Kiddush Hashem

This post is for links to two recent Kiddush Hashem news items.  The first one you may have seen, since it has been posted many places.  The second is not as well known.

 

Kiddush Hashem #1

 

Kiddush Hashem #2

 

What I like about the first one is that it wasn't even an extraordinary act that made the Kiddush Hashem.  It was Jews doing what Jews do, in daily life.  Numerous Jews live this way.  We don't always realize how our Jewish routines make an impact, not only in the spiritual realms, but right here.

 

What's nice about the second one is the breaking of stereotypes.

 

Sometimes, a Kiddush Hashem is made when Jews return money that does not belong to them.  True, it's a Kiddush Hashem, but non-Jews also return money that does not belong to them.  These two stories are special because it is the very Jewishness of the protagonists that make it a Kiddush Hashem. 

 

 

And Another Moshiach Fantasy

 

Another Moshiach fantasy I have (see here for the first one) is that all Jews will have a glowing yud on their foreheads and all Amalekites will have a black ayin.  Lots of people with that yud will be surprised, sad to say, since so many Jews do not know they are Jews.  This could be because they were never told and had no reason to think so, because they were raised by non-Jews, because they did not know that having a Jewish maternal great-grandmother, grandmother, mother makes them Jewish.

 

A smaller group of people, those who thought they were Jewish but aren't, and who won't have a yud, will be surprised too.

 

The precedent for my Moshiach fantasy is Bereishis 4:15 where Hashem engraves a letter of His name on Kayin's forehead.  But I think this idea came to me from the Lights video here that I first saw 23 years ago on Chanuka.  It tells the Chanuka story and uses flying, golden letters of the alef-beis to represent Torah-true Judaism and Greek letters that drop with a clang to represent the Hellenist philosophy.

 

Identity, who we are, who we belong to.  That's the first step.  Once we know who we are, then we find out what we need to do.

A Peek at Biblical Times

I just finished reading a book about a slum in India.  The extreme poverty in which millions of people live is quite awful.  However, what struck me about what I read, is how the people the author describes regularly transgress the sins of idol worship, sexual immorality, murder, theft, corrupt courts - that's five out of the seven Noahide Laws!

There is a scene in which a person is seen lying on the roadside, badly injured.  The author describes various people who pass by and do nothing to help, being busy with their own lives.  The hours pass.  More people see the weakening man whose cries become fainter.  By the end of the day his corpse is carted away and the wrong cause of death is deliberately written down in the records. 

That is when it struck me - this is what Avrohom Avinu had to contend with, a world of idolatry, murder, immorality, and corruption, the likes of Sedom, the people of Canaan, of Egypt.  Through India, we get to see the revolution Avrohom brought to the world.  Monotheism! Kindness! Loyalty!

And we can see the inroads that the message of Avrohom and subsequent generations of Jews has made in the world.  America, in particular, has championed the Bible and has promoted Torah morality and values.  It is known as a malchus of chesed which is unprecedented in the history of the world.  And where does this value of the sanctity of life and the desire to help others come from? From Avrohom and the Jewish people.

There are many Americans threatening these values today, those who equate the life of a gorilla and a human, those who seek to legalize immorality, those who support legalizing the murder of babies.  But although this is terribly harmful, the bedrock was laid and we won't be going backward to barbarian times.  Truth, justice, and the supremacy of one G-d will hold sway.

Saluting Servicemen who Died for their Country

Some Wikipedia information about Memorial Day and Jews in the military to remind us to feel grateful to our fellow Jews and all Americans who fought for our country:

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, a federal holiday for remembering those who died while serving the country's armed forces (not to be confused with Veterans Day.  Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving, while Veterans Day celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans).

Jewish Americans have served in the United States armed forces dating back to before the colonial era, when Jews had served in militias of the Thirteen Colonies. Jewish military personnel have served in all branches of the armed forces and in every major armed conflict to which the United States has been involved. The Jewish Chaplains Council estimated that there are currently 10,000 known Jewish servicemen and servicewomen on active duty.

