Editor's Note:
Dear Friend,
Much of my adolescence revolved around playing guitar and singing the songs of two nice Jewish boys—Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. I suppose it’s inevitable that their influence should be somewhere in my writing now.
So when Dylan recently snatched a Nobel Prize and Cohen passed on just within walking distance of my home, there was memory, there was introspection. I had to learn something from that past of mine that they had filled.
Here’s what they told me: That with a few strums on the guitar and lyrics from the heart you have the power to move mountains. You can change the way a generation thinks. You can change the soul of a nation.
And if a guitar and a raspy voice can accomplish that, maybe we should start believing that yet more change comes from within our own homes, our own communities, our own selves.
That all it takes is a family where peace dwells on Friday night, a community where people know each other’s joys and sorrows and come running to help, and a heart that says hineini—I’m here to serve,
And we can have a new world.
Hey people! Write to me! What did you do today to change your world today?
Tzvi Freeman
on behalf of the Chabad.org Team
Still Rock BottomSometimes reaching higher is not enough. Sometimes you need to touch the very core of your soul. And there are two ways to do that:
One is by hitting rock bottom.
The other is by realizing that as high as you may have climbed, relative to where you really belong, this is still rock bottom.[Maamar Vekibel Hayehudim 5738.]This Week's Features
Printable Magazine
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5 Festive Highlights From the Chassidic Month of KislevDon’t let these special days and their messages pass you by! by Eli Rubin
The cycle of the Jewish year has many starting points, and many periods of celebration. As the Mishnah noted long ago, there is not one Rosh Hashanah, but four; there are different calendrical cycles for different kinds of things.In this vein the Rebbe would often recall the Talmudic debate about whether the world was first created on the 25th of Adar, making Nissan the first month, or on the 25th of Elul, making Tishrei the first month. These two calendarical beginnings, the Rebbe explained, mirror one another as complementary paths in our service of G‑d. Beginning in Nissan, divine redemption and revelation is bestowed from on high. It is then that we celebrate the redemption from Egypt, and three months later—in Sivan—the giving of the Torah. Beginning in Tishrei we seek to raise ourselves up from below. It is then that we seek within our own depths to draw forth the depth of all things, returning to our true selves and to G‑d. And three months later—in Kislev—we celebrate the outpouring of Torah’s concealed wellsprings: the teachings of Kabbalah as expounded and explicated by the Chassidic masters.
The oldest and best known of Kislev’s chassidic celebrations occurs on its 19th day (Yud Tes Kislev). But this month includes many other special occasions, beginning from its very first day (Rosh Chodesh), which was first established as a chassidic celebration as recently as 1978. This is a month of freedom and edification, of joy and transformation, and it climaxes with the eight-day festival of Chanukah. Of course, this holiday of miracles long predates chassidism. But as with all other aspects of Jewish, life, learning, and practice, Chanukah shines with an entirely new degree of luminosity when experienced through the chassidic prism.
So here are five celebratory highlights from the chassidic month of Kislev:
1. Rosh Chodesh Kislev
This photo was taken at the first farbrengen led by the Rebbe after suffering a major heart attack, unbeknownst to most of the audience doctors were using cardiac monitors to observe the Rebbe's condition throughout the farbrengen.The first day of the month (rosh chodesh) marks the return of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—to public life after suffering a major heart attack just thirty-eight days earlier. During the celebration of the eve of Shemini Atzeret in the year 1977 (5738), while dancing with the Torahs in the main synagogue, the Rebbe’s face suddenly turned pale. As he sat back in his chair the chassidim knew that something was very wrong, and the synagogue was quickly cleared. Yet the Rebbe stoically completed the last dance together with his brother-in-law, Rabbi Shmaryahu Gurary. Dr. Ira Weiss, who flew in from Chicago to treat the Rebbe, testified that “on a scale of ten he had the full ten heart attack … it involved such extensive damage that in anyone’s normal medical experience one would worry about the possibility of survival.”
Knowing that the Rebbe’s life might be in danger, and that he was surely suffering intense physical pain, the chassidim had cause for deep anguish and anxiety. Yet the Rebbe instructed that the celebration must continue, and that the joy must be unconstrained. One chassid who was present later recalled, “The fact that the Rebbe was unwell penetrated us to the very core. To begin with we sang, ‘the rebbe should be healthy.’ Then the words changed to ‘the rebbe is healthy.’ We somehow knew, axiomatically, that our faithful joy would make it so. On Rosh Chodesh Kislev, when we once again saw the Rebbe, we celebrated because we were united again with our own essence. And that was the celebration. Such a thing doesn’t come through any kind of specific preparation. It comes from the very foundation of what it means to be a chassid, knowing that the Rebbe is your essence.”
Strikingly, in a talk broadcast from his room following the festival’s conclusion, the Rebbe too spoke of how his bond with the chassidim was actually intensified through their enforced separation. “For a certain reason,” the Rebbe began, “we speak after the festival’s conclusion, which allows us to use media to communicate what we say even in far away places, physically far, but obviously spiritually close, which is the main thing among Jews, being that their soul is primary and their body secondary … Thereby is formed a tie, a bond, a unity, among all those who hear this speech…”
These words are particularly resonant today, when we again find ourselves to be physically separated from the Rebbe. But knowing that our very souls are bound with the Rebbe’s, we know that his spiritual life—his faith, his awe and love of G‑d—are as accessible to us as ever before. On the contrary, as the Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi explains in Tanya, “having departed from the world the tzaddik is more present in all worlds than he was in his lifetime… since his soul is no longer constrained by a physical vessel or by physical space.”
Rosh Chodesh Kislev marked the beginning of sixteen additional years of life and leadership for the Rebbe. During this period he revealed ever deeper Torah secrets, and inspired many thousands of people to transform themselves and the world for good. But Rosh Chodesh Kislev wasn’t just a point in the past. Rosh Chodesh Kislev continues to be celebrated as the moment that chassidim collectively recognize just how deep the bond with the Rebbe goes. Transcending any physical or temporal dimension, the Rebbe and his teachings continue to provide our essential soul connection, the bedrock of our faith, of our awe and love of G‑d.
Listen to the Rosh Chodesh Kislev nigun, composed by Rabbi Faitel Levin as an expression joy and thanksgiving for the Rebbe’s recovery and continued leadership:
For more about Rosh Chodesh Kislev click here.
2. Tes and Yud Kislev
New editions of Bi'urei Ha-zohar (left) and Imrei Binah (right), originally published by Rabbi DovBer of Lubavitch in 1816 and 1821, respectively.These two days mark a threefold commemoration of the life and works of Rabbi DovBer Schneuri, the second rebbe of Chabad, and the first to establish his court in the townlet of Lubavitch. The 9th of the month (tes), marks both his birthday and the day on which he passed away, in 1773 (5534) and 1827 (5588), respectively. The 10th of the month (yud), marks the day just one year earlier, in 1826 (5587), when Tsarist officials cleared him of false charges and freed him from imprisonment.
Already in the lifetime of his father and predecessor, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Rabbi DovBer achieved renown for his eloquent ability to expand on his father’s teachings, accentuating the profundity of their depth and the breadth of their application. He developed an extensive, explanatory style, and often employed distinctly philosophical terminology, departing from Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s words in order to more fully expound and extend his ideas.
The distinctiveness of Rabbi DovBer’s approach is evidenced both in his transcripts of teachings that he heard from his father, and in his own discourses and written works. During the tenure of his leadership he also published many chassidic books, including collections of his father’s discourses on prayer and on the Zohar, and many original works of his own.
The intensity of his engagement with chassidic teachings was captured by his son-in-law, nephew and successor, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn—better known as the Tzemach Tzedek—who commented that if Rabbi DovBer’s finger were to be cut, Chassidic teachings would flow rather than blood. His own chassidic teachings were not only qualitatively expansive but also quantitatively so. On a single Shabbat he would regularly deliver several oral discourses, and on one Shavuot festival delivered no less than eleven. He only held himself back from delivering more when his uncle, Rabbi Yehuda Leib of Yanovitch, exclaimed, “not everyone has a head like yours!”
It may have been on the same occasion, or perhaps a different year, that on preparing to deliver a third discourse in uninterrupted succession, Rabbi Eizik of Homel ran to the home of the Tzemach Tzedek—who did not always attend when his father-in-law delivered new chassidic teachings—and exclaimed, “Mendel, Mendel! Come and see, divinity is flowing in the streets!”
Rabbi DovBer once described the delivery and reception of a new discourse as “the revelation of the root of the soul in the body,” citing the writings of R. Chaim Vital to the effect that such an experience is greater than a mystic encounter with Elijah the Prophet (gilui eliyahu), and greater than reception of prophecy (ruach ha-kodesh). He was also known to demand that when two young people meet in the street their conversation should concern the two forms of divine unity, yichuda ila’ah and yichuda tata’ah.
To this day, Rabbi DovBer and his teachings stand as an avatar for the most intense form of cognitive engagement with the theoretical core of Chabad teachings, an exemplar of an ideal to which we should all aspire.
Listen to the melody sung most closely associated with Rabbi DovBer, and composed and sung in his court:
For more about Rabbi DovBer Schneuri of Lubavitch, known as the Mitteler Rebbe, click here.
3. Yud Daled Kislev
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (later the Rebbe) wearing a silk coat and sash in preparation for his wedding on the 14th of Kislev, 1928 (5689).The 14th day of the month (yud daled), marks a historic marriage that took place in Warsaw, Poland, in the year 1928 (5689). The bride, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, was the second daughter of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch. The groom was her distant cousin, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who in 1951 would succeed his father-in-law as the seventh rebbe.
This was a time of tremendous upheaval and uncertainty for Chabad. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak had been released from Soviet imprisonment a little more than a year before, and was temporarily living in Riga, Latvia, having yet to decide where to establish a new center for the continuation of Chabad activities. Over the course of the previous year Rabbi Menachem Mendel had made several trips to Berlin, where he had enrolled as a student at both the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary and the prestigious Frederick William (Humboldt) University. He would soon return to that city together with his new wife.
There was a strong feeling at the time that this marriage was somehow the beginning of a new era for Chabad, but it was very far from clear how the movement’s future would play out. This mixture of hope, uncertainty and anticipation is well reflected in a letter penned immediately following the wedding by Rabbi Eliyahu Chaim Althoiz, a senior chassid who was appointed by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak to remain at the groom’s side in the days leading up to the great event. He described his experiences and musings during these few days, and especially his impressions of the groom in rich and poignant detail.
Here is how Rabbi Eliyahu Chaim described his own thoughts as he watched Rabbi Menachem Mendel pray the afternoon prayer on his wedding day:
“There are many paths before him, and all of them carry the risk of danger, some in soul and spirit, some in flesh and matter… Seeing before me this young man… did I myself not cry along with him too? Did I not connect with him and join with him in his prayers, in his supplications and requests for mercy from the bottom of his heart? Did I not yet know that on the path of this praiseworthy young man is dependent the paths and deeds of our children, and our children’s children… In the truest truth, I clearly see a young man of precious worth; a great scholar… in him the sacred is not profaned even the slightest hairsbreadth… In these thoughts I ascended in the preceding generations one after the other… and I did not find better than he.”
This sense of shared destiny—of the intertwined futures of the Rebbe’s new son-in-law and of the chassidic community as a whole—echoes strongly in remarks made by Rabbi Menachem Mendel himself, marking his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in 1953. By this time his path, the path of Chabad, and that of the entire Jewish people had taken many treacherous turns. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak had passed away less than four years earlier, and with the trauma of the holocaust still fresh, Rabbi Menachem Mendel was continuing his predecessor's project to ensure the future of Jewish life, learning and practice in the United States and across the world. Looking back to his wedding day a quarter century prior, the Rebbe remarked:
“In general a wedding is a public event for a private individual. But for me this was even more the case. Through my marriage I was later drawn into public affairs, whether or not I was happy about it… May G‑d help that our toil shall produce good results… This is the day that bound me to you and you to me.”
In the intervening years, it is clear, the Rebbe’s work has produced many good results. But his work is not over. And we, who are bound to him as he is bound to us, must continue to toil in the perpetuation of Jewish life, learning and practice, using all the resources he gave us to their fullest extent.
Listen to the Melody of Four Stanzas. Composed by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, it is traditionally sung at Chabad weddings as the bride circles the groom:
For more about the Rebbe’s marriage click here.
4. Yud Tes Kislev
An aerial view of the Peter and Paul Fortress, which served from around 1720 as a prison for high-ranking and political prisoners. Today it is an important part of the State Museum of Saint Petersburg History.The 19th day of the month (yud tes), marks the 1798 [5559] release of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi by the express order of the Tsar, from imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Rabbi Schneur Zalman had been arrested after a letter was addressed to the Tsar accusing the Rebbe of supporting the revolution in France, and encouraging thievery and anarchy among Jewish youths. This false denunciation, whose author hid behind a pseudonym, initiated a full investigation into the ascendent Chassidic movement. Leading members of the chassidic community, in Vilna and elsewhere, were also arrested and interrogated.
This was not simply an attack on Rabbi Schneur Zalman personally. It was also an attempt to instigate a government crackdown on the Chassidic movement as a whole. Rabbi Schneur Zalman was specifically targeted because by this stage he had emerged as the preeminent Chassidic leader in the Russian Empire. In written testimony penned during his internment, Rabbi Schneur Zalman offered a spirited defense of the Chassidic movement’s emphasis on intentional prayer as the key to cultivating love and awe of G‑d. He likewise defended the role of Chassidic leaders as teachers who communicate the inner meaning of the prayers to the wider community, empowering them to serve G‑d, each according to their capacity.
Explaining why his own teachings were particularly popular, Rabbi Schneur Zalman wrote: “They desire to hear from me more than to hear from other teachers (maggidim)… for their words are included in mine, and enhanced with conceptualization and understanding built on many earlier books, and sometimes drawing from Kabbalistic books, what can be understood and explained to those who have studied Kabbalah…”
Rabbi Schneur Zalman understood his imprisonment to be a result of his prominence as a Chassidic leader, which in turn derived from his distinctly cognitive, conceptual and explanatory approach to the perpetuation of Chassidic teaching and practice. This distinction—later marked by the appellation Chabad—was controversial even within the Chassidic community. For this reason Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s ultimate release was seen not only as a victory for the Chassidic community as a whole, but also as divine vindication of his particular approach.
From this point and on Rabbi Schneur Zalman's tendency to include conceptual and Kabbalistic elements in his public teachings would be significantly accelerated. While he always remained focused on the application of contemplative techniques in practice, he now devoted complete discourses to explain and probe esoteric Kabbalistic concepts in rich detail and at great length. Accordingly, Yud Tes Kislev does not simply mark the release of Rabbi Schneur Zalman himself from imprisonment. Yud Tes Kislev marks the redemption of his distinct mode of thinking and teaching; the opening of the conceptual wellsprings of Chabad so that far deeper ideas could be widely communicated, studied, absorbed, developed, and ultimately applied in the contemplative service of G‑d.
In a famous letter underscoring this point, Rabbi Shalom DovBer Schneersohn, the fifth rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, described Yud Tes Kislev as “the festival upon which our souls were redeemed in peace, and the light and life of our souls were given to us.” He added that “one might say that it is the Rosh Hashanah” for Chassidic teachings, the “words of the living G‑d,” as communicated by Rabbi Schneur Zalman and his successors.
In this letter we find a definitive statement, establishing Yud Tes Kislev as the joyous celebration of ultimate significance on the Chabad calendar: “This day is the beginning of our work to complete the true intention in the creation of man on this earth, which is to draw forth revealed light of the interiority of our holy Torah, which is drawn forth on this day as a general revelation for the entire year. It is incumbent on us to arouse our hearts on this day with a desire, an inner and essential will in the true point of our hearts, that our souls shall be illuminated with the light of the interiority of G‑d’s Torah … that all our actions and endeavors (whether in service of G‑d, meaning prayer, Torah and mitzvot; whether in worldly affairs that are necessary for the sustenance of the body) shall be with true intention for the sake of heaven, for the purpose that G‑d desired…”
Yud Tes Kislev also marks the passing of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s teacher, Rabbi DovBer, the Maggid of Mezritch, in 1772.
Listen to a joyous song, which celebrates the dissemination of the Baal Shem Tov’s Chassidic teachings as the path to the messianic redemption:
For more about Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi’s life, works and teachings, click here.
5. Chanukah
Chabad representative Rabbi Abraham Shemtov (right) and other rabbis light the first public menorah in front of Philadelphia's iconic Liberty Bell.Chanukah is a universal Jewish celebration, rather than a distinctly Chassidic one. But one of the striking features of Chassidic teachings is the way they illuminate every aspect of Jewish life and practice. This is perhaps especially so in the case of Chanukah, precisely because it is experienced and celebrated as the culmination of the Chassidic month of Kislev.
On Yud Tes Kislev in the year 1965 the Lubavitcher Rebbe delivered a historic talk, later edited into a definitive treatise on the nature, or essence, of Chassidism. All aspects of the Torah, he pointed out, and all methods of Torah interpretation are “utterly united with the revelation of the Infinite, blessed-be-He.” Yet, when studying some point of Jewish law, a story from the Torah, or a point of moral instruction, the essential divinity of this or that aspect of Torah is not always overtly apparent. The role of Chassidic teachings is to illuminate all these different genres of Torah, making their specific details entirely transparent to their unified source in G‑d’s infinite essence.
This is the reason, the Rebbe explained, that Chassidic teachings are compared to oil. Oil has dual, indeed paradoxical, qualities. On the one hand, it always remaining separate, rising to the top when poured into water, rather than diffusing or emulsifying. On the other hand, it has a tendency to ooze all over the place, to seep and spread throughout. Similarly, the essence of the chassidic innovation at once transcends all specifics, all examples of its expression, but also permeates the very core of all specifics, all aspects of Torah, all aspects of our service of G‑d, and all aspects of life.
