The Chossid

(ה) אָמַר הֶחָבֵר: הֶחָסִיד הוּא מִי שֶׁהוּא מוֹשֵׁל, נִשְׁמָע בְּחוּשָׁיו וְכֹחוֹתָיו הַנַּפְשִׁיִּים וְהַגּוּפִיִּים, וּמַנְהִיגָם הַהַנְהָגָה הַגּוּפִיִּית, כְּמוֹ שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: "וּמֹשֵׁל בְּרוּחוֹ מִלֹּכֵד עִיר". וְהוּא הַמּוּכָן לְמֶמְשָׁלָה, כִּי אִלּוּ הָיָה מוֹשֵׁל בִּמְדִינָה הָיָה נוֹהֵג בָּהּ בְּצֶדֶק כַּאֲשֶׁר נָהַג בְּגוּפוֹ וְנַפְשׁוֹ, וְחָסַם הַכֹּחוֹת הַתַּאֲוִיִּים וּמָנַע אוֹתָם מִן הָרִבּוּי אַחַר אֲשֶׁר נָתַן לָהֶם חֶלְקָם, וְהִסְפִּיק לָהֶם מַה שֶּׁיְּמַלֵּא חֶסְרוֹנָם, מֵהַמַּאֲכָל הַמַּסְפִּיק וְהַמִּשְׁתֶּה הַמַּסְפִּיק עַל הַדֶּרֶך הַשָּׁוֶה גַם כֵּן, וְחָסַם הַכֹּחוֹת הַכַּעֲסָנִים הַמְבַקְשִׁים לְנִצּוּחַ, אַחַר אֲשֶׁר נָתַן לָהֶם חֶלְקָם בַּנִּצָּחוֹן הַמּוֹעִיל בְּדִבְרֵי הַחָכְמוֹת וְהַדֵּעוֹת וְגַעֲרַת הָאֲנָשִׁים הָרָעִים, וְנָתַן לַחוּשִׁים חֶלְקָם בְּמַה שֶּׁמוֹעִיל לוֹ, וּמְשַׁמֵּשׁ בְּיָדָיו וְרַגְלָיו וּלְשׁוֹנוֹ בְעִנְיַן הַצֹּרֶךְ וּבְחֶפְצוֹ הַמּוֹעִיל, וְכֵן הַשֵּׁמַע וְהָרְאוּת וְהַהַרְגָּשָׁה הַמִּשְׁתַּתֶּפֶת הוֹלֶכֶת אַחֲרֵיהֶם, וְאַחַר כֵּן הַיֵּצֶר וְהָרַעְיוֹן וְהַמַּחֲשָׁב וְהַזִּכָּרוֹן, וְאַחַר כֵּן הַכֹּחַ הַחֶפְצִי הַמִּשְׁתַּמֵּשׁ בְּכָל אֵלֶּה, וְהֵם מְשַׁמְּשִׁים עוֹבְדִים לְחֵפֶץ הַשֵּׂכֶל. וְלֹא עָזַב אֶחָד מֵאֵלּוּ הַכֹּחוֹת וְהָאֲבָרִים שֶׁיַּרְבֶּה בְמַה שֶּׁהוּא מְיֻחָד בּוֹ וְיַפְחִית הַנִּשְׁאָרִים. וְכַאֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה צָרְכֵי כָל אֶחָד מֵהֶם וְנָתַן לַטִּבְעִיִּים מַה שֶּׁיַּסְפִּיק לָהֶם מֵהַמְּנוּחָה וְהַשֵּׁנָה, וְלַחִיּוּנִיִּים מַה שֶּׁיַסְפִּיק לָהֶם מֵהַקִּיצָה וְהַתְּנוּעָה בְמַעֲשֵׂי הָעוֹלָם, אָז יִקְרָא אֶל עֲדָתוֹ, כְּמוֹשֵׁל הַנִּשְׁמָע שֶׁקּוֹרֵא אֶל חֵילוֹ הַשּׁוֹמֵעַ לַעֲזֹר לוֹ, לְהִדָּבֵק בַּמַּדְרֵגָה שֶׁהִיא לְמַעְלָה מִמֶּנָּה, רְצוֹנִי לוֹמַר: הַמַּדְרֵגָה הָאֱלֹהִית אֲשֶׁר הִיא לְמַעְלָה מֵהַמַּדְרֵגָה הַשִּׂכְלִית, וִיסַדֵּר עֲדָתוֹ וִיתַקְּנָהּ, וְדוֹמֶה לַסֵּדֶר שֶׁסִּדֵּר מֹשֶׁה עָלָיו הַשָּׁלוֹם לַעֲדָתוֹ סְבִיבוֹת הַר סִינַי, וּמְצַוֶּה הַכֹּחַ הַחֶפְצִי שֶׁיִּהְיֶה מְקַבֵּל וְשׁוֹמֵר לַאֲשֶׁר יָבֹא מֵאֶצְלוֹ צִוּוּי, וְיַעֲשֵׂהוּ לְעִתּוֹ, וִישַׁמֵּשׁ בַּכֹּחוֹת וּבָאֲבָרִים כְּפִי אֲשֶׁר יְצַוֶּה מִבְּלִי הַמְרוֹת, וִיצַוֶּה אוֹתוֹ שֶׁלֹּא יִפְנֶה אֶל הַשֵּׁדִים הַמַּחֲשָׁבִיִּים וְהַמִּתְדַּמִּים, וְלֹא יְקַבְּלֵם וְלֹא יַאֲמִין בָּם, עַד שֶׁיִּוָּעֵץ אֶת הַשֵּׂכֶל, וְאִם יַכְשִׁיר מַה שֶׁיֵּשׁ אֶצְלָם יְקַבְּלֵם, וְאִם לֹא – יַמְרֵם, וִיקַבֵּל הַחֶפְצִי זֶה מִמֶּנּוּ וְיַסְכִּים לַעֲשׂוֹתוֹ. וּמְיַשֵּׁר כְּלֵי הַמַּחֲשָׁב וּמְפַנֶּה אוֹתוֹ מִכָּל אֲשֶׁר קָדַם מֵהַמַּחֲשָׁבוֹת הָעוֹלָמִיּוֹת. וּמְצַוֶּה הַמְדַמֶּה לְהַמְצִיא הֶהָדוּר שֶׁבַּצּוּרוֹת הַנִּמְצָאוֹת אֶצְלוֹ בְעֵזֶר הַזִּכָּרוֹן, לְדַמּוֹת אֵלָיו הָעִנְיָן הָאֱלֹהִי הַמְבֻקָּשׁ, כְּמוֹ מַעֲמַד הַר סִינַי וּמַעֲמַד אַבְרָהָם וְיִצְחָק בְּהַר הַמּוֹרִיָּה, וּכְמוֹ מִשְׁכַּן מֹשֶׁה וְסֵדֶר הָעֲבוֹדָה וְחוּל הַכָּבוֹד בְּבֵית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ, וְזוּלַת זֶה הַרְבֵּה. וּמְצַוֶּה הַשּׁוֹמֵר לִשְׁמֹר אֶת זֶה וְלֹא יִשְׁכָּחֵהוּ, וְיִגְעַר הַמַּחֲשָׁבִי וְשֵׁדָיו מִבַּלְבֵּל הָאֱמֶת וּמִסַּפְּקוֹ. וְיִגְעַר בַּכַּעֲסָנִי וּבַתַּאֲוָנִי מֵהַטּוֹת הַחֶפְצִי וַהֲנִיעוֹ וְהַטְרִידוֹ בְמַה שֶּׁיֵּשׁ אֶצְלָם מֵהַכַּעַס וְהַתַּאֲוָה. וְאַחַר זֹאת הַהַצָּעָה יַנְהִיג הַכֹּחַ הַחֶפְצִי כָּל הָאֲבָרִים הַמְשַׁמְּשִׁים אוֹתוֹ בִּזְרִיזוּת וַחֲרִיצוּת וְשִׂמְחָה, וְיַעַמְדוּ בְעֵת הָעֲמִידָה מִבְּלִי עַצְלָה, וְיִשְׁתַּחֲווּ עֵת שֶׁיְּצַוֵּם לְהִשִׁתַּחֲווֹת, וְיֵשְׁבוּ בְּעֵת הַיְשִׁיבָה, וּמַבִּיטוֹת הָעֵינַיִם הַבָּטַת הָעֶבֶד אֶל אֲדוֹנָיו, וְיַעַמְדוּ הַיָּדַיִם מִמַּעֲשֵׂיהֶם, וְלֹא תִתְקַבֵּץ הָאַחַת עִם הָאַחַת, וְתִשְׁתַּוֶּינָה הָרַגְלַיִם לָעֲמִידָה, וְיַעַמְדוּ כָל הָאֲבָרִים כְּנִבְהָלִים הַיְרֵאִים לַעֲשֹוֹת מִצְוַת מַנְהִיגָם, לֹא יַרְגִּישׁוּ עַל מֵחוּשׁ וְלֹא עַל הֶפְסֵד אִם יִהְיֶה לָהֶם, וְיִהְיֶה הַלָּשׁוֹן מַסְכִּים עִם הַמַּחֲשָׁבָה לֹא יוֹסִיף עָלָיו, וְלֹא יְבַטֵּא בִתְפִלָּתוֹ עַל דֶּרֶךְ הַמִּנְהָג וְהַטֶּבַע כְּמוֹ הַזַּרְזִיר וְהַבַּבָּגָא אֶלָּא עִם כָּל מִלָּה מַחֲשָׁבָה וְכַוָּנָה בָהּ, וְתִהְיֶה הָעֵת הַהִיא לֵב זְמַנּוֹ וּפִרְיוֹ, וְיִהְיוּ שְׁאָר עִתּוֹתָיו כִּדְרָכִים הַמַּגִּיעִים אֶל הָעֵת הַהִיא, יִתְאַוֶּה קִרְבָתוֹ שֶׁבּוֹ מִתְדַּמֶּה בָרוּחֲנִיִּים וְיִתְרַחֵק מֵהַבַּהֲמִיִּים, וְיִהְיֶה פְרִי יוֹמוֹ וְלֵילוֹ הַשָּׁלֹשׁ עִתּוֹת הָהֵם שֶׁל תְּפִלָּה, וּפְרִי הַשָּׁבוּעַ יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת, מִפְּנֵי שֶׁהוּא מְעֻמָּד לְהִדָּבֵק בָּעִנְיָן הָאֱלֹהִי, וַעֲבוֹדָתוֹ בְשִׂמְחָה לֹא בִכְנִיעָה, כַּאֲשֶׁר הִתְבָּאָר. וְהַסֵּדֶר הַזֶּה מֵהַנֶּפֶשׁ כְּסֵדֶר הַמָּזוֹן מֵהַגּוּף, מִתְפַּלֵּל לְנַפְשׁוֹ וְנִזּוֹן לְגוּפוֹ, וּמַתְמֶדֶת עָלָיו בִּרְכַּת הַתְּפִלָּה עַד עֵת תְּפִלָּה אַחֶרֶת, כְּהַתְמָדַת כֹּחַ סְעֻדַּת הַיּוֹם עַד שֶׁיִּסְעַד בַּלַּיְלָה, וְכָל אֲשֶׁר תִּרְחַק עֵת הַתְּפִלָּה מֵהַנֶּפֶשׁ הִיא הוֹלֶכֶת וְקוֹדֶרֶת בְּמַה שֶׁפּוֹגֵעַ אוֹתָהּ מֵעִסְקֵי הָעוֹלָם כָּל שֶׁכֵּן אִם יְבִיאֵהוּ הַצֹּרֶךְ לְחֶבְרַת נְעָרִים וְנָשִׁים וְרֵעִים, וְיִשְׁמַע מַה שֶּׁיַּעְכִּיר זַכּוּת נַפְשׁוֹ, מִדְּבָרִים כְּעוּרִים וְנִגּוּנִים שֶׁתִּטֶּה הַנֶּפֶשׁ אֲלֵיהֶם וְלֹא יוּכַל לִמְשָׁל־בָּהּ. וּבְעֵת הַתְּפִלָּה מְטַהֵר נַפְשׁוֹ מִכָּל מַה שֶּׁקָּדַם, וִיתַקְּנָהּ לֶעָתִיד, עַד שֶׁלֹּא יַעֲבֹר שָׁבוּעַ עַל זֶה הַסֵּדֶר עַד שֶׁיְּתַקֵּן הַנֶּפֶשׁ וְהַגּוּף, וּכְבָר נִקְבְּצוּ מוֹתָרִים מַקְדִּירִים עִם אֹרֶךְ הַשָּׁבוּעַ לֹא יִתָּכֵן לְטַהֲרָם וּלְנַקּוֹתָם אֶלָּא בְהַתְמָדַת עֲבוֹדַת יוֹם עִם מְנוּחַת הַגּוּף, וְאָז יִרְצֶה הַגּוּף בַּשַּׁבָּת אֶת אֲשֶׁר חָסַר לוֹ מִשֵּׁשֶׁת הַיָּמִים, וְיִהְיֶה נָכוֹן לֶעָתִיד. וְכֵן הַנֶּפֶשׁ תִּזְכֹּר מַה שֶּׁחָסְרָה עִם טִרְדַּת הַגּוּף, וּכְאִלּוּ הִיא בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא מִתְרַפְּאָה מֵחֳלִי שֶׁקָּדַם וּמִתְעַתֶּדֶת לְמַה שֶׁיִּדְחֶה מִמֶּנָּה הֶחֳלִי בֶעָתִיד. דּוֹמֶה לְמַה שֶּׁהָיָה עוֹשֶׂה אִיּוֹב בְּכָל שָׁבוּעַ בְּבָנָיו, כְּמוֹ שֶׁהוּא אוֹמֵר: 'אוּלַי חָטְאוּ בָנַי', וְאַחַר כֵּן יִהְיֶה עָתִיד לָרְפוּאָה הַחָדְשִׁית שֶׁהִיא זְמַן כַּפָּרָה לְכָל תּוֹלְדוֹתָם, רְצוֹנִי לוֹמַר: תּוֹלְדוֹת הֶחֳדָשִׁים וְחִדּוּשֵׁי הַיָּמִים, כְּמוֹ שֶׁאָמַר: 'כִּי לֹא־תֵדָע מַה־יֵּלֶד יוֹם'. וְאַחַר כֵּן יִהְיֶה עָתִיד לְשָׁלֹשׁ רְגָלִים. וְאַחֲרֵי כֵן אֶל הַצּוֹם הַנִּכְבָּד אֲשֶׁר בּוֹ יִנָּקֶה מִכָּל עָוֹן שֶׁקָּדַם, וְיַשִּׂיג בּוֹ מַה שֶּׁחָסַר לוֹ בַּיָּמִים וּבַשָּׁבוּעִים וּבֶחֳדָשִׁים, וְתִנָּקֶה הַנֶּפֶשׁ מֵהַבִּלְבּוּלִים הַמַּחֲשָׁבִיִּים וְהַכַּעֲסִיִּים וְהַתַּאֲוִיִּים, וְתָשׁוּב מִנְּטוֹת אֲלֵיהֶם תְּשׁוּבָה גְּמוּרָה בֵּין בְּמַחֲשָׁבָה בֵּין בְּמַעֲשֶׂה. וְאִם לֹא תִתָּכֵן הַתְּשׁוּבָה מֵהַמַּחֲשָׁבָה בַּעֲבוּר גְּבוּרַת הָרַעְיוֹנִי עָלֶיהָ, בְּמַה שֶּׁקָּדַם לָהּ מִזִּכְרוֹן מַה שֶּׁשָּׁמְעָה מִימֵי הַנְּעוּרִים מִשִּׁירִים וְחִידוֹת וְזוּלָתָם, תִּנָּקֶה מֵהַמַּעֲשֶׂה וְתִתְוַדֶּה עַל הָרַעְיוֹנִים וּתְקַבֵּל שֶׁלֹּא תִזְכְּרֵם בִּלְשׁוֹנָהּ כָּל שֶׁכֵּן שֶׁתַּעֲשֵׂם, וּכְמוֹ שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: זַמֹּתִי בַּל־יַעֲבָר־פִּי. וְצוֹמוֹ בַיּוֹם הַהוּא צוֹם שֶׁהוּא קָרוֹב בּוֹ לְהִתְדַּמּוֹת בַּמַּלְאָכִים, מִפְּנֵי שֶׁהוּא גּוֹמְרוֹ בִכְנִיעָה וּבְשִׁפְלוּת וּבַעֲמִידָה וּבִכְרִיעוֹת וְתִשְׁבָּחוֹת וּתְהִלּוֹת, וְכָל כֹּחוֹתָיו הַגּוּפִיִּים צָמִים מֵהָעִנְיָנִים הַטִּבְעִיִּים, מִתְעַסְּקִים בַּתּוֹרִיִּים, כְּאִלּוּ אֵין בּוֹ טֶבַע בַּהֲמִי. וְכֵן יִהְיֶה צוֹם הֶחָסִיד בְּכָל עֵת שֶׁיָּצוּם, שֶׁיְּעַנֶּה בוֹ הָרְאוּת וְהַשֵּׁמַע וְהַלָּשׁוֹן, וְלֹא יַטְרִידֵם בְּזוּלַת מַה שֶּׁיְּקָרֵב אוֹתוֹ אֶל הָאֱלֹהִים, וְכֵן הַכֹּחוֹת הַפְּנִימִיִּים מִדִּמְיוֹן וּמַחֲשָׁבָה וְזוּלָתִי זֶה, וְעִם זֶה יִהְיוּ הַמַּעֲשִׂים הַטּוֹבִים. 

