scared locally, furious when not refunded and their houses not rebuilt. Politicians get alerted and peaceful “greens” might swirl in rebellious upheaval of consciences with a touch of Tantric Buddha "Om Mani Padmeh Hum - hey to lotus flowers" non-violent sit-ins and cry for fresh air, blasting in trumpets made of human bones. Chabad Himalayan hospitality at their refuge in Kathmandu mingles with the pleasure to share some tea flavored with rancid butter in a saffron purple trumpets that seem to roam in and out from the deepest entrails of the worlds. The eternal snows are more solid than the Arctic [skull] cap. The Vesuvio is infuriated and belches forth the pangs of our ever-pregnant Mediterranean Sea. The region gets shaken by her immemorial abyss of measureless reigns of might and historical foolishness. Greece was on fire and villages were uprooted from the cradle of our civilization.
We reach Tishri 1, 5768 on the eve of that New Year, i.e. September 12th. On that day, the Eastern Orthodox Church of Romania will elect her new patriarch. For the Julian Eastern-Orthodox calendar in use in Jerusalem, this corresponds to August 31st and the end of the Feast of Mary, the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth who - for the Orthodox - fell asleep in death = died in Jerusalem. New Gregorian calendars (used as universal agendas) will celebrate the Tree of the Life as the cross on which Jesus was crucified, noting a time of autumnal renewal that it should historically be possible to compare or consider as parallel to "newness times". Beyond the pagan sign of torture, the cross has the shape of the Old Hebrew letter "tav" and sends forward into the Coming and Revelation of God in the messiah (Sukka 52b). Curiously, the TaNaKh reading on the first day of New Year is from Genesis 21; on the second day the “Akedat Yitzchak / Binding of Isaac” on the wood (read throughout the year) (Gen. 22) is read because Rosh HaShanah is the day of conception and attempted sacrifice (Rosh HaShanah 10b.11a; Pessikta Rabbati 40).
Rosh HaShanah has something more than Pesach / Passover. It is white and bright, joyously shining, whiter than any sort of good clean fun living whiteness. It is a good time for taking a real break. A time to feel that, whatever down in the dump and definitely down to the wire, human beings will ride out all whirlwinds and make life worth living. Thus, it is intriguing to note that this excess of waste, spoiled lost and burnt energy as regards how we fritter away the wealth of Good Earth and consume it can hardly be corrected. We need at times some health and ecology freak, nu? Nu-nu, actually, the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomaios of Constantinople (Istanbul) has been active for years about the spiritual and ethical responsibility that is incumbent to humankind to respectfully handle and take care of the Earth, our planet, its nature, environment, ecology.
The patriarch insists on the fact that this is not some sort of wild hippy trend. He wrote a lot of books and articles about how to preserve the creation, the plants, fruit, fields, crops by developing a sane mental and environmental protection and preservation “fitness” activities. Ecology includes “oikos = house (Gr.)” and the method for studying and analyzing the how our planet can preserve its life-bearing balance. The Oriental spiritualities have always scrutinized with much deference the sources of our breathing in and inspirited creation: “Ekumene = Gr. realm of the house = world” and corresponds to Hebrew “Yaval = fruit and tevel = inhabited world”. On September 5th, 2007, the Ecumenical Patriarch called for a time of penitence at the international meeting in Sibiu that targets both respectful attitudes toward our flourishing environment as also mental equilibrium based on healthy spiritual values. It is appealing that a Christian head of the Church can call for penitence for the sake of Creation. He lives and is the citizen of a country affected by historical troubles and showing a persistent opacity toward the simple fact that Turkey firstly was a homeland for Jews and Christians.
But the major point is that, in terms of ecology freak, the Jewish communities should be very forward. The account of the creation of the universe insists on the inestimable shaping of herbs, fruit, greens, animal and vegetal microcosm that allows maintaining the equilibrium and stability between the species in a context of constant change and struggle for life. Where are our beloved dinosaurs, mammoths, eagles, vultures? In a sense, Noah’s ark and its shipment that went through the flood do correspond to the preservation of the Noahide commandments. Moreover, we can technically create all kinds of new natural products or animals and cloning, for example, is a part of the quest.
I explained in the previous blog that “shemittah = year of remittance (of debts) and rest for the ground” will start on Rosh HaShanah 5768 till it comes to an end. This means that all land owned by Jews in Eretz Israel must “enjoy a rest, be uncultivated”. A full one year relax or holiday for a land that is definitely entitled to be exhausted. It is a Sabbath for the soil (Vayikra 25:1-7; Devarim 31:10-13). The Book of Chronicles explores the redeeming significance of these restingSshabbatot, in particular during the time of the exile in Babylon. This is hinting point of reference to the existence or visible absence of the Mikdash / Temple. The Land of Israel has the right to rest and to remain unfarmed. It means a lot because usually everything is connected in Israel with the Mitzvot and thus the presence of God’s Dwelling. In 5712 (1951), crowds gathered at mount Zion at the end of the first shemittah year since King Agrippa in 42 CE! As the “Time” reports, there were fewer religious Orthodox Jews compared to nowadays and “shemittah’ing” was special: the Torah was read from a truck. Land was the major resource for fragmented pieces of Jewish land properties; each inch was so valuable and the farmers would not really be pious.
It happens that 5768 is a year in which the State of Israel will be shemittah’ing ten years after its Jubilee (Yovel) and ten years before turning 70. We are nearly 60 years (shishim) and no clearly fixed and accepted borders. There is more: the bigger part of the Orthodox rabbis does not include the whole Land of Israel owned by Jews and that should have a rest, be unfarmed. It excludes at the present the Negev and many other areas, with some shadowing regions like Gush Katif. It is evident that right now the city is not “cultivated” by the Jews. But it shows the interrogations that interfere in the process of applying or not the “Year of rest and remittance”.
On the other hand, debts should also be remitted. This is comparable with the same problems as for the land. We are short of money: virtual credit card reimbursements are not allowed between pious Jews or can be handed over to a sort of “beyt din – court” which is empowered to collect the money for the debtors who will get it at the end of the shemittah. Let’s say this is a way to keep alive a debt instead of “remitting” it. The Autumnal Feasts precisely consists in being fundamentally able to forgive, release and cancel the great variety of servile bonds that may endanger somebody’s freedom. Jewishness is the fruit of forgiveness, remittance of debts, pardon of sins and transgression from Ur-Kasdim and out of Egypt. From the time of Hillel down to the present, the rabbinical authorities have tried to restrict this remittance of debts to the sole Jews and between them alone. This could make sense because of the hideous financial pressure exercised against the Jews. Interestingly, if we want to transfer a pending reimbursement to a rabbinical court, online files can be filled before Wednesday 30th of Elul 5767 to pass such an agreement on the web.
The question is frankly inspiring. We are franticly preparing for the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel. Pious or Orthodox Jews will respect the rules governing the shemittah year. In the fields, products that grow by themselves are allowed to be eaten. Some vegetables, grains and beans that grew during the shemittah may be allowed. The main problem is linked with wine and vineyards and, then, Jews can transfer their land to non-Jews who will cultivate the grounds. This is an engrossing question for this new year: can we limit our actions to sabbatical year contracts and deals with non-Jews? Non-Jews do have very parallel interrogations with regards to their own abilities to cultivate or transfer their land.
“Whoever visits the sick relieves them of a sixtieth part of their illness” states Talmud Nedarim 39, 72. It somehow shows – about a number which will make sense in the coming year in Israel – the intensity of the period we enter in. Jews are rooted in the priestly and sacrificial fundamentals of forgiveness, pardon, atonement that exerts an immense impact on the Jewish souls and minds. The real imprint is prophetic that may appear reduced to series of rituals: yes, we can do the physical effort not to eat up the products stored in our fridge on Yom Kippur. Yes, we may pardon what is unforgivable between Jews and still… No, this is not the true heart of the matter.
The shemittah implies that we make ourselves free by releasing the others and quitting the land – let it rest or be farmed by others. It may commit to eventually lose money. It should normally leave the Jewish inhabitants of Eretz Israel in a total reliance upon God and a full trust in the enemies of the State of Israel. Indeed, it should be possible, by shemittah’ing over and over, in the future, to come closer to our aliens as our strangers might accept to discover Judaism not because they are in our networks, somehow involved in our national identity. The prophetic time will be to accept each other and being totally different and capable to build together.
The Amidah for Rosh HaShanah (here slightly shortened) includes one of the most beautiful prayers, full of openness: “Our God and God of our fathers, reign over the entire world in Your glory and reveal Yourself to all the inhabitants of Your terrestrial world. May everything that has been created understand that You have created it; and everyone who has a breath of life in his nostrils declare: the Lord, God of Israel is King and His Kingship dominates everything”.
Happy New Year – Shanah tovah 5768
We reach Tishri 1, 5768 on the eve of that New Year, i.e. September 12th. On that day, the Eastern Orthodox Church of Romania will elect her new patriarch. For the Julian Eastern-Orthodox calendar in use in Jerusalem, this corresponds to August 31st and the end of the Feast of Mary, the Mother of Jesus of Nazareth who - for the Orthodox - fell asleep in death = died in Jerusalem. New Gregorian calendars (used as universal agendas) will celebrate the Tree of the Life as the cross on which Jesus was crucified, noting a time of autumnal renewal that it should historically be possible to compare or consider as parallel to "newness times". Beyond the pagan sign of torture, the cross has the shape of the Old Hebrew letter "tav" and sends forward into the Coming and Revelation of God in the messiah (Sukka 52b). Curiously, the TaNaKh reading on the first day of New Year is from Genesis 21; on the second day the “Akedat Yitzchak / Binding of Isaac” on the wood (read throughout the year) (Gen. 22) is read because Rosh HaShanah is the day of conception and attempted sacrifice (Rosh HaShanah 10b.11a; Pessikta Rabbati 40).
Rosh HaShanah has something more than Pesach / Passover. It is white and bright, joyously shining, whiter than any sort of good clean fun living whiteness. It is a good time for taking a real break. A time to feel that, whatever down in the dump and definitely down to the wire, human beings will ride out all whirlwinds and make life worth living. Thus, it is intriguing to note that this excess of waste, spoiled lost and burnt energy as regards how we fritter away the wealth of Good Earth and consume it can hardly be corrected. We need at times some health and ecology freak, nu? Nu-nu, actually, the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomaios of Constantinople (Istanbul) has been active for years about the spiritual and ethical responsibility that is incumbent to humankind to respectfully handle and take care of the Earth, our planet, its nature, environment, ecology.
The patriarch insists on the fact that this is not some sort of wild hippy trend. He wrote a lot of books and articles about how to preserve the creation, the plants, fruit, fields, crops by developing a sane mental and environmental protection and preservation “fitness” activities. Ecology includes “oikos = house (Gr.)” and the method for studying and analyzing the how our planet can preserve its life-bearing balance. The Oriental spiritualities have always scrutinized with much deference the sources of our breathing in and inspirited creation: “Ekumene = Gr. realm of the house = world” and corresponds to Hebrew “Yaval = fruit and tevel = inhabited world”. On September 5th, 2007, the Ecumenical Patriarch called for a time of penitence at the international meeting in Sibiu that targets both respectful attitudes toward our flourishing environment as also mental equilibrium based on healthy spiritual values. It is appealing that a Christian head of the Church can call for penitence for the sake of Creation. He lives and is the citizen of a country affected by historical troubles and showing a persistent opacity toward the simple fact that Turkey firstly was a homeland for Jews and Christians.
But the major point is that, in terms of ecology freak, the Jewish communities should be very forward. The account of the creation of the universe insists on the inestimable shaping of herbs, fruit, greens, animal and vegetal microcosm that allows maintaining the equilibrium and stability between the species in a context of constant change and struggle for life. Where are our beloved dinosaurs, mammoths, eagles, vultures? In a sense, Noah’s ark and its shipment that went through the flood do correspond to the preservation of the Noahide commandments. Moreover, we can technically create all kinds of new natural products or animals and cloning, for example, is a part of the quest.
I explained in the previous blog that “shemittah = year of remittance (of debts) and rest for the ground” will start on Rosh HaShanah 5768 till it comes to an end. This means that all land owned by Jews in Eretz Israel must “enjoy a rest, be uncultivated”. A full one year relax or holiday for a land that is definitely entitled to be exhausted. It is a Sabbath for the soil (Vayikra 25:1-7; Devarim 31:10-13). The Book of Chronicles explores the redeeming significance of these restingSshabbatot, in particular during the time of the exile in Babylon. This is hinting point of reference to the existence or visible absence of the Mikdash / Temple. The Land of Israel has the right to rest and to remain unfarmed. It means a lot because usually everything is connected in Israel with the Mitzvot and thus the presence of God’s Dwelling. In 5712 (1951), crowds gathered at mount Zion at the end of the first shemittah year since King Agrippa in 42 CE! As the “Time” reports, there were fewer religious Orthodox Jews compared to nowadays and “shemittah’ing” was special: the Torah was read from a truck. Land was the major resource for fragmented pieces of Jewish land properties; each inch was so valuable and the farmers would not really be pious.
