"Why Do People Shout "Mazal Tov" When Dishes Drop?" Chabad Wednesday, Tevet 18, 5776 · December 30, 2015

"Why Do People Shout "Mazal Tov" When Dishes Drop?" Chabad Wednesday, Tevet 18, 5776 · December 30, 2015
Editor's Note:
Dear Friend,
As I rip the last month off my calendar and expose a fresh year, I think back to how I imagined this era twenty years ago.
Flying cars! Self-tying shoes! Virtual-reality holograms! Hoverboards! Teleportation!
This is supposed to be a breakout period for technology, and indeed there have been many major technological trends on the cusp of going mainstream, such as 3D printing, wearables, and even driverless cars.
But at the risk of being termed a neo-Luddite, I have to say that while all this technology has enabled us to live a futuristic life, it can come at the cost of living a present life. A close friend just had it with the distraction of WhatsApp last week and gave it up entirely. He has not looked back (or down) since.
Although our devices can be used for good and even holy purposes, let’s set a time to put them away, look up, and really connect with the people that matter. Learn some Torah together, light a fire in your fireplace and have family/couple time, or just enjoy each other’s company (read here why this is a special year to do this).
Let’s not forget that the man makes the technology, not the other way around.
Moshe Rosenberg,
on behalf of the Chabad.org Editorial Team
Shemot

Wasting Life on Purpose
Once you have found the meaning of life, will there be enough life left to live meaningfully?
Better to live life as meaningfully as you know how, and find more meaning as you go along. You will gain, and so will those you influence.[From a letter to a teacher who wanted to take off time from teaching to find the meaning of life.]
---------------------
Your Questions

Why Do People Shout “Mazal Tov” When Dishes Drop?
By Yehuda Shurpin
Is this just an outgrowth of the wedding custom, or is there something more to it?

10 Ways to Stop Worrying and Start Living
By Rosally Saltsman
I’m very anxious about all the terrible things that can happen. We live in such a dangerous world, and so many people are suffering. I’m always terrified that some calamity is going to befall me or those whom I love, G‑d forbid.

Is My Teacher Responsible for My Confiscated iPod?
By Yehuda Shurpin
Was she allowed to confiscate it? If she was, is she responsible to reimburse me?
Story

Jewish Education and Space Flight
By Velvl Greene
In the NASA program, the Rebbe understood, there had always been a problem with balancing weight limits versus fuel needs in space flights.
Parshah

The Jewish Answer to Evil
By Mendel Kalmenson
“Who in their right mind could bring children into such a dark and turbulent world?”

The Kabbalah of Anger
By Lazer Gurkow
There is no question that during fits of temper one can take leave of his senses and do stupid, even violent, things. But how is it equivalent to idolatry, which denies the oneness of G-d?

Jochebed: Planting the Seeds of Leadership
By Stacey Goldman
As a mother of young children, it is easy for me to lose perspective amidst the peaks and valleys of parenting. It will be years before I will see the fruits of my labor . . .

A Message of Hope
By Chana Weisberg
Who isn’t suffering nowadays? We’re surrounded by tragedy, difficulty and challenges.
Jewish News

There Is Hope. Miracles Do Happen
By Nechama Dina Hendel
Reflecting on the unique wedding of Chedva and Shmuel, I am comforted.

L’Chaim on a Moscow Train Platform: 25th Year Since the Fall of the USSR
By Dovid Margolin
Secret Chassidic gatherings through decades of Soviet oppression ensured the extraordinary Jewish renaissance seen today.

Classmates’ Initiative Wins New Wheelchair for Wisconsin Boy
By Faygie Levy Holt
Students at Hillel Academy in Milwaukee gain a grant for their friend.
Chabad.org Classic

The Shrinking of Man
By Yanki Tauber
Man has shrunk over the centuries. Suddenly there were all these other people and species dwarfing our significance. Our planet became an infinitesimal speck in a universe of mind-numbing vastness. Did we become humbler?
Parenting

Kiwis and Kids: Why They Both Need Time to Ripen
By Elana Mizrahi
I bought two baskets of the hard kiwis, thinking that within a few days they would be ripe and ready to eat. I was wrong.
Lifestyle

Rishe’s Chunky Chicken-Barley Soup
By Miriam Szokovski


Artwork of the Week: Moses Stands at the Burning Bush
By Yoram Raanan
Chabad.org Magazine - Editor: Yanki Tauber
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.

---------------------Printable Magazine
This Week's Features:

The Jewish Answer to Evil by Mendel Kalmenson

When tragedy occurs on a community level, the shock and the sense of vulnerability can be paralyzing. Difficult questions are raised, such as “What do we do now? Should we fold up or scale back our efforts and presence? Is this a sign that we’re in the wrong place, that this will never work?”

The Rebbe responded to the stricken residents of Kfar Chabad after their village was attacked by terrorists:

While Judaism does not provide explanations for tragedy, it does have a response. Do not diminish or detract from your noble activities, but increase and expand them!

Consolation can be achieved through intensified activity, a heightened sense of purpose, and by redirecting our thoughts from what has been lost to that which thankfully remains.

By choosing to rebuild and intensify growth in the face of loss—and especially in the face of terrorism and acts of hatred—we also make a statement of victory. We become living proof that evil does not prevail, that life triumphs over death. Conversely, reducing positive efforts and activities only contributes to promoting the ideological goals of evildoers.

An ancient iteration of this argument can be found in midrashic lore,1 as articulated by Miriam the prophetess when she was a child. After Pharaoh had decreed that all newborn Hebrew males be thrown into the Nile, Miriam’s parents, Amram and Yocheved, who held leadership positions among the children of Israel, divorced, leading other Israelites to divorce as well. Miriam went to her father and challenged him, saying, “Pharaoh decreed against the males, but you have passed a decree against the females as well.”

As a result of this argument, which brought about Yocheved and Amram’s reunion, none other than Moses, Pharaoh’s nemesis, was born. And it was this argument that was responsible for the high Jewish birthrate despite the slavery in Egypt.

Miriam’s argument was certainly not intuitive, and the counterargument would echo throughout much of Jewish history including, most recently, the Holocaust: “Who in their right mind could bring children into such a dark and turbulent world?” During the time of the first Jewish holocaust in Egypt—when newborn infants were being used for spare building parts, and a campaign of genocide was being waged against male infants—having children must have seemed at the very least irresponsible. And, yet, as Miriam argued, the Jewish people believed that by not having children, they would only be contributing to the program of extermination their enemies planned for them.

In a frank letter he wrote to Elie Wiesel (the Holocaust survivor whose activism and writings won him the Nobel Peace Prize), the Rebbe advocated a similar approach to those who had recently undergone the trauma and devastation of the Holocaust:

And now allow me to make a personal observation which is related to our discussion when you visited me last. Your article series titled “And the World Was Silent” reawakened in me the idea I’d like to communicate here.

To remember and not forget, as the Torah teaches, “Do not forget that which Amalek did to you . . .”2 is obviously an active thing—in the language of the rabbis, a “positive command.”

That notwithstanding, remembering alone is only one aspect of our responsibility. The other, and arguably more important, aspect is the active combat against the so-called “final solution” that Hitler, may his name be obliterated, like Haman in his day, had in mind to do.

This combat should express itself through deeds that recall the Jewish response to infanticide in Egypt, “they would increase and they would multiply.”

To achieve this aim, it doesn’t help to only feel sad and constantly remind oneself of the horrific tragedies that once were, and of the importance not to forget. Rather, we must expand and publicize efforts to grow the Jewish people literally, and in the spirit of “they would increase and they would multiply”—in contradiction to the “final solution.”

In this matter, as in all matters, the important thing is to provide a living example, especially someone like yourself who underwent the horrors that you did, who will demonstrate that Hitler did not prevail. Even if only in order to spite him, one should have a large family of children and grandchildren.

With all the conviction I can muster, I’d like to say that notwithstanding the importance of telling the younger generation about the tragic experiences and losses suffered and how difficult it is to be liberated from those terrifying memories and ordeals of the past, in my estimation the main calling of our times is to fulfill the teaching which states, “Against your will you must live,”3 with the emphasis on “you must live” . . . i.e., you must make the effort to establish a Jewish home and family, which will certainly contribute to the downfall of Hitler, proving futile his efforts that there be one chassid of Vizhnitz less . . .4

At the conclusion of this long letter (only a portion of which is quoted here), the Rebbe ends:

Too long a letter? If, however, with good fortune you will be married after the festival of Shavuot, according to the tradition of Moses and Israel, this lengthy letter, as well as the time you spend reading it, will have been well worth the while.

Subsequently Elie Wiesel did marry, and he attributed his decision, in part, to the Rebbe’s prodding. As he related in an interview, the Rebbe was overjoyed at the news: “The greatest bouquet of flowers I ever received was from the Rebbe for my wedding. He was [always] nudging me to get married. I have letters—one letter in which we speak about Jewish theology—seven, eight pages about theology. At the end [of the letter], he said, ‘And by the way, when are you getting married?’ As if the two had something in common.”5

In the Rebbe’s mind, they clearly did.6

In addition to the practical, demographic response, the Rebbe also advocated a spiritual retaliation of sorts as a response to the massive losses the Jewish people experienced at the hands of our enemies.

What follows is an excerpt from an informal discussion session between members of the Young Leadership Cabinet of the U.J.A. (United Jewish Appeal) and the Rebbe, which lasted through the evening of March 4, 1962.

Question: We are going on a pilgrimage to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, going to Warsaw and Auschwitz. As we get deeper and deeper in the reading, we’re all having many problems with the questions that the Holocaust and Auschwitz bring. . . . What did the whole thing mean?

Rebbe: . . . If history teaches us something that we must not repeat or must emulate, the best lesson can be taken from the destruction of the Second Temple. We witnessed something so terrible, it must bring every Jew to become more identified with his Jewishness. . . . Every one of us has an obligation to fight Hitler, [which] can be done by letting that which Hitler had in mind to annihilate, not only continue, but grow bigger and on a deeper scale. Hitler was not interested so much in annihilating the body of Jewishness as he was interested in annihilating the spirit. [He decreed that the spiritual and moral ideas which the Jewish people embodied7] must not infect the German people, the Russian people or the Polish people—and because of that, he had all the Polish, Russian and German people on his side. They regarded the Jews as a foreign body, and a body that does not belong must be eliminated.

If you influence a Jew not to become assimilated but to profess his Jewishness, his pride and inspiration and joy, this is defeating Hitlerism. If someone does his best in his personal life to be Jewish [so that] everyone sees that in the street he is a Jew, that his home is a Jewish home, that he is proud, and that it is not a burden but his pride, his life defeats the idea of Hitlerism.

When you go to Auschwitz, you must profess there that Auschwitz cannot happen again. You can assure it by becoming a living example of a living Jew. It has nothing to do with chauvinism. You are not trying to convert anyone to be a Jew, but you are fighting, you are struggling for survival not only as a human being but as a Jew. In our time it is a very acute problem, because every one of us must do something not only to perform his task, but to replace all those Jews that were murdered and annihilated. Their tasks are our direct duty.8

In the years following the Holocaust, the Rebbe often expressed the idea that after the German atrocities, which annihilated nearly a third of the Jewish people, every living Jew counts as two, for through each Jew, those who were murdered live on.