5. The Rabbi: The pious man is nothing but a prince who is obeyed by his senses, and by his mental as well as his physical faculties, which he governs corporeally, as it is written: 'He that rules his spirit [is better] than he that takes a city' (Proverbs 16:32). He is fit to rule, because if he were the prince of a country he would be as just as he is to his body and soul. He subdues his passions, keeping them in bonds, but giving them their share in order to satisfy them as regards food, drink, cleanliness, etc. He further subdues the desire for power, but allows them as much expansion as avails them for the discussion of scientific or mundane views, as well as to warn the evil-minded. He allows the senses their share according as he requires them for the use of hands, feet, and tongue, as necessity or desire arise. The same is the case with hearing, seeing, and the kindred sensations which succeed them; imagination, conception, thought, memory, and will power, which commands all these; but is, in its turn, subservient to the will of intellect. He does not allow any of these limbs or faculties to go beyond their special task, or encroach upon another. If he, then, has satisfied each of them (giving to the vital organs the necessary amount of rest and sleep, and to the physical ones waking, movements, and worldly occupation), he calls upon his community as a respected prince calls his disciplined army, to assist him in reaching the higher or divine degree which is to be found above the degree of the intellect. He arranges his community in the same manner as Moses arranged his people round Mount Sinai. He orders his will power to receive every command issued by him obediently, and to carry it out forthwith. He makes faculties and limbs do his bidding without contradiction, forbids them evil inclinations of mind and fancy, forbids them to listen to, or believe in them, until he has taken counsel with the intellect. If he permits they can obey him, but not otherwise. In this way his will power receives its orders from him, carrying them out accordingly. He directs the organs of thought and imagination, relieving them of all worldly ideas mentioned above, charges his imagination to produce, with the assistance of memory, the most splendid pictures possible, in order to resemble the divine things sought after. Such pictures are the scenes of Sinai, Abraham and Isaac on Moriah, the Tabernacle of Moses, the Temple service, the presence of God in the Temple, and the like. He, then, orders his memory to retain all these, and not to forget them; he warns his fancy and its sinful prompters not to confuse the truth or to trouble it by doubts; he warns his irascibility and greed not to influence or lead astray, nor to take hold of his will, nor subdue it to wrath and lust. As soon as harmony is restored, his will power stimulates all his organs to obey it with alertness, pleasure, and joy. They stand without fatigue when occasion demands, they bow down when he bids them to do so, and sit at the proper moment. The eyes look as a servant looks at his master, the hands drop their play and do not meet, the feet stand straight, and all limbs are as frightened and anxious to obey their master, paying no heed to pain or injury. The tongue agrees with the thought, and does not overstep its bounds, does not speak in prayer in a mere mechanical way as the starling and the parrot, but every word is uttered thoughtfully and attentively. This moment forms the heart and fruit of his time, whilst the other hours represent the way which leads to it. He looks forward to its approach, because while it lasts he resembles the spiritual beings, and is removed from merely animal existence. Those three times of daily prayer are the fruit of his day and night, and the Sabbath is the fruit of the week, because it has been appointed to establish the connection with the Divine Spirit and to serve God in joy, not in sadness, as has been explained before. All this stands in the same relation to the soul as food to the human body. Prayer is for his soul what nourishment is for his body. The blessing of one prayer lasts till the time of the next, just as the strength derived from the morning meal lasts till supper. The further his soul is removed from the time of prayer, the more it is darkened by coming in contact with worldly matters. The more so, as necessity brings it into the company of youths, women, or wicked people; when one hears unbecoming and soul-darkening words and songs which exercise an attraction for his soul which he is unable to master. During prayer he purges his soul from all that passed over it, and prepares it for the future. According to this arrangement there elapses not a single week in which both his soul and body do not receive preparation. Darkening elements having increased during the week, they cannot be cleansed except by consecrating one day to service and to physical rest. The body repairs on the Sabbath the waste suffered during the six days, and prepares itself for the work to come, while the soul remembers its own loss through the body's companionship. He cures himself, so to speak, from a past illness, and provides himself with a remedy to ward off any future sickness. This is almost the same as Job did with his children every week, as it is written: 'It may be that my sons have sinned' (Job 1:5). He, then, provides himself with a monthly cure, which is 'the season of atonement for all that happened during this period,' viz. the duration of the month, and the daily events, as it is written: 'You know not what a day may bring forth' (Proverbs 27:1) He further attends the Three Festivals and the great Fast Day, on which some of his sins are atoned for, and on which he endeavors to make up for what he may have missed on the days of those weekly and monthly circles. His soul frees itself from the whisperings of imagination, wrath, and lust, and neither in thought or deed gives them any attention. Although his soul is unable to atone for sinful thoughts--the result of songs, tales, etc., heard in youth, and which cling to memory--it cleanses itself from real sins, confesses repentance for the former, and undertakes to allow them no more to escape his tongue, much less to put them into practice, as it is written: 'I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress' (Psalsm 17:3). The fast of this day is such as brings one near to the angels, because it is spent in humility and contrition, standing, kneeling, praising and singing. All his physical faculties are denied their natural requirements, being entirely abandoned to religious service, as if the animal element had disappeared. The fast of a pious man is such that eye, ear, and tongue share in it, that he regards nothing except that which brings him near to God. This also refers to his innermost faculties, such as mind and imagination. To this he adds pious works.

