I would have preferred
If he came on eagle's wings
Than for this ransom
How does one of us
Redeem a thousand of them?
Here he is, with us.
The willow branches
The sweet scent of the etrog
Gilad Shalit free
Dvar Yitro 5771
Rich Furman
Last week we read Parshat Beshallach, during which many wonderful things happen. The Israelites find themselves between a sea and an approaching army, and the sea splits, they become frightened because there is not water to drink, and water is provided. They are fearful from lack of food, and lo and behold, food falls out of the sky (the best we merit in Minnesota is snow). The Parsha, in addition to being called Beshallach, for its first word and Shirah for the song at the sea, is also known as Parshat HaMann - for the manna that fell from the skies to sustain the Israelites.
It has become customary in some communities to recite parshat hamon as a “segullah” for “parnassah.” These two terms are both somewhat problematic. In common, contemporary usage “segullah” has come to mean a charm for luck or fortune. “Parnassah” first appeared in Mishnaic Hebrew meaning sustenance(Sokoloff, 935), but these days may mean a bit more than just sustenance.
The Artscroll siddur gives us a small insight into the custom in its introduction to it:
The Commentators cite the Yerushalmi that one who recites this chapter every day is assured that his food will not be lacking. Levush explains that God provides each day's sustenance - just as He provided the manna each day in the Wilderness (Artscroll Interlinear Siddur, 253)
It appears that the custom, when it first emerged did so as a reminder that our sustenance comes from God and is not the work of our own hands, as is written:
וְזָֽכַרְתָּ אֶת־יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהֶיךָ כִּי הוּא הַנֹּתֵן לְךָ כֹּחַ לַֽעֲשׂוֹת חָיִל לְמַעַן הָקִים אֶת־בְּרִיתוֹ אֲשֶׁר־נִשְׁבַּע לַֽאֲבֹתֶיךָ כַּיּוֹם הַזֶּֽה:(דברים ח"יח)
You shall remember Adonai your God, that it is he who gives you strength to make wealth, in order to establish his covenant that he swore to your fathers as of this day. (Deuteronomy 8:18).
And yet, as people talk about this, they look forward to parshat Beshallach as a propitious time to entreat God for sustenance, or even wealth.
The drift from reminder to segullah, from mezuzah to amulet, from reading to incantation, is a drift in the relationship between a symbol and its meaning, it is a product of the fact that any symbol you might care to name is potentially multivalent in meaning. Torah is extremely cautious with this, and in Parshat Yitro we find both the perfect example of the problem, and a perhaps too idealistic outline of the solution.
The moment of the revelation at Sinai is a curious moment; It begins with our text telling us how God tells Moses to prepare the Israelites:
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָֹה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה לֵךְ אֶל־הָעָם וְקִדַּשְׁתָּם הַיּוֹם וּמָחָר וְכִבְּסוּ שִׂמְלֹתָֽם: וְהָיוּ נְכֹנִים לַיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי כִּי | בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִשִׁי יֵרֵד יְהוָֹה לְעֵינֵי כָל־הָעָם עַל־הַר סִינָֽי:(שמות י"ט: י"-י"א)
God said to Moses “Go to the people and sanctify them today and tomorrow; they shall wash their clothes. They shall be ready on the third day, for on the third day Adonai will descend before the eyes of all the whole nation upon Mount Sinai.”(Ex. 19:10-11)
The actual delivery of this message is rather different:
וַיֵּרֶד מֹשֶׁה מִן־הָהָר אֶל־הָעָם וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֶת־הָעָם וַֽיְכַבְּסוּ שִׂמְלֹתָֽם: וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל־הָעָם הֱיוּ נְכֹנִים לִשְׁלשֶׁת יָמִים אַֽל־תִּגְּשׁוּ אֶל־אִשָּֽׁה:(שם, י"ד-ט"ו)
Moses descended from the mountain to the people. He sanctified the people and they washed their clothing. He said to the people “Be ready for three days, don’t go near a woman.”(Ibid, 14-19)
That Moses here is injecting a misogyny into the moment that God did not command is noted by Ellen Frankel in the Five Books of Miriam (117-118). Indeed, even the קול סתם, the narrative voice of Torah, tells us that Moses addresses “העם” whereas God told him to address "כל־העם", thus suggesting that Moses did not do all of what he was told. The injection of that misogyny, however, is not the main problem with this disparity, but rather that the change took place at all. This introduces the fundamental problem of mediated experience: the mediator necessarily changes the message.
