Rejewvenate!

Or a Mazel Tov, if you’re old-school

On the first night of Sukkot, my wife gave birth to our first child, a beautiful baby boy! Mom and baby are resting comfortably and recovering well.

I was scheduled to give a six-part lecture series over the three-day holiday at the Dude Ranch in Passaic (where Deuter-Pesach, Duder Sukkas, and Machvis, Shushan Machvis, Machvis Sheini and Machvis Katan all take place) but because of the timing of the birth, I was only able to deliver an abridged and condensed version. I hope to reproduce the six parts in some kind of written format here, but as a new father, perhaps I’m biting off more than I can chew. We’ll see how it goes!

I had the opportunity to pass through both Yeshiva University and the Jewish Theological seminary as the two institutions completed their respective Sukkahs.

At YU, the Sukkah is relatively small (though, to be fair, students are off for Sukkot) and awkward. Built on a wide portion of sidewalk outside of the Beit Midrash on Amsterdam Ave. and 186th street, it looks more like the plywood enclosures built around construction sites than a space for celebrating a holiday. And of course, since it’s built on the sidewalk, it interferes with regular pedestrian traffic. Basically, the Sukkah looks and feels like an afterthought.

JTS has a much nice physical plant than YU to begin with, so perhaps this comparison is doomed from the start, but it was not just the aesthetic appeal of the JTS Sukkah that was so impressive. For starters, JTS built two large Sukkot (no, not one for men and one for women!) in its central courtyard. Each of these is easily larger than the single YU Sukkah. Moreover, the Sukkahs were well-planned and executed. Each Sukkah was built on a large wooden platform, sure to provide a solid, level floor, as well as excellent drainage in case of rain.

Speaking of rain, these Sukkahs are well-prepared. Rising above the schach of each Sukkah is a series of triangular wooden frames, forming the skeleton of a roof. Perched at the peak of this roof, and bound up in rope, is a large, rolled tarp. It appeared that with a yank on the right cord, the trap would unroll down both sides of the frame-roof, quickly covering the Sukkah and protecting it from the rain. Ingenious!

Yet even this was not the most impressive thing about the Sukkahs. What struck me most was that at JTS, outside of each Sukkah was an industrial-size fire extinguisher. That touch spoke of foresight, planning, and concern for health, safety, and municipal codes. It spoke to me of what it means to be a a good host, and a mensch. For all the Orthodox tzaddikim who will spend hundreds on their etrogim, and will build Sukkot with windows, space-heaters, and plumbing, it’s worth remembering that a fire extinguisher is no less a religious duty, and no less a fulfillment of our responsibilities towards God and towards one another than arba minim or eating in the Sukkah.

Are fire extinguishers incompatible with Orthodoxy? Of course not. But when your focus on improving your service to God is expressed through the halachic lens of hiddur, beautification, it is easy to lose sight of concerns that are far more basic, and which go neglected far too often.

Yes, the newest Persian threat to all of Judaism came to New York and spoke at Columbia University. My rabbi actually spoke about it right before Mussaf on Yom Kippur, and urged the congregation to attend the rally at the UN.

I’m not a member of the Achmadinejad fan club, of course. I think that his statements about Holocaust denial are unacceptable, but they are far less extreme and offensive, in many ways, than the opinion, commonly held throughout the Muslim world, that 9/11 was a Zionist plot. After all, 9/11 happened only six years ago, and was perhaps the most-covered event in human history to date.

I’m not an expert on Iran, but it strikes me as obvious that Iran has not a single thing to gain from accepting the Holocaust narrative as it is told in the West. Moreover, whatever Antisemitism you may wish to impute to Iran, there is no question or doubt that it, almost alone among its neighbors, is accepting of the Jewish faithful within its borders. There aren’t any Jews in Saudi Arabia. Though some have cast Achmadinejad as Hitler II, or perhaps Haman II, Jews have lived peaceably in Iran for generations.

