Jewish

Parshat Naso & HH #168

Yesterday was Parshat Naso, a great parsha with laws of the suspected adulteress, laws of the nazir, the Kohen’s blessing and gifts of the tribes. Maybe next year I’ll write a post on this parsha, but some bloggers came up with some good divrei Torah (words of Torah) that I would like to present.

First, read Jack’s Haveil Havelim #168 Go Celtics Edition.

On Parshat Naso:

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Flowers in the House

rosesIf you needed to decorate your house for just two days with some kind of flower theme, how would you do it? If you wanted to involve your children in the project, how could you make it fun?

Here’s some quick ideas:

  • Buy some beautiful (but expensive) flowers at the florist.
  • Go to the supermarket and buy some OK flowers.
  • Do tissue paper flowers (do you use pipe cleaners and twist around the middle and trim the tissue paper?).
  • Draw pictures of flowers and plants and hang those up.
  • Go pillaging through your garden and find something or another that might possibly last for two days.

Ideas welcome.

The holiday of Shavuot is coming, and it is customary to decorate one’s house with flowers. The origin of the custom may be a tradition of vegetation sprouting up around the mountain of Sinai when the Torah was given, or it may be connected to the agricultural roots of this holiday, which is also called Hag HaKatzir, the holiday of the harvest. Whether you celebrate this holiday or not, I am sure you can come up with at least one idea of how we could floralize our house.

Scouts March for Israel

I had the pleasure of marching in uniform with Troop 55 of Highland Park/Edison, New Jersey in the Salute to Israel Day Parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America are some of the first marchers in the parade. We are right behind the Veterans of America. First, we had to get there:
Penn Station NYCleaving edison new jersey
At left, we leave from Edison, New Jersey. At right, we are in Penn Station, New York.

A lot of waiting for the parade to start:
flagflagsIsraeli scouts by a yeshiva from QueensVeterans of Americaisraeli dancersboy scoutsscouts wait in line

Finally, we march:
past Central Park
FlagsI am Israeli
Monsey police
60th
JEC
Bruriah
Back of  of Bruriah high school
Kushner
There were a lot more schools and floats from many organizations that we missed, because we wanted to get home. In particular, it would have been nice to see RPRY(my children’s school) and TABC(the high school my son will attend next year). But they weren’t marching until much later.

This one is a reflection in the window of a New York apartment building:
reflection of parade

So here are some of the tired scouts, sitting down this time in Penn Station:
Penn Station
We got to ride on these cool double-decker trains on our train ride back to New Jersey.

  See also Elinka’s parade pictures.

About My Work

In between working on intriguing posts for your enjoyment and taking care of my family, I do website work for a number of Central New Jersey businesses and organizations. Sometimes it takes a while before my work becomes public, but recently I edited a number of web pages that I can share with you:
Catch the Reading Bug poster

  • Yesterday, I put the Rutgers Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life’s
    Fall 2008 Public Events. Note that in December Dara Horn, author of The World to Come, a book recommended by Mother in Israel, will be speaking at Rutgers.
  • The Highland Park Public Library has a bug poster to advertise summer programming for children. The bug poster, by children’s book illustrator Harry Bliss, is part of a national program called Collaborative Summer Library Program, so you may see a similar one on another library site. I just added some text to make it unique to our library.
  • New Jersey School of Dental Assisting had me add their newest schedule, information about tuition and financing, and a new field on their contact form.
  • I did some edits for Wilkin & Guttenplan, an accounting firm in East Brunswick, New Jersey, including an animated gif of Best Places to Work award logos that you can see on the bottom right of the Careers page.

I will soon be working on a new online course for the Rutgers Bildner Center. The courses are free; so if you have some time to do a course, go to the Jewish Studies Online Studies page to take the Bible & History or the Israeli Political System. Also, I’ve been working a site for a local firm that is not yet public.

Proclaim Liberty

From Parshat Behar, Leviticus 25:10
“proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof”
וּקְרָאתֶם דְּרוֹר בָּאָרֶץ לְכָל-יֹשְׁבֶיהָ

The above phrase is written on the Liberty Bell. If you read it in the context of the Torah portion, you will realize that it is talking about freeing slaves. In the fiftieth year, one is supposed to free one’s slaves. So one could say the Liberty Bell designers got it wrong; it’s only slaves that are being freed, not everyone. But when you own another human being, you the master is not truly free, either. So indeed the freeing is for everyone.

Here’s a little more explanation of this idea of a master not being free:

The Pnei Yehoshua explains this with a profound psychological insights. Slavery does not only deprive the slave of his freedom, but the master as well. A person who dominates others is not truly free either, and the Talmud correctly states that one who acquires a slave acquires a master over himself (Kiddushin 20a). He who enslaves another becomes enslaved himself.

And here’s background on how the phrase on the Liberty Bell was chosen:

The Pennsylvania Assembly ordered the Bell in 1751 to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of William Penn’s 1701 Charter of Privileges, Pennsylvania’s original Constitution. It speaks of the rights and freedoms valued by people the world over. Particularly forward thinking were Penn’s ideas on religious freedom, his liberal stance on Native American rights, and his inclusion of citizens in enacting laws…
the line in the Bible immediately preceding “proclaim liberty” is, “And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year.” What better way to pay homage to Penn and hallow the 50th year than with a bell proclaiming liberty?

It would have been nice if I had posted this a week and a half ago, right before we read the Torah portion of Behar in the synagogue. However, that did not happen. So I will connect it with Memorial Day, which is tomorrow. On Memorial Day we remember those that died for freedom. We have freedoms today because what of others sacrificed.

Swords Into Inter-Responsibility

Parshat Behukotai 26:37 says “each man before his brother as if from before a sword”. Please note the “as if”. This is analogy for something. For what? Rashi explains that each man will stumble over each other’s sins. We are all responsible for each other:

כל ‘שראל ערבים זה לזה

Shabbat Shalom.

Ruth and Public Domain Images

Ruth in field of Boaz

This artwork of Ruth and Boaz is by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, a German painter who lived from 1794-1872. It seems to be a study for an oil painting of Ruth in the Fields of Boaz.

This post is an introduction to a series of posts by Ilana-Davita and me on Ruth and the holiday of Shavuot. Read an introduction to Shavuot by Ilana-Davita.

And now, about public domain art: When is it OK to put up someone else’s art? When is it stealing?

Works of art that are from the 19th Century or earlier are, generally speaking, in the public domain. But your best bet is to go to a site like Wikimedia, and take art that declares that it is in the public domain or under a license that allows you to use it. For more recent images, you can use artwork or photos that are under a license such as GNU Free Documentation License.

There is also a concept called fair use. Fair use means you can use it for educational purposes but not for commercial purposes. So you could argue that you could use one of my paintings if you were trying to teach something.

But I got a better idea. If you want to use something that belongs to someone else, ask. It’s just common courtesy. And give credit back to the person to whom it belongs.

This is very simplified; if you want to study copyright law, you could come up with a much more complicated discussion on images and use on the web.

More about public domain art and reproductions here.

Two Celebratory Holidays

This year Lag B’Omer and Memorial Day are three days apart. Interestingly, both holidays have similar themes: people died, let’s have a barbecue.

Lag B’Omer is the anniversary of the death of Torah sage Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yohai. It also commemorates Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students who stopped dying from a mysterious plague on this day. (However, one friend did say they stopped dying because there were none left, so he’s not sure what the celebration is about). I was once in Israel on Lag B’Omer; there are bonfires everywhere. I have always wondered how the country, being so dry, manages not to burn itself down on this day. Batya shows a campfire being built here.

It sounds like the day is not without problems, as rabbis recently warned:

Lag Ba’omer bonfire fans should be careful not to cause monetary or environmental damage in their enthusiasm to celebrate, cautioned the two Israeli chief rabbis in an announcement.

“When God created Adam he took him and showed him all the trees in Gan Eden,” quoted rabbis Shlomo Amar and Yona Metzger from ancient homiletic literature (Kohelet Raba). “God said to him, ‘Look at all my creations, how magnificent they are. All that I have created is for you. Be sure not to destroy my world, because if you do there is no one who can repair it.”
[snip]
However, preparations for Lag Ba’omer, such as the gathering of wood and other combustibles, often involve the stealing of private property by overly enthusiastic children. In addition, the large amount of smoke emitted by the fires is detrimental to the environment.

In addition, just before and during Lag Ba’omer, Magen David Adom receives double the regular number of calls from children and teenagers who have been accidentally burned or hurt preparing bonfires.

The chief rabbis urged the Jews of Israel to be careful with their bonfires to prevent unnecessary damage. They also called for the public to be scrupulous in protecting private property.

In America, we often forget why we celebrate holidays. What’s this one for? Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service.

Memorial Day in Highland Park is a lot of fun because the annual parade. In the past, when my son was a Cub Scout (and for four years I was the Den Mother), we would march together down Raritan Avenue:

Memorial Day Parade 2004
This is the 2004 Memorial Day Parade. I’m wearing the orange t-shirt. Note the price of gas.

This year, however, my son is a Boy Scout, and he will be on Boy Scout Kinus, the weekend camping trip. He was disappointed to hear that the local Boy Scouts don’t march in the local parade because it conflicts with Kinus. I didn’t know he liked the march so much! All I remember are the complaints about needing to walk so far. And the complaints about being told by adults to smile at the crowds.

Are you celebrating either holiday? Any interesting plans?

Mother of Boys

tzitzit
My newest watercolor.

I could have called this post “Mother of Jewish Boys” or “Mother of My Boys.” I still don’t have a name for the actual painting. I was thinking of putting a softball in this still-life, but neither of my boys play baseball anymore.

For those that would like some explanation, the four-cornered garment that Jewish boys and men wear is called tzitzit, as it says in Numbers 15:38, Parshat Sh’lach:

Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them throughout their generations fringes in the corners of their garments

The blue book in the right corner is a prayer book, a siddur. That siddur happens to be the one many boys, including my boys, use in elementary school.

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