So the third day arrives, and the people have prepared themselves according to Moses’ instructions. God sends Moses to fetch Aaron up the mountain, and to warn the Israelites not to come too close. After this, God speaks the ten utterances to the people, who, stunned, say to Moses:
דַּבֶּר־אַתָּה עִמָּנוּ וְנִשְׁמָעָה וְאַל־יְדַבֵּר עִמָּנוּ אֱלֹהִים פֶּן־נָמֽוּת:(שם, ט"ז)
YOU speak with us and we will listen, but don’t let God speak to us lest we die.(ibid: 16)
The Israelites at Sinai may not know it, but we know that Moses is not necessarily a reliable transmitter of divine intent, because we have just seen how he added “don’t go near a woman” to God’s instructions on their preparations. Moses’ editorial license will ultimately be his undoing when the act of striking a rock he was told to speak to becomes the reason God does not let him enter the land. But this particular moment, when all of the people have just had direct communication from God, and decided that they would prefer that Moses continue to mediate can, I think, be said to be where our troubles begin.
The first commandment is:
אָֽנֹכִי יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֲשֶׁר הֽוֹצֵאתִיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִבֵּית עֲבָדִֽים:
I am Adonai your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt, out of the slave house.
This statement defines a relationship and specifies its basis. God puts forth an I-Thou sentiment in the first clause saying, in essence, I am yours. The people are afraid of that relationship.
Then we have the second commandment, beginning:
לֹא־יִֽהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים עַל־פָּנָֽי:
You will have no other gods before me.
This is an interesting statement. At first glance it is a demand for exclusivity, however, I would like to suggest that another possible meaning of this is that nothing else should be used as an intermediary with God. And yet we find that instead of accepting the face-to-face relationship with God that is offered, the people would rather have Moses between them and God.
Commenting on the phrase על פני which he understands to mean “with me,” Ibn Ezra notes that
Its meaning is: do not make forms that receive powers from above and think that you make them for My glory, in that they will serve as an intermediary between Me and you . . . The meaning of with me thus is: I have no need for intermediaries to be with me.(IE, 437)
With the first two commandments, God tries to implement a system where nothing stands between Himself and Israel, where there is no potential for miscommunication and no symbols whose meaning can drift, but at the end of the revelation, the Israelites want Moses for a intermediary. While God does not need an intermediary, the people, it seems, do.
The problem with an intermediary is that it becomes easy to mistake the intermediary for the power it represents. Thus when Moses, who has just ceased in the eyes of the people to be a human being, and has become instead an avatar for Adonai, appears to have died on Sinai, the people demand an idol.
Ibn Ezra argues that Aaron’s intent in making the golden calf was that it should be an avatar for the divine presence(IE 660-661). This is understandable, first the people put Moses between themselves and God, next they will use a statue. Aaron takes a great deal of care with this statue, that its purpose as an avatar for Adonai should remain at the forefront of everyone’s consciousness, declaring upon it completion that the next day would be a feast for Adonai. But nonetheless there are those among the Israelites who declare:
אֵלֶּה אֱלֹהֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר הֶֽעֱלוּךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם:
These are your gods, Israel. that brought you up from the land of Egypt.