 

You Have To Know Your Tafkid

הסופר הנודע רבי משה שיינפלד זצ"ל בא אל הסטייפלר והציע לפניו שמעוניין הוא להקים כולל ולהביא לשם את בנו הגר"ח כנראה שיעמוד בראש הכולל וביקש ממרן שידבר עמו להסכים להצעה.

השיב לו מרן היקהלות יעקב כי ר' חיים לא נועד לתפקיד ושליחות שכזו אלא צריך הוא להתמיד בלימודו ולכתוב ספרים. 

מבצע קדש בפונוביז'

 הימים ימי מתח בארץ הקדש טרם מבצע קדש, ביום לא בהיר אחד נקראו כל ראשי הישיבה דפוניבז' לכינוס קצר דחוף במעונו של מרן הרב דפוניבז' זצוק"ל גם הרמי"ם הצעירים דאז נקראו לאסיפה דחופה זו. ישבו שם מרנן הגאונים המשגיח רבי יחזקאל רבי אלעזר מנחם שך רבי דוד פוברסקי רבי שמואל רוזובסקי המשגיחים בישיבה זצוק"ל רמ"י הישיבה רבי גרשון אדלשטיין רבי שלמה ברמן ורבי ברוך פוברסקי. 

מרן הרב דפוניבז' פתח בדברים וסיפר כי בן גוריון קרא לו אישית לגלות לו את העתיד הקרוב פתיחת המערכה הצבאית מבצע קדש בן גוריון סיפר בכאב על הסיכון והסכנה וביקש לידע את הרב על מנת שידעו להכין את עצמם לקראת הבאות ויאספו שקי חול יבצרו חדרי מיגון ואף הציע שמספר בחורים יאחזו בידם כלי נשק. הרב ביקש לשמוע את חוות דעתם של ראשי הישיבה שתיקה שררה בחדר המשגיח הצביע ידו על ר' שלמה כאומר נשמע מה בפיו הכל הביטו אל רבי שלמה שפנה אל הרב בשאלה "האין לבן גוריון עיסוק אחר מלבד לדאוג לבני ישיבה? מטרתו אחרת לגמרי. כיון שנושא גיוס בחורי הישיבות אינו יורד מעל הפרק מצא הזדמנות להניח בידינו נשק ואח"כ יוכיח מכך לטובתו". 

הרב קם ממקומו בהתלהבות "הוי ר' שלמה שפתיים ישק כמה שאתה צודק". 

Churchill, Seinfeld And The Golden Age Of America

This essay reflects on the inspiration that can be drawn from an unlikely pair of people: the first English, the second American. The first seemed destined from birth for heroism; the second exhibited courage in the face of surprising and terrible events. The first is Winston Churchill; the second is Jerry Seinfeld.

Let us begin with Churchill. In October 1941, Churchill visited Harrow, the school he had attended as a boy. The previous ten months had been the most perilous in Britain’s history, when France fell, and Britain stood alone. In honor of Churchill, the students added a stanza to the traditional school song. It went as follows:

Not less we praise in darker days

The leader of our nation,

And Churchill’s name shall win acclaim

From each new generation.

Moved by what he had heard, Churchill spoke about courage, human greatness made manifest, and then concluded:

You sang here a verse of a school song: you sang that extra verse written in my honor, which I was very greatly complimented by and which you have repeated today. But there is one word in it I want to alter—I wanted to do so last year, but I did not venture to. It is the line: “Not less we praise in darker days.” I have obtained the headmaster’s permission to alter darker to sterner. “Not less we praise in sterner days.”

Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part.

What did Churchill mean? Were these not dark days? Were those past months not England’s darkest hour? Were there not countless dead. Was not England still without the United States? Did they not face the nightly terrors of the bombings of the Blitz?

Churchill, I think, had in mind those who wistfully looked back to the years between the wars as a time of peace and prosperity for England, and indeed for Europe. But Churchill understood that those purportedly blissful times were an age of illusions, that actually it was a time when evil was allowed to fester, when the seeds were sown for the danger and destruction that was to come, a time when his own prophetic warnings were ignored, culminating in the cheering of Neville Chamberlain at Buckingham Palace after he returned from Munich proclaiming “peace in our time.”

The age for which there was nostalgia, in other words, was a shameful period in British history, or as Churchill, still alone after Munich, declared in parliament, the British people must know

that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

He was saying, in 1941, that what was clear to him years ago had become clear to so many, and that meant that the current moment, which was seen by many as a dark time, was a time of clarity. Now so many understood what they were fighting for, and just as importantly, they understood what they were fighting against.

We do not find ourselves in World War II. But the year has been, for the Jewish people, one of great challenges. It is with this in mind that we may approach the assertion, made often in the past many months, that the golden age of American Jewry that made itself manifest in the second half of the 20th century now is no more.

What exactly made that period a Jewish golden age? Here is how it was described in the Atlantic magazine, in an article titled, appropriately, “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending.”

Jews, who had once been excluded from the American establishment, became full-fledged members of it. And remarkably, they achieved power without having to abandon their identity. In faculty lounges and television writers’ rooms, in small magazines and big publishing houses, they infused the wider culture with that identity. Their anxieties became American anxieties. Their dreams became American dreams.

That, according to the Atlantic, was what constituted the golden age of Jewry in America: Jews getting to write comedy shows and edit novels. This is to say that Jews became part of the cultural mainstream, a testament to American openness to be sure. But this did not in any way involve a genuine Judaic contribution to America.

If we wish to see what it meant to celebrate Jewish contributions to culture in the 1990s, we may look to an article in the Yale Law Journal in 1998 under the unusual title “Lawyer Shmawyer.” This article reported that, according to an online search,

the word chutzpah has appeared in 112 reported judicial decisions. Curiously, all but eleven of them have been filed since 1980. There are two possible explanations for this. One is that during the last thirteen years there has been a dramatic increase in the actual amount of chutzpah in the United States. This explanation seems possible, but unlikely. The more likely explanation is that Yiddish is quickly supplanting Latin as the spice in American legal language.

This is nice, certainly. But is the ubiquity of the word chutzpah an achievement for which we will be lauded in Jewish history? To ask this question is to answer it.

Meanwhile, during this purportedly golden age, much was not well, and the seeds were being sown for the dangers yet to come. The 1990s of my youth were indeed blissful; but as Charles Krauthammer wrote in 2003, “We are now paying the wages of the 1990s, our holiday from history. During that decade, every major challenge to America was deferred.” And what was true of America in general was true of American Jewry. During that period, so many American Jews ardently embraced and supported elite universities, even as intellectual rot was already festering there, giving us postmodernism and claims about colonialism; giving us Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, anti-Americanism, hatred of the West, and much else.

At the same time, Jews, including many Jews with a genuine Jewish identity, were tempted by a fantasy that those who hate Jews could suddenly love them. So many embraced the mendacious mirage of Oslo and the ill-named peace process, the assurances of purportedly wise men that Gaza could become the Singapore of the Middle East. Like Chamberlain, so many of us celebrated and even helped advance the arming of Yasir Arafat and called it peace in our time. I grew up in this era, and it seemed nice—but some aspects of American Jewry at the time, we could say, were weighed in the balance and found wanting.

Now many of those illusions are gone; we have emerged from the cave of shadows. The past thirteen months have been difficult ones, but they have also been clarifying. We find ourselves in a moment of great challenges, and the clarity that comes with such a moment provides opportunities for courage and heroism.

 

It is with this in mindthat we turn to our other inspiring figure, the Jew who perhaps achieved more cultural success than any other in America in the 90s.

It may seem odd in today’s culturally fragmented world of Internet streaming, but I remember when millions across America gathered around their televisions to watch the Seinfeld series finale. It was perhaps the last mainstream popular-culture experience. By the standards of the Atlantic, this was the peak of the Jewish golden age in America. Jerry Seinfeld had truly conquered the writing room and made his anxieties America’s anxieties. Had his life concluded in this manner, he would be known to Jewish and American history as a very wealthy man living the American dream on the Upper West Side.

But we now know that is not all that he is, and the path that he has taken after October 7 has been striking, especially when compared with other American Jews who have attained cultural stature and success comparable to his.

He stood with his people in their moment of crisis. He stood against the anti-Semites, and he did so fearlessly, as an American and as a Jew. He may sometime be heckled at his performances, but he readily responds. Upon being asked in an interview by the journalist Bari Weiss what his experience in Israel was like, he broke down and offered only his tears, but this answer was more eloquent than any other.

Thus I have seen, in my life, two sides of Seinfeld. Many of you are familiar with Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s writings, which describe two sides of man, what he called Adam the first and Adam the second. Adam 1 is the man of the world; Adam 2 is the man of covenantal identity. We are called to embrace both, to be part of the world while embracing with courage the covenantal claims of Jewish peoplehood. But, for Rabbi Soloveitchik, this has not been the story of the Jews in the West. He writes:

The emancipated modern Jew has been trying, for a long time, to do away with this twofold responsibility which weighs heavily upon him. The Westernized Jew maintains that it is impossible to engage in both confrontations, the universal and the covenantal, which, in his opinion, are mutually exclusive.

This, Rabbi Soloveitchik suggested, is why so many Jews, seeking to succeed in the world, have lost the courage to embrace the covenantal claims of Jewishness. And so, building on the contrast between Adam 1 and Adam 2, I’d like to offer the parallel archetypes of Seinfeld 1 and Seinfeld 2.

Seinfeld 1 gave us one of the most popular television series in American history, and I will leave it to you to judge the value of that, but Seinfeld 2 has been the one we have seen in the wake of October 7. Seinfeld 2’s most moving moment above all was captured in a clip that circulated the Internet thanks to an Orthodox Jewish Twitter account. This great assertion of Jewishness took place at the most unlikely of places: Citifield, home of the New York Mets.