The responsibility of survivors and those not directly affected by a catastrophe to represent those who perished is captured in the following story:

A Holocaust survivor once came to see the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, some years after he settled in America. This survivor was plagued by an all-consuming guilt, the type that afflicted many who saw their peers killed off or who were the sole remnant of their entire families or towns. The question of “Why me?” devoured their waking hours. “Why did I survive while the others did not?” they probed others and accused themselves.

This man, too, was haunted by survivor’s guilt. He had visited many rabbis for counsel so that he could move on, but to no avail. His search brought him to 770 Eastern Parkway for an audience with the rebbe.

“What zechut (merit) did I have over the others?” he asked desperately. “Why did I merit surviving?”

The emphatic two-word response turned his life around: Zechut? Chov! (“Merit? Obligation!”)

Rabbi Mendel Kalmenson is the rabbi of Beit Baruch and executive director of Chabad of Belgravia, London, where he lives with his wife, Chana, and children. 

Mendel was an editor at the Judaism Website—Chabad.org, and is also the author of the popular books Seeds of Wisdom and A Time to Heal.

Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.

FOOTNOTES

1.Talmud, Sotah 12a.

2.Deuteronomy 25:17.

3.Avot 4:22.

4.Igrot Kodesh, vol. 23, pp. 373–375. See also ibid., vol. 25, pp. 56ff.

5.See http://lubavitch.com/news/article/2030937/In-Conversation-with-Nobel-Prize-Winner-Elie-Wiesel.html.

6.When Elie and Marion’s son, Elisha, was born, the Rebbe sent representatives to the brit milah (circumcision), who brought them a note from the Rebbe in which he wrote that his heart and soul were overflowing with joy.

7.The following are some examples of Hitler’s pronouncements that revealed the reasons behind his venomous hatred of the Jews:

“The struggle for world domination will be fought entirely between us, between Germans and Jews. All else is facade and illusion. Behind England stands Israel, and behind France, and behind the United States. Even when we have driven the Jew out of Germany, he remains our world enemy.” (Cited by Hermann Rauschning in Hitler Speaks, p. 234.)

“If only one country, for whatever reason, tolerates a Jewish family in it, that family will become the germ center for fresh sedition. If one little Jewish boy survives without any Jewish education, with no synagogue and no Hebrew school, it [Judaism] is in his soul. Even if there had never been a synagogue or a Jewish school or an Old Testament, the Jewish spirit would still exist and exert its influence. It has been there from the beginning and there is no Jew, not a single one, who does not personify it.” (From a conversation with Croatian Foreign Minister General Kvaternik, July 21, 1941, cited by Robert Wistrich, Hitler’s Apocalypse, p. 122.)

8.From an informal interview session between a group of Young Leadership Cabinet members of the U.J.A. (United Jewish Appeal) and the Rebbe, Sunday evening, March 4, 1962. An English transcript can be accessed at http://www.chabad.org/354698.

© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.

---------------------Your Questions
Why Do People Shout “Mazal Tov” When Dishes Drop? By Yehuda Shurpin

Question:
The other day I was invited to my friends’ house for dinner. During dinner, someone dropped a glass and it broke. At that moment, everyone shouted, “Mazal tov!” Now, I read on Chabad.org why we break a glass at a Jewish wedding and then say “Mazal tov.” Is this just an outgrowth of that custom, or is there something more to it?
Reply:
It is quite possible that the sound of shattering glass reminds people of the breaking of the glass at a wedding, and it therefore evokes the accompanying mazal tov. But there are a number of other fascinating reasons unrelated to weddings.
A Good Omen
Some point to this wondrous tale in the Talmud:
Once, the Romans forbade the Jews to observe Shabbat, circumcision and family purity. When other avenues were exhausted, the Jews sent a delegation to plead with the Romans. Who was sent? Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, for he was accustomed to having miracles performed for him, and Rabbi Eliezer ben Rabbi Yosei.
As the pair traveled, a demon named Ben Temalion came to meet them. He proposed to enter into the body of a princess of the imperial house, and not to leave her until Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai was asked to cure her, for in her madness she would call for him. When Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai would whisper into the ear of the princess, Ben Temalion would leave her, and as a sign of his departure all the glass in the palace would break.
Thereupon Rabbi Shimon wept and said: “The handmaid of my ancestor’s house [i.e., Hagar, the handmaid of Abraham] was found worthy of meeting an angel three times, and I am not worthy to meet one once. However, let the miracle be performed, no matter how.”
So it was. When Rabbi Shimon arrived, he wispered: “Ben Temalion, leave her, Ben Temalion, leave her,” and he left her, and all the glass in the palace shattered.
The grateful emperor then told them, “Request whatever you desire,” and had them led to the treasure house to take whatever they chose. The rabbis found the scroll upon which the decree was written, took it and tore it to pieces.1
Some infer from the story that whenever glass shatters, it signals that all is well, and they therefore shout “Mazal tov” to celebrate.2
It Could Have Been Worse
Psalm 79 is all about the destruction of the Temple. Yet, strangely, it starts off with the words “A song of Asaph.” Why is a composition about a tragedy called a song? The Midrash explains that Asaph was singing in gratitude to G‑d, knowing that He would vent His wrath on buildings of wood and stone instead of on human beings.3
Similarly, when something like glass breaks, we say “Mazal tov” to thank G‑d for only delivering judgment on our belongings and not on us.4
Sweetening the Severity
When something breaks, it is an omen of divine severity and judgment. Being joyful and wishing “Mazal tov” has the power to sweeten and mitigate this severity. This idea is perhaps best illustrated by the following story:
Rabbi Dovber Schneuri, known as the Mitteler Rebbe, was known for his penchant for joyfulness. He even had a group of chassidim who formed a kapelye (choir), and another group who were trained to perform tricks on horseback. On special, joyous occasions, he would ask these groups to perform, and he would stand on his balcony watching. The rebbe’s son Reb Nochum happened to be one of these horsemen.
Once, for no apparent reason, the rebbe suddenly instructed both of these groups to perform. This was extremely unusual. Yet the chassidim performed while the rebbe stood in his usual spot and watched the horsemen carefully.
Suddenly the rebbe’s son Reb Nochum fell off of his horse. Informed that his son was in grave danger, the rebbe merely motioned with his hand to continue the festivities.
After a while the rebbe asked them to stop, and stepped into his private office.
A doctor was summoned, and Reb Nochum’s situation proved far less severe than previously thought. He had broken a leg, but no more.
The rebbe was then asked why he had told the horsemen and choir to continue with their performance while his beloved son lay injured.
He responded, “Why don’t you ask me an even better question: why did I ask the horsemen and the choir to perform on a simple weekday in the first place?”
The rebbe explained: "Today was meant to be a harsh day for my son. I saw a grave accusation against him in the heavenly court. The prosecution was very powerful, and I could see only one way out: joy sweetens the attribute of severity. So I therefore called upon the choir to sing, and asked the riders to gladden everyone with their antics.
"The joy thus created tempered the strict decree against my son, but a small portion of the decree remained. That is why he fell off his horse and hurt his leg. However, the continued revelry lessened even this residual decree. G‑d willing, Nochum will recover in the very near future."5
Now that you know the reasons behind the peals of “Mazal tov,” you too can join in and help transform the world into a more joyous place.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.
FOOTNOTES
1. Talmud, Meilah 17a–b, following the emendations of Tosafot and Shitah Mekubetzet ad loc.
2. See Otzar Yad ha-Chaim 92.
3. Midrash Tehillim, Psalms 79:1; Eichah Rabbah 4:14; Rashi, Psalms 79:1.
4. See Machmudei ha-Torah 38, p. 4.
5. Otzar Sipurei Chabad, vol. 16, p. 55, quoting Reshimot Devarim by Rabbi Yehuda Chitrik.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Your Questions
10 Ways to Stop Worrying and Start Living By Rosally Saltsman