The problem with an idol is that it has no intrinsic meaning. The prohibition on idol and image making that follows upon “you shall have no other gods before me” recognizes this fact and acknowledges that any symbol can have a meaning other than what its maker intends. It is in this way that Ibn Ezra can suppose that Aaron made the golden calf as a vessel for Adonai, while others may describe it as something else entirely.
One can see over the course of Israel’s story - first as a man, then as a people - an increasing abstraction of the relationship.
When Jacob survived his wrestling match, he declared: “I have seen God face to face and my soul endured.”
When the Israelites received direct revelation at Sinai, they were overwhelmed saying: “YOU speak with us and we will listen, but don’t let God speak to us lest we die.”
And at the end of Ki Tissa God appears to cede their point, telling Moses: “You cannot see my face, for mankind cannot see me and live.
With greater abstraction comes greater use of symbols, and so now we find ourselves entrusted with the care of a religion rich with symbol and ritual, from tefillin and mezuzot, to shabbat candles and chanukkah lights, to the symbols that adorn our seder table and our sukkot. It is important for us to remember that the symbols are not there to grant us wealth or protection, but rather to remind us of that moment when we stood face to face with the ineffable and heard “אנכי יהוה אלהיך אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים מבית עבדים:;” may we be ever mindful of it.
Shabbat Shalom
Works Cited
Frankel, Ellen. The Five Books of Miriam. San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1998.
The Schottenstein Edition Siddur. Mesorah Publications Ltd, 2002
Sokoloff, Michael. A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002.
Strickman, H. Norman, et.al. Ibn Ezra's Commentary on the Pentateuch: Exodus. (IE) Menorah, 1997.
We had our Pear Tree removed right before the High Holidays, and the arborist left the fruit for us on tarps, and so, on Sunday of Labor Day weekend, some friends came over, and helped us grind and press the fruit. We pasteurized the raw cider, because the fruit was not in perfect shape, and we cooled it, transferred it to to a fermenter and pitched some English Cider Yeast. We left the fermenter - a three gallon carboy with an airlock - in a cool, dark closet until the day of Erev Sukkot, at which point we bottled directly from the fermenter.
The Cider was good; but that's not what this story is about.
This story is about what happened when the baker in me saw all that yeast at the bottom of the fermenter. The thought that it would be a shame to let it go to waste occurred simultaneously with the thought to which, according to Terry Pratchett, most human made disasters can be attributed: "I wonder what happens if I do this?"
"This," in this case, was to use the yeast that was in the fermenter to make bread.
The wife was skeptical. Cider yeast is not bread yeast, she warned me. The results might not taste good, or might be explosive, or it might not rise at all. Nonetheless, I transferred the yeast into a small jar, fed it a bit of flour, sugar and water, and stuck it in the fridge, and then sanitized and put away the fermenting tools.
When I made my Challah, I used the last of my bread yeast, and I still wanted to bake for a sukkah party we were having. And there was my jar of English cider yeast, waiting patiently in the unemployment line for their next project after having fermented our Sukkot Cider (5771). I told the wife that the worst case scenario is that we end up picking up something at Breadsmith for the party guests, and proceeded to run a batch of something I call "simple bread" in the bread machine using the dough cycle. I looked in on it, and it was far too sticky, so I added flour and re-ran the mixing/kneading cycle, and let it complete.
The dough was still stickier than I wanted to work with, but this was attributable to my failure to consider the liquid that came in with the yeast as part of the total liquid. I sucked it up and shaped the stuff into two boules and a tasting roll, gave it a second rise, and popped it in the oven.
18 minutes later it came out, and apart from a few painful mishaps getting it to the cooling racks, all went well. The tasting roll met with my wife's approval - though I was afraid I was allergic to it. My lips were swelling. Could I be allergic to the cider yeast? Would I be allergic to both the bread and the Cider.
I then rubbed my eye and realized, painfully, that it was not the bread I was reacting to - I had merely forgotten to wash up between seeding a hot pepper for dinner and splitting the roll. Wife had gotten the half that had not been in the pepper hand.
