Editor's Note:
Dear Friend,
There are so many special days on the Jewish calendar, and it’s often the case that the ones we know the least about are those that can make biggest difference in our spiritual lives.
Take 15 Shevat, the “New Year for Trees,” which we celebrate this week fromTuesday evening to Wednesday evening. It’s a fascinating holiday, with a wealth of Torah material related to the planting and harvesting of trees, and filled with beautiful, traditional, mystical customs. We enjoy a feast of fruits, and who can turn away from a new opportunity to eat great food with family and friends in a special spiritual setting?
But there is so much more to the day than that. The Torah refers to the human being as a tree. The Torah itself is called “The Tree of Life.” We’re told that when Moshiach comes—may it be soon—the trees themselves will join in the celebrating: “For you shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12)
There is so much to discover about 15 Shevat on Chabad.org. Comecelebrate with us.
Yaakov Ort,
on behalf of the Chabad.org Editorial Team
P.S. What do you love most about 15 Shevat?
Not About Anything
People think that Torah is about something; that it comes to explain our world, what has happened and what will happen, where each thing belongs and what to do with it.
In a way, this is true. But ultimately, Torah isn’t about anything—everything is about Torah.
G‑d emanated light, created a world and filled it with events, people and things, all so we would have means and metaphor to discuss His thoughts.[Chayei Sarah 5726:19; Torat Menachem 5741 13 Tishrei, sicha 1—based on Zohar, B’haalotecha]
Information, stories, blessings, insights, videos, audio classes and more
Tu B’Shevat
Do you feel stuck in a rut? Do you ever fantasize about making a bold change in your life, perhaps starting a new career or moving to another city?
Whether it’s our domestic chores, the daily challenge of homework with children or the endless list of things that need fixing, by the time a day is over, we’re exhausted. Novelty seems far away.
There’s a wonderful children’s story about a discontented stonecutter, whose backbreaking job it was to hack at a stone mountain all day with his heavy axe. What an inconsequential occupation, let alone a life’s mission. He didn’t want to chop at mountains; he wanted to move mountains! He wanted to be a mover and a shaker! A somebody. Do you feel stuck in a rut?And—he wanted an easier ride. This stonecutting was exhausting labor.
One day, a chariot transporting a mighty monarch passed by. “Ah,” thought the stonecutter, “to be a king—what a dream! It’s easy and so‑o‑o glamorous.” As he fantasized how wonderful and stimulating that role would be, presto! His wish became a reality, and he was suddenly sitting in a royal, splendid coach. How powerful and mighty he felt, issuing commands to his subjects—until the sun started to beat mercilessly on him. He realized the sun was mightier than he, and he wished to become the sun. Poof! He became the sun, beaming its powerful rays toward the earth.
But his quest to be the ultimate “someone” did not end there. He became the clouds that blocked the sun, then the powerful wind that was able to blow away the clouds, then the mountain that was able to stand its ground against the wind, until . . . a stonecutter came along and began to chisel away at his mountainside. When he realized what power the simple stonecutter wielded, power over the great big mountain, he decided to become—a stonecutter. He was back where he had started—but not really. There was new vigor in every chop and new glamour in every chip. Every small action was making a huge difference.
It’s tempting to fantasize about a better life. We’d love to dodge our own reality, our never-ending workload, the monotony of our existence. We dream of escaping, some exciting new means of self-fulfillment. And something easy. Who wants to work hard, anyway?
The world is a very exciting place, but if we don’t think that what we’re doing is any big deal, if we fail to see the redeeming value of our daily routine, we can become jaded and seek out fun-filled fantasies. We’re dazzled by things that have high visibility and make a public splash; we’re impressed by titles and multiple letters after one’s name. Our rational sight is clouded by the glitz and glare, while authentic Judaism is swept aside by the winds of “progress.”
Being out in the public eye, being conspicuous, noticed and wowed over is not the source of our distinctiveness. Were the cameras flashing when Moses came to the rescue of the daughters of Yitro (Jethro) at the well? When the relieved daughters returned home and recounted how a stranger had delivered them from the shepherds’ malevolent mischief, Yitro asked them, “Where is he(Ayo)? A person of this caliber would This was an extraordinary display of modestybe a good marriage candidate for one of you.”
His query was an echo of an earlier verse in the Torah. “Where is she (Ayeh Sarah)?” the three angels asked about Sarah, their hostess in the desert. “Where is Sarah, in whose merit the world is blessed?”
Moses’s “no-show” reminded Yitro of Sarah. Moses did not follow Yitro’s daughters home, and so did not receive praise and recognition for his heroic act. This was an extraordinary trait of modesty, Maharal explains. Yitro realized that the stranger must be a descendant of the woman who prepared a beautiful repast for her guests but did not feel any need for recognition. Sarah remained inconspicuous, doing the ordinary everyday things that exceptional people do. It was enough for her to be in the right place at the right time.
The presumption that “to be noticed proves that I’m a somebody” is a fallacy. There’s a better, more effective way to be celebrated. Every act that we do with the correct intention is special. And G‑d cherishes every one of those acts, no matter how trivial—forever.
For G‑d values modesty. He values one who is focused on inner qualities, not externalities, accolades and attention.
What is most hidden is ultimately the most sought after.
Why Fruit Are Important
I have a friend who will not buy avocados on principle. "Fifty percent of the weight is the seed," he explains. He loves purchasing apples, grapes and bananas, but avocados and mangos are out. Peaches and dates are borderline . . .By Yanki Tauber
• Planting Seeds of Respect (By Elana Mizrahi)
I was walking down the sidewalk with my son. He looked one way, I looked another way. And he walked straight into a pole (thank G‑d, he didn’t really hurt himself). As I rubbed his head and gave him a kiss I wanted to say, “Silly pole!” and put the “blame” on the pole to make my son feel better, but instead I told him, “Ouch, that must have hurt. We have to be more careful to look where we are walking!”
Why didn’t I want to make him feel better by putting the blame on the pole? I want to teach my child that when we make a mistake, not only is that okay, but we should also take responsibility for the mistake. Otherwise, how will a person ever grow and change?He walked straight into a pole
During a recent visit from my father-in-law, we encouraged him to open up and tell us about his childhood. My father-in-law is old enough to be my grandfather. He himself is a great-grandfather and has rich stories to tell. He talked and reminisced and told us crazy tales. When he was growing up, times were hard, times were challenging. There’s no doubt about that. But do you know what he kept repeating? “I had a beautiful childhood.”
There were no complaints, no pointing fingers. He never said a single negative word about his parents or about how they treated him or educated him. Imagine a whole story, a whole conversation about someone’s childhood and parents without a single—as we say in Yiddish—kvetch (complaint)! What was there? Complete and total respect, admiration and love.
Wouldn’t you love it if in 60 years time, as your children sit down to tell their grandchildren about their childhood, they say, “I had a beautiful childhood . . .” Wouldn’t you love it if there was the passing down of a tradition without any complaints or pointing fingers? Is it possible? Yes! I see it with my father-in-law! How can it be done? By taking responsibility for our own actions, by looking at our own childhoods and saying, “All that happened made me into who I am today. There was good, and I need to see the good.” By admitting that by now, you are an adult, and while it is productive to look at your past and to understand that, yes, maybe you have this not so positive quality or trait because of the way that you were raised, it’s only beneficial if it pushes you to move forward and change. If all it does is bring up resentment and encourage you to complain, it’s not good for you! And it certainly doesn’t set a good example for your children.
It says in the Torah that “a person is like the tree of a field.”1 There are many beautiful explanations for this comparison. Here is one that came to me: A tree is only alive if it’s connected to its roots, and it will only survive if the roots are deeply implanted in the ground. When you look at your parents, you may even want to “disconnect,” but I am going to tell you something: you are who you are in part because of them—and that is grand. If your mother is Jewish, it means that you are Jewish because of her, and that is huge, because it means that you are connected, you have roots. These roots give you stability; they give you strength. Through its roots, the tree is nourished with nutrients from the soil and water. The roots rise to the trunk, the trunk to the branches, and from the branches grow flowers and fruits.You are connected. You have roots.
There’s another secret that I learned as I observed my father-in-law. Everyone does the best they can in their situation, and we all make mistakes. I started to think about my own parents, and I realized that they really did the best they could, and they continue to do the best they can. Who is to say that if I were in their shoes I wouldn’t have done worse. I look at my own children, and I only pray that they forgive me for my mistakes ,and that they take responsibility for their actions. I pray that one day they sit and reminisce about their “beautiful” childhoods and that when they think of me it is with positive thoughts full of respect, love and admiration.
FOOTNOTES
1. Deuteronomy 20:19.
Artist’s Statement: Pomegranates are so pretty.
Every Jew is full of mitzvot like a pomegranate is filled with seeds.
Doesn't matter with which part of the Jewish community one identifies with or doesn’t identify with.
How learned or unlearned one is.
How affiliated or unaffiliated one considers themselves.
Every single Jew is full of mitzvot, just like a pomegranate is filled with seeds.
With Generations in Tow, Women the World Over Prep for New York Conference
It’s a family affair, albeit for the female side of the family. Thousands of women and girls from around the world are preparing to travel to New York next week for the annual Kinus Hashluchos—the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Women Emissaries. By Mindy Rubenstein
Dassie New, co-director of Chabad Lubavitch of Georgia and Congregation Beth Tefillah in Sandy Spring, Ga., will be attending the Kinus Hashluchos—the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries—with three of her grown daughters: from left, Liba Leah Gurary, Sarel New and Chaish Mentz.
It’s a family affair, albeit for the female side of the family. Thousands of women and girls from around the world will gather in New York for the annual Kinus Hashluchos—the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Women Emissaries—with many mothers and daughters in attendance together.
The four-day program will take place from Thursday, Feb. 12, through Sunday, Feb. 15. It commences with a workshop and welcome session, and concludes with a gala banquet that will be broadcast live Sunday night on Jewish.tv
“I hope it will give them a dose of inspiration,” said Dassie New, who has co-directed Chabad Lubavitch of Georgia and Congregation Beth Tefillah in Sandy Spring, Ga., a suburb north of Atlanta, for nearly 30 years. New, who has nine children, will be attending the Kinus with three of her grown daughters.
“I want them to come away feeling deeply connected to the Rebbe [Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory], to his teachings and to all the other emissaries who will be there. To appreciate what a full and meaningful life they have as Chabadshluchos, and thereby have the ability to inspire others back home.”
As far as her own experiences at the women’s gathering, New has been attending since the program began more than two decades ago.
“I cannot get enough of those personal stories—the letters and directives that different shluchim, Chassidim, received from their Rebbe,” she said. “I also enjoy the collective sessions where you are sitting with 3,000 women all doing the same thing as you, united as one. It’s powerful.”
She added that “having my children together with us as shluchim is a gift the Rebbe gave us that I feel forever grateful for.”
‘Inspiration Lasts the Year’
Educational, social and spiritual opportunities are on tap for the thousands of women who will congregate in New York for the four-day program. (Photo: Michal Weiss)
Her daughter, Sarel New, 19, attended the children’s version of the Kinus in the past, and then the young women’s program in high school. This will be her first year going to the women’s Kinus with her mother and two older sisters.
“I feel honored to be able to be there,” she said. “As a kid, it was one of the most exciting times of the year to be able to join so many Chabad girls and be together for the weekend. I didn’t usually get to be with them.”
One of the lasting results of participating? “The inspiration lasts throughout the year.”
Of watching her parents work as shluchim, she said: “They were great role models and gave of themselves. They were—and are—always there for everyone in the community. And I always felt like they were there for us, their children, as well. It’s amazing that they could have two completely full-time jobs and do both amazingly. That’s what I strive to be like.”
A first-year teacher at the Chaya Mushka Children’s House, a Montessori-style preschool run by her mother, she looks forward to attending the education sessions and workshops, and to hear what others have to share during the conference.
“My favorite part is the banquet and feeling that energy of so many shluchos all in the same room,” said Liba Leah Gurary, another of Dassie New’s daughters, who will be attending the conference for the eighth year in a row. Gurary, who has two young children, co-directs the Chabad Israeli Center in Atlanta with her husband, Rabbi Menachem Gurary. “It is so special to experience it with my mother and sisters. It makes it even more fun and memorable and inspiring to be able it share it with them.”
A first-year teacher at the Chaya Mushka Children’s House in Sandy Springs, Ga., Sarel New looks forward to attending the education sessions and workshops—like this one from last year—and hear what others have to share during the conference. (Photo: Michal Weiss)
New’s daughter Chaish Mentz, 24, oversees the Judaics program at Chaya Mushka Children’s House Elementary School, which runs from first through sixth grade. She is married to Rabbi Levi Mentz, who teaches at the school; they have a 10-month-old son. This is her second year going to New York for the Kinus.
“I feel honored to get to be a part of this program, and share it with my mother and sisters,” she said. She also hopes to bring back advice and inspiration from the workshops and from simply conversing with all of the other women there.
‘A Sense of Purpose’
The word kinus is Hebrew for “gathering.” The Kinus Hashluchim, or International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, is an annual event that takes place in November, when thousands of men gather to share inspiration, ideas and goals, leaving rejuvenated and ready to carry on their work with renewed vigor and enthusiasm. The same goes for the shluchos, the women, in February.
The first such conference began in 1991. It is timed to coincide with theyahrtzeit (anniversary of passing) of the Rebbe’s wife—Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka Schneerson, of righteous memory—whose concern for and interest in the shluchim and shluchos was legendary.
The Rebbe often quoted the Talmudic teaching: “The exodus from Egypt was in the merit of the righteous women of that generation,” explaining that in contemporary times as well, individual and global transformation occurs in the merit of righteous women.
Since 1995, a special program has been offered for the children of emissaries. The Rebbe considered them to be not only “children of shluchim,” butshluchimthemselves, playing an integral part in their parents’ mission. The girls’ Kinus takes place in tandem with the Kinus Hashluchos, and the boys’ conference takes place alongside the men’s conference.
Dina Eber co-directs Chabad Jewish Center of West Pasco in Trinity, Fla., with her husband, Rabbi Yossi Eber. They have six children, including two sets of twins. Eber will be attending the conference with her oldest twin daughters, Hana and Zelda, age 10. Because they live so far from an established Jewish community, the girls learn online daily.
Rabbi Yossi and Dina Eber, co-directors of the Chabad Jewish Center of West Pasco in Trinity, Fla., and their six children. Eber and her 10-year-old twin daughters are flying to New York for the conference.
“They want the chance to get to see their teachers and friends from their online school,” she said. “And being around all those Chabad girls will be very uplifting for them.”
Her daughters will attend the children’s part of the program, which includes workshops and activities geared specifically for girls. Eber said they are “extremely excited.” Their classmates are coming together from far-flung places like Turkey, Chile and the Dominican Republic, and one of their teachers is flying in from Jerusalem.
“They will get to experience real-life social interaction with their online classmates,” said Eber. “It helps instill conviction and pride in why we live here away from a big community—a clear sense of purpose and belonging. And we get to be reminded that we are part of something big and beautiful.”
More in Jewish News:
• With Stories and Song, a Chassidic Memorial and Celebration in Chicago (By Menachem Posner)
Campus Life Education Europe First Person Former Soviet Union Headquarters Holiday Watch Internet Israel North America Obituary Photo Galleries Jewish News » North America With Stories and Song, a Chassidic Memorial and Celebration in Chicago With Stories and Song, a Chassidic Memorial and Celebration in Chicago Part of worldwide observance of ‘10 Shevat,’ the day prompts inspiration for moving forward By Menachem Posner | January 30, 2015 9:01 AM Hundreds gathered at Congregation B’nei Ruven in Chicago to commemorate 10 Shevat.
I sat in the large oval brick sanctuary of Chicago’s Congregation B’nei Ruven in Chicago with several hundred other Chassidic men and women. Separated by the traditional mechitza, we were gathered to mark Yud Shevat (the 10th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat), the anniversary of passing of the PreviousRebbe—Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory—in 1950. One year later, his son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, officially accepted the position of Rebbe at a Chassidic gathering held at Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y.
As I looked around the hall, I was immediately struck by the size of the crowd. Every seat in the room was taken; I had to make due with sitting on the stairs to the raised platform that held the ark. I don’t think this would have been the case 20 or 30 years ago, when there were but a handful of Chassidic families in the area.
I was then struck by the fact that not one of the people seated had ever met the Previous Rebbe—appropriate for what has become as much a celebration of the beginning of the Rebbe’s tenure as it is a memorial for his father-in-law.
The evening’s speaker was Rabbi Yoseph Y. Groner, head shaliach in North Carolina and executive director of the Lubavitch Education Center North Carolina in Charlotte. The son of one of the Rebbe’s long-serving aides, he had a wealth of personal interactions with the Rebbe from which he wove a powerful talk.
“The Rebbe never dismissed a single individual,” he said, citing the example of how the Rebbe smiled and even hugged an Israeli policymaker who had actively opposed the Rebbe’s efforts to safeguard the spiritual nature of the Jewish state. “This is a powerful lesson we can all take and apply in our own lives, with our families, friends and anyone we come across.”
An Ongoing Partnership
There were audible giggles when he told of the time he snuggled up inside the Rebbe’stallit during prayer services—much to the horror of the assembled—but most of his talk had a decidedly serious air, with a sense of purpose and urgency.
“There is a partnership between the Rebbe and the Chassidim,” he said. “When you were writing to the Rebbe about something that was for the greater communal good, you knew that he would reply. People don’t realize it, but the Rebbe put in real effort into what he did. When we put in effort, he reciprocated in kind.”
Rabbi Yoseph Y. Groner.
As he paused to sing a niggun—a slow, soul-stirring Chassidic melody—I thought back to the first 10 Shevatfarbrengen with the Rebbe in 1951. I once asked my grandfather—at whose wedding the Rebbe would officiate less than three weeks later—if he was there. He told me that he was not. Why? Because the Rebbe had sent him on shlichus to Los Angeles, and the Rebbe wanted him to continue doing what he was doing.