Dear Rachel,
I’m a worrier. I’m very anxious about all the terrible things that can happen. We live in such a dangerous world, and so many people are suffering. I’m always terrified that some calamity is going to befall me or those whom I love, G‑d forbid. I take every precaution I can, I pray, but I’m always nervous and tense. I always have the worst-case scenario in my head. Please help. This is a terrible way to live my life.
“Worst Case” Scenario
Dear “Best Case” Scenario,
Mark Twain famously said, “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” We spend so much time worrying about what can happen that we don’t actually enjoy life.
And you’re right—it’s a terrible way to live. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Fear and worry are a choice. You’re right that we have so little control over the events of our lives, and there are many dangers out there. But the one thing we do have in our control is how we view the world. Is it dangerous, or full of opportunity? Are we safe, or is danger lurking right around every corner? Do things befall us, or is everything part of a divine plan?
The story is told of a chassid who asked his rebbe, the Maggid of Mezeritch, “The Talmud tells us how to make a blessing over the bad things that happen as we do for the good ones. How is that possible?” The Maggid told him to go ask Reb Zushe of Anipoli, a holy but very poor man. He lived in a small, dilapidated house with his family. He was thin and sickly, and lived hand to mouth. When the chassid came to Reb Zushe with his question, Reb Zushe stood there in his cold house, in his threadbare clothes, and said, “I don’t know why the Maggid would send you to me. I’ve never known any misfortune in my life.”
Reb Zushe understood that there is no bad. Everything in life comes from G‑d, and G‑d is all good. And even though we may not understand it at the time, everything G‑d does is good. I know that’s a hard concept to grasp. There is a lot of tragedy and suffering in the world. But faith in G‑d is the No. 1 tool to deal with your fears.
With that in mind, here are a few tips to help you worry a bit less:
1. Don’t read the news. We are constantly inundated with bad news—in the paper, on the Internet, on social media. It’s no wonder many of us are nervous wrecks. Reading the headlines once a day to know what’s going on is more than enough, if that.
2. Get enough sleep.
3. Eat healthfully and cut down on caffeine, which is a big stress inducer.
4. Pray. But pray less like you’re talking to a police officer who you’re afraid is going to give you a ticket, and more like to a grandparent who wants to spoil you. Pray for the wisdom to recognize the good and deal with the “bad.”
5. Help other people. When you’re helping others, you don’t worry about yourself. And when you become a giver, you realize how much you have to offer.
6. Be grateful. Before you go to sleep every night, take an inventory of all the blessings in your life and all the things that went well that day, and thank G‑d for them.
7. Spend time in nature and walk every day. Both nature and exercise have calming effects.
8. Find ways to enjoy yourself and laugh. It’s a great mitzvah to be happy! And you can’t be happy and worried at the same time.
9. Use your imagination—for the good. Thoughts have power, so use them positively. Visualize all the wonderful things that can happen, see them happening in your mind’s eye, and there’s a greater chance they will.
10. Look for the positive in every situation.
In our long, miraculous history as a nation—through war, terrorism and inquisition, from Amalek to Osama bin Laden, from the prayers of our foremother Sarah to the prayers of Sarah in San Antonio longing to be a mother, from miracle to miracle—we must always be cognizant of the fact that the Master of the Universe is also the master of our destinies. And we should trust Him.
No one can guarantee a life that is free of suffering. But you will have not one drop more suffering than is decreed for you, unless you inflict it on yourself by constantly worrying and being anxious.
If you’re still distraught after following the above advice, I suggest you speak to a rabbi or a therapist.
May you have many reasons to be joyful!
Rachel
Rosally Saltsman is a freelance writer originally from Montreal living in Israel.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Your Questions
Is My Teacher Responsible for My Confiscated iPod? By Yehuda Shurpin
Question:
Rabbi, I admit, I probably had it coming when my teacher finally confiscated my iPod, which I was playing a tad too loudly in the middle of class. She was supposed to return it to me after two weeks, but now she says she can’t find it.
My question is: was she allowed to confiscate it? If she was, is she responsible to reimburse me?
Answer:
Leaving the lectures about proper behavior to others, I’ll just address the issue at hand.
Is Confiscation Permissible?
Limited Confiscation
According to Jewish law, one is not allowed to “take” an object from someone else, even if it is done as a practical joke with the intention of teaching a lesson (e.g., “Next time be more careful with securing your valuables”). It is considered stealing.1
Some are of the opinion that this law applies to a teacher as well, and therefore a teacher may not confiscate an object from a student—unless it is potentially dangerous—even if it’s to teach him a lesson.2 It still, however, may be permitted for a teacher to take an item from a student and place it on her desk until the end of the class, since in this instance the teacher is not taking it for herself, and the student knows where the object is at all times.3
Confiscation Is Permitted
Others make a distinction between a practical joker and a teacher. Parents entrust their child’s education to the teacher, so if a teacher were to not confiscate the items from the child when it is appropriate, the teacher would be guilty of not fulfilling her job properly.4
Additionally, if after trying other discipline techniques it is clear to the teacher that only corporal punishment will be effective, then according to the letter of the law, the teacher is allowed to gently hit the child5—so how much more so would the teacher be permitted to confiscate the student’s objects.6 [Please note: The subject of corporal discipline and when it may or not be permitted—and even if it is permitted, whether it is advisable—is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that in today’s age, it is extremely rare for it to be permitted.]
In this event, the teacher is generally still required to return the object (unless it is a dangerous object). Some, however, are of the opinion that if it is deemed that the only way to discipline the student is through permanently confiscating or destroying the object, then as a last resort that may be permitted.7 Others qualify this and say that it would only apply to relatively inexpensive objects.8 According to all, however, the teacher is forbidden to use the confiscated item without permission.9
Teachers’ Responsibility
Assuming your teacher was permitted to confiscate the object (which is what most hold), the question of the teacher’s responsibility remains.
When your teacher signed up for her job, the agreement was that she would be paid to teach, not to guard iPods. Therefore, she may be considered a shomer chinam (unpaid guardian) over any confiscated items in her possession. A shomer chinam is liable only for damages that occur due to his own negligence; he’s not liable if, through no fault of his own, the item is lost or stolen.10
Therefore, in this case, if your teacher took the normal precautions (e.g., she put it the iPod in a locked closet), but now it’s gone, your teacher isn’t liable for your lost iPod. If, however, it was lost due to negligence, then she would indeed be required to reimburse you for your iPod.
Having promised to leave the lectures to others, I’ll just end off with saying that hopefully this entire episode will serve as a catalyst for positive change.
Rabbi Yehuda Shurpin responds to questions for Chabad.org's Ask the Rabbi service.
FOOTNOTES
1. Talmud, Bava Metzia 61b; Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Gezeilah 1:3; Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 348:1; Shulchan Aruch ha-Rav, Choshen Mishpat, Hilchot Gezeilah u-Geneivah 3.
2. Responsa Benei Banim 2:47.
3. See Techumin, vol. 8.
4. Responsa Mishneh Halachot 6:284. See also Pit’chei Choshen 4:1, fn. 17.
5. See Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 245:10.
6. Responsa Mishneh Halachot ibid.; Rabbi Zalman Nechemiah Goldberg in Melechet Hashem, Hilchot Melamdim, pp. 287 & 292.
7. See Responsa Mishneh Halachot ibid.
8. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, quoted in Melechet Hashem, p. 270. If the child’s parents wouldn’t mind that the object be destroyed for educational purpose, it is considered “inexpensive.”
9. Responsa Mishneh Halachot ibid.
10. Talmud, Bava Metzia 93a; Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 291:1.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Story
Jewish Education and Space Flight By Velvl Greene

The Rebbe, who was trained as an engineer, had a keen understanding of the physical world and how it worked. So when the Apollo spaceship landed on the moon in 1969, he used that scientific achievement to make a point about Jewish education.
In the NASA program, the Rebbe understood, there had always been a problem with balancing weight limits versus fuel needs in space flights. It’s a conundrum: If you build a rocket that will go a long distance, you’ll need to carry a lot of fuel. But the more fuel you carry, the larger the fuel container has to be—which means the weight of the spacecraft is increased. It’s an endless cycleThe heavier the spacecraft, the more fuel you need. It’s an endless cycle, and a critical issue if your mission takes you beyond the local environment to the moon or Mars.
Engineers settled on a solution: They built multistaged rockets that contained several individual fuel tanks. The largest amount of fuel is needed in the first minutes of the flight, as the rocket takes off from the ground. So the fuel for those first four or five minutes goes into a separate container, and when the fuel is used, the empty container is jettisoned off. When you watch a launch, you’ll see it. After a few minutes, the used-up fuel container drops away.
The next stage of the flight uses up the next-most fuel, because the rocket is still fighting the gravity of the earth. When that fuel tank is empty, it’s also jettisoned, as are several more stages. As each tank of fuel is used and the container jettisoned, the overall weight of the spacecraft becomes lighter, so it needs less fuel.
By the time you’re weightless, out of the pull of Earth’s gravity, you’ll need only a tiny bit of fuel. Because there’s no resistance to fight against, a thimbleful of fuel will propel the craft a very long distance.
So the Rebbe used this to explain a passage in Mishlei (Proverbs 22:6), that we are to “educate a young person according to his path.” That phrase has always been problematical, the Rebbe said. What does it mean, “according to his path”?
It’s very simple, the Rebbe said. It’s something we do in education all the time. We introduce a three-year-old child to the aleph-bet, and we make a big fuss about it. We have a party, we give him candy, we celebrate. In the old days, we’d even put honey on the page itself. The child sees the big fuss, he likes the candy, and he’s very interested. He learns.
When the child gets to be about five years old, candy doesn’t motivate him anymore. So we move to a different incentive, maybe toys or a tricycle.
Then when he’s 10 or 11, We move to a new incentivetoys don’t work anymore. By that time, he wants electronic games. That’s what we’re doing—educating a child according to his path. We’re using an incentive that’s meaningful to him at his age level.
This, the Rebbe said, is exactly the same principle as that of the multistage rocket. That which is not needed any longer is jettisoned. We don’t want to carry the extra weight along.
When you reach the next level of understanding and learning, you get rid of the weight, you don’t need as much inspiration as before in order to push yourself. By the time you reach a certain stage of learning, all you need is just a tiny bit of fuel to propel you forward.
A former Fulbright scholar and pioneer in exobiology, Professor Velvl Greene spent years working for NASA searching for life on Mars. He continued to lecture right up until his passing in 2011. Read more about Professor Greene’s life, scientific research, and relationship to the Lubavitcher Rebbe here. This story is adapted from Curiosity and the Desire for Truth (Arthur Kurzweil Publishers—October 2015).
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.Parshah
The Jewish Answer to Evil By Mendel Kalmenson

