אוכל–Create a new food for חנכה

Create a new food for Chanukah. We all love latkes and jelly donuts, but we need new foods as well. As a family. create a new food that is representative of the holiday of חנכה. Think beyond the oil, or focus on it, it’s all up to you.

ישראל–Israel

Israel is a central part of modern Judaism. We are deeply connected to our Homeland, but do we know what is happening there all the time? On this last night of Chanukah we will examine the שם/Sham, “there,” from the “Great Miracle Happened There,” on our dreidles. There are many ways to connect with this one: read some newspaper articles about Israel or go to the store and by products made there.

צדקה–Justice

It is better to give than to receive and on this holiday when so many of us receive so much it is all the better to remember for one night that we too can give. On this night nobody in the house receives gifts, but gifts will be given… Choose any charity and donate the money that would have been spent on all of the gifts for that night and donate the money to that charity. You could also participate in one of the many needy children’s gift donation programs.

מרשם משפחתי–Family Recipe

We connect with our tradition in many ways. One of the most beloved of ways is through our stomachs. On this night choose a family recipe (one that your grandmother used to make) and make that delicious dish together as a family for dinner.

שבת–Shabbat

Its שבת/Shabbat, celebrate Chanukah and Shabbat together this evening, be sure to light your Chanukah candles before your Shabbat ones. Then enjoy a traditional Shabbat dinner together.

סרט יהודי–Jewish Movie Night

Jewish movie night. Pick out your favorite Jewish movie or one your family has never seen before and pop some popcorn to watch the movie together.

הסטוריה–Family History

Do you know how your family came to America? Do you know what your grandparents did for a living? Tonight, call up relatives and ask them 20 questions about your family history. Then turn those 20 answers into a beautiful story of your family in America.

סיפורים–Storytime

It is always an incredible pleasure to do things together as a family. One great thing we can do is read stories. Find an age-appropriate Jewish story to read and discuss together. Feel free to visit the Midway Library to choose a book to borrow.

חג אורים שמח–Happy Chanukah 5772

 

After this initial post you will find eight additional posts.  I have assigned a “night” to each of the cards, but you can do them in any order you choose.  Please post a reply to each night’s activity after your family has completed it, so that we can share…  Thanks again and Chag Sameach.

It’s Chanukah 5772, and we are so excited to continue our Chanukah program for our community that we started last year.  Once again we are offering you and your family the opportunity to give Chanukah a little more meaning.  The word Chanukah means dedication.  We call this holiday Chanukah because it commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. This year we can all rededicate our modern day “Temples,” our homes, to our religion and our people. We are asking you to use the enclosed cards to enrich your celebration of Chanukah with a nightly mitzvah or tradition.

Here’s How:

1. On the day before the first candle is lit, as a family, choose an activity card for the first night of Chanukah.
2. On each subsequent night choose the next night’s card (some of the cards need to be pre-selected, like Shabbat)
3. On each night of Chanukah, after you have lit the Chanukiya and sung some songs, as a family perform that night’s designated activity. (Remember to then draw the card for the next evening.)
4. Please post on Rabbi Hearshen’s blog: http://ravhearshen.blogspot.com, your experiences as a family. There will be a space for each night’s review.
5. Enjoy this experience and keep an open mind...

And now for the cards: (Note: these are a reproduction of the actual cards that were handed out, they do not look exactly as they did when handed out.)

	It is always an incredible pleasure to do things together as a family. One great thing we can do is read stories. Find an age-appropriate Jewish story to read and discuss together. Feel free to visit the Midway Library to choose a book to borrow.
	Do you know how your family came to America? Do you know what your grandparents did for a living? Tonight, call up relatives and ask them 20 questions about your family history. Then turn those 20 answers into a beautiful story of your family in America.
	Jewish movie night. Pick out your favorite Jewish movie or one your family has never seen before and pop some popcorn to watch the movie together.
	Its שבת/Shabbat, celebrate Chanukah and Shabbat together this evening, be sure to light your Chanukah candles before your Shabbat ones. Then enjoy a traditional Shabbat dinner together.
	We connect with our tradition in many ways. One of the most beloved of ways is through our stomachs. On this night choose a family recipe (one that your grandmother used to make) and make that delicious dish together as a family for dinner.
	It is better to give than to receive and on this holiday when so many of us receive so much it is all the better to remember for one night that we too can give. On this night nobody in the house receives gifts, but gifts will be given… Choose any charity and donate the money that would have been spent on all of the gifts for that night and donate the money to that charity. You could also participate in one of the many needy children’s gift donation programs.
	Israel is a central part of modern Judaism. We are deeply connected to our Homeland, but do we know what is happening there all the time? On this last night of Chanukah we will examine the שם/Sham, “there,” from the “Great Miracle Happened There,” on our dreidles. There are many ways to connect with this one: read some newspaper articles about Israel or go to the store and by products made there.
	Create a new food for Chanukah. We all love latkes and jelly donuts, but we need new foods as well. As a family. create a new food that is representative of the holiday of חנכה. Think beyond the oil, or focus on it, it’s all up to you.