It is no accident that oil is the central motif of Chanukah’s story and celebration. The one pure jug of oil, which only contained enough to light the menorah for one day, miraculously burned for eight days. Chassidic teachings about Chanukah abound with meditations and insight into the mysterious interplay of darkness and light, of nature and of miracles. Ultimately, however, these dialectical categories are fundamentally bound together by the singular essence of all things, by the pure oil that at once transcends all specifics and is the immanent core of all specifics.
Through the celebration of Chanukah, these lofty ideas are drawn into the reality of our lived experience, illuminating the concrete world. The ideal time to light the menorah, according to Jewish law, is after sundown. The ideal place is in the street, outside the door of the home. Divine light should not be locked away in places that are already luminous, nor should it remain a strictly private affair. For the Rebbe, the menorah and its laws symbolized the ideal role religion should play in the public square; a source of moral illumination extending to the darkest corners of society.
In 1974, Chabad representative Rabbi Abraham Shemtov applied these teachings in practice, erecting the first public menorah in front of Philadelphia's iconic Liberty Bell. The next year Rabbi Chaim Drizin erected a “giant” menorah in San Francisco’s Union Square, and within a few years Chabad representatives across the United States and the world were following suit.
These public menorahs brought Jewish observances to the fore of public consciousness in a very visible way, and sometimes sparked controversy. But the sincere warmth and non-confrontational enthusiasm so openly shared through the public celebration of Chanukah continues to embolden Jews everywhere to engage more deeply with their Judaism. As the Rebbe put it in one letter to a critic of Chabad’s Chanukah campaigns, “countless Jews … have been impressed and inspired by the spirit of Chanukah which has been brought to them, many for the first time.” It was precisely the extension of divine light beyond the confines of the home and synagogue, to illuminate and thaw the dark wintry streets, which made this new way of celebrating Chanukah so powerful and so boundlessly joyful.
Listen to a classic Chabad Chanukah melody, capturing both Chabad’s contemplative hallmark and the joyous celebration of Chanukah’s miracles:
For more about Chanukah click here.
Eli Rubin studied Chassidic literature and Jewish Law at the Rabbinical College of America and at Yeshivot in the UK, the US and Australia. He has been a research writer and editor at Chabad.org since 2011, focusing on the social and intellectual history of Chabad Chassidism. Through his writing, research, and editorial work he has successfully participated in a range of scholarly interchanges and collaborative endeavors.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.-------
PARSHAH
Toldot In Depth
A condensation of the weekly Torah portion alongside select commentaries culled from the Midrash, Talmud, Chassidic masters, and the broad corpus of Jewish scholarship.
Why Did Isaac love Esau? by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
A condensation of the weekly Torah portion alongside select commentaries culled from the Midrash, Talmud, Chassidic masters, and the broad corpus of Jewish scholarship.
Parshat Toldot In-Depth
Genesis 25:19-28:9
Parshah Summary
Toldot means “offspring” and “generations”; it also means “generations” in the more general sense—that which a person generates and produces. Thus, “the toldot of Isaac” are Isaac’s two sons, Jacob and Esau, as well as the deeds and achievements of Isaac—both of which are the subject of the Torah section of Toldot.
These are the generations of Isaac the son of Abraham—Abraham fathered Isaac.
Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebecca the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Padan Aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to himself for a wife. But twenty years later, the couple was still childless.
Isaac prayed to G‑d opposite his wife, because she was barren, and G‑d accepted his prayer, and Rebecca his wife conceived. Rebecca had a tumultuous pregnancy, as “the children struggled within her.” When she inquired to G‑d as to the meaning of this, she was told:
Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall diverge from your belly. One nation will struggle against the other; and the elder shall serve the younger.
The Twins When it came time for her to give birth, behold, there were twins in her womb.
The first came out red all over like a hairy mantle; and they called his name Esau (“ready-made”).
After that came out his brother, his hand holding on to Esau’s heel; and his name was called Jacob (“he who heels”). The passing years only accentuated the differences between them.
The youths grew up, and Esau was a man who understood hunting, a man of the field, whereas Jacob was an innocent man, dwelling in tents. They also differed in their relationship with their parents:
Isaac loved Esau because [his] game was in his mouth, but Rebecca loved Jacob.
A Pot of Lentils One day, Esau came back from the hunt exhausted and hungry; Jacob was cooking a pot of lentils.
Esau said to Jacob: “Give me to swallow, I beg you, of that red stew, for I am faint”; therefore was his name called Edom (“red”).
Jacob said: “Sell me this day your birthright.”
Esau said: “Behold, I am about to die, and what good is this birthright for me?”
Jacob said: “Swear to me this day.” He swore to him, and he sold his birthright to Jacob.
Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; he ate and drank, got up and went his way; thus Esau despised the birthright.
Water Wars A famine forces Isaac to relocate, but G‑d commands him not to leave the Holy Land, and reiterates His promise that “to you and to your seed I will give all these lands, and I will fulfill the oath which I swore to Abraham your father.”
So instead of going to Egypt (as Abraham did, and Jacob will when famine strikes the land of Canaan), Isaac settles in Gerar, in the land of the Philistines, which is within the boundaries of the Holy Land.
He does, however, follow his father’s example in presenting Rebecca as his sister, “lest the men of the place should kill me on account of Rebecca, because she is fair to look upon.” When the local king, Avimelech, happens to discover that they are husband and wife, he reproaches Isaac: “What have you done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.” Avimelech then warns his people: “He that touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”
Isaac prospers in Gerar. “He had possessions of flocks, possessions of herds, and a great store of servants.” He works the soil: “Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year a hundredfold, for G‑d blessed him.” So successful is he, that the previously hospitable Avimelech no longer desires his neighborship. “Go from us,” he now says to Isaac, “for you have grown mightier than us.”
Isaac sets himself the task of reopening the wells dug by Abraham:
For all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them up, and filled them with earth . . .
Isaac dug again the wells of water . . . and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. Then he dug wells of his own:
Isaac’s servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of living waters.
The shepherds of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s shepherds, saying, “The water is ours”; so he named the well Eisek (“strife”), because they had contended with him.
They dug another well, and they quarreled about it also; so he named it Sitnah (“animosity”).
He moved away from there, and he dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it Rechovot (“broad places”), and he said: “For now G‑d has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.” At age forty, Esau takes two Hittite wives—Judith the daughter of Be’eri and Basmat the daughter of Elon—who were “a grief of spirit to Isaac and to Rebecca.” Jacob remains an unmarried, reclusive scholar in the tents of learning.
A Scholar in Hunter’s Clothes
It came to pass that Isaac aged, and his eyesdimmed so that he could not see; and he called Esau his eldest son, and said to him:
“. . . Behold now, I am old; I know not the day of my death.
“Now therefore take, please, your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and catch me some game. Make me savory foods such as I love, and bring them to me, that I may eat; so that my soul may bless you before I die.” Rebecca overhears her husband’s words to her elder son, and is determined that Jacob, not Esau, should receive Isaac’s blessing. She summons Jacob and commands him to bring her “two choice kids” from the flocks, which she will prepare to resemble the “savory foods” which Esau serves his father. Jacob is to take them to Isaac before Esau returns from the hunt, and receive the blessings in his brother’s stead.
Jacob said to Rebecca his mother: “Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.
“Perhaps my father will touch me, and I will appear to him as a deceiver, and I will bring upon myself a curse and not a blessing.” But Rebecca insists that he follow through with the plan. She dresses Jacob in Esau’s clothes, and covers his arms and the back of his neck with the skin of the goats from which she prepared the “game,” so that he should feel like his hairy brother to his blind father’s hands.
He came to his father, and said: “My father!”
And he said: “Here I am. Who are you, my son?”
Jacob said to his father: “I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you have spoken to me. Please rise, sit down and eat of my game, so that your soul will bless me.”
Isaac said to his son: “How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?”
And he said: “Because the L‑rd your G‑d sent me good speed.” The tone and content of Jacob’s speech arouses Isaac’s suspicions.
Isaac said to Jacob: “Come near, please, that I may feel you, my son, whether you are really my son Esau or not.”
Jacob approached Isaac his father. He felt him, and said: “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau!” Thus Jacob receives the blessings which Isaac intended for Esau:
“May G‑d give to you of the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine.
“May peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you; you shall be lord over your brethren, and your mother’s sons shall bow down to you.
“Cursed be those who curse you, and blessed be those who bless you.”
Flight to Charan Esau enters his father’s room just seconds after Jacob’s departure, and the deception is discovered, but nothing can be done. “Your brother came with cunning,” says Isaac, “and has taken away your blessing. . . . Behold, I have made him your lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants; with grain and wine have I sustained him. What can I do now for you, my son?”
Esau said to his father, “Have you but one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father.” Esau raised his voice and wept. But all that Isaac can offer his distraught son is a blessing that “your dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above. You shall live by your sword, and you shall serve your brother; it will be, when you grieve, that you will break his yoke off your neck.”
Esau is furious, and plots to kill Jacob. Rebecca hears of this, and tells Jacob that he must flee to Charan, to her brother Laban.
To her husband, Rebecca says that it is time that Jacob married, and she certainly does not desire that he follow the example of his brother in marrying a Hittite woman. So Isaac summons Jacob and instructs him:
“Do not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father, and take a wife from there of the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother.” Before he goes, Isaac has an additional series of blessings for Jacob:
“May the Almighty G‑d bless you, make you fruitful and multiply you, and you shall become an assembly of peoples.
“May He give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your seed with you, that you may inherit the land of your sojournings, which G‑d gave to Abraham.” Our Parshah concludes by relating how Esau, seeing that his father prefers that his children marry within the family rather than with the local population, takes an additional wife—“Machalat, the daughter of Ishmael the son of Abraham, the sister of Nevayot.”
Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebecca the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Padan Aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to himself for a wife.
The first came out red all over like a hairy mantle; and they called his name Esau (“ready-made”).
After that came out his brother, his hand holding on to Esau’s heel; and his name was called Jacob (“he who heels”).
A Pot of Lentils
Jacob said: “Sell me this day your birthright.”
Esau said: “Behold, I am about to die, and what good is this birthright for me?”
Jacob said: “Swear to me this day.” He swore to him, and he sold his birthright to Jacob.
Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; he ate and drank, got up and went his way; thus Esau despised the birthright.
Water Wars
So instead of going to Egypt (as Abraham did, and Jacob will when famine strikes the land of Canaan), Isaac settles in Gerar, in the land of the Philistines, which is within the boundaries of the Holy Land.
He does, however, follow his father’s example in presenting Rebecca as his sister, “lest the men of the place should kill me on account of Rebecca, because she is fair to look upon.” When the local king, Avimelech, happens to discover that they are husband and wife, he reproaches Isaac: “What have you done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.” Avimelech then warns his people: “He that touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”
Isaac prospers in Gerar. “He had possessions of flocks, possessions of herds, and a great store of servants.” He works the soil: “Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year a hundredfold, for G‑d blessed him.” So successful is he, that the previously hospitable Avimelech no longer desires his neighborship. “Go from us,” he now says to Isaac, “for you have grown mightier than us.”
Isaac sets himself the task of reopening the wells dug by Abraham:
Isaac dug again the wells of water . . . and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them.
The shepherds of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s shepherds, saying, “The water is ours”; so he named the well Eisek (“strife”), because they had contended with him.
They dug another well, and they quarreled about it also; so he named it Sitnah (“animosity”).
He moved away from there, and he dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it Rechovot (“broad places”), and he said: “For now G‑d has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”
It came to pass that Isaac aged, and his eyesdimmed so that he could not see; and he called Esau his eldest son, and said to him:
“. . . Behold now, I am old; I know not the day of my death.
“Now therefore take, please, your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and catch me some game. Make me savory foods such as I love, and bring them to me, that I may eat; so that my soul may bless you before I die.”
“Perhaps my father will touch me, and I will appear to him as a deceiver, and I will bring upon myself a curse and not a blessing.”
And he said: “Here I am. Who are you, my son?”
Jacob said to his father: “I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you have spoken to me. Please rise, sit down and eat of my game, so that your soul will bless me.”
Isaac said to his son: “How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?”
And he said: “Because the L‑rd your G‑d sent me good speed.”
Jacob approached Isaac his father. He felt him, and said: “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau!”
“May peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you; you shall be lord over your brethren, and your mother’s sons shall bow down to you.
“Cursed be those who curse you, and blessed be those who bless you.”
Flight to Charan
Esau is furious, and plots to kill Jacob. Rebecca hears of this, and tells Jacob that he must flee to Charan, to her brother Laban.
To her husband, Rebecca says that it is time that Jacob married, and she certainly does not desire that he follow the example of his brother in marrying a Hittite woman. So Isaac summons Jacob and instructs him:
“May He give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your seed with you, that you may inherit the land of your sojournings, which G‑d gave to Abraham.”
From Our Sages
. . . Isaac the son of Abraham; Abraham fathered Isaac (25:19)
The cynics of that generation were saying that Sarah had become pregnant from Avimelech, since she had failed to conceive in all the years she was with Abraham. What did G‑d do? He formed the countenance of Isaac to resemble that of Abraham, so that all might attest that Abraham had fathered Isaac. This is the meaning of the repetitious wording of the verse: “Isaac (is certainly) the son of Abraham, (since there is proof that) Abraham fathered Isaac.”
Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebecca . . . as a wife (25:20)
For three years, from the Binding of Isaac at age 37 to his marriage at age 40, Isaac was in the Garden of Eden.
Therein lies the lesson to be derived from the fact that prior to his marriage Isaac spent three years in the Garden of Eden, abandoning the physical state for a wholly spiritual existence. In order to ensure the success of the most physical phase of a person’s life, it must be prefaced by a period of spiritual preparation. Although the primary objective of our mission in life is the development and sanctification of the physical world, one must enter that world well equipped with the spiritual vision of the divine purpose and with the spiritual fortitude to carry it out.
The children struggled within her (25:22)
Whenever she would pass a house of prayer or house of study, Jacob would struggle to come out . . . and when she passed a house of idol worship, Esau would struggle to come out. Also, they were struggling between themselves, fighting over the inheritance of the two worlds (i.e., the material world and the “world to come”).
One nation will struggle against the other (25:23)
They will never be equal: when one rises the other will fall, and vice versa.
Jacob was an innocent man, dwelling in tents (25:27)
The academy of Shem and the academy of Eber.
Isaac loved Esau because [his] game was in his mouth (25:28)
Esau would deceive him with his mouth. He would inquire of him: “Father, how does one tithe salt? Father, how does one tithe straw?” And Isaac would muse: “This son of mine, how diligent he is in the fulfillment of the commandments!”
Jacob cooked a stew (25:29)
That was the day on which Abraham died, and Jacob made a broth of lentils to comfort his father Isaac.
Why lentils? Just as the lentil has no mouth, so is the mourner speechless. . . . Just as the lentil is round, so mourning comes around to all the inhabitants of this world.
Esau came from the field, and he was exhausted (25:29)
Esau committed five sins on that day: he dishonored a betrothed maiden, he committed a murder, he denied G‑d, he denied the resurrection of the dead, and he spurned the birthright.
G‑d appeared to him, and said: “Do not go down into Egypt; dwell in the Land” (26:2)
G‑d said to him: “You are a burnt offering without blemish; as a burnt offering becomes unfit if it passes beyond the Temple enclosure, so will you become unfit if you go out of the Holy Land.”
Isaac dug again the wells of water . . . and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them (26:18)
Behold the humility of Isaac. A person acquires a house and gives it a name; then his son comes, adds a new part to it, and calls it by a different name. Not so Isaac: all the wells which Abraham dug and named, although they were entirely stopped up by the Philistines, when Isaac redug them a second time he did not give them new names, but reinstated the names given them by his father.
And what reward did he receive for this? The other Patriarchs had their names changed: Abraham was first called Abram and later Abraham; Jacob was initially called Jacob and subsequently given the name Israel. Isaac, however, was given the name “Isaac” from G‑d even before his birth, and his name was not changed for all generations.
He called the name of it Sitnah (“animosity”) (26:21)
This comes to teach us that there is not a righteous man who does not have detractors.
He dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it (26:22)
The first two wells allude to the first two Temples, which the enemies of Israel destroyed. The third well represents the Third Temple which shall speedily be built, which will be established without animosity and strife; G‑d will then broaden our boundaries, and all nations will serve Him in unison.
It came to pass that Isaac aged, and his eyes dimmed (27:1)
From the smoke of the offerings that Esau’s wives burned for their idols. Another explanation is that when Isaac was bound on the altar and his father wished to slaughter him, at that moment the heavens opened and the angels wept, and their tears fell into his eyes, which caused his eyes to dim. Another explanation: this came to pass in order to enable Jacob to receive the blessings.
Behold now, I am old; I know not the day of my death (27:2)
Said Rabbi Joshua ben Korchah: When a man comes to the age of his parents at the time of their death, for five years before and five years after he must fear death. For thus did Isaac reason: If I am to attain my father’s years, I am yet far short of them. But if I am to attain my mother’s years, “Behold now, I am old; I know not the day of my death.” (Isaac was 123 years old at the time; Sarah lived 127 years; Abraham, 175.)
I know not the day of my death (27:2)
Seven things are concealed from man: the day of death, the day of the Redemption and the absolute truth in a judgment; also, no man knows how he will earn a livelihood, what is in his neighbor’s heart, what a woman is bearing, and when the wicked State [Rome] will fall.
Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man (27:11)
Two men, one possessing a thick head of hair and the other bald-headed, stood near a threshing floor. When the chaff flew into the locks of the former, it became entangled in his hair, but when it flew on to the head of the bald man, he passed his hand over his head and removed it.