The Rebbe demanded work, from himself and from others.
To drive the point home, the rabbi told the story of a young boy who had wandered into the Rebbe’s study one Shabbat afternoon while the Rebbe sat learning. Looking up, the Rebbe asked the child what he was doing. In response to the boy’s reply that he was doing “nothing,” the Rebbe motioned to the books lining the walls of the study and asked, “And when will you have time to learn all of this?”
As midnight approached, I headed for the door. On my way out, I met a friend who opened a Chabad center with his wife less than two years ago. We joked about how our conversation may become the stuff of my next article (how right he was), and he then told me how many people in his community read Chabad.org regularly.
“Just the other day, one of our friends told me that he was preparing his 2015 business plan,” he related, “when he took a break and watched Challenge [a video on the Rebbe’s relentless call for every Jew to never rest], and that gave him the boost to do it in an entirely different way.”
“Yes,” I told him. “That’s just the right way to end the farbrengen."
"We must always do more, and the Rebbe will be there to help us do just that.”
• Rabbi Ariel Rav-Noy, 36, Served Persian-Jewish Community in Los Angeles (By Mordechai Lightstone)
Rabbi Ariel and Miriam Rav-Noy, and family
Rabbi Ariel Rav-Noy, assistant director of Chabad Persian Youth in Los Angeles, passed away suddenly earlier today. He was 36 years old.
He is recalled by family, friends and students for his warm and caring manner, his patience and for having an instant love for all he met.
During one conversation with a friend about his work with Jews of Iranian descent in southern California, where he worked, Rav-Noy shared his enthusiasm for their special dedication and interest in Jewish community and tradition.
Rabbi Hershey Novack, co-director of Chabad on Campus serving Washington University in St. Louis, was a friend and classmate of Rav-Noy’s.
"It is tough to discuss Ariel in the past tense," says Novack. “He was the kindest soul wrapped in a dynamo of positive energy. He was very studious and took copious notes in a big, looping handwriting. In his grades, he was typically at the top of the class.”
Possessing a bubbly and outgoing personality with a loud laugh, Rav-Noy was an avid user of social media to connect to his community, keeping them informed of classes, celebrations and his thoughts.
In his role at Chabad Persian Youth, Rav-Noy reached out to many young Iranian Jews in the city’s high schools. He started the High Holiday High School and Youth Minyan, and would regularly visit Jewish clubs at University High School in West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills High School and Santa Monica College.
Rav-Noy with Ryan Fouladian
An Outpouring of Grief
As the news spread of his passing, friends and admirers began posting their shock and disbelief.
“I can’t believe the news I am hearing ..., ” wrote one person. “I remember when you asked me your help out because you wanted to start doing events for the community. You and your wife, your family, have done so, so much for the community. Always raising awareness and being an advocate for am Israel. I am in shock. May Hashem bring clarity and comfort to your wife and family. ... We have lost a true tzadik.”
“I feel like I just got punched in the gut,” and “This man helped so many families, including mine” are typical of the many of messages that are being quickly added.
Rav-Noy is survived by his wife, Miriam, and their seven children: Mendy, Chani, Levi, Shaina, Sarale, Hindy and Avremile; and by his parents, Dr. Zeev and Mrs. Varda Rav-Noy. He is also survived by his siblings: Rabbi Michi Rav-Noy (Los Angeles); Rabbi Avinoam Rav-Noy (Los Angeles); Rabbi Eyal Rav-Noy (Los Angeles); and Racheli Muchnik (Oxnard, Calif.).
The levaya will take place on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. at the Chabad Persian Youth Center in Los Angeles.
An extended obituary is being prepared.
• Surveying South Dakota: A History of Rabbis Keeping in Touch With Residents (By Karen Schwartz)
The menorah-lighting this past Chanukah outside the Capitol in Pierre, South Dakota. Rabbi Yosef Sharfstein, who has traveled to the state multiple times from New York to serve the needs of Jewish residents there, is second from the left; Rabbi Binyomin Druk is on the far right
Rachel Hunt, 23, hadn’t talked to too many rabbis in South Dakota before she met Yosef Sharfstein, 24, and Shmuel Lefkowitz, 24.
A Minneapolis native, Hunt is a student in her last year at South Dakota State University in Brookings, in the northeastern part of the state, less than four hours from Minneapolis, Minn., due east and Omaha, Neb., due south. With the estimated number of Jews in South Dakota hovering below 400—spread throughout a state that measures more than 77,000 square miles, the 16th largest in the nation—she says conversations about Jewish tradition can be few and far between.
The Jewish individuals and families who do live there are centered in and around Sioux Falls and Rapid City, with handfuls in Brookings, the state capital of Pierre and a few other smaller cities.
So when the these two young rabbis—part of a cadre of “Roving Rabbis” who spend their summers and study breaks connecting with communities near and far, practically everywhere on the globe—reached out to her this summer, she was glad to set up a time to talk with them.
“They’re making people feel like they’re not the only Jews out here,” she says. “Roving Rabbis”—Sharfstein and Lefkowitz included—organize programs around Jewish holidays, teach Torah study, and as a central part of their travels, stop by people’s homes to discuss Judaism, observance and everyday topics as they relate to Torah and heritage, including family concerns.
“I think they’re making an impact,” says Hunt.
In December, she worked with Sharfstein to help coordinate multiple menorah-lightings. “They literally brought Chanukah to Brookings,” she says, recalling the holiday staples they shared—latkes, dreidels and chocolate coins. “If you had told me when I had come here five years ago, I would have never imagined seeing the lighting of a seven-foot menorah in Brookings.”
‘Essential Part of the Jewish Nation’
Interestingly enough, there were more Jews a hundred years ago in South Dakota than there are today.
In 1899, some 1,750 Jewish people called the area home. European Jews, especially, made their way out West, social agrarians lured by the U.S. Homestead Act, where land grants were doled out by the federal government to settle in country’s grasslands.
Some of those folks stayed, some moved on nearby states or to larger cities in the region, and others left for good.
Sharfstein started visiting a few years ago, and has since developed personal relationships with people all over South Dakota, which is currently the only state in America with no permanent Chabad presence.
“We are committed to continuing to address the needs of Jewish residents there,” says Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, executive director of Merkos Suite 302. “Chabad’s dedicated involvement with the Jews of South Dakota highlights the core philosophy of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—that no matter where a Jew is, both on the map and in life itself, he or she is an essential and irreplaceable part of the Jewish nation, worthy of our care, warmth and love.”
Kotlarsky also notes an active “Roving Rabbis South Dakota” social-media page, used to remain in touch with South Dakotan Jews when visiting rabbis are back in New York.
For Lefkowitz, who lives in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., where daily life is steeped in everything Jewish, meeting people in small communities is a great experience: “People are excited; they’re just waiting for Judaism.”
A favorite story comes to mind. During one stay in South Dakota, someone mentioned visiting a friend with Jewish lineage; he and Sharfstein actually discovered that she was Jewish. The woman then told them she had a grandson living in town who had just turned 13.
So what did they do?
“We arranged a bar mitzvah right away,” relates Lefkowitz. “The next afternoon, we met the grandmother, her daughter and her daughter’s family; we put together some cakes; and we held a bar mitzvah. The boy put on tefillin, and we celebrated. The kid had never even heard of a bar mitzvah a few years ago, and all of a sudden, he’s having a bar mitzvah party in his house.”
“It was amazing,” recalls Lefkowitz. “It was freezing cold, and people were coming out to show their support and do the mitzvah.”
Sharfstein has been to South Dakota four times now—the past two summers and twice for Chanukah. In that time, he has coordinated menorah-lighting events in Pierre, Sioux Falls and Brookings. He and Lefkowitz have also visited people’s homes as part of a broader Chabad “Roving Rabbi” program that dispatches rabbinical students for a month in the summer; they return for holidays and are available throughout the year to help with questions about Jewish practice, belief and resources.
In South Dakota, they also connect people with Chabad in North Dakota, and can arrange for quarterly shipments of kosher meat to interested individuals.
The impact was visible on the faces of those he met, many of whom hadn’t had the opportunity to celebrate in ages, and certainly for some, ever before in their lives. “One man in Rapid City told me that he fundamentally disagrees with public displays of religion, but since he was so thrilled that we drove more than 400 miles to visit, he would shake the lulav in the sukkah-mobile anyway,” recounts Grossman.
Grossman, like the “Roving Rabbis,” would answer any queries or help in ways he could. Sharfstein notes that “some people want to know about the holidays and praying, and some have questions on Jewish philosophy and practice … it’s a little bit of everything.”
Very often, wearing their traditional clothing—black hat, long black coat, not the everyday resident garb—the rabbis get stopped on the street. “People are always coming over and asking: ‘Where are you from?’ and ‘Is there a big Jewish community here?’ ” he relates. “But people are very nice, and they like what we’re doing, so it’s encouraging.”
Robert Mandel of Rapid City met Sharfstein and Lefkowitz on one of their first trips.
“I enjoy it,” he says. “Judaism is such a rarity in South Dakota; it’s nice to have anything that makes you feel connected.”
The New Year for Trees
Tu B’Shevat, the 15th of Shevat on the Jewish calendar—celebrated this year on Wednesday, February 4, 2015—is the day that marks the beginning of a “new year” for trees. This is the season in which the earliest-blooming trees in the Land of Israel emerge from their winter sleep and begin a new fruit-bearing cycle.
Legally, the “new year” for trees relates to the various tithes that are separated from produce grown in the Holy Land. These tithes differ from year to year in the seven-year shemittah cycle; the point at which a budding fruit is considered to belong to the next year of the cycle is the 15th of Shevat.
We mark the day of Tu B’Shevat by eating fruit, particularly from the kinds that are singled out by the Torah in its praise of the bounty of the Holy Land: grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates. On this day we remember that “man is a tree of the field” (Deuteronomy 20:19), and reflect on the lessons we can derive from our botanical analogue.
Follow the following links for more information about this holiday and the ideas it represents:
Man and Tree"Man is a tree of the field." How many ways can this statement be interpreted?
The Tree
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The Old Man and the Fig Tree
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Ecology and Spirituality in Jewish Tradition
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Blossoms in the Winter?
Mystical Insights Into the New Year for Trees
Celebrating Pleasure
Ecology and Spirituality in Jewish Tradition
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More on Tu B'ShevatWhat is Tu B'Shevat? Why is it celebrated, and how is it observed?
Tu B'Shevat in a Minute
Tu B'Shevat: What and How
Tu B'Shevat Customs
Tu B'Shevat Q & A
Tu B'Shevat: A Weekday Rosh Hashanah
Why Eat Carob on 15 Shevat?
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Make Like a Tree, and Grow!
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Legally, the “new year” for trees relates to the various tithes that are separated from produce grown in the Holy Land. These tithes differ from year to year in the seven-year shemittah cycle; the point at which a budding fruit is considered to belong to the next year of the cycle is the 15th of Shevat.
We mark the day of Tu B’Shevat by eating fruit, particularly from the kinds that are singled out by the Torah in its praise of the bounty of the Holy Land: grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates. On this day we remember that “man is a tree of the field” (Deuteronomy 20:19), and reflect on the lessons we can derive from our botanical analogue.
Follow the following links for more information about this holiday and the ideas it represents:
The Tree
Branches
A Tree's New Year Resolution
The Old Man and the Fig Tree
A Stupid Little Ruler
View All 24
The Leaf
Taking Back Tu B'Shevat
Ecology and Spirituality in Jewish Tradition
The Unity and Purposefulness of Creation
Jewish Ecology
Blossoms in the Winter?
Mystical Insights Into the New Year for Trees
Celebrating Pleasure
Ecology and Spirituality in Jewish Tradition
Holy Eating
Tu B'Shevat in a Minute
Tu B'Shevat: What and How
Tu B'Shevat Customs
Tu B'Shevat Q & A
Tu B'Shevat: A Weekday Rosh Hashanah
Why Eat Carob on 15 Shevat?
Tu B'Shevat and Healing
The New Year for Trees
Celebrating the Potential
Mankind – Nature’s Keeper and Nurturer
Make Like a Tree, and Grow!
View All 14
What is Tu B'Shevat?
Coloring Pages
Learn about Apples
Learn about Figs
Learn about Grapes
View All 10
Tu B'Shevat Fruit Plates
Tu B'Shevat Truffles
Almond Smoothie
Kiwi Honeydew Energy-Boosting Smoothie
Nut-Filled Pears
View All 13
RELATED
ArticlesVideoAudioPhotosTopics
New Year for Trees
Why Eat Carob on 15 Shevat?
Tu B'Shevat: A Weekday Rosh Hashanah
Taking Back Tu B’Shevat
Shevat 15
How A Stupid Little Ruler Saved My Life
Cuttings
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PARSHAH
Moses the Real Estate Agent
A dialogue between Moses and the angels, in which the angels challenged Israel's right to receive the Torah, yields fascinating insights into the nature of spirituality and physicality, the purpose of creation, and the role of the Torah
Based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe
A dialogue between Moses and the angels, in which the angels challenged Israel's right to receive the Torah, yields fascinating insights into the nature of spirituality and physicality, the purpose of creation, and the role of the Torah
Based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe
When Moses ascended to heaven, the angels protested to G-d: What is a human being doing amongst us?
Said He to them: He has come to receive the Torah.
Said they to Him: This esoteric treasure, which was hidden with You for nine hundred and seventy-four generations before the world was created, You wish to give to flesh and blood? (Talmud, Shabbat 89a)
According to Torah law, your neighbor is not just the fellow on the other side of the fence, but someone toward whom you have certain responsibilities and obligations. One of these is spelled out in the law of bar mitzra (literally, "the one on the boundary"), which states that when a person wishes to sell his field, his neighbors -- i.e., those who own land bordering the land being sold -- must be given first priority to purchase it. The neighbor's right is enforced by the court, to the extent that if the property is sold to an outside buyer without first being offered to the neighbor, the neighbor has the right to pay the purchase price to the buyer and evict him from the land (see Talmud, Bava Metzia 108a; Mishneh Torah, Laws Regarding Neighbors, chs. 12-14; Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 175:5-63).1
Halachah (Torah law) is not just a code of behavior for life on earth; it is also G-d's own "code of behavior," the manner in which He chooses to relate to His creation. Thus, we find G-d observing Shabbat,2 donning tefillin,3 and otherwise fulfilling the requirements of Torah law. In the words of the Midrash, "G-d's way is not like the way of flesh and blood. The way of flesh and blood is that he instructs others to do, but does not do so himself; G-d, however, what He Himself does, that is what He tells Israel to do and observe" (Midrash Rabbah, Shemot 30:4). If G-d commanded us the law of bar mitzra, He conforms to it Himself.
Thus, the Talmud tells us that "When Moses ascended to heaven to receive the Torah from G-d,"
The angels protested to G-d: "What is a human being doing amongst us?"
Said He to them: "He has come to receive the Torah."
Said they to Him: "This esoteric treasure, which was hidden with You for nine hundred and seventy-four generations before the world was created, You wish to give to flesh and blood?... Place Your glory upon the heavens!"
Said G-d to Moses: "Answer them."
Said [Moses]: "Master of the Universe! This Torah that You are giving to me, what is written in it? 'I am the L-rd Your G-d, who has taken you out from the land of Egypt.' Have you descended to Egypt? Have you been enslaved to Pharaoh? So why should the Torah be yours? What else does it say? 'You shall have no alien gods.' Do you dwell amongst idol-worshipping nations? What else does it say? 'Remember the Shabbat day.' Do you work? ... What else does it say? 'Do not swear falsely.' Do you do business? What else does it say? 'Honor your father and your mother.' Do you have parents? What else does it say? 'Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal.' Is there jealousy among you? Do you have an evil inclination?
The commentaries explain that the angels had a legal claim on the Torah -- the neighbor's prerogative stipulated by the law of bar mitzra. For, as they noted, the Torah is G-d's "esoteric treasure": before it was given to us at Sinai it was a wholly spiritual manifesto, "written of yore before Him in black fire upon white fire,"4 relating exclusively to the spiritual infrastructure of creation. Thus we are told that at Sinai "G-d spoke to us from the heavens,"5 and that Moses "ascended to heaven," entering into a spiritual state of being in order to receive the Torah ("And he (Moses) was there (atop Mount Sinai) with G-d for forty days and forty nights; bread he did not eat, and water he did not drink" --Exodus 34:28) We, argued the angels, are the Torahs natural neighbors; it should be offered to us before it is translated into a doctrine for physical life for some distant earthly customer. (See Shetei Yadot, Terumah; Sheeirit Yaakov, Bamidbar; Chida (Penei Dovid and Rosh Dovid, Yitro; Chasdei Avot, 3:14); Beer Yitzchak, Yitro (2); Maarchei Lev, Mattan Torah (12); Berit Avot, Yitro; Sefat Emet, Yitro; Nachal Yitzchak, Pesach, Shaar I & II; et al.)
(The fact that the angels' claim was based on the law of bar mitzra explains many points of the dialogue beetween Moses and the angels. For example: why could not Moses simply say to the angels: "Open up the Torah and have a look: virtually every section is prefaced with the words, 'Command the children of Israel,' 'Speak to the children of Israel,' etc. The Torah is already ours! I'm just here to pick up the merchendise." For the law of bar mitzra gives the neighbor the right to purchase the field even after it has been sold to the non-neighboring buyer.)
Five Answers
Indeed, it seems that G-d acknowledged that the angels had a basis for their claim in Torah law -- He told Moses to "answer them" before he could receive the Torah and take it down to earth.6 How, indeed, might Moses defend the legality of the contract between G-d and Israel? The above-cited commentaries offer the following halachic solutions:
1) The law of bar mitzra applies only to a sale, not to a gift -- a person is obviously free to make a gift of his field to whomever he desires.7 Since G-d granted us the Torah, the angels' claim has no basis.