Where do we go from here?

After this initial post you will find eight additional posts.  I have assigned a “night” to each of the cards, but you can do them in any order you choose.  Please post a reply to each night’s activity after your family has completed it, so that we can share…  Thanks again and Chag Sameach.

Parshat VaYera and Joe Paterno

Each year our communities read the story of the Binding of Isaac twice.  The first time is on Rosh Hashanah and the second is each year when we read this week’s Torah portion.  Every year we are thus pushed to confront this painful episode that so many people much smarter than I have written volumes upon volumes about.  Every year we look deeper and deeper into the text and try to find meaning in something that makes us all shudder and cry in thinking about.  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel told the following story:

A young boy was once reading the story of the Binding of Isaac at home.  He began to cry and his father asked him what was wrong.  To which the boy explained: Abraham is a about to kill Isaac.”

The father smiled and said that he shouldn’t worry and that “you know how it ends, God sends an angel and the angel stops it from happening.” 

But the child retorted: “What if God is late?”

The father understood his son and said: “Humans can be late (and we often are) but God is never late.”

Many scholars have remarked that the story of the Binding of Isaac is a polemic against the predominate culture of that time that practiced child sacrifice.  In our story God commands such a practice only to intervene to prevent it and to demonstrate that such a sacrifice runs counter to His desires and to the way that monotheism sees the world.  Child sacrifice is a reprehensible practice that thankfully we see very little to none of today in the concrete sense. But I worry at times that we have some great strides to make in defeating it all together.  Look at how we treat our children as natural resources in our economic wars, and how we constantly remove more and more of their childhood so that we can assure a better future for our society.  Look at how we have robbed them of so much innocence in a viewpoint that says that boundaries are bad, but perhaps those sacred boundaries were there for a reason…

So this brings us to the reality of the day and age in which we live.  Joe Paterno, an incredible football coach, has lost his job.  Not because of what he did or did not do on the field, but because of what he did not do off of the field.  Every single person who works with youth has to take a sacred pledge to be advocates for them at all times.  Every single person who dedicates their lives to working with our little ones needs to see the enormous responsibility that we all have to guard them and to protect them.  Anything short of this needs to be seen as being tantamount to child sacrifice.

It is an awfully sad thing that has transpired in Pennsylvania.  It is an awfully sad thing to see such an impressive career brought to a screeching halt and to have it so tarnished.  But that is not the sad thing in this saga… The sad thing is that the children who were victimized by a man who clearly was ill, were left on the alter that Isaac left all those years ago.   Those children were sacrificed for the sake of college football.  Those children were proof that we have not yet cleaned the world of this enormously shameful practice.  And to add to the sadness of this is the response of the students at Penn State.  In the 1960s students in the US rioted against bigotry, against a war, against a world that they saw as heading in the wrong direction.  Surely it must be a worthy cause to strongly protest an athletic department that allowed for a predator to terrorize children… But unfortunately the riots have nothing to do with the children… They were sacrificed for the sake of college football and a career that many felt could never be tarnished.  Those poor children still tied to the alter that Isaac left, they are still waiting for an angel to intervene on their behalf. 

The victim in all of this is not Joe Paterno (and to be clear he is not the culprit either), he lost his job because he failed to do something every coach must do… Before a coach must win… Before a coach must inspire… Before a coach must mentor… A coach must be trusted with the safety and security of all of the people s/he comes into contact with as a professional.  Joe Paterno lost his job because he neglected his chief responsibility and that was to protect children and players.  The victims in all of this are the children who had no voice to stop the assaults from happening, and now that a voice has begun to speak, angry mobs accuse those voices of having ruined something that they find to be more important and more sacred than the lives of children.

Heschel was right, God is never late but we as humans clearly can be and in this case we truly are.

It is my sincere hope and prayer that God heal these victims speedily and that they find a voice and a salvation away from this modern child sacrifice.

It has been a while, but lets get back to business with פרשת נח

 

Last night at פרשה and Poker we had a great discussion about Noah and his ark.  I would like to share some of this with all of you and perhaps elaborate on some of it.  We began with a discussion of the משנה from פרקי אבות that says: ובמקום שאין אנשים. השתדל להיות איש, and in a place where there are no people, strive to be that person… This phrase/concept is not a new one, it is not something that should surprise us… We are all familiar with that basic societal goal of having people step up and rise to the occasion.  We all need to be willing to take steps to be the person who is willing to act when and when not called upon to act.  This is a basic demand of all societies of conscience.  In our society we often do not heed these words because of fear, and because we worry that the person we are trying to help could be evil or could hurt us.  This is sad and disappointing, but this is what our news causes us to think and feel.  Our news reports day in and out about the bad and the ugly and the things that have gone awry.  Our news is always talking about these horrible occurrences in our world when somebody simply wanted to help another person.  We should be scared to help, because look at the possible outcomes of that help.  But then there is the reality that the news is only reporting on the exceptions.  The news is not telling us about the 5,000 or 100,000 good results for every one of those bad results.  The risk would probably be considered unfounded if the news told us of the opposite as well.