By the same token, the wicked Esau is polluted by sin throughout the year and has no way to achieve atonement; whereas Jacob is defiled by sin throughout the year, but has the Day of Atonement through which to procure forgiveness.
Rebecca took the coveted clothes of Esau . . . and put them on Jacob (27:15)
These are the clothes which Esau coveted from Nimrod, killing him in order to take them from him.
He said: “Because the L‑rd your G‑d sent me good speed” (27:20)
As soon as Jacob said these words, Isaac said to himself: “I know that Esau does not mention the name of the Holy One, blessed be He; since this one does mention Him, he is not Esau but Jacob.” Since Jacob spoke thus, Isaac said to him: “Come near, please, that I may feel you, my son, whether you are really my son Esau or not.”
The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau (27:22)
“The voice is the voice of Jacob”—no prayer is effective unless the seed of Jacob has a part in it. “The hands are the hands of Esau”—no war is successful unless the seed of Esau has a share in it.
Esau went to Ishmael, and he took Machalat, the daughter of Ishmael the son of Abraham, the sister of Nevayot, in addition to his other wives as a wife (28:9)
What is the point of identifying Machalat as “the sister of Nevayot”? Rashi explains that this is to provide us with a clue as to Jacob’s age at the time of his receiving the blessings from his father. Calling her “Nevayot’s sister” indicates that her marriage to Esau took place after Ishmael’s death, so that her brother, rather than her father, was the one who married her off. Yet the beginning of the verse describes how Esau went to Ishmael to arrange the marriage. This means that the event occurred right at the time of Ishmael’s death.
We know that Ishmael was 14 years older than Isaac (cf. Genesis 16:16 and 21:5); that Isaac was 60 years older than Jacob and Esau (25:26); and that Ishmael died at age 137 (25:17). Hence, Jacob and Esau were 63 years old when Jacob stole the blessings from his brother and was sent by Isaac to Charan to take a wife from Laban’s daughters.
But following other clues provided by the Torah, we deduce that Jacob arrived in Charan quite a number of years later. Upon his arrival in Egypt, Jacob tells Pharaoh that he is 130 years old (Genesis 47:9); Joseph at the time was 39 (41:46 and 45:6), which means that Jacob was 91 at the time of Joseph’s birth; and Joseph was born 14 years after Jacob’s arrival in Charan, after he had worked for two seven-year periods for Leah and Rachel, but before his third, six-year term of working in return for a portion of Laban’s sheep (30:25 and 31:41).
In other words, Jacob left his parents’ home in Be’er Sheva at age 63, but arrived in Charan 14 years later, at age 77. (Eliezer, making the same journey a generation earlier to find a wife for Isaac, made the trip in a single day.) Our sages explain that for fourteen years Jacob hid himself in the home of his ancestor and teacher, Eber (the great-grandson of Shem), where he immersed himself in the study of Torah.
The cynics of that generation were saying that Sarah had become pregnant from Avimelech, since she had failed to conceive in all the years she was with Abraham. What did G‑d do? He formed the countenance of Isaac to resemble that of Abraham, so that all might attest that Abraham had fathered Isaac. This is the meaning of the repetitious wording of the verse: “Isaac (is certainly) the son of Abraham, (since there is proof that) Abraham fathered Isaac.”
(Rashi)
There are children who are embarrassed of their parents, and there are parents who are embarrassed by their children. With Abraham and Isaac it wasn’t like that: Isaac prided himself in that he was “Isaac the son of Abraham,” and Abraham prided himself in that “Abraham fathered Isaac.”
(Midrash Tanchuma; Midrash HaGadol)
Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebecca . . . as a wife (25:20)
For three years, from the Binding of Isaac at age 37 to his marriage at age 40, Isaac was in the Garden of Eden.
(Asarah Maamarot)
Marriage is a time of increased enmeshment in the material. It is a time when one begins to engage in the most physical of human drives; it is also a time when one is forced to begin, in earnest, the business of earning a livelihood, often at the expense of loftier and more idealistic pursuits. Thus the Zohar refers to marriage as a person’s second birth: first the soul enters into the body and assumes a physical existence; then, at a later point in life, it further “descends” into the physical state by marrying.Therein lies the lesson to be derived from the fact that prior to his marriage Isaac spent three years in the Garden of Eden, abandoning the physical state for a wholly spiritual existence. In order to ensure the success of the most physical phase of a person’s life, it must be prefaced by a period of spiritual preparation. Although the primary objective of our mission in life is the development and sanctification of the physical world, one must enter that world well equipped with the spiritual vision of the divine purpose and with the spiritual fortitude to carry it out.
(The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
The children struggled within her (25:22)
Whenever she would pass a house of prayer or house of study, Jacob would struggle to come out . . . and when she passed a house of idol worship, Esau would struggle to come out. Also, they were struggling between themselves, fighting over the inheritance of the two worlds (i.e., the material world and the “world to come”).
(Yalkut Shimoni; Rashi)
One nation will struggle against the other (25:23)
They will never be equal: when one rises the other will fall, and vice versa.
(Rashi)
Jacob was an innocent man, dwelling in tents (25:27)
The academy of Shem and the academy of Eber.
(Midrash Rabbah)
Isaac loved Esau because [his] game was in his mouth (25:28)
Esau would deceive him with his mouth. He would inquire of him: “Father, how does one tithe salt? Father, how does one tithe straw?” And Isaac would muse: “This son of mine, how diligent he is in the fulfillment of the commandments!”
(Midrash Tanchuma; Rashi)
Jacob cooked a stew (25:29)
That was the day on which Abraham died, and Jacob made a broth of lentils to comfort his father Isaac.
Why lentils? Just as the lentil has no mouth, so is the mourner speechless. . . . Just as the lentil is round, so mourning comes around to all the inhabitants of this world.
(Talmud)
Esau came from the field, and he was exhausted (25:29)
Esau committed five sins on that day: he dishonored a betrothed maiden, he committed a murder, he denied G‑d, he denied the resurrection of the dead, and he spurned the birthright.
(Talmud)
On that day, Esau murdered Nimrod (the king of Babylonia).
(Midrash)
G‑d appeared to him, and said: “Do not go down into Egypt; dwell in the Land” (26:2)
G‑d said to him: “You are a burnt offering without blemish; as a burnt offering becomes unfit if it passes beyond the Temple enclosure, so will you become unfit if you go out of the Holy Land.”
(Midrash Rabbah)
Isaac dug again the wells of water . . . and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them (26:18)
Behold the humility of Isaac. A person acquires a house and gives it a name; then his son comes, adds a new part to it, and calls it by a different name. Not so Isaac: all the wells which Abraham dug and named, although they were entirely stopped up by the Philistines, when Isaac redug them a second time he did not give them new names, but reinstated the names given them by his father.
And what reward did he receive for this? The other Patriarchs had their names changed: Abraham was first called Abram and later Abraham; Jacob was initially called Jacob and subsequently given the name Israel. Isaac, however, was given the name “Isaac” from G‑d even before his birth, and his name was not changed for all generations.
(Midrash HaGadol)
He called the name of it Sitnah (“animosity”) (26:21)
This comes to teach us that there is not a righteous man who does not have detractors.
(Midrash HaBiur)
He dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it (26:22)
The first two wells allude to the first two Temples, which the enemies of Israel destroyed. The third well represents the Third Temple which shall speedily be built, which will be established without animosity and strife; G‑d will then broaden our boundaries, and all nations will serve Him in unison.
(Nachmanides)
It came to pass that Isaac aged, and his eyes dimmed (27:1)
From the smoke of the offerings that Esau’s wives burned for their idols. Another explanation is that when Isaac was bound on the altar and his father wished to slaughter him, at that moment the heavens opened and the angels wept, and their tears fell into his eyes, which caused his eyes to dim. Another explanation: this came to pass in order to enable Jacob to receive the blessings.
(Rashi)
Behold now, I am old; I know not the day of my death (27:2)
Said Rabbi Joshua ben Korchah: When a man comes to the age of his parents at the time of their death, for five years before and five years after he must fear death. For thus did Isaac reason: If I am to attain my father’s years, I am yet far short of them. But if I am to attain my mother’s years, “Behold now, I am old; I know not the day of my death.” (Isaac was 123 years old at the time; Sarah lived 127 years; Abraham, 175.)
(Midrash Rabbah)
I know not the day of my death (27:2)
Seven things are concealed from man: the day of death, the day of the Redemption and the absolute truth in a judgment; also, no man knows how he will earn a livelihood, what is in his neighbor’s heart, what a woman is bearing, and when the wicked State [Rome] will fall.
(Midrash Rabbah)
Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man (27:11)
Two men, one possessing a thick head of hair and the other bald-headed, stood near a threshing floor. When the chaff flew into the locks of the former, it became entangled in his hair, but when it flew on to the head of the bald man, he passed his hand over his head and removed it.
By the same token, the wicked Esau is polluted by sin throughout the year and has no way to achieve atonement; whereas Jacob is defiled by sin throughout the year, but has the Day of Atonement through which to procure forgiveness.
(Midrash Rabbah)
Rebecca took the coveted clothes of Esau . . . and put them on Jacob (27:15)
These are the clothes which Esau coveted from Nimrod, killing him in order to take them from him.
(Midrash Rabbah)
He said: “Because the L‑rd your G‑d sent me good speed” (27:20)
As soon as Jacob said these words, Isaac said to himself: “I know that Esau does not mention the name of the Holy One, blessed be He; since this one does mention Him, he is not Esau but Jacob.” Since Jacob spoke thus, Isaac said to him: “Come near, please, that I may feel you, my son, whether you are really my son Esau or not.”
(Midrash Rabbah)
The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau (27:22)
“The voice is the voice of Jacob”—no prayer is effective unless the seed of Jacob has a part in it. “The hands are the hands of Esau”—no war is successful unless the seed of Esau has a share in it.
(The Talmud)
Esau went to Ishmael, and he took Machalat, the daughter of Ishmael the son of Abraham, the sister of Nevayot, in addition to his other wives as a wife (28:9)
What is the point of identifying Machalat as “the sister of Nevayot”? Rashi explains that this is to provide us with a clue as to Jacob’s age at the time of his receiving the blessings from his father. Calling her “Nevayot’s sister” indicates that her marriage to Esau took place after Ishmael’s death, so that her brother, rather than her father, was the one who married her off. Yet the beginning of the verse describes how Esau went to Ishmael to arrange the marriage. This means that the event occurred right at the time of Ishmael’s death.
We know that Ishmael was 14 years older than Isaac (cf. Genesis 16:16 and 21:5); that Isaac was 60 years older than Jacob and Esau (25:26); and that Ishmael died at age 137 (25:17). Hence, Jacob and Esau were 63 years old when Jacob stole the blessings from his brother and was sent by Isaac to Charan to take a wife from Laban’s daughters.
But following other clues provided by the Torah, we deduce that Jacob arrived in Charan quite a number of years later. Upon his arrival in Egypt, Jacob tells Pharaoh that he is 130 years old (Genesis 47:9); Joseph at the time was 39 (41:46 and 45:6), which means that Jacob was 91 at the time of Joseph’s birth; and Joseph was born 14 years after Jacob’s arrival in Charan, after he had worked for two seven-year periods for Leah and Rachel, but before his third, six-year term of working in return for a portion of Laban’s sheep (30:25 and 31:41).
In other words, Jacob left his parents’ home in Be’er Sheva at age 63, but arrived in Charan 14 years later, at age 77. (Eliezer, making the same journey a generation earlier to find a wife for Isaac, made the trip in a single day.) Our sages explain that for fourteen years Jacob hid himself in the home of his ancestor and teacher, Eber (the great-grandson of Shem), where he immersed himself in the study of Torah.
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Parshah Why Did Isaac love Esau? by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Even before they were born, Jacob and Esau struggled in the womb. They were destined, it seems, to be eternal adversaries. Not only were they were different in character and appearance. They also held different places in their parents’ affections:The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country,Did he not know about Rebecca's oracle? while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents. Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebecca loved Jacob.1
We know why Rebecca loved Jacob. Before the twins were born, the pains Rebecca felt were so great that “she went to inquire of the L‑rd.” This is what she was told:
“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you will be separated;
one people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger.”2
It seemed as if G‑d were saying that the younger would prevail and carry forward the burden of history, so it was the younger, Jacob, whom she loved.
But why, in that case, did Isaac love Esau? Did he not know about Rebecca’s oracle? Had she not told him about it? Besides, did he not know that Esau was wild and impetuous? Can we really take literally the proposition that Isaac loved Esau because “he had a taste for wild game,” as if his affections were determined by his stomach, by the fact that his elder son brought him food he loved? Surely not, when the very future of the covenant was at stake.
The classic answer, given by Rashi, listens closely to the literal text. Esau, says the Torah, “knew how to trap [yode’a tzayid].” Isaac loved him “because entrapment was in his mouth [ki tzayid befiv].” Esau, says Rashi, trapped Isaac by his mouth. Here is Rashi’s comment on the phrase “knew how to trap:”
He knew how to trap and deceive his father with his mouth. He would ask him, “Father, how should one tithe salt and straw?” Consequently his father believed him to be strict in observing the commands.3
Esau knew full well that salt and straw do not require tithes, but he asked so as to give the impression that he was strictly religious. And here it is Rashi’s comment on the phrase that Isaac loved him “because entrapment was in his mouth”:
“The midrashic explanation is that there was entrapment in the mouth of Esau, who trapped his father and deceived him by his words.”4
The Maggid of Dubnow adds a perceptive comment as to why Isaac, but not Rebecca, was deceived. Rebecca grew up with the wily Laban. She knew deception when she saw it. Isaac, by contrast, had grown up with Abraham and Sarah. He only knew total honesty and was thus easily deceived. (Bertrand Russell once commented on the philosopher G. E. Moore, that he only once heard Moore tell a lie, when he asked Moore if he had ever told a lie, and Moore replied, “Yes”).
So the classic answer is that Isaac loved Esau because he simply did not know who or what Esau was. But there is another possible answer: that Isaac loved Esau precisely because he did know what Esau was.
In the early twentieth century someone brought to the great Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel, the following dilemma. He had given his son a good Jewish education. He had always kept the commands at home. Now however the son had drifted far from Judaism. He no longer kept the commandments. He did not even identify as a Jew. What should the father do?
“Did you love him when he was religious?” asked Rav Kook. “Of course,” replied the father. “Well then,” Rav Kook replied, “Now love him even more.”
Sometimes love can do what rebuke cannot. It may be that the Torah is telling us that Isaac was anything but blind as to his elder son’s true nature. But if you have two children, one well behaved, the other liable to turn out badly, to whom should you devote greater attention? With whom should you spend more time?
It may be that Isaac loved Esau not blindly but with open eyes, knowing that there would be times when his elder son would give him grief, but knowing too that the moral responsibility of parenthood demands that we do not despair of, or disown, a wayward son.
Did Isaac’s love have an effect on Esau? Yes and no. It is clear that there was a special bond of connection between Esau and Isaac. This was recognized by the sages:
Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel said: No man ever honored his father as I honored my father, but I found that Esau honored his father even more.5
Rabbi Shimon derives this from the fact that usually people serve their parents wearing ordinary clothes while they reserve their best for going out. Esau, however, had kept his best clothes in readiness to serve his father the food he had gone out to hunt. That is why Jacob was able to wear them while Esau was still out hunting.6
We find, much later in the Torah, that G‑d forbids the Israelites to wage war against Esau’s descendants. He tells Moses:
Give the people these orders: “You are about to pass through the territory of your brothers the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. They will be afraid of you, but be very careful. Do not provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land, not even enough to put your foot on. I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his own.”7
And later still Moses commands the Israelites:
Do not abhor an Edomite [i.e. a descendant of Esau], for he is your brother.8
The sages saw these provisions as an enduring reward to Esau for the way he honored his father.
So, was Isaac right or wrong to love Esau? Esau reciprocated the love, but remained Esau, the hunter, the man of the field, not the man to carry forward the demanding covenant with the invisible G‑d and the spiritual sacrifices itWas Isaac right or wrong to love Esau? called for. Not all children follow the path of their parents. If it was Isaac’s intent that Esau should do so, he failed. But there are some failures that are honorable. Loving your children, whatever they become, is one, for surely that is how G‑d loves us.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the British Commonwealth. To read more writings and teachings by Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, or to join his e‑mail list, please visit www.rabbisacks.org.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.
FOOTNOTES
1.Genesis 25:27-28.
2.Genesis 25:23.
3.Rashi to Genesis 25:27.
4.Rashi to Genesis 25:28.
5.Devarim Rabbah 1:15.
6.Genesis 27:14.
7.Deuteronomy 2:4-5.
8.Deuteronomy 23:8.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Parshah
Life Begins at 40 by Elisha Greenbaum
The driver who took me to the airport yesterday was a failure; or so he believed. A Coptic Christian, he'd spent over 10 years living as a monk. Living in"Instead of a life of piety, I drive a limousine the Egyptian desert, meditating, praying and fasting, he'd done everything he could to attain spiritual enlightenment.But he'd given it all up.
"I'm too weak," he confessed to me. "I kept dreaming of women and other pleasures of the flesh. I left the order, and a few years ago I immigrated here. I'm married now and we're expecting a child. Instead of a life of piety, I drive a limousine in New York City. I wasn't worthy."
I couldn't help contrasting his standards of religious perfection with the Jewish ideal. We don't believe in asceticism and don't hold up celibacy as an ambition. The ideal is to marry and bring children to this world. Rather than withdrawing from society, we are expected to do work that contributes to the common good.
