My husband reads the parsha in depth every week. This week, he said, he gets off easy. There is not a lot of Rashi commentary, because a lot of the parsha is repetition of what was previously said. So, my son wisely asks, why does it need to be repeated? “That’s tonight’s question, replies my husband. Easier to ask questions than to give answers.” A basic theme of this blog, too.
I found one Rashi commentary that is in this week’s parsha but not in last week’s, Ki Tisa. (This is with the help of Avigdor Bonchek, author of What’s Bothering Rashi.)
Exodus 35:34:
וּלְהוֹרֹת, נָתַן בְּלִבּוֹ: הוּא, וְאָהֳלִיאָב בֶּן-אֲחִיסָמָךְ לְמַטֵּה-דָן.
And He hath put in his heart that he may teach, both he, and Ahaliav, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan.
Rashi explains that Ahaliav, the son of one of Jacob’s maidservants, is on equal footing here with Bezalel, son of Leah, one of Jacob’s wives, in the holy work of constructing the Mishkan. This exemplifies Job 34:19: “He does not recognize the wealthy over the poor.”
Avigdor Bonchek explains that even though there is a very similar pasuk in Ki Tisa, that one does not get Rashi’s commentary, because that one uses the word “with”. “With” might mean Ahaliav is a subordinate. In VaYakhel, the pasuk uses “and”. “And” puts the two men on equal basis.
Finally, I had a little time on Friday to peruse the parsha. But then my company arrived, and I didn’t have time until now to write a post. Instead of coming up with one in depth dvar torah, however, I am jotting notes of what would be interested to explore more:
– Counting at the beginning of the parsha. Why men counted and not women?
Rabbi Buchwald writes: “since the Jewish women did not participate in the sin of the Golden Calf, they were exempt from giving their half shekel”.
– Lion of Zion writes about hokhmat lev, as possibly being a Hebrew word for art. I’m not sure about this. It’s kind of like elevating all art to the level of Betzalel, who built the mishkan along with other artisans and were imbued by God with a divine spirituality to do this craftsmanship. I’m hoping Lion of Zion will write more on this topic.
– If you have 51 minutes, you can listen to an in-depth podcast about different levels of the Torah by Esther Wein. She’s a good speaker. At a basic level, for example, you shouldn’t take the law into your own hands and murder. At another level, you don’t want to embarrass someone; it’s considered to be like murder. You have to listen to the shiur (lesson) for a while to hear her talk about Sugihara, who saved the Mir Yeshiva and many other Jews in World War II. He was dismissed from his post in his own lifetime, but posthumously he was honored.
– What are the בִּגְדֵי הַשְּׂרָד ? Rashi says they were used to wrap the items in the Mishkan when traveling. Somewhere I saw a discussion of the word ‘sered’; if I find it again, I will add a note here. Sered often means remnant.
– My father talked about how Moshe breaking the luchot, the tablets of the ten commandments, was Moshe’s greatest deed. Perhaps because Moshe did not want God to destroy B’nei Yisrael because of the Golden Calf, and by breaking the luchot he was teaching them a lesson and allowing them to do t’shuva and therefore saving them? (this one is really just a note to remember what my father told my husband and me on Shabbat).
– A fragment of a note: the word herut as engraving the tablets, relating the luchot to freedom (from my husband, who doesn’t remember the source).
– I have become a big fan of Avigdor Bonchek’s What’s Bothering Rashi series. On this parsha, he explains the insight of the Ramban on Betzalel. Betzalel, who had been a slave in Egypt, was considered a wonder as he mastered silver, gold, precious stones, wood carving, embroidery and weaving! God inspires this recently freed slave with uncanny God-given talents to build the mishkan.
Both Avigdor Bonchek and Nechama Lebowitz explore Exodus 31:13:
אַךְ אֶת-שַׁבְּתֹתַי, תִּשְׁמֹרוּ: כִּי אוֹת הִוא בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵיכֶם, לְדֹרֹתֵיכֶם.
Note the word אַךְ (akh). This is a limiting word, meaning something should limited…is it the building of the Mishkan or keeping Shabbat? Rashi and Ramban disagree on this subject. Rashi says we do not build the Mishkan on Shabbat. Ramban says there are times we do not keep Shabbat; even Shabbat has limits. From this our Sages learned, for example, that in cases were a life may be at risk (pikuach nefesh) we may break Shabbat.
Finally, Nehama Lebowitz has a lot to say about כִּי קָרַן עוֹר פָּנָיו . “…the skin of his face became radiant…” Michelangelo and other artists gave Moshe horns because of a mis-translation of this pasuk. Maybe by next year I will actually take the time to read this chapter, which she entitled: Moses Was Unaware His Face Shone.
Links:
Books I read recently:
Books my husband just gave me for my birthday and so I intend to read:
I was telling Jill this past week if you find yourself drawn to reading about the Holocaust and want to read something perhaps a bit more uplifting or at least great literature, read anything by Aharon Appelfeld.