So what does this have to do with Noah.  The introductory words of this week’s portion are:

ט) אֵלֶּה תּֽוֹלְדֹת נֹחַ נֹחַ אִישׁ צַדִּיק תָּמִים הָיָה בְּדֹֽרֹתָיו אֶת־הָֽאֱלֹהִים הִֽתְהַלֶּךְ־נֹֽחַ: י) וַיּוֹלֶד נֹחַ שְׁלֹשָׁה בָנִים אֶת־שֵׁם אֶת־חָם וְאֶת־יָֽפֶת: יא) וַתִּשָּׁחֵת הָאָרֶץ לִפְנֵי הָֽאֱלֹהִים וַתִּמָּלֵא הָאָרֶץ חָמָֽס: יב) וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הָאָרֶץ וְהִנֵּה נִשְׁחָתָה כִּֽי־הִשְׁחִית כָּל־בָּשָׂר אֶת־דַּרְכּוֹ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ:

9. These are the generations of Noah; Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

10. And Noah fathered three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

11. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

12. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth.

 

Noah was considered to be that person we are all striving to be in that he was upright and walked with God… Or did he.  Here is a commentary on the verses:

These are the generation of Noah... and Noah walked with God...

Why are we Jews not considered to be the descendants of Noah but rather of Abraham, while the rest of the world is referred to in our literature as “the children of Noah”? The explanation is that even though Noah was righteous and perfect in his actions, he was not the ideal of the righteous ­Jew. Instead, he was the ideal of the righteous gentile. “Noah walked with God,” not with people, not with others - he was not inter­ested in humanity, in the environment. His righteousness was directed inward, to himself and his family. He was what is known in Yiddish as a tzadik in peltz — a “righteous man in a fur coat." He was commanded by God to build an ark- he built it board by board and nail by nail, for a hundred and twenty consecutive years, and it never crossed his mind that there might be a way to avert God’s decree and to save the world from destruction.

Abraham was different, as we are told by our Sages, “Abraham converted the men and Sarah the women.” Abraham taught the world proper behavior and knowledge of God. When God wished to overturn Sodom, Abraham did all in his power to save those wicked people. – ALSHEKH

 

Now in order to better understand this commentary we need to first grasp the concept of a Tzadik in peltz, a righteous man in a fur coat.  This concept is one that does not come right to us upon first glance.  But think about it, there are countless ways to warm oneself or to keep oneself warm.  Putting on a jacket is just one of the ways.  But one could also choose to light a fire so that others could keep warm, one could walk around giving hugs so as to share body heat… But a person who puts on a jacket and watches as others are freezing, this is not a good character trait in a righteous person.  During the Holocaust righteous gentiles became that great person by not being a tzadik in peltz, but by being a person who put his/her own life in serious jeopardy because they could not be warm and okay with the actions being perpetrated in their midst.  Others chose to not join the Nazis and to not fight against them or help the victims.  By not joining the Nazis they managed to save their own humanity, but by looking away and not saving others they forsook the humanity of the person in their midst.

This commentary accuses Noah of such a behavior.  He built this ark for 120 years, that is 43,800 days, that is 1,051,200 hours and that is 63,072,000 minutes… And he did not stop for just one of those minutes and say, hey wait a minute, can’t we save some more people from this?  Why didn’t he say to God as Avraham did?  Where was his righteousness?

I do not agree with every aspect of this commentary and here is why: the differentiation of the example of a righteous Jew vs. righteous human.  I think that we need all humans, and not just Jews to walk with people and with God, and not with just one or the other.  We need a world in which people see the needs of others and are not content to be well off by themselves.  We need a world where all people are collectively inspired by people who do good to others.  To assert that only Jews do this is not accurate and not a fair evaluation of the real world in which we all live.  This is in part why I have always asserted that Avraham was not the first “Jew,” but the first monotheist.  Ya’akov (Jacob) was the first Jew.  All three of the great monotheistic faiths trace their roots back to Avraham and in that way he was a person who would not just build an ark to protect himself while the other 99.9% of creation is decimated.  He argued for the sake of humanity and the sake of justice.  That is a person we all can look up to and we all can strive to be more like.  Noah did a good job at keeping things going in this world.  But Avraham is the person who was not content with just continuity, rather he could only be content when justice was allowed to reign supreme.