When I served the Boules, they were greeted enthusiastically. It had a crumb similar to most sour dough boules I tasted, but tasted like . . . . cider. It's olive oil mopping powers were widely acclaimed, and of course it paired very well with the cider which had been fermented by the same yeast.
The jar of yeast lives in my fridge, I expect it will slowly develop a sour over the generations, as wild yeast join the colony, but I would call this a success.
The challenge now, as with any chance discovery, is to achieve repeatability.
Morgan and I spent a week in Jerusalem last year, and we have since lamented getting on the plane back on multiple occasions. For the most part I felt safer there than I ever do in Minnesota. Like New York, Jerusalem lacks the small town duplicity on which Garrison Keillor and Howard Mohr have built their careers. But I did have one moment of great apprehension when I was there.
It was in the cool of the evening, and I was headed for the Kotel with Chaim Stern’s Paths of Faith tucked underneath my arm. It was a beautiful walk, and I could smell pretzels baking just outside Robinson’s Arch. I passed easily through security and onto the plaza. Yeshivot tower over the Kotel, and everywhere were bochurs davvening ma’ariv out of the Artscroll siddurs that positively littered the place, and as for me I pulled out Stern, and I too davenned ma’ariv. With the matriarchs. In editing “Paths” Rabbi Stern zt”l did not miss a chance to pair the word “avot” with “imahot.” And I knew that if I was overheard uttering them, well, things would not necessarily go well for me. This did not stop me from praying aloud, even in this place of zealots, because I believe that our willingness to utter prayer aloud and put it into the world is one of the things that makes it efficacious. What I felt was a sacred fear, a quiet certainty that this recognition of the personhood of half of humanity was a necessary thing to bring to the men’s side of the Kotel.
And so we come to the verse which gives this week’s Parsha its name.
פִּֽינְחָס בֶּן־אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן־אַֽהֲרֹן הַכֹּהֵן הֵשִׁיב אֶת־חֲמָתִי מֵעַל בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּקַנְאוֹ אֶת־קִנְאָתִי בְּתוֹכָם וְלֹֽא־כִלִּיתִי אֶת־בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּקִנְאָתִֽי:
Pinchas son of El’azar, son of Aaron the priest has diverted my anger from upon the children of Israel; by his zeal [turned] my zeal from among them so I have not made an end of the children of Israel in my jealousy(Num 25:11).
Pinchas had it easy. When the Shimonite Zimri brought the Midianite Cozbi into the tent, Pinchas knew he was looking at a capital crime for which a verdict and a sentence had been handed down. By acting upon it, he saved the people from annihilation. Whether the crime was “cohabiting with a heathen woman,” as is suggested in the Talmud (BT Sanh. 81b-82a), or the violation of the tabernacle, as Richard Elliott Friedman suggests(Friedman, 513), Pinchas knew what action he had to take, and that he took that action for the sake of saving the Israelites is argued by R. Aharon Kotler:
Pinchas actually performed a kindness resembling the merciful deeds of his father Aaron. By slaying Zimri, he rescued the entire people from death at the hands of Heaven, for they were all guilty of tolerating evil in their midst.(Weissman, 358)
It’s a nice drash, the sort that one comes up with when one feels that something reprehensible has taken place, but the event has been condoned by God. It has the feel of rationalization, because this extra-judicial killing is very disconcerting to a tradition that prides itself on the difficulty with which it can arrive at a death penalty. Our sages of blessed memory struggle with this. The Mishnah states:
IF ONE STEALS THE KISWAH[Temple vessels],23 OR CURSES BY ENCHANTMENT, OR COHABITS WITH A HEATHEN [LIT. SYRIAN] WOMAN, HE IS PUNISHED BY ZEALOTS.(BT Sanh. 81b)
But what we find in the Gemara would appear to render this a descriptive rather than a prescriptive statement, for
Rabbah b. Bar Hana said in R. Johanan's name: If [a zealot] comes to take counsel [whether to punish the transgressors enumerated in the Mishnah], we do not instruct him to do so. What is more, had Zimri forsaken his mistress and Phinehas slain him, Phinehas would have been executed on his account; and had Zimri turned upon Phinehas and slain him, he would not have been executed, since Phinehas was a pursuer [seeking to take his life].(BT Sanh. 82a)
In other words, if a zealot acts, it will be without the consent of the sages. The Mishnah, thus, is prevented from rising to the level of practical law. Moreover, unless the act the zealot is responding to remains uninterrupted, the zealot runs the risk of execution by order of the Sanhedrin, but the transgressor does not. In the case where the transgressor is not “punished by zealots,” however the Gemara provides a prooftext from Malachi that God will deal with it:
The Lord will cut off the men that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the Lord of Hosts. (Malachi 2:12).