It happens that 5768 is a year in which the State of Israel will be shemittah’ing ten years after its Jubilee (Yovel) and ten years before turning 70. We are nearly 60 years (shishim) and no clearly fixed and accepted borders. There is more: the bigger part of the Orthodox rabbis does not include the whole Land of Israel owned by Jews and that should have a rest, be unfarmed. It excludes at the present the Negev and many other areas, with some shadowing regions like Gush Katif. It is evident that right now the city is not “cultivated” by the Jews. But it shows the interrogations that interfere in the process of applying or not the “Year of rest and remittance”.
On the other hand, debts should also be remitted. This is comparable with the same problems as for the land. We are short of money: virtual credit card reimbursements are not allowed between pious Jews or can be handed over to a sort of “beyt din – court” which is empowered to collect the money for the debtors who will get it at the end of the shemittah. Let’s say this is a way to keep alive a debt instead of “remitting” it. The Autumnal Feasts precisely consists in being fundamentally able to forgive, release and cancel the great variety of servile bonds that may endanger somebody’s freedom. Jewishness is the fruit of forgiveness, remittance of debts, pardon of sins and transgression from Ur-Kasdim and out of Egypt. From the time of Hillel down to the present, the rabbinical authorities have tried to restrict this remittance of debts to the sole Jews and between them alone. This could make sense because of the hideous financial pressure exercised against the Jews. Interestingly, if we want to transfer a pending reimbursement to a rabbinical court, online files can be filled before Wednesday 30th of Elul 5767 to pass such an agreement on the web.
The question is frankly inspiring. We are franticly preparing for the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel. Pious or Orthodox Jews will respect the rules governing the shemittah year. In the fields, products that grow by themselves are allowed to be eaten. Some vegetables, grains and beans that grew during the shemittah may be allowed. The main problem is linked with wine and vineyards and, then, Jews can transfer their land to non-Jews who will cultivate the grounds. This is an engrossing question for this new year: can we limit our actions to sabbatical year contracts and deals with non-Jews? Non-Jews do have very parallel interrogations with regards to their own abilities to cultivate or transfer their land.
“Whoever visits the sick relieves them of a sixtieth part of their illness” states Talmud Nedarim 39, 72. It somehow shows – about a number which will make sense in the coming year in Israel – the intensity of the period we enter in. Jews are rooted in the priestly and sacrificial fundamentals of forgiveness, pardon, atonement that exerts an immense impact on the Jewish souls and minds. The real imprint is prophetic that may appear reduced to series of rituals: yes, we can do the physical effort not to eat up the products stored in our fridge on Yom Kippur. Yes, we may pardon what is unforgivable between Jews and still… No, this is not the true heart of the matter.
The shemittah implies that we make ourselves free by releasing the others and quitting the land – let it rest or be farmed by others. It may commit to eventually lose money. It should normally leave the Jewish inhabitants of Eretz Israel in a total reliance upon God and a full trust in the enemies of the State of Israel. Indeed, it should be possible, by shemittah’ing over and over, in the future, to come closer to our aliens as our strangers might accept to discover Judaism not because they are in our networks, somehow involved in our national identity. The prophetic time will be to accept each other and being totally different and capable to build together.
The Amidah for Rosh HaShanah (here slightly shortened) includes one of the most beautiful prayers, full of openness: “Our God and God of our fathers, reign over the entire world in Your glory and reveal Yourself to all the inhabitants of Your terrestrial world. May everything that has been created understand that You have created it; and everyone who has a breath of life in his nostrils declare: the Lord, God of Israel is King and His Kingship dominates everything”.
Happy New Year – Shanah tovah 5768
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Shuv: toward the highest effort
What profits will we remember of the year 5767? Is it possible to understand anything and to detect God's projects that so many would eventually deny? Just a real look! Mother Teresa, the Albanian-born little Catholic nun passed away ten years ago, in Calcutta, amidst dying corpses, crematories. She was beatified - first step toward her full recognition as a saint - by late Pope John-Paul II. The fervent faithful gathered for the pope’s funeral then required the Catholic Church his immediate canonization.
A sort of "on air" event required after his death but that is still on hold, following the normal process of the Church tradition. Our civilization is divided into the speediest instant messengers, some up-to-the-second thrilling tempo of life and a burden-like, often shameful and scandalous waste of time and competences. And see, since the 4th of Tevet 5766 (January 4, 2006), Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been sleeping while we splash and flounder with kassams on Sderot, the resignation of the president while Shimon Peres averted the Eyn HaRa' / Evil Eye and, overshadowed by all the blessings of our tzaddikim, will lead Israel into the "shemittat karka'ot veshemittat kesafim = the year of remission and for the Land of Israel, its qarqa'ot / soil that will remain uncultivated and the remittance of the debts" in 5768. The grounds and soils as the bottom of a certain period that shows again every seven years, like a "karka'it shel sefinah - the bottom of a ship" (Yevamot 116b) that, in terms of years, arrives at some deadline, a time of rest and forgiveness (for land (adamah) and humans (bney Adam).
In the course of 5767, we roved here and there and rambled in the search of some long-term solution. Our ancestors wandered from Ur-Kasdim down to Egypt and back to the Land of Canaan. Abraham erred - because he was seeking God or it would be more adequate to say that God took him on a journey. He was - as we often shared it here - "bekhom hayom - in the very heat of the day". Together with Sarah, he was struggling along throughout wide spaces and unknown people, but he did it consistently, cheating at times but overcoming all the "nissayonot / tempting tests proposed by God while Sarah could have a grin or some laugh. No real problem: it was still prophetic. We read quite the same with Moses’ story. He constantly remained a man of faith in the context of impossible challenges.
The media scoop that brought forth the “night of the faith” or “darkness” through which Mother Teresa went for some time over thirty years of her life is an important feature of anybody’s relationship to God. Elie[zer] Wiesel’s first account written after his experience in the concentration camp of Auschwitz echoes this profound darkness and abandonment: “Di Nacht – the Night”. The young survivor of a “Nacht und Nebel – night and fog” period could hardly describe what is beyond any description. As numerous survivors, it took time before he could only smile. Thousands of pious Jews got away from their ancestors’ faith in the living God and until today, it remains a very painful and open wound for a great number of souls. It is an act of divine loving-kindness that some men and women, survivors and their children could surface after the Churban (Extermination) with something parallel to the seeded steadfast, inflexible though not rigid emunah / confidence-faith of Abraham, Moses or Job. In this respect, the rather joyous spiritual traditions experienced by the Sephardim and Oriental Jewries do reinvigorate and everywhere allow curing the scars left by history. Indeed, sarcastic and cynical attitudes mirror how the twentieth century had thickly been marked by darkness and despair.
True, the communist terror and various forms of genocides in different countries (South Africa, Turkey, Cambodia, Rwanda) would also enter in some sort of conflict with the light shown at Mamre’s oaks. The Russian Eastern Orthodox monk, saint Silouan the Athonite, declared: “Keep your soul in hell and do not despair”, which definitely links the Oriental tradition with the powerful rise and revival of Judaism. But say, that “night” is en vogue. It makes sense because it allows showing that people who dedicated their lives to God could – like anybody else – be terribly affected by some total privation or defect of God’s Presence. A young French Catholic nun, saint Therese of Lisieux, who died at the age of 26, was the first to describe with remarkable insights her experience of “night, or divine apparent absence” as a spiritual test. Jewish and Christian, Muslim renewal and sometimes stiff attitudes contrast and might come into conflict with this experience of a spiritual “eclipse / tzimtzum” that affected the last century in many aspects.
Nonetheless, there is a profound gap between the Jewish and Christian approaches with regards to this darkness or “night”. The parshat hashavua or reading portion of this week is a twofold one; the second portion is usually read after Rosh HaShanah. These Shabbat readings “Netzavim-Vayelech” are thus to be found in Devarim / Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20 and 31:1-30. We should bear in mind the following Shabbat Teshuvah that will include the reading of the song Ha’azinu which concludes Moses’ life and introduces to the coming Day of Atonement.
We experience how short our memory can be. This is true in our own lives and records. We may be swirling in a world of pictures, takes, shots, videos and films. Images are stored en masse and fade. Days pass, disappear and change. They may facedly give the impression of some deja-vu. Fashion swings that way.
There is a special way for Jewishness to apprehend tenses. But Judaism cannot focus on any positive “night or darkness, absence of eclipse / tzimtzum of God”. Christianity has it as a part of natural Gentile and “heathen-rooted” tendency. It turns to be a positive experiment because it shows that God chooses and man may feel as left aside, abandoned. The most difficult part for Jews is to admit that such a spiritual posture is not linked to idolatry and that faith in God may show as “ from under ashes or dust” (cf. Gen. 3:19; “Al efer tashuv – you shall return to dust”). The so-called “culture of death” has reigned over too many events that affected Christianity in the past century. On the other hand, Jews may forget that they are proposed two ways, once again, for the last time before Autumnal New Year: blessing or curse. Indeed we ask that the year end with its curses and that New Year start with God’s blessings.
Does it mean that we enjoy any real free will and free choice? Pre-destination and absence of free will or conscience have prevailed throughout the Christian history and that souls are at stake. The Catholic Church revised this essential point during the last Council that ended in 1965. The Oriental and Orthodox Churches are less flexible until now, though they mainly focus on conversion, return to God and resurrection. Indeed, our freedom depends, as concerns Judaism, on how the Mitzvot are so real and abide our souls that everything only depends on God.
The reading portion proposes a set of choices to which we are submitted beyond any personal decision. True, we are called to bless, to build, support, save, cure and help. Daily life may be rather a burden that misses simple justice too much. We have seen that during the year: “shuv – again, return, renew” is the main spiritual and human tendency. Judaism is shaped to value life and not death. Life supersedes anything and this is the exceptional spiritual plus that Judaism brought and maintains, and somehow sustains among the Nations. It is the real challenge of the hardships faced in the timid development of a dialogue with the Christians. This is the terrible difference between Jews and Christians. Just as the night would seemingly be considered as a positive sign of humbleness, death may be a temptation to see if survival is possible. Judaism focuses on a choice: take the good measure of your days and nights and why should God extend them?
“Veshavta ad HaShem – you will return to (= until) the Lord” (Deut. 30:2). Hebrew says “ad – until” because God expects that the believers or humans in general turn, convert, respond in a swiveling and revolving move toward God until they reach Him in the “ad = eternity, world-to-come, forever” and not only for a while, say even a “year”. And the same verse continues: “You (gather) them again (“shav”) those that were scattered (“shvutecha – deported that you call back and return”). Jesus also spoke of newness, of making all things new. But this is at the core of what Rosh HaShanah and the reading portions want to teach us this week. This kind of newness that is a perpetual call to all human being that has a breath of life: indeed things are new.
Then, it is true that there are different schools. Either people are too scared to place their bets or would say they don’t care. There are tons of clichés: life is too short; I do what I want; this is my decision. The real challenge in the “teshuvah – conversion, penance, response, revolving return forever to God” is that it requires that every soul is ready to invest the maximum, more than anything they think to possess in order to get to that point. This is the highest effort that surpasses every effort. That’s the point. It sounds not inhumane and still it shows the price of life. A Jewish Chassidic group has this year this kind of wishes, showing a multi-handicapped who calls to turn to Life. At first, such season’s greetings may rebuke. But they are real.
They are authentic as when I see my heavily handicapped daughter breathing with difficulty. Still, she enjoys life and breathes faith at home and at her work. Just as so many injured, sick or disabled often may show us. It is not possible to fool them with pious words about God. This means that the highest effort is a personal move that also can reinforce the weak. The “shemittah – year of remission and rest of the land” is also one of the best examples of what the Shulchan Aruch teaches about the significance of the highest effort.
“Remember us for Life, King Who desires Life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life, for Your sake, Living God”.
A sort of "on air" event required after his death but that is still on hold, following the normal process of the Church tradition. Our civilization is divided into the speediest instant messengers, some up-to-the-second thrilling tempo of life and a burden-like, often shameful and scandalous waste of time and competences. And see, since the 4th of Tevet 5766 (January 4, 2006), Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been sleeping while we splash and flounder with kassams on Sderot, the resignation of the president while Shimon Peres averted the Eyn HaRa' / Evil Eye and, overshadowed by all the blessings of our tzaddikim, will lead Israel into the "shemittat karka'ot veshemittat kesafim = the year of remission and for the Land of Israel, its qarqa'ot / soil that will remain uncultivated and the remittance of the debts" in 5768. The grounds and soils as the bottom of a certain period that shows again every seven years, like a "karka'it shel sefinah - the bottom of a ship" (Yevamot 116b) that, in terms of years, arrives at some deadline, a time of rest and forgiveness (for land (adamah) and humans (bney Adam).
