Shavuot count-down: Day 3 of counting the Omer. Using the
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Tiferet of Chesed: Compassion, Harmony in Lovingkindness. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Harmony in love is one that blends both the chesed and gevurah aspects of love. Harmonized love includes empathy and compassion. Love is often given with the expectation of receiving love in return. Compassionate love is given freely; expects nothing in return – even when the other doesn’t deserve love. Tiferet is giving also to those who have hurt you.
(More on counting the Omer
here)
And it's still Pesach, which means a chance to
sing Hallel and eat matzah for another few days.
Hallel is one of my favorite parts of the liturgy, especially with a congregation that likes to sing.
Shavuot count-down: Day 2 of counting the Omer. Using the
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Gevurah of Chesed: Discipline in Lovingkindness. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Healthy love must always include an element of discipline and discernment; a degree of distance and respect for another’s boundaries; an assessment of another’s capacity to contain your love. Love must be tempered and directed properly. Ask a parent who, in the name of love, has spoiled a child; or someone who suffocates a spouse with love and doesn't allow them any personal space.
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Pesach Day 2, Shavuot countdown: Day 1 of counting the Omer. The 2nd night of Pesach we often have a seder with a different host, and begin the
mystical, meditative discipline of
counting the Omer, which re-enacts on a spiritual level
each step in the journey from the liberation at the Red Sea to the revelation of Torah at Sinai.
Tonight begins the first day of the Omer. In the Kabbalistic system where
permutations of the seven lower sephirot (one
sephira for each day of the week times seven weeks) brings a different meaning for each day, tonight begins the
Chesed of Chesed: LovingKindness in Lovingkindness. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Love is the single most powerful and necessary component in life. It is both giving and receiving. Love allows us to reach above and beyond ourselves, to experience another person and to allow that person to experience us. It is the tool by which we learn to experience the highest reality – God. Examine the love aspect of your love. Ask yourself: What is my capacity to love another person? Do I have problems with giving? Am I stingy or selfish? Is it difficult for me to let someone else into my life? Am I afraid of my vulnerability, of opening up and getting hurt?
The creative synthesis of American pop culture and ancient Jewish tradition has produced a recent innovation called
Counting the Homer. The Homer website has a whole section on the
Jews of Springfield, and links to
the Simpsons Talmud and
learned investigations of the Simpsons Sephardic crypto-Jewish ancestry. D'oh.
Pesach countdown - still Day 0. We sing Hallel of course, and during the musaf service, the hazzan chants
T'filat Tal, the once-a-year petition for dew. (Its counterpoint, the once-a-year
petition for rain, is chanted 6 months later during the musaf service for
Sh'mini Atzeret.) Both of these prayers have lovely melodies and - since they are special occasions - cantorial improvisation is expected. The change-over is also reflected in two verses in the daily Amidah.
The first verse echoes the Tal-Geshem switch.
The second is a bit more complicated, but also refers to rain and dew and has a switch at Pesach.
Prayers for rain or dew are aligned with the climate and growing seasons of Eretz Yisrael - one more example of how Jews throughout the diaspora for centuries kept alive their connection with their homeland - and reminds us that Pesach was originally a
harvest festival.
Assimilation watch: The watch is on at
The Wall Street Journal (subscription required). The focus for reporter Jeffrey Zaslow is on our Holocaust hang-ups:
Judaism has always been a religion focused on commemoration -- of tyrants overcome, of the deliverance from slavery, of the tenacious survival of the Jewish people. In the modern era, this urge to commemorate often settles on the Holocaust, which many regard as a motivator for fighting current anti-Semitism. Some Jews dwell on the atrocities, stressing the lessons for today. Others have trouble dealing with the awful past, or are embarrassed by it, or say enough already, it's time to move on.
I see this tension in my own family. As a U.S. Army private during World War II, my father was among the liberators of the Dachau concentration camp. At a row of cattle cars, all filled with the mangled bodies of dead Jews, a fellow U.S. soldier turned to my dad and said, "If you're not careful, Zaslow, that's where you'll end up."