From the Jewish State (local Central New Jersey newspaper):
According to a statement issued by Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan’s office the teens’ “alcohol-fueled vandalism” came from teenage boredom, not anti-Semitism. Kaplan said this means while the teens will still face vandalism charges in Family Court, they will not be prosecuted on the more serious charge of committing a hate crime.
and, on the civil suit filed against the teens:
The cost of reconstruction is currently estimated to be between $500,000 and $1 million. While adjudication of a juvenile is not a matter of public record, [Attorney Gerald] Gordon said, punitive-damage civil judgements remain in effect until they are paid. This would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the teens to get credit cards as adults and also damage their future credit reports.
Children need to learn at a young age to respect other people’s property. I believe Rabbi Bassous mentioned this in his speech on the cemetery desecration, but I will retell in my own words here:
The story in the Gemara (thank you to Olomeinu, a children’s magazine) is Mar Zutra’s goblet was stolen. He saw a man wiping his hands on someone else’s garment without permission. He then knew that that was the thief, for he saw that this man had no respect for the possessions of others (Bava Metzia 24a).
UPDATE: On the Main Line has the Olemeinu cartoon along with analysis of such cartoons. If you don’t take Olemeinu too seriously, it’s humorous.
We certainly can’t control how others raise their children. It seems like the best we can do is make it difficult for non-respecting people to get credit cards.
When I first blogged about the cemetery vandalism in New Brunswick, I wrote Are we in Eastern Europe? I am pleased to say we are not. What is the difference? Here in Central New Jersey, not only is the Jewish community reacting with shock to the recent vandalism, but there is also condemnation from the general community.
From today’s Daily Targum, the Rutgers student newspaper:
“It is one of the most dramatic events you [can] see in a physical sense,” said Rutgers University Student Assembly treasurer Yonaton Yares, a School of Arts and Sciences student.
RUSA unanimously passed a resolution Thursday to get students involved in the site’s repair.
Members of the assembly said such a resolution was necessary in order to make a statement on behalf of the student body that such acts are unacceptable.
“[The resolution] shows that Rutgers University doesn’t tolerate that kind of crime, because we don’t want to destroy our diversity,” said College Avenue Council Vice President Yelena Shvarts, a Rutgers College junior.
The key to preventing such acts from occurring in the future is to become opinionated, said RUSA recording secretary Kathryn Jenkins, a Douglass College student.
Yares said this incident has brought together members of Rutgers Hillel.
“We have decided to say that Rutgers students – Jewish, non-Jewish, black, white or Latino – all care about this,” he said.
RUSA hopes the assembly can generate the same solidarity among students that the University community demonstrated during the Don Imus controversy last year to prevent future acts from occurring.
“When someone goes on the radio and attacks our women’s basketball team, they don’t just attack those women. They attack the entire Rutgers community,” said RUSA chair Jim Kline, a Rutgers College senior. “The same goes when you attack the Rutgers community and what it stands for.”
Surveyors are beginning to assess the damage done to the site in an attempt to estimate the amount that repairs will cost.
A week after the incident, four teenagers were arrested and charged for committing the vandalism, though the acts were not deemed anti-Semitic by authorities, according to The Associated Press.
But Kline said the acts are upsetting to the Jewish community.
“I think our voice as the student body lends an olive branch to the Jewish community. It allows students to enter into this dialogue about racism, sexism and, in this case, anti-Semitism,” Kline said. “It’s important to have these conversations now that we live in this bubble where we can openly discuss ideas and thoughts.”
Somehow I think there is a connection to the film I viewed by a Franklin Township student yesterday. Sonal Thawani’s film “Take a Stand Against Violence,” a 6-minute piece showed the positive action taken by her community’s youth in response to the recent violence in her township. It was heartening to see in Sonal’s film that many people in her community wanted to see a stop to the violence. Likewise, we all would like cemetery desecration to stop as well.
My main thought is it is easier to teach a five-year old to respect property, respect the dead, and respect others than a 17 year old. And as both cemetery desecration and violence against one’s peers reflect poor anger management, some kind of positive channeling is needed at a young age. I hardly profess to have answers, but I am good at asking the questions.
From nj.com:
Accused vandals sued over Jewish cemetery destruction
A Rutherford resident whose parents’ gravestones were desecrated in a New Brunswick Jewish cemetery this month has filed a lawsuit against the four teenagers charged with causing the damage to nearly 500 headstones.
Mark Elfant is a member of Congregation Poile Zedek with familial ties to the congregation dating to the 1800s. Gerald Gordon, Elfant’s lawyer, said he is seeking monetary damages from the accused teenagers, their parents and anyone else involved. Damage has been estimated between $500,000 to $1 million.
“We’re not going to let them off the hook,” said Gordon, whose mother ran the cemetery for 30 years and who is handling the case pro bono. “The money we get will go to a fund for the restoration, security and perpetual care of the cemetery.”
Elfant’s mother, Ann Elfant, cared for the cemetery for five decades. His father, Morris Elfant, played a key role in creating the cemetery association. And his grandfather, Benjamin Elfant, was a founder of the congregation in the late 1800s.
Caryn Lipson, administrator at Congregation Poile Zedek, declined to comment.