In the course of 5767, we roved here and there and rambled in the search of some long-term solution. Our ancestors wandered from Ur-Kasdim down to Egypt and back to the Land of Canaan. Abraham erred - because he was seeking God or it would be more adequate to say that God took him on a journey. He was - as we often shared it here - "bekhom hayom - in the very heat of the day". Together with Sarah, he was struggling along throughout wide spaces and unknown people, but he did it consistently, cheating at times but overcoming all the "nissayonot / tempting tests proposed by God while Sarah could have a grin or some laugh. No real problem: it was still prophetic. We read quite the same with Moses’ story. He constantly remained a man of faith in the context of impossible challenges.
The media scoop that brought forth the “night of the faith” or “darkness” through which Mother Teresa went for some time over thirty years of her life is an important feature of anybody’s relationship to God. Elie[zer] Wiesel’s first account written after his experience in the concentration camp of Auschwitz echoes this profound darkness and abandonment: “Di Nacht – the Night”. The young survivor of a “Nacht und Nebel – night and fog” period could hardly describe what is beyond any description. As numerous survivors, it took time before he could only smile. Thousands of pious Jews got away from their ancestors’ faith in the living God and until today, it remains a very painful and open wound for a great number of souls. It is an act of divine loving-kindness that some men and women, survivors and their children could surface after the Churban (Extermination) with something parallel to the seeded steadfast, inflexible though not rigid emunah / confidence-faith of Abraham, Moses or Job. In this respect, the rather joyous spiritual traditions experienced by the Sephardim and Oriental Jewries do reinvigorate and everywhere allow curing the scars left by history. Indeed, sarcastic and cynical attitudes mirror how the twentieth century had thickly been marked by darkness and despair.
True, the communist terror and various forms of genocides in different countries (South Africa, Turkey, Cambodia, Rwanda) would also enter in some sort of conflict with the light shown at Mamre’s oaks. The Russian Eastern Orthodox monk, saint Silouan the Athonite, declared: “Keep your soul in hell and do not despair”, which definitely links the Oriental tradition with the powerful rise and revival of Judaism. But say, that “night” is en vogue. It makes sense because it allows showing that people who dedicated their lives to God could – like anybody else – be terribly affected by some total privation or defect of God’s Presence. A young French Catholic nun, saint Therese of Lisieux, who died at the age of 26, was the first to describe with remarkable insights her experience of “night, or divine apparent absence” as a spiritual test. Jewish and Christian, Muslim renewal and sometimes stiff attitudes contrast and might come into conflict with this experience of a spiritual “eclipse / tzimtzum” that affected the last century in many aspects.
Nonetheless, there is a profound gap between the Jewish and Christian approaches with regards to this darkness or “night”. The parshat hashavua or reading portion of this week is a twofold one; the second portion is usually read after Rosh HaShanah. These Shabbat readings “Netzavim-Vayelech” are thus to be found in Devarim / Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20 and 31:1-30. We should bear in mind the following Shabbat Teshuvah that will include the reading of the song Ha’azinu which concludes Moses’ life and introduces to the coming Day of Atonement.
We experience how short our memory can be. This is true in our own lives and records. We may be swirling in a world of pictures, takes, shots, videos and films. Images are stored en masse and fade. Days pass, disappear and change. They may facedly give the impression of some deja-vu. Fashion swings that way.
There is a special way for Jewishness to apprehend tenses. But Judaism cannot focus on any positive “night or darkness, absence of eclipse / tzimtzum of God”. Christianity has it as a part of natural Gentile and “heathen-rooted” tendency. It turns to be a positive experiment because it shows that God chooses and man may feel as left aside, abandoned. The most difficult part for Jews is to admit that such a spiritual posture is not linked to idolatry and that faith in God may show as “ from under ashes or dust” (cf. Gen. 3:19; “Al efer tashuv – you shall return to dust”). The so-called “culture of death” has reigned over too many events that affected Christianity in the past century. On the other hand, Jews may forget that they are proposed two ways, once again, for the last time before Autumnal New Year: blessing or curse. Indeed we ask that the year end with its curses and that New Year start with God’s blessings.
Does it mean that we enjoy any real free will and free choice? Pre-destination and absence of free will or conscience have prevailed throughout the Christian history and that souls are at stake. The Catholic Church revised this essential point during the last Council that ended in 1965. The Oriental and Orthodox Churches are less flexible until now, though they mainly focus on conversion, return to God and resurrection. Indeed, our freedom depends, as concerns Judaism, on how the Mitzvot are so real and abide our souls that everything only depends on God.
The reading portion proposes a set of choices to which we are submitted beyond any personal decision. True, we are called to bless, to build, support, save, cure and help. Daily life may be rather a burden that misses simple justice too much. We have seen that during the year: “shuv – again, return, renew” is the main spiritual and human tendency. Judaism is shaped to value life and not death. Life supersedes anything and this is the exceptional spiritual plus that Judaism brought and maintains, and somehow sustains among the Nations. It is the real challenge of the hardships faced in the timid development of a dialogue with the Christians. This is the terrible difference between Jews and Christians. Just as the night would seemingly be considered as a positive sign of humbleness, death may be a temptation to see if survival is possible. Judaism focuses on a choice: take the good measure of your days and nights and why should God extend them?
“Veshavta ad HaShem – you will return to (= until) the Lord” (Deut. 30:2). Hebrew says “ad – until” because God expects that the believers or humans in general turn, convert, respond in a swiveling and revolving move toward God until they reach Him in the “ad = eternity, world-to-come, forever” and not only for a while, say even a “year”. And the same verse continues: “You (gather) them again (“shav”) those that were scattered (“shvutecha – deported that you call back and return”). Jesus also spoke of newness, of making all things new. But this is at the core of what Rosh HaShanah and the reading portions want to teach us this week. This kind of newness that is a perpetual call to all human being that has a breath of life: indeed things are new.
Then, it is true that there are different schools. Either people are too scared to place their bets or would say they don’t care. There are tons of clichés: life is too short; I do what I want; this is my decision. The real challenge in the “teshuvah – conversion, penance, response, revolving return forever to God” is that it requires that every soul is ready to invest the maximum, more than anything they think to possess in order to get to that point. This is the highest effort that surpasses every effort. That’s the point. It sounds not inhumane and still it shows the price of life. A Jewish Chassidic group has this year this kind of wishes, showing a multi-handicapped who calls to turn to Life. At first, such season’s greetings may rebuke. But they are real.
They are authentic as when I see my heavily handicapped daughter breathing with difficulty. Still, she enjoys life and breathes faith at home and at her work. Just as so many injured, sick or disabled often may show us. It is not possible to fool them with pious words about God. This means that the highest effort is a personal move that also can reinforce the weak. The “shemittah – year of remission and rest of the land” is also one of the best examples of what the Shulchan Aruch teaches about the significance of the highest effort.
“Remember us for Life, King Who desires Life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life, for Your sake, Living God”.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Birobidzhan: "Shulem, Friends!
Elul 20th, 5767 corresponds to the generally accepted calendar date of September 3rd, 2007. The Eastern Orthodox Churches started the new liturgical (cycle of prayers) year and thus they are, in the West on September 3rd, 7516 (of the creation) that will be celebrated on September 14th, 7516 in the Church of Jerusalem, Russia and other Julian Eastern Orthodox calendars. There is a significant difference between the Jewish traditional year of the creation of the universe and the Christian Orthodox year of the foundation of the worlds. Calendars are definitively PG / parental guidance and not U / universal and we do behave as naughty kids towards Our Father Who is in heaven / Avinu shebashamayim.
Canada celebrates Labour Day on September 3rd. A sort of prior-to-Thanksgiving Day that starts on October 8th, 2007 in Canada while the United States will have their Thanksgiving on November 22nd, 2007. This is due to the period of harvesting in the different regions. But Labour Day in Canada on 09/03 has been instituted on the first Monday in September since the 1880s. Something that unexpectedly matches with the first Aliyah to Eretz Israel or with the overwhelming violence of the pogroms organized against the proletarian shtetl-Jewish village in the czarist Russian Empire.
The proletarians were mostly needy people as were the Ukrainians who fled to Canada by the same time and settled in the Western Provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia. Nothing to do with the 09/03 institution of a Labour Day. Interestingly, the 1880s were years of fighting for civil rights almost everywhere in the Western civilization.
By that time, Toronto appeared to be very advanced in this struggle to get more social and economic justice in the laws governing the general respect of the workers and condition of work. Merely a dream if compared to some wealthy States and moguls. But, the Toronto printers got to their 54-hour work per week and the day was adopted in Canada in 1894 although the socialists (our Bundists to some extent) chose May 1st as the official international Labour Day. Still, the Anglos had to do that their way and the point is that in North America, this corresponds to the time when leaves fall from trees; harvest collects the late crops... The falling of leaves = Fall or Autumn” and Yiddish sings the hit: "'s fal'n di bleter - Leaves are falling", the French best "Les Feuilles mortes" written by the poet Jacques Prevert. There is a touch of French nostalgia, Slavic spleen, Germanic Sehnsucht and Yiddish “miltz un benkshaft”. It is sweet, cute, kind; Hebrew: “dikayon or dichduch” (spleen) or "gagu'im" that are slightly weirder and whirling.
Autumn! We shall soon have the Autumnal Feasts of Rosh HaShanah and Yamim Nora'im, the Day of awe. Nu-u-u, what? I suddenly got aware that the Jewish workers celebrate these days the 70th anniversary of the former Jewish Autonomous Region (in Siberia), namely the seventieth year of the full official recognition of what is today the “Republic” of Birobidzhan, the ever-Jewish autonomous region by the rivers of Amur on the Chinese border. Is it a birthday or a yohrtsayt (anniversary of departed)? Or the departure for a far-reaching envisioned prospect of acting Israeli development in Asia amidst a mixer of blended Russian, Ukrainian, Mongolian, Chinese, Manchu, Jewish descents flavored with some Yiddish if not rebirth of Yiddishkayt / Jewishness.
“Ich habe einen Traum = chalom chalamti (Berachot 55b) = I have a dream”, said the Viennese birth-giving founder Benyamin Zvi Theodor Herzl born in Budapest at the sight of the Dreyfus affair and condemnation. From Basle to Zichron Yaakov, the Ashkenazi Jews erred throughout Her Majesty’s Empire and Commonwealth before the Jewish Congress got the Balfour Declaration allowing the return of the Jews to Zion and Jerusalem.
We were about to toil in Uganda, down the Darfur at that time. On that same year, the Bolshevik Revolution, broke out and remodeled the czarist Russian Empire into a sort on union of comrades. Byelorussia (Belarus) became a haven of creation for the future kibbutzim in Palestine. Some elements of the large Jewish settlements and intelligentsia actively participated in the godless deployment of a fraternal and messianic brave new world of friendship.
Thus, Stalin had his own dream about the Jews and he is the only State builder who donated a piece of land to the Jewish comrades as full members of the communist collectivity. We hardly can say that he presented – hmm? - conferred, or even conceded Birobidzhan to the Jewish “nation”. At this point, it should be noted that both Israel and Birobidzhan (ca. 36,000 sq km) miss exact total surfaces. Stalin, as most leaders of the world from Pharaoh till now, could find the Jews useful at times. Frankly, he would not confess any love toward them. So he created, in 1928, the “Jewish Autonomous Region/Oblast – Yid. Di Yiddishe Avtonome Geg’nt” by the Siberian rivers of the Amur (actually not “love” but “Black River” in Mongolian) along its two tributaries “Bira and Bidzhan”. It is so strange that the Birkat HaMazon (Grace after Meals) Psalm 137 (“By the rivers of Babylon…) made us weep along two rivers in the Siberian Far East! Maybe some remembrance of Biro Sava = Beer Sheva, where Abraham’s story started?... The official languages are Yiddish and Russian, or vice versa. Some legal status updates happened in 1934 and then it became “full-autonomous” in 1937, i.e. seventy years ago. After the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991, it recently redeployed its activities.
This “inspired if not inspiriting” project sought to gather in all the workers of the Jewish nation inside the Soviet Union. Jewish hard-working labor force and toiling cosmopolitan manpower were encouraged to settle in this remote non-cleared virgin and wild area in order to thaw out the land and somehow get frozen there…A taste of Hirsh Glick’s “Zog nit kaynmol = Never say you are going on your last way”, the song of the Partisan. Yiddish was reformatted with Hebrew letters that removed any trace of traditional TaNaKh and Talmud spelling. It was really a dream that lined with the traditional “von ot siuda – get away from us, you Jews” to flicker with the flame of the Jewish toiling workers’ bravery and international chevurah / fraternity that had been launched in 1925 in Belarus.
Still, please do note that this assignment of the Jews corresponded, in the fundamentals of the Soviet spirit, to the laws governing the Union. Each nation had the right to enjoy some land allotment, a homeland. Stalin is the only politician who, with the Soviet communist regime, decided to apportion a tiny and apparently ridiculous part of the “empire” to the Jews and thus founded some kind of Jewish “country, home if not State”. Irrationality met with extravagant right. In comparison, the Mormons were chased, hounded down till they settled in Utah. No Canadian province, United States, European, African or Asian authority has ever proposed the creation of a “Free republic and haven for the Jews”.