When tragedy occurs on a community level, the shock and the sense of vulnerability can be paralyzing. Difficult questions are raised, such as “What do we do now? Should we fold up or scale back our efforts and presence? Is this a sign that we’re in the wrong place, that this will never work?”
The Rebbe responded to the stricken residents of Kfar Chabad after their village was attacked by terrorists:
While Judaism does not provide explanations for tragedy, it does have a response. Do not diminish or detract from your noble activities, but increase and expand them!
Consolation can be achieved through intensified activity, a heightened sense of purpose, and by redirecting our thoughts from what has been lost to that which thankfully remains.
By choosing to rebuild and intensify growth in the face of loss—and especially in the face of terrorism and acts of hatred—we also make a statement of victory. We become living proof that evil does not prevail, that life triumphs over death. Conversely, reducing positive efforts and activities only contributes to promoting the ideological goals of evildoers.
An ancient iteration of this argument can be found in midrashic lore,1 as articulated by Miriam the prophetess when she was a child. After Pharaoh had decreed that all newborn Hebrew males be thrown into the Nile, Miriam’s parents, Amram and Yocheved, who held leadership positions among the children of Israel, divorced, leading other Israelites to divorce as well. Miriam went to her father and challenged him, saying, “Pharaoh decreed against the males, but you have passed a decree against the females as well.”
As a result of this argument, which brought about Yocheved and Amram’s reunion, none other than Moses, Pharaoh’s nemesis, was born. And it was this argument that was responsible for the high Jewish birthrate despite the slavery in Egypt.
Miriam’s argument was certainly not intuitive, and the counterargument would echo throughout much of Jewish history including, most recently, the Holocaust: “Who in their right mind could bring children into such a dark and turbulent world?” During the time of the first Jewish holocaust in Egypt—when newborn infants were being used for spare building parts, and a campaign of genocide was being waged against male infants—having children must have seemed at the very least irresponsible. And, yet, as Miriam argued, the Jewish people believed that by not having children, they would only be contributing to the program of extermination their enemies planned for them.
In a frank letter he wrote to Elie Wiesel (the Holocaust survivor whose activism and writings won him the Nobel Peace Prize), the Rebbe advocated a similar approach to those who had recently undergone the trauma and devastation of the Holocaust:
And now allow me to make a personal observation which is related to our discussion when you visited me last. Your article series titled “And the World Was Silent” reawakened in me the idea I’d like to communicate here.
To remember and not forget, as the Torah teaches, “Do not forget that which Amalek did to you . . .”2 is obviously an active thing—in the language of the rabbis, a “positive command.”
That notwithstanding, remembering alone is only one aspect of our responsibility. The other, and arguably more important, aspect is the active combat against the so-called “final solution” that Hitler, may his name be obliterated, like Haman in his day, had in mind to do.
This combat should express itself through deeds that recall the Jewish response to infanticide in Egypt, “they would increase and they would multiply.”
To achieve this aim, it doesn’t help to only feel sad and constantly remind oneself of the horrific tragedies that once were, and of the importance not to forget. Rather, we must expand and publicize efforts to grow the Jewish people literally, and in the spirit of “they would increase and they would multiply”—in contradiction to the “final solution.”
In this matter, as in all matters, the important thing is to provide a living example, especially someone like yourself who underwent the horrors that you did, who will demonstrate that Hitler did not prevail. Even if only in order to spite him, one should have a large family of children and grandchildren.
With all the conviction I can muster, I’d like to say that notwithstanding the importance of telling the younger generation about the tragic experiences and losses suffered and how difficult it is to be liberated from those terrifying memories and ordeals of the past, in my estimation the main calling of our times is to fulfill the teaching which states, “Against your will you must live,”3 with the emphasis on “you must live” . . . i.e., you must make the effort to establish a Jewish home and family, which will certainly contribute to the downfall of Hitler, proving futile his efforts that there be one chassid of Vizhnitz less . . .4
At the conclusion of this long letter (only a portion of which is quoted here), the Rebbe ends:
Too long a letter? If, however, with good fortune you will be married after the festival of Shavuot, according to the tradition of Moses and Israel, this lengthy letter, as well as the time you spend reading it, will have been well worth the while.
Subsequently Elie Wiesel did marry, and he attributed his decision, in part, to the Rebbe’s prodding. As he related in an interview, the Rebbe was overjoyed at the news: “The greatest bouquet of flowers I ever received was from the Rebbe for my wedding. He was [always] nudging me to get married. I have letters—one letter in which we speak about Jewish theology—seven, eight pages about theology. At the end [of the letter], he said, ‘And by the way, when are you getting married?’ As if the two had something in common.”5
In the Rebbe’s mind, they clearly did.6
In addition to the practical, demographic response, the Rebbe also advocated a spiritual retaliation of sorts as a response to the massive losses the Jewish people experienced at the hands of our enemies.
What follows is an excerpt from an informal discussion session between members of the Young Leadership Cabinet of the U.J.A. (United Jewish Appeal) and the Rebbe, which lasted through the evening of March 4, 1962.
Question: We are going on a pilgrimage to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, going to Warsaw and Auschwitz. As we get deeper and deeper in the reading, we’re all having many problems with the questions that the Holocaust and Auschwitz bring. . . . What did the whole thing mean?
Rebbe: . . . If history teaches us something that we must not repeat or must emulate, the best lesson can be taken from the destruction of the Second Temple. We witnessed something so terrible, it must bring every Jew to become more identified with his Jewishness. . . . Every one of us has an obligation to fight Hitler, [which] can be done by letting that which Hitler had in mind to annihilate, not only continue, but grow bigger and on a deeper scale. Hitler was not interested so much in annihilating the body of Jewishness as he was interested in annihilating the spirit. [He decreed that the spiritual and moral ideas which the Jewish people embodied7] must not infect the German people, the Russian people or the Polish people—and because of that, he had all the Polish, Russian and German people on his side. They regarded the Jews as a foreign body, and a body that does not belong must be eliminated.
If you influence a Jew not to become assimilated but to profess his Jewishness, his pride and inspiration and joy, this is defeating Hitlerism. If someone does his best in his personal life to be Jewish [so that] everyone sees that in the street he is a Jew, that his home is a Jewish home, that he is proud, and that it is not a burden but his pride, his life defeats the idea of Hitlerism.
When you go to Auschwitz, you must profess there that Auschwitz cannot happen again. You can assure it by becoming a living example of a living Jew. It has nothing to do with chauvinism. You are not trying to convert anyone to be a Jew, but you are fighting, you are struggling for survival not only as a human being but as a Jew. In our time it is a very acute problem, because every one of us must do something not only to perform his task, but to replace all those Jews that were murdered and annihilated. Their tasks are our direct duty.8
In the years following the Holocaust, the Rebbe often expressed the idea that after the German atrocities, which annihilated nearly a third of the Jewish people, every living Jew counts as two, for through each Jew, those who were murdered live on.
The responsibility of survivors and those not directly affected by a catastrophe to represent those who perished is captured in the following story:
A Holocaust survivor once came to see the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, some years after he settled in America. This survivor was plagued by an all-consuming guilt, the type that afflicted many who saw their peers killed off or who were the sole remnant of their entire families or towns. The question of “Why me?” devoured their waking hours. “Why did I survive while the others did not?” they probed others and accused themselves.
This man, too, was haunted by survivor’s guilt. He had visited many rabbis for counsel so that he could move on, but to no avail. His search brought him to 770 Eastern Parkway for an audience with the rebbe.
“What zechut (merit) did I have over the others?” he asked desperately. “Why did I merit surviving?”
The emphatic two-word response turned his life around: Zechut? Chov! (“Merit? Obligation!”)
Rabbi Mendel Kalmenson is the rabbi of Beit Baruch and executive director of Chabad of Belgravia, London, where he lives with his wife, Chana, and children.
Mendel was an editor at the Judaism Website—Chabad.org, and is also the author of the popular books Seeds of Wisdom and A Time to Heal.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.
FOOTNOTES
1. Talmud, Sotah 12a.
2. Deuteronomy 25:17.
3. Avot 4:22.
4. Igrot Kodesh, vol. 23, pp. 373–375. See also ibid., vol. 25, pp. 56ff.
5. See http://lubavitch.com/news/article/2030937/In-Conversation-with-Nobel-Prize-Winner-Elie-Wiesel.html.
6. When Elie and Marion’s son, Elisha, was born, the Rebbe sent representatives to the brit milah (circumcision), who brought them a note from the Rebbe in which he wrote that his heart and soul were overflowing with joy.
7. The following are some examples of Hitler’s pronouncements that revealed the reasons behind his venomous hatred of the Jews:
“The struggle for world domination will be fought entirely between us, between Germans and Jews. All else is facade and illusion. Behind England stands Israel, and behind France, and behind the United States. Even when we have driven the Jew out of Germany, he remains our world enemy.” (Cited by Hermann Rauschning in Hitler Speaks, p. 234.)
“If only one country, for whatever reason, tolerates a Jewish family in it, that family will become the germ center for fresh sedition. If one little Jewish boy survives without any Jewish education, with no synagogue and no Hebrew school, it [Judaism] is in his soul. Even if there had never been a synagogue or a Jewish school or an Old Testament, the Jewish spirit would still exist and exert its influence. It has been there from the beginning and there is no Jew, not a single one, who does not personify it.” (From a conversation with Croatian Foreign Minister General Kvaternik, July 21, 1941, cited by Robert Wistrich, Hitler’s Apocalypse, p. 122.)
8. From an informal interview session between a group of Young Leadership Cabinet members of the U.J.A. (United Jewish Appeal) and the Rebbe, Sunday evening, March 4, 1962. An English transcript can be accessed at http://www.chabad.org/354698.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Parshah
The Kabbalah of Anger By Lazer Gurkow

Pharaoh’s Anger
In a powerful condemnation of anger, our sages proclaim that anger is tantamount to idol worship.
There is no question that during fits of temper one can take leave of his senses and do stupid, even violent, things. But how is it equivalent to idolatry, which denies the oneness of G‑d?
When Moses demanded that Pharaoh set the Hebrews free, Pharaoh flew into a rage. He was convinced that the Jews were agitating for freedom because their burden was too light, leaving them too much time to think. In truth, they were thinking of freedom because their burden was too heavy; they had too little time. Increasing their burden would only exacerbate their desire for freedom, especially since Moses’ arrival gave them cause for hope.
Had Pharaoh thought it through carefully, he might have discerned another point of view. He might have noted that a desire for freedom was understandable among overworked slaves, and that easing their burden was a wise idea. Had he reflected further, he might have concluded that it wasn’t in Egypt’s long-term interest to subjugate a growing, disenfranchised people. Had he been completely objective, he might have actually considered the matter from the slaves’ point of view. His heart might have been touched by the plight of a suffering nation, and he might have been moved to ease their burden.
But because he was angry, he did none of the above. Instead, his reasoning was clouded by one overarching thought: The Jews, a people I am accustomed to dehumanizing and enslaving, have the audacity to demand a reprieve. They actually think they have rights.
Our Anger
Does any of this sound familiar? Is this not the typical mindset of anger? Perfectly rational interpretations of motive and consequence are breezily dismissed in favor of the narrative that offends us most. We follow this flawed narrative to an even more flawed conclusion, and imagine terrible consequences if we don’t respond to the perceived provocation. We reject every perspective but one: This was wrong, and I must avenge it.
A story is told of a host who discovered that his guest was a landsman (an émigré from the same hometown). All through dinner the host inquired after the wellbeing of the people he knew from home, but whenever he brought up a name, the visitor replied that the fellow had died. Dismayed, the host asked why so many people had died since his last visit. “Listen,” replied the guest, “when I’m eating, everyone else may as well be dead. Let me finish eating; then I’ll tell you all about them.”
We behave similarly when we are angry. There are a hundred aspects to the story, but when we are angry, they may as well not exist. We behave as if the only salient piece of the story is the part that angered us. We are perfectly capable of objective analysis—when something happens to others. When it is personal, we lose all objectivity. We isolate one facet and ignore the rest.
Universal Symmetry
Your good friend did something hurtful. But he had a reason. He has been your friend for many years. He hasn’t changed, and is still your friend. He regrets it. He, or someone else, might in fact benefit from what he did. Even you might benefit, or at least not be terribly harmed, by what he did. All these facts are true, and when you calm down and think about it, you will consider them all. But when you stop thinking and let your feelings reign, one feeling dominates. You find yourself myopically focused on the fact that he hurt you.
In truth, all aspects of the story are integrated with the one we choose to isolate. None would have existed if any one of them were missing. That is the way our universe works. On the surface, it appears as if each element stands alone and has no relation to the others. But we know better. An inner rhythm flows through the universe. Everything is interconnected. We know this is true on an atomic level; even on the macro level, the universe enjoys a symbiotic nature and delicate balance that makes each element dependent on all others.
The universe was created by G‑d with a single burst of creative power. Although G‑d’s infinite light manifests differently in each element of creation, the universe pulsates with that unifying divine energy. Every minute detail is part of G‑d’s cosmic blueprint, integral to the whole. At root, it is all one.
Imagine a single light that bursts into endless variations of colors when filtered through a kaleidoscope. Each color emerges from the single light, which is why they are all connected—each is an integral part of the others. Yet if you shut out every brilliant color and isolate only the most garish one, you are ruining the beauty of that color. Rather than being part of a brilliant whole, you reduced it to a single garish color.
Idol Worship
This is what we do when we fly off the handle in a fit of rage. We erase every dimension of the situation, and isolate one infuriating part. We deny the intricate pattern of brilliant symmetry woven by G‑d, and embrace only one side of the story.
So long as we review the matter in the privacy of our thoughts, we are capable of considering all aspects of the story. In fact, we often arrive at conclusions that include multiple factors. For example, we might conclude that the friend still loves us, didn’t mean to hurt us, and is sorry that he did, but that we still resent what happened. This is a merging of the story’s many aspects, which underscores its synthesis.
But once we allow our emotions to overtake us, it is difficult to moderate our anger with love. This is even more accentuated when we express our anger verbally. At that point we commit ourselves to a single interpretation of the event, which excludes all others. When we act on it, we are even further invested in this approach.
A pattern emerges. The more we introspect, the more we discern a common theme among the conflicting aspects of the story. The more we apply and express our feelings, the more particular our feelings become. This tells us that at our quintessence we are closely related to the Creator’s perspective, to the unity that incorporates all elements of a story. But when we become invested in our physical and emotional reality, we lose touch with that unifying truth.
This is perhaps what our sages meant when they defined anger as a form of idol worship. Just as the idol worshippers ignore the hand of G‑d and focus myopically on what is before them, so do we in bouts of anger.
Therapists advise us to remove ourselves from a provoking situation in order to calm down, assess the matter from all angles and restore peace. But it is not just a therapeutic experience. It is a religious experience. When we take the time to think things through, we find the G‑dly perspective. Without even realizing it, we uncover the cosmic blueprint of the event.
You see, G‑d isn’t found only in sacred tomes and holy texts. G‑d is found in every element of the universe. When you step away from anger, you find interconnectivity. And in the process, you find G‑d.
This essay is based on a treatise by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi on “Kegavna,” a paragraph from the Zohar included by many in the liturgy of Kabbalat Shabbat.
Rabbi Lazer Gurkow is spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Tefilah in London, Ontario, and a frequent contributor to The Judaism Website—Chabad.org. He has lectured extensively on a variety of Jewish topics, and his articles have appeared in many print and online publications. For more on Rabbi Gurkow and his writings, visit InnerStream.ca.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Parshah
Jochebed: Planting the Seeds of Leadership
By Stacey Goldman

I am listening to my 9-year-old son read a book to his little brother. He animatedly asks him what sound a cow makes, and patiently waits as the 2-year-old goes through his entire cache of animal noises until he finally arrives at “moo.” I kvell as I feel I am seeing an early sprout of my planting efforts in raising my children. Actually, a more accurate description would be a trampled bit of brownish-green reassembling itself to continue growing upward, as said 9-year-old had earlier behaved less than ideally toward his 4-year-old brother.
As the mother of young children, it is easy for me to lose perspective amidst the peaks and valleys of parenting. It will be years before I will see the fruits of my labor: will my watering and weeding yield contributing, functioning members of the Jewish community and society at large?
Sprout, planting, fruits, watering, weeding. Amidst the peaks and valleys of parenting, it is easy to lose perspectiveI am by no means the first to compare parenting to planting, especially within the context of Jewish tradition. Jochebed is described by the rabbis as having planted a vineyard, namely her son Moses. King Solomon in Proverbs describes the ideal woman: “She envisions a field and buys it; from the fruit of her handiwork she plants a vineyard.” The rabbis explain in Midrash Eishet Chayil that this verse represents Jochebed, the mother of Moses. Moses represents all of the Jewish people, and they are called a vineyard in the book of Isaiah.
This explanation is ripe with imagery of parenting as a planting process. Jochebed first envisions a field—the home and its atmosphere in which she will raise her children. She then acquires it: she works on her character to ensure that she lives up to her own moral standards. Finally, with proper love, care and attention from her own hands, she sees her seeds come to life in her children and their accomplishments. She doesn’t see just one plant come to life; her efforts produce an entire vineyard!
We first met Jochebed in Parshat Shemot as a nameless daughter of Levi who must hide her newborn son for three months. Ultimately, she is forced to make a basket for him and send him down the Nile River, where he is ultimately saved by the daughter of Pharaoh herself. Jochebed is sought out as a wet-nurse, and the daughter of Pharaoh actually pays her to nurse her own son. With this arrangement, she is able to raise him during the first few formative years of his life. Imagine her care in mothering, knowing she would have to return him to the palace.
According to the rabbis, we were introduced to her even prior to the birth of Moses, as one of the two brave midwives who defy Pharaoh’s decree and let all the Jewish babies, male and female alike, live. They maintain their courageous stance even after Pharaoh confronts them. Throughout this entire narrative, we never hear the name Jochebed.
The Throughout this entire narrative, we never hear the name Jochebedfirst time Jochebed is mentioned by name, it is in a bizarrely placed genealogy immediately prior to Moses’ and his brother Aaron’s first encounter with Pharaoh in Parshat Va’eira. If this appeared in an ordinary book, our eyes would skim over this section as quickly as possible to get to the “good stuff.” The Torah, however, is no ordinary book. Every sentence is meaningful, and we have something to gain from every word, every letter. Why is this list of faceless names placed here, at this point in the story?
Moses has just failed to inspire the Israelites. They are so overburdened by their life of servitude that they cannot even conceive of freedom. G‑d then commands Moses and Aaron to confront Pharaoh and demand freedom for the children of Israel. Moses wonders aloud: how he will ever convince Pharaoh to do something at considerable economic loss to his kingdom, when he cannot even motivate the Israelites with all that they have to gain from their impending freedom? G‑d repeats His command, and so begins the genealogy starting with Jacob’s first son Reuben and his children, then Simeon and his children, and finally Levi with a more detailed list of his progeny. Within this list, we see in chapter 6, verse 20: “Amram took Jochebed, his aunt, as his wife, and she bore him Aaron and Moses.” This is the first mention of Jochebed by name. She is also the first woman mentioned in this genealogy.
Many rabbis throughout the ages have commented on why this genealogy appears at this exact juncture. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (a 19th-century German rabbi) highlights the change that occurs from here on. “From this point onwards begins their triumphal mission, a mission which has never been accomplished before or after them, so that it became a real necessity to first establish their parentage and relationships so that for all time their absolutely human origin, and the absolutely At birth, a baby is nothing more than potential for the fully formed person he will becomeordinary human nature of their beings should be firmly established.”
The Lubavitcher Rebbe elaborates on this theme: “The Torah wants to emphasize that a Jewish leader is not one who is born in a supernatural way. He is a normal person who has a father and mother, and who has elevated himself spiritually to be worthy of his rank. Every Jewish boy has the potential to become a Moses—a leader of the Jewish people in his generation.” (Cited in Vedibarta Bam)
Moses, like all human beings, was born of a mother and a father. At birth, a baby is nothing more than potential for the fully formed person he will become. It is at this point in the Torah, immediately before Moses’ amazing leadership feats that brought the Jewish people from slavery to freedom, that we learn the names of the man and woman who planted these seeds in him from birth, Jochebed and Amram. They have done their job as parents; they can now enjoy the fruits of their labors. Jochebed did indeed plant a vineyard by her diligent parenting of her son Moses.
Stacey Goldman teaches Torah in the Philadelphia area while raising a houseful of boys.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Parshah
A Message of Hope By Chana Weisberg

Who isn’t suffering nowadays? We’re surrounded by tragedy, difficulty and challenges. And then we open up the newspaper and we read about even more!
Yet, can the source of some of our misery possibly be that we view our lives in a limited way, believing that what we hold now represents how we always were and will be?
The truth is, of course, that our world is just a tiny snapshot of the infinite cosmic worlds, and we are seeing but a tiny dot of the full picture. But moreover, even within the here and now of our physical world, everything remains in a state of flux. We may not be aware of it, but at every moment there is enormous change. The shift may occur so slightly as to be imperceptible to our eyes and minds, but it is taking place.
In this week’s Torah portion, in one of the most moving accounts of hope emerging from within overwhelming darkness, the Torah records the first exchange between G‑d and Moses.
The Jewish people had been experiencing the severest tyranny of their Egyptian oppressors. G‑d commands Moses to reveal that He will be freeing them from bondage. Moses responds by asking what he should tell the Israelites is G‑d’s name.
Moses was requesting a message of solace and hope to bring to a broken people whose G‑d had seemingly turned a deaf ear to their anguish during the last many decades.
G‑d responds elusively. Moses should convey to the Hebrew slaves that G‑d’s name is “I will be what I will be.”
For a time, the slavery became worse after Moses’ message of hope. Though the seeds of redemption were sown, from the people’s perspective nothing had changed. And yet the situation was dramatically evolving.
Perhaps G‑d’s message to the downtrodden people is G‑d’s message to us in our moments of misery: we can connect to divinity with “I will be what I will be”—the power to be.
When we realize that being is inseparable from becoming, we can free ourselves from our anxieties and self-defeating habits.
When the blackness seems overpowering, when the tedious monotony is driving us to the brink of insanity, we can take comfort in the realization that nothing in our world remains static.
Not our present challenges. Nor who we are.
You, your life and your circumstances are an integral part of G‑d’s cosmic plan, emerging anew every instance. The present is only what we have brought from our pasts, and what we will use to forge into our immediate futures.
There is no static “is.” There is only what we were—and most importantly, what we choose to become.
Chana Weisberg is the editor of TheJewishWoman.org. She lectures internationally on issues relating to women, relationships, meaning, self-esteem and the Jewish soul. She is the author of five popular books.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.VIDEO

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All the Same
Rabbi Hillel Zaltzman was active in the Soviet Jewish underground. When faced with hard times and tough decisions, he recalls secretly consulting his “zeide” in America. The word may simply mean “grandfather” in Yiddish, but to Rabbi Zaltzman and his comrades, it was the code name for “Rebbe.” (1960s)
Watch (5:20)

http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/livingtorah/player_cdo/aid/2489369/jewish/All-the-Same.htm
---------------------Jewish News
There Is Hope. Miracles Do Happen By Nechama Dina Hendel

Photo: Yehudit Chana Yeinan
Wednesday's news had hit me hard.
Two more of our dear brothers were taken from us and one more is severely wounded as a result of a deadly stabbing attack near the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem.
Ofer Ben Ari, a 46-year-old husband and father of two daughters, and Rabbi Reuven Biermacher, a 45-year-old husband, father of seven, and a devoted teacher at Aish Hatorah, have been torn from their families and loved ones by yet another act of Palestinian terror.
The wound in each one of our hearts is still raw and bleeding. Each time we hear of another innocent victim claimed by this wave of terror, the unhealed scars of previous attacks are painfully reopened. The Henkin couple, the Litman family, Ezra Schwartz, the toddler who lost his leg in a vehicular attack, and the images and stories of 24 precious lives ended and hundreds more wounded and maimed flood our consciousness, reigniting feelings of deep grief and anguish.
Is there hope? When will the situation improve?
As these thoughts rush through my mind, I remenber the wedding I attended on Wednesday, the same day as this gruesome attack.
Reflecting on the unique wedding of Chedva and Shmuel, I am comforted.
The wedding was not typical in any way. Our dear friend Chedva, 61, was getting married for the first time to Shmuel, 72. Chedva is a frequent Shabbat guest at our home in Talpiyot, and she is one of the most gracious people I know. Each time she comes, she raves about how delicious the food is and how delightful the company. Her praise and appreciation are genuine and heartwarming.
And this week, the miracle of her marriage took place. Chedva twirled in her exquisite white and silver gown and proudly displayed her sparkling silver shoes.
In her strongly accented Hebrew, Chedva was calling out to the guests, "Kulam le'echol- everyone, please eat!"
She carried her book of Psalms with her and showered blessings upon all of the friends and family who came to share in her simcha.
"I bless each one of you to find your zivug, your true match. Everyone should get married, Shmuel says!" she gushed to the large group of older singles surrounding her.