“He is acting as a private citizen,” Lipson said. “This has nothing to do with the congregation.”
The commenters to the article all want to see something done. The idea that a 17 year old can commit such an act and walk away scot-free is bizarre.
Much thanks to Batya for organizing this carnival. And including links to two of my posts! My first posts on a carnival! (I didn’t know what a carnival was before this, but it’s a very fun way to find out about other bloggers).
This week’s parsha, Parshat Beshalach, is full of women heroes. We’ve got Miriam singing in the Torah portion. Then in the haftorah, Devorah leads the people, Yael tricks and kills Sisera, and Sisera’s mother cries:
“Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why don’t I hear the clatter of his chariots?”
She is just darn convinced her son is going to show up again. But he doesn’t. He’s dead.
Turns out, that we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashana 100 times because according to tradition, she cried 100 times. How interesting, that this woman about whom we know so little, other than she was the mother of the story’s “bad guy”, can have such an influence. Maybe it speaks to the power of a woman’s emotional world? And how if it’s a mother, even our rabbis can relate to her pain? Somehow, the crying at the loss of a son (or the not knowing where a son is?) is related to our crying unto God?
Yael Unterman wrote an essay on the topic of “The Voice in the Shofar: A Defense of Deborah” published in Torah of Our Mothers: Contemporary Jewish Women Read Classical Jewish Texts. Yael Unterman proposes that the only reason why we even know about em Sisera, the mother of Sisera, is because of Deborah’s song. Furthermore, Deborah knew that Sisera was dead, long before Sisera’s mother knew. Deborah is called “em beYisrael”, in parallel to em Sisera. Literally, em beYisrael means mother in Israel, but Radak suggests here it means mother to Israel. Deborah, too, is a mother…mother to all of Israel.
So why, according to Yael Unterman, is em Sisera chosen to take central role in associations surrounding the shofar blowing on Rosh Hashana, equal or maybe even superseding Sarah?
Sarah is crying for what has already happened… if she did believe her son Isaac is dead, she crying in grief; if she is aware he is alive, she is crying in shock. About em Sisera, Yael Unterman writes:
As we watch her, we know her son is already dead; and on one level, em Sisera knows this too and her signs and groans are, like Sarah’s, that of a mother who has actually lost her son. Yet on another level, she is still at a point in time where she may reassure herself, imaginging her son is still alive and is victoriously bringing home the booty.
(snip)
…em Sisera’s condition of dialectical emotions and time-frames is a model for us as we hear the shofar on Rosh Hashanah: it evokes grief and loss, but also hope. The groan of the shofar arouses deep feelings of alienation and lack of sense of self: on the Day of Judgement we are stripped of our standing and of the delusions we hold dear the rest of the year…
There is much more to Yael Unterman’s essay, but perhaps I got you interested enough to read it yourself. I took a peek at Yael’s website and discovered she is working on a biography of Nehama Leibowitz.
To finish up this post, I would like to remind (or inform, as the case may be) you of the ritual of dipping one’s finger in the wine cup on Pesach to take out a bit of wine. Even the though the Egyptians drowned in the sea, they are still human beings, and we cannot be completely happy at the death of our enemies.
Rabbi Bassous devoted his speech this past Shabbat to learning from the cemetery vandalism in New Brunswick. I missed the speech (my daughter had other plans for me), so I apologize in advance to Rabbi Bassous if I botch my summary of what he said. My husband related to me that he spoke about two topics:
1) Even when you are dead, you may still not be at rest. Vandals can still attack your grave.
2) It is important to raise children from an early age to respect property. This can start with teaching children to pick up a candy wrapper from the floor. Unfortunately, the teens involved in this incident were not raised to respect property.
=======
My husband pointed out that if the teens were tried in a Jewish Halachic court, they would be considered adults. In the American judicial system, they are considered juveniles.
In my searches on the web, I discovered that cemetery desecration is all too common a pastime for some teens. Clearly, there are a lot of parents out there NOT teaching their children to respect property, especially buried dead people. On one forum, I found young men bragging about their exploits, and saying the only reason why this is getting such publicity is because it is a Jewish cemetery. Sad. And scary.
This week my husband asked:
Why is the Korban Pesach (the sacrificial lamb) roasted?
You can come up with your own answer, but his answer was because it is a sign of a rich person. When you roast a piece of meat, much of the fat drips away. A poor person would lament the loss of much of the meat. But a rich person is OK with parting with all that fat. It is yet another sign of freedom.
Which reminds me that when I started this blog, I intended to write about food and “you are what you eat”. So I’ll get started here, by saying: pay attention to how you cook the food, as well. Quick broiling is a healthy way of cooking. I am a big fan of steaming vegetables; I own three steamer inserts for my pots.
So maybe I haven’t blogged much about food, food choices and cooking methods because it comes across too preachy. And also, if you think my family only eats healthy food, hah! We do (the adults, anyway) have a tendency to sit around and discuss the junk food after we eat it. My eldest son at a young age could read the sugar amounts on cereal boxes and complain that the ones I bought did not have enough sugar.
I’ll save my complaints about kosher bakeries and hydrogenated fat for another post.