There is a spiritual curiosity: in czarist Russia as under the communist Soviets, each inhabitant of the immense territory belonged to a “nation” and, subsequently, was a citizen of the former USSR. We have the same in Israel. There are firstly the “Jewish (national” and then the “Nations”. The Eastern Orthodox Church seemingly reflects identities according to “ethnicities”.
We can say that, though it sounds a bit bizarre, Israel was created as the State of the Jews according to the paradox of a divine concession memorized and kept living in the Scriptures. When our “nuke-oriented” Persian neighbor suggests that each European country should be ready to give asylum to Israeli refugees, he quietly can make such a statement because no European or other nation ever thought of giving some alms of land ownership to a Jewish autonomous or self-governed region. On the other hand, Eastern Europe and Oriental Christianity are undisputedly linked by their faith that, in principle, unites the faithful beyond their ethnicity which constitutes an important and positive element.
The Soviet communist system also dreamed of uniting all the hard-working proletarians. Of course, the Jews did not get the cream of the crops: I met quite a lot of strong-minded former communist and international Labor activists who settled there and sometimes showed up unexpectedly in Europe and Israel. Along the Bira lived some sorts of “fayne biryes = nice, well-educated creatures (Yid.)”, i.e. either real spiritual characters or stiff-necked lost people, as the Polish Jews say. From the 2nd to the 15th of September – with the exception of 09/03! – Birobidzhan celebrates its 70th anniversary with many events scheduled at Sholom-Aleichem Street (City Palace of Culture). It begins with a memorial of the end of World War II and then different meetings: a chess tournament, a festival of Jewish and Yiddish movies (“I love you, Birobidzhan”), dances, with the participation of different ethnics: Ukrainians from Kharkiv and Chinese, Mongolian living in the neighboring areas.
Since 1991, there are astounding development of the Yiddish language and cultural life although the major part of the country had always been non-Jewish – quite an extraordinary situation of paradoxes. There is a rebirth of Judaism, synagogues and an Israeli rabbi lives in the country with his big family. This takes place not so far from this remote “end of Europe”, eh yes, Birobidzhan is part of the Russian Federation and thus reaches out to the border of Europe that falls down the harbor of Vladivostok. I met in Jerusalem a Christian God-seeker who had traveled from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok with two priests – one Orthodox, the other was Catholic - showing the relics of a renowned saint. They also trekked along Birobidzhan, and they were so surprised to see the slow growth of this Jewish Region.
It is also very intriguing to follow up how the Jews will meet the opportunity to support a region located in the heart of Asia, not far from Harbin where so many Jews had lived till the end of World War II. The area seemingly extends Europe to the core of Asia. But the location is unique. Siberia attracts Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Manchu and Mongolians. It is linked to Japan and Philippines… We do have all these people as guest workers in Israel.
Beyond the tragic events that affected the Jews who, for a great part, arrived from Eastern countries in Israel, this miniature autonomous region of Birobidzhan retains something of the socialist communist atheist system that tried to rule the world and in between delivered Auschwitz. Is it foolish / meshigene mazeh or understandable / mistume (min-hastam) that Yiddish, born on the Rhine a thousand years ago was about to disappear many times. Still, it became the truncated national language of a ghostly Jewish Autonomous Region that today tries to use it more wisely. Miracles substantiate the words of the Prophet: “My ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Zay gezint, Birobidzhan!
Canada celebrates Labour Day on September 3rd. A sort of prior-to-Thanksgiving Day that starts on October 8th, 2007 in Canada while the United States will have their Thanksgiving on November 22nd, 2007. This is due to the period of harvesting in the different regions. But Labour Day in Canada on 09/03 has been instituted on the first Monday in September since the 1880s. Something that unexpectedly matches with the first Aliyah to Eretz Israel or with the overwhelming violence of the pogroms organized against the proletarian shtetl-Jewish village in the czarist Russian Empire.
The proletarians were mostly needy people as were the Ukrainians who fled to Canada by the same time and settled in the Western Provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia. Nothing to do with the 09/03 institution of a Labour Day. Interestingly, the 1880s were years of fighting for civil rights almost everywhere in the Western civilization.
By that time, Toronto appeared to be very advanced in this struggle to get more social and economic justice in the laws governing the general respect of the workers and condition of work. Merely a dream if compared to some wealthy States and moguls. But, the Toronto printers got to their 54-hour work per week and the day was adopted in Canada in 1894 although the socialists (our Bundists to some extent) chose May 1st as the official international Labour Day. Still, the Anglos had to do that their way and the point is that in North America, this corresponds to the time when leaves fall from trees; harvest collects the late crops... The falling of leaves = Fall or Autumn” and Yiddish sings the hit: "'s fal'n di bleter - Leaves are falling", the French best "Les Feuilles mortes" written by the poet Jacques Prevert. There is a touch of French nostalgia, Slavic spleen, Germanic Sehnsucht and Yiddish “miltz un benkshaft”. It is sweet, cute, kind; Hebrew: “dikayon or dichduch” (spleen) or "gagu'im" that are slightly weirder and whirling.
Autumn! We shall soon have the Autumnal Feasts of Rosh HaShanah and Yamim Nora'im, the Day of awe. Nu-u-u, what? I suddenly got aware that the Jewish workers celebrate these days the 70th anniversary of the former Jewish Autonomous Region (in Siberia), namely the seventieth year of the full official recognition of what is today the “Republic” of Birobidzhan, the ever-Jewish autonomous region by the rivers of Amur on the Chinese border. Is it a birthday or a yohrtsayt (anniversary of departed)? Or the departure for a far-reaching envisioned prospect of acting Israeli development in Asia amidst a mixer of blended Russian, Ukrainian, Mongolian, Chinese, Manchu, Jewish descents flavored with some Yiddish if not rebirth of Yiddishkayt / Jewishness.
“Ich habe einen Traum = chalom chalamti (Berachot 55b) = I have a dream”, said the Viennese birth-giving founder Benyamin Zvi Theodor Herzl born in Budapest at the sight of the Dreyfus affair and condemnation. From Basle to Zichron Yaakov, the Ashkenazi Jews erred throughout Her Majesty’s Empire and Commonwealth before the Jewish Congress got the Balfour Declaration allowing the return of the Jews to Zion and Jerusalem.
We were about to toil in Uganda, down the Darfur at that time. On that same year, the Bolshevik Revolution, broke out and remodeled the czarist Russian Empire into a sort on union of comrades. Byelorussia (Belarus) became a haven of creation for the future kibbutzim in Palestine. Some elements of the large Jewish settlements and intelligentsia actively participated in the godless deployment of a fraternal and messianic brave new world of friendship.
Thus, Stalin had his own dream about the Jews and he is the only State builder who donated a piece of land to the Jewish comrades as full members of the communist collectivity. We hardly can say that he presented – hmm? - conferred, or even conceded Birobidzhan to the Jewish “nation”. At this point, it should be noted that both Israel and Birobidzhan (ca. 36,000 sq km) miss exact total surfaces. Stalin, as most leaders of the world from Pharaoh till now, could find the Jews useful at times. Frankly, he would not confess any love toward them. So he created, in 1928, the “Jewish Autonomous Region/Oblast – Yid. Di Yiddishe Avtonome Geg’nt” by the Siberian rivers of the Amur (actually not “love” but “Black River” in Mongolian) along its two tributaries “Bira and Bidzhan”. It is so strange that the Birkat HaMazon (Grace after Meals) Psalm 137 (“By the rivers of Babylon…) made us weep along two rivers in the Siberian Far East! Maybe some remembrance of Biro Sava = Beer Sheva, where Abraham’s story started?... The official languages are Yiddish and Russian, or vice versa. Some legal status updates happened in 1934 and then it became “full-autonomous” in 1937, i.e. seventy years ago. After the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991, it recently redeployed its activities.
This “inspired if not inspiriting” project sought to gather in all the workers of the Jewish nation inside the Soviet Union. Jewish hard-working labor force and toiling cosmopolitan manpower were encouraged to settle in this remote non-cleared virgin and wild area in order to thaw out the land and somehow get frozen there…A taste of Hirsh Glick’s “Zog nit kaynmol = Never say you are going on your last way”, the song of the Partisan. Yiddish was reformatted with Hebrew letters that removed any trace of traditional TaNaKh and Talmud spelling. It was really a dream that lined with the traditional “von ot siuda – get away from us, you Jews” to flicker with the flame of the Jewish toiling workers’ bravery and international chevurah / fraternity that had been launched in 1925 in Belarus.
Still, please do note that this assignment of the Jews corresponded, in the fundamentals of the Soviet spirit, to the laws governing the Union. Each nation had the right to enjoy some land allotment, a homeland. Stalin is the only politician who, with the Soviet communist regime, decided to apportion a tiny and apparently ridiculous part of the “empire” to the Jews and thus founded some kind of Jewish “country, home if not State”. Irrationality met with extravagant right. In comparison, the Mormons were chased, hounded down till they settled in Utah. No Canadian province, United States, European, African or Asian authority has ever proposed the creation of a “Free republic and haven for the Jews”.
There is a spiritual curiosity: in czarist Russia as under the communist Soviets, each inhabitant of the immense territory belonged to a “nation” and, subsequently, was a citizen of the former USSR. We have the same in Israel. There are firstly the “Jewish (national” and then the “Nations”. The Eastern Orthodox Church seemingly reflects identities according to “ethnicities”.
We can say that, though it sounds a bit bizarre, Israel was created as the State of the Jews according to the paradox of a divine concession memorized and kept living in the Scriptures. When our “nuke-oriented” Persian neighbor suggests that each European country should be ready to give asylum to Israeli refugees, he quietly can make such a statement because no European or other nation ever thought of giving some alms of land ownership to a Jewish autonomous or self-governed region. On the other hand, Eastern Europe and Oriental Christianity are undisputedly linked by their faith that, in principle, unites the faithful beyond their ethnicity which constitutes an important and positive element.
The Soviet communist system also dreamed of uniting all the hard-working proletarians. Of course, the Jews did not get the cream of the crops: I met quite a lot of strong-minded former communist and international Labor activists who settled there and sometimes showed up unexpectedly in Europe and Israel. Along the Bira lived some sorts of “fayne biryes = nice, well-educated creatures (Yid.)”, i.e. either real spiritual characters or stiff-necked lost people, as the Polish Jews say. From the 2nd to the 15th of September – with the exception of 09/03! – Birobidzhan celebrates its 70th anniversary with many events scheduled at Sholom-Aleichem Street (City Palace of Culture). It begins with a memorial of the end of World War II and then different meetings: a chess tournament, a festival of Jewish and Yiddish movies (“I love you, Birobidzhan”), dances, with the participation of different ethnics: Ukrainians from Kharkiv and Chinese, Mongolian living in the neighboring areas.
Since 1991, there are astounding development of the Yiddish language and cultural life although the major part of the country had always been non-Jewish – quite an extraordinary situation of paradoxes. There is a rebirth of Judaism, synagogues and an Israeli rabbi lives in the country with his big family. This takes place not so far from this remote “end of Europe”, eh yes, Birobidzhan is part of the Russian Federation and thus reaches out to the border of Europe that falls down the harbor of Vladivostok. I met in Jerusalem a Christian God-seeker who had traveled from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok with two priests – one Orthodox, the other was Catholic - showing the relics of a renowned saint. They also trekked along Birobidzhan, and they were so surprised to see the slow growth of this Jewish Region.
It is also very intriguing to follow up how the Jews will meet the opportunity to support a region located in the heart of Asia, not far from Harbin where so many Jews had lived till the end of World War II. The area seemingly extends Europe to the core of Asia. But the location is unique. Siberia attracts Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Manchu and Mongolians. It is linked to Japan and Philippines… We do have all these people as guest workers in Israel.
Beyond the tragic events that affected the Jews who, for a great part, arrived from Eastern countries in Israel, this miniature autonomous region of Birobidzhan retains something of the socialist communist atheist system that tried to rule the world and in between delivered Auschwitz. Is it foolish / meshigene mazeh or understandable / mistume (min-hastam) that Yiddish, born on the Rhine a thousand years ago was about to disappear many times. Still, it became the truncated national language of a ghostly Jewish Autonomous Region that today tries to use it more wisely. Miracles substantiate the words of the Prophet: “My ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Zay gezint, Birobidzhan!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
He'emirecha: a word is a word
We come near to the New Year - Rosh HaShanah 5768. Throughout this year 5767, we have tried to share the meaning of the annual cycle of the parashyiot or reading portions that have to be read per annum by the faithful Jews throughout the weeks that give a special unique rhythm to our months and relationship to God, to other Jews and to our fellow people as humankind.
A year is a set of a peculiar number of days and nights, hours, minutes and seconds that pass and are stored by God (Sukka 62b). I often speak of "shlishiyot - thirds" because we want to slowly be so speedy at the present that we would like to compact tiny segments of immeasurable time wickets to the world-to-come. The specificities of these parashiyot or readings consist in the continuous and perpetually renewed and repeated description, study, scanning, discovery of each word of the Torah.