Photo: Yehudit Chana Yeinan
Shmuel sported a bow tie and exuberated youthful joy and excitement. His warm smile and kind hearted nature reminded me of Chedva.
I offered to bring Chedva a drink or some food, but she told me that she was too hyper to eat. The thought of my composed older friend being hyper made me smile.
How different this wedding was from my own and the others I frequently attend.
This bride and groom were decades older, certainly wiser, and yet the pure joy and excitement was timeless.
It struck me that Chedva and Shmuel had each been living fragmented lives until their reunion. For 61 years Chedva was single and searching, hoping and wishing.
Shmuel, too, went through his own journey, until he finally found the other half of his soul.
But finally, there they were at Mt. Scopus, overlooking the hills of Jerusalem and celebrating the seemingly impossible.
It hadn't been easy for Chedva. I remember her working overtime, cleaning homes and cooking for the elderly, and I imagine that there were times that marriage seemed like a distant dream for her.
And yet it happened, and I was blessed to witness this awesome celebration.
The joy of this older couple uniting at a festive Jewish wedding touched my heart, infusing me with much needed optimism.
There is hope. Miracles do happen.
G‑d can piece together this fragmented, painful reality called Exile. And we, too, can do our part to help piece things together, through continued acts of kindness and Jewish unity.
Just as G‑d brought Chedva and Shmuel together after all these years of loneliness, He can certainly reunite with us in a manner that we will feel His open love and affection, with peace and harmony in our land.
Even when it seems so elusive, the miracle of salvation is around the bend. Chedva and Shmuel's wedding is living proof.
We will continue to anticipate and hope, and through this, may we merit the Redemption speedily!
Nechama Dina Hendel is a mother of six, who teaches at Mayanot and co-directs Chabad of Baka, Jerusalem, with her husband, Rabbi Avraham Hendel.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Jewish News
L’Chaim on a Moscow Train Platform: 25th Year Since the Fall of the USSR
By Dovid Margolin

Here, at a secret farbrengen in Moscow circa 1983, Reb Getche Vilensky can be seen fourth to left, clutching his long white beard.
First in a series of articles on Jewish life in the former Soviet Union in the 25th year since the formal dissolution of the USSR on December 26, 1991.
Three young Jewish men approached Reb Getche Vilensky’s Moscow apartment, hoping to join him that evening in celebrating the Chassidic holiday of 19 Kislev. It was the late 1950s; times were dangerous. In the building’s dark entryway lurked a Soviet policeman, waiting for them.
The young men—Notte Barkan, Yehuda Bartnovsky and Mottel Lifshitz—placed a call to their would-be host, Reb Getche, telling him “he had guests” (i.e., the police), and that they would not be able to join him that night for the farbrengen they had hoped for.
“Reb Notte told me this story,” says Rabbi Yitzchak Kogan, himself a legendary figure in the underground Jewish community in Leningrad (today, St. Petersburg), and since 1991 the rabbi of the Chabad-Lubavitch Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue in central Moscow. “He said the three of them then took an electrichka trolley to the end of the line, to the last stop where all of the drunks used to congregate and split bottles of vodka between themselves. They got some herring, bought a bottle of vodka and sat the whole night among the drunks, singing and sharing Chassidic stories with each other. It was the only place they knew no one would be suspicious of them saying l’chaim together. That’s how they celebrated the 19th of Kislev.”
Kogan says many years later, Barkan, who after emigrating in 1969 returned to the USSR as a Chabad emissary to Riga, Latvia, in 1989, told him that it was that lonely Chassidic gathering on the dark and dingy outskirts of Moscow that gave the young men the strength and courage they needed to continue their work in the Soviet Jewish underground. The other two men—Bartnovsky and Lifshitz—also served the Moscow Jewish community with distinction, Lifshitz as the city’s shochet (ritual slaughterer) and mohel (circumciser).

Rabbi Getche Vilensky was for decades a central figure in the underground Jewish community of Moscow.
It was this legacy of Russian-Jewish self-sacrifice that was highlighted at a massive 19th of Kislev farbrengen held in Moscow on Nov. 29, where 1,000 people gathered at the opulent Congress Park at the Radisson Royal Hotel banquet hall to hear from, among others, former Soviet political prisoner and current head of the Jewish Agency for Israel Natan Sharansky, former underground Chassidic activist Cantor Berel Zaltzman and Kogan, who spoke via a video presentation.
“These are people who could have lived calmly and well had they just minded their own business, but they understood that this was not the Chassidic approach,” Rabbi Berel Lazar, Russia’s chief rabbi and head Chabad emissary, told the audience.
The Moscow gathering, which also drew Israel’s new ambassador to Russia Zvi Heifetz and Russian-Jewish literary figure Alexander Gelman, placed special emphasis on the fact that this December 26 marks the beginning of the 25th year since the dissolution of the Soviet Union
The renaissance of Jewish life and free religious practice throughout the former Communist empire is perhaps most visible during the week of Chanukah, when thousands of Jews gather to witness the lighting of menorahs in public squares throughout the former Soviet Union—inside the Kremlin in Moscow; on Kudirkos Square in Vilnius, Lithuania; across from the State Opera Theater in the center of Kharkov, Ukraine; and so many other places.

Reb Mottel Lifshitz (left), known as Reb Mottel der Shoichet for his work as a ritual slaughterer, sits next to Reb Getche at a Moscow farbrengen in the 1980s.
Yet the shimmering public lights of Chanukah—a Jewish holiday nearly forgotten by generations of Soviet Jews, only to be revived and reinvigorated in the last quarter-century—would not have been possible without the inner flame; without the furtive 19 Kislev Chassidic gatherings, subdued singing and disguised l’chaims of the past.
Jewish life had, of course, suffered unparalleled devastation during decades of Soviet rule, but it was not altogether destroyed. Using a spiritual jug of oil sealed by the Chabad Rebbes themselves, underground Chassidic activists had successfully ignited a lamp, one that continues to burn miraculously to this day.
A New Year of Light
The Chassidic holiday the young men marked on that lonely Moscow night in the 1950s—and the one that 1,000 people celebrated in grand style this month—is the 19th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev. Regarded within Chabad circles as the “New Year of Chassidism,” it celebrates the release of Chabad’s founder Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi from a Tsarist Russian prison in 1798.

Rabbi Yitzchak Kogan, rabbi of the Bolshaya Bronnaya synagogue in central Moscow, who for years worked in the Soviet Jewish underground in Leningrad (today St. Petersburg).
In addition to being the acknowledged leader of the Chassidic movement in Russia, White Russia, Lithuania and large swaths of Ukraine, Rabbi Schneur Zalman—also known as the Alter Rebbe—had founded the Colel Chabad charity to support needy Jews in the land of Israel, then under Ottoman rule. Jewish opponents of the Chassidic movement, both religious Jews and Jewish enlightenment activists from Vilna, used this information to bring accusations of treason against the Alter Rebbe to the government. They claimed that the money he collected for his charity was, in fact, aiding Russia’s enemy, the Ottoman Empire (the two countries had been at war throughout much of the 18th century). They hoped that by silencing this visionary Chassidic leader they could crush his burgeoning movement with one swift blow.
The Alter Rebbe was arrested and brought to St. Petersburg in a black iron wagon reserved for enemies of the state, and held in the Petropavlovskaya Fortress for 53 days. But the Alter Rebbe and his followers did not just see the charges only in physical terms; they saw it as a spiritual battle against the new teachings and path laid out by the Alter Rebbe. The charges were ultimately dropped by order of Tsar Paul I himself, and on the 19th of Kislev, Nov. 16, 1798 O.S., the Alter Rebbe was freed. The holiday is traditionally celebrated on both the 19th and 20th of Kislev, which corresponded this year to Dec. 1 through Dec. 2.

Rabbi Berel Lazar, chief rabbi of Russia, addresses the central 19 Kislev farbrengen gathering in Moscow. The event, which marked the day of release of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi from Tsarist prison, also focused on it being 25 years since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The holiday has been deeply ingrained in the Chassidic psyche ever since, its celebration marked each year with festive family meals, intimate farbrengens and large communal gatherings during which the story is retold, the Alter Rebbe’s famous melody of “Four Stanzas” sung, and l’chaims toasted.
“Grandfather visited us on the way to and from his Rebbe before Shavuot and Rosh Hashanah,” wrote Israel’s President Zalman Shazar (1889-1974) regarding his childhood in Belarus. “On our part, we visited him during the weeks of Passover and Sukkot ... and on the nineteenth of Kislev.”
(Shazar, who was named Schneur Zalman for the Alter Rebbe, came from Chabad roots on both his mother and father’s side).
In Russia, on the very same streets where the story’s events took place 217 years ago, there’s an intensified emotional connection to the day. For many Russian Jews from Chassidic backgrounds—even those who had strayed far from religious practice due to various circumstances­­—the 19th of Kislev remained an important holiday to mark in some way.
Sitting on the banks of the frozen Neva River, these days the Petropavloskaya Fortress in St. Petersburg is open to visitors. On display inside is a wax statue of the Alter Rebbe, one of the prison’s most famous former inmates, and near it hangs a sign: “Legend has it that Rabbi Schneur Zalman was visited in prison by Emperor Paul I himself. Each year, Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s followers come here to celebrate the day of his freedom.”

A crowd gathers in the rain to watch the public lighting of a giant menorah in St. Petersburg.
“Of course, there’s a special significance of celebrating 19th of Kislev in Petersburg today,” explains Rabbi Mendel Pewzner, who has been the city’s chief rabbi and head Chabad emissary since he moved to Russia with his wife, Sara, in 1992. “It’s explained that the real work of teaching Chassidus, spreading the Torah teachings that will lead to the coming of Moshiach, that began noch Peterburg, after the events of 19th Kislev in Petersburg. A new era of the Chassidic movement began then. So it’s very closely associated with this city.”
During Tsarist rule—save for a handful of wealthy and influential merchants and businessman—Jews were banned from living in St. Petersburg. The imperial city’s gates slowly opened to Jewish settlement during the reign of Tsar Alexander II (1855-1881), but Jews were not freely allowed in until after the Bolshevik Revolution, at which time Jewish religious practice began to be systematically suppressed.
Today, under Pewzner’s leadership, six Chabad Jewish centers operate throughout the city, including the Grand Choral Synagogue in the urban center. Some 500 Jewish students attend Chabad’s kindergarten-through-high-school educational system in St. Petersburg, which also counts a yeshivah and an orphanage.
“Every year on 19 Kislev, groups of children from our schools visit the fortress,” adds Pewzner. “That’s who the plaque is referring to.”

Fireworks explode off of words spelling "Chanukah 5776" in Cyrillic script outside the Grand Choral Synagogue in St. Petersburg.
This year in honor of 19 Kislev—with the added emphasis of Hakhel, a once-every-seven-years occurrence that is a time traditionally dedicated to celebrating Jewish unity—the joint St. Petersburg Jewish community held a weekend Shabbaton retreat in a city suburb, drawing 300 men, women and children. There was also a large farbrengen held at the Choral Synagogue, barely a 10-minute car ride away from the fortress where the Alter Rebbe was held.
During the eight days of Chanukah, 20 large public menorahs shine proudly throughout St. Petersburg, with massive billboards informing passers-by of the menorah-lighting times—all of it seen by thousands of people each day. This in the city where it all began, where Chabad’s founder was imprisoned, tried and released, and who subsequently began a new phase of building the Chassidic movement and spreading its teachings.
It was the Alter Rebbe’s teachings and followers that would power Judaism’s survival during Russian Jewry’s darkest hour, as well as its eventual resurgence.
The Melody of ‘Four Stanzas’

Rabbi Mendel Pewzner, chief rabbi of St. Petersburg since 1992, lights the giant menorah standing outside the city's Grand Choral Synagogue, barely a ten minute drive from the fortress where Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi was imprisoned in 1798.
If Kogan remembers a 19th of Kislev story dating to the 1950s, it’s because he experienced something similar, almost identical, 20 years later in Leningrad. Back at the Moscow gathering, a video was played of Kogan telling his own tale of a covert farbrengen celebrated years earlier.
“It was the 1970s, and I had read that there’s this Chassidic holiday and it’s called 19 Kislev,” says Kogan, repeating the story by phone from Moscow. “We had no idea how we were supposed to celebrate it, but I knew for sure you have to say l’chaim. In Leningrad there lived an old Tomim [a student of the Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch yeshivahsystem] named Reb Naftoli Hertz Chidekel, so we went to him.”
Kogan remembers climbing the stairs to Chidekel’s Leningrad apartment, friends in tow, bottle of vodka in hand.
“We knocked on the door saying, ‘Rav Chidekel, gut yontiff!’ He was an older man and he was a little afraid, but he opened up and responded in kind, ‘gut yontiff.’
“We told him that we had come to say l’chaim with him because it was the 19th of Kislev.”
Chidekel invited them in, looked first at their bottle and then at them, and said: “Don’t you know? On 19 of Kislev, you first sing the melody of the Alter Rebbe, and then you say l’chaim!”
Like 19 Kislev itself, the Alter’s Rebbe’s niggun [soulful Jewish tune], called “Daled Bavos” or the “Melody of Four Stanzas,” has a place of unparalleled importance for the Chabad follower. It is a serious and contemplative tune, one sung only on special occasions—under the chuppah at a wedding, during the High Holidays and on the 19th of Kislev. In teaching the song to Kogan and the other young men, Chidekel imparted to them the meaning of the day.