A religious Jew was at the recent Mets playoff game, and saw Seinfeld, in a Mets outfit, standing in the box next to him. And this Jewish Mets fan had a brother who at the time was serving in the IDF, and who happened to be an ardent devotee of Seinfeld. He called out, “Jerry, my brother’s watching from the Gaza border. Can I get a video for him?” One would expect Seinfeld to respond by saying “Go Mets!” But instead, he turned to the camera, held up his fist, and said: “Let’s go IDF!”

Not many Jewish celebrities in America would have been willing to do that, and as I watched it I wondered which moment will be remembered as the golden moment in the American Jewish story of Jerry Seinfeld? When he achieved success in the writers’ room and made his anxieties America’s anxieties, or when he stood with the IDF, and with Jews in Israel and around the world?

We know what will be truly remembered, and we know what in the memory of the eternal Jewish people will truly endure. We know which achievements will truly matter. I first heard from Norman Podhoretz about the remarkable encounter in Jerusalem between Saul Bellow and and S.Y. Agnon, both Nobel laureates for literature. Bellow was by far more famous, but Agnon insisted that, because Hebrew was the language of an eternal people, only literature written or translated into Hebrew would survive. Here is Bellow’s account of the meeting:

This spare old man, whose face has a remarkably youthful color, received me in his house, not far from the barbed-wire entanglements that divide the city, and while we were drinking tea, he asked me if any of my books had been translated into Hebrew. If they had not been, I had better see to it immediately, because, he said, they would survive only in the Holy Tongue. His advice I assume was only half serious. This was his witty way of calling my attention to a curious situation. I cited Heinrich Heine as an example of a poet who had done rather well in German. “Ah,” said Mr. Agnon, “we have him beautifully translated into Hebrew. He is safe.”

And if this is true about Saul Bellow’s novels, then this is doubly true of Seinfeld’s sitcom. As funny as episodes of Seinfeld may have been, an artistic achievement such as this will fade into the mists of time. But we are an eternal people, with an eternal memory. Next week we will mark and mourn the besieging of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and now we are celebrating the heroism of the Maccabees. We remember our triumphs and our failures; we remember Jewish cowardice and we remember Jewish courage. And the simple poignancy of Seinfeld’s “Let’s go IDF!” reminds us that this moment has been one in which many Jews have suddenly been seized by the mysterious nature of their identity, responding with courage and conviction, standing on behalf of Israel and on behalf of the values of the West.

These acts of courage are not the same thing as achieving success in the writers’ room or in the publishing house; they are better, more enduring as a Jewish achievement, and as a contribution to the future of America. For as Churchill reminded the students at his alma mater, clarity and courage are better, greater, than living in appeasement and illusion.

In standing courageously for their people, these Jews have been joined and supported the many non-Jewish Americans who care about the Jewish state.

We need to recognize what a blessing this is. During the recent debate over an anti-Israel resolution put forward in the Senate by Bernie Sanders, I imagined students in Israel, taking a class in American Jewish history a hundred years from now, studying the events of the last few weeks. What would their reaction be? Knowing Jewish history, these Jewish Israelis would, unfortunately, not be surprised to learn that Bernie Sanders submitted this travesty to the Senate, or that Jon Ossoff voted for it. And, sadly, given our history, none will be surprised that the leaders of some of the world’s foremost democracies expressed support for arresting the prime minister of Israel for war crimes.

But these Israelis, a hundred years hence, might well wonder and marvel at a speech given right before the vote by the incoming Senate majority leader, South Dakota’s John Thune. Thune stressed that the Congress that would be sworn in on January 3, 2025, would ensure that Israel receives all the materiel it needs in its war against Hamas and Hizballah. He also insisted that the 119th Congress would seek to sanction the International Criminal Court if it did not cease targeting the Jewish state. “To our allies in Israel and to the Jewish people around the world,” he went on, “my message to you is this: reinforcements are on the way.”

Now it is safe to say that Jews are not a major constituency in South Dakota. Thune’s remarks reflect the fact many millions of non-Jewish Americans care deeply about the well-being of Israel, and of Jews around the world. In this, many of them reflect a reverence for the scriptural story of the Jewish people. As Walter Russel Mead put it, Israel’s endurance against its enemies remains, for these Americans, proof that “God exists; he drives history; he performs miracles in real time; [and that] God’s word in the Bible is true.”

Likewise, many of our fellow Americans see the American flags being desecrated at anti-Israel rallies in college quads and city streets. They know these monsters hate America as much as they hate Jews. They know that a defeat of the enemies of the Jews is a defeat of the enemies of America. And they know that victory over the enemies of the Jewish people here and overseas is a victory for America.

What all this means is that the stage is set not for darkness and despair, but for Jewish heroism in America, in alliance with so many who stand with us. We can embrace this calling in the knowledge of the miraculous nature of the Jewish story, the uniqueness of America, and the way one has inspired the other.

Recently I heard the former senator Ben Sasse give a speech in which he cited George Washington’s letter to Newport Jewry. It is not widely known that this was not the first letter that Washington wrote to American Jews. The first was sent to Savannah’s Hebrew Congregation, and its conclusion is even more incredible:

May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors planted them in the promised land—whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation—still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah.

Washington was saying, in effect, “Your story inspires our story. Your story of a providential planting in the promised land inspires our own efforts to a create a country in this land.” As Americans prepared to mark their country’s bicentennial on July 4, 1976, they woke up to learn of the incredible IDF raid on Entebbe. But this is fitting, because the miraculous story of the Jewish people has inspired the American story in many ways—the miracle of one inspiring the remarkable nature of the other. Americans, as they marked their 200th year, read news of Jews who, as Washington said, had been planted by Providence in the promised land. As we prepare to mark in 2026 the 250th anniversary of America, we should seize the opportunity to communicate to the next generation the exceptional nature of this country.

 

In light of everythingwe have seen over the past months, the lesson is clear. Don’t speak of an age of American Jewish illusions as a golden age that is gone. To paraphrase Churchill, these are sterner days to be sure, but they are clearer days, and they are days when the illusions have evaporated, when the fantasies have failed; these are days when courage truly matters. This is an age when Jewish and American heroism is possible, and we must be grateful for being called, in our several stations, to play our part.

If, utilizing the freedom this glorious country affords us, we truly stand for all that is right, if we create and strengthen Jewish and civic institutions, if we work to defeat the enemies who hate the exceptional nature of America, and therefore hate the Jewish people whose Scripture gave rise to the exceptional way in which America sees itself, if we work courageously in defense of the Jewish people, and on behalf the America that we love, then the present time, not the 1990s, will be remembered as the golden age of American Jewry. Perhaps, one may say that this will be celebrated as our finest hour.

This essay has been adapted in Mosaic magazine from a speech given on December 8, 2024 at the Jewish Leadership Conference in New York.

Hagaon R' Dovid Barkin ztz"l - Yahrtzeit 29 Kislev

 Here. 

היתר עגונה

 מספר עו"ד דוד גלס בשנת תש"ס עוררו דבריו של מרן בקשר לשואה סערה גדולה. בכל הארץ התקשורת כולה געשה ורעשה. העיתונות חגגה ושום נושא לא תפס באותם ימים את הכותרות מלבד דבריו של מרן. מול ביתו של מרן התגודדו עשרות פעילי שמאל שבאו להפגין נגד מרן. כנגדם נעמדו עשרות אלפי תלמידי מרן להגן על כבודו של מרן. רחוב הקבלן היה עמוס באנשים עד אפס מקום כולם צועקים וזועקים זה בכה וזה בכה. ביתו של מרן המה אף הוא אנשים עשרות רבנים ואישי צבור הגיעו לתמוך לעודד ולחזק לא הייתה פינה אחת שקטה בכל הבית בו עד מרחק של מאות מטרים מחדרו של מרן. אך לפתע מצאתי פינה אחת שקטה חיפשתי את מרן מצאתיו יושב לבדו בחדר ספון בין ספריו וכשראשו רכון על הדף הוא מעלה על הכתב פסק של היתר עגונה. משסיים שאלתיו לפשר הדבר כיצד הוא מרוכז בהיתר עגונה כשכל המדינה חגה סביבו. אך הוא בפשטות ענה לי יש כאן צער של אשה יהודיה עגונה מסכנה שרוצה היתר להתחתן ולהקים בית בישראל זה קודם להכל. 

Money And Girls

 בבית שני, כשמלכי יון גזרו גזרות על ישראל, ובטלו דתם, ולא הניחו אותם לעסוק בתורה ובמצוות; ופשטו ידם בממונם ובבנותיהם.... [רמב"ם הלכות חנוכה ג-א]

Part of the צרה of כלל ישראל today is that our relationship with our money and with male-female issues is often very יון.

Geulah from יון means realigning our values with those of Hashem.

ואכמ"ל. 

A Tale of Two Presidents

 

Neither Barak Obama nor Jimmy Carter is greatly beloved by American Orthodox Jewry, but, putting aside their political views, their post-presidential behavior offers some illuminating insights.

When Obama left the presidency, he remained in the Washington area, bought a million-dollar mansion, published his memoirs, traveled, lectured, gave interviews with national media, hobnobbed with the rich and famous, and improved his golf game. Just recently, he upgraded his housing needs by purchasing a $12 million estate in Martha’s Vineyard containing a mansion with seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms on spacious grounds and lovely landscaped gardens.

When Carter left the presidency, he returned to his roots and his humble home, a cottage with three bedrooms and two baths in the tiny town of Plains, Georgia. He worked on his memoirs, helped develop the Carter Library and Center in Atlanta, involved himself in Habitat for America, with whom, hammer in hand, he literally helped build houses for the poor, and continued to teach Bible every Sunday in his little church in Plains.

Two famous men, two approaches to living. Their deeds and values speak for themselves and require no commentary. Some might envy Obama’s flashy new lifestyle, and wish they had the means to emulate it; others might envy Carter’s simple, Spartan ways and wish they had the will to emulate that.

It is ironic that for a believing and practicing Orthodox Jew, the post-presidential lifestyle most worthy of emulation is that of the former president they most dislike: Jimmy Carter. Not to stretch things too far, but in some ways it is a lifestyle that in its simplicity — when contrasted with Obama’s — is faintly redolent, l’havdil, of the classic Mussar concept, mistapek b’muat, literally “being content with minimals” — a concept reflected in Avos6:6. (Menachem Begin’s austerity in contrast with Ehud Olmert’s prodigality also comes to mind, but that is for another column).

Although it is an underlying principle of the religious life and of avodas Hashem, this concept is not widely known or seriously stressed in the Orthodox community. Among the mitzvos and virtues that religious Jews hold most dear — observing Shabbos strictly, keeping kashrus and taharas hamishpachah meticulously, davening with kavanah, studying Torah regularly, giving tzedakah generously, abjuring gossip — among many other foundational mitzvos, it is fairly obvious that mistapek b’muat is not close to the top of the list. Some might not even be aware of the concept.

Why this crucial concept is so neglected in our time is puzzling. Or maybe not so puzzling. For — let us be frank — even the very religious these days have not successfully avoided the pitfalls of consumerism. Even the most Orthodox and chareidi enclaves, such as, say, Boro Park, or Golders Green, or Lakewood, or Monsey, or Bnei Brak, are not quite the poster children for making do with minimals.

Yes, poverty is a stark reality in these and other Orthodox communities, but it must be admitted that for the mainstream above the poverty line, acquisitiveness is not the exception. Just a cursory glance at the ad campaigns directed toward Orthodox Jews that feature $25,000 wrist watches, diamond-studded necklaces, high-end vacations and hotels, and luxurious goodies — not to mention shtreimels and sheitels costing well in excess of $4,000 — offers a vivid glimpse into a society for whom mistapek b’muat is not quite a household term. Some even say that we are consumed by consumerism.

At the recent passing of Rav Gershon Edelstein ztz”l, we learned again that he was an exemplary embodiment of minimal living, as were all the great Torah leaders of our time, such as Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Rav Yosef Elyashiv, Rav Kahaneman, Rav Aharon Kotler, Rav Levenstein, Rav Shach, Rav Moshe Shapira, Rav Steinman, Rav Yosef Soloveitchik zichronam livrachah, and numerous others. Even if we cannot begin to approach their level of de-emphasizing the material, it is still uplifting to know that such flesh-and-blood people lived among us and served as models for our generation.

Genuine mistapek b’muat is probably beyond the reach of most people today, and in any case, we are not required to be ascetic. Nevertheless, an attempt to strike a balance, living comfortably but not ostentatiously, would be in order. And if the lofty heights of these saintly men are far beyond our grasp, we can lower our sights onto more ordinary public figures — such as some past presidents — and, if we look carefully, derive useful lessons even from them.

R' Feldman 

נועם אברהם בן עטרה שלומית

 בתוך שח"י!!!

בימי מתיתיהו בן יוחנן כהן גדול

 Who was the Kohen Gadol - Matisyahu or Yochanan?

Subtle Enemies Of Torah Values

People actively promote anti-Torah agendas on social media in very subversive, subtle and disingenuous ways time and time again but when attacked present themselves as innocent, unjustly pursued, pious, peace loving champions of Torah values filled with love and goodness. 

Being purposely vague. 

Tshuvos R' Akiva Eiger 1-68: Contradictory Commands From Parents #2

 HERE!!:-)!!!

Kamala's Husband's Version Of Chanukah

 

 

This was later deleted. 

One message of Chanukah which he missed is that one shouldn't intermarry. 

The Unique Nature Of Neis Chanukah And It's Ramifications #8

HERE!!!:-)!!!

Tshuvos R' Akiva Eiger 1-68: Contradictory Commands From Parents

 HERE!!!:-)!

Tshuvos Eretz Tzvi 1-5 #6: Machine Made Tzitzis

 HERE!!!:-)!!

העדה החרדית והרב עובדיה זצ"ל

את הסיפור הבא שמעתי מפיו של בעל המעשה החפץ בעילום שמו: התגוררתי בשכנותו של הגאון רבי אברהם דוד הלוי הורוויץ זצ"ל, חבר בבד"צ העדה החרדית ומחבר שו"ת קנין תורה בשכונת בר אילן בירושלים. באחד מימי חול המועד סוכות הגיעו פועלים של העירייה והחלו סוללים כביש חדש מתחת לביתינו. הרב זצ"ל בקנאתו לקדושת החג ירד למטה עם בגדי החג בגילו המתבגר ומצבו הרפואי הירוד ונשכב על הכביש למען לא יוכלו הפועלים לחלל את קדושת החג. 

החלה שם מהומה גדולה עד שמאות סקרנים ומוחים הגיעו למקום. אשתו הרבנית ע"ה באה אלי לבית וביקשה שארד לדבר עם בעלה הרב שיחוס על גופו ונפשו ויעלה לבית. עניתי לה שזה לא שייך עקב הסערה המתחוללת כעת למטה. אך מיד כשנסתיים הבלגן והרב שב לביתו הגעתי אליו והצעתי את פתרוני למען יוכל הרב לישב בשלוה בשאר ימי החג, בהם יבואו הפועלים לעבוד בצו העירייה. נלך לשאול את מרן, אולי יש איזה מתירים ונסמוך עליהם גם אם לא לעשות מעשה לפחות שלא נצטרך למחות. 

ענה לי הרב זה פתרון טוב. רק מרן יכול לתת לנו שיטות לסמוך עליהם, אך אני חושש ללכת אליו לשאול אותו כי אם ידעו הסובבים אותי בעדה החרדית שאני שואל אותו אוי ואבוי לי. עניתי לו אני אלך. ביקש ממני "רק אל תספר לו בעבור מי אתה שואל". 

כשהגעתי למרן ושאלתי, תכף שאל בעבור מי אני שואל. משעניתי לו שהוא חושש שידעו אמר לי "אל תדאג, אני לא אגלה". משספרתי לו צחק ואחז בידי ולקחני אל שולחנו הטהור התכופף ופתח מגירה עמוסה דפים בכתב יד ואמר לי "אתה רואה זו המגירה של רבני העדה החרדית. כולם שואלים אותי ואני לא מראה את זה לאף אחד כי הם מפחדים מכל מיני שוטים רשעים וגסי רוח שהם מוקפים בהם". מיד מסר מרן בידי תשובה בעל פה מפני שהיה זה חול המועד נתן לי רשימה של 15 אחרונים בדעת הרא"ש שמתירים את הדבר כולל המקורות. כשהגעתי לביתו של הרב הורוויץ נשארו בזכרוני רק שמות של 7 פוסקים ללא המקורות אך זה הספיק לרב הורוויץ בכדי לעצור את המחאה. 

התוצאה של התפילה

"פעם ישבו אצל כמה משגיחים ושוחחו עמו.

בתוך הדברים שאלם רבינו:

מה לדעתם הדבר הראשון שצריך לעשות מיד בסיום התפילה?

אחד אמר ללמוד משניות.

השני הציע ללמוד הלכה.

אולם רבינו השיב:

שהדבר שצריך לעשות הוא לומר 'בוקר טוב' לסובבים.

שכן התוצאה הראשונה של תפילה צריכה להיות בין אדם לחברו!

ואכן הג"ר שלמה ברעוודא סיפר, שאף בשנותיו האחרונות ממש, כשהיו מביאים אותו לישיבה עם כסא גלגלים, ואך בקושי יכול היה לנוע,

ביקש ממלוויו מיד לאחר התפילה שיקחוהו לכמה מהמתפללים שלא היו בסביבתו הקרובה לברכם ב'בוקר טוב'".

Jimmy Carter's Legacy

 From a Pro-Arab website:

Former US president Jimmy Carter, who passed away on Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia, was a true friend of Palestine. Despite a decidedly checkered presidency on issues ranging from human rights abroad to austerity at home, he will be remembered as one of the first and most distinguished international observers to foresee Israel’s apartheid system in Palestine.

In 2006, Carter published Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in which he equated Israel’s occupation in the West Bank to the apartheid system of South Africa. Carter defined apartheid as the “forced separation of two peoples in the same territory with one of the groups dominating or controlling the other.” What follows, he concluded, is that Israel was creating a “system of apartheid” where a minority of Israeli settlers were ruling over a Palestinian majority who are deprived of basic human and civil rights.

Carter went further. In an interview with MSNBC, he called Israel’s rule in the West Bank “a horrendous example of apartheid” and “one of the worst examples of human right deprivations that I know.” In fact, Carter went on to warn that Israel’s apartheid system was even worse than South Africa. As he later told CBS: “When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200 or so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa.”

----

From the JP:

Among many other time-tested attributes, the Jewish people have a long memory. Aid us in the manner of the ancient Persian King Cyrus, and we will remember you forever fondly. Cross us as Seleucid King Antiochus IV did, and we will curse you every Hanukkah.

Our talent for remembering is particularly salient today after the death, at age of 100, of former president Jimmy Carter.

While the rest of the world is now hailing him as a statesman who, after his failed one-term presidency, rose to become an unstinting peacemaker, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a paragon of now non-existent virtues, many Jews will have a far more ambivalent reaction.

The man whose legacy could have been cherished by future Jewish generations, with streets in Jerusalem named for him and communities created in his honor, will be at best forgotten, if not reviled. That is the tragedy of Jimmy Carter, a leader who could have gone down in Jewish history as a second Truman, will be recalled, if at all, as another Bernie Sanders.

The tragedy is compounded by the fact that the Jewish state owes Carter an immense historical debt. In an anomalous way, his insistence on including the Soviets in the Middle East peace process immediately after Egypt succeeded in evicting them convinced president Anwar Sadat of the need to act swiftly and independently of the United States.

The result came in November 1977, with Sadat’s groundbreaking visit to Israel. Carter, to his credit, leaped into the diplomatic breach, and devoted 13 presidential days to forging the Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel. Though never close to yielding a warm peace, that treaty has since withstood tectonic pressures and relieved Israel of the threat of large-scale Arab armies.

But, sadly, that achievement proved to be a one-off. The self-proclaimed champion of human rights, Carter was comfortable with Middle Eastern dictators like Sadat, Hafez al-Assad, and the shah of Iran, but endlessly critical of Israel’s democratically elected leaders, beginning with Menachem Begin.

No sooner were the Camp David Accords signed in 1979 than Carter embarked on a 40-year smear campaign against Israel.

In my meeting with him several years after, Carter insisted that Israel was violating UN Resolution 242 by not withdrawing to the pre-Six Day War boundaries and failing to create a Palestinian state.

My assurances that the resolution specifically voided the return to the indefensible 1967 borders and made no mention of the Palestinians, much less of a state, were righteously rejected.

Dark obsession with Israel

From a mere misreading of 242, Carter descended into a dark obsession with Israel, casting it as the source of all Middle Eastern instability and a world-leading violator of human rights. His 2004 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, though based on half-truths and outright lies, effectively legitimized Israel’s delegitimization.

Yet, while reviewing the book for the Wall Street Journal, what shocked me so profoundly was Carter’s not-so-subtle antisemitism. He lambastes secular Israelis for abandoning Jewish law and condemns National-Religious Jews for fulfilling it. Whether Right or Left, Jews can do no right by Jimmy Carter. The one-time peanut farmer from Georgia who spent a lifetime repenting for his earlier racism against Blacks, conveniently forgot that the KKK also murdered Jews.

CARTER WASN’T satisfied with merely libeling Israel. His final decades were devoted to whitewashing Hamas and presenting it as an organization opposed to terror and dedicated to peace.

That was the message he conveyed on the op-ed pages of The New York Times and in public appearances worldwide. While shunning meetings with Israeli leaders, he embraced Khaled Mashaal, Ismail Haniyeh, and other terror chiefs.

He supported the Goldstone Report that condemned Israel for committing war crimes during the 2008-09 conflict with Gaza and accused Israel of systematically starving Gaza’s civilian population. The terrorists’ attempts to bore under Israel’s border were, in Carter’s telling, “defensive tunnel[s] being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.”

Sanctimonious and prideful, Carter was never popular among his successors, Democratic and Republican alike, who generally shunned him. A story told me by an Israeli official who participated in the Camp David talks summed up the reasons for this aversion.

Visiting Israel in the ’80s, well after Begin’s resignation and physical decline, Carter asked this official to arrange a phone call. The conversation lasted a few minutes, at most, the ex-official told me, during which Carter talked endlessly and Begin said nothing.

That did not prevent Carter from immediately going to the press and reporting on how he and Begin discussed the peace process and other Middle East affairs. “It was a total lie,” the official told me. “A fiction.”

A tarnished legacy

That, unfortunately, is how many Israelis will remember Jimmy Carter, a person for whom the truth, especially about Israel, was easily discounted. A person who expressed not the slightest gratitude for the Israeli medical technology that successfully treated his melanoma or for the Israeli prime minister who assured him, inaccurately, “that you’ve inscribed your name forever in the history of... the people of Israel.”

Not a Cyrus nor a Truman, in the end, Jimmy Carter, but a Nebuchadnezzar who befriended Haman.

----------

Jimmy Carter’s death has unleashed a predictable flood of tributes. From his humanitarian work to his “commitment to peace,” the accolades are rolling in. But let’s not mince words: for anyone who cares about Israel and the future of the Jewish people, Jimmy Carter’s legacy is not worthy of praise. It is a stain—a decades-long campaign to undermine the Jewish state and empower its enemies. And yet, some Jewish organizations, most notably the American Jewish Committee (AJC), cannot resist their compulsion to whitewash Carter’s record.

In their official statement on Carter’s passing, the AJC declared, “Jimmy Carter’s decades-long commitment to advancing peace earned him a place on the world stage as a respected statesman and humanitarian. We will always be grateful for his role in facilitating the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.” That’s it? No mention of his anti-Israel rhetoric, his toxic “apartheid” slander, or his cozying up to Hamas leaders who have Jewish blood on their hands? The AJC’s statement is not just tone-deaf; it’s a betrayal.

Carter’s record on Israel is infamous. His 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, accused Israel of imposing apartheid on Palestinians—a libel that delegitimizes the Jewish state and fuels the very antisemitism that Jewish organizations claim to oppose. Carter’s meetings with Hamas, an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews worldwide, were not about “peace.” They were about legitimizing terror.

Jewish organizations like the AJC should have been leading the charge to call Carter out. Instead, they fell over themselves to avoid offending the memory of a man who spent decades undermining Israel’s existence. The AJC’s spinelessness is not unique; it exemplifies the broader failure of establishment Jewish organizations to stand up for Jewish honor and Jewish pride.

This pattern is nothing new. From their willingness to platform antisemites like Ilhan Omar to their obsessive need to “balance” criticism of Israel with validation of its detractors, many mainstream Jewish organizations have prioritized appeasement over advocacy. They crave approval from the very forces that despise us, mistaking subservience for diplomacy. And in doing so, they undermine the strength, dignity, and security of the Jewish people.

October 7th should have been a wake-up call. The massacre of innocent Israelis by Hamas terrorists exposed the true stakes of Jewish survival and the utter moral bankruptcy of the “Land for Peace” delusion. Yet even in the wake of this atrocity, many Jewish leaders remain stuck in the same failed paradigms, unwilling to defend the Jewish people with the courage and conviction that the moment demands.

Dad Tells Kids About Good Old Days When You Didn't Need To Download Firmware Updates For Toy Trains

MILWAUKEE, WI — Local dad Greg Evans took a trip down memory lane earlier this morning when he had to tell his kids about the good old days when you didn't have to download firmware updates for toy trains.

Evans' reminiscences were initially sparked when his son Chris came to ask him how to update the firmware on the train set that he'd gotten for Christmas, as it was already out of date.

"Son, let me tell you about when Dad was a kid, okay?" Evans sighed. "Back in the good old days, we didn't have to download firmware updates for the toys we got for Christmas every two days. It was a golden age of societal joy, when the worst thing that could happen to you was the dreaded ‘Batteries Not Included.' We have strayed so far."

Evans broke off, as his son's attention had started wandering shortly after the 15-second mark in his soliloquy. Sources say that he bit his lip to hold back the rising tide of memories about how neither the Game Boy Advance nor the SNES he grew up on had ever needed firmware updates.

At publishing time, Evans had been plunged into another flood of nostalgia after his daughter Gracie came to him to ask him to install the routine software update on her new Hello Kitty teapot set.

Jimmy Carter To Skip Trump Inauguration

U.S. — In yet another blow to President-elect Trump, aides have announced that former President Jimmy Carter will also be skipping Trump's inauguration.

Carter joins the growing list of several prominent Democrats who will not be attending Trump's inauguration, a sign of the deep divisions still plaguing the country.

"We are saddened to learn that President Carter will also be skipping the inauguration," said an aide for Trump. "While we are sure Carter has his reasons, Trump looked forward to welcoming every leader to this new chapter. We continue to hope that this next year will be one of healing divisions and coming together."

At publishing time, Biden had announced that he too was dead and would not be attending the inauguration.

Reframing

 The phrase “Jewish thinker” may mean two very different things. It may mean a thinker who just happens to be Jewish by birth or descent – a Jewish physicist, for example – or it may refer to someone who has contributed specifically to Jewish thought: like Judah Halevi or Maimonides.

The interesting question is: is there a third kind of Jewish thinker, one who contributes to the universe of knowledge, but does so in a recognizably Jewish way? The answer to this is never straightforward, yet we instinctively feel that there is such a thing. To give an analogy: there is often something recognizably Jewish about a certain kind of humor. Ruth Wisse has interesting things to say about it in her book, No Joke.[1] So does Peter Berger in his Redeeming Laughter.[2] Humor is universal, but it speaks in different accents in different cultures.

I believe that something similar applies to psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. So many of the early practitioners of psychoanalysis, with the marked exception of Jung, were Jewish that it became known in Nazi Germany as the “Jewish science.” I have argued to the contrary, that by taking the Greek myth of Oedipus as one of his key models, Freud developed a tragic view of the human condition that is more Hellenistic than Jewish.[3]

By contrast, three of the most significant post-war psychotherapists were not merely Jewish by birth but profoundly Jewish in their approach to the human soul. Viktor Frankl, a survivor of Auschwitz, developed on the basis of his experiences there an approach he called Logotherapy, based on “man’s search for meaning.”[4] Though the Nazis took away almost every vestige of humanity from those they consigned to the death factories, Frankl argued that there was one thing they could never take away from their prisoners: the freedom to decide how to respond.

Aaron T. Beck was one of the founders of what is widely regarded as the most effective forms of psychotherapy: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.[5] Among patients suffering from depression, he found that their feelings were often linked to highly negative thoughts about themselves, the world and the future. By getting them to think more realistically, he found that their mood tended to improve.

Martin Seligman is the founder of Positive Psychology, which aims not just to treat depression but actively to promote what he calls “authentic happiness” and “learned optimism.”[6] Depression, Seligman argued, is often linked to pessimism, which comes from interpreting events in a particular kind of way that he calls “learned helplessness”.

Pessimists tend to see misfortune as permanent (“It’s always like this”), personal (“It’s my fault”) and pervasive (“I always get things wrong”). This leaves them feeling that the bad they suffer is inevitable and beyond their control. Optimists look at things differently. For them, negative events are temporary, the result of outside factors, and exceptions rather than the rule. So, within limits,[7] you can unlearn pessimism, and the result is greater happiness, health and success.

What links all three thinkers is their belief that (1) there is always more than one possible interpretation of what happens to us, (2) we can choose between different interpretations and (3) the way we think shapes the way we feel. This gives all three a marked resemblance to a particular kind of Jewish thought, namely Chabad Chassidus, as developed by the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady (1745-1812). The word Chabad stands for the initial letters of the three intellectual virtues, chochmah, binah and da’at, “wisdom, understanding and knowledge,” which influence the more emotional attributes of chessed, gevurah and tiferes, “kindness, self-restraint and beauty or emotional balance.” Unlike the other Chassidic movements, which emphasized the emotional life, Chabad Chassidism focused on the power of the intellect to shape emotion. It was, in its way, an anticipation of cognitive behavioral therapy.

Its origins, however, lie far earlier. Last week I argued that Joseph was the first economist. This week I want to suggest that he was the first cognitive therapist. He was the first to understand the concept of reframing, that is, seeing the negative events of his life in a new way, thereby liberating himself from depression and learned helplessness.

The moment at which he does so comes when, moved by Judah’s passionate plea to let Benjamin return home to their father Jacob, he finally reveals himself to his brothers:

“I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.  For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.”

Note what Joseph is doing here. He is reframing events so that the brothers will not have to live under an unbearable burden of guilt for having sold Joseph as a slave and deceived their father, causing him years of undiminished grief. But he is only able to do so for them because he has already done so for himself. When it happened, we cannot be sure. Was Joseph aware, all along, that the many blows of misfortune he suffered were all part of a divine plan, or did he only realise this when he was taken from prison to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, and then made Viceroy of Egypt?

The text is silent on this point, but it is suggestive. More than any other character in the Torah, Joseph attributes all his achievements to God. This allows him to do what, in secular terms, Frankl, Beck and Seligman would all have advised him to do if he had been one of their patients: think of a mission he was being called on to fulfill (Frankl), reinterpret misfortune as possibility (Beck) and see the positive elements of his situation (Seligman). Not only was Joseph freed from a physical prison; he freed himself from an emotional prison, namely resentment toward his brothers. He now saw his life not in terms of a family drama of sibling rivalry, but as part of a larger movement of history as shaped by Divine Providence.

That is what makes me think that the work of Frankl, Beck and Seligman is Jewish in a way that Freudian psychoanalysis is not. At the heart of Judaism is the idea of human freedom. We are not prisoners of events but active shapers of them. To be sure, we may be influenced by unconscious drives, as Freud thought, but we can rise above them by “habits of the heart” that hone and refine our personality.

Joseph’s life shows that we can defeat tragedy by our ability to see our life not just as a sequence of unfair events inflicted on us by others, but also as a series of divinely intended moves, each of which brings us closer to a situation in which we can do what God wants us to do.

We can’t all be Joseph, but thanks to R. Shneur Zalman of Liady in spiritual terms, and to Frankl, Beck and Seligman in secular ones, we can learn what it is to change the way we feel by changing the way we think, and the best way of doing so is to ask, “What does this bad experience enable me to do that I could not have done otherwise?” That can be life-transforming.

[1] Ruth Wisse, No Joke: Making Jewish Humor, Princeton University Press, 2013.

[2] Peter Berger, Redeeming Laughter: the comic dimension of human experience, Boston, de Gruyter, 2014.

[3] There were undeniably Jewish elements in Freud’s work, most notably the fact that though he himself called psychoanalysis the “speaking cure,” it is in fact the “listening cure,” and listening is a key feature of Jewish spirituality.