Moreover, each consonant is inspired by changeable vowels or phrase sequences. Then, our lives, life paths or styles, choices or inability to make up our minds and get forward, shape each year into the form of collectivity and alien “portions”. There is a very strange verse in the Gospel. Jesus says to the disciples to get some fish to eat, after his resurrection and they were on the beach. "Simon-Peter (Kaipha) went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three (153) of them" (John 21:11). The intriguing point is that before the decision of the Sages at Yavneh and when the Temple was still extant, the Torah was not read over one sole year as we do at the present, but over a period of three years. There were153 parashiyot / Torah reading portions. Each reading portion is like a "shanah", if not a "rosh hashanah - cappo d'anno (It.) = (the) cape of a year" that instructs us according to the demands "tiftach = open the gates" during Neylah of Kippur / the closure of the Day of Atonement. Thus we turn the cape of a certain period of time, or a page, we round along new openness or closets.
Interestingly, although the Jews as the Christians are rarely aware of that, the Early Church adopted the same weekly pattern of readings. The Syrian-Orthodox and the Assyrian Churches did keep in Aramaic four basic readings that develop the meaning of time over one year as most Churches do at the present. The Roman Latin Church decided, after the Second Council of Vatican that ended in 1965, to break down the readings over three years, reintroducing large portions from the Bible. The Byzantine Church has retained a systematic envisioning of time "spreading-expansion" that is definitely structured upon the basis of the Jewish series of weekly readings. Thus, the Anglican and Episcopalian Churches read "lessons", which correspond to the order of age and time deployment. The very first verse of the Hebrew Torah does not describe a big bang or a set of fragmentation that led to the creation of heaven and (rotating) earth. Yes, let's have a Zen or frightful crashing party. It is important to feel this move, immense energizing impulse that may seem to be partially or totally irrelevant and so short-timed. At any age, a verse, a word can reach out to our understanding of events, without any prior premonition. Then, each instant teaches individuals and congregations about the relevancy of what others would consider as indistinctive and lacking exact goals or prospects.
As the (Jewish) year floats til its untouchable and invisible borders preceded by the “yamei slichot – days of penance”, the engrossing nature of the present ending-up life & Torah portion looks like some sort of chaotic breaking down shivering of our cultures and societies in a climatic context of imbalance. We are supposed to read with new insights the parashiyot / reading portions and their related haftarot / readings from the Books of the Prophets. Hebrew is quite peculiar because of the great variety of interpretations that are proposed by changing the vowels and phrases. There is also the imperative reference to the Oral Law that brings forth another style of Mishnah and comprehensiveness. Good, we supposedly went out of the Land of Egypt, the House of serfdom. We are free. And we ARE. And God… He does exist / He is life-giving and He does direct our lives. He is One. His goal: humans are One, only one singled out humankind. At the present, Israel has no guaranteed and secured borders. Cities turn to be towns distanced by villages. We emerge with difficulty from years of complex societal shame that corrupts us in different ways. The problem is how to make out of it a cohesive relevant challenge inside the Jewish spiritual life and move up to the future. And to approach the New Year which is a Shemittah / year of remission with much renewed insights.
This week, the parshat hashavua / reading portion is “Ki tavo = When you have to come (into the land)” in Devarim / Deuteronomy 26:1- 29:8. Curiously, the portion scrolls up and down again the wonders that happened with the very first Mitzvot / Commandments given by God since the way out of Egypt. Again, the words try to clarify what seems to remain obscure or at least opaque to the human heart. The last verse of the portion sums up God’s indication: “Therefore diligently observe the words of this covenant so that you may deal wisely (“taskilu et kol asher ta’asun”)” (Deut. 29: 8). Yes, Moses reminds us “that his/our ancestor was a wandering Aramean… who lived as an alien and a poor number (vayagar sham b’mitei me’at = poor as dead and low”) in Egypt” (Deut. 26:5). He recalls that the land of Israel “is flowing with milk and honey - eretz zavat chalav ud’vash” (Deut. 26:9.27:3). He mentions the offering of the first fruit and the tithe to be given to the Levites, the foreigners, the orphans and the widow. This deals with the “orlayim / first fruits” and the “reshit ‘on” as regards the firstborns. It should be important to come to 5768 with the ability to remit all debts and offer the first fruits of a soil that needs a rest. But, basically, we know that by heart. What is the point of newness on the eve of this shemittah year (year of remission)? Any believer, any member of a monotheist denomination may quote by heart these commandments.
It does not prove our unity or benevolence or shows our acceptance of togetherness according to the Mitzvot of the Lord. The country is broken down, the region is parting, and war flames lash not so far from a land that will rest for one full year while others would nuke it. It is intriguing that we will have to work more in the coming year than the earth for which every Jewish soul prays so that it could produce good fruits and flow with milk and honey. The “divrei haberit = the words of the Covenant” announced by the Holy One are also linked to “devorim = bees” that collect the nectar in a sort of oneness task. By the way, queen bees are endangered and suffer from an unknown disease that strongly affects the animal at the moment. Pitcairn Island honey is strictly protected. It constitutes the main income of the descent of the Bounty mutinies. The same process develops in Europe and other continents.
“Foot yawly come yah- why come to that?” as Pitcairn mutinies’ descent say at the present. Because, believers can hardly listen to any warning words, hear and accept them to the full. Any believer – in particular in the One God (various style and moods) – may humble himself, preferably suggesting the others to bow and kneel down. Considering the failure of any mission in India, Gandhi used to stigmatize how all sorts of Jews and Christians peacefully could live and work together, e.g. in Cochin. And the reading portion, two weeks before 5768, a year of remission, summons that nobody has any right to self-glorification, pride. This week, God seriously warns us, again and again, as in the first commencements (rishonim) that He can bless and He can curse, not our enemies – No! He can curse us as Jews, He can curse those who fake to accept the Mitzvot and dishonor them. There is no place for playing the fool with that. But we do continue to play the fool anyway. How God could decide to “remove his chosen”? The problem is that He can do that and we experienced that. And when He does, we have a set of arguments, worked out over the ages to turn that either into some modern apikoros-style (“we doubt, we are secular”). A Jew can hardly say he is an atheist, Gotyenu (Yid. “good gracious”). It sounds arrogantly provocative even if the person means it. But newly-converted Jews (it is an inter-faith process anyway) and some dippy posers might treat themselves or their gurus as smashing ones. At this point, we are really survivors of all the floods and should be take care and behave because hurricanes, storms, earthquakes and tsunamis may be signals to give our nonsense a break and get wiser.
True, “I (God) wonder whether in this generation there is one that accepts “admonition / tokhechah” (Tractate Arakhin 16b) and “Man loves reproofs (“tokhechot”). For as long as reproofs are in the world, ease of the mind comes upon the world as also good and blessing” (Tamid 28a). But Judaism has a one time word, full of ambiguity and realism to describe the position of the true believer: “He’emirechah hayom – a hiphil verbal form = (The Lord) has obtained your agreement / promise / reached that you said – admitted – recognized as His treasured people as He promised you, and to keep His commandments” (Deut. 26:18). Here is the point, the real one, based on the paradox of faith. “Yoqer yaamir… Prices increase and go high” (Sota 49, 72) because “recognition, promise, agreement” may at times be confused with “arrogance, pride, pretence”.
In the positive sense, “he’emir = to admit, recognize” creates a sort of constant link or bond between God and human beings as the bride is engaged with her bridegroom. This relates to the offerings of the first fruits that can be traced back to the way out of Egypt. The mitzvah to don the tefillin / phylacteries is performed as a bridal attachment (Hosea 2:21-22; compared to the Song of Songs and Menachot 60b about “the Throne of Glory / Kisse HaKavod”).
The Evangelist John states something similar in the Book of Revelation: “The Spirit and the bride say “Come – Marana tha” and let everyone who hears say: “Come” (cf. Piyyut “Akdamut milin – Before saying any word”) (Apocalypse 22:16).
This bridal commitment has to be reinforced and this is also a matter of concern in our society. Indeed, we utter words as God spoke His words and they are trustworthy, because we experience as numerous generations before us that they are seeds of what we look for: hope and life.
A year is a set of a peculiar number of days and nights, hours, minutes and seconds that pass and are stored by God (Sukka 62b). I often speak of "shlishiyot - thirds" because we want to slowly be so speedy at the present that we would like to compact tiny segments of immeasurable time wickets to the world-to-come. The specificities of these parashiyot or readings consist in the continuous and perpetually renewed and repeated description, study, scanning, discovery of each word of the Torah.
Moreover, each consonant is inspired by changeable vowels or phrase sequences. Then, our lives, life paths or styles, choices or inability to make up our minds and get forward, shape each year into the form of collectivity and alien “portions”. There is a very strange verse in the Gospel. Jesus says to the disciples to get some fish to eat, after his resurrection and they were on the beach. "Simon-Peter (Kaipha) went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three (153) of them" (John 21:11). The intriguing point is that before the decision of the Sages at Yavneh and when the Temple was still extant, the Torah was not read over one sole year as we do at the present, but over a period of three years. There were153 parashiyot / Torah reading portions. Each reading portion is like a "shanah", if not a "rosh hashanah - cappo d'anno (It.) = (the) cape of a year" that instructs us according to the demands "tiftach = open the gates" during Neylah of Kippur / the closure of the Day of Atonement. Thus we turn the cape of a certain period of time, or a page, we round along new openness or closets.
Interestingly, although the Jews as the Christians are rarely aware of that, the Early Church adopted the same weekly pattern of readings. The Syrian-Orthodox and the Assyrian Churches did keep in Aramaic four basic readings that develop the meaning of time over one year as most Churches do at the present. The Roman Latin Church decided, after the Second Council of Vatican that ended in 1965, to break down the readings over three years, reintroducing large portions from the Bible. The Byzantine Church has retained a systematic envisioning of time "spreading-expansion" that is definitely structured upon the basis of the Jewish series of weekly readings. Thus, the Anglican and Episcopalian Churches read "lessons", which correspond to the order of age and time deployment. The very first verse of the Hebrew Torah does not describe a big bang or a set of fragmentation that led to the creation of heaven and (rotating) earth. Yes, let's have a Zen or frightful crashing party. It is important to feel this move, immense energizing impulse that may seem to be partially or totally irrelevant and so short-timed. At any age, a verse, a word can reach out to our understanding of events, without any prior premonition. Then, each instant teaches individuals and congregations about the relevancy of what others would consider as indistinctive and lacking exact goals or prospects.
As the (Jewish) year floats til its untouchable and invisible borders preceded by the “yamei slichot – days of penance”, the engrossing nature of the present ending-up life & Torah portion looks like some sort of chaotic breaking down shivering of our cultures and societies in a climatic context of imbalance. We are supposed to read with new insights the parashiyot / reading portions and their related haftarot / readings from the Books of the Prophets. Hebrew is quite peculiar because of the great variety of interpretations that are proposed by changing the vowels and phrases. There is also the imperative reference to the Oral Law that brings forth another style of Mishnah and comprehensiveness. Good, we supposedly went out of the Land of Egypt, the House of serfdom. We are free. And we ARE. And God… He does exist / He is life-giving and He does direct our lives. He is One. His goal: humans are One, only one singled out humankind. At the present, Israel has no guaranteed and secured borders. Cities turn to be towns distanced by villages. We emerge with difficulty from years of complex societal shame that corrupts us in different ways. The problem is how to make out of it a cohesive relevant challenge inside the Jewish spiritual life and move up to the future. And to approach the New Year which is a Shemittah / year of remission with much renewed insights.
This week, the parshat hashavua / reading portion is “Ki tavo = When you have to come (into the land)” in Devarim / Deuteronomy 26:1- 29:8. Curiously, the portion scrolls up and down again the wonders that happened with the very first Mitzvot / Commandments given by God since the way out of Egypt. Again, the words try to clarify what seems to remain obscure or at least opaque to the human heart. The last verse of the portion sums up God’s indication: “Therefore diligently observe the words of this covenant so that you may deal wisely (“taskilu et kol asher ta’asun”)” (Deut. 29: 8). Yes, Moses reminds us “that his/our ancestor was a wandering Aramean… who lived as an alien and a poor number (vayagar sham b’mitei me’at = poor as dead and low”) in Egypt” (Deut. 26:5). He recalls that the land of Israel “is flowing with milk and honey - eretz zavat chalav ud’vash” (Deut. 26:9.27:3). He mentions the offering of the first fruit and the tithe to be given to the Levites, the foreigners, the orphans and the widow. This deals with the “orlayim / first fruits” and the “reshit ‘on” as regards the firstborns. It should be important to come to 5768 with the ability to remit all debts and offer the first fruits of a soil that needs a rest. But, basically, we know that by heart. What is the point of newness on the eve of this shemittah year (year of remission)? Any believer, any member of a monotheist denomination may quote by heart these commandments.