The Parshah we read this week begins: “This is the story of Isaac the son of Abraham ... Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebecca.”We then proceed to relate the story of the birth of Jacob and Esau, Isaac's interactions with the local king and his digging of wells throughout the region.
On the face of it, by starting the story of Isaac’s life here, we're selling him short. After all, he had a fascinating backstory. Although we have read about the Akeida—how Abraham took Isaac on G‑d's instructions and bound him as a potential sacrifice to G‑d—we weren't given any of the details from Isaac's perspective. Surely that would be a story worth telling?
We also read in the Midrash that immediately following the Akeida, Isaac spent three years in the Garden of Eden, studying Torah, communing with the angels and imbibing G‑dliness. I wouldWe are expected to work and contribute to the common good have liked to learn how those years of spiritual solitude affected his psyche and colored his future endeavors, but the Torah skips blithely past these fundamentals and starts the story only once he'd finally settled down to marriage, at the relatively advanced age of 40.
By starting Isaac’s story at this point, the Bible is pointing out that the true religious ideal is not a life of loneliness and self-sacrifice, but one of engaging in the world and making a difference in the lives of others. Spending time in paradise might be personally rewarding, but Isaac’s real story began when he settled down and started making his mark on the world.
Rabbi Elisha Greenbaum is spiritual leader of Moorabbin Hebrew Congregation and co-director of L’Chaim Chabad in Moorabbin, Victoria, Australia.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Parshah
Haftarah Companion for Toldot For an informed reading of Malachi 1:1-2:7 by Mendel Dubov
OverviewThe book of Malachi gives us a unique glimpse into the time when he delivered his prophecies. As the last of the biblical prophets, Malachi is there as the Second Temple is being built and the handful of Jews return to their land. Although they had taken a leading role in this historic time, the spiritual level that these Jews were at was rather low.
As we read in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah at length, the Jewish men thought much more of the non-Jewish women than of their Jewish wives. After all, why be married to a Jewish woman, on whose face can be seen all the difficulties of exile, when you can marry a good-looking local girl and become part of society?1 The newly arrived immigrants were also so bent on material prosperity in their new surroundings that expenses for their Jewish duties were seen as burdensome. We read here that the sacrifices offered in the Temple were taken from the poorest of the crops and animals. The people also had a general disrespect, even contempt, for the Temple service.
It is here that Malachi admonishes them to wake up to their real selves. He begins with describing the unconditional love that exists between G‑d and His people. This had been demonstrated with the Jewish return to their homeland, something that no other exiled nation had been able to do. Where is the reciprocation? the prophet demands. So insensitive had they grown that they did not even think there was anything wrong with their attitude. The service in the Temple was to be the source of blessing for the people in the land, and ridiculing it would in turn become a source of shame and contempt for themselves.
The final words of the haftarah are directed to the kohanim. G‑d had made a covenant with the priests because of their commitment and righteous ways. The kohanim were expected to continue in the way of their ancestors, teach the people, and live lives that would serve as role models for the rest of the nation.
Jacob the chosen
“I loved you,” said the L‑rd; and you said, “How have You loved us?” “Was not Esau a brother to Jacob?” says the L‑rd, “yet I loved Jacob… and I hated Esau.”
This opening statement of Malachi makes the connection of the haftarah to the portion of Toldot, namely the story of Jacob and Esau. And what a perplexing statement it is… Could there really have been an equal choice between the wicked Esau and the righteous Jacob? Preoccupying all the commentaries to our Parshah is the great question of how Isaac could have possibly favored Esau over Jacob. Many different explanations are offered. But that this was actually a dilemma for G‑d as well?!
The commentaries understand the verse in the following way:
In response to G‑d stating that He loved them, the Jewish people pressed to know specifics: “How have you loved us?” The people were still unsure as to what might constitute this love. Was it only because G‑d loved their forefathers that He loved them? Or did G‑d have a unique relationship with them in their own right?
To this G‑d responded: “Was not Esau a brother to Jacob?” If His love for the Jew would be merely because of his ancestry, then Esau too came from the same illustrious lineage—Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca. The fact that G‑d loved Jacob and hated Esau was evidence that this was about a direct relationship with the Jewish people themselves, without consideration of their ancestry.2
The above understanding, however, still does not settle the question: what about the actions of these two brothers? If Jacob was the righteous one, then how could there have been a choice to possibly choose Esau? As for the descendants of the two—would it not depend on their own actions whether they would earn or forfeit G‑d’s love for them?
This verse introduces us to one of the the great facts of Judaism: G‑d’s choice of the Jewish people. When we talk of G‑d choosing something, two things must be understood:
1. The item of choice does not have any sway over this decision. G‑d is truly infinite, and the finite is totally inconsequential to Him.
2. “Choosing,” in this context, means that an essential bond is forged with that which is chosen. We call this “love.”
To elaborate:
When we choose things, we have always have a cause: something in the chosen person or object that sways us to choose it. This may be conscious or subconscious, but there is always an explanation as to why we make our choices. As for G‑d, though, nothing has any sway over Him. When G‑d extends Himself in a certain way to something, the only case for it is Himself, not the recipient.
Now, when we say that nothing has any sway over G‑d’s choice, this also includes the actions of the chosen being. This is not to say that actions do not mean anything to Him; they do. But this does not have any bearing on G‑d’s “choosing” something and creating an eternal bond with it. These are two separate things.
G‑d wants good deeds being performed and does not want evil deeds perpetrated. So He will not tie Himself to the righteous regardless of their actions; on the contrary, His closeness with them depends on their actions.
However, in many places, such as here, the Torah tells us that G‑d chose to have an inseparable bond with the Jewish people that is independent of their actions. In this context, “Esau is a brother to Jacob.” Binding Himself to a specific people regardless of who they are and what they do is something that both defies and goes beyond any explanation.
The prophet is conveying this fact to the Jewish people: G‑d loves you. He could have loved anyone, but He chose you.3 Live up to it.4
Don’t be cheap!
In his rebuke to the people, Malachi chides them for fulfilling their duties to G‑d in a cheap and begrudging way: “When you offer a blind [animal] for a sacrifice, is there nothing wrong? And when you offer a lame or a sick one, is there nothing wrong? Were you to offer it to your governor, would he accept you or would he favor you?”
Toeing the line of the prophet, a number of halachic dicta were put into place for precisely this purpose: upholding of the quality of the performance of mitzvot. A number of these standards applied in Temple times, but some are also in place today, such as these:
1. One is not allowed to make kiddush on wine that has a bad smell.5
2. If a rodent fell into oil, even though there is more than sixty times the volume of the rodent in the oil (thus not rendering it non-kosher), it is nevertheless still forbidden to use this oil for a mitzvah, like Shabbat or Chanukah lights, or illuminating a synagogue.6
This general principle is often quoted in halachic responsa when asked about using something of inferior quality for the performance of a mitzvah.
Rabbi Mendel Dubov is the director of Chabad in Sussex County, NJ, and a member of faculty at the Rabbinical College of America in Morristown, NJ.
FOOTNOTES
1.See Malachi 2:10ff and Rashi ad loc.
2.See commentaries of Metzudat David and Malbim on this verse for slight variations on this explanation.
3.In this light, it is important to put the rest of the phrase in context: “And I hated Esau.” This is not to say that G‑d rejects or hates those who are not Jewish. It is a principle in Judaism that “the righteous among the nations of the world have a share in the world to come” (see Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 3:13), and the world to come is an experience of closeness to G‑d (see ibid. ch. 8)—not something that would be extended to a “hated” one. The term “hated” is to be understood as in a relative sense, describing an exclusion from the deep level of bonding described in the text.
4.See Likutei Sichot, vol. 17, p. 90.
5.Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 272:1; see Magen Avraham ad loc.
6.Ibid. 154:12; see Mishnah Berurah ad loc.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Story
The Wellspring of Salvation
(ibid. v. 15).© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
A villager came to Reb Yitzchak Aizik of Zhidachov for advice. His local squire was prepared to give him the lease on his inn, which would provide him with a highway used by the dealers in oxen. It had one drawback: since there was no water there for their livestock, they had to make a long detour via a different road. If only water were to be found near this inn, he would be a prosperous man. What should he do?
“Take the lease,” advised the rebbe, “and start digging a well there. When you have dug a few feet, come to me for a Shabbat.”
The villager did just this, and when he came to Zhidachov for Shabbat, the rebbe told him to dig a little deeper, then write the following words on a slip of paper, The servants of Isaac dug a well, and they came and told him, “We have found water”, (Gen. 26:32) and throw it into the well. The innkeeper followed these instructions, and the well immediately filled with spring water...
The innkeeper followed these instructions, and the well immediately filled with spring water, to the delight of the passing gentile merchants. He began to grow rich, because he had taken the lease on this unwanted inn at a very cheap rate.
Now another Jew went along to the squire, and pointed out that he was not earning as much as could be expected on his lease, considering how much the present tenant was obviously prospering; in fact, he could better the offer. In a word, the first leaseholder found himself soon displaced and without any means of income. He set out at once for Zhidachov, and told his rebbe his tale of woe.
“This time,” said Reb Yitzchak Aizik, “these are the words which you should write on the note which you are to throw into the well: All the wells which his father’s servants had dug, the Philistines stopped them up, and filled with earth” (ibid. v. 15).
The villager did as he was told. The well dried up, and the disappointed gentiles went to the squire with a complaint: he had leased this concern to a new tenant—but, for some reason, the water supply had expired with the first lease.
The squire called back the first tenant, but when he proposed that they renew their former arrangement, the tenant stipulated that he would first have to consult his rebbe.
Reb Yitzchak Aizik advised him to agree only if the terms were the same as heretofore, and told him that the slip of paper which he should throw into the well this time should bear these words: They dug another well, and did not quarrel over it; and he called that place Rechovot, saying, “For now G‑d has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land” (ibid. v. 22).
The squire agreed to the earlier terms, the Jew threw in his note, and the spring came back to life. And that same inn on the highway provided a respectable livelihood for the man, and his children, and his children’s children—without any unfair interference—for many long years thereafter.
Adapted by Yerachmiel Tilles from Sippurei Chassidim by Rabbi S. Y. Zevin, and supplemented from other oral sources.
Biographical note:
Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik of Zhidachov (1804–30 Adar I 1872) was a descendant of the Tosefot Yom Tov (Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman Heller, 1579–1654), and the nephew and successor of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch of Zhidachov. He was a major scholar as well as a chassidic rebbe, who authored commentaries on the Talmud, Midrash and Kabbalah. His thousands of followers included some of the leading scholars and rabbis of the generation. His four sons were all considered tzaddikim, including the first rebbe of the Komarna dynasty.
Copyright 2003 by KabbalaOnline.org. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work or portions thereof, in any form, unless with permission, in writing, from Kabbalah Online.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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‘You’ll Love Us—We’re So Disorganized!’ by Dovid Lazerson
The author and his family in 1977, a year after returning to Buffalo after spending time in Morristown yeshiva.“Why be Jewish, or any label for that matter?” I declared to the rabbi. “All the problems in the world, well, most of them anyhow, can be traced to some sort of organized religion.”
The rabbi sat quiet for a moment in front of the entire class. It was winter semester in 1972 at the University of Buffalo, and good ol’ Divine providence had placed me in a course titled “Jewish Mysticism.” It was also my last semester before“Why be Jewish?” I asked graduating. I had a job lined up to help teach geodesic dome-building and assist at an organic farm. In my four-plus years since high school, I had been through quite a lot. I was coming out of the Eastern religions/meditation scene. Despite having a roommate who was a drug dealer, I was now clean and realized that scene was a dead-end street.
Being born Jewish and not really knowing what that meant, I was intrigued by the course description. Was there really anything “mystical” about Judaism? Was there really anything beyond joining a country club, and eating bagels and lox on Sunday mornings?
Despite the intriguing course title, I fought with this teacher all semester long. I figured, who was he to teach me? After all, I had been around the world in my travels. Whereas I figured that Rabbi Gurary, who was affectionately known as “Rabbi G,” had probably never even left Brooklyn, N.Y. (well, maybe to go on a short trip or two to the Catskills) before he arrived in town to open a Chabad center.
No, my attitude was that I was going to learn him a thing or two about life. My spiritual creed at that time was very much, pardon the expression, in tune with John Lennon’s song, “Imagine.” In my argument with Rabbi G, I couldn’t help but focus on one line which the Beatles’ main singer croons: “Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion, too.”
Indeed. It seemed like a profound yet simple truth. Wasn’t it organized religion that was making most, if not all, the main trouble on the planet? From the Crusades to the European Wars of Religion to modern-day terrorism, there’s this notion of justifying “killing in the name of … .”
I put my hands up a bit, smiled, and uttered an expression he had actually taught me: “Nu?” Perhaps I had stumped the rabbi at last, and he had no answer to my wisdom.
“Oh, you’ll love Chabad,” Rabbi G responded with a twinkle in his eye. “We’re very disorganized.”
The author in 1972, the year he enrolled in Rabbi Gurary's class at University of Buffalo.The entire class broke out in laughter, myself included. The answer to that particular dilemma would come later, as would about a hundred other questions I had. But I was slowly beginning to see that there was a lot more to this Judaism business, and that I was just scratching the surface.
This past weekend, I had an educational conference in New York City that coincided with the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, more commonly known as the Kinus Hashluchim. My wife Gittel and I stayed with our son Rafi, who lives in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the conference is held, and so we got to experience a bit of the energy and inspiration that pervades this incredible annual gathering. This year’s convention featured more than 4,500 Chabad rabbis, who arrived in New York from all over the world. I’m actually surprised that there isn’t a Chabad House on the moon yet, but it’s probably not too far in the making.
Just walking
Just walking the streets of Crown Heights was electifying! the streets of Crown Heights was electrifying. On one corner, I met an emissary from Hawaii. On another was a rabbi from Paris. In the bagel shop, I schmoozed with some shluchimfrom England, where I had formerly given some concerts and Shabbatons. Each encounter didn’t just reflect on the past, but more importantly, represented a chizuk—that proverbial “booster shot in the arm”—as we discussed future endeavors and projects. The Lubavitcher Rebbe was never content with past accomplishments. With Chabad, it’s always a matter of m’chayil el chayil—moving ever onward and upward.
Being in Crown Heights over the weekend also gave me a powerful feeling of gratitude to the Rebbe’s awesome army of shluchim. I couldn’t help but marvel at all the changes that had taken place since that class with Rabbi G. Forty-plus years after a course on “Jewish Mysticism,” and I’m walking around Crown Heights on Shabbat, feeling very comfortable with my beard and my long black coat, looking more like Rabbi G than I ever could have imagined. I was not only a father to seven beautiful children but a grandfather to more than I can count. If it wasn’t for the shluchim—if Rabbi G didn’t have the mesiras nefesh to come to Buffalo and start a Chabad House—who knows what, where and who I would have been? I shudder to think of how I could have easily ended up. So many of my high school and college friends got lost along the way: some from drugs; others from Eastern-type religions; a few ended up in psychiatric wards. Many never married, and now confess to me how lonely their lives seem without the nachas of children and grandkids.
Eventually, I learned that Judaism is not a religion; it’s a way of life. It lives and breathes meaning and inspiration into our daily existence. It infuses joy into everything we do.
However, I did discover one thing that Rabbi G was very wrong about. I saw it with my own eyes. And it was absolutely mind-boggling.
Two of our grandsons came in for the convention, and I had the privilege of bringing them to their various drop-off points for the simultaneous program for “young shluchim,” the sons of emissaries. There were probably close to 1,000 kids whoI learned that Judaism is not a religion; it’s a way of life came in for the weekend, and Chabad kept them safe, busy and happy for days and nights on end. Each kid was placed in a bunk with several counselors. There were buses, and sleeping arrangements, and nametags, and a zillion pieces of luggage, and thousands of meals to worry about—and a whole host of details that I can’t even begin to imagine. So besides the almost 5,000 shluchim attending the main convention, there was also this incredibly successful massive overnight camp that took place at the same time. We all know how hard it is to try and keep our own kids happy; now try that daunting task for 1,000 others. I’m sorry Rabbi G, but I got ya on this one! Chabad is anything but disorganized. Props to all the amazing staff who ran events for these boys. You can work at my summer camp anytime!
While Rabbi G won the vast majority of our discussions back in Buffalo, I think I am the one who has been the real winner.
Being in Crown Heights over the weekend also gave me a powerful feeling of gratitude to the Rebbe’s awesome army of shluchim. I couldn’t help but marvel at all the changes that had taken place since that class with Rabbi G. Forty-plus years after a course on “Jewish Mysticism,” and I’m walking around Crown Heights on Shabbat, feeling very comfortable with my beard and my long black coat, looking more like Rabbi G than I ever could have imagined. I was not only a father to seven beautiful children but a grandfather to more than I can count. If it wasn’t for the shluchim—if Rabbi G didn’t have the mesiras nefesh to come to Buffalo and start a Chabad House—who knows what, where and who I would have been? I shudder to think of how I could have easily ended up. So many of my high school and college friends got lost along the way: some from drugs; others from Eastern-type religions; a few ended up in psychiatric wards. Many never married, and now confess to me how lonely their lives seem without the nachas of children and grandkids.
Eventually, I learned that Judaism is not a religion; it’s a way of life. It lives and breathes meaning and inspiration into our daily existence. It infuses joy into everything we do.
However, I did discover one thing that Rabbi G was very wrong about. I saw it with my own eyes. And it was absolutely mind-boggling.