2) The law of bar mitzra applies only to real estate, not to transportable objects.8 The Torah, which is a portable entity (as evidenced by the fact that Moses came up to heaven to bring it down to earth), is thus exempt from this law.
3) If a person wishes to sell his field to a family member, he is permitted to do so without first offering it to his neighbor.9 The people of Israel are "G-d's children" (Deuteronomy 14:1) and His "close relatives" (ibid., 4:7). Thus, the law of bar mitzra is not applicable to Israel's acquisition of the Torah.
4) A sale to a partner is likewise exempt from the bar mitzra requirement.10 The Talmud (shabbat 10a) states that "Any judge who judges law with an utter exactitude of truth becomes a partner with G-d in creation." Moses, being such a juror of Torah law, is thus considered G-d's partner, and may purchase property from Him over the objections of the property's supernal neighbors. (As per the Talmud, Shabbat 119b, keeping Shabbat also makes one "a partner with G-d in creation." Since the Jewish people had been given the mitzvah of Shabbat several weeks before Sinai, they, too, are G-d's partners).
5) The Torah refers to Moses as "a man of G-d" (Deuteronomy 33:1) "half mortal, half supernal" (Midrash Rabbah on verse). So he was no less a "neighbor" to the spirituality of the Torah than his celestial competitors. (Again, the same could be said regarding the people of Israel, whose souls are "carved from under the Supernal Throne of G-d"11 )
However, each of these defenses has its difficulties. Regarding the first defense, while it is true that the Torah is called "a gift from Above" (as in Numbers 21:18 and numerous other places) it is also called an "inheritance" (Deuteronomy 33:4), and a "purchase" (Proverbs 4:2; Midrash Rabbah, Shemot 33:1). As we have elaborated on another occasion, these three metaphors describe three distinct elements in Torah and the manner of its possession by the people of Israel. So the angels' claim to the Torah stands, at least in regard to the "purchase" aspect of Torah.
As for the second defense, the reason why the law of bar mitzra does not apply to a portable object is that a portable object has no defined place, and thus no true neighbors: anyone can acquire it anywhere and transport it to his property. In our case, however, the Torah's defining place is the very issue at hand. The angels were insisting that it should remain in heaven and spiritual in essence, while Moses' "acquisition" would mean its removal to earth and the redefinition of its primary function from a spiritual manifesto to a doctrine for physical life. Indeed, after we received it at Sinai, the Torah is expressly "not in heaven" and placed under terrestrial jurisdiction. The giving of Torah to Israel meant that the angels would no longer have access to the Torah -- at least not as something of their own environment (in the same way that the Torah's remaining in heaven would have meant that we could relate to it only on the spiritual level, not as a sanctifier of physical life -- as indeed "was the case prior to the Giving of the Torah). It follows, then, that as regards the law of bar mitzra, the Torah is indeed supernal real estate, and ought to be subject to the neighbor's prerogative claimed by the angels.12
Finally, all five explanations beg the question: Where is there mention of any of this in Moses response? If the basis of the angels argument to G-d, "Place Your glory upon the heavens!" is the law of bar mitzra, then Moses must explain why this clause is not applicable in this case. Yet nowhere in Moses words do we find a sign of any of the five defenses enumerated above. Indeed, as far as the third, fourth and fifth defenses are concerned, Moses seems to be saying the very opposite. The gist of Moses response is that, unlike the angels, the Jewish people are physical beings inhabiting a profane and even heretical world marked by jealousy, dishonesty and idolatry, and thus they have need of and right to the Torah. Instead of refuting the angels claim by speaking of Israels innate spirituality (defense #5) or their relationship or partnership with G-d (defences #3 and #4), Moses seems to be confirming their claim by emphasizing Israel's distance from their divine origins and the spirituality of the heavens.
The Home
Our sages teach that "The purpose of the creation of all worlds, supernal and ephemeral, is that G-d desired a dwelling in the lowly realms.13 G-d desired to created a "lowly realm" -- a world that is virtually devoid of all manifest expression of His truth -- and that this lowly realm should be made into a "home" for Him, a place that serves and facilitates His presence.
Thus, our Sages say that the world was created "for the sake of the Torah and for the sake of Israel"14 : the people of Israel are the builders of this home for G-d, and the Torah is the instrument of its construction. The people of Israel inhabit the physical universe, the "lowly realm" where G-d desires to dwell. The Torah instructs the Jew how to transform material things such as animal hides, grain and coins into holy and G-dly things such as tefillin, matzah for Passover, and charity. With the Torah as his blueprint and empowerer, the Jew transforms a mundane world into an environment that is receptive and subservient to the divine reality.
Why is the sanctification of the physical world referred to as the making of a dwelling for G-d? Because the concept of a "home" is the prototype that most expresses the significance of what we achieve through our fulfillment of the Torah's blueprint for life.
There are many environments and structures that house a person and serve his needs. A person might spend many toilsome hours in a field, tilling its soil to derive sustenance from the earth; others mark time in offices, factories and laboratories to earn a livelihood. Man also constructs buildings to serve his educational, medical, legal, and entertainment needs, and vehicles to move him across land, sea and air. But what all these containers of man have in common is that they each house a specific aspect of the person, as opposed to the person himself. They shelter and facilitate the farmer, the businessman, the student, the patient, the art critic and the vacationer, rather than the man. All these are places where a person fulfills a certain role or fills a certain need; only at home is he himself. Echoing the Talmudic adage, "A man without a homestead is not a man", Chassidic teaching defines the "dwelling" as a place that houses a person's very essence.15
This is what is meant when we say that "G-d desired a dwelling in the lowly realms." G-d has many venues for the expression of His reality. He created many spiritual "worlds" or realms, each of which conveys another face of His infinitely faceted truth. But only the physical world can be His home, the environment that houses His essence.
For the wisdom of the sage is not revealed in his scholarly discourse with his colleagues, but in his ability to explain the loftiest of concepts to the simplest of minds. The benevolence of the philanthropist is seen not in his generosity to his family and friends, but in his kindness toward the most undeserving of recipients. The power of the torch is expressed not by the light it sheds upon its immediate surroundings, but by its illumination of the most distant point its light can reach. By the same token, the infinity and all-pervasiveness of the divine is expressed not in the spirituality of the heavens, but in the sanctification of material earth. When the physical world "whose workings are harsh and evil and the wicked prevail there" for it is dominated by forces that seem indifferent and even opposed to the divine will16 is made to express the divine truth, it becomes a dwelling for G-d. When the lowliest and most profane of G-d's creations is made to serve Him, a true home has been constructed for Him, an edifice that houses His very essence.
Therein lies the ultimate refutation of the angels' claim on the Torah. The law of bar mitzra states that "If the outside buyer wishes to build homes on the land, and the neighbor wishes to seed it, the outside buyer retains the land, since the habitation of the land takes precedence, and the law of bar mitzra is not applied in this case" (Mishneh Torah, Laws Regarding Neighbors 14:1; Talmud, Bava Metzia 108b; Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 175:26).
Thus Moses said to the angels: Do you have an evil inclination? Do you deal with the mundanities of the marketplace? Do you dwell in a pagan world? So to what end should you be given the Torah? To cultivate another lush garden of spiritual delights? But we will build a home with the Torah, as only we can. Only we, who daily struggle with the deceit, the strife and the profanity that mark the lowliest stratum of G-d's creation, can construct with the Torah a dwelling for Him, a place to house His quintessential self.
FOOTNOTES
1.The Talmud cites this law as a classical case of "one profits, while the other suffers no loss" (the buyer profits in that he can cultivate both properties as a single contiguous field, saving him the added expense of cultivating two fields in two separate places; the seller suffers no real loss, since he gets his price; nor does the prospective non-neighboring buyer, who can purchase a field of equal quality and value somewhere else). Thus, the court enforces the precept, "You shall do what is just and good" (Deuteronomy 6:18; i.e. it is forbidden to act maliciously, even if it is within your legal rights)
2.Midrash Rabbah, Bereishit 11:5.
3.Talmud, Berachot 6a.
4.Rashi, Deuteronomy 33:2.
5.Exodus 20:19; Deuteronomy 4:31.
6.According to Rashi on Bava Metzia, ibid., the law of bar mitzra pertains primarily to the prospective purchaser, forbidding him to purchase a field desired by its neighbor and obligating him to resell it to the neighbor should he actually purchase it (see Likkutei Sichot, vol. XIX, pp. 55-57). This explains why G-d directed the angels' claim to Moses, who, as the purchaser, was the alleged violator of the bar mitzra law.
7.Talmud, Bava Metzia 108b; Mishneh Torah, ibid. 13:1; Shulchan Aruch, ibid. par 54.
8.Mishneh Torah, ibid., 13:4; Shulchan Aruch, ibid., 53.
9.Rif, cited in Shitah Mekubetzet on Talmud, ibid.; Bahag, cited by Beit Yosef on Tur, Choshen Mishpat 175; Shach on Shulchan Aruch, ibid. sub-section 30.
10.Mishneh Torah, ibid. 12:5; Shulchan Aruch, ibid. par 49.
11.Zohar, part III, 29b.
12.The law of bar mitzra applies only when comparable fields are available at other locations, and the issue is only who should be subjected to the trouble of purchasing elsewhere. This is consistent with the debate between Moses and the angels as to whether the Torah might be sold to earth: in either case, both the angels and the people of Israel would still be able to study the Torah, but only one of them would enjoy the Torah as something that is of their own element.
13.Midrash Tanchuma, Nasso 16; Tanya, ch. 36.
14.Rashi, Genesis 1:1.
15.Ohr HaTorah, Balak 997; Yom Tov Shel Rosh Hashanah 5666, p. 3; et al.
16.Tanya, chs. 6 and 36.
More in Parshah:
• Find Glamour in the Grind (By Gitty Stolik)
• Find Glamour in the Grind (By Gitty Stolik)
Whether it’s our domestic chores, the daily challenge of homework with children or the endless list of things that need fixing, by the time a day is over, we’re exhausted. Novelty seems far away.
There’s a wonderful children’s story about a discontented stonecutter, whose backbreaking job it was to hack at a stone mountain all day with his heavy axe. What an inconsequential occupation, let alone a life’s mission. He didn’t want to chop at mountains; he wanted to move mountains! He wanted to be a mover and a shaker! A somebody. Do you feel stuck in a rut?And—he wanted an easier ride. This stonecutting was exhausting labor.
One day, a chariot transporting a mighty monarch passed by. “Ah,” thought the stonecutter, “to be a king—what a dream! It’s easy and so‑o‑o glamorous.” As he fantasized how wonderful and stimulating that role would be, presto! His wish became a reality, and he was suddenly sitting in a royal, splendid coach. How powerful and mighty he felt, issuing commands to his subjects—until the sun started to beat mercilessly on him. He realized the sun was mightier than he, and he wished to become the sun. Poof! He became the sun, beaming its powerful rays toward the earth.
But his quest to be the ultimate “someone” did not end there. He became the clouds that blocked the sun, then the powerful wind that was able to blow away the clouds, then the mountain that was able to stand its ground against the wind, until . . . a stonecutter came along and began to chisel away at his mountainside. When he realized what power the simple stonecutter wielded, power over the great big mountain, he decided to become—a stonecutter. He was back where he had started—but not really. There was new vigor in every chop and new glamour in every chip. Every small action was making a huge difference.
It’s tempting to fantasize about a better life. We’d love to dodge our own reality, our never-ending workload, the monotony of our existence. We dream of escaping, some exciting new means of self-fulfillment. And something easy. Who wants to work hard, anyway?
The world is a very exciting place, but if we don’t think that what we’re doing is any big deal, if we fail to see the redeeming value of our daily routine, we can become jaded and seek out fun-filled fantasies. We’re dazzled by things that have high visibility and make a public splash; we’re impressed by titles and multiple letters after one’s name. Our rational sight is clouded by the glitz and glare, while authentic Judaism is swept aside by the winds of “progress.”
Being out in the public eye, being conspicuous, noticed and wowed over is not the source of our distinctiveness. Were the cameras flashing when Moses came to the rescue of the daughters of Yitro (Jethro) at the well? When the relieved daughters returned home and recounted how a stranger had delivered them from the shepherds’ malevolent mischief, Yitro asked them, “Where is he(Ayo)? A person of this caliber would This was an extraordinary display of modestybe a good marriage candidate for one of you.”
His query was an echo of an earlier verse in the Torah. “Where is she (Ayeh Sarah)?” the three angels asked about Sarah, their hostess in the desert. “Where is Sarah, in whose merit the world is blessed?”
Moses’s “no-show” reminded Yitro of Sarah. Moses did not follow Yitro’s daughters home, and so did not receive praise and recognition for his heroic act. This was an extraordinary trait of modesty, Maharal explains. Yitro realized that the stranger must be a descendant of the woman who prepared a beautiful repast for her guests but did not feel any need for recognition. Sarah remained inconspicuous, doing the ordinary everyday things that exceptional people do. It was enough for her to be in the right place at the right time.
The presumption that “to be noticed proves that I’m a somebody” is a fallacy. There’s a better, more effective way to be celebrated. Every act that we do with the correct intention is special. And G‑d cherishes every one of those acts, no matter how trivial—forever.
For G‑d values modesty. He values one who is focused on inner qualities, not externalities, accolades and attention.
What is most hidden is ultimately the most sought after.
• Learn the Parshah In DepthExodus 18:1-20:23
Parshah Summary
Parshah Summary
In the Parshah of Yitro ("Jethro"), the purpose of the Exodus is achieved when, seven weeks after their liberation from Egypt, the people of Israel gather at the foot of Mount Sinai to receive the Torah from G-d.
But first the Parshah describes the arrival in the Israelite camp of Moses' father-in-law, Jethro the priest of Midian, who has heard of the miracles of the Exodus. Jethro brings with him Moses' wife, Zipporah, and Moses' two sons, Gershom and Eliezer (whom Moses had earlier sent back to Midian), and proclaims:
"Now I know that G-d is greater than all gods..."
The next day, Jethro observes Moses administering justice to the people. "Why do you sit alone," he asks his son-in-law, "and all the people stand by you from morning to evening?"
Moses explains:
"The people come to me to seek G-d. When they have a matter, they come to me and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the decrees of G-d and His instructions."
Says Jethro:
"It is not good, this what you are doing. You will surely wear away, both you and this people that is with you; for this thing is too heavy for you--you are not able to perform it yourself alone."
Jethro advises Moses to appoint a hierarchy of magistrates to share the burden:
"You be the link between the people and G-d... You shall show them the way in which they must walk, and the work that they must do.
"But you must also seek out, from amongst all the people, able, G-d fearing men, men of truth, hating unjust gain; and appoint them over the [people] to be leaders of thousands, and leaders of hundreds, leaders of fifties, and leaders of tens.
"Let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but every small matter they shall judge themselves... and they shall bear the burden with you."
Moses accepts Jethro's advice and does as he suggests, following which "Moses sent off his father-in-law, and he went his way to his own land."
A People are Chosen
In the third month following the children of Israel's exodus from the land of Egypt; that same day they came into the wilderness of Sinai... and there Israel camped opposite the mountain.
Moses is summoned to the top of Mount Sinai, where G-d tells him that He is taking the children of Israel as His own chosen nation:
"Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel:
"You have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice, and keep My covenant, you shall be My own treasure from among all peoples, for all the earth is Mine
"And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation."
Moses descends from the mountain and "called for the elders of the people, and laid before them all these words which G-d had commanded him."
And all the people answered together, and said: "All that G-d has spoken we will do." And Moses reported the words of the people to G-d.
G-d instructs that the people should purify and sanctify themselves for two days, "Because on the third day G-d shall descend upon Mount Sinai before the eyes of the entire people." The mountain itself should be fenced in, and all should be warned against ascending the mountain or even "touching its edge."
The Revelation
And it came to pass on the third day when it was morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and the sound of a shofar exceeding loud; so that all the people in the camp trembled.
Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with G-d; and they stood under the mountain.
And Mount Sinai smoked in every part, because G-d descended upon it in fire: and the smoke of it ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.
The voice of the shofar sounded louder and louder; Moses speaks, and G-d answers him by a voice.
And G-d came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain. And G-d called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up....
The Ten Commandments
And G-d spoke all these words, saying:
I am G-d your G-d, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
You shall have no other gods beside Me. You shall not make for yourself any carved idol, or any likeness of any thing... you shall not bow down to them, nor serve them...
You shall not take the name of G-d your G-d in vain...
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to G-d... For in six days G-d made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore G-d blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Honor your father and your mother...
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your fellow.
You shall not covet... anything that is your fellow's.
The people are overwhelmed by all that they see and hear, and beg Moses: "You speak with us, and we shall hear; but let not G-d speak with us, lest we die." So "the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near to the thick darkness where G-d was."
The Parshah concludes with a number of additional laws communicated at Sinai, including the prohibition to use any iron tools in constructing an altar to G-d.
