Numerii Kap. IX: Während der vierzig Jahren, dass die Israeliten in der Wüsste weilten, vor dass sie ins heilige Land einziehen durften, wurde kein Pessachopfer gebracht. Kein einziges? Nein, ein einziges mal wurde das Pessachopfer doch gebracht: zum ersten Pessachfest nach dem Auszug. Einige Leute durften das Opfer aber nicht bringen, weil sie zu einer Beerdigung usw. tamé (rituell veruntreinigt) wurden.
Jedoch wollten sie unbedingt das Pessachopfer bringen. Moses wendete sich zu G”tt, der das sgn. Pessach-Schení-Fest verordnete: der, der es fürs erste mal nicht schaffte, durfte es ein Monat später nachholen.
Aber: wieso wollten jene Leute unbedingt das Opfer bringen? Sie hatten ja eine legitime Dispensation?
PS: Weil es eher kalt war, wurde die Predigt nicht während des G”ttesdienstes, sondern zum Frühstück nachher, im Pflegeheim Margoa – Lengnau, gesprochen.
On sevearal occasions, the educational committee of our community, the IGB, has organized long weekends for adolescents who have recently reached the age of bar or bat mitzvah. On several occasions, I had the pleasure and privilege to lead such a trip to a European destination, and the question was always where to go. The purpose of the trip is to boost the youngsters’ interest in continuing to build their Jewish education. For that, one needs both to learn the past and see the future. One particular challenge going with such a group is the language barrier – Basel youth speaks German as their first language. Not all 13 and 14 year olds, even in a quadrilingual country like Switzerland, have extensive foreign language skills, and even if they do speak more than one language fluently, they don’t all speak the same second language. So for us, it has always been a good bet to give priority to German speaking areas, which, indeed, are areas of a very rich Jewish past, however, many of those places are about a Judaism that has been, that is in the past tense. It would surely fill the youngsters with sadness that so much was destroyed so recently, but that does not motivate too many to be more Jewishly engaged. They live in the here and now, and the past, however rich, is not enticing, unless it continues in the present.
And so, we took a particular liking to Berlin, because, despite the reality that the present local kehilla is but a weak shadow of its former self, it is the largest German speaking Jewish community, with well over 10’000 registered Jews, and is estimated to have perhaps as many as three times that number of Jews. But more importantly, it is not a disappearing community, or one where only the forces of assimilation hold sway. On account of the great work of the Lauder Foundation, the city boasts a growing men’s yeshiva and women’s midrasha, which, more than anything else, show the vitality of Jewishh life and contribute to it. This is the topic of a recent Washington Post article, which I urge you to read. An excerpt:
Orthodox Jewish community takes hold in Berlin
…
Now when the sun sets on a Friday night, dozens of Jewish men clad in traditional Shabbat garb with big black hats and dark long coats walk down the streets past hip coffee shops, chic boutiques and tiny art galleries to attend services at Rykestrasse synagogue.
…
There about 200 believers now and it’s growing fast: There are several weddings a year and the nursery school has become so overcrowded that parents have to register their children soon after birth if they want to get one of the coveted spots.
…
“In many other Jewish places in Germany, there’s a sadness, it’s all about the past,” said Rabbi David Rose, the director of the congregation’s yeshiva where young men study Judaism’s traditional texts. “Here we have a lot of students, it’s all very alive.”
Denmark – “We all have evil within us. Even small children are evil towards each other,” Danish-Norwegian artist Nina Maria Kleivan tells Haaretz as she explains why she chose to dress up her baby daughter as the most evil historical figures of the 20th century.
… In the controversial photo-series “Potency,” Kleivan’s daughter Faustina, then a few months old, depicts such infamous personalities as Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, Chairman Mao, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milosevic, and Adolf Hitler. The aim is to illustrate just one thing: We all begin life the same. We all have every opportunity ahead of us. To do good, or inexplicable evil. (Haaretz reports)
While many will critique this artistic statement as offensive, it seems clear ffrom the article that the artists does not idolize any of history’s most wicked leaders. In order to raise consciousness, art often attempts to shock, to draw people out of their comfort zone and make them think. This particular artistic effort may be particularly distasteful, but I do not see myself as an art critic, leaving this craft to people far more able than I am.