Guest speakers at the Moscow event, which drew 1,000 people, included former Soviet political prisoner and refusenik Natan Sharansky, today the head of the Jewish Agency for Israel.
“The melody of the Old Rebbe [Alter Rebbe] is rooted in the soul of every Chabad Chassid, and his children and children's children until the end of the generations,” Shazar records his pious Chassidic grandfather telling him during their last ever encounter. “If a righteous Chassid or any one of his descendants wants to remember this holy melody and it escapes him no matter how hard he tries to recall it, this simply proves that at that particular time he has deviated somehow from the true path and must search his soul and repent.
“It cannot be for nothing, my child, that a Chassid forgets the Rebbe’s melody—this precious gift and touchstone. Do not lose it, my child!”
A Continuous Miracle
This year will mark 25 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the precipitous disintegration of Soviet power that few analysts predicted even towards the end of the 1980s. The happy anniversary is not lost on the Jewish community of Russia, which plans on marking it with a series of events throughout the coming year, beginning with this month’s 19th of Kislev banquet in Moscow.

Rabbi Yitzchak Kogan greets Rabbi Berel Zaltsman, who was a member of the undergroundr Chabad community in Samarkand, Soviet Asia, until his emigration in 1972. Zaltsman was a guest speaker at the Moscow 19 Kislev gathering.
“Only 25 years have gone by since that year that the Rebbe [the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory] said, ‘Let this be a year of miracles,’ ” recounted Lazar during his speech at the banquet. “We all remember how these miracles changed circumstances, specifically in this country. Since that time the Jewish community has grown, authorities look at the community differently, and thousands and thousands of Jews are returning to their roots and tradition—the miracle has continued until this day.”
“But like any miracle, it is possible thanks to people who are ready to sacrifice of themselves—that’s how it was on Chanukah, that’s how it was on Purim, and that’s how it is in our times. In this hall today, there are a number of people that, thanks to them, we are able to celebrate this holiday again.”
Zaltzman, a guest speaker flown in from the United States, was one of those people. Born and raised in the Soviet Union, he had been a member of the Chabad community in Samarkand, Soviet Asia, where until the early 1970s a full-fledged Chassidic infrastructure secretly flourished. Zaltzman grew up without ever stepping foot into a Soviet school, which meant he spent large parts of the school year in a closet or basement, hiding.

At a Chanukah concert in St. Petersburg, a boy prepares to light his own menorah. More than 500 children attend Chabad's educational system in St. Petersburg, which includes a yeshivah and orphanage.
When he was a teenager and developed an operatic singing voice, he told his father he wanted to enroll in a musical school in Samarkand.
“I told my father I have no diploma, no skills, why shouldn’t I go train my voice here? I’ll become a chazzan [cantor] when we get to Israel,” Zaltzman told the audience in Moscow. “My father answered me, ‘Before you become a chazzan, you will become a non-Jew!’
“That’s how my father saw it,” said Zaltzman. “There could not be any compromises.”
Sharansky spent close to nine years behind bars and in Gulag labor camps before being released in 1986. He spoke of the isolation room at the Lefortovo Prison in Moscow and visiting it years later, before telling the audience of the person who informed his wife, Avital, that he would soon be going free: The Rebbe.
“Then came the day, the Rebbe’s secretary Rabbi [Binyomin] Klein called my wife and told her that this time they would be releasing me,” Sharansky recalled. “And that’s what happened. There was a day that I woke up in Lefortovo prison ... and that evening I was with my wife and the whole nation of Israel at the Kotel [Western Wall].”

More than 1,000 people turned out for the 19 Kislev gathering in Moscow, which was held at the opulent Congress Park at the Radisson Royal Hotel on the Moskva River.
Just five years later, the miraculous changes that had allowed Sharansky to be freed had swept through the Soviet Union. That Chanukah, 1991, thousands of Jews gathered at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses to take part in the lighting of the menorah, which was broadcast around the world as part of the “Chanukah Live” program that linked world-wide menorah-lightings via satellite, including the one with the Rebbe in New York.
On the stage were the Rebbe’s new emissaries to the Soviet Union (which would formally break apart officially weeks later), Lazar, in Moscow, and Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki, who had recently settled in Dnepropetrovsk (today, Ukraine). But the menorah was lit by an elderly man with a booming voice and a wooden leg named Reb Avraham Genin, a veteran underground Chabad activist who had spent decades working to sustain Jewish life in the Soviet Union. He read the blessings loudly and clearly; the public lighting of a menorah was the culmination of decades of dangerous work for the Jewish community at large.
Genin passed away not long thereafter.
“I remember very clearly a secret 19th of Kislev farbrengen of Lubavitcher Chassidim here in Moscow,” said Lazar during his speech. “And they were discussing: ‘What more can we do? How can we further spread Torah and Judaism, so that every Jew can find a path home?’”
The Chassidic teachings and spirit that stemmed from the Alter Rebbe and were continued by his successors, explained Lazar, was the secret not only to the chassidim’s survival, but their dedication to expanding the work.
“They were just a handful of people, but like the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe [Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory], said: ‘Although our army may be small in numbers, it is battle-ready.’”

Rabbi Berel Lazar (left) and Natan Sharansky (second from right) at the 19 Kislev gathering in Moscow. Sharansky told the audience about the person who informed his crusading wife Avital of his imminent arrest: The Rebbe.

The majestic St. Petersburg Grand Choral Synagogue was transformed into a concert hall for a Chanukah performance by Jewish music star Avraham Fried.

Russian Jews, once harassed and imprisoned for any expression of Judaism, pictured at this year's Chanukah event in St. Petersburg.

The havdalah ceremony marking the conclusion of Shabbat being performed at a Shabbaton for the St. Petersburg Jewish community in honor of 19 Kislev.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Jewish News
Classmates’ Initiative Wins New Wheelchair for Wisconsin Boy
By Faygie Levy Holt

Shmuely Tebbitt, left, with Bryon Riesch, whose charitable foundation provided Shmuley with a new wheelchair, thanks to the initiative of Shmuley's classmates at Hillel Academy.
For 14-year-old Shmuely (Silas) Tebbitt, recess wasn’t always his favorite activity. While his classmates headed outside or to the gym, Shmuely had to hang back.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to play basketball or baseball, but the teen, who has spina bifida, had outgrown his wheelchair. Not only that, but the wheelchair he’d been using for more than five years was heavy, bulky and falling apart. And when he wasn’t using the wheelchair, he was using crutches and pulling his entire body with his upper arm strength.
“My hands serve as my legs when I am standing, so I couldn’t use them for basketball or baseball, things like that,” says Shmuely, a seventh-grader at the Hillel Academy in Milwaukee, affiliated with Chabad-Lubavitch of Wisconsin. Plus, he says, he would tire easily because of all the weight he was pulling using his crutches.
However, wheelchairs are expensive with even basic models going for several thousands of dollars and the Tebbitt family’s insurance would not cover a new model.
Tired of seeing their friend struggling just to walk into school and not being able to join them for recess or on outings to the park and even, sometimes, to synagogue on Shabbat, a group of students at Hillel Academy took matters into their own hands to help their classmate get a new wheelchair.
Classmates Come to the Rescue

Shmuley with some friends who wrote letters to the foundation.
Leading the charge was 13-year-old Avi Pullin, who has been friends with Shmuely for the last few years.
Avi discussed his plans with his mother, an attorney, who suggested the students try and find a grant that might help pay for a wheelchair. Their search led them to the Bryon Reisch Paralysis Foundation, a Wisconsin foundation that helps those with spinal injuries and neurological disorders.
While Avi’s mother wrote a formal proposal, the kids began writing letters to encourage the foundation to help Shmuely. Some of the kids typed their letters, others took pen to paper and wrote heartfelt notes by hand.

Leading the charge was 13-year-old Avi Pullin, who has been friends with Shmuely for the last few years.
‘He Likes to Have Fun,’ Wrote Rebecca
“Writing everything is sometimes hard,” says 12-year-old Rebecca Kalmar, who also participated in the letter-writing campaign. “It’s hard to put things into words, but I knew Shmuely and wanted to help him because he’s a friend.”
In her letter, Rebecca wrote that despite being in a wheelchair, “[Shmuely] is very positive and his friends can always learn from him. He is a very kind and thoughtful person who loves nature. … He likes to have fun whether he is catching grasshoppers in the grass or playing games on the computer.”
“I think Shmuely needs a new wheelchair because he has trouble in school and in the neighborhood in getting around and keeping up with me and his other friends,” Avi wrote. “My friend Shmuely’s old chair has trouble with the brakes and is hard to push so he can’t participate with us. … It would make a huge difference for Shmuely to have a new chair because he could do so many more activities with us.”

Rebecca Kalmar, reading from the letter she sent to the Bryon Reisch Paralysis Foundation, a Wisconsin foundation that helps those with spinal injuries and neurological disorders.
Clearly the students were onto something because their campaign caught the attention of Bryon Riesch himself.
‘We Were Completely Touched’
“Upon receiving the letters from Silas’ friends we were completely touched. The way that each one of them sincerely crafted the letters to help out a friend in need was truly inspirational,” says Riesch, who was paralyzed from the chest down after an accident in 1998. “In today’s world it’s refreshing to see children so unselfishly care for someone else. We were honored to be able to fulfill their request and help him live a more independent life.”
School officials were equally as moved by the students’ actions.
“It’s just so touching,” says Mrs. Devorah Shmotkin, principal of Hillel Academy. “There’s an inner drive and force within the students, a sense of confidence and of doing what’s right. They know what needs to be done and they will do it. It wasn’t a question of should we or shouldn’t we, but how are we going to get him there.”
The principal went on to say that “Being a Jewish school, we strive all the time to make their learning come alive for them; to take what they learn in Chumash, Navi or Talmud and apply it to their lives, whether that’s building meaningful friendships with seniors in a nearby nursing home or helping one of their friends.”

Mrs. Devorah Shmotkin, principal of Hillel Academy, praised her students at the ceremony.
“Our students have leadership skills and values you don’t often see in kids today,” says Jennifer Huber, director of development and community engagement at Hillel. “For many kids today the logic is ‘How can I get a new Xbox or a new bicycle?’ a ‘What are you going to do for me?’ mentality. But for our students it’s all about ‘How can we affect change? What can we do to create a ripple effect?’”
On Tuesday, the school held a special assembly where Reisch officially presented the new, sleeker and more lightweight wheelchair to Shmuely.
“I feel very privileged to have very loyal friends and am also very excited,” says Shmuely, who proudly notes he scored his first two-point shot in basketball while a local news crew was filming a story about the wheelchair dedication.
As for Rebecca, Avi and their classmates, they don’t think they did anything all that special, even if the grown-ups around them know they did.
“It’s just helping out your friend,” Avi says. “And if you can, you should and I think a lot of people would do it if they could.”