From Our Sages
And Jethro, the priest of Midian, the father-in-law of Moses, heard of all that G-d did for Moses and His people Israel; that G-d had taken Israel out of Egypt (18:1)
Of what did he hear that he came? Of the splitting of the Red Sea and the war against Amalek.(Rashi)
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And Jethro heard... and Jethro came... (Exodus 18:1)
This is the meaning of the verse (Proverbs 27:10), "Better a close neighbor than a distant brother." "A close neighbor"--this is Jethro; "a distant brother" refers to Esau.(Midrash Rabbah)
Jethro took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her back (18:2)
When G-d said to Moses in Midian, "Go, return to Egypt" (Exodus 4:19), "Moses took his wife and sons..." (ibid., v. 20). When Aaron later met with him "at the mountain of G-d" (v. 27), he said to him: "Who are these?" Said Moses: "This is my wife whom I married in Midian and these are my children" "Where are you taking them?" asked Aaron. "To Egypt," said Moses. Said Aaron to Moses: "We are grieving over the ones already in Egypt, and you propose to add to their number!" So Moses said to Zipporah, "Return to your father's house," and she took her two sons and went away.(Mechilta; Rashi)
Now I know that G-d is greater than all gods (18:11)
This tells us that he had full knowledge of every idol in the world, for he had worshipped them all.(Mechilta; Rashi)
The Torah could not be given to Israel until Jethro, the great and supreme priest of the all pagan world, and confessed his faith in the Holy One, saying, "Now I know that G-d is greater than all the gods."(Zohar)
And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the people... from the morning to the evening (18:13)
Every judge who judges with utter truthfulness even for a single hour, the Torah regards it as though he had become a partner with G-d in the work of creation. For here it is written, "And the people stood by Moses from the morning to the evening," and [regarding G-d's creation of the world] it is written, "And there was evening, and there was morning, one day."(Talmud, Shabbat 10a)
And Moses's father-in-law said to him... "Hearken now to my voice, I will give you counsel" (18:17-19)
Why was Jethro called (in Exodus 4:18) Yeter? Because he added (yiteir) a chapter to the Torah.(Rashi)
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In the third month... that same day they came into the wilderness of Sinai (19:1)
On the first of the month [of Sivan] they arrived in the Sinai... and on that day Moses did not say anything at all to them, on account of their exhaustion from the journey.
On the second day, he said to them, "And you shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests..."
On the third day, he informed them of G-d's command to set boundaries [around Mount Sinai]...
On the fourth day, he commanded them to "Sanctify [yourselves today and tomorrow" (Exodus 19:10); following which the Torah was given on the sixth day of Sivan].
Rabbi Jose says that the Torah was given on the seventh day of the month... Moses having added a third day of sanctification out of his own understanding.
All agree that the Torah was given on Shabbat. They differ only in that Rabbi Jose says that the first of the month was a Sunday, while the other rabbis hold that the first of the month was a Monday.(Talmud, Shabbat 86b)
A most puzzling thing in the Talmud's account is the fact that on the first day of Sivan--the day on which the people of Israel arrived at the place where they would receive the Torah--"Moses did not say anything at all to them, on account of their exhaustion from the journey." For six weeks the children of Israel had been eagerly awaiting the most important event in their history--their receiving of the Torah from G-d. Our sages tell us that they literally counted the days (hence our annual practice of "counting the omer" during the weeks that connect Passover to Shavuot). Does it make sense that on the very day they arrived at Mount Sinai they would do nothing at all in preparation for the great day?
At Sinai, the divine wisdom was revealed to man. Obviously, the human mind cannot attain the divine wisdom on its own---it that must be given to it by G-d Himself. So although G-d instructed us to study His Torah, desiring that human intellect should serve as the vehicle by which we apprehend His truth, a crucial prerequisite to Torah study is the mind's total abnegation of its ego. Only after it has voided itself of all pretension that it is capable of attaining the truth of truths on its own, can the mind become a "fit vessel" to receive it. In the words of the Sages, "An empty vessel can receive; a full vessel cannot receive."
So the day on which "Moses did not say anything at all to them" was an integral part of their preparations for receiving the Torah. This was the day on which they undertook the most "exhausting journey" of emptying their souls of intellectual vanity and make themselves fit receptacles of the divine truth.(The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
And they camped in the desert (19:2)
In the ownerless wilderness was the Torah given to the people of Israel. For if it were given in the Land of Israel, the residents of the Land of Israel would say, "It is ours"; and if it were given in some other place, the residents of that place would say, "It is ours." Therefore it was given in the wilderness, so that anyone who wishes to acquire it may acquire it.(Mechilta D'Rashbi)
Why was the Torah given in the desert? To teach us that if a person does not surrender himself to it like the desert, he cannot merit the words of Torah. And to teach us that just as the desert is endless, so is the Torah without end.(Pesikta D'Rav Kahana)
And there Israel camped opposite the mountain (19:2)
At all their other encampments, the verse says vayachanu ("and they camped," in the plural); here it says vayichan ("and he camped," in the singular). For all other encampments were in argument and dissent, whereas here they camped as one man, with one heart.(Mechilta; Rashi)
Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel (19:3)
"The house of Jacob" are the women; the "children of Israel" are the men.
Why did He command the women first? Because they are the more diligent in the fulfillment of the commandments. Another explanation is: So that they should introduce their children to the study of the Torah.
Rabbi Tachlifa of Caesarea says: G-d said, "When I created the world, I commanded Adam first, and only then Eve was commanded, with the result that she transgressed and upset the world. If I do not now call upon the women first, they will nullify the Torah."(Midrash Rabbah)
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And all the people answered together, and said: "All that G-d has spoken we will do" (19:8)
Said G-d to them: "I require guarantors."
Said the people of Israel: "The heaven and the earth shall be our guarantors."
Said G-d: "They won't last forever."
Said they: "Our fathers will guarantee it."
Said He: "They are busy."
Said they: "Our children will guarantee it."
Said He: "These are excellent guarantors."(Mechilta D'Rashbi)
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And it came to pass on the third day (19:16)
A Galilean scholar lectured before Rabbi Chisda: "Blessed be the Merciful One who gave a three-fold Torah (consisting of Torah, Prophets and Scriptures) to a three-fold people (comprised of Kohanim, Levites and Israelites) through a third-born (Moses, the third child of Amram and Jocheved) on the third day in the third month.(Talmud, Shabbat 88a)
The Torah is associated with the number "3" because the ultimate function of Torah is "to make peace in the world" and "3" represents the concept of peace.
Peace is unity in diversity. The number "1" implies exclusivity and singularity; the number "2" connotes diversity and plurality; the number "3" represents a state in which the diversity of "2" is superceded by a third, encompassing truth, within whose context differences no longer divide but rather unite diverse components into a harmonious whole.
This is the function to Torah: to introduce a unity of purpose to the diverse objects, forces and peoples of creation, uniting them all in the harmonious endeavor of serving the divine objective in creation.(The Chassidic Masters)
At the Torah's conclusion of its account of the creation of the world, it is written (Genesis 1:31): "And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day." What is the purpose of the additional "the" (hashishi)?
(Regarding the other days of creation, the Torah simply says, "And it was evening and it was morning, one day... a second day.. a third day, etc."; "the sixth day" implies that the verse is referring to a certain famous "sixth day").
This teaches that G-d stipulated with the works of creation and said to them: "If Israel accepts the Torah (on the sixth of Sivan), you shall exist; but if not, I will turn you back into emptiness and formlessness."(Talmud, Shabbat 88a)
And they stood under the mountain (19:17)
This teaches that G-d overturned the mountain upon them like an [inverted] cask, and said to them: "If you accept the Torah, fine; if not, there shall be your burial."
Rabbi Acha ben Yaakov observed: This resulted in a strong legal contest against the Torah (since it was a contract entered into under duress). Said Raba: But they re-accepted it (out of their own, uncompelled choice) in the days of Ahasuerus, as it is written (Esther 9:27): "The Jews confirmed, and accepted"--on that occasion they confirmed what they had accepted long before.(Talmud, Shabbat 88a)
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Moses speaks, and G-d answers him by a voice (19:19)
"The voice of G-d is in power" (Psalms 29:4). If it would have said, "The voice of G-d is in His power," the world could not survive it; rather it says, "The voice of G-d is in power"--in accordance to the individual strength of each and every one of them. To the old, according to their strength, and to the young, according to theirs; to the children, to the babes and to the women, according to their strength; and even to Moses according to his strength, as it is said: "Moses spoke, and G-d answered him by a voice."(Midrash Rabbah)
And G-d came down on Mount Sinai... and G-d called to Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up (19:20)
Once there was a king who decreed: "The people of Rome are forbidden to go down to Syria, and the people of Syria are forbidden to go up to Rome." Likewise, when G-d created the world, He decreed and said: "The heavens are G-ds, and the earth is given to man" (Psalms 115:16). But when He wished to give the Torah to Israel, He rescinded His original decree, and declared: "The lower realms may ascend to the higher realms, and the higher realms may descend to the lower realms. And I, Myself, will begin" as it is written, "And G-d descended on Mount Sinai," and then it says, "And to Moses He said: Go up to G-d."(Midrash Tanchuma)
Our Sages tell us that the Patriarchs studied the Torah and fulfilled its precepts many centuries before the Torah was "officially" given at Sinai. Since no "new information" was revealed on the sixth of Sivan, what is the significance of the "giving of the Torah" on that occasion?
The answer lies in the above-quoted Midrash: at Sinai G-d abolished the decree which had consigned the physical and the spiritual to two separate domains. Thus, at Sinai was introduced a new phenomenon--the cheftza shel kedushah or "holy object." After Sinai, when physical man takes a physical coin, earned by his physical toil and talents, and gives it to charity; or when he forms a piece of leather to a specified shape and dimensions and binds them to his head and arm as tefillin---the object with which he has performed his "mitzvah" is transformed. A finite, physical thing becomes "holy," as its very substance and form become the actualization of a divine desire and command.
The mitzvot could be, and were, performed before the revelation at Sinai, and had the power to achieve great things within the spiritual realm (by elevating the soul of the one who performed them and effecting "unions" (yichudim) and "revelations" (giluyim) in the supernal worlds) and within the physical realm (by refining the object with which it was performed, within the limits of its natural potential). But because the mitzvot had not yet been commanded by G-d, they lacked the power to bridge the great divide between matter and spirit. Only as a command of G-d, creator and delineator of both the spiritual and the physical, could the mitzvah supersede the natural definitions of these two realms. Only after Sinai could the mitzvah actualize the spiritual and sanctify the material.(The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
And G-d spoke all these words (20:1)
When G-d gave the Torah no bird twittered, no fowl flew, no ox lowed, none of the angels stirred a wing, the seraphim did not say "Holy, Holy," the sea did not roar, the creatures spoke not, the whole world was hushed into breathless silence and the voice went forth: "I am G-d your G-d."(Midrash Rabbah)
With each and every utterance that issued forth from the mouth of G-d, the souls of Israel flew from their bodies, as it is written (Song of Songs 5:6), "My soul went out when He spoke." But since their souls departed at the first utterance, how could they receive the second one? G-d brought down the dew with which He will resurrect the dead and revived them.(Talmud, Shabbat 88a)
In other words, even after they were revived by the divine "dew" following the first utterance, this did not suffice to keep body and soul together at the second utterance; and the "dew" which enabled them to absorb the second utterance, did not suffice for the third; and so on "with each and every utterance." This means that each utterance involved a greater revelation of divinity than the previous one. Thus the commandment "Do not murder," for example, expresses an even loftier divine truth than "Remember the Shabbat" or "I am G-d your G-d."(The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
I am G-d your G-d (20:2)
Because G-d appeared to them at the Red Sea as a mighty warrior, at Sinai as a sage teaching Torah, in the days of Solomon as a handsome lad and in the times of Daniel as a compassionate old man, G-d said to them: Just because you perceive Me in many guises, do not thinks that there are many gods; rather, it is I who was at the sea, I who was at Sinai, I who is in every place -- "I am G-d your G-d."(Midrash Tanchuma)
I am G-d your G-d, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt (20:2)
Would it not have been more appropriate for G-d to say, "I am G-d... who created the heavens and the earth"?
But G-d the creator is the G-d that Israel shares with the rest of creation. At Sinai, G-d did not speak to us as the author of nature, but as the executor of the miraculous Exodus. For at Sinai we forged a covenant with G-d in which we pledged to surpass all bounds of nature and convention in our commitment to Him, and He pledged to supercede all laws of nature and convention in His providence over us.(The Chassidic Masters)
Remember the Shabbat day (20:8)
In Deuteronomy 5 (where the Ten Commandments are repeated), it says, "Safeguard the Shabbat day." "Remember" and "safeguard" (which represent the imperative and prohibitive aspects of Shabbat) where expressed in a single utterance--something which the human mouth cannot articulate and the human ear cannot hear.(Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 27a)
Six days shall you labor... (20:9)
This, too, is a divine decree. Just as the people of Israel were commanded to rest on Shabbat, so, too, were they commanded to work on the other days of the week.(Mechilta D'Rashbi)
Six days shall you labor, and do all your work (20:9)
Is it then possible for a person to do "all his work" in six days? But rest on Shabbat as if all your work is done.(Mechilta)
Honor your father and your mother (20:12)
There are three partners in man: G-d, his father, and his mother. When a man honors his father and his mother, G-d says: "I consider it though I had dwelt among them and they had honored Me."(Talmud, Kiddushin 30b)
(The commentaries point out that the Ten Commandments were engraved on two tablets--five on the first and five on the second. The first tablet contains mitzvot that are "between man and G-d," while the commandments on the second tablet govern the relationship "between man and man." This means that as the fifth commandment, "Honor your father and your mother," belongs to the category of "between G-d and man"!)
Honor your father and your mother (20:12)
And in Leviticus 19:3 it says, "Every man, his mother and father should fear." For it is revealed and known to G-d that a person adores his mother more than his father, and that he fears his father more than his mother. G-d therefore set the honor of one's father first, and the fear of one's mother first, to emphasize that one must honor and fear them both equally.(Talmud, Kiddushin 31a)
Do not murder (20:13)
How were the Ten Commandments given? Five on one tablet and five on a second tablet. This means that "Do not murder" corresponds to "I am G-d your G-d." The Torah is telling us that one who sheds blood it is as if he has reduced the image of the King.
What is this analogous to? To a king of flesh and blood who entered a country and put up portraits of himself, and made statues of himself, and minted coins with his image. After a while, the people of the country overturned his portraits, broke his statues and invalidated his coins, thereby reducing the image of the king. So, too, one who sheds blood reduces the image of the King, as it is written (Genesis 9:6): "One who spills a man's blood... for in the image of G-d He made man."(Mechilta)
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Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal (20:13)
When Moses ascended to heaven, the angels protested to G-d: "What is a human being doing amongst us?"
Said He to them: "He has come to receive the Torah."
Said they to Him: "This esoteric treasure, which was hidden with You for nine hundred and seventy-four generations before the world was created, You wish to give to flesh and blood?... 'What is man, that You are mindful of him, and the son of man, that You take notice of him? ... Place Your glory upon the heavens!' (Psalms 8:2-5)"
Said G-d to Moses: "Answer them."
Said Moses: "Master of the Universe! I fear lest they consume me with the breath of their mouths."
Said G-d: "Hold on to the Throne of Glory, and return them an answer."
Said Moses: "Master of the Universe! This Torah that You are giving to me, what is written in it? I am the L-rd Your G-d, who has taken you out from the land of Egypt."
"Have you descended to Egypt?" asked Moses of the angels. "Have you been enslaved to Pharaoh? So why should the Torah be yours?
"What else does it say? You shall have no other gods. Do you dwell amongst idol-worshipping nations? What else does it say? Remember the Shabbat day. Do you work? ... What else does it say? Do not swear falsely. Do you do business? What else does it say? Honor your father and your mother. Do you have parents? What else does it say? Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal. Is there jealousy among you? Do you have an evil inclination?"
Straightway the angels conceded to G-d... and each one was moved to befriend Moses and transmit something to him. Even the Angel of Death too confided his secret to him...(Talmud, Shabbat 88b)
[For another version of this dialogue, click here]
And all the people saw the voices (20:15)
They saw what is ordinarily heard and they heard what is ordinarily seen.(Midrash Lekach Tov; Rashi)
As physical beings, we "see" physical reality. On the other hand, G-dliness and spirituality is only something that is "heard"--it can be discussed, perhaps even understood to some extent, but not experienced first hand.
At the revelation at Sinai, we saw what is ordinarily heard--we experienced the divine as an immediate, tangible reality. On the other hand, what is ordinarily "seen" --the material world--was something merely "heard," to be accepted or rejected at will.(The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
And Moses drew near to the thick darkness where G-d was (20:18)
There are three types of darkness: the "heavy darkness" of the Covenant Between the Pieces (Genesis 15:17); the "tangible darkness" of the ninth plague in Egypt (Exodus 10:22); and the "thick darkness" at the giving of the Torah.(Rabbeinu Bechayei)
And when you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone: for if you lift up your sword upon it, you have defiled it (20:22)
Iron was created to shorten the life of man, and the Altar was created to lengthen the life of man; so it is not fitting that that which shortens should be lifted upon that which lengthens.(Talmud, Middot 3:4)
15 SHEVAT
I have a friend who will not buy avocados on principle. "Fifty percent of the weight is the seed," he explains. He loves purchasing apples, grapes and bananas, but avocados and mangos are out. Peaches and dates are borderline . . .By Yanki Tauber
I have a friend who will not buy avocados on principle. "Fifty percent of the weight is the seed," he explains. He loves purchasing apples, grapes and bananas, but avocados and mangos are out. Peaches and dates are borderline -- he'll buy them on occasion, with deep misgivings.
My friend has a point - the whole fruit business is a scam. Trees need to procreate; that's why they grow seeds. But trees are not very mobile, leaving them with the problem of how to get their seeds planted a reasonable distance away (if both you and your offspring are immobile, you can't throw them out of the house at age 35). One way would be to tap a passing bird, animal or human on the shoulder and say: "Excuse me, sir, can you please take these seeds and drop them off some distance away, preferably some place with good soil, sunshine and an abundant water supply?" But most passersby would probably mumble something about a doctor's appointment and slink away. So the tree packages its seeds in colorful, tasty and nutritional pulp, and markets it as "fruit."
"Man is a tree of the field" (Deuteronomy 20:19).
We resemble the tree in numerous ways: in our ceaseless "upward" striving, in our need for "roots", in the way that our lives fork and "branch" off in different directions, among others. Chief amongst them, of course, is the way that everything we are and do is focused on the generation of seed.
Man is a spiritual being, which means that we not only reproduce physically -- by giving birth to children -- but also spiritually: we replicate ourselves by seeding our ideas, feelings and convictions in the minds and hearts of others. And here, says the Lubavitcher Rebbe, we find an interesting parallel between the way that the fruit tree dispatches its seeds and the way that we disseminate our thoughts and experiences.