But I do find fault with her thesis. By dressing up a child as Hitler, she almost makes the appearance of such tyrants a matter beyond the free moral choice of the child. Are the Hitlers and the Stalins and the Pol Pots predestined, and more importantly, are their followers predestined to follow them? Read the rest of this entry »
Die Hafstrafe des Mörders des Herrn Jacob Gerstle wurde diese Woche ausgesprochen, wie Vosizneias berichtet:
A 6-foot-6 career mugger who bludgeoned an 81-year-old Orthodox Jew to death while robbing him in his Washington Heights elevator was slammed today with a maximum sentence of 25 years to life for the brutal murder.
…
“I’ve tried dozens of murder cases in my career,” the judge said in throwing the book at the hulking murderer. “This is one of the most brutal crimes I’ve had to face.
“To attack a frail, elderly man in an elevator is every citizen’s nightmare.”
Continuing the theme I explored in an earlier post about Muammar Qadhaffi’s possible Jewish roots, we read in the New York Times about people discovering they are Jewish, after all. The theme from one of the last prophecies in Sefer Yesha’yahu, that the Gentile Nations will bring back those who were captured or assimilated in their midst, to Judaism and the Jewish People, resonates strongly (see my Qadhaffi post, linked to above, for an analysis of that prophecy).
WARSAW — When Pawel looks into the mirror, he can still sometimes see a neo-Nazi skinhead staring back, the man he once was before he covered his shaved head with a yarmulke, shed his fascist ideology for the Torah and renounced violence and hatred in favor of G”d. Read the rest of this entry »
The order of the Biblical parshiyot from Schemot 25 through the end of that book presents a particular chronological and thematic challenge. In the parshiyot Terumah and Tetzaveh (chs. 25-30), G”d tells Moshe Rabbenu to command the Israelites to make a Mishkan, that G”d may reside in the Israelites’ midst. Then, in the beginning of Ki Tissa, the command is relayed to the people, and immediately afterwards the Torah reports the sin of the Golden Calf. Finally, in Vayaqhel and Piqudei(chs. 35-40), the work is carried out and brought to a successful completion.
This gives rise to a chronological question and a difficult philosophical corollary. Since Moshe ascended Mount Sinai when G”d spoke the Ten Utterances (erroneously known as Ten Commandments), and remained there for forty days, only coming down after the Golden Calf was celebrated, Shemot 31 could not have come before ch. 32! Read the rest of this entry »
Languages evolve constantly. New technologies, new philosophical concepts and ideas, and new social organizations and interactions necessitate new words. Cultural encounter also leads to incorporation of foreign loan word for foreign phenomena, whether to label them as something desirable, or as pejorative influences to be rejected.
Mishnaic and Talmudic Hebrew brought Greek and Latin terms to Hebrew (Apotika=Hypotheka, Dinar, Drachon, Itztaba=Stoa, Sanhedrin, Siqriqon=Sicarii, Biberin=Vivarium; other examples in the Jewish Encyclopedia). Mediaeval Hebrew incorporated Arab and Greek philosophical terms (just leaf through Maimonides’ Guide for abundant examples), and the twentieth century, technological terms.
In recent decades, such words have often come from English – in all languages, including Hebrew. However, earlier in the 20th century, German dominated, and, as DPA documents in Haaretz, Hebrew not inly includes many Yiddish terms, but outright German loan words, too:
When an Israeli gets out of bed on a dark morning, she will flick on a light Schalter (switch in English) and wash down a Biss (bite) of toast with a Schluck (sip) of coffee – all Hebrew words that stem from the German language. Read the rest of this entry »
The Israeli press is in uproar. Over the last week, serious accusations have been levelled at sixteen Israeli NGOs and the New Israel Fund, which is a or the major funder of these organisations. In a nutshell:
“Without the New Israel Fund, there would be no Goldstone Report, and Israel would not be facing international accusations of war crimes,” read the advertisement, making reference to a an Israeli philanthropic organization that funds a number of Israeli rights and progressive social change organizations.