Not only does Iran have little to gain from accepting the Holocaust, and implicitly then, the modern basis for the State of Israel, Iran has no incentive for getting along with the US. Unlike Egypt or Jordan, Iran doesn’t need money. With Iraq gone, Iran has no significant conventional military threat facing it. With its long-range missiles, Iran has a fair deterrent power and relatively long arm, and while I do not have confirmation that Iran possesses chemical weapons, I find it hard to believe that it could not get its hands on them.

What can the US offer Iran other than cultural hegemony? Iran doesn’t want our Wal-Marts and our McDonalds, our Vogue magazine and our MTV. And they want recognition as one of the great empires and cultures of history. And of course, with nuclear-armed neighbors all around them, including Pakistan, India, Russia, and, of course, Israel, Iran’s wondering on what grounds it is to be fairly restrained from acquiring those weapons.

As many of us know, Achmadinejad is himself a figurehead, who stands in for the Ayatollah, who is the real power in Iran. And unlike Achashverosh or old, or Hitler, the Ayatollah is not motivated by an obsessive hatred of Jews. I think that we need to acknowledge that the Ayatollah has a love for Islam and for Persian identity. We need not paint Iran and its leaders in black and white. Iran is powerful, and potentially dangerous, but not necessarily so. Neither the US, nor Israel, nor the Jewish community, should paint themselves into an untenable corner. Iran is certainly funding terrorists and engaging in a sort of Cold-War conflict with the US and Israel, but let’s not forget that the threats Iran faces, whether from the US troops across its border, or the Israeli planes and missiles parked not very far away, are much greater than those it presents.

One year ago, I conceived of putting together a mix (as I am wont to do) in honor of Elul. The theme of the mix is Teshuva, repentance. I use music to set the mood for many things I do. Aside from the usual work mixes, drive mixes, and romantic mixes, I have my Friday mixes, for getting into the Shabbat mood, mixes for intense relaxation, music for flying, and music for cooking. I’ve got the music I listen to when I need to feel some emotional pain, and the mixes I listen to when I need some adrenaline and a kick in the rear. So why not a teshuva mix? The High Holidays can creep up on you if you don’t prepare for them, and having a mix I can listen to that brings me to some introspection, some deeper questioning and consideration, helps remind me that the time has come to evaluate the year, and evaluate my relationship with God.

In hopes that this music can do the same for you, I offer you my latest mix, 40 Day Return Policy.¹

If you enjoy this mix, please donate something to your favorite charity, or to one of mine.

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¹ Note, this mix is not offered with any return policy.

Please make sure to refrain from doing business with www.succah.com or www.succah.safewebshop.com, as they are owned by Mr. Sam Rosenbloom, who continues to refuse to give his wife a get, leaving her an agunah.  He continues to be subject to a seruv (i.e., he is in contempt of beit din), and it is thus halakhically prohibited to engage in any contact with him, economically or socially.  See http://www.ouradio.org/images/uploads/rav_hauer77.JPG.

So spake my rabbi, and I pass it on to you. Can’t help but feeling like it’s a drop in the bucket though.

An ongoing series…

In the past I defined halachics as “the study of the application of Halachic categories to contemporary behaviors and situations.” I believe that I may have to slightly amend that definition, but let’s not get caught up in semantics.

A.K.A. Pella, a Jewish music band, has released an album that is ‘kosher’ for listening to during the Omer. Many religious Jews refrain from listening to music, though that prohibition comes in a variety of flavors. Some people listen to no music at all, while others refrain from hearing live music. For many, the key distinction is between live and recorded music, but others claim that unaccompanied vocal music is permissible, but not music with instruments.

For years, a cappella music, which features only human voices, presented a halachic question during the Omer, and many rabbis, including Rabbi Henkin, allowed it. In fact, many Jewish a cappella groups find themselves in high demand during the Omer, when other musicians are precluded from performing at most religious Jewish events. Generally, though a cappella groups do mimic instruments with their voices, and use musical arrangements that help to create the illusion that instruments are being played, the illusion is largely superficial, and even with eyes closed it is easy to tell that humans are singing.