[4] Frankl wrote many books, but the most famous is Man’s Search for Meaning, one of the most influential works of the 20th century.

[5] See Aaron T. Beck, Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders, Penguin, 1989. See also his important Prisoners of Hate: the cognitive basis of anger, hostility and violence, HarperCollins, 1999.

[6] Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness, Free Press, 2002; Learned Optimism, Basic Books, 2008.

[7] Seligman admits that there are things about us that we can’t change, but there is much about us that we can. See Martin Seligman, What you can change and what you can't, London, Nicolas Brealey, 2007.

Taking Responsibility

I was once present when the great historian of Islam, Bernard Lewis, was asked to predict the course of events in the Middle East. He replied, “I’m a historian, so I only make predictions about the past. What is more, I am a retired historian, so even my past is passé.” Predictions are impossible in the affairs of living, breathing human beings because we are free and there is no way of knowing in advance how an individual will react to the great challenges of their life.

If one thing has seemed clear throughout the last third of Genesis, it is that Joseph will emerge as the archetypal leader. He is the central character of the story, and his dreams and the shifting circumstances of his fate all point in that direction. Least likely as a candidate for leadership is Judah, the man who proposed selling Joseph as a slave (Gen. 37:26-27), whom we next see separated from his brothers, living among the Canaanites, intermarried with them, losing two of his sons because of sin, and having sexual relations with a woman he takes to be a prostitute. The chapter in which this is described begins with the phrase, “At that time Judah went down from among his brothers” (Gen. 38:1). The commentators take this to indicate Judah's moral decline. At this point in the story, we may have no doubt who will lead and who will follow.

Yet history turned out otherwise. Joseph’s descendants, the tribes of Ephraim and Menashe, disappeared from the pages of history after the Assyrian conquest in 722 BCE, while Judah’s descendants, starting with David, became kings. The tribe of Judah survived the Babylonian conquest, and it is Judah whose name we bear as a people. We are Yehudim, “Jews.” This week’s parsha of Vayigash explains why.

Already in last week’s parsha we began to see Judah’s leadership qualities. The family had reached deadlock. They desperately needed food, but they knew that the Egyptian viceroy had insisted that they bring their brother Benjamin with them, and Jacob refused to let this happen. His beloved wife Rachel’s first son (Joseph) was already lost to him, and he was not about to let the other, Benjamin, be taken on a hazardous journey. Reuben, in keeping with his unstable character, made an absurd suggestion: “Kill my two sons if I do not bring Benjamin back safely.” (Gen. 42:37) In the end it was Judah, with his quiet authority – “I myself will guarantee his safety; you can hold me personally responsible for him” (Gen. 43:9) – who persuaded Jacob to let Benjamin go with them.

Now, as the brothers attempt to leave Egypt, and return home, the nightmare scenario has unfolded. Benjamin has been found with the viceroy’s silver cup in his possession. The official delivers his verdict. Benjamin is to be held as a slave. The other brothers can go free. This is the moment when Judah steps forward and makes a speech that changes history. He speaks eloquently about their father’s grief at the loss of one of Rachel’s sons. If he loses the other, he will die of grief. I, says Judah, personally guaranteed his safe return. He concludes:

“Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that it would bring my father.”

Gen. 44:33-34

No sooner has he said these words than Joseph, overcome with emotion, reveals his identity and the whole elaborate drama reaches closure. What is happening here and how does it have a bearing on leadership?

The Sages articulated a principle: “Where penitents stand even the perfectly righteous cannot stand.” (Brachot 34b) The Talmud brings a prooftext from Isaiah: “Peace, peace, to those far and near” (Is. 57:19) placing the far (the penitent sinner) before the near (the perfectly righteous). However, almost certainly the real source is here in the story of Joseph and Judah. Joseph is known to tradition as ha-tzaddik, the righteous one.[1] Judah, as we will see, is a penitent. Joseph became “second to the king.” Judah, however, became the ancestor of kings. Hence, where penitents stand even the perfectly righteous cannot stand.

Judah is the first person in the Torah to achieve perfect repentance (teshuvah gemurah), defined by the Sages as when you find yourself in a situation where it is likely you will be tempted to repeat an earlier sin, but you are able to resist because you are now a changed person.[2]

Many years before Judah was responsible for Joseph being sold as a slave:

Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed.

Gen. 37:26-27

Now, faced with the similar prospect of leaving Benjamin as a slave, he has a very different response. He says, “Let me stay as a slave and let my brother go free.” (Gen. 44:33) That is perfect repentance, and it is what prompts Joseph to reveal his identity and forgive his brothers.

The Torah had already hinted at the change in Judah’s character in an earlier chapter. Having accused his daughter-in-law Tamar of becoming pregnant by a forbidden sexual relationship, he is confronted by her with evidence that he himself is the father of the child, and his response is to immediately declare: “She is more righteous than I” (Gen. 38:26). This is the first time in the Torah we see a character admit that he is wrong. If Judah was the first penitent, it was Tamar – mother of Perez from whom King David was descended – who was ultimately responsible.

Perhaps Judah’s future was already implicit in his name, for though the verb le-hodot from which it is derived means “to thank” (Leah called her fourth son Judah saying, “This time I will thank the Lord,” Gen. 29:35), it is also related to the verb le-hitvadot, which means “to admit or “to confess” - and confession is, according to the Rambam, the core of the command to repent.

Leaders make mistakes. That is an occupational hazard of the role. Managers follow the rules, but leaders find themselves in situations for which there are no rules. Do you declare a war in which people will die, or do you refrain from doing so at the risk of letting your enemy grow stronger with the result that more will die later? That was the dilemma faced by Chamberlain in 1939, and it was only some time later that it became clear that he was wrong and Churchill right.

But leaders are also human, and their mistakes often have nothing to do with leadership and everything to do with human weakness and temptation. The sexual misconduct of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and many other leaders has undoubtably been less than perfect. Does this affect our judgment of them as leaders or not? Judaism suggests it should. The prophet Nathan was unsparing of King David for consorting with another man’s wife. But Judaism also takes note of what happens next.

What matters, suggests the Torah, is that you repent – you recognize and admit your wrongdoings, and you change as a result. As Rav Soloveitchik pointed out, both Saul and David, Israel’s first two kings, sinned. Both were reprimanded by a Prophet. Both said chattati, “I have sinned”.[3] But their fates were radically different. Saul lost the throne, David did not. The reason, said the Rav, was that David confessed immediately. Saul prevaricated and made excuses before admitting his sin.[4]

The stories of Judah, and of his descendant David, tell us that what marks a leader is not necessarily perfect righteousness. It is the ability to admit mistakes, to learn from them and grow from them. The Judah we see at the beginning of the story is not the man we see at the end, just as the Moses we see at the Burning Bush – stammering, hesitant – is not the mighty hero we see at the end, “his sight undimmed, his natural energy unabated.”

A leader is one who, though they may stumble and fall, arises more honest, humble and courageous than they were before.

[1] See Tanchuma (Buber), Noach, 4, s.v. eleh, on the basis of Amos 2:6, “They sold the righteous for silver.”

[2] Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 2:1.

[3] I Sam. 15:24 and II Sam. 12:13.

[4] Joseph Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek: Listen – My Beloved Knocks (Jersey City, N.J.: Ktav, 2006), 26.

Latkes

 When I hear "Latkes" it makes me miss Andy Kaufman ע"ה. 

Chilul Hashem

For all of those frum looking people who steal and make headlines: For חילול השם there is no Teshuva in Olam Ha-zeh. In that sense - it is the worst of all aveiros.   

ד"א (דברים ו) ואהבת את ה' אלקיך שאתה תהא מאהב שם שמים על הבריות שתהא יודע דברי תורה ותהא קורא ושונה בדברי תורה ותהא משאך ומתנך עם בני אדם באמונה כדי שיהיו הבריות הרואים אותך יאמרו אשרי פלוני שלמד תורה כמה נאים מעשים שלו כמה יפים דרכיו אוי לו למי שלא למד תורה העבודה שאנחנו נלמוד גם כן תורה ונלמד לבנינו תורה ונמצא שם שמים מתקדש על ידו ועליו הכתוב אומר (ישעיה מט) ויאמר לי עבדי אתה ישראל אשר בך אתפאר. אבל בזמן שאדם קורא ושונה בדברי תורה ואין משאו ומתנו בנחת עם הבריות ועסקו אינו באמונה עם הבריות הן הן אומרים עליו ראו איש פלוני שלמד תורה כמה רעים מעשיו כמה מכוערים דרכיו העבודה שלא נלמוד תורה ולא נלמד את בנינו תורה ונמצא שם שמים מתחלל על ידו ועליו הכתוב אומר (יחזקאל לו) ויחללו את שם קדשי באמור להם עם ה' אלה ומארצו יצאו ולא נתנה התורה אלא על מנת לקדש שמו הגדול. מכאן אמרו ירחיק אדם את עצמו מן הגזל בין מן הישראל בין מן העכו"ם ולא עוד אלא משום שכל הגונב מן העכו"ם לסוף הוא גונב מן הישראל ואם הוא נשבע לעכו"ם לסוף הוא נשבע לישראל ואם הוא מכחש לעכו"ם לסוף הוא מכחש לישראל ואם הוא שופך דמים לעכו"ם לסוף הוא שופך דמים לישראל ולא נתנה התורה אלא לקדש שמו הגדול שנאמר (ישעיה סו) ושמתי בהם אות ושלחתי מהם פליטים מהו אומר בסוף הענין והגידו את כבודי בגוים.

[תד"א כ"ח]

את מי לאהוב?

 מתוך האהבה כיצד אלא כשם שהקב"ה אוהב את ישראל ואוהב את הת"ח ביותר שנאמר (דברים ז) לא מרבכם מכל העמים חשק ה' בכם ויבחר בכם וגו' כי מאהבת ה' אתכם ונאמר (מלאכי א) אהבתי אתכם אמר ה' וגו'. כך יהא אדם אוהב את ישראל ויהא אוהב את הת"ח ביותר.

תד"א כ"ח

Be Real

 ויגש אליו יהודה ויאמר בי אדני ידבר נא עבדך דבר באזני אדני (מד,יח)

The Parshah begins with Yehuda bringing his case to Yosef. But what exactly was he saying new? He seems to be merely repeating the story that he and Yosef already knew and therefore what caused Yosef to now open up to the brothers?

One thing that Yehuda did add was that he made himself an ערב as the Pasuk says כי עבדך ערב את הנער מעם אבי אם לא אביאנו אליך (מד,לב). Yehuda calls Binyamin, his father’s בן זקנים, meaning because his brother died, now Binyamin was his father’s בן זקנים. Yosef once was his father’s בן זקנים who his father loved more than the other brothers. Originally when Yosef was the בן זקנים it was ויקנאו בו אחיו and they hated him because of that. But now, Yosef sees that they actually care about their father’s relationship with the בן זקנים because Yehuda is willing to give himself up in order to prevent his father from losing the בן זקנים. When Yehuda added this point in the beginning of Vayigash, Yosef saw that they corrected this חטא that not only were they not hating the בן זקנים but they were putting themselves out for the בן זקנים and that’s why he opened up to them.