On Tuesday, the school held a special assembly where Reisch officially presented the new, sleeker and more lightweight wheelchair to Shmuely.

“I feel very privileged to have very loyal friends and am also very excited,” says Shmuely, who proudly notes he scored his first two-point shot in basketball while a local news crew was filming a story about the wheelchair dedication.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Chabad.org Classic
The Shrinking of Man Is it a good thing that we’ve become so small?
By Yanki Tauber

Once upon a time, man was very big. The stars were tiny lights suspended in the “sky,” which was a blue, rooflike covering a few hundred miles above his head. The earth on which he stood was about a quarter the size it is today. At the very most, he was aware of the existence of several hundred thousand other human beings (the word “million” wasn’t even in his vocabulary). He was obviously the most important thing around—stones were just stones and animals were just animals. It was equally obvious that he stood at the pinnacle of creation, and all these other things existed solely to serve his needs.
Over the centuries, man shrank. His world grew larger; suddenly there were all these other people, and all these other species, dwarfing his significance. At the same time it became tinier and tinier, until it was an infinitesimal speck in a universe of mind-numbing vastness.
Did man become humbler? Did we become less infatuated with self? Interestingly enough, the shrinking of man had the very opposite effect. Ideals such as devotion and sacrifice became “human weaknesses.” Pride, once a sin, became a mark of psychological health. People started asking whether greed was indeed inferior to virtue, until greed became a virtue, ending the argument. Why is it that the more we came to appreciate our insignificance, the more selfish we became?
Upon closer examination, this is no paradox. The person who sees himself as the kingpin of creation, as something of paramount importance to the grand divine plan, is driven to fill that role and serve that plan; the person who believes that everything exists to serve his existence is certain that his existence serves a purpose beyond mere existence.
On the other hand, if man is insignificant, then he serves no higher purpose. “I am nothing” can be just another way of saying “There’s nothing but me.”
This is not to say that the person who sees himself as the center of creation is not susceptible to egoism and self-aggrandizement. Nor is it to say that feelings of inconsequentiality will never be accompanied by altruistic behavior. The point is that feelings of insignificance do not make a person selfless—indeed, the most virulent forms of egomania derive from a lack of self-worth. Conversely, a sense of self-worth can be the source of either arrogance or humility—depending on how a person regards his worth.
The difference, says chassidic master Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, is the difference between two alephs. In the opening verse of the book of Chronicles, the name “Adam” is written in the Torah with an oversizedaleph; in the opening verse of Leviticus the word vayikra, which refers to G‑d’s calling to Moses, is spelled with a miniature aleph.
Adam and Moses were both great men, and both were cognizant of their greatness. Adam was the “handiwork of G‑d” fashioned after “the divine image.” His sense of himself as the crown of G‑d’s creation is led to his downfall, when he understood this to mean that nothing is beyond his ken.
Moses was well aware of the fact that, of all G‑d’s creations, he was the only one to whom G‑d spoke “face to face”; he knew that it was to and through him that G‑d communicated His wisdom and will to His world. But rather than the inflated aleph of Adam, this knowledge evoked in him the self-effacing aleph of vayikra. Moses felt diminished by his gifts, humbled by the awesome responsibility of proving equal to them. As the Torah attests, “Moses was the most humble man on the face of the earth”—not despite, but because of, his greatness.
Ancient man was both blessed and cursed by the prevailing evidence of his greatness. Modern man is both blessed and cursed by the increasing evidence of his smallness. Our challenge is to avail ourselves of both blessings: to couple our knowledge of how small we truly are with our sense of how great we can truly be. To become humbly great, which is the greatest kind of humility there is.
By Yanki Tauber; based on the teachings of the Rebbe.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Parenting
Kiwis and Kids: Why They Both Need Time to Ripen By Elana Mizrahi

My family loves fruits and vegetables, thank G‑d. By now I’m usually pretty good at picking out delicious produce. I say “usually” but not “always” because, as I write this, I’m looking at some very hard—yet rotting—kiwis that are sitting on my countertop. What happened?
About a month ago, I was very excited to see that my fruit lady was carrying kiwis, which are not easy to find here in Israel. My children love this fruit, which being high in Vitamin C is perfect for the winter months. I bought two baskets of the hard kiwis, thinking that within a few days they would be ripe and ready to eat. I was wrong. One week passed and then I was excited to see my fruit lady carrying kiwisanother. They continued to be hard as rocks. Frustrated, I cut one open just to see what was happening. The seeds weren’t even black. The flesh was a very pale green, almost white. I tried to take a bite, but I couldn’t—too hard, too bitter, too sour. Now, four weeks after I bought them, these kiwis are still hard as rocks. They never ripened, and they are starting to rot. What happened? Simple: they were picked too early—way before their ripening time.
King Solomon encapsulated it best in the book of Ecclesiastes (3:1–8):
Everything has an appointed season, and there is a time for every matter under the heaven. A time to give birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot that which is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break and a time to build. A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time of wailing and a time of dancing. A time to cast stones and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to seek and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast away. A time to rend and a time to sew; a time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.
Yes, everything in life—not just fruits—has its time, its season. Every person does as well.
I feel like King Solomon is speaking directly to me as a mother. As parents, we sometimes have expectations of our children that are beyond reasonable. We try to “pick the fruit” way too early. We tell a 5-year-old to sit quietly. He can sit and be quiet for 5 minutes, maybe 10, but then he starts to fidget and kick his legs, to make noise and ask questions. He’s bored. We shush him, saying, “Can’t you sit still and be quiet?” No, he can’t, not after 15 minutes, anyway. Why? He’s a normal, healthy child. This is his season to move and to talk.
Or we expect our teenage daughter, who’s at least two decades younger than us, to already be a balaboosta, a homemaker. She’s not, at least not yet. So while she can have chores and responsibilities, and while she can definitely do acts of kindness, we certainly can’t expect more of her than she can or should give.
These are just two scenarios; I could give you many more. We often demand and expect—we want ripe fruit—but we forget that if we don’t give our children the time that they need to be children, later down the road, instead of ripe fruit we will, G‑d forbid, get rotten fruit. If we don’t allow children to be children, if we crush their beautiful creativity, their energy, their joie de vivre, their playfulness, what will happen? As adults, will they rebel and act like children in grown-up clothes? Will they be happy and full of life, or frustrated and Will they be happy and full of life, or frustrated and miserable?miserable? I can’t say for sure, but they will have missed out on something wonderful and special, and we, missing King Solomon’s lesson, will be responsible.
The other day it started to pour, and I realized that my eldest left our home without a jacket or umbrella. Knowing that he gets out of school at 4 PM, I ran there 10 minutes beforehand (his school is, thankfully, only a few blocks from our home) with a coat and umbrella for him. I felt like Supermom. I ran into him on the way, soaking wet, laughing, running with his friends. He saw me and his face fell. I got the message: This Supermom’s super presence was not wanted (or needed)! I turned around and went home (I did hand him the umbrella, though—I couldn’t help myself), leaving him to enjoy the walk through the rain with his friends. “Please G‑d,” I thought, “let me allow him to enjoy these precious childhood moments.”
I glance over at my rotting kiwis, and I know that I need to take King Solomon’s wise words to heart. Everything has its time, its season.
Originally from northern California and a Stanford University graduate, Elana Mizrahi now lives in Jerusalem with her husband and children. She is a doula, massage therapist, writer, and author of Dancing Through Life, a book for Jewish women. She also teaches Jewish marriage classes for brides.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Lifestyle
Rishe’s Chunky Chicken-Barley Soup By Miriam Szokovski
I didn’t create this one—it’s my friend Rishe’s signature dish, and it could easily be renamed Best Ever Soup. It certainly has my vote! In fact, pretty much everyone who has tried it raves about it. I knew I had to share the recipe with you, and Rishe graciously agreed to let me make and photograph it with her.

This is not your typical chicken soup, with clear broth and matzah balls. It’s pretty much a meal in a bowl, with lots of chicken, vegetables and barley in every bite, and the barley helps thicken the broth, giving it a real, hearty, full-bodied flavor. Delicious for Shabbat or any weeknight. Oh, and leftovers make fantastic work lunches (if you have access to a microwave).

The recipe below makes a full 12-quart pot of soup (because you will surely be asked for seconds and thirds, and you will want to eat it all week long), but you can easily halve or even quarter it if you want to make less.
Ingredients:
2 lb. chicken (you can use white or dark chicken, on the bone or off)
2 large Spanish onions, diced
1 huge (or 2–3 small) zucchini, peeled and diced
5 huge (or 10 small) carrots, peeled and diced
1 bunch celery, leaves removed, stalks diced
½ lb. barley
¼ cup kosher salt
Pinch of black pepper
Water
Directions:
This recipe is for a 12-qt. pot, but you can easily halve it if you want to make a smaller amount. (It also freezes well.)
Place the chicken, onion, zucchini, carrots, celery, salt and pepper in the pot. Fill with water and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for two hours.
Add the barley and cook for another 45–60 minutes.
Remove the chicken, debone, dice and return to the soup.
Serve immediately or refrigerate for later. Also freezes well. Enjoy!

What’s your favorite winter soup?
Miriam Szokovski is the author of the historical novel Exiled Down Under, and a member of the Chabad.org editorial team. She enjoys tinkering with recipes, and teaches cooking classes to young children. Miriam shares her love of cooking, baking and food photography on Chabad.org’s food blog, Cook It Kosher, and in the N’shei Chabad Newsletter.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Lifestyle
Artwork of the Week: Moses Stands at the Burning Bush By Yoram Raanan

An angel of the L‑rd appeared to him in a flame of fire from within the thorn bush, and behold, the thorn bush was burning with fire, but the thorn bush was not being consumed…And the L‑rd said further to him, "Now put your hand into your bosom," and he put his hand into his bosom, and he took it out, and behold, his hand was leprous like snow. And He said, "Put your hand back into your bosom," and he put his hand back into his bosom, and [when] he took it out of his bosom, it had become again like [the rest of] his flesh. (Exodus 3:2, 4:6-7)
This composition was originally two canvases that were later attached and integrated with each other. The painting of the golden red bush against a cool background, emerged by spilling watery paint on the canvas and then subtly directing the flow of color. The bush began shining out of puddles of pigment. The painting of Moses had remained unfinished for many years. It was only after the two canvases were connected, the light of the bush could spread and be reflected Mose's self-effacing figure.
While the bush burned with the spirit of G‑d, Moses pled and argued before he accepted G‑d's mission. Moses doubted that the people would believe him and asked for signs to prove to the others that his mission was actually from heaven. In one of these supernatural signs, Moses's hand became covered with leprosy and then healed. His white arm in the painting is a hint of the many coming miracles of exodus.
Yoram Raanan takes inspiration from living in Israel, where he can fully explore and express his Jewish consciousness. The light, the air, the spirit of the people and the land energize and inspire him. His paintings include modern Jewish expressionism with a wide range of subjects ranging from abstract to landscape, biblical and Judaic.
© Copyright 2015, all rights reserved.
Chabad.org Magazine - Editor: Yanki Tauber---------------------