The soldier knew my father was Jewish. Was he issuing a threat? A friendly warning? For decades, my dad rarely spoke about the horrors he saw that day in 1945. But lately, he's been obsessed with his memories. He gives Holocaust lectures at schools, and discusses anti-Semitism with anyone who will listen.
My mother wishes he'd let the topic rest. As my dad talks, she often feels overwhelmed with emotion and asks him to stop. She keeps telling him she is living in the present. But truth is, World War II is a painful memory for her, too. Her brother had enlisted in the U.S. military, saying, "I've got to go. They're killing Jews." His B-17 bomber was shot down, his body never found.
Zaslow thinks we can fight assimilation a better way. Rather than focus on the Holocaust as our defining moment, we can remember it while looking to the future:
It might be healing if more Jews moved on from the Holocaust by mastering a middle ground: pressing forward, but not forgetting.
... Some Jews argue that we should focus on the bonds we've built with so many non-Jews, rather than isolated anti-Semitic incidents. In a New Republic article last year on "ethnic panic" among American Jews, author Leon Wieseltier called us "the luckiest Jews who ever lived," adding: "The Jewish genius for worry has served the Jews well, but Hitler is dead."
Do we worry too much? Of course. Are there things to worry about? Of course.
We at Kesher Talk are frequently divided on this problem. I myself have scoffed at excessive sensitivity, decrying anti-semitism where it does not really exist.
And yet, we have seen and shown ample examples of serious incidents. So what is the answer? Do we press forward undaunted or do we keep a wary eye ever open? I don't have a great answer. I do know that, as a Jew, I am safe being such in this country and in the land of my parents (Canada). Aside from these two countries, and the UK, anything goes.
So while I would prefer that the Anti-Defamation League did not play chicken little about anti-semitic data in the U.S., I don't begrudge them their work abroad...
Pesach countdown - Day 0. On
the busiest afternoon of the year, please pause in your Pesach preparations (or whatever else you are doing today) to read
Joe Katzman's excellent essay on the overthrow of Iraq's Pharoah, their 10 plagues, and the challenges of freedom. (After all, the
crossing of Yam Suf was only the beginning of our liberation - we still had to
wander in the desert for 40 years, whine about our cucumbers and melons, build a golden idol, and make many more mistakes before we reached the Promised Land, and we
continue to recall the exodus each year, and
mark each day until
the revelation at Sinai, because that journey from immaturity to responsible adulthood is iterative and never finished.)
It is fitting that the Iraq war began on
Purim (although I am sure it's coincidence; with so many life-or-death logistical factors involved in deciding when to begin a war, I have a hard time believing a Jewish holiday date mattered to Bush & Team). It is even more fitting that Pesach draws near as the war concludes and the Iraqi people begin to taste their liberation.
Hag Sameach Pesach, everyone!
PS It's a bit late, but I just found this article about
memories of Purim in the Iraqi Jewish community.
Pesach countdown - Day 0. Okay. I learned my
Shir haShirim chapter well enough to chant it into the cantor's voicemail (since I won't be back in New York till Friday afternoon and I'm
chanting it Saturday morning, and she wanted to hear me do it in case I needed any coaching). I led
shacharit this morning and yesterday, so I don't have to practice that anymore (if I led enough I would know it by heart anyway). I have to learn a
Torah portion for tomorrow morning. Adina and I kashered her kitchen last night. Some of the guests are coming over to cook with us in a few hours. I've finished my shopping trips, Adina is shopping right now. We have the ingredients for 3 different desserts, two of which require some facility with beating egg whites. Right now there is a false lull in the craziness, but I'm sure it won't last long.
(But
Jewish soldiers in Iraq, and their families back home, have to juggle way more to make their seders than I do.)
Pesach countdown - Day 1. Had Gadya is a popular Pesach song (popular? anyone trying to conclude a seder without singing it would probably be lynched) about a goat. Well, it's
really about the history of the Jewish people, but it starts out being about a goat.
More about goats in Jewish symbology.
Forbes audits Yasser Arafat: Money keeps Arafat in power. Start
checking up on that money, and you put him in serious trouble...