But what can really be asked is that when Yehuda is seemingly just repeating everything that happened in Parshas Mikeitz, he adds things that weren’t said and didn’t happen. The things Yehuda says in the beginning of Parshas Vayigash don’t appear in Parshas Miketz. For example Yehuda says that Yosef asked them היש לכם אב או אח but Yosef never asked the brothers such a thing rather they suggested that information on their own without being prompted by Yosef. Yehuda also adds הורדהו אלי ואשימה עיני עליו and לא יוכל הנער לעזב את אביו ועזב את אביו ומת even though these things weren’t actually said in Parshas Miketz. So what exactly going on that Yehuda is now adding all these things as if they were said. Also what does it mean ויגש אליו יהודה if the last two Psukim of Parshas Miketz ends with Yehuda standing and speaking in front of Yosef?

Maybe this could be explained with the שפת אמת תרלו who says that because the Pasuk is written ויגש אליו יהודה and not ויגש יהודה אליו, there is room for explanation as to who Yehuda was approaching. It could be understood that Yehuda was approaching himself, which is the indication of אליו. The Vayigash of Yehuda was him approaching himself. Sometimes, people, especially when they are having an argument, get preoccupied with the factual details and the objective truth. This makes it difficult for people to see eye to eye because objective reality is actually interpreted in a subjective manner and each has their own narrative. When Yehuda is approaching himself, he is letting go of the objective facts and he is being in touch with himself and presenting how what happened was experienced by him. In such a context, even things that weren’t clearly stated like Yosef asking היש לכם אב או אח, nonetheless they felt that question he was begging for. So Yehuda is presenting the story from his place and that is the ויגש אליו יהודה that he is in touch with his vulnerable self and he was saying over the story as was experienced by him.

When a person exposes his vulnerability and his real self, it doesn’t allow for the other person to remain indifferent and distant. Therefore, Yosef also reveals himself because by Yehuda telling over how he experienced it and not the objective reality, such a thing brings people closer. When one presents his experience and himself and disregards the facts, then the other person can present his experience and open up. When one opens up, the other opens up.

R' Y.W. 

Teach Me

There is a quiet unassuming Rosh Kollel in my neighborhood. He was recently "קונה" me as his chossid [even though he is not Chasidish]. Before Ma'ariv one night [when someone was instructing me how to daven] I mentioned that I try as Shaliach Tzibbur [3 times a day being an aveil this year] my best to please the Tzibbur but I always "succeed at failing" ["אני תמיד מצליח להיכשל"]. 

After davening he quietly approached me with his children in tow [almost every time I see him it seems that he is with his children - they are very, very good boys and are very attached to their father] and complimented my tefillah. I thanked him and sensing that I didn't think he really meant it he assured me that he REALLY enjoyed my tefillah. 

Then I asked him if he knows a Zohar. "No", he said. "Teach me".

I told him that the Zohar says in Parshas Metzora that just as Hashem will bring judgment upon people for all of their negative speech, he will also bring judgment upon people for every time they could have said something positive but refrained from doing so. And so I appreciate your kind words. 

We parted ways. 

The next morning after Shachris he approached me and thanked me for teaching him the Zohar. 

In my life, 53 years, I recall exactly zero times that someone asked me to "teach" him. I hear that as often as I here "I want to grow. Please give me mussar. In what areas do you think I can improve and how?" [I have been thanked a number of times for teaching people. Rare but it has happened. Fortunately, there are many reasons I aspire to teach Torah. One of them is NOT to receive thanks or positive acclaim]. People have egos and when one says "teach me" it elevates the other person and diminishes you. I have had the experience countless times that people have taught me or tried to teach me - unasked. Sometimes it is assuming that I don't know a Halacha and they do, so they have to set me straight. [At times they are right and at times they are wrong and just don't know the Halacha]. 

This Talmid Chochom asked me to teach him and then thanked me for doing so, admitting in essence that there is something I know that he doesn't. 

He is officially "MY MAN". 

Humility is the best of traits.

Mussar Haskel: 

1] Be humble and elevate others at your expense. It is free but with great dividends.

2] הַחֲזֵק בַּמּוּסָר אַל תֶּרֶף נִצְּרֶהָ כִּי הִיא חַיֶּיךָ.

3] איזהו חכם? הלומד מכל אדם!!!

 

 

 

מעוז צור

 ראשית פותח הפייטן בתפילה להקב"ה שיבנה לנו את בית המקדש

מעוז צור ישועתי – השם שהוא צורי, בו מעוזי ומבטחי והוא בודאי יושיעני.

לך נאה לשבח – רק אותך נאה לשבח. ואני מבקש ומתחנן אליך.

תכון בית תפלתי – תבנה על מכונו את בית תפילתי דהיינו את בית המקדש.

ושם תודה נזבח – ושם נקריב לפניך קורבן תודה על הניסים ועל פדות נפשנו.

לעת תכין מטבח – כשיבוא העת שהקב"ה יעשה טבח מ…

מצר המנבח – מכל שונאינו המנבחים עלינו ככלבים.

אז אגמור בשיר מזמור – אז אפתח פי ואגמור לפניך שירי מזמור.

חנוכת המזבח – על חנוכת המזבח.

בבית זה ביטא הפייטן את הגלות המרה שגלו אבותינו במצרים עד שהקב"ה גאלם משם ונקם מהמצרים

רעות שבעה נפשי – נפשי שבעה כבר הרבה רעות.

ביגון כוחי כלה – ובצער רב (יגון) כלו שם כוחותינו.

חיי מררו בקושי – המצרים מררו את חיי בכל עבודה קשה.

בשעבוד מלכות עגלה – מלכות מצרים המשולה לעגלה.

ובידו הגדולה – השם שגדלה ידו להושיע, הוא-

הוציא את הסגולה – הוציא מארץ מצרים את ישראל הנקראים עם סגולה.

חיל פרעה וכל זרעו – כל חילותיו של פרעה הרשע שרדף את בנ"י וכל כוחו.

ירדו כאבן במצולה – טבעו בים סוף כמו שנאמר "תהמות יכסיומו ירדו במצלות כמו אבן".

בבית זה ביטא הפייטן את הגלות השניה של ישראל אחר חורבן בית המקדש הראשון

 דביר קדשו הביאני – אחר גאולת מצרים שהקב"ה הביאני לביהמ"ק הנקרא דביר.

וגם שם לא שקטתי – גם שם אחר שבאתי אל המנוחה ואל הנחלה לא שקטה נפשי לאורך זמן.

ובא נוגש והגלני – מפני שבא הנוגש דהיינו נבוכדנצר מלך בבל והגלה אותי לבבל.

כי זרים עבדתי – הגלות הזאת באה עלי כי עבדתי עבודה זרה.

ויין רעל מסכתי – ועל ידי מעשי אלה גרמתי לי שאמזוג לעצמי יין עם רעל.

כמעט שעברתי – ובחורבן זה כמעט שם ישראל נעלם ועבר מן העולם.

קץ בבל זרובבל – ולקץ שנות גלות בבל עליתי משם ע"י זרובבל שהוא היה ראש העולם.

לקץ שבעים נושעתי – והישועה באה לאחר קץ שבעים שנות גלות.

בבית זה מבטא הפייטן צרות שהיו לישראל בימי גלות בבל ושהקב"ה הושיעם

כרות קומת ברוש – לכרות קומתו של ברוש, דהיינו מרדכי הנקרא ברוש כדאיתה בגמרא.

בקש אגגי בן המדתא – בקש המן הרשע הנקרא אגגי.

ונהייתה לו לפח ולמוקש – וזה שחשב על מרדכי הצדיק נהיה להמן למלכודת שהוא עצמו נלכד שם.

וגאותו נשבתה – וגאותו נשברה.

ראש ימיני נשאת – את כבודו של מרדכי הצדיק שנקרא איש ימיני, הגדלת

ואויב, שמו מחית – והאויב (המן הרשע) שמו נמחה מן העולם.

רוב בנין וקניניו – ולא את עצמו בלבד מחית מן העולם אלא גם את רוב בניו ורכושו.

על העץ תלית – שנתלה על העץ והוא המוקש (המלכודת) שנתכוון ללכוד בו את מרדכי.

בבית זה מבטא הפייטן את צרות ישראל בימי החשמונאים שסבלו מאת היוונים

עד שריחם השם עליהם והושיעם וקבעו את הימים ההם להלל ולהודות להשם

יוונים נקבצו עלי – היוונים שנאספו על עם ישראל להחטיאם.

אזי בימי חשמנים – זה היה בימי חשמונאים.

ופרצו חומות מגדלי – היוונים עשו פרצות בחומת היהדות שהם מגדלי ונכנסו להיכל בית המקדש.

וטמאו כל השמנים – וכל השמנים שהיו בתוך בית המקדש טמאו (הם לא שפכו את השמן רק טמאו אותו כי עיקר כוונתם היתה להחטיא את ישראל).

ומנותר קנקנים – ומהשמן שנשאר מיתר הקנקנים שטמאו והם לא ראוהו ולא טמאוהו.

נעשה נס לשושנים – מהשמן הזה שהיה בו להדליק יום אחד בלבד נעשה נס ודלק שמונה ימים והנס הזה הוא לשושנים דהיינו לצדיקים הנקראים שושנה (שיר השירים).

בני בינה ימי שמונה – החכמים שבזמן ההוא שהם יודעי בינה שהבינו שהימים האלו – שמונה הימים, הם ימי רצון.

קבעו שיר ורננים – קבעו את הימים האלה לשיר ורננים להקב"ה.

בבית האחרון זה מסיים הפייטן במה שבטח שנזכה לגאולה שלימה

חשוף זרוע קדשך – גלה לנו השם את זרועך הקדושה.

וקרב קץ הישועה – ותקרב לנו את הישועה שנושע מן הגלות האחרון הזה.

נקום נקמת דם עבדיך – דם עבדיך בני ישראל שדמם נשפך בגלות הזה, נקום השם נקמתם.

מאומה הרשעה – מהאומות המרשיעות על בני ישראל דהיינו אדום.

כי ארכה לנו הישועה – כי מצפים אנו כבר לישועה הזאת.

ואין קץ לימי הרעה – ועד עכשיו לא זכינו לראות את קץ הדעות הבאות עלינו.

דחה אדמון  בצל צלמון – דחה את אדום בצלו של הצלמות שהיינו גיהנום.

הקם לנו רועה שבעה – שבעת הרועים: אברהם, יצחק, יעקב, משה, אהרון, יוסף ודוד שהם יקומו וינהיגונו…

הרחמן הוא יעשה לנו ניסים  כמו שעשה לאבותינו בימים ההם בזמן הזה.