The fruit tree's vehicle of reproduction consists of two basic components:
1) the seed, into which the tree distills its very self - its characteristics, its nature, its quintessential treeness;
2) the "packaging" that makes it attractive and palatable to its curriers and consumers.
Both are necessary. Without the packaging, the seed wouldn't get very far, or would do so only with great difficulty. On the other hand, if a tree were to produce a most luscious and attractive fruit but neglect to include a seed, nothing would happen. There would be no shortage of consumers, but no progeny.
When we seek to "reproduce" spiritually by communicating our thoughts and feelings to others, we, too, package our seeds. We envelop them in intellectual sophistication, steep them in emotional sauce, dress them in colorful words and images. If we didn't, our message might not get very far (my avocado-shunning friend, for one, would not display much interest). But the important thing to remember is that there must be a "seed" in there. If the fruit of our mind doesn't encase a piece of our soul, what's the point?
More in 15 Shevat:• Planting Seeds of Respect (By Elana Mizrahi)
Why didn’t I want to make him feel better by putting the blame on the pole? I want to teach my child that when we make a mistake, not only is that okay, but we should also take responsibility for the mistake. Otherwise, how will a person ever grow and change?He walked straight into a pole
During a recent visit from my father-in-law, we encouraged him to open up and tell us about his childhood. My father-in-law is old enough to be my grandfather. He himself is a great-grandfather and has rich stories to tell. He talked and reminisced and told us crazy tales. When he was growing up, times were hard, times were challenging. There’s no doubt about that. But do you know what he kept repeating? “I had a beautiful childhood.”
There were no complaints, no pointing fingers. He never said a single negative word about his parents or about how they treated him or educated him. Imagine a whole story, a whole conversation about someone’s childhood and parents without a single—as we say in Yiddish—kvetch (complaint)! What was there? Complete and total respect, admiration and love.
Wouldn’t you love it if in 60 years time, as your children sit down to tell their grandchildren about their childhood, they say, “I had a beautiful childhood . . .” Wouldn’t you love it if there was the passing down of a tradition without any complaints or pointing fingers? Is it possible? Yes! I see it with my father-in-law! How can it be done? By taking responsibility for our own actions, by looking at our own childhoods and saying, “All that happened made me into who I am today. There was good, and I need to see the good.” By admitting that by now, you are an adult, and while it is productive to look at your past and to understand that, yes, maybe you have this not so positive quality or trait because of the way that you were raised, it’s only beneficial if it pushes you to move forward and change. If all it does is bring up resentment and encourage you to complain, it’s not good for you! And it certainly doesn’t set a good example for your children.
It says in the Torah that “a person is like the tree of a field.”1 There are many beautiful explanations for this comparison. Here is one that came to me: A tree is only alive if it’s connected to its roots, and it will only survive if the roots are deeply implanted in the ground. When you look at your parents, you may even want to “disconnect,” but I am going to tell you something: you are who you are in part because of them—and that is grand. If your mother is Jewish, it means that you are Jewish because of her, and that is huge, because it means that you are connected, you have roots. These roots give you stability; they give you strength. Through its roots, the tree is nourished with nutrients from the soil and water. The roots rise to the trunk, the trunk to the branches, and from the branches grow flowers and fruits.You are connected. You have roots.
There’s another secret that I learned as I observed my father-in-law. Everyone does the best they can in their situation, and we all make mistakes. I started to think about my own parents, and I realized that they really did the best they could, and they continue to do the best they can. Who is to say that if I were in their shoes I wouldn’t have done worse. I look at my own children, and I only pray that they forgive me for my mistakes ,and that they take responsibility for their actions. I pray that one day they sit and reminisce about their “beautiful” childhoods and that when they think of me it is with positive thoughts full of respect, love and admiration.
FOOTNOTES
1. Deuteronomy 20:19.
• Mystical Insights Into the New Year for Trees (Adapted from the works of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson)
A Conversation with the Chief Rabbi of Israel
A dynamic discussion with Chief Rabbi David Lau in conversation with Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie in Yorba Linda, California.
Rabbi David Lau
Watch (1:03:35)
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• Your Real Problem Is the Serpent! (By Moishe New)
Why do we celebrate Tu B’Shevat? Unlike other holidays, it is neither mentioned in the Torah, nor does it commemorate a historic event. What exactly are we celebrating?
The Mishnah1 explains that there are four heads of the year, four dates on the calendar when the yearly cycle begins anew for specific purposes:2
● The first of Nissan is the new year for kings and for festivals. In the olden days, documents were often dated counting from the reign of the monarch. Now, when does the first year end and the second one begin? It would have been highly inconvenient to use the actual anniversary of his coronation, since not everyone knew the date, and every king had a different date of ascension. Thus, the first day of Nissan served as that day. No matter when a king was crowned, his first year ended and his second year began on that day.
● The first of Elul is the new year for the cattle tithe, but according to Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Simeon, it is on the first of Tishrei. A Jewish farmer is obligated to tithe his livestock, consecrating every ten animals. But all ten animals counted must be born in the same year. So when does one group end and another one begin? The first of Elul (or according to some, on the first of Tishrei).
● The first of Tishrei is the new year for years, for Sabbatical years and Jubilees, and for the planting of trees and herbs. This is our beloved Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which we celebrate by hearing the shofar, praying, and feasting on sweet foods.
● The first day of Shevat is the new year for trees, according to the school of Shammai, but the school of Hillel says it is on the fifteenth of the same month. Like cattle, 10% of our fruit must be tithed, and we must not tithe fruit from one year together with fruit of another. So when does one arboreal year end and another begin? The halachah follows the school of Hillel, which teaches that it was on 15 Shevat (Tu B’Shevat).
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson shares several teachings regarding the yearly cycle and its various heads:
Three or four heads?
The Mishnah states that there are four heads of the year. Yet, according to Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Simeon there are only three (since they combine the first of Elul with Tishrei). Rabbi Levi Yitzchak points out that this ambiguity is reflected in the letter shin, which is linguistically similar to the Hebrew word for “year,” “shanah. While we are most familiar with the shin with three heads, it sometimes appears with a fourth head. For example, the tefillin we wear on our heads has a three-headed shin on one side, and a four-headed shin on the other—appropriately reflecting the shanah, which has either three or four heads.
Twelve or thirteen months?
Jewish years are not all the same length. Most have 12 months. But every few years, there is a “leap year” with a 13th month that helps us keep the lunar and solar cycles in sync. This same elasticity is seen in the 12 Tribes of Israel, which come from the 12 sons of Jacob. At first glance, there seem to be only 12 tribes. But in fact, Jacob split the tribe of Joseph into two, when he “upgraded” his grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh, to be like sons to him. This brings the count up to 13. But then we have the Tribe of Levi, which was not granted any land in Israel, which is often seen as a separate entity, not counted among the tribes, bringing the count down to 12 again. Thus, the Tribes of Israel are both 12 and 13—just like the months of the year.
This is seen on a deep mystical level as well. The year is connected to the letter vav of G‑d’s ineffable name (the explanation for this connection is beyond the scope of this article). Now, the letter vav is often spelled out as וו, which has the numerical value of 12 (6+6). But other times, it is written as ואו, which has the value of 13 (6+1+6).
Scripture at Age Five
The sages instituted that five years of age is the appropriate time to begin learning Scripture. At that point, a child may have mastered the Hebrew letters and vowels and his ready to read the Torah. The Hebrew word for “year,” “shanah” (שנה), has the numerical value of 355 (which is exactly how many days some Hebrew years have). After five years, a child acquires a total of 1,775 (355x5). Now take the letters of the alphabet, and add up their numerical value—with aleph worth 1, bet worth 2, all the way to tav being worth 400—and you will arrive at a grand total of 1,775.
What, you tried it, and you only arrived at 1,495? Of course, you also need to add in the value of the five final letters, and you will arrive at the right number.
Tu B’Shevat Insights
Back to the new year of the trees. While there is disagreement with regards to the date, all agree that this event takes place in the month of Shevat. Rabbi Levi Yitzckak writes that the word “Shevat” (שבט) has exactly the same numerical value as “ilan” (אילן), the Hebrew word for “tree.”
How can that be? Shevat adds up to 311 (3+9+2), and ilan only reaches 91 (1+10+30+50)!
The solution is to let the tree spread its branches a bit. Take every letter ands spell it out in full:
LETTER FULL SPELLING FULL VALUE
א אלף 111
י יוד 20
ל למד 74
ן נון 106
Now add up 111+20+74+106, and you arrive at 311, exactly the same value as the month of Shevat.
Sources:
Igrot Kodesh p. 414.
Torat Levi Yitzchak p. 366.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak’s personal diary.
Igrot Kodesh p. 413.
FOOTNOTES
1.Rosh Hashanah 1:1.
2.For the sake of brevity, we have only explained one aspect of each of these New Years.
VIDEO
A dynamic discussion with Chief Rabbi David Lau in conversation with Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie in Yorba Linda, California.
Rabbi David Lau
Watch (1:03:35)<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://embed.chabad.org/multimedia/mediaplayer/embedded/embed.js.asp?aid=2829942&width=auto&height=auto"></script><span style="clear:both;" class="lb" id="lbdiv">Visit <a href="http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/default_cdo/aid/591213/jewish/Video.htm">Jewish.TV</a> for more <a href="http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/default_cdo/aid/591213/jewish/Video.htm">Jewish videos</a>.</span>
More in Video:
• Your Real Problem Is the Serpent! (By Moishe New)
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• The Shul, Episode 2 (Dovid Taub & Jonathan Goorvich)
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WOMEN
Yes, I'm the Lady Who Stops Strangers Outside the Supermarket
I was definitely looking for G‑d in college, but I was also very sure that the answer was not in Torah Judaism. A lot has changed in 40 years.By Lieba Rudolph
• Winter Parenting (By Temima Shulman)
As the trees have shed their glory in my corner of the world in suburban New Jersey, I am thinking a lot about the end of things. The end of everything that was once beautiful, full of color, full of life, at its peak. I have been thinking about this especially because of the recent death of my grandmother.
Autumn and winter are a time when we subconsciously carry an end- or death-consciousness. If you are a gardener, or involved in agricultural production, you understand this organically. Death is a precursor to life. Death prepares for a better crop, for stronger roots. I watch as the barren trees allow their branches to remain steady, demonstrating an acceptance of the end of things, their leathered leaves having imparted wisdom of a life well-lived.I am thinking a lot about the end of things
Already grieving for my grandmother’s passing, I am feeling autumn’s adieu and winter’s insistence in more than just a physical way. True, I have lived through many winters and hopefully many await, but I realize that one day a spring will follow a winter, and I won’t be here. I will not experience the excitement of seeing the first green buds of my backyard maple punctuating the blue spring sky after a long winter, and in that same spring I will not feel the fresh breeze on my face, in my hair.
The falling red and orange leaves have helped me internalize this in a way that I had not been able to, until death came too close. The shorter days, the earlier sunsets are reminding me that the sun doesn’t shine forever, that sunset can often sneak up quicker than you think.
My three-year-old is also helping me internalize this.
She too is struggling with the loss of my grandmother, her great-grandmother. She spoke to her almost daily; whenever I called, they talked.
“I didn’t want Bubby to die,” she says, referring to my grandmother, as I put her to bed one night.
“Me, too, but it was her turn,” I try to explain to her, to myself. “She had a very long turn,” I add, referring to her 96 years.
My three-year-old has heard from her four sisters about Bubby’s remarkable old age. In fact, she has already been waiting for her own February birthday for months now, repeating the order of the seasons like a rhyme, asking, “Is it winter yet?”
Someone must have told her that trees die in the winter, because she comes home one day announcing, “I don’t want winter.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I don’t want the trees to die.”
I reassuringly say, “They die for the winter, but then they come back to life when it is springtime.”
Uh, oh. I can’t backtrack now.
“And Bubby will also come back in the spring?” I can see the relief in her eyes at finally finding a solution for this horrible truth about Bubby being gone forever.
“The trees will come back, but Bubby will not come back,” I say, wishing I could fill the vacuum of pain left by these words.
I try to explain to her how we feel Bubby in our heart, in our soul, and in this way, she lives on. When we say the things she said, or bake the blintzes she made, we feel her. I quickly shuffle through my memory for a distinct “Bubby” moment and try to imitate my grandmother’s Hungarian-accented English, when she would greet us at her apartment door: “Look who came to visit her Bubby!” I raise my eyebrows and open my eyes wide, the way my grandmother would exclaim, standing in her worn housecoat.
“I don’t feel her in my heart,” my three-year-old announces firmly.
But then I repeat a little Yiddish nursery rhyme my grandmother would sing to my daughter. “Patche patche hantaleh . . .”
A smile is forming on her lips, and she releases her eye contact with me. She lowers her face and folds herself into a fetal ball, murmuring some sort of melancholy sound, and I know that I have touched her with my grandmother’s memory.
There are so many “how to explain” books for children and for parents about death. But when Bubby died, I couldn’t find a book that told me how to grieve for my enormous loss and still be a mother, and still believe in the beauty of the mundane tasks that a mom has to do in order to build her child. I could not find a book on how to answer the questions my little girl was asking, because I had the same questions, and I could not just give her the answers that now seemed formulaic.
I found that all the books were wholly inadequate, because grieving is such a personal experience. The death of a loved one is such a “pull you out from under” game-changer. It’s as if everyone starts out with a black-and-white screen and spends a lifetime filling in the color, and then in one swoop, a button is pressed and your screen is devoid of all that hard work—all that color. Death forces us to look at the screen of life more carefully, to really think about whether we want to add a little red to this relationship, or some purple to that dream.
And that is why I am experiencing this winter so intimately, ready to think about life from a natural point of view. Nature has served as a sort of metaphor, but nature alone has not been enough. Because I am also aware of the fact that withIs there a larger presence than nature? Does it all end with death? death, the BIG questions loom even larger: are we accompanied? Is there a larger presence than nature? Does it all end with death?
I know that if I trekked the expanse of earth, I would not find Bubby, and still, it feels as though she is right here with me. Sometimes I joke out loud to her, thinking that death is some great seat in the theater and she can see me from all angles, wherever her seat is. And then I think, if Bubby could be such a powerful, living presence for me, and the trees can be such an anchor in a world that seems to have lost its form, then there must be something more powerful than both. If both the human and the tree have continuity, but are unrelated natural objects, then there must be a Higher Power.
That Higher Power placed us in a beautiful world, setting into motion both nature and humanity, but then left?
Death gets you thinking about where G‑d might still be present in this world: in the living, or in the dead? In the moment of a melody formed, or in the everyday eternity of a Renoir? In the moment we forgive, or in the moment we ignite a friendship? Does G‑d reside in the “why”? Or in the “what to do now” that follows tragedy? Does G‑d linger in the prayerbook? Or out in the sea? Is G‑d each aspect of a noun: a person, place and thing? Or is G‑d only present in the idea of G‑d?
All of these questions feel like the fallen leaves, building themselves up into piles that will be blown into a big expanse.
I know my daughter is brimming with questions, too. They come out of nowhere. “Where does Bubby live now?” She is trying to make sense of the world that she has only known to be good, predictable and consistent.
One night, she says to me, “I don’t want you to get old.”I know my daughter is brimming with questions
A young age to be grappling with the fact that we cannot control what appears to be in our control. There are moments when I, too, am looking for security, a rail to hold on to. Nature gives me metaphor, and profundity, but it is still a limited, physical response.
I have started to take solace in a different rhythm, a different kind of nature: the cycle of the Torah reading.
I am surprised by the Book that has begun to give my questions context.
The Torah has been on my shelf my entire life. I have known its stories since I was three. But it is as if death has allowed me to see the Torah in its skeletal form—a clean canvas—and I am able to begin the stories again. To see value where I had not seen value before, to understand it more fully as a book of our ancestors as much as a guiding compass, to notice the colors in the text that had never been there before. Because now I understand the Torah to be a tree against the endless blue sky of history, whose leaves shed, but whose root system grows deeper and more stable with time.
This eternal tree has allowed me a window to understand mankind’s root system, set forth by the Higher Power. I am rereading the stories without the flourish from the past, but with a sharp eye on the branches of its narrative. Death has given me the lens to read the Torah with the wonder of my three-year-old, and the hindsight we acquire with loss.
I find great comfort in reading about the first monotheistic and universal families. They are full of life and pain, color and dimension. But unlike the tree, they are human. I can dialogue with them.
They are the same stories my grandmother heard every Shabbat of her 96 years, they are the stories that helped her keep her destroyed family alive. Her father—who, like Abraham, was a religious man who saw beauty in the metaphysical—died and left my grandmother fatherless when she was nine. Her mother, like Sarah, was more particularistic, and always had linens and food set aside for the wandering Jewish poor. My grandmother, sent away from her homeland at 19, to an unknown land—the last salve of the family in 1939—had spent her entire life in Brooklyn recreating her Canaan for me, for her children and grandchildren, so that we would know our inheritance, our monotheism.
I find connection in the fact that I am reading the same stories that she read, that she had learned from her mother. Like the maple in my backyard that will continue to grace the blue sky every spring, my children will continue to keep my Bubby and me alive—long after our leaves have fallen—through our stories.
I am that child who is keeping my grandmother’s stories alive, the biblical stories, the personal stories—they become enmeshed. When I read the Torah, I am reaching back to many ancestors whose names I do not even know, but whose fundamental reason to live I am sustaining. Thousands of years apart, we are in conversation. This gives me great comfort, because, as I am living through winter’s consciousness, I realize that even trees eventually die. But these conversations are eternal.
The essence of our lives is the story we create and then narrate, write and rewrite, and eventually entrust for someone else to tell. The stories we tell create a fresh layer for the subtext, the big questions that we are all looking to fashion our stories upon.