 

A number of Jewish American servicemen have gained fame due to their military service, and many have received awards and decorations for distinguished service, valor, or heroism. More than 20 Jewish servicemen were awarded the military's highest award, the Medal of Honor.

 

Revolutionary War - American Jews served in numbers disproportionate to their small population of the period. Of an estimated population of 3,000, 160 Jews served on the Colonial side

 

Civil War - Jews were among the supporters of each side of the American Civil War. Some 150,000 Jews lived in the United States at the time of the American Civil War, about 0.5 percent of the population. One academic estimate was that at least 8,000 Jewish soldiers fought for the Union and Confederate during the Civil War. Another estimates that at least 10,000 Jews served, about 7,000 for the Union and 3,000 for the Confederacy, with some 600 Jewish soldiers killed in battle.

 

During World War II, approximately 500,000 American Jews, out of a total population of 4,770,000 American Jews, served in the various branches of the United States armed services. Roughly 52,000 of these received U.S. military awards.

 

Korean and Vietnam Wars - Over 150,000 Jewish Americans served in the Korean War. In Vietnam, 30,000 served.

How Are We Different 3

As a follow-up to previous posts on the topic of "Mi K'Amcha Yisrael"

here and here

I read (Mishpacha magazine) that a Cleveland benefactor came up with a fantastic chesed idea for families traveling on the afternoon and evening of bedikas chometz, when their car is chometz-free and everyone is hungry.  He, together with others, picked a location between Lakewood and Cleveland on the side of the highway and set up a huge roadside barbeque where travelers going in either direction could stop for a hot meal.

There was no cost for the meals; rather, donations were made to Cleveland's Matan B'Sayser fund.  This year, there was also a food stop located on the route between Toronto and Detroit.

The news item says 1100 people enjoyed hot meals between 1 and 10 pm, there were minyanim for mincha and then maariv, and when rain threatened, two bachurim hurried to the nearest Walmart and bought tents.

Quite impressive!

On Our Own Two Feet

In the paragraph before Shema in shacharis, we say, "v'solichei'nu komemiyus l'artzeinu" (and bring us upright into our land). 

Someone described being in Eretz Yisrael this week and seeing large cars driving by early in the morning before the streets are busy.  Upon asking the taxi driver what that was about, the driver sadly said they were the bodies of the four Jews murdered in Paris. 

One way of understanding the words "and bring us upright into our land" is, we should enter the land on our own two feet, upright, not in a coffin.

I wonder what, if any, link there is between four Jews being killed in a shul in Har Nof and four Jews being killed in a kosher store as they shopped for Shabbos.

Lecture Roundup II

Charlie Harary on achdus -

He says we think unity is smiling at others and doing acts of kindness which are great, but not achdus. Achdus is when the name on the front, “G-d”, is more important than the name on the back.  This is a sports reference to the jerseys that hockey (and other sports) players wear with their personal name on the back and the team they're playing for, on the front. 

He told the story of Herb Brooks, the US Olympic hockey coach  of 1980 whose team won the gold.  Brooks worked hard to take a bunch of guys from different places and meld them into a team whose focus was on winning for the USA. 

Every day we put on a jersey called G-d, says Harary, and the only question we ask all day is whether the name on the front is more important than the name on the back. Is it all about me or all about Hashem?

When G-d becomes more important, then I don't have to like you or accept you, because I recognize that we need every single Jew to represent Hashem in this world!  Acceptance of others is not what it's about. There is a reason why we're here and we are being used by G-d to represent Him to the world.

 

No matter who we are, no matter the name on the back, we all have the same thing on the front.  G-d.

Lecture Roundup

Since, as of this writing, we still don't have the third Beis Ha'Mikdash, it's still timely to post a summary of some of the points various lecturers made recently about sinas chinam and unity.

R' Akiva Rutenberg - He said sinas chinam is apathy; I don't think so.

R' David Fohrman did an excellent 5 part video presentation here in which he maintains, based on the Kamtza-Bar Kamtza story, that sinas chinam is disproportionate anger.  Not convinced that's what sinas chinam is.