With a tight grip on much of the $5.5 billion in international aid that has flowed into the PA since 1994, he appears to have overseen virtually all disbursements, from $600 payments to alleged terrorists and $1,500 in "tuition" for security officers, to $10 million, reportedly paid by a company controlled by friends of Arafat, for a 50-ton shipment of weapons from Iran.
Forbes accompanies this article with a handy-dandy spreadsheet comparing the wealth and assets of
royalty and despots.
Pesach countdown - Day 2. Talmud scholar and Oxblogger
David Adesnik's mom
Judith Hauptman likes to delve into our texts and find out
what they really say about women's participation in Jewish ritual. Upon close reading and understanding of their social context, they often present many more options than found in contemporary Orthodox halachic interpretation of the same texts.
This article discusses the history and halacha of women's participation and obligations at the Pesach seder table.
Some people make their charoset a day ahead, others at the last minute. Imshin is trying to stay ahead of the last-minute rush by
soliciting recipes now.
Fox-hunting - what would Moses do? Is hunting for sport permitted by the Torah? No. The rabbis of the Talmud call hunting for sport "an occupation of scorners". That doesn't mean we need to legislate against it–that would certainly be an unenforceable law. But we can educate our children and our society in that direction. (
AskMoses.com)
Pesach countdown - Day 3. More ideas for
an interactive seder, and the etymology of the word
"seder," from the Hebrew verb "le-sadder)," "to arrange." Other related words are "siddur" (the prayerbook), and "sidrah" (the weekly Torah reading).
The user's manual for the seder is
the Haggadah, from the Hebrew verb, "l'hagid," which means
"to tell," with the nuance of
paying attention to details. The Haggadah contains blessings over the various symbolic food items, songs, exhortations, commentary, often beautiful illustrations, and the telling of the Pesach story. A friend just sent me an email with an updated version:
If the Passover Story Were Reported by The NY Times or CNN
The cycle of violence between the Jews and the Egyptians continues with no end in sight in Egypt. After eight previous plagues that have destroyed the Egyptian infrastructure and disrupted the lives of ordinary Egyptian citizens, the Jews launched a new offensive this week in the form of the plague of darkness.
Western journalists were particularly enraged by this plague. "It is simply impossible to report when you can't see an inch in front of you," complained a frustrated Andrea Koppel of CNN. "I have heard from my reliable Egyptian contacts that in the midst of the blanket of blackness, the Jews were annihilating thousands of Egyptians. Their word is solid enough evidence for me."
While the Jews contend that the plagues are justified given the harsh slavery imposed upon them by the Egyptians, Pharaoh, the Egyptian leader, rebuts this claim. "If only the plagues would let up, there would be no slavery. We just want to live plague-free. It is the right of every society."
Saeb Erekat, an Egyptian spokesperson, complains that slavery is justifiable given the Jews' superior weaponry supplied to them by the superpower God.
The Europeans are particularly enraged by the latest Jewish offensive. "The Jewish aggression must cease if there is to be peace in the region. The Jews should go back to slavery for the good of the rest of the world," stated an angry French President Jacques Chirac.
Even several Jews agree. Adam Shapiro, a Jew, has barricaded himself within Pharaoh's chambers to protect Pharaoh from what is feared will be the next plague, the death of the firstborn. Mr. Shapiro claims that while slavery is not necessarily a good thing, it is the product of the plagues and when the plagues end, so will the slavery. "The Jews have gone too far with plagues such as locusts and epidemic which have virtually destroyed the Egyptian e conomy," Mr. Shapiro laments.
The United States is demanding that Moses and Aaron, the Jewish leaders, continue to negotiate with Pharaoh. While Moses points out that Pharaoh had made promise after promise to free the Jewish people only to immediately break them and thereafter impose harsher and harsher slavery, Richard Boucher of the State Department assails the latest offensive. "Pharaoh is not in complete control of the taskmasters," Mr. Boucher states. "The Jews must return to the negotiating table and will accomplish nothing through these plagues."
The latest round of violence comes in the face of a bold new Saudi peace overture. If only the Jews will give up their language, change their names to Egyptian names and cease having male children, the Arab nations will incline toward peace with them, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah declared.