Not so the new album from A.K.A. Pella. The album features the voice of only one singer, who happens to mimic some instruments pretty well. After he recorded the various parts, the band augmented, modified, and otherwise played around with his recording to make it nearly indistinguishable from an instrumental album, and has traded on the verisimilitude by subtitling the album: “So good it should be assur!”

The issue does present some interesting halachic possibilities. Should a computer like the one used to modify the vocal tracks be considered an instrument for the purposes of prohibiting listening to the album? Alternatively, can we rest on an essentialist doctrine that claims that even though your ears can’t tell the difference between the voice and the instruments, your ears don’t decide the halacha, and the use of instruments affects the spiritual worlds in real ways that the voice simply cannot duplicate?

As usual, I think the above misses the point. The character of the Omer period itself is what is at stake. What began as an anxious but exciting time period on the agricultural calendar (anxious because though the barley crop was in, assuring feed for the animals, the wheat crop would have to wait seven more weeks, and the crop was at its most vulnerable to unseasonable weather) turned into a period of mourning some 1500 years into Jewish history, with the collapse of the Bar-Kochba uprising and the deaths of the students of Rabbi Akiva. Since that time, various other mournful moments were added to the omer, including mourning over the Jewish martyrs killed during the various pogroms that were so common during the time of the Crusades.

More recently though, the Omer has taken on a different tone. The corridor from Yom Hashoah through Yom Hazikaron, Yom Ha’atzmaut, and finally Yom Yerushalayim change the nature of the Omer in subtle and dramatic ways. Yom Hashoah commemorates the Holocaust, but I think it does more than that. I think that it manages to distill all the suffering, exile, destruction, and dehumanization that Jews have experienced since the destruction of the Second Temple in a way that the more religiously sanctioned fast days of Asara B’Tevet and Tisha Be’Av cannot.

After Yom Hashoah, we come to Yom Hazikaron, and the understanding that our suffering, our pain, our deaths and our sacrifices are no less painful for being meaningful, but they are preferable. In our hearts we believe that every Jew who died at the hands of the Nazis would have preferred to die, gun in hand, as a member of Tzahal. The devastation of the Holocaust did birth a new reality in which Jews could and would defend themselves. A small step perhaps, in acknowledging the humanity of the Jew, but a miraculous one nonetheless.

Finally, after the grieving and weeping of Yom Hazikaron come to a close, the siren wails, whether in the street or just in our hearts and minds, and Yom Haatzmaut begins. It is a celebration of salvation, independence, self-reliance, identity, and hope. We sing, dance, recite Hallel (some of use even make a bracha on it!) and spend time with family and friends. And soon after, we rejoice over the conquest of Jerusalem on Yom Yerushalayim, and yet another milestone in the return to Zion.

Whatever the Omer may have been, these holidays transform it, and they make the question of whether driving a truck through the halachic loophole of vocal performances is permitted almost obscene! The Omer is not a time of mourning anymore! It is extremely difficult to conjure up feelings fro Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students, or the countless victims of Europe’s Middle Ages. But we trudge along with our traditions because that’s what we do as Jews - we observe our faith, even as we find little meaning in the observation. So enough already! I try to reflect this in my life. I personally would avoid planning a simcha during the Omer, out of respect for our cultural traditions. I don’t shave during sefirah, but I do trim my beard on Rosh Chodesh, Yom Haatzmaut, Yom Yerushalayim, and Lag Ba’Omer. But I listen to music of all kinds (I’m a musician though, so my relationship to music may be somewhat different from that of a non-musician), even as I am meticulous about counting the Omer every night with a bracha.