The overall impression is that the sages would prefer that those who commit the transgressions described in the Mishnah receive their punishment from God rather than man. This solution, however, does not address the anxiety, expressed by Rav Kotler above, that God’s punishment might prove to be communal rather than individual. The problem is that, all too often, communal punishment from heaven is truly in the eye of the beholder, and such differences in perception lead to infighting within the Jewish community. This kind of tension can be seen when Rav Ovadiah Yosef, the spiritual leader of Shas, says in a shiur
[A woman] needs to take care not to lay tefillin. There are stupid women who come to the Western Wall, don tallit and pray. They are idiots, they want equality, their desire is not for the sake of heaven. It is necessary to denounce them and to be wary(אטינגר, my translation).
Rav Yosef’s language seems to compare the Women of the Wall to Korach and his company, alluding to that controversy which is not for the sake of heaven. What’s worse, is there may even be in here an actual call to violence. The word in his speech which I have here rendered as “denounce” is “להוקיע.” To an audience that is literate in both Modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew, it is a dangerous double entendre, being the very same verb that is used to describe the punishment that is to be meted out to the communal leaders who had attached themselves to Baal Peor, as is written:
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה קַח אֶת־כָּל־רָאשֵׁי הָעָם וְהוֹקַע אוֹתָם לַיהוָֹה נֶגֶד הַשָּׁמֶשׁ וְיָשֹׁב חֲרוֹן אַף־יְהוָֹה מִיִּשְׂרָאֵל
Adonai said to Moses, take all the heads of the people and hang (הוֹקַע) them for Adonai opposite the sun so the fury of Adonai’s anger will be averted from Israel. (Num. 25:4)
Brown, Driver and Briggs state that הוקע, the hif’il imperative of יקע is “some solemn form of execution, but mng uncertain.” In Numbers Rabbah on this verse, however, Rabban Judan is quite certain of the meaning, explaining the punishment using the word תלה, meaning hung(Numbers R. 20:23).
Given an audience who would not only recognize the biblical meaning of the word, but would also understand it as an allusion to this very event in which all Israel was endangered, and saved by a zealot, we can see clearly how this utterance can result first in the arrest of Nofrat Frenkel for - I forget, was it leining from a sefer torah, or intent to lein from a sefer Torah? - to the assault of Noa Raz at a Beer Sheva bus stop for sporting strap marks from having laid tefillin.
The reward for zealotry that our parsha opens with strikes me not so much as troubling as ambiguous. Pinchas is essentially assigned the position of warrior-priest, chaplain to the army that will avenge the matter of Baal peor, and the only Levite to serve in this campaign. It is as if the Holy Blessed One looked upon him and said, “this is how you want to be, let’s put you where you can channel that energy.” It is a matching of talent to career more than it is a reward. It is also an expression by God that Pinchas, and the behavior he exhibits, must be taken out of the mainstream and sanctified within the priesthood, in order to contain this sort of recklessness.