Two of our grandsons came in for the convention, and I had the privilege of bringing them to their various drop-off points for the simultaneous program for “young shluchim,” the sons of emissaries. There were probably close to 1,000 kids whoI learned that Judaism is not a religion; it’s a way of life came in for the weekend, and Chabad kept them safe, busy and happy for days and nights on end. Each kid was placed in a bunk with several counselors. There were buses, and sleeping arrangements, and nametags, and a zillion pieces of luggage, and thousands of meals to worry about—and a whole host of details that I can’t even begin to imagine. So besides the almost 5,000 shluchim attending the main convention, there was also this incredibly successful massive overnight camp that took place at the same time. We all know how hard it is to try and keep our own kids happy; now try that daunting task for 1,000 others. I’m sorry Rabbi G, but I got ya on this one! Chabad is anything but disorganized. Props to all the amazing staff who ran events for these boys. You can work at my summer camp anytime!
While Rabbi G won the vast majority of our discussions back in Buffalo, I think I am the one who has been the real winner.
The author and his wife at a Shabbaton where he spoke in Burlington, Vermont, 2016.Dr. David Lazerson, affectionately known as Dr. Laz, is a world renowned educator, musician, author & entertainer. He won Teacher of the Year for NY State in 1981 and again for the Broward County Public Schools, the nation's 5th largest school district, in 2007, and is a 2008 Inductee into the National Teachers Hall of Fame.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Women
Lessons From My Parents’ House by Lieba Rudolph
My mother passed away in February, which means that their house—the house I grew up in—is empty now. Well, not exactly. There are four floors and almost 60 years’ worth of “stuff.” But all I’m looking for are some tokenMaybe I can find some clues to help explain how I got this way remembrances of my parents, plus a few from my own childhood, just in case I ever need to prove to someone that I wasn’t born Torah-observant. And while I’m looking, maybe I can find some clues to help explain how I got this way.The bedroom that was “mine” hasn’t been mine for many years. My desk in the corner is without the blotter that I doodled on; the desktop is now dominated by the mirror my mother used in her struggle against macular degeneration. The drawers are empty, too, with no sign of my legendary treasure: the small white box that warned everyone to “Keep Out!” Inside was my generous snip of our dog Lobo’s white poodle hair. (Yes, even as a child, I was keenly aware that nothing lasts forever.)
Now dogs don’t go to heaven, according to Torah, but if they did, Lobo surely would have merited the opposite; he had a biting problem, he was never housebroken, and he refused to eat dog food. We loved him because we didn’t know any better—and he was ours. Did our dog train me in the way of unconditional love that I now know I’m supposed to have for all Jews? Dogs are far less complicated than people, I know, but Lobo definitely taught me how it’s possible for love to transcend any external qualities. But there’s no small white box and I can’t ask my parents what happened to it, so any Lobo lessons will have to be orally transmitted. (This feels very Jewish to me, too; it also reaffirms that I have been prudent in detaching myself from stuff, sentimental or otherwise.)
My next stop is to the attic to retrieve what I always said I wanted: my collection of 1960s’ MAD magazines. It takes a couple trips before I find a stash, but I am happy when I do. MAD helped shape me into a humor-driven iconoclast, which I would probably would still be had G‑d not shown me that not everything is funny, and that some things in life are truly worth revering.
I feel like I’m on a scavenger hunt for myself. I look for my high school diploma and a synagogue yearbook from the year I was confirmed, even though I never did learn what I was confirming. I have my eye out for the picture frame with my name engraved on it, especially because it testifies that I came into this world weighing 6 pounds, 13 ounces (and there are exactly 613 mitzvahs in the Torah). I’m convinced that I was marked for my Jewish journey all along, and my magic birthweight is just the icing on the cake. I was 30 years old before I learned 613’s significance, but that discovery is emblematic of my quest since then: to find a G‑dly connection in everything. (So far though, I haven’t found the frame, which reinforces my attitude towards stuff.)
My sister Stephanie never played with dolls, so I know I can take all the ones I want. A few are propped up on the basement sofa, looking a little scary and definitely too frail to leave the house. I find Barbie’s and Ken’s clothes crumpled in their doll cases, but the dolls themselves are AWOL. Fortunately, I already know that Barbie and her mishpocha are only valuable if they’re in perfect condition in the original boxes, and there’s no way in the world I would ever have wanted to leave my gorgeous, hot-pink-lipstick-wearing, platinum-haired “bubblecut” Barbie in a box. Barbie may have been my dalliance with superficiality, but she taught me how to dream big. Yet, here again, there’s barely a vestige of our relationship.
My brother Robert tells me I should take the family Judaica, even though I’m not sure I want the tzedakah box our kids made for my parents or their tired tchotchkes (mostly fabric-covered figurines of shtetl Jews). There are also numerous awards and acknowledgements from Jewish organizations scattered around the house; some of this quasi-Judaica dates back to my grandfather. A small memento of community service will suffice as proof that in my parents’ house, the more fortunate were obligated to give to the less fortunate. This axiom quiteI wouldn’t have had it any other way possibly ignited a spark deep within my soul: Why did some people need help, and why was I born capable of giving it? It was an existential question that haunted me as a child and motivated me to become Torah-observant as an adult. I learned that G‑d has a reason for everything, and that by learning Torah and performing mitzvahs, I might come closer to knowing why He created me—and everything, for that matter.
Thirty years later, I still marvel at the fact that my life changed direction the way it did, even though I understand that it was all hashgacha pratis, Divine will. G‑d needed to create me with my birth weight, my family and my neshamah (Jewish soul), which was meant to be dormant until it wasn’t anymore. I didn’t realize at the time how this awakening would change my relationship to everyone and everything, including the stuff in my parents’ house.
But I wouldn’t have had it any other way: G‑d wanted my Jewish soul to come home.
Lieba Rudolph lives in Pittsburgh, PA, and writes a weekly blog about Jewish spirituality.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Women
Karen Yemima Chose Judaism, Only to Be Killed by Terrorists by Shlomo Rizel
It was the fall of 2014, what should have been a normal, peaceful October day. Instead, a terrorist rammed his car into a crowd of people. One of them was a girl named Karen Yemima.She was badly hurt in the attack and died a week later. News of her death came as a shock to many—not just because another innocent Jew had died in a murderous terrorist attack, but because of who she was.
Karen Yemima was a 22-year-old convert from Guayaquil, Ecuador. Her parents were Christian Evangelist missionaries. Life revolved around the local church that her parents had founded until her life made a definite change. This is her story.
In writing this article, I didn’t just rely on phone conversations with her friends and teachers; I also went to meet her mother, Shoshana Newman (originally known as Rosa Cecelia Birla Muñoz) in the center for converts from Latin America, where both of them had converted. It’s a special place in the heart of the Jewish Quarter, very close to the Hurva Synagogue.
Shoshana only speaks Spanish, so we spoke via a translator, but she was eager to talk. “In spite of the difficulty, it’s important for me to perpetuate my daughter’s memory,” she said before she started telling their astonishing story.
“For 40 years, I traveled from place to place in the service of the church, but the most meaningful experience of my life started when Carlos, Karen’s father, flew to Colombia, where he heard recordings of Jewish music. The lyrics were verses from the Bible, and he found them astounding. It turned out that there was a branch of Christian Evangelism that, as part of their rituals and as part of their outreach to the Jews, put an emphasis on learning Jewish texts and songs about the Jews and about the Torah.
“When Carlos returned home, he shared his new enthusiasm with me, and it was a turning point in our lives. We lived in an isolated home, in an out-of-the-way country; I didn’t know that the Jewish people I had read about in Christian writings still existed, that there were Jews and a Jewish religion in today’s world. When my husband shared the recordings he had brought back—in this case, it happened to be the songs of Avraham Fried, a Chassidic music artist—my soul sensed that this was something special, holy and pure. From then on, I had no interest in other music, including the music of the church.”
Shoshana’s husband began to travel regularly to the Evangelical Church in Colombia, and each time he returned with suitcases full of books and teaching materials.
Shoshana and her children wanted to know more and more about Judaism. When Carlos realized that his wife was abandoning Christianity in favor of Judaism, he told her to stop or agree to a divorce. “He asked me to leap from the current that was sweeping me toward Judaism, but I was just beginning my journey and refused to stop. I told him clearly that I couldn’t believe in Christianity anymore or preach to others about it. I explained to him that since I’d discovered that Christianity isn’t the truth, I wouldn’t be able to rest until I reached the source from which Christianity sprung, even if it meant I’d be thrown out of the house and left starving. In the end, my husband decided that we had to divorce.”
The Right Path
Shoshana finds it difficult to talk about those days. She needs a couple of minutes to compose herself before she returns to her story. “I cried endlessly during that time, about the 40 years I had wasted on a false religion. I asked G‑d to show me the right path and to send someone to teach me how to serve Him properly.”
Shoshana’s Judaism in those days wasn’t really Judaism as we know it. It was a strange jumble of the concepts she had managed to learn and those she’d figured out herself, but she persisted in the face of many difficulties.
The couple’s three oldest children were sons, who stayed with their father. The two daughters went with their mother. Shoshana had her hands full taking care of them without her husband, but Karen, the fourth child and oldest daughter, proved herself capable and energetic. In addition to everything she did to help out at home, she was the one who managed to find more material about Judaism and bring it home so they could study it together.
“Karen was brilliant,” Shoshana remembers, her eyes full of tears. “In 2007 or 2008, she was the only female in all Ecuador to receive a scholarship to study clinical psychology, but she turned her back on the promising career that awaited her, and instead invested her strength and energy and brilliance into her search for the truth. It gave her no rest. She had a hunger for Judaism, and the materials she found on the Internet were never enough for her; she always wanted to know more and more, and to look into everything herself.”
When Shoshana talks about the materials that Karen found on the Internet, she’s referring mainly to the Spanish version of Chabad.org. There, she found answers to her questions, along with commentary on the weekly Torah reading, information about the Jewish festivals and more.
Later, Karen looked for a rabbi with whom she could chat and study online, and that’s how she found Rabbi Gabriel Giver from Modi’in Illit. For two-and-a-half years, they learned what she wanted. “She would chat with him for hours every night,” recalls her mother. “The rabbi explained how Shabbat is kept, how to fulfill other commandments and how to pray.”
The Right Choice
Shoshana continues: “Karen was anxious to live as a Jew and to fulfill the commandments even before the Messiah arrives and brings everybody back to G‑d, but before she took this huge step, she asked G‑d to give her a sign that He wanted her to convert and not just to serve Him as a non-Jew. One day, there was a very strong earthquake in our city. Everything in the house fell down but Karen, who was in the middle of the Shemoneh Esrei prayer, didn’t even notice. When she finished her prayer and saw what had just happened all around her, she understood that she had received her sign. She approached me and said: ‘If even the power of nature can’t affect me, it’s a sign that G‑d is calling me to come to the Holy Land and wants me as his daughter.’ ”
The next day she asked Rabbi Giver to direct her to a center for conversion. The rabbi sent her to Rebbetzin Engel, the director of Roni in Jerusalem, who helps facilitate conversions for women from South America. He asked the Rebbetzin to accept her and do everything she could to help her convert.
That was three-and-a-half years ago. Before she left home, she gathered the church members and tried to show them the truth of her beliefs, but to no avail. Several just burst out crying at hearing her say such things; others tried to argue with her. “People started to warn their friends not to talk to her anymore and this really hurt her, but on the other hand, she felt that this was another sign that she had nothing left in Guayaquil.”
One month later, she found herself in Jerusalem. In order to bring about her daughter’s dream, Shoshana used her meager savings to pay for the plane ticket. “There was a long period afterwards in which we didn’t have enough to eat, but I knew we had made the right choice.”
The Fastest Way to Get to Him
Karen’s dorm mother, Rebbetzin Sarah Katz, says: “Karen Yemima was only here for a year-and-a-half, but she really stood out.”
She emphasizes that Karen was outstanding during her lifetime—not just in the stories that emerged after her death. “She was a quick learner who absorbed everything without forgetting a drop, but three things about her really stood out: her modesty, which was like that of a girl who had grown up in a religious home; the nobility of her bearing; and her desire to live as a Jew, fulfilling the commandments in the best way possible, without compromise, never mind what other people felt about her or whether or not they approved. In our last conversation before she converted, she cried and told me that she wanted to convert to be as close to G‑d as possible. She also said that her dream was to establish a Jewish home.”
One of Karen’s friends hears us talking and joins in, telling us that whenever they were going to the Western Wall or walking anywhere in the Old City, Karen wanted to take different routes, explaining that “Moshiach will be coming soon and she wants to know as much of the Old City as possible so that wherever she is when he comes, she will know the fastest way to get to him.”
Rebbetzin Katz tells us that every night she would see Karen sitting up for hours, typing on her laptop.
“I trusted her and didn’t ask what she was doing. It was only after her murder that I found out that every night before she went to sleep, she would use the computer to teach her mother everything she had learned that day. In addition, she worked very hard to raise money for a plane ticket for her mother, so she could join her in Israel and also convert. She promised her mother that she wouldn’t rest until she had the money and could see her through the conversion process.
“To raise the money, Karen spent her afternoons cleaning houses for minimal pay. She refused to go on any trips or activities, setting aside all her spare time to raise the money.”
Watching From Heaven
But on the evening of Oct. 22, 2014 (the 28th of Tishrei), everything changed. Karen was waiting for the light-rail train at the Givat Hatachmoshet station in Jerusalem on her way to her first class at a seminary she had just joined after finishing her studies at the center. A terrorist in a Volkswagen deliberately drove his car onto the train platform, ramming into her and seven others. A 3-month old baby, Chaya Zissel Braun, was killed on the spot. Karen was critically injured; she spent five days in the hospital hovering between life and death, but in the end, she lost the battle.
Karen didn’t have Israeli citizenship yet, which meant that the government couldn’t provide a grave. Through the efforts of communal activists, a place was found for her on Har Hamenuchot in Jerusalem.
But Rebbetzin Katz pushed to instead have her buried on the Mount of Olives.
Her friend says this was the realization of one of Karen’s dreams. “Several months before the terrorist attack, we took pictures right outside the Mount of Olives cemetery, and she said that if she wouldn’t be alive when Moshiach came, she would like to be buried there in order to come back to life as soon as possible and greet him.”
This last thought is too much for Shoshana; she starts crying and needs to stop talking. But before we do, she says one more thing.
“Karen worked hard to bring me here and help me convert. In the end, I came because of her, but not in the way we had hoped; I came instead to be with her in her last days. Every night before I go to sleep, I look at her picture beside my bed, smile at her and thank her for being the one to show me my own path to Judaism. I’m certain she’s watching from heaven, smiling her pure smile and guiding me until G‑d brings the dead back to life with the coming of Moshiach, when we will see each other again.”
Shlomo Rizel is a Chabad chassid who works for Radio Kol Hai in Israel and speaks on behalf of charitable organizations.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Women
The Art of Falling by Ilana Rubenstein
To the father holding the back of his daughter’s bike, what I want to say is this: Let go. Let her fall. It’s OK. She will get up. The tighter you hold, the more you anxiously gasp when she wobbles to the left or right, the more you tell her: “I don’t trust you. I’m not sure you can do this.”But really, it’s not my business. In fact, I get it, the fear of falling. Of watching her tumble. And really, if I’mLet go. Let her fall. It’s OK. She will get up. honest, it’s less what I want to say to that father, and more what I need to tell myself: It’s OK, you will get up. I believe in you.
It’s not that I’ve been able to avoid falling in my life. In fact, I was notorious for face-planting as a child. Apparently, I’d simply get up, brush myself off and continue playing. But the soul-size-scratches and ego bruises of adulthood are a little harder to recover from. I think, secretly, there is a part of me that wishes I were done with making mistakes. As if I got the T-shirt, paid my dues in the land of failures and now it’s going to be smooth sailing ahead. But that doesn’t seem to be the business of being human.
The other day, a friend called me in a panic. “I said a terrible thing to a client. What do I do?” She went on to describe how insensitive she felt her words had been. This sounded bad. She continued: “It’s probably on one of those ‘Top 10 things you should never say’ lists.”
Yikes. It was clearly a serious blunder. I asked her to tell me what she had actually said. She repeated the conversation to me, including the “terrible thing” she had uttered. “Those were your words?” I asked, “nothing more?” Indeed, that had been it. I was not impressed. I have said and done far more hurtful things. But it didn’t matter. Because in that moment I got it; I knew where she was standing. I, too, have stood in the quicksand of shame, with one simple wish: “If only I hadn’t.” The details were irrelevant; it was the feeling that was universal. Maybe it’s not so much about the mistakes we make, but how we decode them.
King Solomon relates that a tzaddik, a righteous individual, falls sevens times and rises (Proverbs 24:16). This might seem like some kind of de facto apologetics. Along the lines of “sorry dear, you took a tumble, but greatness is still within reach.” Not so. The tzaddik only becomes so by way of the fall and rise. Had it not been for the fall itself, the rise would never have been possible. And not just that. This is no one-time event. Our work is not to avoid the blunders of humanity, it is to constantly choose to learn. To strive. To do better, all the while knowing that we won’t always get it right. Like a revolving door in our lives, we get to re-believe in ourselves over and over again.
It seems there really is a whole other way to feel about mistake-making. I saw it last week when I was having computer problems at work and called in IT support. I watched as the guy began to run programs and troubleshoot: “No, that’s not it,” he quipped as he tried something else. Still not working. “I ran the wrong one,” he commented. He remained calm and curious, as if each wrong move was simply pointing him to try something else. I marveled at his reaction. His was a trial-and-error approach, where not getting it right was written right into the code. I’d surely have broken a sweat by then and likely would have been berating myself, wishing each mistake away. But there he was smiling as he cleaned up each “error code” flashing on the screen.
A few computer blunders may pale in comparison to the real-life missteps we make, but in the micro-moments of could-have-done-better, we get to practice how we will react to the more serious ways we falter. Each time we fall, each moment we look into the mirror and see where we missed the mark, we get to choose—to hope we can be done with making mistakes once and for all, or to whisper back “I trust you. You will get up.”