Enough! Here we had a period of mourning that we observed for 2000 years. One day, God gave us our land back during this period, and a few years later, he restored the very heart of our religion to us, during that very same period. What more do we need? God has reversed our mourning, and turned our tears into laughter. At least, let’s compress the mourning of the Omer so that it lasts only until the final siren sound at the close of Yom Hazikaron fades, drowned out by the laughter and song of Yom Ha’atzmaut.

Hat tip: Avakesh

My wife opined a few months ago that the New York Times has a terrible habit of being about a year behind on major trends, be it in fashion, technology, color printing, or popular culture. While not quite so far behind this time, I did enjoy their article on the “kosher for Passover” gasoline story that I posted about in this space near Purim.

In This Town, Talk Turns to Putting the Volvos on a Kosher Diet - New York Times

I’ve just kashered my kitchen, but there’s always more to do! Chag Kasher V’Sameach.

Oh, by the way, I asked earlier about why we have this story about having no time to bake bread because we were in such a rush to leave Egypt when God clearly commands Moshe weeks earlier to prepare the Jews to bring the Korban Pesach, and to eat it with Matzah and Marror. So go look at the pesukim, and you’ll find that Moshe never passes the command to eat Matzah to the Jews. Interesting, no? It seems like Moshe sets it up so that the Jews will end up with Matzah. I don’t get it, but I plan to ask about it at my seder!

Last week, I wrote a post about the sale of Kosher-for-Pesach gasoline in Teaneck. The article I cited was, of course, not factual, and was simply making the rounds for Purim. I confess that at the time I posted it I suspected, but was not certain, that this was the case. Besides, I figured it would make for good fun in either case. After all, on its face, the prohibition on gasoline seemed no more or less farcical than the prohibition on water from the Kinneret (because fisherman fish in it with bread or other chametz), or the prohibition on Brooklyn water because of non-kosher organisms that needed to be filtered out.

Since then, the article, ostensibly published in the non-existent Bergen County Jewish Times, has made its way out of the small Jewish pond. I encountered it today at one of the most popular economics blogs on the web, Marginal Revolution. It appears that they too, were taken in, as they quoted the fake article in their ‘Markets in Everything’ feature.

How did MR get wind of this? They credit Brendan Nyhan, who runs a fine political blog, but I could not find any mention of this article on his blog - Brendan, if you see this, do you mind posting in the comments about how you got the article, and what made you send it on to MR? In any case, Marginal Revolution was eventually clued in to the humorous nature of the article, and to their credit, they posted a link to Rabbi Mark Ankorn’s debunking of the story.

I don’t know if this story comes with a moral, but its worth noting how quickly our meshugas reaches outside of the walls of our parish and into the broader world.

When I said I was going to post about Pesach this isn’t what I had in mind.

The Bergen County Jewish Times (no link to the original, couldn’t find one - hope this isn’t a hoax… or maybe I hope it is a hoax, I’ll let you decide) is reporting that a local gas station owner will be selling Kosher-For-Pesach gas!

Yaniv Ban-Zaken, a local gas station owner, will be selling Kosher for Passover gasoline during the holiday this year. The move, Ben-Zaken says,has become necessary due to the increased ethanol content in gasoline required by the government. The ethanol is typically derived from corn, which is a forbidden food for Jews on Passover. And, according to Ben-Zaken, underJewish law, it is also forbidden to derive any benefit from corn.

Interested? It’ll cost you. A gallon of chametz- (or rather, kitniyot-) free gas will set you back a staggering $9.69 per gallon. Still, compared to a pound of hand-made shmura matzah, a gallon of chametz-free gas is pretty cheap - a pound of shmura will go for about $18, and all you get is some hastily-baked flour and water! I wonder what’s more expensive, feeding matzah to your family of eight, or driving them all to Great Adventure on Chol HaMoed in your Suburban, Navigator, or Odyssey.