When we leave this world, we leave everything we planted in others, and everything that was planted in us. Our actions, our stories, forever re-germinate, spring after spring, child after mother, Genesis after Genesis.
QUESTION
What Does It Mean When You Dream Your Teeth Are Falling Out?
As a kid, I was told that dreaming about losing your teeth is a bad sign. Is it true, and do we have to take dreams seriously? By Aron Moss
• Why Eat Carob on 15 Shevat? (By Baruch S. Davidson)
The custom of eating carob on Tu B'shvat, the New Year for Trees, is not cited in the Talmud or in theCode of Jewish Law, yet it is common in many communities. Our sages teach that the customs of the Jewish people are also Torah and have profound reasons congruent with Torah teachings and laws.
As it turns out, eating carob has an intrinsic connection both to Tu B'Shevat and to customs in general. But first, a word about the halachic significance of Tu B'Shevat, and what makes it the New Year for Trees:
Let's say you are a farmer in the Land of Israel and you have an orchard. Once a year, you must give a certain amount of fruit as tithes—for the Kohanim, for the poor, or for eating in Jerusalem (depending on the year in a seven year cycle). The question arises: When is the cut-off date that divides between one year's crop and the next? The answer is fairly simple: It is the day when most of the rainy season in the Land of Israel has passed. That is the 15th day of Shevat, known commonly as Tu B'Shevat ("Tu" is one way of saying fifteen).
Now another problem arises: There are certain trees—such as the carob tree—that can begin to bud before Tu B'Shevat, but will not be harvested until much later, well after Tu B'Shevat. Would their tithing follow the rules of the tree-year in which they bud, or the tree-year in which they are harvested? This question is addressed in the Talmud:
The rabbis taught: A tree whose fruits were in bud before the fifteenth of Shevat must be tithed as the produce of the past year, but if they bud after that, they are tithed during the coming year. Said Rabbi Nechemia: This applies to trees whose fruit ripen and are harvested over an extended period of time. But in the case of a tree whose crop is harvested all at once—such as the date-palm, olive tree, or carob tree—although their fruits may begun to bud before the fifteenth of Shevat, they are tithed with the produce of the coming year.
The Talmud concludes that "The custom of the masses follows Rabbi Nechemia with regard to carobs." This law was decided not by a vote of the sages, but simply by the custom of the Jewish people.
Throughout this entire discussion there is only one law that is decided by the custom of the people—the custom regarding carob trees. Now isn't that neat: In order to commemorate Tu B'Shevat, the custom evolved that we should do something to note a custom mentioned in the Talmud—at least in an indirect way—by eating carobs!
Another unique thing about the carob tree is that the Talmud tells us that it takes 70 years to mature and bear fruit. By eating carob on Tu B'Shevat, we are also highlighting an important lesson to be learned from the carob tree: the importance of patiently investing in the future even when it is a long and arduous process with no immediate gains, for the fruits of our labors will be harvested by generations to come.1
Let me know if this helps.
Best regards,
Rabbi Baruch S. Davidson
Sources
Tractate Rosh Hashana 15b, Kuntres Tu B'Shevat by Rabbi David Cohen ("The Nazir of Jerusalem") – Jerusalem 1973.
FOOTNOTES
1. This is also one of the reasons that G‑d (in Song of Songs 5:1) refers to this world as His "garden", and not just a home. For unlike a home, which is ready to be inhabited immediately upon construction, a garden or orchard requires several years of constant work before it is a source of benefit. This reminds us that our mission on earth is not necessarily an easy or fast job. - From a talk of the Rebbe, 10th of Shevat 5732.STORY
His Disciples Dance on the New Moon
One year, during the Yom Kippur prayers, the Baal Shem Tov saw with his holy spirit that harm would come to the Jewish people if he and his disciples did not make the traditional blessing of the new moon immediately following the holiday. Then this great mitzvah would be joined to the side of merit and incline the balance of the scale of judgment to good.
But the new moon was not visible at the end of Yom Kippur, and the blessing could not be recited. So the Baal Shem Tov, who was depressed about this, attempted to use his mystic powers to cause the moon to appear. He asked his disciples several times to go outside and see if the moon was visible, but in spite of his great efforts, the skies remained overcast with dark clouds, and it seemed unlikely there would be a moon that night.
The Baal Shem Tov’s disciples knew nothing about their master’s worries or about the heavenly decree and how important it was that they bless the moon after Yom Kippur. It was their custom to celebrate at the end of Yom Kippur, since they had completed their divine service successfully, led by their holy master, the Baal Shem Tov, whose service on Yom Kippur was like that of thehigh priest in the ancient Temple. They had full trust that their prayers were accepted and that they were signed and sealed for a good year.
So this time too, they were joyously dancing with holy fervor. At first, they danced in the outer room of the Baal Shem Tov’s house, but afterward, carried on the wave of their exuberant joy, they burst into their master’s room and danced in his presence. When the joy and ecstasy of their dancing surged even more strongly, they dared to draw the Baal Shem Tov himself into their circle. They swept their holy master into their midst, and he began to dance with them.
While they were dancing this sacred dance, those outside suddenly called out loudly that the moon was visible, and they all went out quickly to bless the moon that night.
The Baal Shem Tov then said that what he could not accomplish by his mystic powers, the Chassidim had accomplished by their joy.
Reprinted with permission from Jewish Tales of Mystic Joy, by YitzhakBuxbaum.More in Story:
• Hidden Treasure Well Used (Yalkut Shimoni, Ruth 607)
There was once a pious man with a righteous wife. When the couple lost all their money, the man found work plowing a field, where he met Elijah the Prophet disguised as an Arab.Elijah said to him, “You have six years of wealth coming to you. Do you want them now or at the end of your life?”
The man said to him, “You are just a conjurer. You have nothing to give me. Please go away and leave me in peace.”
Elijah came back to him again and again. The third time, the pious man said, “Let me consult with my wife.”
He went to his wife and said, “This man has come to me three times to say that I have six years of wealth coming to me. He wants to know when I want them—now or at the end of my life.”
She said, “Tell him to give you the money now.”
He went to tell this to Elijah, who said to him, “Go home. Even before you get to the gate of your front garden, you will see that you have been blessed.”
The couple’s children had been playing in the dirt of their yard, where they found enough money to support their family for six years, so they called their mother. She ran out to tell her husband the good news even before he got to the gate of their house. He immediately thanked G‑d.
What did his wife do? She said to him, “G‑d has been extremely kind to us, giving us all this money. Let’s spend these six years helping others. Maybe then G‑d will give us more.” So they did.
At the end of the six years, Elijah came and said, “The time has come for me to take back what I gave you.”
The pious man said, “When I accepted the money, I consulted with my wife. Now that it’s time to give it back, let me consult with her again.” So he went to her and said, “The man has come to take back what he gave us.”
She told him, “If he can find people who will use the money better than we did, he should take it.”
G‑d knew about all the good things they had done for others while they had wealth and decided to give them even more, as it says in Isaiah (32:17), “The fruit of righteousness will be peace.”
LIFESTYLE
Make 15 'Shevat Frozen Yogurt Grapes
An easy way to jazz up your grapes and make a quick, refreshing, naturally sweet treat. By Miriam SzokovskiThis week, Jews around the world will celebrate Tu B’Shevat, the New Year for the trees. Traditionally, we celebrate by eating fruit, specifically the seven fruits of Israel, including grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates.
While plain fruit is delicious and healthy, here's an easy way to jazz up your grapes and make them a little more fun. Meet the Frozen Yogurt Grape—a quick, refreshing, naturally sweet treat.
You'll need large, firm grapes (whichever color you prefer), toothpicks, Greek yogurt (or other thick yogurt) and some sort of crunch (chopped nuts, coconut flakes, chia seeds, flax seed or nut crunch all work well).
Wash and dry the grapes, and push a toothpick into each one. Freeze the grapes until frozen solid (time will depend on the size of your grapes).
You need a thick yogurt for this recipe, so it doesn't drip down. Place the yogurt in a small bowl and the crunch in a second bowl. Remove the grapes from the freezer. Dip each grape into the yogurt and then into the crunch.
Place the dipped grapes onto a pan lined with parchment paper and return to the freezer for an hour or so. Once the yogurt has frozen, transfer the grapes to a Ziploc bag or airtight container and keep in the freezer until serving.
Ingredients
25 large red grapes
25 toothpicks
5 oz. Greek yogurt
1/2 cup ground nuts and/or toasted coconut (chia seed or flax seed also work)
Directions
Wash and dry the grapes.
Push one toothpick into each grape.
Freeze the grapes until frozen solid (2-3 hours).
Take the grapes out of the freezer. Dip each grape into the yogurt and immediately into the crunch.
Place the dipped grapes gently onto a pan lined with a sheet of parchment paper and return to the freezer until serving.
Yields: 25 grape pops
How do you celebrate Tu B'Shevat?More in Lifestyle:
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• The Shul, Episode 2 (Dovid Taub & Jonathan Goorvich)
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WOMEN
I was definitely looking for G‑d in college, but I was also very sure that the answer was not in Torah Judaism. A lot has changed in 40 years.By Lieba Rudolph
"Excuse me, are you Jewish?" the young woman asked.
"That’s none of your business," I snarled as I kept walking.
I have a vague memory of this exchange while I was at the University of Michigan in the early 1970s. I know the school’s Chabad House existed then, so it’s entirely possible that someone actually approached me with this exact question. And my answer surely would have been an abrupt one.
I was definitely looking for G‑d in college, but I was also very sure that the answer was not in Torah Judaism. As far as I could see, religion separated people; I wanted to learn how people were all the same.
Excuse me, are you Jewish?
A lot has changed in 40 years. Now I’m the one stopping Jewish women on the street to ask if they want a brochure with Shabbat candle-lighting times. But it’s really my partner, Mrs. Miriam Rosenblum, who motivates me to take her every Tuesday to sit in front of Pittsburgh's Giant Eagle supermarket. I figure, if she can go out on mivtzoim (mitzvah campaigns) six days a week, I can at least take her on one of those days, which I’ve been doing for over 10 years.
“Mivtzoim” literally means "campaigns," and in Chabad parlance, mivtzoim are the Rebbe’s campaigns to encourage Jews to do mitzvahs.
When my kids were little, I offered to buy them treats, whatever they wanted, if they would come on mivtzoim with me. I didn’t care what they bought—those awful drinks that make your teeth turn blue—as long as they helped Mrs. Rosenblum get her paraphernalia in the car and handed out a brochure or two on the street. Now that my sons are over thirteen, they bring their tefillin along so they can offer that mitzvah to Jewish men. Going on mivtzoim is fun for the whole family—sometimes I even bring along a grandchild.
Why does the Rebbe want us to take to the streets to encourage a Jew to do a mitzvah?
Chassidut teaches that the soul of every Jew is inextricably connected to G‑d, and when a Jew does a mitzvah, G‑d’s Infinite light is revealed to all physicality involved in that mitzvah, especially that Jew.
Of course, we can’t actually see what a mitzvah accomplishes in this world—yet.
Whether or not we "see" it, this is pretty much the whole purpose of Creation: to reveal the G‑dliness in our physical world by doing mitzvahs.
And because the Rebbe could appreciate that Moshiach’s arrival is imminent, due to the G‑dly light accumulated through the performance ofmitzvahs throughout the generations, he instituted many mivtzoim, because each mivtzah strengthens a different mitzvah. (The words sound similar, but “mitzvah” and “mivtza” are actually two different concepts.)
Whether we see it or not, one mitzvah has the power to "tip the scales" of light over darkness within an individual Jew and, potentially, within all of Creation.
The power to reconcile this imperfect physical world and the perfect spiritual world is in the hands of every single Jew. Every mitzvah unlocks G‑d’s infinite light, and somebody’s mitzvah is going to unlock the ultimate treasure chest.
I don’t know whose it will be or how soon, but I know it can’t be soon enough.
Which is why I push myself to go out every Tuesday—which wasn't always easy.
It wasn't just that the weather wasn't always conducive or I had other things to do. Because I live in the city where I was raised, the hardest part of mivtzoim was approaching people I knew from my childhood, especially my mother's friends.
Let's face it, most people who hand things out on the street are people to be avoided. And everyone knows that "Jews don't proselytize." Yet there I was, newly observant, with my blue-toothed kids and my Shabbat brochures and Mrs. Rosenblum.
Sometimes I let women "get away," as my daughter Mushkie used to say, but I forced myself not to be intimidated. I knew I had nothing to be embarrassed about, but I still remember the looks I got when certain women said no to me. They were also wondering what happened to me.
Even when I myself was wondering what happened to me, on mivtzoim, I had to "act" like I was sure of myself. Because I knew I wanted to be sure. Sure that I believed everything the Shabbat brochures said. Sure that I believed that the "before" part of my life and the "after" part of my life were not just "meant to be," but meant to be synthesized into a G‑dly life.
I knew I didn't want to turn back
It took many years of spiritual struggle (along with a few personal miracles) to close my "synapse of disbelief," the tiny doubt that preceded every Jewish gesture, the voice that said that none of this mattered, or that it didn't matter so much.
But I pushed myself through the uncertainty because I knew I didn't want to turn back. And going on mivtzoim helped me convince myself; I used to force myself to approach the very people I wanted to avoid.
It's hard to remember that challenge now, because when I go on mivtzoim these days, seeing old, familiar faces is one of the aspects I enjoy most. Especially when I'm with my grandchildren—the best testimony that, whatever it was that happened to me, it must have been a good thing.
More in Women:• Winter Parenting (By Temima Shulman)
Autumn and winter are a time when we subconsciously carry an end- or death-consciousness. If you are a gardener, or involved in agricultural production, you understand this organically. Death is a precursor to life. Death prepares for a better crop, for stronger roots. I watch as the barren trees allow their branches to remain steady, demonstrating an acceptance of the end of things, their leathered leaves having imparted wisdom of a life well-lived.I am thinking a lot about the end of things
Already grieving for my grandmother’s passing, I am feeling autumn’s adieu and winter’s insistence in more than just a physical way. True, I have lived through many winters and hopefully many await, but I realize that one day a spring will follow a winter, and I won’t be here. I will not experience the excitement of seeing the first green buds of my backyard maple punctuating the blue spring sky after a long winter, and in that same spring I will not feel the fresh breeze on my face, in my hair.
The falling red and orange leaves have helped me internalize this in a way that I had not been able to, until death came too close. The shorter days, the earlier sunsets are reminding me that the sun doesn’t shine forever, that sunset can often sneak up quicker than you think.
My three-year-old is also helping me internalize this.
She too is struggling with the loss of my grandmother, her great-grandmother. She spoke to her almost daily; whenever I called, they talked.
“I didn’t want Bubby to die,” she says, referring to my grandmother, as I put her to bed one night.
“Me, too, but it was her turn,” I try to explain to her, to myself. “She had a very long turn,” I add, referring to her 96 years.
My three-year-old has heard from her four sisters about Bubby’s remarkable old age. In fact, she has already been waiting for her own February birthday for months now, repeating the order of the seasons like a rhyme, asking, “Is it winter yet?”
Someone must have told her that trees die in the winter, because she comes home one day announcing, “I don’t want winter.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I don’t want the trees to die.”
I reassuringly say, “They die for the winter, but then they come back to life when it is springtime.”
Uh, oh. I can’t backtrack now.
“And Bubby will also come back in the spring?” I can see the relief in her eyes at finally finding a solution for this horrible truth about Bubby being gone forever.
“The trees will come back, but Bubby will not come back,” I say, wishing I could fill the vacuum of pain left by these words.
I try to explain to her how we feel Bubby in our heart, in our soul, and in this way, she lives on. When we say the things she said, or bake the blintzes she made, we feel her. I quickly shuffle through my memory for a distinct “Bubby” moment and try to imitate my grandmother’s Hungarian-accented English, when she would greet us at her apartment door: “Look who came to visit her Bubby!” I raise my eyebrows and open my eyes wide, the way my grandmother would exclaim, standing in her worn housecoat.
“I don’t feel her in my heart,” my three-year-old announces firmly.
But then I repeat a little Yiddish nursery rhyme my grandmother would sing to my daughter. “Patche patche hantaleh . . .”
A smile is forming on her lips, and she releases her eye contact with me. She lowers her face and folds herself into a fetal ball, murmuring some sort of melancholy sound, and I know that I have touched her with my grandmother’s memory.
There are so many “how to explain” books for children and for parents about death. But when Bubby died, I couldn’t find a book that told me how to grieve for my enormous loss and still be a mother, and still believe in the beauty of the mundane tasks that a mom has to do in order to build her child. I could not find a book on how to answer the questions my little girl was asking, because I had the same questions, and I could not just give her the answers that now seemed formulaic.
I found that all the books were wholly inadequate, because grieving is such a personal experience. The death of a loved one is such a “pull you out from under” game-changer. It’s as if everyone starts out with a black-and-white screen and spends a lifetime filling in the color, and then in one swoop, a button is pressed and your screen is devoid of all that hard work—all that color. Death forces us to look at the screen of life more carefully, to really think about whether we want to add a little red to this relationship, or some purple to that dream.
And that is why I am experiencing this winter so intimately, ready to think about life from a natural point of view. Nature has served as a sort of metaphor, but nature alone has not been enough. Because I am also aware of the fact that withIs there a larger presence than nature? Does it all end with death? death, the BIG questions loom even larger: are we accompanied? Is there a larger presence than nature? Does it all end with death?
I know that if I trekked the expanse of earth, I would not find Bubby, and still, it feels as though she is right here with me. Sometimes I joke out loud to her, thinking that death is some great seat in the theater and she can see me from all angles, wherever her seat is. And then I think, if Bubby could be such a powerful, living presence for me, and the trees can be such an anchor in a world that seems to have lost its form, then there must be something more powerful than both. If both the human and the tree have continuity, but are unrelated natural objects, then there must be a Higher Power.
That Higher Power placed us in a beautiful world, setting into motion both nature and humanity, but then left?
Death gets you thinking about where G‑d might still be present in this world: in the living, or in the dead? In the moment of a melody formed, or in the everyday eternity of a Renoir? In the moment we forgive, or in the moment we ignite a friendship? Does G‑d reside in the “why”? Or in the “what to do now” that follows tragedy? Does G‑d linger in the prayerbook? Or out in the sea? Is G‑d each aspect of a noun: a person, place and thing? Or is G‑d only present in the idea of G‑d?
All of these questions feel like the fallen leaves, building themselves up into piles that will be blown into a big expanse.
I know my daughter is brimming with questions, too. They come out of nowhere. “Where does Bubby live now?” She is trying to make sense of the world that she has only known to be good, predictable and consistent.
One night, she says to me, “I don’t want you to get old.”I know my daughter is brimming with questions
A young age to be grappling with the fact that we cannot control what appears to be in our control. There are moments when I, too, am looking for security, a rail to hold on to. Nature gives me metaphor, and profundity, but it is still a limited, physical response.
I have started to take solace in a different rhythm, a different kind of nature: the cycle of the Torah reading.
I am surprised by the Book that has begun to give my questions context.
The Torah has been on my shelf my entire life. I have known its stories since I was three. But it is as if death has allowed me to see the Torah in its skeletal form—a clean canvas—and I am able to begin the stories again. To see value where I had not seen value before, to understand it more fully as a book of our ancestors as much as a guiding compass, to notice the colors in the text that had never been there before. Because now I understand the Torah to be a tree against the endless blue sky of history, whose leaves shed, but whose root system grows deeper and more stable with time.
This eternal tree has allowed me a window to understand mankind’s root system, set forth by the Higher Power. I am rereading the stories without the flourish from the past, but with a sharp eye on the branches of its narrative. Death has given me the lens to read the Torah with the wonder of my three-year-old, and the hindsight we acquire with loss.
I find great comfort in reading about the first monotheistic and universal families. They are full of life and pain, color and dimension. But unlike the tree, they are human. I can dialogue with them.
They are the same stories my grandmother heard every Shabbat of her 96 years, they are the stories that helped her keep her destroyed family alive. Her father—who, like Abraham, was a religious man who saw beauty in the metaphysical—died and left my grandmother fatherless when she was nine. Her mother, like Sarah, was more particularistic, and always had linens and food set aside for the wandering Jewish poor. My grandmother, sent away from her homeland at 19, to an unknown land—the last salve of the family in 1939—had spent her entire life in Brooklyn recreating her Canaan for me, for her children and grandchildren, so that we would know our inheritance, our monotheism.
I find connection in the fact that I am reading the same stories that she read, that she had learned from her mother. Like the maple in my backyard that will continue to grace the blue sky every spring, my children will continue to keep my Bubby and me alive—long after our leaves have fallen—through our stories.
I am that child who is keeping my grandmother’s stories alive, the biblical stories, the personal stories—they become enmeshed. When I read the Torah, I am reaching back to many ancestors whose names I do not even know, but whose fundamental reason to live I am sustaining. Thousands of years apart, we are in conversation. This gives me great comfort, because, as I am living through winter’s consciousness, I realize that even trees eventually die. But these conversations are eternal.
The essence of our lives is the story we create and then narrate, write and rewrite, and eventually entrust for someone else to tell. The stories we tell create a fresh layer for the subtext, the big questions that we are all looking to fashion our stories upon.
When we leave this world, we leave everything we planted in others, and everything that was planted in us. Our actions, our stories, forever re-germinate, spring after spring, child after mother, Genesis after Genesis.
QUESTION
As a kid, I was told that dreaming about losing your teeth is a bad sign. Is it true, and do we have to take dreams seriously? By Aron Moss
Question:
Do you interpret dreams? As a kid, I was told that dreaming about losing your teeth is a bad sign. I have had such dreams a few times, and when I wake up, I feel worried. Is it true, and do we have to take dreams seriously?
Answer:
It is true that dreams have meanings, but interestingly, those meanings are fluid. Let me explain . . .
The Talmud relates that the sage Rava once dreamed that his teeth were falling out. He went to Bar Hedya, a non-Jewish dream interpreter, to find out its meaning. The interpreter told him that his sons and daughters would die (and he would lose his appetite in his sorrow, and therefore not use his teeth).
The interesting thing is that this anecdote is presented in the context of a longer saga in which Rava and his colleague Abaye would consistently dream similar dreams and go to Bar Hedya for interpretations. Bar Hedya gave Abaye favorable interpretations each time, while Rava consistently received gloomy predictions.
Why the discrepancy? The rabbi who received the positive interpretation was paying Bar Hedya, while the other was not. The weird thing was, the interpretations came true.
The way you interpret a dream can actually have an effect on its realization. The dream itself could go either way: If you say it's bad, it will be. If you label it as a good dream, then that's what will come about.
In fact, the great mystic Rabbi Yoel Baal Shem taught that teeth falling out can be seen as a wonderful dream: Teeth are what we use to grind our food, so we can digest it. They represent the daily grind, the toil and effort we spend on making a living. Teeth falling out in your dream means that you will escape the grind, your income will come easily to you, you will not need to grind hard to eat.
So ultimately, even a dream with a negative connotation can be positive if you interpret it as such.
More in Question:• Why Eat Carob on 15 Shevat? (By Baruch S. Davidson)
As it turns out, eating carob has an intrinsic connection both to Tu B'Shevat and to customs in general. But first, a word about the halachic significance of Tu B'Shevat, and what makes it the New Year for Trees:
Let's say you are a farmer in the Land of Israel and you have an orchard. Once a year, you must give a certain amount of fruit as tithes—for the Kohanim, for the poor, or for eating in Jerusalem (depending on the year in a seven year cycle). The question arises: When is the cut-off date that divides between one year's crop and the next? The answer is fairly simple: It is the day when most of the rainy season in the Land of Israel has passed. That is the 15th day of Shevat, known commonly as Tu B'Shevat ("Tu" is one way of saying fifteen).
Now another problem arises: There are certain trees—such as the carob tree—that can begin to bud before Tu B'Shevat, but will not be harvested until much later, well after Tu B'Shevat. Would their tithing follow the rules of the tree-year in which they bud, or the tree-year in which they are harvested? This question is addressed in the Talmud:
The rabbis taught: A tree whose fruits were in bud before the fifteenth of Shevat must be tithed as the produce of the past year, but if they bud after that, they are tithed during the coming year. Said Rabbi Nechemia: This applies to trees whose fruit ripen and are harvested over an extended period of time. But in the case of a tree whose crop is harvested all at once—such as the date-palm, olive tree, or carob tree—although their fruits may begun to bud before the fifteenth of Shevat, they are tithed with the produce of the coming year.
The Talmud concludes that "The custom of the masses follows Rabbi Nechemia with regard to carobs." This law was decided not by a vote of the sages, but simply by the custom of the Jewish people.
Throughout this entire discussion there is only one law that is decided by the custom of the people—the custom regarding carob trees. Now isn't that neat: In order to commemorate Tu B'Shevat, the custom evolved that we should do something to note a custom mentioned in the Talmud—at least in an indirect way—by eating carobs!
Another unique thing about the carob tree is that the Talmud tells us that it takes 70 years to mature and bear fruit. By eating carob on Tu B'Shevat, we are also highlighting an important lesson to be learned from the carob tree: the importance of patiently investing in the future even when it is a long and arduous process with no immediate gains, for the fruits of our labors will be harvested by generations to come.1
Let me know if this helps.
Best regards,
Rabbi Baruch S. Davidson
Sources
Tractate Rosh Hashana 15b, Kuntres Tu B'Shevat by Rabbi David Cohen ("The Nazir of Jerusalem") – Jerusalem 1973.
FOOTNOTES
1. This is also one of the reasons that G‑d (in Song of Songs 5:1) refers to this world as His "garden", and not just a home. For unlike a home, which is ready to be inhabited immediately upon construction, a garden or orchard requires several years of constant work before it is a source of benefit. This reminds us that our mission on earth is not necessarily an easy or fast job. - From a talk of the Rebbe, 10th of Shevat 5732.STORY
In spite of his great efforts, the skies remained overcast with dark clouds, and it seemed unlikely there would be a moon that night. By Yitzchak Buxbaum
One year, during the Yom Kippur prayers, the Baal Shem Tov saw with his holy spirit that harm would come to the Jewish people if he and his disciples did not make the traditional blessing of the new moon immediately following the holiday. Then this great mitzvah would be joined to the side of merit and incline the balance of the scale of judgment to good.
But the new moon was not visible at the end of Yom Kippur, and the blessing could not be recited. So the Baal Shem Tov, who was depressed about this, attempted to use his mystic powers to cause the moon to appear. He asked his disciples several times to go outside and see if the moon was visible, but in spite of his great efforts, the skies remained overcast with dark clouds, and it seemed unlikely there would be a moon that night.
The Baal Shem Tov’s disciples knew nothing about their master’s worries or about the heavenly decree and how important it was that they bless the moon after Yom Kippur. It was their custom to celebrate at the end of Yom Kippur, since they had completed their divine service successfully, led by their holy master, the Baal Shem Tov, whose service on Yom Kippur was like that of thehigh priest in the ancient Temple. They had full trust that their prayers were accepted and that they were signed and sealed for a good year.
So this time too, they were joyously dancing with holy fervor. At first, they danced in the outer room of the Baal Shem Tov’s house, but afterward, carried on the wave of their exuberant joy, they burst into their master’s room and danced in his presence. When the joy and ecstasy of their dancing surged even more strongly, they dared to draw the Baal Shem Tov himself into their circle. They swept their holy master into their midst, and he began to dance with them.
While they were dancing this sacred dance, those outside suddenly called out loudly that the moon was visible, and they all went out quickly to bless the moon that night.
The Baal Shem Tov then said that what he could not accomplish by his mystic powers, the Chassidim had accomplished by their joy.
Reprinted with permission from Jewish Tales of Mystic Joy, by YitzhakBuxbaum.More in Story:
• Hidden Treasure Well Used (Yalkut Shimoni, Ruth 607)
The man said to him, “You are just a conjurer. You have nothing to give me. Please go away and leave me in peace.”
Elijah came back to him again and again. The third time, the pious man said, “Let me consult with my wife.”
He went to his wife and said, “This man has come to me three times to say that I have six years of wealth coming to me. He wants to know when I want them—now or at the end of my life.”
She said, “Tell him to give you the money now.”
He went to tell this to Elijah, who said to him, “Go home. Even before you get to the gate of your front garden, you will see that you have been blessed.”
The couple’s children had been playing in the dirt of their yard, where they found enough money to support their family for six years, so they called their mother. She ran out to tell her husband the good news even before he got to the gate of their house. He immediately thanked G‑d.
What did his wife do? She said to him, “G‑d has been extremely kind to us, giving us all this money. Let’s spend these six years helping others. Maybe then G‑d will give us more.” So they did.
At the end of the six years, Elijah came and said, “The time has come for me to take back what I gave you.”
The pious man said, “When I accepted the money, I consulted with my wife. Now that it’s time to give it back, let me consult with her again.” So he went to her and said, “The man has come to take back what he gave us.”
She told him, “If he can find people who will use the money better than we did, he should take it.”
G‑d knew about all the good things they had done for others while they had wealth and decided to give them even more, as it says in Isaiah (32:17), “The fruit of righteousness will be peace.”
LIFESTYLE
An easy way to jazz up your grapes and make a quick, refreshing, naturally sweet treat. By Miriam SzokovskiThis week, Jews around the world will celebrate Tu B’Shevat, the New Year for the trees. Traditionally, we celebrate by eating fruit, specifically the seven fruits of Israel, including grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates.
While plain fruit is delicious and healthy, here's an easy way to jazz up your grapes and make them a little more fun. Meet the Frozen Yogurt Grape—a quick, refreshing, naturally sweet treat.
25 large red grapes
25 toothpicks
5 oz. Greek yogurt
1/2 cup ground nuts and/or toasted coconut (chia seed or flax seed also work)
Directions
Wash and dry the grapes.
Push one toothpick into each grape.
Freeze the grapes until frozen solid (2-3 hours).
Take the grapes out of the freezer. Dip each grape into the yogurt and immediately into the crunch.
Place the dipped grapes gently onto a pan lined with a sheet of parchment paper and return to the freezer until serving.
Yields: 25 grape pops
• 15 Shevat Craft: Make a Tree Pencil (By Chana Scop)
Sick of boring pencils? Here is a fun alternative.
You will need:
Pencils
Brown floral tape (sold at Michaels and other crafting and floral stores), or a brown washi tape
Green tissue paper (feel free to use orange and red too for a more winter/fall look)
Brown pipe cleaners
Glue gun, tacky glue or very strong adhesive glue dots for adding mini acorns, pinecones or leaves (You can also preserve real leaves by painting them with mod-podge.)
Step 1:
Wrap your pencil tightly with floral tape.
Step 2:
Cut the pipe cleaners in half and position them around the pencil "tree trunk." Hold them in place and wrap a long strip of floral tape around them until you reach the top. Press well to seal. (Make sure you pull the floral tape as you go around.)
Step 3:
Bend the branches (the pipe cleaners) as you wish. Tear the green tissue paper into pieces and thread them onto the pipe cleaners.
Step 4:
Add any cute touches like acorns, mini pinecones, real leaves, or even some pale pink blossoms!
Step 5:
Use and enjoy your new pencil!
• Arrange a Beautiful 15 Shevat Fruit Platter (By Chava Mindy Feinzeig)
Celebrate Tu B'Shevat with a beautiful fruit platter.
Some tips to improve your presentation:
Make a Cantaloupe Flower
Start with half a cantaloupe. Scoop out the seeds and cut off the peel. Slice thinly across the width of the melon.
Lay one slice over another. Fold slices over as pictured. Keep adding slices and folding. Hold together and keep adding slices on alternating sides until rose is formed. Use a toothpick to hold in place Using a knife shape a piece of the peel to form a leaf shape, then carve leaf vein.
Prickly Pear Flower
Prickly pears add great color to any platter. Use a sharp knife to cut V shapes.
Star Fruit Slices
Star fruits are a beautiful complement to any platter. Their shape is beautiful and the taste, delicious.
Kiwi Designs
Use a sharp knife to cut large V shapes into a kiwi.
Slice diagonally into a kiwi on both sides to form a shallow V shape. Cut more V shapes and fan out the slices as shown. Use toothpicks to secure.
Simple slices can go a long way.
Now you're ready to make a beautiful fruit platter for your friends and family. Happy Tu B'Shevat!
Pencils
Brown floral tape (sold at Michaels and other crafting and floral stores), or a brown washi tape
Green tissue paper (feel free to use orange and red too for a more winter/fall look)
Brown pipe cleaners
Glue gun, tacky glue or very strong adhesive glue dots for adding mini acorns, pinecones or leaves (You can also preserve real leaves by painting them with mod-podge.)
Step 1:
Wrap your pencil tightly with floral tape.
Step 2:
Cut the pipe cleaners in half and position them around the pencil "tree trunk." Hold them in place and wrap a long strip of floral tape around them until you reach the top. Press well to seal. (Make sure you pull the floral tape as you go around.)
Step 3:
Bend the branches (the pipe cleaners) as you wish. Tear the green tissue paper into pieces and thread them onto the pipe cleaners.
Step 4:
Add any cute touches like acorns, mini pinecones, real leaves, or even some pale pink blossoms!
Step 5:
Use and enjoy your new pencil!
• Arrange a Beautiful 15 Shevat Fruit Platter (By Chava Mindy Feinzeig)Make a Cantaloupe Flower
Prickly Pear Flower
Star Fruit Slices
Kiwi Designs
Now you're ready to make a beautiful fruit platter for your friends and family. Happy Tu B'Shevat!
• Holiday Art: Pomegranate Jews (By Esther Rosen)
Every Jew is full of mitzvot like a pomegranate is filled with seeds.
Doesn't matter with which part of the Jewish community one identifies with or doesn’t identify with.
How learned or unlearned one is.
How affiliated or unaffiliated one considers themselves.
Every single Jew is full of mitzvot, just like a pomegranate is filled with seeds.
JEWISH NEWS
It’s a family affair, albeit for the female side of the family. Thousands of women and girls from around the world are preparing to travel to New York next week for the annual Kinus Hashluchos—the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Women Emissaries. By Mindy Rubenstein
Dassie New, co-director of Chabad Lubavitch of Georgia and Congregation Beth Tefillah in Sandy Spring, Ga., will be attending the Kinus Hashluchos—the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries—with three of her grown daughters: from left, Liba Leah Gurary, Sarel New and Chaish Mentz.
It’s a family affair, albeit for the female side of the family. Thousands of women and girls from around the world will gather in New York for the annual Kinus Hashluchos—the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Women Emissaries—with many mothers and daughters in attendance together.
The four-day program will take place from Thursday, Feb. 12, through Sunday, Feb. 15. It commences with a workshop and welcome session, and concludes with a gala banquet that will be broadcast live Sunday night on Jewish.tv
“I hope it will give them a dose of inspiration,” said Dassie New, who has co-directed Chabad Lubavitch of Georgia and Congregation Beth Tefillah in Sandy Spring, Ga., a suburb north of Atlanta, for nearly 30 years. New, who has nine children, will be attending the Kinus with three of her grown daughters.
As far as her own experiences at the women’s gathering, New has been attending since the program began more than two decades ago.
“I cannot get enough of those personal stories—the letters and directives that different shluchim, Chassidim, received from their Rebbe,” she said. “I also enjoy the collective sessions where you are sitting with 3,000 women all doing the same thing as you, united as one. It’s powerful.”
She added that “having my children together with us as shluchim is a gift the Rebbe gave us that I feel forever grateful for.”
‘Inspiration Lasts the Year’
Her daughter, Sarel New, 19, attended the children’s version of the Kinus in the past, and then the young women’s program in high school. This will be her first year going to the women’s Kinus with her mother and two older sisters.