And yet, we cannot let ourselves off the hook this easily, for there is another story that is told about Pinchas in the Talmud: that while Moses and the Elders were standing around debating whether Zimri and Cozbi were committing a capital offense, it was then that Pinchas took up his spear and acted(Sanh. 82a). With too much talk, too much deliberation, the leaders of the people stood idly by while a zealot made history committing what should have been a capital crime. There are moments in life where it is absolutely vital that we act in accordance with our consciences, because if we spend too much time on the sidelines of history second guessing ourselves, we will let the Pinchases of the world write our history.
Works Cited
Brown, Francis et.al. The Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999.
Friedman, Richard. Commentary on the Torah. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.
Kantrowitz, David, Judaic Classics. Davka Corporation: 2004 (All references to Babylonian Talmud and Midrash Rabbah)
Weissman, Moshe, The Midrash Says: The Narrative of the Weekly Torah-portion in the Perspective of Our Sages (Bamidbar). Benei Yakov Publications, 1980.
אטינגר, יאיר. 'הרב עובדיה יוסף: נשים המתעטפות בטלית ומניחות תפילין הן "טיפשות."' הערץ Online פורסם ב
- . http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1126528.html 23:25 7, Nov 09
The words of Ovadiah Yosef cited from Ettinger:
"תפילין היא צריכה להיזהר לא לשים. יש טיפשות שבאות לכותל המערבי, שמות טלית ומתפללות. אלו שוטים. רוצות שוויון, לא רוצים שם שמיים, צריך להוקיע אותן ולהיזהר", אמר הרב.
Kick My People Out: The Challenge of Choosing Freedom
Dvar on Parshat Bo 5770, Rich Furman
Delivered at Beth Jacob Congregation 23 January 2010
Whenever I read the story of the Exodus in the Torah, I think about the phrase “let my people go.” We’ve grown up hearing it, we watched Charlton Heston deliver it to Yul Brynner in that film whose storyboard was received by Moses at Sinai and transmitted by the chain of tradition to Cecil B. DeMille - The Ten Commandments. Many of us sing it in the spiritual “Go Down Moses” around the Seder Table each year. It conjures up images of a people yearning to be free, held back only by the hard heart of Pharaoh. There’s only one problem: It’s not completely clear that this is what the text says, even if the JPS translation in our pew Chumash would have us believe otherwise. “Let my people go” is not the only possible rendering of ".שלח את עמי" The word שלח here is the pi’el imperative of the root ש'ל'ח' which means “send.” However, in the pi’el binyan, it does not merely mean send, but rather, “dismiss,” “send away,” or even “cast out”(BDB 1018-1019). The words that Moses brings from God to Pharaoh thus may be a bit more forceful than “Let my people go;” perhaps more on the order of “kick my people out.”
Back in Parshat Shemot God responds to Moshe’s complaint that his first attempt to get Pharaoh to release the Israelites was rebuffed by telling Moshe “עתה תראה אשר אעשה לפרעה כי ביד חזקה ישלחם וביד חזקה יגרשם מארצו:” “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh so with a strong hand he will dismiss them and with a strong hand he will expel them from his land”(Ex. 6:1). Rashi comments on this verse saying “He will drive them out against their will so that they will not have a chance to prepare provisions [for the journey]. And so it is said: ‘The Egyptians pressed the people - to hurry and send them away.’(Ex. 12:33)”(Rashi on Ex. 6:1). The miracle of the Exodus is not that God persuaded Pharaoh to release a people that was longing for freedom, but rather that God compelled Pharaoh to expel the Israelites from Egypt. One would think that given the oppression the Israelites were experiencing at the hands of the Egyptians, such that their groans rose before the heavenly throne, they would be chomping at the bit to get out, but this was not the case.