But why take psak from a non-observant yored? Rabbi Mordechai Silver of Yeshivas Torah Ohr in Englewood says:

[W]hile it might technically be acceptable to use mass-produced gasoline, those who can afford to purchase the new alternative should. “In Jewish law, we have a principle of lifnim mshuras hadin–going above and beyond the basic requirements of the law,” he explained in an email. “Thank G-d, many people in the area can afford to do so in this case.”

A cynic might argue that there’s no chiyuv to line the pockets of your local gas-station owner on Pesach, but Mr. Ban Zaken claims that he won’t turn a profit on this venture at all, and that he’s just providing a community service.

In fairness, not everyone thinks this is such a great idea:

Rabbi Shalom Silver, of Congregation Ohel Emeth in Teaneck , has recommended to his congregants that they not buy the gasoline. “Although Jews of Ashkenazi descent are not permitted to eat corn on Pesach, they are permitted to derive benefit from corn byproducts, such as gasoline with ethanol additives,” he said.

And to think, if I was only born a Sephardi I could have been sitting on the sidelines and laughing about all this!

Hat tip to Torn

Some interesting links I’ve stumbled across recently:

Should you set up a not-so-observant-but-Orthodox guy with a really frum Conservative girl? As much as I enjoyed the question, I think the best part was the disconnect between admitting that the Conservative girl was more religious than the Orthodox guy and this paragraph:

That there are so many Conservative Jews who are serious about their observance should be seen as a challenge to us. It is all too easy to say that our Kiruv efforts should be geared to those whose knowledge of Torah Judaism is negligible. That’s what the NCSYs and Aish HaTorahs do. But what about this young woman and others like her? Can we afford to just leave them alone? Should we perhaps be interacting more with them? Can we entice them away from the heresy that is the Conservative movement into the Emes of an Orthodox one? Is there Kiruv for them? And how would we do it? Is there anyone or any group doing it?

I fully agree that the existence of frum Conservatives challenges Orthodox assumptions and positions. But what’s funny is that Harry Marlyes (the author) completely misses that the person needing kiruv is not the frum Conservative, but the disaffected Orthodox!

[From Emes V'emunah]

Best Fatwah Ever!

Reconstructive hymen surgery for women who lost their virginity before marriage is halal (religiously permissible), said to Aly Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt.

Gomaa, the highest authority with the power to issue a fatwa (religious edict), appeared the popular terrestrial Channel Two’s talk show El Beit Beitek, where he condoned the controversial fatwa, released by Soad Saleh, the ex-dean of the faculty of Islamic studies at Al-Azhar University and noted scholar.

Shiekh Khaled El Gindy, an Al-Azhar scholar and member of the Higher Council of Islamic Studies told The Daily Star Egypt that he agrees with the new fatwa.

“Islam never differentiates between men and women, so it is not rational for us to think that God has placed a sign to indicate the virginity of women without having a similar sign to indicate the virginity of men,” El Gindy said.

“Any man who is concerned about his prospective wife’s hymen should first provide a proof that he himself is virgin,” he added.

[From the Daily Star Egypt]

The Rebbe’s partying with Elvis, but 770 lives on - check out this exhibit of various 770-clones around the world. There was an exhibit of many of these photos at the Jewish Museum a year or two ago, but it’s gone now. [Hat tip - Kottke.org]

Supposedly, there’s a native Jew who is blogging from Mogadishu, Somalia. I hate to sound cynical, but I have my doubts as to whether it’s the real deal or not. In some places the writing sounds juvenile, while in others it is strangely fluent. Dunno. I leave it to you to to judge.

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A question to ponder: The Torah tells us, and the Haggadah repeats for us, that the Jews made matzah on their way out of Egypt because they had no time to allow their bread to rise:

Exod. 12:39

However, a few verses prior, in the very same chapter, God tells Moshe that the Jewish people should select a lamb for slaughter on the 10th of Nisan, and that they will eat it five days later with Matzah! If there was enough time to prepare a lamb barbecue with matzah and marror, surely there was enough time to bake some bread for the journey out of Egypt! What gives?