“I feel honored to be able to be there,” she said. “As a kid, it was one of the most exciting times of the year to be able to join so many Chabad girls and be together for the weekend. I didn’t usually get to be with them.”
One of the lasting results of participating? “The inspiration lasts throughout the year.”
Of watching her parents work as shluchim, she said: “They were great role models and gave of themselves. They were—and are—always there for everyone in the community. And I always felt like they were there for us, their children, as well. It’s amazing that they could have two completely full-time jobs and do both amazingly. That’s what I strive to be like.”
A first-year teacher at the Chaya Mushka Children’s House, a Montessori-style preschool run by her mother, she looks forward to attending the education sessions and workshops, and to hear what others have to share during the conference.
“My favorite part is the banquet and feeling that energy of so many shluchos all in the same room,” said Liba Leah Gurary, another of Dassie New’s daughters, who will be attending the conference for the eighth year in a row. Gurary, who has two young children, co-directs the Chabad Israeli Center in Atlanta with her husband, Rabbi Menachem Gurary. “It is so special to experience it with my mother and sisters. It makes it even more fun and memorable and inspiring to be able it share it with them.”
New’s daughter Chaish Mentz, 24, oversees the Judaics program at Chaya Mushka Children’s House Elementary School, which runs from first through sixth grade. She is married to Rabbi Levi Mentz, who teaches at the school; they have a 10-month-old son. This is her second year going to New York for the Kinus.
“I feel honored to get to be a part of this program, and share it with my mother and sisters,” she said. She also hopes to bring back advice and inspiration from the workshops and from simply conversing with all of the other women there.
‘A Sense of Purpose’
The word kinus is Hebrew for “gathering.” The Kinus Hashluchim, or International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, is an annual event that takes place in November, when thousands of men gather to share inspiration, ideas and goals, leaving rejuvenated and ready to carry on their work with renewed vigor and enthusiasm. The same goes for the shluchos, the women, in February.
The first such conference began in 1991. It is timed to coincide with theyahrtzeit (anniversary of passing) of the Rebbe’s wife—Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka Schneerson, of righteous memory—whose concern for and interest in the shluchim and shluchos was legendary.
The Rebbe often quoted the Talmudic teaching: “The exodus from Egypt was in the merit of the righteous women of that generation,” explaining that in contemporary times as well, individual and global transformation occurs in the merit of righteous women.
Since 1995, a special program has been offered for the children of emissaries. The Rebbe considered them to be not only “children of shluchim,” butshluchimthemselves, playing an integral part in their parents’ mission. The girls’ Kinus takes place in tandem with the Kinus Hashluchos, and the boys’ conference takes place alongside the men’s conference.
Dina Eber co-directs Chabad Jewish Center of West Pasco in Trinity, Fla., with her husband, Rabbi Yossi Eber. They have six children, including two sets of twins. Eber will be attending the conference with her oldest twin daughters, Hana and Zelda, age 10. Because they live so far from an established Jewish community, the girls learn online daily.
“They want the chance to get to see their teachers and friends from their online school,” she said. “And being around all those Chabad girls will be very uplifting for them.”
Her daughters will attend the children’s part of the program, which includes workshops and activities geared specifically for girls. Eber said they are “extremely excited.” Their classmates are coming together from far-flung places like Turkey, Chile and the Dominican Republic, and one of their teachers is flying in from Jerusalem.
“They will get to experience real-life social interaction with their online classmates,” said Eber. “It helps instill conviction and pride in why we live here away from a big community—a clear sense of purpose and belonging. And we get to be reminded that we are part of something big and beautiful.”
More in Jewish News:
• With Stories and Song, a Chassidic Memorial and Celebration in Chicago (By Menachem Posner)
I sat in the large oval brick sanctuary of Chicago’s Congregation B’nei Ruven in Chicago with several hundred other Chassidic men and women. Separated by the traditional mechitza, we were gathered to mark Yud Shevat (the 10th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat), the anniversary of passing of the PreviousRebbe—Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory—in 1950. One year later, his son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, officially accepted the position of Rebbe at a Chassidic gathering held at Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y.
As I looked around the hall, I was immediately struck by the size of the crowd. Every seat in the room was taken; I had to make due with sitting on the stairs to the raised platform that held the ark. I don’t think this would have been the case 20 or 30 years ago, when there were but a handful of Chassidic families in the area.
I was then struck by the fact that not one of the people seated had ever met the Previous Rebbe—appropriate for what has become as much a celebration of the beginning of the Rebbe’s tenure as it is a memorial for his father-in-law.
The evening’s speaker was Rabbi Yoseph Y. Groner, head shaliach in North Carolina and executive director of the Lubavitch Education Center North Carolina in Charlotte. The son of one of the Rebbe’s long-serving aides, he had a wealth of personal interactions with the Rebbe from which he wove a powerful talk.
“The Rebbe never dismissed a single individual,” he said, citing the example of how the Rebbe smiled and even hugged an Israeli policymaker who had actively opposed the Rebbe’s efforts to safeguard the spiritual nature of the Jewish state. “This is a powerful lesson we can all take and apply in our own lives, with our families, friends and anyone we come across.”
An Ongoing Partnership
There were audible giggles when he told of the time he snuggled up inside the Rebbe’stallit during prayer services—much to the horror of the assembled—but most of his talk had a decidedly serious air, with a sense of purpose and urgency.
“There is a partnership between the Rebbe and the Chassidim,” he said. “When you were writing to the Rebbe about something that was for the greater communal good, you knew that he would reply. People don’t realize it, but the Rebbe put in real effort into what he did. When we put in effort, he reciprocated in kind.”
As he paused to sing a niggun—a slow, soul-stirring Chassidic melody—I thought back to the first 10 Shevatfarbrengen with the Rebbe in 1951. I once asked my grandfather—at whose wedding the Rebbe would officiate less than three weeks later—if he was there. He told me that he was not. Why? Because the Rebbe had sent him on shlichus to Los Angeles, and the Rebbe wanted him to continue doing what he was doing.
The Rebbe demanded work, from himself and from others.
To drive the point home, the rabbi told the story of a young boy who had wandered into the Rebbe’s study one Shabbat afternoon while the Rebbe sat learning. Looking up, the Rebbe asked the child what he was doing. In response to the boy’s reply that he was doing “nothing,” the Rebbe motioned to the books lining the walls of the study and asked, “And when will you have time to learn all of this?”
As midnight approached, I headed for the door. On my way out, I met a friend who opened a Chabad center with his wife less than two years ago. We joked about how our conversation may become the stuff of my next article (how right he was), and he then told me how many people in his community read Chabad.org regularly.
“Just the other day, one of our friends told me that he was preparing his 2015 business plan,” he related, “when he took a break and watched Challenge [a video on the Rebbe’s relentless call for every Jew to never rest], and that gave him the boost to do it in an entirely different way.”
“Yes,” I told him. “That’s just the right way to end the farbrengen."
"We must always do more, and the Rebbe will be there to help us do just that.”
• Rabbi Ariel Rav-Noy, 36, Served Persian-Jewish Community in Los Angeles (By Mordechai Lightstone)
Rabbi Ariel Rav-Noy, assistant director of Chabad Persian Youth in Los Angeles, passed away suddenly earlier today. He was 36 years old.
He is recalled by family, friends and students for his warm and caring manner, his patience and for having an instant love for all he met.
During one conversation with a friend about his work with Jews of Iranian descent in southern California, where he worked, Rav-Noy shared his enthusiasm for their special dedication and interest in Jewish community and tradition.
Rabbi Hershey Novack, co-director of Chabad on Campus serving Washington University in St. Louis, was a friend and classmate of Rav-Noy’s.
"It is tough to discuss Ariel in the past tense," says Novack. “He was the kindest soul wrapped in a dynamo of positive energy. He was very studious and took copious notes in a big, looping handwriting. In his grades, he was typically at the top of the class.”
Possessing a bubbly and outgoing personality with a loud laugh, Rav-Noy was an avid user of social media to connect to his community, keeping them informed of classes, celebrations and his thoughts.
In his role at Chabad Persian Youth, Rav-Noy reached out to many young Iranian Jews in the city’s high schools. He started the High Holiday High School and Youth Minyan, and would regularly visit Jewish clubs at University High School in West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills High School and Santa Monica College.
An Outpouring of Grief
As the news spread of his passing, friends and admirers began posting their shock and disbelief.
“I can’t believe the news I am hearing ..., ” wrote one person. “I remember when you asked me your help out because you wanted to start doing events for the community. You and your wife, your family, have done so, so much for the community. Always raising awareness and being an advocate for am Israel. I am in shock. May Hashem bring clarity and comfort to your wife and family. ... We have lost a true tzadik.”
“I feel like I just got punched in the gut,” and “This man helped so many families, including mine” are typical of the many of messages that are being quickly added.
Rav-Noy is survived by his wife, Miriam, and their seven children: Mendy, Chani, Levi, Shaina, Sarale, Hindy and Avremile; and by his parents, Dr. Zeev and Mrs. Varda Rav-Noy. He is also survived by his siblings: Rabbi Michi Rav-Noy (Los Angeles); Rabbi Avinoam Rav-Noy (Los Angeles); Rabbi Eyal Rav-Noy (Los Angeles); and Racheli Muchnik (Oxnard, Calif.).
The levaya will take place on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. at the Chabad Persian Youth Center in Los Angeles.
An extended obituary is being prepared.
• Surveying South Dakota: A History of Rabbis Keeping in Touch With Residents (By Karen Schwartz)
Rachel Hunt, 23, hadn’t talked to too many rabbis in South Dakota before she met Yosef Sharfstein, 24, and Shmuel Lefkowitz, 24.
A Minneapolis native, Hunt is a student in her last year at South Dakota State University in Brookings, in the northeastern part of the state, less than four hours from Minneapolis, Minn., due east and Omaha, Neb., due south. With the estimated number of Jews in South Dakota hovering below 400—spread throughout a state that measures more than 77,000 square miles, the 16th largest in the nation—she says conversations about Jewish tradition can be few and far between.
The Jewish individuals and families who do live there are centered in and around Sioux Falls and Rapid City, with handfuls in Brookings, the state capital of Pierre and a few other smaller cities.
So when the these two young rabbis—part of a cadre of “Roving Rabbis” who spend their summers and study breaks connecting with communities near and far, practically everywhere on the globe—reached out to her this summer, she was glad to set up a time to talk with them.
“They’re making people feel like they’re not the only Jews out here,” she says. “Roving Rabbis”—Sharfstein and Lefkowitz included—organize programs around Jewish holidays, teach Torah study, and as a central part of their travels, stop by people’s homes to discuss Judaism, observance and everyday topics as they relate to Torah and heritage, including family concerns.
“I think they’re making an impact,” says Hunt.
Rabbi Yonah Grossman, of ChabadJewish Center of North Dakota in Fargo, N.D., drove to his neighboring state over Sukkot.
She, for one, was glad for the chance to connect with the two rabbis over coffee. Coming from Minneapolis, she says she’s used to more of a “Jewish scene,” so talking with them “kind of felt like being at home.”In December, she worked with Sharfstein to help coordinate multiple menorah-lightings. “They literally brought Chanukah to Brookings,” she says, recalling the holiday staples they shared—latkes, dreidels and chocolate coins. “If you had told me when I had come here five years ago, I would have never imagined seeing the lighting of a seven-foot menorah in Brookings.”
‘Essential Part of the Jewish Nation’
Interestingly enough, there were more Jews a hundred years ago in South Dakota than there are today.
In 1899, some 1,750 Jewish people called the area home. European Jews, especially, made their way out West, social agrarians lured by the U.S. Homestead Act, where land grants were doled out by the federal government to settle in country’s grasslands.
Some of those folks stayed, some moved on nearby states or to larger cities in the region, and others left for good.
Sharfstein, second from left, and Druk, to his right, also held a menorah-lighting in the Sioux Falls Empire Mall, attended by this group of young men.
For more than 20 years now, Chabad rabbis have been sent to South Dakota under the auspices of Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. “Multiple times a year, young rabbis visit the state to provide Jewish residents with their various needs during holidays and year-round,” he says. “On each visit, the ‘Roving Rabbis’ drive hundreds of miles in an effort to reach every single Jew, no matter how remote they may be.”Sharfstein started visiting a few years ago, and has since developed personal relationships with people all over South Dakota, which is currently the only state in America with no permanent Chabad presence.
“We are committed to continuing to address the needs of Jewish residents there,” says Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, executive director of Merkos Suite 302. “Chabad’s dedicated involvement with the Jews of South Dakota highlights the core philosophy of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—that no matter where a Jew is, both on the map and in life itself, he or she is an essential and irreplaceable part of the Jewish nation, worthy of our care, warmth and love.”
Kotlarsky also notes an active “Roving Rabbis South Dakota” social-media page, used to remain in touch with South Dakotan Jews when visiting rabbis are back in New York.
A Chanukah celebration in Brookings, in the northeastern part of the state and home of South Dakota State University. Sharfstein and Druk are standing at the far right. Student Rachel Hunt, who met with the two rabbis in December, is at the far left.
‘Waiting for Judaism’For Lefkowitz, who lives in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., where daily life is steeped in everything Jewish, meeting people in small communities is a great experience: “People are excited; they’re just waiting for Judaism.”
A favorite story comes to mind. During one stay in South Dakota, someone mentioned visiting a friend with Jewish lineage; he and Sharfstein actually discovered that she was Jewish. The woman then told them she had a grandson living in town who had just turned 13.
So what did they do?
“We arranged a bar mitzvah right away,” relates Lefkowitz. “The next afternoon, we met the grandmother, her daughter and her daughter’s family; we put together some cakes; and we held a bar mitzvah. The boy put on tefillin, and we celebrated. The kid had never even heard of a bar mitzvah a few years ago, and all of a sudden, he’s having a bar mitzvah party in his house.”
Outside Pierre's Capitol building during Chanukah 2013. Sharfstein is joined by Rabbi Shmuel Lefkowitz, right. The two “Roving Rabbis” have traveled much of the state together visiting Jewish homes.
That’s the kind of energy they’re sparking, and people have been responding. They especially come out to celebrate holidays, according to the rabbis. During Chanukah 2013, they drew a significant crowd for one of their outdoor menorah-lightings, despite the temperature dropping to minus 10 degrees.“It was amazing,” recalls Lefkowitz. “It was freezing cold, and people were coming out to show their support and do the mitzvah.”
Sharfstein has been to South Dakota four times now—the past two summers and twice for Chanukah. In that time, he has coordinated menorah-lighting events in Pierre, Sioux Falls and Brookings. He and Lefkowitz have also visited people’s homes as part of a broader Chabad “Roving Rabbi” program that dispatches rabbinical students for a month in the summer; they return for holidays and are available throughout the year to help with questions about Jewish practice, belief and resources.
In South Dakota, they also connect people with Chabad in North Dakota, and can arrange for quarterly shipments of kosher meat to interested individuals.
Inside the Capitol that same year, Sharfstein and Lefkowitz light the menorah with South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard, left, and State Sen. Dan Lederman. (Photo: Joel Ebert-Capital Journal)
Not only that, this year they started something new, having Rabbi Yonah Grossman—co-director with his wife, Esti, of Chabad Jewish Center of North Dakota in Fargo—visit during Sukkot with a mobile sukkah. He mainly spent time near Deadwood and in Rapid City, the closest city to Mount Rushmore—sometimes with just miles of corn and soy fields, or badlands and mountains as the view—offering Jewish men and women the opportunity to shake the lulavand etrog, and eat a bite of food in the sukkah, which are traditions (mitzvahs, actually) associated with the eight-day holiday.The impact was visible on the faces of those he met, many of whom hadn’t had the opportunity to celebrate in ages, and certainly for some, ever before in their lives. “One man in Rapid City told me that he fundamentally disagrees with public displays of religion, but since he was so thrilled that we drove more than 400 miles to visit, he would shake the lulav in the sukkah-mobile anyway,” recounts Grossman.
Lefkowitz puts tefillin on Steve Rosenthal of Sioux Falls.
An added bonus from the trip, he says, is the fact that a number of people he met in South Dakota have become regulars of a weekly online Torah class.Grossman, like the “Roving Rabbis,” would answer any queries or help in ways he could. Sharfstein notes that “some people want to know about the holidays and praying, and some have questions on Jewish philosophy and practice … it’s a little bit of everything.”
Very often, wearing their traditional clothing—black hat, long black coat, not the everyday resident garb—the rabbis get stopped on the street. “People are always coming over and asking: ‘Where are you from?’ and ‘Is there a big Jewish community here?’ ” he relates. “But people are very nice, and they like what we’re doing, so it’s encouraging.”
Robert Mandel of Rapid City met Sharfstein and Lefkowitz on one of their first trips.
The two rabbis have made man connections during their time in South Dakota. Here, they pose with Herschel Preamak in the city of Aberdeen.
The two young men now make it a point to come by the 63-year-old’s home when they’re in the area to spend a few hours, chatting and wrapping tefillinwith him, which he considers an important addition to the Jewish content in his life.“I enjoy it,” he says. “Judaism is such a rarity in South Dakota; it’s nice to have anything that makes you feel connected.”
Sharfstein, left, and Lefkowitz wrap tefillin with Mark Margolis in Aberdeen.
The sukkah in the back of Grossman's truck came in handy in Rapid City, the closest city to Mount Rushmore and home to a handful of Jews.
Offering a man a bite to eat in the sukkah; the rabbi also brought with him a lulav and etrog to shake, all of which are traditions associated with the eight-day holiday
Grossman drives near Deadwood, a popular “Wild West” tourist resort that, incidentally, the rabbi says is linked to some significant Jewish history.
Filling up at the general store. • In Canberra, Rabbis Gather to Meet Australian Prime Minister - They thank him for his unwavering support for the Jewish community and Israel (Chabad.org Staff)
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