It does not prove our unity or benevolence or shows our acceptance of togetherness according to the Mitzvot of the Lord. The country is broken down, the region is parting, and war flames lash not so far from a land that will rest for one full year while others would nuke it. It is intriguing that we will have to work more in the coming year than the earth for which every Jewish soul prays so that it could produce good fruits and flow with milk and honey. The “divrei haberit = the words of the Covenant” announced by the Holy One are also linked to “devorim = bees” that collect the nectar in a sort of oneness task. By the way, queen bees are endangered and suffer from an unknown disease that strongly affects the animal at the moment. Pitcairn Island honey is strictly protected. It constitutes the main income of the descent of the Bounty mutinies. The same process develops in Europe and other continents.
“Foot yawly come yah- why come to that?” as Pitcairn mutinies’ descent say at the present. Because, believers can hardly listen to any warning words, hear and accept them to the full. Any believer – in particular in the One God (various style and moods) – may humble himself, preferably suggesting the others to bow and kneel down. Considering the failure of any mission in India, Gandhi used to stigmatize how all sorts of Jews and Christians peacefully could live and work together, e.g. in Cochin. And the reading portion, two weeks before 5768, a year of remission, summons that nobody has any right to self-glorification, pride. This week, God seriously warns us, again and again, as in the first commencements (rishonim) that He can bless and He can curse, not our enemies – No! He can curse us as Jews, He can curse those who fake to accept the Mitzvot and dishonor them. There is no place for playing the fool with that. But we do continue to play the fool anyway. How God could decide to “remove his chosen”? The problem is that He can do that and we experienced that. And when He does, we have a set of arguments, worked out over the ages to turn that either into some modern apikoros-style (“we doubt, we are secular”). A Jew can hardly say he is an atheist, Gotyenu (Yid. “good gracious”). It sounds arrogantly provocative even if the person means it. But newly-converted Jews (it is an inter-faith process anyway) and some dippy posers might treat themselves or their gurus as smashing ones. At this point, we are really survivors of all the floods and should be take care and behave because hurricanes, storms, earthquakes and tsunamis may be signals to give our nonsense a break and get wiser.
True, “I (God) wonder whether in this generation there is one that accepts “admonition / tokhechah” (Tractate Arakhin 16b) and “Man loves reproofs (“tokhechot”). For as long as reproofs are in the world, ease of the mind comes upon the world as also good and blessing” (Tamid 28a). But Judaism has a one time word, full of ambiguity and realism to describe the position of the true believer: “He’emirechah hayom – a hiphil verbal form = (The Lord) has obtained your agreement / promise / reached that you said – admitted – recognized as His treasured people as He promised you, and to keep His commandments” (Deut. 26:18). Here is the point, the real one, based on the paradox of faith. “Yoqer yaamir… Prices increase and go high” (Sota 49, 72) because “recognition, promise, agreement” may at times be confused with “arrogance, pride, pretence”.
In the positive sense, “he’emir = to admit, recognize” creates a sort of constant link or bond between God and human beings as the bride is engaged with her bridegroom. This relates to the offerings of the first fruits that can be traced back to the way out of Egypt. The mitzvah to don the tefillin / phylacteries is performed as a bridal attachment (Hosea 2:21-22; compared to the Song of Songs and Menachot 60b about “the Throne of Glory / Kisse HaKavod”).
The Evangelist John states something similar in the Book of Revelation: “The Spirit and the bride say “Come – Marana tha” and let everyone who hears say: “Come” (cf. Piyyut “Akdamut milin – Before saying any word”) (Apocalypse 22:16).
This bridal commitment has to be reinforced and this is also a matter of concern in our society. Indeed, we utter words as God spoke His words and they are trustworthy, because we experience as numerous generations before us that they are seeds of what we look for: hope and life.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Sheerit: a remnant of believers
As we all know and are getting more and more concerned for different reasons, there is a harsh baby boom competition that turns to an obsessing rush to birth babes on the Jewish side of Israel. There is a sort of fear, a feeling of threat that Jews may be overcome by the competition's generating abilities.
In this "birthing war", we feel on the top of the world and are tickled pink, orange, white and blue. This race is definitely not racist. It is not ethnic: we need babes to birth, more babes and get thousands home made inhabitants that should join the newcomers and all these birthrights & Co Unlimited. We are the State of the Jews, "der Judenstaat" that substantiates Theodore Benyamin Zvi Herzl's vision of the required creation a home refuge for the scattered exiled of worldwide Jewry. Is it a Jewish State?
This is a nuance that does not totally fit or outline what can be understood from Herlz’s German title of the book. Well, the in gathering relates to the Bney Israel (Israelites of Children of Israel), Bney Yaakov, Bney Berit (Children of the Covenant), Bney Yeshurun. Still the "nationality - le'om" usually shows that there are either "Yehudim - Jews" or - as the recent ad claims, nobody will ever take it from us. This usually implies that Yehudim are not the Children of Judah, but mainly "Jewish believers" even if the increasing number of the extant "Jewish" streams might be a bit confusing. Then, we have the "satellite border Jews".
Because, all things being equal, Aharon Barak, the former President of the Supreme Court, could not implement his goal to leave his post by sketching out some clear definition of "who is a Jew". Good, “Jewish” means that the mother is Jewish. This does not mean that her father was a Jew or that there was any understanding of what the realm of the Mitzvot is, or what Jewish faith induces for each Jewish soul.
In the former Soviet Union, a great number of men were "Jewish" according to the Soviet national structure and regulation in force. They became "alien" or "lo barur / not clear - lo rashum / not registered - lo le'om / without nationality" and finally "bebedikah / checked" and thus "like goyim / non-Jews". Indeed, the State of the Jews basically functions, at the present, upon the laws that affected the Jews up to the fourth maternal or paternal ancestors and deported or exterminated because of a presumed ancient Jewish lineage. The same is applicable in the Eastern countries that persecuted "any sort of Jews".
On the other hand, any Jew, living in any country outside Eretz Israel, normally enjoys the full right to return to the homeland; be immediately given all the documents and proof that he/she is duly a citizen if he/she does shows evidence that he/she has some Jewish background. The problem may be more complex for those who come from certain countries like Ethiopia or India. And there is a lot of uncertainty with regards to some individuals or groups who either obtain forged documents bought in messy conditions. Let's say this is a general problem for any new just born-again country.
On the other hand, there is no “born again” contest with regards to the Emunat Israel / Faith of Israel. The State of Israel is indeed considering itself as the refuge and native homeland for all Jews, believers or not. This has raised strong conflicts, but still, the Jewish Orthodox movement is responsible for assuming the present identity of Jewish faithful and belief patterns. These are fought by reformists, conservative, modern Orthodox i.a. and other streams mainly from the West and North America.
In Hebrew, “sheerit – remnant” is connected with the root “sh’er” = “preservation, existence, sustenance, bodily contact, flesh and blood/race as “sh’ereinu – our relatives (compared with Yid. “undzere kinder – our children”) in Tractate Shabbat 1c. Tanhumah Tol’dot 19 (Ed. Buber) refers to the Prophet: “Then the remnant of Jacob amidst many peoples (“sheerit Yaakov beqerev amim rabbim”), shall be like dew from the Lord… and among the Nations, the remnant of Jacob… shall be like a lion” (Micah 5:6[7.8]). Indeed, these verses relate to the well-known verse of Prophet Elijah: “Vehish’arti veIsrael, and I will preserve/ leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18).
Now, we have to keep maintaining that this verse, as others from the Prophets, concerns the Jews as firstly being the community of Israel and not the Church of Christ. The supposedly post-exilic verse “Vehish’arti veqirbech am ‘ani vedal / and I will leave – keep the remnant in your midst of a poor and needy people (of Israel)” (Zephania 3:12) echoes Jeremiah’s verse of “the remnant of those who escaped deportation- to Babylon, the “sheerit Yehudah – remnant of Judah”” (Jeremiah 42: 15.19). It is important to constantly bear in mind that the “remnant of Jacob, Israel, Judah” are the meek and the Chassidim who clutched to the Commandments in times of slaughter and destruction (as the Maccabeans). They do continue to repeatedly teach the Sons of Israel in the context of a full rebuilding process.
Throughout history, the Gospel suggested, in Paul of Tarsus’ writings, that the Gentiles entered the Covenant. They entered the Covenant by the approval of the Jews as members of the Mashiah / Moshiah (Christos), not on the contrary. They were accepted under specific agreements proclaimed by Jacob/James, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, a Hebrew Christian (Ch. 15, Acts of the Apostles). But progressively the Gentiles came to consider themselves as being the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16), the fellow-citizens with God’s true people (Eph.2.11-22), having entered into the covenant of promise. This a tactic of replacement and usurpation: even though they are the branches of the true vine (John.15:1-6) and have been grafted into the olive tree (Romans 11:17). As if God “wants all men to be saved and to come to know the truth”. (1Timothy 2:4), based on missionary power and exercise of might instead of releasing and free consented faith. They are the true ‘dispersion’ (James 1:1, 1 Peter1:1).
Ever since the first separation that forbade the Hebrew Christians to take part in Jewish services and banned them (“cherem”) from the Jewish communities, the Early Church lost its Jewish part of the Body and disappeared. The Churches and their splits steadfastly captured the Jews mainly by forced conversion and without real integration. It does not mean that Jews could never “move up” in Christian hierarchy. In most cases this had nothing to do with faith and Judaic-Christian “intra-faith” recognition.
Are the death and funeral of Cardinal J. M. Lustiger reigniting any kind of pending polemic? I tried to give some basic explanations in a general context in the previous blog “Zehut” (Aug 17). There is definitely no precedent to his situation, with the exception of Solomon Alexander Pollack who was bar mitzvahed and got appointed as first Anglican archbishop of Jerusalem in 1842. Again, Cardinal Lustiger was called to be a French and not a “Jewish” Bishop. True, he was very Jewish in many aspects, but definitely marked by the tragedy of the times.
It is true that the Churches envisioned for ages the existence of Israel as an odd remnant. Some Jews refused to be baptized during WWII because they did not want to adhere to a faith they might have not shared but could exert some attraction on them. They would not separate from “their people”. “Rarely in the past have conversions of the Jews to Christianity proven to be a courageous act of sacrifice”, declared the German Rabbi Leo Baeck. In that sense, Cardinal Lustiger’s life and Church service showed a real spirit of abandonment that bordered some sort of “irrationalities”. And he could experience that pretending to be a Jew and a Christian might appear as a kind of “sub-cultural stand”.
His views were those of the heads of the Roman Catholic Western Latin Rite French clergy. His question is not the same – thus seemingly parallel - as Father Daniel Rufeisen’s “requirement” to be recognized, by the State of Israel, as a Jew and member of the “lochamey haGettaot – Ghetto fighters” as he saved so many Jews from the Gestapo at Mir and imperiled his life as a Jew. The same is applicable for many other priests of Jewish descent (Fr. Alexander Glasberg, originally from the Ukraine). Both have trees as “Righteous among the Nations” and not in their quality of Jews. Fr. Daniel Rufeisen had strong ties with the Israeli survivors and he got the citizenship, still not as a Jew. Such requirements need time, patience and the consent of the Jews as a full-coherent community of faithful.
Thus, it may be useful for the emergence of a Judenstaat / State of the Jews (Israel) to interrogate Israeli society and authorities that are enabled to contest any Christian pretence. Are we called to be Israelis because our ancestors were either persecuted by the Christians, the Nazi apostates or the atheists? Because the tragedy for a great part of the converted Jews to Christianity is that they turned Christians during the time of the Shoah or, more recently of the “perestroika/fall of communism in the USSR”, while profound societal breaches were roaring inside of traditional Jewries.
Cardinal Lustiger’s epitaph: “Having become Christian by faith and baptism, I have remained Jewish. As did the Apostles” is only understandable in the context of France, full of contradictions toward Dreyfus, Leon Blum, deportation, denunciation and heroic resistance. It is both a courageous act and self-recognition, showing a lot of suffering. But a Jew is irreversibly born to fully proclaim the Resurrection (“mechayeh metim = Who resurrects the dead”). Then, the problem is that historically the Gentile Church did eat up and swallow Jewishness like praying mantis, leaving Judaism moving ahead on its own.
The House of Israel / Klal Israel always retained and developed her primacy of priesthood and service for the blessing of all the Nations. The “sheerit Israel” as it appears in the present in the State of Israel should also consider the possibility of positively considering the presence of Jews as Christian believers and full Israeli citizens, participating to the full, and without proselytizing, to Jewish life and being a full part of the local Church of Zion and Jerusalem. They are indeed numerous and often similarly rebuked by Jewish and Christian authorities alike. They did exist throughout centuries. Yes, Jesus was not born in a free State of the Jews; this does theologically (and not only politically) question the Church. Today, Israel is capable of contradicting the Christian world and breaking their historic monologue. Thus, Israel could have the wit to open the gates and benefit of the large experience of her Christian inhabitants.
Rabbi Gamaliel had asked Shmuel HaKatan to write the “Birkat malshinim – Benediction against the slanderers, minim (heretics)” around 100 CE. It concerned all sorts of Jewish heretics as we have them today in different ways. Very slowly and with much insight, Israel should open a dialogue with those that don’t teach the Jews but survived amidst hostility and despite it because the return to Zion gathers every soul as “They are the Bney Israel and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law (Torah), the worship (Avodah), and the promises…” (Romans 9:4).