 

שבת שלום

 

4,178 Pages later I celebrate my conclusion of Harry Potter

Last פסח/Passover we were sitting at a friends table discussing the story of our peoples’ freedom and I let out a very well-kept secret: I had not read, nor did I intend to read any of Harry Potter.  Another person at the סדר/Seder, was shocked and disappointed at my statement.  How could I claim to have a handle on culture if I refused to dive into this cultural icon? Well I had no answer, and so that night that we learned of and celebrated our exodus from slavery to freedom I commenced my own exodus… This exodus was from ignorance to knowledge.  From emptiness to fulfillment… From not knowing what people were talking about, to being the one doing the talking.  What stinks is that I started far too late.  Not many people will google “Harry Potter” any longer, and so I am saddened by this fact.  But anyways, back to the celebration… We celebrate the conclusion of the study of the תלמוד/Talmud when people set to learn the whole thing.  Now the תלמוד has 5,894 folio pages, while Harry Potter has 4,178 pages, and so clearly this achievement is not on par with the study of תלמוד.  I am not even beginning to claim it is.  I am celebrating that I completed the task at hand and by way of having done so, I have fallen in love with the series. I have become a very big fan of Harry Potter and of JK Rowlings for that matter.

So how will I use this new knowledge?  I have always asserted that it is a תורה-World (well actually this is a phrase I borrow from my teacher Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer), and so I find Judaism and Jewish concepts in everything I encounter.  When I sit down with a book or any other media, I see it as a Jewish interaction as I am constantly picking it apart to find the Judaism in it.  So this is just my first attempt at Judaism and Harry Potter.

We shall begin with תלמוד: R. Nahman son of R. Hisda expounded: Why is the word Va-yitzer ["He formed man"] (Gen. 2:17) spelled with two yods? Because the Holy One created two yetzers ("impulses") in man--the impulse to good and the impulse to evil. (B. Ber 61a)

A basic Jewish idea is that every person has the ability to be abundantly good or evil.  This is because we all have both a good inclination and an evil one as well.  We all have both of these abilities and we all need to master them. I love that in Harry Potter there are two diametrically opposed characters: Harry and Voldemort.  But they are connected by many things, the least of which is not their wands are twins.  One chose (using the free-will that God gave us) to do great evil with that wand, and the other chose to do great good.  So poetic.

But lets examine this deeper with the three following sources:

• Rava said: We have a tradition that the impulse to evil dominates only what its eyes see. (B. Sot 8a)
• The mirror of erised found in book one is an illusion that shows the viewer that which s/he wants most to see.  It could betray the person’s greatest desires, and could allow for them to see beautiful things to them.  But then what does that cause them or allow for them to do?  What do they do with those hidden desires that have been made available in the mirror? As you’ll see in the hyperlinked article to this bullet-point, Harry was able to beat evil because his eyes did not desire to use the sorcerer’s stone, they only wanted to prevent evil from happening.  Also please notice the words inscribed on the mirror Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. Which if read backwards it demonstrates the principle: I Show Not Your Face, But Your Hearts Desire. Our eyes can lead us to great things or to terrible, it is up to us.
• The impulse to evil yearns only for that which is forbidden to a man. (P. Yoma 6:4, 43d)
• In Star Wars, love was forbidden to the Jedi and this led Anakin Skywalker down a path of evil and destruction.  Voldemort’s evil impulse led him to yearn for something that all humans can relate to in a way.  He yearned for the very thing that God withheld from Adam and Eve in the garden, eternal life.  We are meant to be on this earth for a finite number of days/months/years.  We are not to live forever.  Voldemort sought eternity and this led him to become the chief death eater, a person trying to end death (at least for himself).  His great fear and distaste for the most human of all things (the reality that we all will eventually die) is what created the monster that he was.  This is greatly revealed in books six and seven.
• R. Simeon ben Lakish said: Satan, impulse to evil, and angel of death--all three are the same thing. (B. BB 16a)
• And this brings me to this last one.  Well to begin with… Yes Jews do have Satan.  The English name is a Anglicized form of the Hebrew word שטן, the adversary.  We believe that Satan was God’s enemy that antagonized God to do some bad things to people at times.  Satan is one of the main characters in the book Job.  Well anyways… Voldemort is the embodiment of evil in this work.  His attempt to snuff out death for himself led him to murder and maim countless other people.  He goaded people on to do horrible things in their following of him, and so he was an adversary.  He was an impulse to evil and he was the angel of death to too many people. 

All of this is just a first attempt.  I will do much more work on this and create more lessons.   None of this was the authors intent in her writing these books.  It is one reader’s work in looking for ways of relating the lessons of the work of fiction to metaphysics of the world that I see.

 

All the best 

The Hope ( www.hatikva.us )