Die israelische Presse ist in Aufruhr. Während der letzten Woche wurden schwere Vorwürfe gegen sechszehn israelische NGOs und dem New Israel Fund – einer der wichtigsten Geldgebern oder sogar der wichtigste Geldgeber diesen Organisationen – erhoben. In wenigen Worten:
“Ohne dem New Israel Fund würde es keinen Goldstone-Rapport geben und würden gegen Israel international keine Vorwürfe von Kriegverbrechen erhoben” liesst man in der Anzeige, die auf eine israelische philanthropische Organisation verweist, die eine Reihe von Menschenrechten- und sozial-progressive geselschaftliche Organisationen finanziert.
In the spirit of the halakha that one begins studying matters relevant to a holiday thirty days before the onset of that holiday, I am interrupting regular programming for this remarkable (and serious) television report, tackling the question whether the Libyan revolutionary leader Mu’ammar Al-Qadhafi is Jewish.
As a matter of introduction, I should note the remarkable prophecy at the end of the book of Yesha’yahu (66:18-21):
… the time cometh, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and shall see My glory. And I will work a sign among them [i.e. among the Gentile Nations], and I will send such as escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard My fame, neither have seen My glory; and they shall declare My glory among the nations. And they shall bring all your brethren out of all the nations for an offering unto HASHEM, upon horses, and in chariots, and in fitters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to My holy mountain Jerusalem, saith HASHEM, as the children of Israel bring their offering in a clean vessel into the house of HASHEM. And of them also will I take for the Kohanim and for the Levites, saith HASHEM.
According to most commentaries, the emphasized verse at the end says that also from among the gentile nations will G”d take Kohanim. The problem is that while any gentile can choose to convert and become part of the Jewish people, there is no conversion process to the Kohen-hood. Now one could argue, as IIRC R’ David Kimchi proposes, that this is not to be taken literally, but rather to mean that also from among the nations will G”d choose pious, righteous people, for religious leadership by example. Such as Shemaya and Avtalyon, who were either the sons of converts, or were themselves converts, and on account of their great piety and scholarship became the top leaders of the Nation of Israel, including presiding over the Sanhedrin.
But most commentators take the verse literally. They resolve the difficulty by stating that among those who were believed to be gentiles, there will be discovered many Jews, who had assimilated away over the ages, who had forgotten they were Jewish. Some of those Jews will be the descendents of Kohanim, however, that would not be enough for them to still be Kohanim. Kohanim must descend from a Kohen on the paternal line, and none of the female ancestors may have been women legally prohibited from marrying Kohanim. Thus, the posit that some of the originally exiled and assimilated Kohanim and their descendants will unknowingly always have married Jewishly born women who were not divorcees.
This reminds me of a large painting of a bride on her wedding day, which is displayed in the Jewish Museum of Berlin. The bride stands by the window, and on the window sill lays a Bible, but not a Jewish Bible. It prominently features a cross on the cover. But the woman was Jewish, one of the possibly 100’000 Jews who are estimated to have converted to Christianity out of social ambitions, in the 19th century. However, she did not marry out. While she did marry in the church, intentionally or not, since she married a grandson of Moses Mendelsohn, theirs was a Jewish couple. Their story is only unique in that we can identify the players, but that story repeated itself countless times, and it is a recurring story that people discover they are really Jewish, and decide to return to the Jewish fold. Some of those people even discover that both their parents were Jewish, or that, unbeknownst to them, they had married a Jew. Such is the touch of Providence.
So is Qadhafi also one of those Jews, who will come back “Tarshish, Pul and Lud, … Tubal and Javan”? Watch the report below [hat tip: SE], and leave your opinion in the comments section:
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Numerii Kap. IX: Während der vierzig Jahren, dass die Israeliten in der Wüsste weilten, vor dass sie ins heilige Land einziehen durften, wurde kein Pessachopfer gebracht. Kein einziges? Nein, ein einziges mal wurde das Pessachopfer doch gebracht: zum ersten Pessachfest nach dem Auszug. Einige Leute durften das Opfer aber nicht bringen, weil sie zu einer Beerdigung usw. tamé (rituell veruntreinigt) wurden.
Posted by Arie Folger 
On sevearal occasions, the educational committee of our community, the 
Mikolot Mayim Rabbim 