COMMENTS
In this "birthing war", we feel on the top of the world and are tickled pink, orange, white and blue. This race is definitely not racist. It is not ethnic: we need babes to birth, more babes and get thousands home made inhabitants that should join the newcomers and all these birthrights & Co Unlimited. We are the State of the Jews, "der Judenstaat" that substantiates Theodore Benyamin Zvi Herzl's vision of the required creation a home refuge for the scattered exiled of worldwide Jewry. Is it a Jewish State?
This is a nuance that does not totally fit or outline what can be understood from Herlz’s German title of the book. Well, the in gathering relates to the Bney Israel (Israelites of Children of Israel), Bney Yaakov, Bney Berit (Children of the Covenant), Bney Yeshurun. Still the "nationality - le'om" usually shows that there are either "Yehudim - Jews" or - as the recent ad claims, nobody will ever take it from us. This usually implies that Yehudim are not the Children of Judah, but mainly "Jewish believers" even if the increasing number of the extant "Jewish" streams might be a bit confusing. Then, we have the "satellite border Jews".
Because, all things being equal, Aharon Barak, the former President of the Supreme Court, could not implement his goal to leave his post by sketching out some clear definition of "who is a Jew". Good, “Jewish” means that the mother is Jewish. This does not mean that her father was a Jew or that there was any understanding of what the realm of the Mitzvot is, or what Jewish faith induces for each Jewish soul.
In the former Soviet Union, a great number of men were "Jewish" according to the Soviet national structure and regulation in force. They became "alien" or "lo barur / not clear - lo rashum / not registered - lo le'om / without nationality" and finally "bebedikah / checked" and thus "like goyim / non-Jews". Indeed, the State of the Jews basically functions, at the present, upon the laws that affected the Jews up to the fourth maternal or paternal ancestors and deported or exterminated because of a presumed ancient Jewish lineage. The same is applicable in the Eastern countries that persecuted "any sort of Jews".
On the other hand, any Jew, living in any country outside Eretz Israel, normally enjoys the full right to return to the homeland; be immediately given all the documents and proof that he/she is duly a citizen if he/she does shows evidence that he/she has some Jewish background. The problem may be more complex for those who come from certain countries like Ethiopia or India. And there is a lot of uncertainty with regards to some individuals or groups who either obtain forged documents bought in messy conditions. Let's say this is a general problem for any new just born-again country.
On the other hand, there is no “born again” contest with regards to the Emunat Israel / Faith of Israel. The State of Israel is indeed considering itself as the refuge and native homeland for all Jews, believers or not. This has raised strong conflicts, but still, the Jewish Orthodox movement is responsible for assuming the present identity of Jewish faithful and belief patterns. These are fought by reformists, conservative, modern Orthodox i.a. and other streams mainly from the West and North America.
In Hebrew, “sheerit – remnant” is connected with the root “sh’er” = “preservation, existence, sustenance, bodily contact, flesh and blood/race as “sh’ereinu – our relatives (compared with Yid. “undzere kinder – our children”) in Tractate Shabbat 1c. Tanhumah Tol’dot 19 (Ed. Buber) refers to the Prophet: “Then the remnant of Jacob amidst many peoples (“sheerit Yaakov beqerev amim rabbim”), shall be like dew from the Lord… and among the Nations, the remnant of Jacob… shall be like a lion” (Micah 5:6[7.8]). Indeed, these verses relate to the well-known verse of Prophet Elijah: “Vehish’arti veIsrael, and I will preserve/ leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18).
Now, we have to keep maintaining that this verse, as others from the Prophets, concerns the Jews as firstly being the community of Israel and not the Church of Christ. The supposedly post-exilic verse “Vehish’arti veqirbech am ‘ani vedal / and I will leave – keep the remnant in your midst of a poor and needy people (of Israel)” (Zephania 3:12) echoes Jeremiah’s verse of “the remnant of those who escaped deportation- to Babylon, the “sheerit Yehudah – remnant of Judah”” (Jeremiah 42: 15.19). It is important to constantly bear in mind that the “remnant of Jacob, Israel, Judah” are the meek and the Chassidim who clutched to the Commandments in times of slaughter and destruction (as the Maccabeans). They do continue to repeatedly teach the Sons of Israel in the context of a full rebuilding process.
Throughout history, the Gospel suggested, in Paul of Tarsus’ writings, that the Gentiles entered the Covenant. They entered the Covenant by the approval of the Jews as members of the Mashiah / Moshiah (Christos), not on the contrary. They were accepted under specific agreements proclaimed by Jacob/James, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, a Hebrew Christian (Ch. 15, Acts of the Apostles). But progressively the Gentiles came to consider themselves as being the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16), the fellow-citizens with God’s true people (Eph.2.11-22), having entered into the covenant of promise. This a tactic of replacement and usurpation: even though they are the branches of the true vine (John.15:1-6) and have been grafted into the olive tree (Romans 11:17). As if God “wants all men to be saved and to come to know the truth”. (1Timothy 2:4), based on missionary power and exercise of might instead of releasing and free consented faith. They are the true ‘dispersion’ (James 1:1, 1 Peter1:1).
Ever since the first separation that forbade the Hebrew Christians to take part in Jewish services and banned them (“cherem”) from the Jewish communities, the Early Church lost its Jewish part of the Body and disappeared. The Churches and their splits steadfastly captured the Jews mainly by forced conversion and without real integration. It does not mean that Jews could never “move up” in Christian hierarchy. In most cases this had nothing to do with faith and Judaic-Christian “intra-faith” recognition.
Are the death and funeral of Cardinal J. M. Lustiger reigniting any kind of pending polemic? I tried to give some basic explanations in a general context in the previous blog “Zehut” (Aug 17). There is definitely no precedent to his situation, with the exception of Solomon Alexander Pollack who was bar mitzvahed and got appointed as first Anglican archbishop of Jerusalem in 1842. Again, Cardinal Lustiger was called to be a French and not a “Jewish” Bishop. True, he was very Jewish in many aspects, but definitely marked by the tragedy of the times.
It is true that the Churches envisioned for ages the existence of Israel as an odd remnant. Some Jews refused to be baptized during WWII because they did not want to adhere to a faith they might have not shared but could exert some attraction on them. They would not separate from “their people”. “Rarely in the past have conversions of the Jews to Christianity proven to be a courageous act of sacrifice”, declared the German Rabbi Leo Baeck. In that sense, Cardinal Lustiger’s life and Church service showed a real spirit of abandonment that bordered some sort of “irrationalities”. And he could experience that pretending to be a Jew and a Christian might appear as a kind of “sub-cultural stand”.
His views were those of the heads of the Roman Catholic Western Latin Rite French clergy. His question is not the same – thus seemingly parallel - as Father Daniel Rufeisen’s “requirement” to be recognized, by the State of Israel, as a Jew and member of the “lochamey haGettaot – Ghetto fighters” as he saved so many Jews from the Gestapo at Mir and imperiled his life as a Jew. The same is applicable for many other priests of Jewish descent (Fr. Alexander Glasberg, originally from the Ukraine). Both have trees as “Righteous among the Nations” and not in their quality of Jews. Fr. Daniel Rufeisen had strong ties with the Israeli survivors and he got the citizenship, still not as a Jew. Such requirements need time, patience and the consent of the Jews as a full-coherent community of faithful.
Thus, it may be useful for the emergence of a Judenstaat / State of the Jews (Israel) to interrogate Israeli society and authorities that are enabled to contest any Christian pretence. Are we called to be Israelis because our ancestors were either persecuted by the Christians, the Nazi apostates or the atheists? Because the tragedy for a great part of the converted Jews to Christianity is that they turned Christians during the time of the Shoah or, more recently of the “perestroika/fall of communism in the USSR”, while profound societal breaches were roaring inside of traditional Jewries.
Cardinal Lustiger’s epitaph: “Having become Christian by faith and baptism, I have remained Jewish. As did the Apostles” is only understandable in the context of France, full of contradictions toward Dreyfus, Leon Blum, deportation, denunciation and heroic resistance. It is both a courageous act and self-recognition, showing a lot of suffering. But a Jew is irreversibly born to fully proclaim the Resurrection (“mechayeh metim = Who resurrects the dead”). Then, the problem is that historically the Gentile Church did eat up and swallow Jewishness like praying mantis, leaving Judaism moving ahead on its own.
The House of Israel / Klal Israel always retained and developed her primacy of priesthood and service for the blessing of all the Nations. The “sheerit Israel” as it appears in the present in the State of Israel should also consider the possibility of positively considering the presence of Jews as Christian believers and full Israeli citizens, participating to the full, and without proselytizing, to Jewish life and being a full part of the local Church of Zion and Jerusalem. They are indeed numerous and often similarly rebuked by Jewish and Christian authorities alike. They did exist throughout centuries. Yes, Jesus was not born in a free State of the Jews; this does theologically (and not only politically) question the Church. Today, Israel is capable of contradicting the Christian world and breaking their historic monologue. Thus, Israel could have the wit to open the gates and benefit of the large experience of her Christian inhabitants.
Rabbi Gamaliel had asked Shmuel HaKatan to write the “Birkat malshinim – Benediction against the slanderers, minim (heretics)” around 100 CE. It concerned all sorts of Jewish heretics as we have them today in different ways. Very slowly and with much insight, Israel should open a dialogue with those that don’t teach the Jews but survived amidst hostility and despite it because the return to Zion gathers every soul as “They are the Bney Israel and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law (Torah), the worship (Avodah), and the promises…” (Romans 9:4).
COMMENTS
Monday, August 27, 2007
Ma'akeh: to fall adequately
Are we going through a normal and standardized summer time? This year, Hurricane Dean swayed the Martinique and the Guadalupe islands, Haiti, and licked with heavy storms the Dominican Republic, then turned to Yucatan and Veracruz in Mexico. It wipes from our memories or more accurately the images of our media the tremendously whirling hurricane Katrina that destroyed New Orleans and Louisiana, with billions and billions of damages and homeless.
This year, America breaks its bridges that fall into the rivers and continues to burn oil: waste, waste carelessly the best of the cream produced in the world, especially in the Middle-East. Oh, they are very nice and heartfelt people. At the end of the war of Vietnam, in 1975, they left a bled white Asian country of ancient culture with all sorts of traitors and betrayers, easy businessmen, women and raped children.
The refugees had to show affidavits of support provided by American citizens, mostly the families of the soldiers or their friends that had visited the country during the war. They got very sincere and warmhearted documents allowing them to settle in the United States.
We see them from time to time in the Holy Land. Israel had also given asylum to some Vietnamese refugees who became full Israeli citizens and would almost speak Chinese or Vietnamese with a touch of Yemenite intonation, lol.
Less than 40 years later, the United States and some Allies are still involved in oil conquest, but the country progressively grows old, buildings and public work structures are not that safe. New Orleans is still swampy.
True, California could support most of the States, but there is a move toward new cultures, Spanish is now a must. But it is so easy to revamp and to swagger when a multi-state-fragmented entity is sliding down, too slowly to be on open alert.
Nobody even anticipated the financial real-estate crash…And who would show off in Puerto Rico, the rich harbor full of homeless. This year, there are hurricanes and overheat in Eastern Europe, Greece, Romania while Asia is drowning under the powerful monsoon in India, China. The United Kingdom had floods and muds.
The Arctic cap melts too quickly and soap opera writers anticipate the coming floods that would wet up and clear out huge parts of Europe, creating a sort of real Atlantida. As we live on the Syrian Phoenician Rift that drifts away from the inland everyday, we might have, in some generations, to go to work by scuba diving in some aquariums like Eilat...
But the crazy thing is that the world is actually losing its polar kippah / skullcap because humans are drained with consumption products and wasting mania is so ethical at the present.
Not only waste but also squander in time, opportunities and resources. For instance, Israel has a strong health educational system based on prevention of diseases. In response, narcotics, anorexia, drugs, sexual and alien sicknesses, psychological weaknesses attack the structures that should prevent from more affection.
One year ago, a young Austrian Viennese girl, Natascha Kampusch, escaped from her jail. She had spent eight years in the house of a man who had abducted and kept her imprisoned in a sort of underground attic. She survived and slowly recovers, showing real compassion for her tormentor. She somehow symbolizes all the Mitzvot given by God in the reading portion of the week and the odious infringements of all kinds of ethical behaviors, to begin with sexual direct or fanciful perversions.
Indeed, the parshat hashavua or reading portion of the week is taken from Devarim / Deuteronomy 21:10-25:9 in this Shabbat “Ki tetsei – (when) you go out (to war against your enemies)”. It precisely deals with morals… Of course! All Mitzvot and the whole of the Written and Oral Laws are reflecting on ethics throughout the ages, teaching each generation how to behave.
It does not mean than we understand or even cope with the God’s Commandments. But they are our substantial green that allows us ruminating slowly like our dear milking cows (Tehillim 1:2, “uv’torato yehggeh yomam valeylah – and considers/ruminates His Torah day and night”). Thus, what do people ruminate about? Sex. Well, there is a little problem. “Sex” does not exist in Hebrew.