R' Benzion Klatzko - He spoke bluntly about our lack of unity.  Unlike many other speakers who extolled the unity of the Jewish people over the past two months, he says he doesn't see that the Sefardic-Ashkenazic, religious-secular, Chassidic-non-Chassidic divide has been bridged.  He highlighted and praised the dozens of chesed organizations that we have but said he didn't see unity at the Siyum Ha'Shas, i.e. he did not see it bringing together all kinds of Jews. 

I agree with him.  So much chesed is done and it crosses lines, i.e. we don't only do chesed for our "own kind," but there still is very much that feeling of "us" and them."  Who is us? Whatever group you affiliate with.  And who is them? The other people out there.  I wrote about it here

to be continued

Two Horrifying Events on the Same Day

On Friday, June 13, I read two shocking news items.  One was the kidnapping of the three teenagers the night before, Thursday night.  The other was that the Tel Aviv Gay Parade, the culmination of a week long series of events that celebrate to'eiva in the Holy Land, took place that day, Friday.  Both events took place on 15 Sivan.

Since I saw the two news items almost simultaneously, it occurred to me that they are linked.  We make a huge commotion, and rightly so, over the kidnapping of Jews, with prayers at the Kosel and all over the world. 

Where was the commotion, the outrage, and the prayers worldwide over the 1) public 2) celebration of 3) sin by 4) Jews in the 5) Holy Land? The Torah says that for this and other sexual sins, the land will vomit out its inhabitants.

Over the decades, religious Jews in Eretz Yisrael have protested the drafting of girls and yeshiva students into the army, unwarranted and unauthorized (by the families) autopsies, and Shabbos desecration.  But when it comes to to'eiva, "the heads of Sephardi and Lithuanian yeshivas in Jerusalem have instructed their students to stay away from the protests. Their decision is not due to support for the gay parade, but because the general ultra-Orthodox population is no longer willing to expose its children to the existence of a strict sexual taboo." So the parades, whether in Tel Aviv or Yerushalayim are mostly ignored. 

Mickey Zivan, Roommate Of Ayal Yifrach

This is a touching tribute to Ayal Yifrach, one of the kidnapped and murdered boys, by a 20 year old roommate of his:

here

Are they "Our Boys" or "Their Boys"?

Jews all over the world care about the three kidnapped boys.  I am sure of that.

That being said, I wonder how many people saw the headlines on Friday about "yeshiva boys kidnapped," and had a certain image in their minds which was dispelled when they saw what the boys look like. 

Oh.  Yeshiva boys don't necessarily wear black hats. 

I wondered: what if the boys' pictures showed them wearing black hats and white shirts? You know, "our kind" of yeshiva boys ... whether "yeshivish" or "chassidish." Would our personal reaction be any different? Would our community's reaction be any different?

I saw the photos of the mass tefilla at the Kosel.  I saw lots and lots of hatless people.  Knitted kippa wearing people.  Almost no black hats.  Where were the all "black hats" when this asifa took place? Why weren't they at the Kosel too? Because "their" black-hatted leaders did not tell them to go? Why not?

Even as we unite in praying for the safe return of the boys, I see disunity amongst us.  Unity and disunity.

The Soul of a Yid

Chaim Grade (1910-1982) was a famous European writer who wrote in Yiddish.  He grew up religious but later left religious practice.

However, it was interesting to see how a lapsed Yid thinks when I read these two anecdotes in an old Ami magazine from 2011 which were taken from the winter 2011 Jewish Review of Books:

1) Grade was overheard talking on the phone about his Pesach seder.  When someone expressed surprise that he celebrated with a seder he said, "Avadeh! Vos meinstu, ich bin a goy?!" (Of course! what do you think I am, a goy?!)

Even more intriguing is this one:

2) Grade said, "I can pick up a Chumash and study it without wearing a yarmulke, but when I look into Rashi, in Chumash or Gemara, heibt mir on der kup tzu brennen" (my head begins to burn).

What Was Gained?

There's a pattern in history which puzzles me. To give some recent examples: Hashem imposes Communism on vast areas which contain millions of Jews. Judaism and its observance is forbidden. This goes on for about seventy years, and countless Jews are lost to their people by marrying out and death. The rest know next to nothing about Judaism.

Then the Iron Curtain comes down and Judaism is slowly being revived.

So what was the point of taking it away, only to bring it back decades later?

Another example: Hashem makes life in Eastern Europe so miserable with poverty, persecution and pogroms that millions of Jews emigrate to America where most of them drop Yiddishkeit. Now we have kiruv organizations bringing back the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those original Jews to Judaism. So why take it away to begin with?

Yemenites and most Jews from North African countries lived religious or at least traditional lives. Then they were taken to Israel or had to flee to Israel and had Yiddishkeit torn away from them by their fellow Jews, r'l. Now we are being mekarev their children and grandchildren. So what was the point in G-d arranging for their Yiddishkeit to be taken away, only to give it back years later after so much fall-out?

 

This is mostly a rhetorical question since we cannot know the ways of Hashem, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts."  There is the idea of a "descent for the sake of an ascent," though I cannot see how it applies here. 

Consider Yourselves Warned

I've been thinking intermittently about the disaster in the Philippines.  Major loss of life, misery and devastation.  How everything that happens in the world happens for the sake of the Jewish people.  The following was written by R' Mendel Weinbach a'h:

When news of an earthquake in Japan a century ago reached the Radin Yeshiva in Poland, the sainted Chofetz Chaim assembled the students and delivered an inspiring mussar lecture.
 
This lesson was delivered millennia ago by the Prophet Tzephaniah who declared in the Name of G-d:
"I have cut off nations; their pinnacles are desolate; I have made their streets waste so that none passes by; their cities are destroyed so that there is no man, there is no inhabitant. I said, surely you will fear me and will learn a lesson." (3:6-7)

The words of the Prophet are quoted in a lecture written during the Middle Ages by the great Talmudic commentator Rabbeinu Nissim who points out that when people fail to learn from the disasters which strike others, they cause such tragedy to come closer to them. One who fails to see natural disasters as a Heavenly warning and fails to make any improvements, he concludes, is comparable to one who has sinned after being warned and thus exposes himself to retribution.

I have a hard time with this, specifically with the making improvements part.  I get as far as remembering everything that transpires happens for our sake and that they are supposed to be calls to teshuva.  I wonder if others are more successful in taking this to heart.

Jews on Trial

 

 

October 28, 2013 marks 100 years since Mendel Beilis was exonerated.  The book, shown above, is a CIS publication.

Beilis was falsely accused of killing a young Christian boy in Czarist Russia.  It was not only Beilis being tried, but the Jewish people as well, of course.  So much hinged on this trial, it garnered international interest.  A psychologist testified as an expert witness for the prosecution that in his opinion it was a case of ritual murder, which doesn't do anything to improve my opinion of that profession! Beilis was in jail for two years until the trial took place.  When acquitted, he moved to Palestine with his family, and then to the United States.

There is a lot of material: here about the case.

Be a Guest - Be a Host!

I received an email which informed me that someone on Shabbat.com had sent me a message, asking whether he could join us for a meal on Yom Tov. 

Have you seen the site? You can sign up as a guest or a host and then, either wait for someone to invite you or to ask you for an invitation, or actively seek a guest or a host.  This person lives in a different neighborhood and will be davening in my area on Yom Tov.

I checked out his profile and then spoke to one of his references (in Arizona), just to ascertain that he is a normal person.  I was reassured that yes he is, and a mentch.  That was enough for me to send a message back to him.  We exchanged a few messages, about food preferences and timing and we are on!

Isn't this special? A "brother," a fellow Jew we never met before, will join us in our succa! How exciting!

Hashem as our Father

I read a moving article in which the author, a counselor in a Russian camp, described visiting day.  How saddened she was to see the family members, "estranged Yiddish parents, some of whom were descendents of chassidishe rabbonim and chashuve gedolim, others were children of simple erliche Yidden.  These neshamos were so cut off, so unfamiliar with their people's customs ..