On the phrase “סבלת מצרים, the burdens of Egypt” at Ex. 6:6, Simchah Bunem of Przysucha comments:
Even though the slavery was hard and crushing, nevertheless they became accustomed to the bitterness and bore the burden and the distress patiently [punning on the similarity of the words for patience (סבלנות) and burdens (סבלות)]. They regarded their situation as natural. Said the Holy One, “Since already they are not healthy, nor do they sense the bitterness of their lot, the danger would be great to detain the redemption any longer.” (Kushner and Olitzky, 71)
Learned helplessness, studied in the animal world, occurs when an animal is subjected to a painful stimulus in a situation in which neither fight nor flight is possible. The animal will enter a docile state that greatly resembles human depression. The same thing happens to people with little volition. . .(Solomon, 348)
Strength of will is often the best bulwark against depression and in this population the will to go on, the tolerance of trauma, is often quite extraordinary. Many among the indigent depressed have personalities so passive that they are free of aspirations, and such people may be difficult to help.(ibid, 355)
לא־ראו איש את־אחיו ולא־קמו איש מתחתיו שלשת ימים ולכל־בני ישראל היה אור במושבתם
a man could not see his brother and a man could not get up off his tuchus for three days, but all the children of Israel had light in their settlements. (Ex 10:23).
The darkness was not simply a lack of light. That could be solved by lighting lamps. Rather it was an inability for anyone to see or interact with any fellow human being for three days. It was as if a thick depression fell on everybody, leaving them entirely alone. People were cut off from people, as if they were in some kind of solitary confinement. There was a blackness of despair, of being entirely alone in the world (Gold).
הכל גלוי לפניו, אלא אמר הקב"ה נותן אני את עיני לראות שאתם עסוקים במצותי, ופוסח אני עליכם
All is revealed before Him, however the Holy Blessed One said “I am letting my eyes see that you are engaging in my commandments, and so I pass over you.” (Rashi on ex. 12:13, my translation).
In my practice I find that the great majority of the depressed patients referred to me improve substantially if they try to help themselves. Sometimes it hardly seems to matter what you do as long as you do something with the attitude of self-help. . . . And yet many depressed individuals will go through a phase in which they stubbornly refuse to do anything to help themselves. The moment this crucial motivational problem has been solved, the depression typically begins to diminish. You can therefore understand why much of our research has been directed to locating the cause of this paralysis of the will. (Burns, 82).
עוד נגע אחד אביא על־פרעה ועל־מצרים אחרי־כן ישלח אתכם מזה כשלחו כלה גרש יגרש אתכם מזהOne more plague (touch) I will bring upon Egypt after which he will dismiss you from here; when he finally kicks you out, he will utterly expel (גרש יגרש) you from here.
ויאפו את־הבצק אשר הוציאו ממצרים עגת מצות כי לא חמץ כי־גרשו ממצרים ולא יכלו להתמהמה וגם־צדה לא־עשו להם
They baked the dough they brought from Egypt: cakes of Matzah because it was unleavened, for they were expelled (גרשו) from Egypt and could not tarry or make preparations for themselves (Ex. 12:39)
Dear Ambassador Oren:
I am writing to you regarding the situation at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The arrest of Nofrat Frenkel and the interrogation of Anat Hoffman, while alarming, are merely a symptom of a far deeper problem: namely that Israel is a country which offers freedom of religion to everyone but the Jew, and that the religion that the Jew is free to practice is increasingly a bizarre aberration from the Judaism that most American Jews, from Reform to Right Wing Modern Orthodox, would recognize as the faith of their fathers. It is a Judaism which, by reversing conversions violates the Torah's injunction not to wrong the stranger; it is a Judaism which wrongs the widow, telling her she is an agunah even after when she had been told she was free to marry. It is a Judaism that commits the idolatry of offering prayers to dead "g'dolim" to intercede on their behalf with the heavenly court. It is a Judaism that cleaves to the sorcery of segulot. And with each of these sins, it creates a chillul HaShem that distances American Jews from Israel, and Israeli Jews from any sort of Judaism at all - one yored I know refuses on principle to wear a kippah.