It may sound bizarre to some citizens, because we are sinking in sex genital prolegomena to the kernel issues of our planet out society. In the reading portion, again God prohibits rapes, women abduction in war times, transvestitism, prostitution, adultery and slander against women, mutilation of male genitalia. This really sounds “sexual”. Actually it might be! But we don’t use the exact word in Hebrew to discuss a matter that is at the heart of any existence. Alas, pedophilia is developing in Israel as it was current in Ancient Greece for different reasons.
Some years ago it created a national cultural and mental shock in Belgium, as also in France and within the Catholic Church in the United States, Ireland and other countries. “Sexus” comes from “secare – to divide, cut. Humans are divided in order to determine their qualities of males and females collectively. The parashah is dealing with the various ways of how to comply or reject the “genital” identity of humans as to control their impulses or taboos.
Sex(us) is declined in the present in: heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, same-sex, over-sexed and unisex. This has nothing to do with mechanics. And it is indeed a pity that modern religious teachers do not dare clearly and loudly instruct about the mental, physical and spiritual values of our limbs. They do not function as separate robots or golems, but reflect on personal purity or soul life.
“Males and females are called to be one body and soul”, states the Talmud (Menachot 93a). This confirms the value of the first commandment, i.e. to quit father and mother and to “clutch” to a wife (Gen. 2:24). In Hebrew, “Min = sex” and “Person (to the fullest)”. It also interrogates about our origin and destination (Avot 3:1): “Me’a’in = where from”, “min = who, out of (where)”, “man, mah = what” clarifies the irreplaceable dignity and fulfillment of whom and what human beings are called to do with their members, bones and souls, brains, intellect, mind, conscience.
Apparently, sex appears as “raw and wild instinct”. Hebrew shows that it cannot be mechanical or temporary. It always involves creation and therefore feeling. As in a paradox, we hardly would understand and admit that “making love / love-making” is nonsense. Bodies are not toys, robotic actions trying to substantiate human fancy or throw away fears and obsession. “Love = Ahavah = Gr. Agape” undoubtedly refers to Divine Light of creation (= la’assot, yatsar = to make, create, shape”).
Again, Mishney Torah – Deuteronomy hammers down how consciousness should abide our souls and never affect, harm or even damage other inmates, in particular women. One could think that this “wedding warnings and strict commandments” are a consequence of some women weakness. There is no evidence that women are weaker than men. The TaNaKH insists on the fact that woman was shaped in order to assist and even contradict maleness (“ezer kenegdo = a helper against him (Adam) Bereishit 2:20). This maybe nothing new, but the newness is not in the repetition of prohibitive mitzvot. Newness consists in being more aware that any human would like or even prefer to test, taste what is wrong – then get wounded and fall.
In Israel, most women wear pants, and men become more feminized (ornaments, beauty products, unisex clothing). We look again toward own-sex groups that would turn to individual hedonism and loneliness.
Sexual perversions or transgressions are universal; transvestitism can be initiatory (shamanism or Japanese No theater) as pedophilia is for the African Siwan people or the East Bay Papuans. They show up in ancient Jewish and Christianized cultures as symptoms of degenerative tendencies that are very close to primary mental panicking impulses.
We have more cases of incest, which – besides any mitzvot system – is condemned by all human groups with two amazing exceptions: Egyptian Pharaoh’s and the Mormons. This is definitely not some primitive depravation. It only proves how difficult it is for humankind to eradicate the early commencement of a world ruled, without the assistance of a self-controlled conscience; and driven by sudden and instant rages to have a hell and let people fall.
This is why, it is said that we ought to save a fallen donkey or ox (Deut. 22:4), not to kill the mother of fledgings in a nest; and “assita ma’aqah legagech / to build a parapet for the roof of a new house: “otherwise you might have blood-guilt on your house if anyone should fall from it / ki yipol hanofel mimenu” (Deut. 22:8). Now, this commandment should be read in most cities of the country as regards the building of solid security parapets / ma’aqot everywhere.
This sounds a bit peculiar: is there on our roof a being who may fall and make us blood-guilty? The prayer of the Amidah (18 Benedictions) “Mechalkel” has it: “God sustains the living with loving-kindness, resurrects the dead with great mercy, somech noflim / supports the falling…”
There is no competition in faith. There cannot be any sort of jealousy or will to hurt or damage the others. And still, ages have passed and believers would often trap and wrap people in their own stiff-necked spiritual views. As the blessing says, “God sustains and reinvigorates” all beings while we would love to trip someone up because casting down is such a pleasant game for which personal wounds cannot stand.
In times of floods and hurricanes, people are often saved from their roofs. This would also mean that people are not only born to fall in catastrophic situations! This is the kind of hope beyond any hope that Jews have shown: we are like bouncing babes that stare at the sight that what seems impossible is real and extant.
In August 79 CE, Mount Vesuvio lashed its stream of volcanic fire destroying Pompeii and Herculaneum that remained hidden for centuries.
Why in the world is the Arctic ice removing the (skull)cap of the Earth at present?
COMMENTS
This year, America breaks its bridges that fall into the rivers and continues to burn oil: waste, waste carelessly the best of the cream produced in the world, especially in the Middle-East. Oh, they are very nice and heartfelt people. At the end of the war of Vietnam, in 1975, they left a bled white Asian country of ancient culture with all sorts of traitors and betrayers, easy businessmen, women and raped children.
The refugees had to show affidavits of support provided by American citizens, mostly the families of the soldiers or their friends that had visited the country during the war. They got very sincere and warmhearted documents allowing them to settle in the United States.
We see them from time to time in the Holy Land. Israel had also given asylum to some Vietnamese refugees who became full Israeli citizens and would almost speak Chinese or Vietnamese with a touch of Yemenite intonation, lol.
Less than 40 years later, the United States and some Allies are still involved in oil conquest, but the country progressively grows old, buildings and public work structures are not that safe. New Orleans is still swampy.
True, California could support most of the States, but there is a move toward new cultures, Spanish is now a must. But it is so easy to revamp and to swagger when a multi-state-fragmented entity is sliding down, too slowly to be on open alert.
Nobody even anticipated the financial real-estate crash…And who would show off in Puerto Rico, the rich harbor full of homeless. This year, there are hurricanes and overheat in Eastern Europe, Greece, Romania while Asia is drowning under the powerful monsoon in India, China. The United Kingdom had floods and muds.
The Arctic cap melts too quickly and soap opera writers anticipate the coming floods that would wet up and clear out huge parts of Europe, creating a sort of real Atlantida. As we live on the Syrian Phoenician Rift that drifts away from the inland everyday, we might have, in some generations, to go to work by scuba diving in some aquariums like Eilat...
But the crazy thing is that the world is actually losing its polar kippah / skullcap because humans are drained with consumption products and wasting mania is so ethical at the present.
Not only waste but also squander in time, opportunities and resources. For instance, Israel has a strong health educational system based on prevention of diseases. In response, narcotics, anorexia, drugs, sexual and alien sicknesses, psychological weaknesses attack the structures that should prevent from more affection.
One year ago, a young Austrian Viennese girl, Natascha Kampusch, escaped from her jail. She had spent eight years in the house of a man who had abducted and kept her imprisoned in a sort of underground attic. She survived and slowly recovers, showing real compassion for her tormentor. She somehow symbolizes all the Mitzvot given by God in the reading portion of the week and the odious infringements of all kinds of ethical behaviors, to begin with sexual direct or fanciful perversions.
Indeed, the parshat hashavua or reading portion of the week is taken from Devarim / Deuteronomy 21:10-25:9 in this Shabbat “Ki tetsei – (when) you go out (to war against your enemies)”. It precisely deals with morals… Of course! All Mitzvot and the whole of the Written and Oral Laws are reflecting on ethics throughout the ages, teaching each generation how to behave.
It does not mean than we understand or even cope with the God’s Commandments. But they are our substantial green that allows us ruminating slowly like our dear milking cows (Tehillim 1:2, “uv’torato yehggeh yomam valeylah – and considers/ruminates His Torah day and night”). Thus, what do people ruminate about? Sex. Well, there is a little problem. “Sex” does not exist in Hebrew.
It may sound bizarre to some citizens, because we are sinking in sex genital prolegomena to the kernel issues of our planet out society. In the reading portion, again God prohibits rapes, women abduction in war times, transvestitism, prostitution, adultery and slander against women, mutilation of male genitalia. This really sounds “sexual”. Actually it might be! But we don’t use the exact word in Hebrew to discuss a matter that is at the heart of any existence. Alas, pedophilia is developing in Israel as it was current in Ancient Greece for different reasons.
Some years ago it created a national cultural and mental shock in Belgium, as also in France and within the Catholic Church in the United States, Ireland and other countries. “Sexus” comes from “secare – to divide, cut. Humans are divided in order to determine their qualities of males and females collectively. The parashah is dealing with the various ways of how to comply or reject the “genital” identity of humans as to control their impulses or taboos.
Sex(us) is declined in the present in: heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, same-sex, over-sexed and unisex. This has nothing to do with mechanics. And it is indeed a pity that modern religious teachers do not dare clearly and loudly instruct about the mental, physical and spiritual values of our limbs. They do not function as separate robots or golems, but reflect on personal purity or soul life.
“Males and females are called to be one body and soul”, states the Talmud (Menachot 93a). This confirms the value of the first commandment, i.e. to quit father and mother and to “clutch” to a wife (Gen. 2:24). In Hebrew, “Min = sex” and “Person (to the fullest)”. It also interrogates about our origin and destination (Avot 3:1): “Me’a’in = where from”, “min = who, out of (where)”, “man, mah = what” clarifies the irreplaceable dignity and fulfillment of whom and what human beings are called to do with their members, bones and souls, brains, intellect, mind, conscience.
Apparently, sex appears as “raw and wild instinct”. Hebrew shows that it cannot be mechanical or temporary. It always involves creation and therefore feeling. As in a paradox, we hardly would understand and admit that “making love / love-making” is nonsense. Bodies are not toys, robotic actions trying to substantiate human fancy or throw away fears and obsession. “Love = Ahavah = Gr. Agape” undoubtedly refers to Divine Light of creation (= la’assot, yatsar = to make, create, shape”).
Again, Mishney Torah – Deuteronomy hammers down how consciousness should abide our souls and never affect, harm or even damage other inmates, in particular women. One could think that this “wedding warnings and strict commandments” are a consequence of some women weakness. There is no evidence that women are weaker than men. The TaNaKH insists on the fact that woman was shaped in order to assist and even contradict maleness (“ezer kenegdo = a helper against him (Adam) Bereishit 2:20). This maybe nothing new, but the newness is not in the repetition of prohibitive mitzvot. Newness consists in being more aware that any human would like or even prefer to test, taste what is wrong – then get wounded and fall.
In Israel, most women wear pants, and men become more feminized (ornaments, beauty products, unisex clothing). We look again toward own-sex groups that would turn to individual hedonism and loneliness.
Sexual perversions or transgressions are universal; transvestitism can be initiatory (shamanism or Japanese No theater) as pedophilia is for the African Siwan people or the East Bay Papuans. They show up in ancient Jewish and Christianized cultures as symptoms of degenerative tendencies that are very close to primary mental panicking impulses.
We have more cases of incest, which – besides any mitzvot system – is condemned by all human groups with two amazing exceptions: Egyptian Pharaoh’s and the Mormons. This is definitely not some primitive depravation. It only proves how difficult it is for humankind to eradicate the early commencement of a world ruled, without the assistance of a self-controlled conscience; and driven by sudden and instant rages to have a hell and let people fall.
This is why, it is said that we ought to save a fallen donkey or ox (Deut. 22:4), not to kill the mother of fledgings in a nest; and “assita ma’aqah legagech / to build a parapet for the roof of a new house: “otherwise you might have blood-guilt on your house if anyone should fall from it / ki yipol hanofel mimenu” (Deut. 22:8). Now, this commandment should be read in most cities of the country as regards the building of solid security parapets / ma’aqot everywhere.
This sounds a bit peculiar: is there on our roof a being who may fall and make us blood-guilty? The prayer of the Amidah (18 Benedictions) “Mechalkel” has it: “God sustains the living with loving-kindness, resurrects the dead with great mercy, somech noflim / supports the falling…”
There is no competition in faith. There cannot be any sort of jealousy or will to hurt or damage the others. And still, ages have passed and believers would often trap and wrap people in their own stiff-necked spiritual views. As the blessing says, “God sustains and reinvigorates” all beings while we would love to trip someone up because casting down is such a pleasant game for which personal wounds cannot stand.
In times of floods and hurricanes, people are often saved from their roofs. This would also mean that people are not only born to fall in catastrophic situations! This is the kind of hope beyond any hope that Jews have shown: we are like bouncing babes that stare at the sight that what seems impossible is real and extant.
In August 79 CE, Mount Vesuvio lashed its stream of volcanic fire destroying Pompeii and Herculaneum that remained hidden for centuries.
Why in the world is the Arctic ice removing the (skull)cap of the Earth at present?
COMMENTS
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