"I suddenly felt the terrible feeling of a parent whose beloved child is off the derech.  The pain, the hurt, the broken heart.  It is almost unbearable.  I contemplated the immense suffering Hashem must feel, having so many wayward children ..."

What immediately comes to my mind is - what is the comparison? Do parents rip Yiddishkeit away from their children and then mourn their going off the derech? Or do they try to raise them in a wholesome, Jewish environment and, for whatever reasons, their chinuch efforts do not bear the expected results?

Hashem is the one who had the shuls, yeshivos and mikvaos close in Russia.  Hashem is the one who made life so miserable in Eastern Europe that poverty-stricken and persecuted Jews left for America in their millions.  Hashem made Hitler rise to power and annihilate most of European Jewry.  That most Jews today have not had a proper chinuch is not, for the most part, because parents withhold it from their children, but because Hashem set things up in such a way that most of His children are estranged. 

Why He chose to do this is inexplicable to us.  Maybe, contrary to Hashem feeling grief over His handiwork, He feels joy at every single mitzvah estranged Jews keep.  Because unlike a parent whose children has left the path, Hashem's children who never had the path, still feel a warmth toward Yiddishkeit.  The neshama still flickers.

Jews Helping Jews

In the spring issue of OU's Jewish Action magazine, there was a special section with articles about Hurricane Sandy.  The theme was how Jews from all walks of life came together with beautiful acts of chessed.  The link is: here

There is a follow-up article from the same magazine about how to foster achdus when we don't have crises to deal with: here

The Sanitation Man's Observations

A sanitation man who works in Boro Park, finally satisfied his curiosity by asking his questions of a local frum man.

First, he wondered about the large quantity of garbage in the area, more than anywhere else.  The frum man told him that religious Jews have large families and they don't eat out in McDonald's, hence, the numerous bags of garbage.

Second, why do the men carry those pillows in the morning?

Do you know what he was referring to?

He sees frum men in the morning holding large square embroidered bags.  You know ... tallis and tefillin!

I wonder how long he saw men coming and going, holding those "pillows," as he wondered and thought up all sorts of reasons why they would be carrying them.

Then, enlightenment .

You are Holy, Chosen, Special, Beloved ...

In an article in the OU's spring 2013 Jewish Action, their executive vice president wrote an article about "The Chosen People" here.  He says:

"With the exception of the Kuzari, almost all Rishonim (medieval scholars) make it very clear that every human being, Jew and gentile alike, is created in the Divine image. The term tzelem Elokim is ascribed to all of humanity—not just Jews. Every human being is created in God’s image (i.e., we were all created with an abstract intellect that enables us to perceive the knowledge of God through the prisms of physics and metaphysics). No human being is inherently better than any other human being. If that is the case, then what does it mean that Jews are the Am Hanivchar, the Chosen Nation?

He goes on to say that being chosen means we have a mission to partner with Hashem, but I want to focus on the part where he says we are not inherently special.  I read this in astonishment. 

Devarim 14:2 (among other places) states, "You are a holy nation to Hashem your G-d, and Hashem picked you to be for Him His precious nation from all the nations on the face of the earth." This follows a pasuk which states we are Hashem's children. There is no mention here at all about our uniqueness being linked to an assignment.

We are called holy, we are chosen by G-d to be an "am segula" (treasured people) from all the nations and He chose us because of His love for us.  Nothing about missions.

And does Weil think that gentiles and Jews have the same neshama?! Does he think the concept of "pintele yid" is just a manner of speech? What does he think happens to a gentile who converts? He is the same as before and this is merely a technical matter, that he is now considered a Jew according to halacha? I guess so.  Nor does he have an explanation as to why we the Torah expects us to love our fellow Jews. 

I've encountered this reluctance on the part of Jews, religious Jews, to accept that we are inherently different, by virtue of our divine souls.  There is the inanimate, plant life, animal life, human life and a fifth category that incomparably different and greater than the previous four.  A Jew.