So, I am not going to simply ask that the Women of the Wall be allowed to pray and read Torah at the wall unharrassed, nice as that would be. I am going to ask that the Ministry of Antiquities give serious reconsideration to any sort of religious oversight of the wall. I am going to ask that the site which has been the longing of all Jews since the days of Bar Kochba be redeemed from the captivity of an Israeli Rabbinate that increasingly claims it as the exclusive heritage of a heretical minority and restored to all klal Yisrael as their eternal inheritance.
B'vrachah,
Rich Furman
I like to make home baked challah for Erev Shabbat whenever feasible. The use of a bread machine for creating the dough has been a tremendous boon in this, because it means that once I get the ingredients in and the doughball to the right consistency, I can pay attention to other things. This recipe has been working pretty well for me, though I find the crumb can be a bit dry the day after it comes out of the oven. I wonder if more oil can fix that. Advice would be appreciated.
Anyway, here is the Recipe as it stands:
Challah
1: Sponge
1C Warm Water
2tbsp Sugar
2tbsp Flour
2.5tsp Yeast
Combine and let floof for ~20min
2: The Bread Machine.
Put in the sponge, three eggs, 1.25tsp Salt, 2tbsp Honey, 1/3C Olive or Grapeseed Oil
Measure out 3.25C, including 2tbsp. gluten, flour by pouring the flour into the cup to avoid packing. (One day I will weigh this out so that this won't be a worry, but now I don't have a scale.) Add to Bread machine. Run the dough cycle. Add flour/water as necessary for proper dough ball consistency.
3: Shape and proof.
Set a skillet with water on the stove to boil while you shape the dough
Remove completed dough and punch down. Divide into however many strands you want and braid. Put on a floured baking sheet.
Remove skillet of steaming water to bottom of oven. I have an oven with a pilot light which keeps the water steaming. Put the loaf on the middle rack and let proof in the humid ofen for ~40 minutes.
4: Brush and bake
Remove loaf and water-pan from oven. Preheat to 450 Degrees.
Brush with an egg wash comprising a half cup water and an egg. Sprinkle with sesame or poppy seed.
Bake for 20 Minutes.
Isaac, Rebekah
Embittered by foreign wives
Had the same idea:
Send Esau afield
Bless Jacob while he's away
Bupkis for Esau.
Isaac was deceived:
He was expecting Jacob
Thought he got Esau
Isaac was relieved:
The voice, the voice of Jacob
Ears did not deceive.
Isaac was afraid:
Conflict was not his strong suit
Esau had returned.
Could not tell the truth
To Esau, the son who hunts
"We don't like your wives."
Esau overheard:
"Take no foreign wives, my son."
Then he understood.
Had Esau been told?
Was the expectation set?
What if he had known
Not to marry out
If only they had told him
Leah might be his.
The shakshuka at Cafe Hillel leaves one feeling nostalgic, so I've been tinkering with the concept and after a couple of tries came up with this. It doesn't have much in the way of exotic spicing, but goes from kitchen to table with about 5 minute's knifework and 30 minutes stovetop.
Simple Shakshuka
One medium onion, medium dice.
1C Bell Peppers, medium dice.
One Can (28 oz/800g) diced or crushed tomatoes.
A splosh of lemon juice (probably two Tbsp)
Four eggs.
One clove garlic, minced
One half tsp Salt
One half tsp Black Pepper
Olive or Grapeseed oil sufficient to saute in a 10" pan
Heat a 10" pan (I prefer cast iron for this) and add oil.
Saute the onions with the salt and black pepper.
As they become translucent, and the garlic, then the peppers.
Deglaze with the lemon juice, then add the tomatoes.
Simmer uncovered to reduce the liquid by about half.
Break the 4 eggs over the sauce and cover until eggs reach desired doneness (tradition dictates a set white with a runny yolk-about 4 minutes).
Serve with Pita or Challah. A garnish of steamed spinach creates a nice contrast on the plate
Serves 2. Parve.
