Received in a synagogue announcement late last night:
This Thursday, September 25 at 7:30 there will be a rally at the corner
of 3rd & Raritan Avenues. The purpose of the rally is to express our
disappointment that the Mennonite Central Committee, the parent
organization of the 10 Thousand Villages store, is hosting the
president of Iran for dinner while he is in New York, and to protest
Ahmadinejad’s calls for genocide against Israel.
Ahmadinejad is basically a modern day Haman. He has threatened to destroy Israel and has held a Holocaust-denial conference. One of the hosts is someone named Penny Pritzker. I’ll let you do the research.
One traditionally eats pomegranate on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, and thus I have been working on a watercolor of a pomegranate as part of my series on the food symbols of this holiday.
The prayer that one says, the yehi ratzon, is as follows:
“she’nirbeh ze’chu’yos k’rimon”
“…that our merits increase like (the seeds of) a pomegranate.”
This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo, starts with the bikurim, the first fruit offering. Are these all fruits or just some? According to Rashi, the bikurim are only the fruits of the seven species. He learns that it is not all fruits from the “mem”, the word that translates as “of”:
Devarim (Deuteronomy) 26:2–
You shall take of the first of all the fruit of the ground
Rashi learns that the word “eretz” used both here and when it mentions the 7 species teaches us that it is the seven species that one needs to bring as bikurim.
It says in Devarim (Deuteronomy) 8:8–
a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates; a land of olive-trees and honey;
So in order to learn this better, I decided to draw some pictures. And who decided to join me but my daughter. First, some notes for next year: we both need to learn what wheat and barley look like:
Next on the list are the grapes. Can you guess who drew which grapes:
Do these look like figs:
Now our pomegranate drawings:
(I am hoping to work on a pomegranate watercolor, as a pre-Rosh Hashana siman post)
Olives:
Finally, the honey was supposedly the honey of dates:
Hope you will remember this Rashi, having seen all these drawings to go with the bikurim.
The week following a wedding Orthodox Jews celebrate by hosting the bride and groom at Sheva Brachot (means 7 blessings, referring to the seven blessings one says to wish the bride and groom well). Last night, the chasan (groom) and kallah (bride) were running late; she had an early evening faculty meeting, and then they both got stuck in traffic. So while we were waiting for the party to begin, I stood on the hosts’ porch and took these sunset photos.
You can learn more about the wedding from MalkaEsther.
Here’s my carrot watercolor. I used both watercolor and gouache.
Carrots are traditionally eaten on Rosh Hashana, and a “yehi ratzon” is said on the carrots: “Yehi ratzon milfanecha she-yikara roa gezar dinneinu, v’yikaru lfaneacha zakiyoteinu” “May it be God’s will that the evil decrees against us be torn up and our
good merits be read out before You”.
The play on words here is the Hebrew word ‘gezer’, which sounds like gezairah, the Hebrew word for “decree.”
The same “yehi ratzon” will show up again for squash, as the Hebrew for squash is kra, which sounds a bit like the Hebrew for “tear up.”
I discovered that some display carrots in slices to resemble coins, as we hope for prosperity in the new year. You can read more about the history of these food symbols from the Rebbetzin’s Husband.
A traditional dish made with carrots that one might eat on Rosh Hashana is tzimmes. Some recipes (I haven’t tried these, no endorsements here):
I prefer mine plain (naturally sweet!) and raw. The tsimmes salad sounds best to me, though it seems a stretch to call that recipe ‘tsimmes’.
Finally, a request to all pomegranate lovers: if you find a link to a pomegranate photo that you like, please leave the link in a comment. I’m going to have to work from photos in order to paint a pomegranate.
Children’s books are often a great way to learn a new topic. For example, when I was learning needlepoint about twelve years ago (I was pregnant with my second child and wanted to do something creative that required little clean up and one could sit), I found some nice books in the children’s section of the library.
Meanwhile, I am struggling over a carrot. Did you know that carrots’ leaves, the frilly part anyway, are far from the carrot top? carrot with piece on top, greenery is broken off top and placed on the carrot
carrot leaves winding around the carrot
My plan is to do a watercolor of the carrot. I have the paper set up, and the watercolor nearby. But first I need to decide on a composition. I’d like to have some greenery with my carrot, but I can’t decide on where to place it. I don’t want it on top, as in the first photo.
Note to pomegranate lovers: Not yet in season here. So I either have to work from a Google photo or copy this stamp. Not my ideal choice.
First, an aside: we went to a bar-mitzvah yesterday of a boy that I’ve known since he was a baby. He gave a wonderful speech, and as part of the speech he said (from memory, not his exact words): “Don’t people have a natural ability to detect what is the right thing to do? In my experience, they don’t, and so we need the Torah to teach us.” This was in reference to finding a dead body in a field; what does one do? How to be a responsible person does not come naturally.