So, really, this is pretty exciting news. Because chances are, I will “mess up” again pretty soon. I know I’m not alone. I will say or do something and find myself bathed in regret. You knowMy job is not to stop making mistakes that moment when you realize: I knew better. I wanted to be different. Most of us have a default script for our inner critic that kicks in. But maybe next time, I’ll also hear the tzaddik calling back—“had I not stumbled, I never would have become who I am today.” Greatness is not born overnight; it comes by way of every fall we choose to learn from.
I am trying to tell myself the same thing. That each day my job is not to stop making mistakes. It’s not about avoiding those moments of internal yuck. Even expert bike riders fall off; they just make a career of getting back up. As for the father holding on so tightly to his daughter’s bike, that’s also OK. She will eventually fall. And then she will learn to tell herself: It’s OK. I promise. You can get back up. Again and again.
Ilana Rubenstein is a therapist, a mother and teacher at The Village Shul and The Yorkville Jewish Centre in Toronto. Her greatest passion is connecting Torah wisdom to our personal paths and struggles.
Artwork by Sefira Ross, a freelance designer and illustrator whose original creations grace many Chabad.org pages. Residing in Seattle, Washington, her days are spent between multitasking illustrations and being a mom.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Info
Why Do We Face East When Praying? Or Do We? How to calculate mizrach by Yehuda Shurpin
The first thing we need to make clear is that we don’t necessarily face east; we face Jerusalem. And even when our compass or map shows that Jerusalem is to the east of our location, we still may end up facing another direction.Sounds confusing? Let’s start from the beginning.
Facing Israel, Jerusalem and the Holy Temple
Shortly after King Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem, he prayed to G‑d that the place be an eternal abode for the Divine Presence: “When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain . . . and they shall pray toward this place and praise Your name, and repent of their sin, so that You may answer them.”1
Based on this verse (and others found in the rather lengthy prayer), the Talmud understands that Jews in the diaspora should face toward the Holy Land when praying, those in Israel should face toward Jerusalem, those in Jerusalem should face toward the Temple Mount, and those on the Mount should turn toward the Holy of Holies.2
Indeed, Daniel, who lived during the Babylonian exile, faced Jerusalem: “Daniel . . . went into his house—now, his windows in his upper chamber opened toward Jerusalem—and he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed . . .”3
Indeed the notion that our prayers ascend to heaven through the Temple Mount is rooted in the Book of Genesis, where Jacob states regarding the Temple Mount, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of G‑d, and this is the gate of heaven.”4
Thus, we see that it is important to face toward Israel, Jerusalem, the Temple or the Holy of Holies, depending on your location, but not necessarily toward the east.
So why is there such a prevalent conception that we face east? Because the cradle of the Ashkenazic and Sephardic cultures, France and Spain respectively, are roughly west of Israel.
Credit: Google MapsOther Directions—Riches or Wisdom?
It is also noteworthy that although it is the universal contemporary practice to face Israel and the Temple when praying, the Talmud cites some divergent opinions.
Some say that it is preferable to face west, since the Shechinah (G‑d’s Presence) is in the west. One sage had the custom of facing any direction but east, since the pagans started facing east when they prayed. Others hold that since G‑d is everywhere, one can pray in any direction.
Additionally, the Talmud goes on to tell us that “one who wants to become wise should turn south [during prayer]; one who wants to become rich should turn north . . . Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: ‘One should always face south because from becoming wise, one will become rich.’ ”5
Accordingly, some archaeological finds of ancient synagogues, especially from Talmudic times, face alternative directions.
Practically, Which Direction Should I Pray?
● Despite the alternative customs, as we mentioned earlier, it has become the almost universal practice to pray toward Jerusalem and the Holy Temple. If one desires to follow one of the other customs, it is suggested that he either stand with his feet facing Jerusalem and his face turned toward the other desired direction, or vice versa.6
● Most hold that when praying in a synagogue that was built facing a direction other than Jerusalem, one should nevertheless turn toward Jerusalem while praying.7
● One who is unable to determine the correct direction should direct his heart to his Father in heaven, as it is written, “And they shall pray to G‑d.”8 9
● If one starting praying in the wrong direction, he continues his prayers and directs his heart to our Father in heaven, relying on the other opinions about which direction to pray and just trying to turn his face toward east. If however, one accidentally faced west, he need not try to turn his body or face toward east, as it won’t quite work.10
Calculating the Shortest Route to Jerusalem
When trying to figure out the direction to Jerusalem, it is important to keep in mind that due to the spherical nature of the earth, the process of calculating the shortest route can be complicated.
There are two potential ways to calculate the distance between two points on the globe. The first way is to project the globe’s surface onto a flat plane (Mercator map) and basically follow the straight line drawn on the map (“rhumb line” or “compass route”).
There are many who have used this method to determine which direction they should pray, and indeed, especially if one lives relatively close to Israel (e.g., France), doing so makes sense, since for short distances this line is not terribly inaccurate.11
The Great-Circle Route
There are, however, downsides to using this method for further distances.
On a globe, the compass route is not the shortest distance between two points, which lies along what mathematicians term a “great circle.” In layman’s terms, if you were to hold two ends of a string to two points on a a globe and pull tight, the string would follow the great-circle route. This is the actual shortest distance between those two places. (You may have noticed this arc-like line mapping the trajectory of your flight on long-distance trips.)
The Shulchan Aruch Harav12 and many others13 rule that this is the preferable method of calculating which direction to pray. In fact, the Shulchan Aruch Harav provides some instructions on how the calculation is to be made. Today, there are many helpful websites that can do this for you.
To illustrate the difference in using the two methods:
The shortest route between New York City and Jerusalem is to use the great-circle route from New York with an initial heading of 54 degrees east-north. This route is about 5,686 miles. If one were to travel using the compass route, they would travel a much longer distance of 6,091 miles at a heading of about 95 degrees east-south.
So although Jerusalem is southeast of New York, the shortest way to get there is by heading northeast, and that is the direction in which we should pray.
Credit: Google MapsHowever, the way the Shulchan Aruch Harav is worded, it is seemingly referring to how to calculate where to place the ark in the synagogue. So in general, while one needs to pray in the proper direction, it need not be precise and recalculated every time we pray.14 (And bear in mind that if using a compass to determine where you should be facing, the magnetic north varies significantly from the “true” north, and how much this varies can vary as well.)
Of course, regardless of which method you use to calculate the proper direction, the most important thing while praying is to have the proper intention. May all our prayers be answered, including the ultimate prayer for the rebuilding of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem!
Rabbi Yehuda Shurpin responds to questions for Chabad.org's Ask the Rabbi service.
FOOTNOTES
1.I Kings 8:35.
2.Talmud, Berachot 30a; Shulchan Aruch Harav, Orach Chaim 94:1.
3.Daniel 6:11 ad loc.
4.Genesis 28:16-17.
5.Talmud, Bava Batra 25a-b.
6.See Shulchan Aruch Harav, Orach Chaim 94:2-3.
7.Ibid., 94:2.
8.I Kings 8:48.
9.Talmud, Berachot 30a; Shulchan Aruch Harav, Orach Chaim 94:4.
10.Shulchan Aruch Harav, Orach Chaim 94:3.
11.See for example, the Levush, Orach Chaim 94.
12.See Shulchan Aruch Harav, Orech Chaim 94:2.
13.See, for example, Rabbi Israel ben Moses Segal of Zamość (1700–1772) in his work Netzach Yisroel, p. 52; Emunat Chachamim (Rabbi Aviad Sar Shalom, 1680–1749) 24; Rabbi Yaakov Emden, Ya’avetz Meor Uktziah 150.
14.See wording of the Shulchan Aruch Harav, Orach Chaim 94:2, and in his Siddur; see also Aruch Hashulchan 94.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
VIDEO
Source of HealingDuring Shemini Atzeres hakafos in 1977, the Rebbe suffered a massive heart attack. Dr. Moshe Feldman was a member of the medical team that treated the Rebbe at 770.
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http://www.chabad.org/2018716
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The Previous Rebbe's 4 AM Diary Entry
Recounting the daunting challenges to establish Torah in foreign places.
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Can One Size Fit All?Are you the ultimate uninhibited extrovert? Or perhaps you are a definitive introvert? No need to conform. Cultivate your own unique path in your service of our Creator!
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5,600 Celebrate and Reflect at Chabad-Lubavitch Annual Banquet by Karen Schwartz and Carin M. Smilk
-------Jewish News
5,600 Celebrate and Reflect at Chabad-Lubavitch Annual Banquet by Karen Schwartz and Carin M. Smilk
Thousands of rabbis and their guests celebrated a milestone at the annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries (Kinus Hashluchim) gala banquet on Sunday night, where the announcement came of a permanent presence in South Dakota, the last of all 50 states in America to get a Chabad center. Later in the evening, men left their dinner tables to dance in joy. (Photo: Yechezkel Itkin)If there was a natural theme to this year’s gala banquet that concluded the four-day annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries (Kinus Hashluchim), it was related to an inspirational milestone announced 75 years after the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—and his wife—the Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, of righteous memory—arrived on U.S. shores from war-torn Europe in 1941.
The big news for the more than 5,600 people celebrating as one at the Pier 8 warehouse in Brooklyn, N.Y.—and for the millions of viewers worldwide who joined by webcast—was the establishment of a Chabad center in South Dakota, to be directed by Rabbi Mendel and Mussie Alperowitz, which means that all 50 states in America, in addition to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, will have a permanent Chabad presence. The center will be situated in Sioux Falls, the largest city in the state.
“He’s going out to the last state without a shaliach,” notes Rabbi Michoel Goldman, who co-directs Chabad Kauai in Princeville, Hawaii, with his wife, Zisel. “It brings us to a certain level of completion in the United States.”
The number 50 in Torah is very powerful, he adds, explaining that it’s a number he focuses on in his work, as Hawaii was the 50th state of the nation. “After 49, there are a few examples in the Torah where the number 50 is like the cherry on top. Forty-nine days for the Omer; on the 50th, we got the Torah, the Divine bestowing of the biggest gift. Forty-nine years of counting, and the 50th is the jubilee.”
Rabbis hailing from 90 countries and their guests applauded the new development, which was pronounced by Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, and director of the Kinus. It followed an introduction by Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch.
“The Rebbe wanted to make real the saying, ‘No Jew should be left behind.’ For that purpose, he had to reach each and every Jew, no matter where they are in the globe,” said Krinsky. “He was able and succeeded in inspiring young men and women to take that task upon themselves—a task that is 24/7; it never ceases. When you eat, when you sleep, you are a shaliach. You dream shlichus, you discuss shlichus, you live with it, and this is your life.”
The first Kinus took place in 1983 (33 years ago) in a conference room at Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, attended by 55 shluchim. That number was multiplied 100 times over this year.
Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, spoke early in the program. (Benams Photo)‘A Breath of Fresh Air’
One of the newcomers was Rabbi Ari Rubin, from Cairns, Australia, where the nearest Jewish community is a three-hour flight away. Rubin moved there from Melbourne earlier this year with his wife, Mushkie, and young daughter, Devorah Leah. He says he was thrilled to find strength, spirituality, community and camaraderie during every aspect of the conference. He even announced his first-time status with exuberance as part of a video portraying emissaries around the world, noting how many annual conferences they have attended.
“Coming here is really a huge breath of fresh air for me, and I have been looking forward to it for months,” says Rubin of the long weekend, which included speakers, workshops, and a visit to the Ohel in Queens, N.Y.—the Rebbe’s resting place. “I have taken many workshops here, and can’t wait to use the tips and advice, which I got plenty of.”
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch and director of the Kinus, announced the new emissaries to South Dakota: Rabbi Mendel and Mussie Alperowitz. (Benams Photo)Coming from a small community of around 500 Jews (with another 500 in the vicinity), he runs Chabad of RARA based in Northern Queensland, where they barely got a minyan (a prayer quorum of 10 Jewish men) together on Simchat Torah. At the Kinus, he said: “Thousands of rabbis who might also have had a tiny minyan get to dance together—the biggest dance we could imagine.”
Goldman, of Hawaii, attended the Kinus last year after a three-year gap and said he was glad to return again. He arrived in New York on Thursday morning and heads back to the Aloha State on Monday. Goldman said the video clips of the Rebbe, which were shown on a series of screens around the banquet room between speakers, were powerful, as was the dancing at the end of the event, when men abandoned their tables and circled the room in song.
“The unity and the brotherliness and the oneness of the family of shluchim and Chassidim at the very end . . . it’s beyond all boundaries,” he described. “For me, it’s about going back recharged, and having a tremendous uplifting of spirit and optimism. I also picked up some tools and tips in the sessions, but above all, it’s about reconnecting and realigning ourselves with our mission, and then going back much more in touch.”
He noted that he used the messaging tool WhatsApp to send his community links to watch the proceedings live: “Some were watching in Hawaii and even texting me while I was at the banquet.”
Of his new mission in the Rushmore State, Rabbi Alperowitz said: “Like the faces of some of our country’s greatest leaders etched into that faceless mountain, we hope to carve the image of our forefathers in the blank earth.” (Benams Photo)‘A G‑dly Home’
Tehillim were recited by Rabbi Avrohom Korf, head shaliach to the state of Florida, who was sent to the Sunshine State by the Rebbe in 1960, a time when Jews were restricted from living in certain towns and apartment buildings. His lone presence 56 years ago has blossomed into 219 Chabad emissaries and 200 Chabad centers statewide.
The keynote address was given by Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who gave a rousing talk, emphasizing his longtime ties to Chabad and his appreciation for their mission.
“I always felt that you could light all of Brooklyn . . . and maybe even New York City, with the electric energy generated each year here,” he said, in what he noted was going to be a “politics-free” talk. “It’s not impossible because Chabad has been lighting the world for many years.”
Focusing on the positive, proactive growth that is the hallmark of Chabad-Lubavitch, uniting Jewry everywhere around the globe, Hoenlein delighted the audience when he quipped: “I am convinced that in Chabad schools they only teach addition and multiplication—not division and subtraction.”
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, gave an address focusing on the positive, proactive growth that is the hallmark of Chabad. (Benams Photo)The Theme of Connection and Faith
The theme of the this year’s Kinus—of connection and faith—was discussed by Rabbi Dovid Yitzchok Hazdan, dean of the Torah Academy and rabbi of the Great Park Synagogue in Johannesburg, South Africa. He offered a brief history of Jewish change in South Africa, offlight and stagnation. But this was also timed with a spiritual awakening and the establishment of Chabad centers in the country’s cities.
“Chabad would change the face of Jewish life in South Africa,” he said, noting the current pulse of the nation, including his own community’s building of a new mikvah that serves 100 families.
Addressing the shluchim, he said: “We need to preserve and develop our commitment to the tower that anchors our bridges that we are building. It is by holding on to the teachings of our Rebbe, the directives of the Rebbe, that we have a capacity to influence and affect positive change, and to make this world a G‑dly home.”
“It is only if we are connected to something higher that we do not slip here below,” he added, alluding to the story of Reb Meir of Premishlan. He then went on to praise the tireless work of the wives, mothers, daughters and grandmothers, without which the men could not succeed.
Rabbi Dovid Yitzchok Hazdan, dean of the Torah Academy and rabbi of the Great Park Synagogue in Johannesburg, South Africa, echoed the theme of the Kinus and the story of Reb Meir of Premishlan: “It is only if we are connected to something higher that we do not slip here below.” (Benams Photo)‘A Very Special Atmosphere’
Rabbi Herschel Finman, of Lubavitch Foundation of Michigan, noted that even though the conference has grown exponentially over the decades, it has consistently been able to provide him with fresh and valuable information to address the changing needs of those he serves.
These days, he works with young adults and singles primarily in the fast-growing areas outside of Detroit. “I do a lot of mentoring, and I do a lot of listening,” he said. “And good ideas are coming from younger people who have a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm.”
And, he added, ideas come from the Kinus as well. He said rabbis of all ages have much to learn from each other over the course of the four-day program.
Rabbi Lev Cotlar, of the Chabad Center of Raleigh, N.C., spent the Kinus honing skills and recharging his spiritual batteries. “It’s just a very special atmosphere, with groups of people from all walks of life and nationalities with one purpose,” he said.
His wife, Dassy, is home with their three children—ages 2, 4, and 6—while he stocks up on tips to bring home to their community, which includes visits to Jewish inmates at a federal prison. He said the gathering fills him with awe: “No one could have imagined the scope of where shluchim are and how it has impacted the world.”
The Kinus highlighted the fact that the Chabad emissaries arriving in the last U.S. state correlates to 75 years after the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—and the Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, of righteous memory, arrived on U.S. shores from war-torn Europe in 1941. (Benams Photo)‘A World of Kindness and Goodness’
That impact is not just felt in the United States, even though that was a focus of this year’s banquet. Kotlarsky also noted the presence of Ambassador Danny Danon, Israel’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and Dani Dayan, the Israeli counsel general of New York, wishing the Israeli people safety and security.
He also talked of Russia, and the great progress that’s been made in the 25 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union on Dec. 26, 1991. “You have to see the contrast to believe this. When we were there 25 years ago, there were four shluchim in the former Soviet Union, which was then the Soviet Union. Today, there are 362 shluchim in the former Soviet Union. Where there were four Chabad Houses, today there are 287. Where there were six schools, today there are 132. Where there were 140 students, today there are 14,720 students learning in Russia, and in Ukraine, and in Azerbaijan and in Uzbekistan, and throughout the length and breadth of the Soviet Union.
“And this is not only the Soviet Union. You saw the growth of how many shluchim there were in Europe then. At that period in time, there were about 120. Today, there are over 790 shluchimin Europe.”
As Kotlarsky summed up: “They go out in the world for one reason—to fulfill the mission that the Rebbe entrusted us with, to make this world a world of goodness and kindness. To better this world, to bring Torah and mitzvahs to each and every Jew.”
The room broke into resounding applause at the news. (Benams Photo)
Screens throughout the room displayed the evening proceedings, which included several video presentations. (Photo: Yechezkel Itkin)
The conference represents a coming together of rabbis the world over, as they discuss their work, share advice, and return home energized and inspired. (Benams Photo)
The faces of Chabad emissaries and Jewish community members across the globe. (Benams Photo)
Taking time to reflect and connect over the course of the four-day conference in New York. (Benams Photo)© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.-------
Jewish News
Chabad Opens Center in 50th State: South Dakota by Menachem Posner
Rabbi Mendel and Mussie Alperowitz take a stroll with their children in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y. They will leave to become the Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries in South Dakota, the last of all 50 American states to get a permanent Chabad presence. (Photo: Eliyahu Parypa/Chabad.org)South Dakota, with a very small Jewish population scattered throughout the state’s vast expanses of windswept prairies, has long held the dubious distinction of being the only state in America without a rabbi.
That will soon change, when Rabbi Mendel and Mussie Alperowitz move from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Sioux Falls—the state’s largest city—to direct a Chabad-Lubavitch center that will cater to a community dating back to the days of the Wild West.
The young couple’s arrival is being met with special attention as North American Jewry marks 75 years since the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—and his wife—the Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, of righteous memory—arrived on U.S. shores from war-torn Europe in 1941.
There will now be a permanent Chabad presence in all 50 states in America, as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The appointment was made by regional director Rabbi Moshe Feller of Upper Midwest Merkos Lubavitch, and was announced to an emotionally charged gathering of 5,600 Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis and lay leaders in New York at the gala banquet of the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries (Kinus Hashluchim) by Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, and director of the Kinus.
“Tonight’s devar Torah will be a milestone,” noted Kotlarsky. “A young couple is moving out to a location with a small Jewish population. Tonight, I invite the shaliach who is going out to the 50th state of the Union. Seventy-five years after the Rebbe arrived on these shores, every state of the Union will have a permanent representative. Join me as we welcome the shaliach and shluchah to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”
Rabbi Mendel Alperowitz gives the devar Torah at the gala banquet of the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries. (Photo: Eliyahu Parypa/Chabad.org)Alperowitz recalled a blessing to “fort gezunterheit—travel in good health”—that he received from the Rebbe as a child preparing to return home to England together with his parents, sharing with the crowd how those words are fortifying him today.
“Those are the words I carry in my heart, as my wife, our two daughters and I ready ourselves to move to the Rushmore State—the final state without a permanent Chabad shaliach,” said Alperowitz. “Like the faces of some of our country’s greatest leaders etched into that faceless mountain, we hope to carve the image of our forefathers in the blank earth.”
The emissaries in the cavernous pier-turned-ballroom on Brooklyn’s Pier 8 responded to news of the appointment with resounding applause. They hailed from 90 countries, each inspired by the Rebbe’s decades-long campaign to bolster and revitalize Judaism in every part of the world.
Alperowitz, center, in the group photo taken annually of thousands of rabbis who attend the annual Kinus. (Photo: Eliyahu Parypa/Chabad.org)A Completion in ‘A Country of Kindness’
That effort began immediately upon the Rebbe’s arrival on American shores after narrowly escaping the Nazi death machine, when his father-in-law and predecessor—the sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory—appointed him to head the movement’s work to spread Judaism and its message of universal morality throughout his adopted country and beyond.
The Rebbe would often refer to the United States as “a country of kindness” and expressed his gratitude and appreciation for the nation that became the welcoming haven for the Lubavitch movement. Poetically, the final state to welcome a permanent emissary couple is home to Mount Rushmore, the iconic symbol of American history and presidential leadership, which was completed only months after the Rebbe’s arrival in New York and the start of his outreach work there.
The Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries’ move to South Dakota is being seen as a boon for the state, its Jewish residents, and significantly beyond.
In the latter half of the 19th century, following the construction of transcontinental railroads and the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, Jewish merchants flocked to the area (then the southern part of Dakota Territory). They established businesses stretching from Sioux Falls in the east to the Black Hills in the west and were part of a prosperous community when the territory became a state in 1889.
As with many smaller American Jewish communities, the mid-20th century saw younger Jews leave for larger metropolitan areas, with few returning back home.
“We have almost no grandparents in this community whose grandchildren live here, too,” says Stephen Rosenthal, a Texas native who has lived in South Dakota since 1973 and serves as the state chair of AIPAC. “Most of the Jewish people here now were not born here, and many of the grown children choose not to stay. Others come and replace them.”
Since the early 1940s, groups of Chabad-Lubavitch students have been traveling the world, visiting small and isolated Jewish communities, including South Dakota.A Decades-Old Relationship
One constant for South Dakota Jewry, however, throughout the years has been Chabad-Lubavitch. Shortly after the Rebbe arrived on U.S. shores, he began dispatching traveling rabbinical students to isolated communities around the globe, laden with heavy suitcases of Torah literature and Judaica materials, boundless energy and vibrant Jewish knowledge. From the outset, there were visitors to Rushmore State.
The young rabbis combing the state to meet with individual Jews scattered through an area of 77,000 square miles were often the Jewish lifeline for the small-town merchants and farmers who were the descendants of 19th century immigrants (Since the mid-1980s, Rabbi Mendel Katzman, Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to nearby Omaha, Neb., has also made periodic visits to assist the community.)
Rosenthal notes that the Roving Rabbis’ visits picked up in frequency in recent years. “It used to be summer, then [also] Chanukah and then [also] Purim,” he reports. “It became something we grew to expect and appreciate.”
The Alperowitzes visited South Dakota for the Purim holiday, in March of this year, where they held two events: a community celebration in Sioux Falls that drew 45 attendees and another program for a dozen Jewish students at South Dakota State University in Brookings.
The Alperowitzes and their daughters‘An Instant Communication’
“We did minimal advertising before Purim,” says the rabbi, whose parents are long-serving Chabad emissaries to Bournemouth in southern England where he grew up, “spreading the word through the people who had been in contact with the ‘Roving Rabbis.’ ”
He reports that many of the people who came to the celebration didn’t know each other. “People kept saying, ‘It’s amazing to see that there are so many other Jews in town. We had had no idea they were here!’ ”
The couple remained for another five days, when they met dozens of Jewish people in homes, offices and public places.
“We were so warmly received,” reports Mussie Alperowitz. “It was inspiring for us to see people who really gave their all to maintain communal infrastructure for decades. We felt an instant connection with the people we met, and people asked us if we would consider opening up a permanent center.”
Although it has been widely accepted that fewer than 400 Jewish people reside in the entire state, Rabbi Alperowitz estimates that it may actually be home to as many as 1,000 Jews. He also believes that the Jewish population may have been bolstered in recent years by a strong economy and the growing financial and healthcare industries.
The Katzman family, Chabad-Lubavitch representatives to Nebraska, have made trips to visit the Jews of South Dakota for decades. Here, one of the Katzman boys wraps tefillin with a man in Aberdeen, S.D.After two more visits (most recently during the holiday of Sukkot), and with the encouragement of Sioux Falls Mayor Mike Huether, the Alperowitzes—along with their infant daughters, Rochel and Shaina—decided to relocate there for good.
“Even though we will be living in Sioux Falls,” says the rabbi, “we will be traveling regularly to serve other Jewish communities and individuals wherever they may be, including the incarcerated.”Rosenthal is excited about the educational programs the couple will offer. “We look forward to them living here,” he says, noting that it will be a significant change for a community that has not had a permanent rabbi in decades. “We will develop a new relationship with each other, and I am excited for that.”
His sentiment is mirrored by that of Dr. Richard Klein. “I do a lot of studying Torah on my own,” says the urologist originally from Cleveland, “so it will be wonderful to be able to study with a rabbi and increase my Jewish understanding.”
Recognizing that the local Jewish community is diverse in its level of Jewish observance, he says he believes that the Alperowitzes “have the wisdom to bridge the gap and help bind us all into a strong, unified community.”
To donate please visit www.southdakotajewish.com.
Rabbi Katzman teaches a Torah class in Aberdeen, the third-largest city in the state.
Rabbi Alperowitz reads the Megillah at the Purim party that he and his wife hosted back in March. It was their first trip to the state they will now call home.
South Dakota, known for the iconic images carved onto Mount Rushmore, will now have permanent emissaries to serve Jewish residents and visitors in the state. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Map of the United States with South Dakota highlighted (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Jewish News
The Untold Bar Mitzvah Story of Brooklyn Dodger Ralph Branca by Dovid Margolin
Ralph Branca, the third youngest in a family of 17 children, with his parents, Katherine (Kati) and John BrancaFormer Brooklyn Dodger pitching star Ralph Branca passed away early in the morning on Nov. 23 at the age of 90. Most famous for giving up a 1951 pennant-winning home run to Bobby Thomson of the Dodgers’ cross-town rivals the New York Giants—known forever in baseball as the “Shot Heard Round the World”—Branca played 12 seasons in the majors and was known throughout his life as a first-class mensch.
What is perhaps less well known are his Jewish roots. Born to a Jewish mother but raised Catholic, Branca seldom spoke about his Judaism, although apparently was always aware of it.
“Ralph certainly knew about it,” says his nephew, Bill Branca. “The girls in the family, his sisters; they talked about it quite openly. The boys—Ralph, my dad, their brothers—they didn’t talk about it, but they all knew.”
While Ralph may not have had a bar mitzvah at age 13, he did have one years later, at age 84, when he first met and eventually wrapped tefillin with two Chabad-Lubavitch yeshivah students at his office in Rye Brook, N.Y.
Never Heard of Him
It was the winter of 2010 when Yisroel New and Mendy Marlow were making their weekly Friday afternoon trek from their Chabad yeshivah in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., out to Rye Brook in Westchester County. Like thousands of similar Chabad rabbinical students their age around the world, the 19-year-old boys spent their Friday afternoons taking part in the mitzvah campaign of the Lubavitcher Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—visiting Jewish businesspeople at the end of the work week to share a Torah thought for the week, offer Jewish men the chance to wrap tefillin and distribute Shabbat candles to Jewish women.
Arriving at a massive office complex called 800 Westchester Avenue, the yeshivah boys set up shop in the business center’s food court, hoping to meet Jewish business men and women on their lunch break. Two Chassidic yeshivah students in black hats and dark jackets isn’t the most common sight in a suburban office food court, and they met a fair number of curious people—Jews and non-Jews alike—with whom they engaged and often formed connections.
And that’s where they met Ralph Branca.
A signed photo that Branca gave to Chabad yeshivah student Mendy Marlow. It reads: “To my rabbi friend, Mendy,” Branca wrote to one of the Chabad boys after his bar mitzvah. “Shalom!! Lechaim & blessings, Ralph Branca.”“Every week, we saw this really tall guy sitting at a table during his lunch break reading the paper,” recalls New. They finally approached him.
“You must be the Yiddish boys from Brooklyn,” the tall man told them. They talked; the man was warm and friendly.
Then he introduced himself: “I’m Ralph Branca.”
At the time, the yeshivah boys, to Branca’s surprise, had never heard of him.
“When you get home, you can look me up,” the three-time All-Star told them. “What are you guys doing here, anyway?”
They explained what they were doing, and Branca, who worked at an insurance firm in the complex at the time, invited them to come by his office the next week, telling them he’d round up some of his Jewish colleagues.
‘L’Chaim’ and Other Yiddish Words
The next week, Branca played some offense for the students, calling in his Jewish co-workers and introducing them to the boys from Brooklyn. The visits continued weekly, with Branca always gracious and welcoming, recall New and Marlow, regaling them with tales of his baseball career: He told them about his 3.79 career ERA, how the Giants stole the signs leading up to Thomson’s homer and his career-ending injury.
American major league pitcher Ray Caldwell in the first exhibition game at Ebbets Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, April 5, 1913. The dirt walkway visible between the mound and the plate disappeared after the 1910s. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)New chalked up Branca’s relatively familiar Yiddish-word dropping to the pitcher’s New York roots, having grown up, as he told them, around Jews and Italians. (Incidentally, the Dodgers’ old home at Ebbets Field in Crown Heights was only blocks away from Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway.)
“He was writing his book, and he had this machine that he would dictate into,” relates New. “He was very excited about it. He’d be saying ‘l’chaim’ into it to show you how it worked.”
Branca enjoyed trying out some saltier Yiddish words on his Dragon dictation machine as well.
When he told the boys that he was the third youngest in a family of 17 kids, New balked. Seventeen children in a family sounded more like a Chassidic Jewish family to him—and that’s what he told him.
“Funny that you say that,” New and Marlow remember Branca replying. “My mom was born Jewish.”
‘He Wanted to Know Everything’
Branca’s mother, Katherine (Kati) Berger, had been born to a Jewish family in Hungary, immigrating to America in 1901 at the age of 16 (some of her siblings later perished in the Holocaust). His father, John, was an Italian Catholic, and Branca and his siblings were raised in the Catholic tradition. Of course, according to Jewish law, being born to a Jewish mother made Branca as Jewish as Moses, and that’s what the yeshivah boys told him.
“We hadn’t realized that he was Jewish,” says Marlow, “but everything he knew started making more sense to us.”
Branca told the boys he had never practiced Judaism and therefore did not feel himself to be a Jew. The boys responded that he was still Jewish and offered him to wrap tefillin with him for the first time.
“We told him about the idea of a mitzvah, and how each and every individual mitzvah counts,” says New. “When somebody gives tzedakah [charity], that $20 might not mean much to him, but it means a lot to that needy person who receives it. A mitzvah is the same. It might not mean much to him, but it matters very much to G‑d.”
“This week, I’ll do the tzedakah one,” Branca replied with a smile. As he had done every week, he folded up a $20 bill and slipped it into the boys’ pushka charity box.
New and Marlow were back the next week, again offering to help the right-hander put on tefillin. This time, Branca agreed.
“We wrapped the tefillin with him, and then said the Shema prayer in Hebrew and English,” says New. “In the beginning, it was like he was doing us a favor, but that changed as it went along. He wanted to know everything: Why do we wrap it seven times? Why on his left arm? We pointed out that the way we wrap the tefillin spells out one of G‑d’s names in Hebrew. He was fascinated.”
Branca’s right arm had made him famous, but his left arm had allowed him to pray as a Jew, connecting to the Jewish soul deep inside.
That day, Branca pulled out two photos of himself from his baseball heyday and signed them for his young rabbi friends: “To my rabbi friend, Mendy,” he wrote on Marlow’s picture. “Shalom!! Lechaim & blessings, Ralph Branca.”
Branca in 2004 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Jewish News
Israel Diaspora Affairs Minister Lauds Mosaic United Campus Program by Chabad.edu Staff
Naftali Bennett, Israel’s Minister of Education and Diaspora Affairs, talks about Mosaic United, a new initiative that brings together the leading campus Jewish organizations to strengthen Jewish identity and support for Israel among college students around the world.Naftali Bennett, Israel’s Minister of Education and Diaspora Affairs, along with a crowd of several dozen students and Jewish campus leaders, were hosted on Monday by Chabad on Campus International at Chabad House Bowery to discuss Mosaic United, a new initiative spearheaded by Bennett’s ministry that brings together the leading campus Jewish organizations to strengthen Jewish identity and support for Israel among college students around the world.
Representing those organizations was Rabbi Yossy Gordon, executive vice president of Chabad on Campus International; Rabbi Avi Weinstein, director of administration at Chabad on Campus International; Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of Hillel International; Rabbi Avi Cassel, regional director of Olami; and Amy Holtz, CEO of Mosaic United.
“My mission in life is to strengthen Jewish identity in Israel and abroad,” Bennett told the crowd. “I feel a sense of urgency—the government of Israel and the people of Israel are no longer coming here asking for donations; we are doing the opposite. We are using taxpayer money to invest in the future of the Jewish people. The only thing is, we don’t know how. We’re not experts on American Jewry. So we founded a startup, Mosaic United, and we brought in an amazing CEO. We’ve got the money, we’ve got the leadership; now the question is how to get unaffiliated Jews involved,” he continued.
During his Nov. 21 talk, Bennett highlighted how impressed he was by the unity between the various organizations partnering with Mosaic United. He then shared a personal anecdote of how his wife was brought closer to Judaism through the outreach of George Rohr, chairman of the International Advisory Board of Chabad on Campus International.
“My wife grew up in Israel as secular. I was religious, she was not, and we decided to marry,” explained Bennett. “I wanted to bring her closer to Judaism. When we moved to New York, we saw a flyer for a ‘Beginner’s Minyan.’ We met a nice guy, probably a teacher [we thought], named George, who spoke about the prayers and the weekly portion, and my wife loved it! We ended up going to the ‘Beginner’s Minyan’ for five years—that’s where my wife grew closer to Judaism. Only later did we realize that George was a world-renowned philanthropist!”
Some of the student and institutional leaders at the event.Opportunities and Challenges on Campus
After his initial remarks, the minister opened the floor to questions from the students. He listened attentively and engaged in dynamic discussion as the students talked about Jewish life on American campuses, describing both the amazing opportunities and the significant challenges.
“Having such active student leaders hold a passionate discussion with Minister Bennett about how to further engage Jewish students on campus with Judaism and Israel was truly remarkable, and a clear testament to the importance of the Mosaic United project,” said Weinstein of Chabad on Campus International.
A select Israeli government delegation, which included members of the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs Hagay Elitzur, Rony Zaboroff and Michal Mastey, joined by Director of Campus Engagement for Mosaic United Jennifer Wilner, started their campus tour at Chabad serving Columbia University, where they shared lunch with emissaries Rabbi Yona and Keren Blum and students. They continued to Chabad serving Queens College and met with emissaries Rabbi Shaul and Tzipah Wertheimer, in addition to leaders of the student board. The gathering at Chabad House Bowery—a center led by Rabbi Dov Yona and Sarah Korn—was the last stop of the day, attended by Minister Bennett and Director-General Dvir Kahana.
Student and organizational leaders discussed the project with Bennett.“We are honored to partner with Mosaic United to strengthen Jewish identity, unity and love for Israel,” stated Gordon of Chabad on Campus International. “Chabad seeks to ensure that students graduate are stronger and more empowered Jews than when they entered, so it is a natural fit.”
Gordon conveyed the importance of this partnership in his welcoming comments: “There is so much that we all agree on, and the No. 1 shared viewpoint is that we believe you [the students] are the ones who will secure the future of the Jewish people—Am Yisrael chai!”
Mosaic United, formerly the Israel-Diaspora initiative, seeks to fuel, scale and connect the most impactful innovators, programs and philanthropists in the Jewish world to help strengthen Jewish identity in the Diaspora. A key focus of its mission is strengthening Jewish identity and unity among Jewish youth on college campuses, the first point at which many young Jews carve their beliefs and character with the autonomy of living independently. To this end, they have made a significant commitment to Chabad on Campus International, Hillel International and Olami.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Lifestyle
Mushroom Chicken (Plus a Review & Giveaway) by Miriam SzokovskiThe kosher cookbook market continues to flourish, and it can be difficult to know which cookbooks are the right match for each home cook. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses in the kitchen; some like to try varied international cuisines, while others prefer to stick with the more familiar; and, of course, some people are happy to spend time making complex recipes, but others are staunchly in the quick-and-easy-only camp.
From time to time I’ll be reviewing different cookbooks here, giving you a little glimpse inside each one, to help you decide which ones might be a good investment for you.
Have you heard about Kosher Taste, the new cookbook by Amy Stopnicki? The publishers have sent me a copy to review, as well as several recipes from the book that I’ve included below (click on the picture or the name of the dish to be taken to the recipe). We also have a second copy of the cookbook for one of you!The Food
There are so many recipes in this book! I didn’t count, but it must be close to 300. And the overwhelming majority of them are on the healthier side. Lots of vibrant, fresh fruit and vegetables, a number of quinoa-based dishes and even some of the desserts have a healthier twist.
Oh, and it has an entire section devoted to mushrooms! Need I say more? There is a mushroom focaccia that looks incredible—I will definitely be giving it a go, and I’ve got the mushroom chicken recipe further down the page for ya’all to try yourselves.
If mushrooms don’t excite you, there is plenty more that will. Some of the dishes that jumped out at me: Balsamic Roast Chicken, Salmon Pad Thai, Roasted Tomato Soup, Soba Noodles with Bok Choy, Mixed Berry Cheesecake, and my very favorite—Cranberry Lemon Tart.
There were a couple of things that bothered me in the recipes—like a recipe for 1-inch round pieces of London broil, which doesn’t seem like something a home-cook could easily make. How would you cut it exactly? A cookie cutter isn’t strong enough to cut through a slab of raw meat and most kosher cooks probably keep their cookie cutters dairy/pareve anyway. And I’m pretty sure my butcher would laugh me down the block if I asked him for 1-inch round pieces of London broil!
But on the whole, the recipes look easy and do-able even for beginner cooks.
Baby Arugula and Sweet Potato Salad
Photography
This is where the book fell short, in my opinion. The styling and photography is nothing to write home about, so I certainly wouldn’t recommend it as a “coffee-table” book. But because the book is heavy, hardcover and has full-page pictures, it builds expectation that it does not fill. You expect a photo with every recipe, and a beautiful one at that. But only about one third of the recipes have pictures at all, and most of them are not that great. Then again, although they are basic, they do appear to accurately depict the dish (which, sometimes the more professionally styled and photographed ones do not). I think if the book were soft-cover and half the price, it would be a better match for what you’re actually getting.
I also think the cover was a poor choice, because it makes the cookbook looks dated even though it just came out a couple of months ago. Stacks are already considered old and stale in the culinary world, and there were definitely better pictures inside that would’ve made the cover look much more enticing.
Having said all that, there are the things I look for, and they may not bother you at all, which is also fine.
Other Features
The cookbook comes with an index of all the recipes which are kosher for Passover, which is definitely something useful. There is also a page of conversion tables in the back.
Who Will Enjoy this Cookbook?
Is this cookbook for you? I can’t answer that question for you, but I hope I’ve given you some insight, and we’ve also shared three recipes here, which you can try out for yourselves and then decide.
One of the recipes that really caught my eye was this very visually appealing mushroom chicken.
Mushroom Chicken
This is where the book fell short, in my opinion. The styling and photography is nothing to write home about, so I certainly wouldn’t recommend it as a “coffee-table” book. But because the book is heavy, hardcover and has full-page pictures, it builds expectation that it does not fill. You expect a photo with every recipe, and a beautiful one at that. But only about one third of the recipes have pictures at all, and most of them are not that great. Then again, although they are basic, they do appear to accurately depict the dish (which, sometimes the more professionally styled and photographed ones do not). I think if the book were soft-cover and half the price, it would be a better match for what you’re actually getting.
I also think the cover was a poor choice, because it makes the cookbook looks dated even though it just came out a couple of months ago. Stacks are already considered old and stale in the culinary world, and there were definitely better pictures inside that would’ve made the cover look much more enticing.
Having said all that, there are the things I look for, and they may not bother you at all, which is also fine.
Other Features
The cookbook comes with an index of all the recipes which are kosher for Passover, which is definitely something useful. There is also a page of conversion tables in the back.
Who Will Enjoy this Cookbook?
Is this cookbook for you? I can’t answer that question for you, but I hope I’ve given you some insight, and we’ve also shared three recipes here, which you can try out for yourselves and then decide.
One of the recipes that really caught my eye was this very visually appealing mushroom chicken.
Mushroom Chicken
Yield: serves 6-8Plan
The sauce for this chicken can be made and stored for later use. It can be kept in the refrigerator for up to a week, or frozen for up to three months. The chicken can be grilled, if you prefer.
Chicken
8 chicken breasts, sliced in half horizontally
2 tablespoons canola oil
salt and pepper to season chicken
Sauce
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 onion, sliced
16 oz. mushrooms, cleaned and checked, sliced
¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup white wine
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup cold water
salt and pepper to taste
Prepare
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Coat chicken with oil, salt and pepper.
Bake for 10 minutes on each side, or until chicken is cooked through.
To prepare mushroom sauce, heat oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet.
Sauté onions until translucent.
Add mushrooms and sauté for another 5 minutes.
Add soy sauce and wine, and let reduce for an additional 5 minutes.
Mix in flour and cold water, adding slowly to mushroom mixture in stages.
Mix continuously until sauce thickens. Pour over chicken.
Plate
Serve this for a weekday or Friday night dinner. Always add sauce directly before serving. It can also be served over your favorite steak or salmon.
Giveaway!
So, is Kosher Taste a cookbook you’d love to own? We are giving away a free copy to one lucky reader. It could be you!
At this time our thoughts and prayers are with Israel. Wildfires, many of which are reported to have been set by arsonists, have injured more than 100 people and destroyed homes, synagogues, schools and businesses. Close to 80,000 have been forced to evacuate, some of whom now have no homes to return to, and thousands of firefighters are still battling the blazes, putting their lives at risk to protect their country.
What can we do? A mitzvah, a G‑dly deed, no matter how small, helps to ensure the continued safety of our brothers and sisters under attack. Please take a minute to think about what youcan do: light Shabbat candles, give charity, pray, study Torah, put a mezuzah on your front door, say the shema prayer before going to sleep…or do any other mitzvah for the safety and wellbeing of our brothers and sisters in Israel. To enter the giveaway, share your commitment in the comment box below.
Note: Cookbook can be shipped only in the U.S. Entries must be made by 11:59 PM on Thursday, December 8, 2016. Winner will be chosen on Monday, December 11, 2016.
Miriam Szokovski is the author of the historical novel Exiled Down Under, and a member of the Chabad.org editorial team. She shares her love of cooking, baking and food photography on Chabad.org’s food blog, Cook It Kosher.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Lifestyle
Art: Isaac Re-Digs His Father’s Wells by Yoram Raanan
Isaac again dug the wells of water which they had dug in the days of his father, Abraham, and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death. . . . Isaac’s servants dug in the valley, and they found there a well of living waters. . . . He moved away from there, and he dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it Rehoboth, and he said, “For now the L‑rd has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”(Genesis 26:18–22)This abstract expressionistic painting, spread over three panels, portrays the complexity of the digging of the wells of our forefathers. The wells that Abraham had discovered and dug were covered by the Philistines. The Talmud teaches that water is an allusion to the Torah itself. The digging of wells is a search to reveal and spread its wellsprings. By re-digging Abraham’s wells, Isaac uncovered what had been obscured, ensuring that the knowledge of G‑d’s Oneness would keep flowing into the world. The intensity of this quest for light is highlighted in the painting by opposing colors, by the contrast between the harmonious blues and the energetic reds. On the other side of the color scale, the lush shades of purple give a feeling of the spiritual nature of the wells.
Not only did Isaac reopen these original wells, but he also forged ahead excavating new ones. In the painting, the clear blue well that connects the right and middle panels is surrounded by brooding red and purple, suggesting the conflict Isaac encountered over the digging of the well. This is reflected in the names Issac gave the wells: Eisek, meaning “strife,” and Sitnah, “hatred.” The quarreling with the Philistines over ownership of the wells is hinted at by the large daunting figures that rise up on either side of the well.
In contrast to this well, which is contained on all sides, is the last well which Isaac dug, a well over which there was no conflict. Isaac calls this well Rechovot—“expansiveness.” This is suggested by the expansiveness of the water that gushes from a dark cave-like cistern, flowing from the left panel into the center of the painting. Rechovot is a place of ever-expanding space, where water can spread and flow freely, unrestricted.
The wells are also a metaphor for the depths that are inside each one of us. For an artist, digging for wells is about the search to find more pure inner expression.
Yoram Raanan takes inspiration from living in Israel, where he can fully explore and express his Jewish consciousness. The light, the air, the spirit of the people and the land energize and inspire him. His paintings include modern Jewish expressionism with a wide range of subjects ranging from abstract to landscape, biblical and Judaic.© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Current
The Burnt Offerings of a Master Painter by Michael Chighel
Acclaimed artist Yoram Raanan surveys the remains of his studio and 40 years of artwork that were destroyed in one of many arsonist blazes that swept through Israel. (Photo: Netanel Sharvit)It was only last Monday that I took the bus to Beit Meir, the graceful little mountain-top village twenty kilometers west of Jerusalem, in order to visit Yoram Raanan. Yoram is a new friend, though the kind you feel you have known and cherished for years. When I first chanced upon a print by the artist a number of years ago—it was his masterpiece, “Mount Sinai”—it took my breath away, quite literally. And when I saw his work featured on Chabad.org, I took the first opportunity to meet him in person.
Yoram and I paced up and down his lush studio, which was overgrown with exquisite paintings of biblical scenes and waterscapes and phosphorescent menorahs and glowing human souls—a veritable small Garden of Eden burgeoning with canvases, paint, and the uncanny ambience of something holy going on.
“I have no intention of flattering you,” I had announced to him on our first meeting a few months back. “Good!” he snapped back instinctively, unafraid of insult. “I will not flatter you,” I said, “because I sincerely believe that your work is nothing less than an event in the history of painting.”
He accepted my words with a smile free of both vanity and false modesty. And I, for my part, followed through by writing a long article in which I have attempted to articulate why the oeuvre of YoramRaanan marks an event in art history, certainly in the history of Jewish art, if not beyond.
Then the Fires Came. . .
In the middle of the night last Thursday, on the 24th of Cheshvan and just three days after my initial visit, the village of Beit Meir fell victim to fires suspected to have been started by Palestinian arsonists. Yoram’s studio was entirely burnt down.
When I heard the next morning what had happened from the artist’s wife, Meira Raanan, the news hit me hard. All those masterpieces! The luminescent “Shir Hamaalot” which took one intothe Beit HaMikdash! The awesome convulsion of the Sea of Reeds in “Beshalach” (behind Yoram)!
The haunting emerald “Esther” that had once been a painting of an eagle hanging in the Sheraton Plaza! The blazing menorah of “Vayakhel” in which gold of the candelabra had been alchemically transformed into pigmented fire!
Yoram Raanan with some of the art destroyed in the fire.The loss of so much beauty—all of it dedicated to G‑d, all of it reflecting subjects from Jewish life and Jewish history—constitutes an inestimable loss for Jewish culture. It goes without saying that Yoram has sold many paintings over the years. But there were certain landmark pieces, including all but one of the pieces I mention in my article that still patiently awaited appreciative buyers. Besides the hundreds of paintings stacked against the walls of the studio, there were hundreds upon hundreds of sketches and half-finished works in drawers that had slowly accumulated over four decades of prolific labors.
The prospect of speaking to Yoram himself after this cataclysmic loss, I must confess, made me quite nervous. Finding words to comfort someone who has lost an enormous amount of personal property is difficult enough. Lost property is labor lost. But how do you comfort an artist who has lost an enormous amount of expressions of his very heart and soul? How is one consoled for the loss of deeply personal, spiritual labor? Before we had a chance to speak, we exchanged a few furtive emails before Shabbat.
The artist in his studio a week before the fire.‘This Too Is For the Good’
Yoram wrote: “Studio total total loss.”
I wrote back: “Can you talk? I can’t imagine what you are going through.”
Yoram: “I know you can understand and appreciate your concern. House and kids ok. Everything in and of my studio and surrounding area are completely finished. Gam zu l’tova. Shabbat shalom.”
Gam zu l’tova, “This too is for the good.” The phrase is a wonderful profession of faith in the face of despair. But to my mind, a hundredfold more astonishing and wonderful is the expression, jotted under such dark circumstances: “Shabbat shalom.”
When I finally spoke to Yoram after Shabbat, he explained his feelings with the same characteristic force of simplicity: “With emunah, there are no half-measures. You either trust Hashem or you don’t.” He described to me how, during the frantic evacuation of Beit Meir, he looked back toward the trees under which his studio lay and saw the conflagration rise into the black sky. “I resigned myself there and then,” he said. “Everything is in the hands of G‑d. G‑d knows what He’s doing. You know, it made me think of a korban [‘offering’].”
“Like an olah [burnt offering]?” I asked, immediately regretting my two cents.
Shir HaMaalot (Artist: Yoram Raanan)“Yup,” he said, with an almost melancholy smile. And he went on to joke about how often fire appears in his paintings—the flames of the menorah, the fire on the altar in the Temple, the fire of Torah.
Then, without batting an eyelash, Yoram immediately goes on to elaborate on how much good has already come of the destruction. “I can’t believe how many emails I’ve received! So many people are writing and calling and want to help out! People are coming to my website and discovering my art for the first time! It’s amazing!” His eyes are full of wonder and gratitude as he enumerates the acts of kindness and appreciation streaming in from all corners. He insists on seeing the destruction as an opportunity.
We talk about the various mundane issues that will now require his attention in the next months: the damage assessment, the police investigation, the plans to rebuild the studio (“It’ll be better than the last one, taller! More mental space to think higher! To paint bigger!”), the need to publish a book of his paintings and the prospects of finding a patron to fund the book.
“What about getting back to painting?” I ask.
“Yes!” his eyes light up and his mind begins to race, “Absolutely! As soon as I have a space to lay down some canvasses and start pouring out the paint! Let the phoenix rise from the ashes!” Yoram evidently intends to fight fire with fire—the profane fire of destruction with the holy fire in the Jewish soul.
I doubt many readers have the patience to plod through my “highbrow” analysis of Yoram’s work. I wish there were some simple way for me to communicate why supporting his work is, from the standpoint of Jewish culture, less like a luxury and more like a necessity. A number of very welcome initiatives have been set up to raise money to rebuild the studio.
Yoram himself muses: “Better than sending money, why not buy a print? It’s a ‘win-win’ that way.” As a very biased fan of Yoram’s work and someone concerned with spreading the hallowed beauty of his art, no less than with seeing him resume his labors of love, I cordially invite the reader to check out his website: www.yoramraanan.com.
Browse through the art. Order a print. Send Yoram and Meira a word. But above all: Feast your eyes!...and then keep an eye out for more to come from Beit Meir ...
More of the artist's work that went up in flames.(Artist: Yoram Raanan)
(Photo: Netanel Sharvit)© Copyright 2016, all rights reserved.
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Chabad.org Magazine - Editor: Yanki Tauber
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Now on Jewish.TV: Loans and Debts: The Talmud on Inheritance, Lesson 3 - Binyomin Bitton from Jewish.TV - Chabad.org Video of Brooklyn, New York, United States
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This class presents the Talmudic perspective on inheritance, detailing the types of properties eligible to bequeath and how they should be divided. Learn the level of responsibility inheriting children have towards their father’s debt.
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This Week's Features: Now on Jewish.TV: Chabad Opens Center in 50th State: South Dakota; The Burnt Offerings of a Master Painter from Jewish.TV - Chabad.org Video of Brooklyn, New York, United States for Thursday, Kislev 1, 5777 · December 1, 2016
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Post Comment | Read Story 5,600 Celebrate and Reflect at Chabad-Lubavitch Annual Banquet75 years after the Rebbe’s arrival in the U.S., Chabad launches center in 50th state by Karen Schwartz and Carin M. Smilk
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Laws Relating to the Writing of Tefillin, Part 10 by Avraham Meyer Zajac
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