Deuteronomy 16:20—
צֶדֶק צֶדֶק, תִּרְדֹּף
“Justice, Justice, you shall pursue”
Whenever the Torah repeats, there is a reason. Why the doubling of “Justice, Justice, you shall pursue”?
(One could also translate ‘tzedek’ as righteousness instead of justice).
The most obvious answer is “emphasis”. This is one of the three answers given by Ibn Ezra. “Hizuk” is the word for emphasis, for those who want to improve their Hebrew skills. Another explanation he gives is whether for profit or for loss, one choose the right path. A third approach is pursue righteousness not just once but all the days of one’s life.
Rashi’s explanation is: “Go after a high quality court”. I wonder what the courts were like in Rashi’s day; could one actually pick one’s own judges?
Rabbi Abraham Twerski in Twerski on Chumash (a great parsha book, if anyone wants a recommendation for one) writes:
Rabbi Simchah Bunim of P’shi’che says that the repetition of the word “righteousness” means that one should pursue righteousness with righteousness. We may not use unjust methods even in the interest of a just cause. The end does not justify the means.
In commerce, good and bad are determined by outcome. Profit is good, loss is bad. If someone undertakes a project in a helter-skelter manner and ends up with a windfall profit, he is a good businessman. If someone does a careful market analysis, uses every bit of caution in setting up his business and goes bankrupt, he is a bad businessman.
It is unfortunate that our preoccupation with commerce has resulted in our personal lives being influenced by commercial standards. We often evaluate ethical good and bad by results rather than by process.
I liked that. May we continue to learn the right thing to do and make those choices.
It may be hard to imagine, but several thousand years ago people sacrificed their children on altars to gods. Here the Torah teaches us that is not right, not proper. We might think, how could anyone do such a thing, burn their children alive as a sacrifice, but there are archaeological findings that show this really did happen.
I read this while sitting in shul, listening to Parshat Re’eh, the Torah portion for the past week. And I spoke with a friend, an older friend who has had many experiences in life. She said that pasuk can be open to many interpretations, but she thinks of her friends whose children did not stay in the Jewish world, who married out. She feels they sacrificed their children. I think of this occurring today in a more concrete way, as unfortunately some children are taught at a very young age (5) to hate, to hold a gun, to kill, to blow themselves up and be a martyr and to kill as many Jews as possible in the process. See summer camp in Gaza.
I’m going to try to write something about the parsha each week, though that has proven to be a difficult task. Some weeks are so busy one can’t even think straight. Other weeks, I get a chance to look at the parsha, but I can’t find one particular theme that motivates me enough to write a post. I’ll keep working at this. It should get easier, one would think, the more years one tries to write about the parsha.
Received a treasured thank you note in response to the card I sent.
Here’s a quote from the card (Habakuk 2:4):
“The righteous shall live through his faith”
צַדִּיק, בֶּאֱמוּנָתוֹ יִחְיֶה
On Community
I am thankful that I belong to a wonderful community here in Highland Park, both the Jewish community and my little borough as a whole. I am glad Batya, Jack, SoccerDad (good philosophy joke here) and Jameel believe there is a Jewish community online, because I value it very much, as I express myself better on my keyboard than I do verbally. And I love all the wonderful bloggers I have met, of many backgrounds and from a multitude of countries.
Community is especially important at a time of loss. This morning, a blogger Twittered that she had lost a favorite aunt. I expressed my sadness to her in a responding Tweet. (If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm leoraw). Online community can be special; it can be a way of saying, hey, I'm having a hard time here. Does anyone else get this? And hopefully, someone does.
Art fans: please visit A Simple Jew today for a little treat. I’m planning to post the painting here on my blog tomorrow.
This was sort of like an art challenge, similar to the photo challenges one finds on blogs. It started with his asking me to write something, but I wanted to paint something.
Here’s a quote he sent to me as a suggestion:
The Degel Machaneh Ephraim taught that a person must have two abilities if he wants to be able to serve Hashem in absolute truth and sincerity. First, a person must have the ability to visualize that he is alone in the world with only his Creator. Second, he must be able to join himself to all of Hashem’s creations, no matter how big or small, and to all the neshamos of His people.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this, but after a few emails, we came up with the idea of a man in a forest near a stream contemplating. Another watercolor will be posted next week.
You can read more about the pomegranate in this 
This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo, starts with the bikurim, the first fruit offering. Are these all fruits or just some? According to Rashi, the bikurim are only the fruits of the seven species. He learns that it is not all fruits from the “mem”, the word that translates as “of”:
