Fighting for Peace

Greetings from beautiful, sunny San Diego, where my wife and I have come so she can take a business seminar. Alas, I am doomed to wander San Diego by my lonesome for two days. Whatever shall I do... first?

'Nuff said about that.

Years ago, ironically in Israel, I saw a t-shirt that read, "Fighting for peace is like f***ing for virginity." (Stars are mine.) I thought it was a cute slogan, but dead wrong... but I never really considered exactly why.

I think that last week's parsha - Pinchas - and the current situation in the Middle East can give us some insight to that.

The parsha begins by describing Pinchas as the grandson of Aharon. R. Yissachar Frand asks the following question:

Why did tracing Pinchas' genealogy to Aharon satisfy anyone? Everyone realized that Pinchas had two grandfathers. What does it help that he was the grandson of Aharon? No one disputed that. This would not seem to mollify anyone's complaint - that in this instance he undertook an action which reflected on his descent from a Priest of Avodah Zarah [ForeignWorship, i.e. - idolatry].

He then quotes R. Meir Bergman to explain the answer. He says that, of course everyone knew that Pinchas was the grandson of Aharon. Their assumption, however, was that Pinchas' behavior could not possibly have been from the Aharon-side of the family. After all, Aharon was known to be the man of peace. Clearly, this must have been from the Yitro-side.

Not so, says God. This was from the Aharon-side of the family! This is what Aharon himself would have done in that situation!

And that is why Pinchas is not referred to as the Ohev Shalom, but rather the Rodef Shalom - and this is the main point. Rodef Shalom literally means, "Chaser of Peace". The Chasam Sofer explains that a rodef is one who chases something, and that in this case, it means that Pinchas was one who was willing to chase away peace - in order for there to be peace.

Sometimes, in order for there to be peace, one must chase peace away - in other words, make conflict; even war. There is evidently something that can be considered a bad peace, that must be removed in order to bring out a good peace.

Looking at the current situation in Israel, I think one can understand this as the difference between a sort of cold war, and real peace. For years, Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in a cold war; a war of open hostility, but little actual fighting, per se. Terrorist attacks, and retaliatory strikes... but no open war. This was a bad peace; a status-quo peace; a peace of uncertainty.

Now Israel has become a rodef shalom. They are actively pursuing peace, at the necessary expense of those determined to allow none. They are determined to rid their borders of those who have never made any bones about their intention to kill us all. All Hezbollah has to do is lay down their arms and commit to ending aggression against Israel, and the fighting will stop. In short, all they have to do is the one thing they will never do... until forced to.

Will Israel be successful in their endeavor? Not without God's help. There is simply too much to do, in my opinion.

But it's a start.

Death and Tehillim

My cousin died this afternoon. She'd been battling cancer and she lost... so did her family... so did the rest of us. The world is a poorer place without her.

Last night, my brother called me to let me know that she'd been taken into the hospital with fluid in her lungs, and that things were very bad. He told me her Jewish name - the one I've been inserting into my tefillot for some 6+ months already - and said that we should daven for her and say some Tehillim.

It occurred to me to wonder why.

It seems that we're very often asked to daven for someone whom God has seen fit to give a life-threatening illness... and that God doesn't usually change his mind. There is no, "Well... I was gonna kill 'em... but then all these people started asking me not too... so I decided, what the heck!" My personal assumption is that He knew what He was doing when He gave them the disease in the first place.

Now I'm all for it when there's a realistic possibility that the person can recover. But at a certain point, I think it's sort of wasted effort to pray for their recovery. At those times, I think it would be more useful to daven for them not to be in pain, or for their families, or in their z'chut so that their n'shamot will have an aliya when the time comes. But for their recovery? God has already decided that they weren't going to.

Now, I know... I know... "But God can do anything. He could make them recover if He wanted to." Yes, yes... that's true. But first of all, we're taught al tismach al ha'ness - we don't rely on miracles. If someone has a disease like pancreatic cancer or something. If the prognosis is just bad, then maybe we ought to focus on what comes next.

In fact, I think that's alluded to by the Medrash when discussing the illness of Yitzchak. If I recall it correctly, the Medrash says that, until his time, people would just drop dead. When your time was up, it was up. Yitzchak prayed, asking that people be given time to get their affairs in order. And God responded by saying, "That's a good idea. I'll start with you."

Maybe, if we looked at terminal illness as the mechanism for preparing for our imminent departure, we'd be better off. We'd, at least, not be so frustrated when we've davened and the person dies anyway.

Please pray for the freed soul of Rena Tamar bat Ester.

We should meet only in... life?

Recently, I got to thinking about that thing people say to each other, especially if they haven't seen each other in a long time (or aren't likely to), or if they are seeing each other on an unpleasant occasion: "May we meet only at simchot".

It occurred to me that I don't agree with this notion.

Simchot are times when, by definition, the heart is light. Things are good. The clouds have parted. The angels are singing. So it's very easy to meet at simchot; very comfortable. Unhappy events are not when we are at our best. Crying does not do much for one's appearance.

On the other hand, somehow it's often when there is an unhappy event, that we become bound together. Relationships become solidified. The slag is removed and people's true essences (good or bad) shine through.

So when someone says, "May we meet only at simchot", they could be saying, "I really don't want a relationship with you with any depth. Let's just keep things at the nice and comfy surface, okay?"

On the other, other hand, pain sucks. It's necessary, and part of life, but no one likes it very much. (Except those people who are just unhappy unless they're unhappy - and we all know people like that!) So we hardly want to be saying, "May our next meeting be in sorrow." It's just too intense.

So what should we say? Or at least, what should we mean, regardless of what we say?

I think both poles are necessary for a good relationship, and everything in between as well. So what we really should mean is something along the lines of "May we have other occasions in which to share each others' company," or "May we see each other again soon," or even just, "See ya'!"

The thing is, we also always want to end things on a "better" note. We're just wired that way. We're uncomfortable with bad stuff, which makes sense since it's necessarily uncomfortable.

So I guess I'm stuck with "May we meet in simchot" or "May we meet in happier times" or some such claptrap... but when I say it, you'll know that's not entirely what I mean.

Chag kasher v'sameach to all...

Learning from the Goyim - A Rant

Bumper Stickers
You're driving down the road, and pull up behind a black woman waiting for a light. There's a bumper sticker - at least one - on her car. It says, "I brake for rapture!" or "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." or "Know Jesus, know peace. No Jesus, no peace." Maybe she's got all three on there!

Normally I don't think about it. This past week I did. I thought about the Christian community - particularly the Black Christian community, and it occurred to me that they've got something we've lost, for the most part. They're enthusiastic about their religion and their beliefs. And we, well we so often just do mitzvot because we have to; because it's ingrained. We all know, "Ivdu et Hashem b'Simcha", but yet we so often seem to forget that last word there. No wonder we have trouble inspiring our kids! We're not inspired ourselves!! Moreover, when we see someone who is inspired - you know, like new Ba'alei Teshuva - we think of it as just a little weird.

Prayer Mats
I remember walking in Manhattan - something I do very infrequently because I live in Baltimore, and because frankly, I hate NY - and seeing a Muslim taxi driver pull his cab over, take out his prayer mat, and start bowing toward Mecca, right in the middle of the sidewalk. No one bothered him, although he did get a few looks from the passers-by. Now maybe this was an unusal occurrence... but I've seen similar things in other places. Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims, have no qualms about their religious beliefs either. When it's time to pray, they just do.

And us, we try to dress so as not to stand out. We stand in phone booths when we're trying to daven Mincha (unless we're in a minyan), and pretend we're having phone conversations. We're embarrassed by our religious requirements, because they make us different - and we so don't want to be different.

But maybe
...just maybe... (alright, more than just maybe) we're wrong. Maybe this is something we should be making concerted efforts in our communities to address. Why should we be embarrassed by the trappings of our beliefs? Do we feel God is an imposition on our lives? (Maybe we do...) Why aren't we happy about God and our relationship with Him? What is our relationship with Him?

We taught Monotheism to the World. Now we need to study from our talmidim.

Lying to Pharoah

In the past few weeks, the parshiot have discussed the Exodus from Egypt, and the preceding plagues. Something that's been bothering me about them is this:

Exo. 8:23

"What we must do is make a three day journey into the desert. There we will be able to sacrifice to God, our Lord, just as He told us."

He then further tells Pharoah that he's going to take all the women, children and animals when he goes. Pharoah doesn't like it, but eventually (after Makat B'Chorot) relents and sends them out. But it's clear that Pharoah has been given reason to believe that we were not leaving, we were going out for a few days to serve God.

Then we see the following:

Exo. 14:5

Meanwhile, the king of Egypt received the news that the people were escaping. Pharoah and his officials changed their minds regarding the people, and said, "What have we done? How could we have released Israel from doing our work?"

Now that first phrase there - he "received the news that the people were escaping." Clearly, Pharoah had not been under the impression that this was to be a permanent thing.

In other words, we left under false pretenses. At best, we allowed Pharoah to be fooled. At worst, we lied outright. Neither of these is acceptable, in my view, for the "Ohr la'goyim". The Torah tells us, "Mi'd'var sheker tirchak" - stay away from falseness. Yet we didn't exactly exemplify this here.

I haven't come up with a good answer for this yet, btw. Feel free to share your thoughts.

Meled

This morning I received an email regarding a program in Israel called Meled (Mercaz L'mida Dati), in Jerusalem, which I think is very important. Meled takes disaffected youth from religious homes, and helps then reorient themselves. These are kids with problems, living in a world in which their problems may seem small to everyone else.

For all the wonderful things about Israel, it is also well known that Israelis can be hard people. If you have a problem, you are expected to just deal with it. I suppose you can't blame them, really, but there are kids for whom that approach doesn't work. Meled is working with them.

On our recent trip to Israel, we saw a number of these kids in Chashmona'im. Troubled kids from nearby Kiryat Sefer. My friend, Arie, told me that on Shavuot, he passed by a group of them, hanging out in the playground near the batei knesiot. One of them called out to him, "Learn with us." He did, and they enjoyed it.

These aren't dumb kids. They aren't bad kids. They're lost kids. Meled is helping them find their way home. Please take a look at their site, and their program, and help out where you can.

Parshat ha'Man and Humanity

In the mornings, when I have time, I like to say some of the extra stuff at the end of davening. I try to say the 6 Zichronot, the Ani Ma'amins (more on that another time, I think) and the tefilot for parnasa, including Parshat ha'Man.

Now, for those of you who don't know what this is, it's a prayer for sustenance along with a selected Torah reading about the giving of the Manna - which is sort of the fundamental notion of God's provision of sustenance to His people.

There were a couple of things that struck me this morning... well, one of them struck me quite some time ago, but I've never written about it before.

One of the important things to know about it, if you haven't read it, is that it chronicles the People's failure to comply with God's orders... twice:

1. They were told to take only a measure for each person in their household, to last the day. They were not to take extra, and they were not to leave any over. The Torah records that they did, in fact, take extra, and that it became wormy and dried out. Moshe gets mad at them and yells at them.
   
   
2. On Friday, they went out and found double the amount they had found on the other days. They went and told Moshe, who told them that this is the way it was going to be. On Fridays they would collect double portions for everyone in the household, and prepare it for Shabbat. They would eat one day's portion on Friday, and the remainder they would hold over until Shabbat morning. They should by no means go out on Shabbat morning to collect Manna, because it wouldn't be there.
   
   The Torah then records that the Manna they held over until morning did not become wormy and dried out, and that they did go out to collect, but found nothing. This time God Himself gets mad at them, asking Moshe, "Until when will they listen to me?" (or something like that - I don't have Chumash in front of me at the moment.)
   

Now, sidestepping the question about who got mad when and why, my question is basically, why get mad at them at all?

Now I have an answer to this, which is compelling, but not at all satisfying. Simply, God commanded them not to leave it overnight during the week, and not to collect it on Shabbat. These were, therefore, commandments for them. They don't directly apply to us today, but they were very serious Issurei D'Oreita for them.

There is no problem with this answer, but I guess it doesn't really address the underlying question which is, why get mad at them at all?

Here's how I'm looking at it: God said don't do it. They wanted to see what would happen if they did, so they tried it. It became dried out and wormy. End of discussion. God said don't collect it on Shabbat. They wanted to see what would happen if they did, so they tried it. There was nothing there. End of discussion.

This, to me, sounds like Science. Hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. What's wrong with that?

"But this is God," you'll say to me. "Where was their bitachon?"

Furthermore, I will acknowledge that it's unreasonable to hold that as an appropriate way to regard all mitzvot. In general, we don't believe in immediate, causal consequences. We don't believe, for example, that if you break Shabbat a lightning bolt will come down from the skies and cook you like a turkey, so that sort of experimentation wouldn't work with everything.

But in this case, it did. It was like testing Gravity or Air Pressure. "I wonder what happens if..."

And there's another thing... This is how God created us. He gave us an innate curiousity about the world. He made us want to experiment and to find out how things work. He's why we have Science; why we've developed the methodologies we use to learn about our world.

Not only that, but you can see this in us, His creation, since our beginnings. This is exactly what Chava was doing with the Tree of Knowledge. This is especially true according to the opinions that hold that the whole conversation between Chava and the snake were really taking place in her head. She saw the snake on the tree and wondered why it didn't die - after all, Adam said, "Don't touch the tree, lest you die". But the snake was all over the tree, and fine. So she touched the tree... and didn't die. Hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. Then she hypothesized again... maybe you could actually eat the fruit...

Alright, so we're imperfect beings, but at least we come by it honestly... and God knew that because he created us this way. So why get so mad about the Manna?

I guess that's the personal responsibilty thing. Yes, it's in our nature to be curious, and to want to experiment. But we are expected to overcome our instincts and natural curiousities, if it means transgressing the Torah. The Rambam, for example, makes it very clear that we do not refrain from eating non-kosher food because the food is bad. We do it because God said so, and that's that.

About Reuven

This week's parsha (Miketz) got me thinking - admittedly, sometimes a dangerous thing - about Reuven.

Yosef is playing headgames with his brothers - there are many questions about this, but that's not my topic for the moment - and he eventually comes to Binyomin. He wants to see his only full-brother. The other brothers try to talk him out of it, but he's not having any of it. He wants Binyomin, and refuses to give them any food until they produce him.

The brothers go home, and try to approach Yaakov about it. They know it's going to be a hard sell, after all, look what happened the last time one of Rachel's children was left in their care. So Reuven - being the oldest, and all - decides that he'd better be the one to step up and take personal responsibility for Binyomin's safety. And how does he do this?

Gen 42:36-37
And Jacob their father said to them, "You have bereaved me of my children: Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and now you would take Benjamin; all this has come upon me." Then Reuben said to his father, "Slay my two sons if I do not bring him back to you; put him in my hands, and I will bring him back to you."

Reuven tells his father, "Pop, I'll tell you what. If I don't bring Binyomin home, I'll let you kill your grandkids. Trust him with me."

Yaakov declines the offer - wisely, in my opinion.

So the question is: What was Reuven thinking?!

I mean, did he really expect to be taken seriously with that kind of offer? Was he perhaps smoking too much of the local herbs? What could possibly have been going through Reuven's mind to say something like that?

We were talking about this a bit at kiddush this morning, and I realized that this really seems to be part of Reuven's character, and probably the reason he was not worthy of the malchut. I think that while Reuven was generally well intentioned, he was just a bit impulsive. He just didn't think things through before acting on them.

In fact, this is at least the third time in Tanach that we see this sort of behavior from him. The first time is when Reuven moves Yaakov's bed into Leah's tent. He decided it was fair, and did it, not considering whether his father might have an opinion about the matter. The second time was with Yosef and the pit. It was Reuven who had him moved to the "empty pit that had no water", which Rashi tells us was instead filled with snakes and scorpions. In other words, Reuven didn't check out whether this was a safe thing to do. He just acted.

This, of course, is not to say that Reuven was not a great man - he clearly was. But it does seem to indicate a certain personality flaw.

Given that I have at least one son with this same sort of problem, I guess this gives me some hope that he can still grow up to be a great man some day.

What can you give the God who has everything?

There's an interesting sequence in last week's parsha - Lech Lecha:

Gen. 14:18-20

But Malchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God, the Most High. He blessed him saying, "Blessed is Abram of God, the Most High, Maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God, the Most High, Who has delivered your foes into your hand"; and he gave him a tenth of everything.

Now, it's not so hard to understand the concept of blessing Abram, in the name of God. But Malchizedek also blessed God, and that's a little more complicated. How do you give God a blessing? Can you really give God something he doesn't already have? This is a problem that apparently did bother the Sages, some of which came up with explanations of how he meant different things in each case.

But I think that perhaps it is possible to give God something he doesn't have. In fact, I think God designed us that way.

According to the Rambam (at least I think it was the Rambam), the two tablets are to be understood as being analogs of each other: the first pertaining to the relationship between Man and his Creator; the second pertaining to the relationship between Man and his fellow. Each Commandment deals with the same underlying issue, as applied to each of those categories.

I'm not going to get into that in detail here - perhaps another time. I am going to explain the relationship between the first and sixth, which are pertinent here. First, let's remember that the first Commandment is, "I am the Lord your God..." and the sixth is, "Don't murder."

Now how do these two things relate to each other? The first doesn't even really sound like a Commandment - I mean, what exactly are we being commanded to do? And the sizth is completely baffling... How does one murder God?!

Well, according to Rabbi David Fohrman (and I think he got this from the Rambam too, but I'm not positive about that), you have to consider what the act of murder is: Murder is the process of removing a person from the world. We are not allowed to do that. So what, then is the first Commandment? Well, we're not allowed to remove God from the world either. And how does one remove God from the world? By refusing to recognize Him and His dominion over the Universe.

Now this may seem a little strange to say... I mean, refusing to recognize someone doesn't change the reality? Either God IS or He IS NOT. But the issue isn't really about what IS or IS NOT... it's about what is perceived. One of the primary functions of humanity, and the Jewish People, in particular, is to bring God's Presence into the mundane. "I am the Lord, Your God" is a command to bring God into the world! Don't think that God is out there, God is in here too, and it's our job to make the world aware of that.

And God had that in mind when He created us. He gave us sentience and free-will exactly for this purpose. The one thing that God can't have without us is our appreciation of Him.

I think that's what Malchizedek was trying to demonstrate. We can't give God much... except ourselves, and our blessings.

The Garden State

One of my neighbors made a "Shalom Zachor" this week - I think this is their 7th child. Anyway, his Rav spoke, and one of the things he said made me think about the creation of Man, and the Garden of Eden.

According to Midrash, someone once asked a Tanna (I don't remember either of their names. I didn't actually look into the Midrash; I'm just using his explanation of it.): "If God saw fit to create men with an orlah (foreskin), why do we believe that we should remove it?"

The answer given was, "Do bread and wine grow on trees? Just as they are raw materials that need to be made into a final product, so too Man is born 'unfinished' and needs to be completed."
A worthy question, and answer, frankly.

But then he went on to describe Gan Eden. He said that originally, Adam was created with a Milah, in other words, without an orlah, and bread and wine grew on trees. This is God's conceptual image of the world, but we screwed it up. Given the curses God pronounced when casting us from Gan Eden, this makes some manner of sense.

Gen. 3:16 To the woman He said, "I will greatly increase your suffering and your childbearing; in pain shall you bear children. Yet your craving shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."

In other words, until this point, the intent had been that women would be truly equal, and would bear children without much discomfort. More on this later.

Gen. 3:17-19 To Adam He said, "Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate of the tree about which I commanded you saying, 'You shall not eat of it,' accursed is the ground because of you; through suffering shall you eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it sprout for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread until you return to the ground, from which you were taken: For you are dust, and to dust shall you return."

In other words, until this point, our sustenance came easily to us. We did not have to struggle and work hard in order to provide food for ourselves and our families.

But I was thinking about this a bit, and came to the conclusion that I don't think this Midrash is meant literally. I don't think it's rational to believe that the trees literally produced wine and bread, etc. I think there's another way to consider it.

Perhaps the truth is that the changes that took place weren't to the World, but rather to Humanity itself. Maybe, just as we changed in respect to being born without an orlah, so too we were changed in other ways. The results are interesting, at least to me:

Animals do not prepare their food. Cows don't go cooking the grass in the pasture. Lions and tigers don't season their prey first. (Gators and crocs do, but what they do is pretty gross, and beyond my scope here.) Animals basically take the world as it comes, and the world provides complete foods for them without further preparation. Perhaps, then, Man was also physiologically different in that he was able to directly use the produce of the world, without further preparation. Thus when it says that bread grew on the trees, it doesn't literally mean that you had white, rye and pumpernickel trees there. Rather, it means that the plants available were, for them, as complete as we would view bread. In fact, there are also Midrashic sources that describe the trees of Gan Eden as being edible. Again, perhaps it wasn't the trees that changed, but rather us. We used to be able to eat trees, just as well as their fruit.

Similarly, the issue of childbirth. For example, even the largest kangaroos, which grow to slightly larger than man-sized, give birth to tiny joeys, which then climb their way into their mothers' pouches, and continue to grow until they are big enough to leave the pouch. So mother kangaroos don't really have birthpangs, like human women do. The darned things are too small to cause that much difficulty. No, I'm not suggesting that we started off as marsupials, but I am suggesting that it is conceivable (no pun intended) for us to have started off having tiny babies, that grew large outside the mother's body.

Now, if what I'm suggesting is right, then it comes out that the Garden of Eden is not so much a place as a physical state. The Garden State, as it were. And that Brit Milah is our attempt, to quote CSNY much out of context, "...to get ourselves back to the Garden..."

I'm not entirely sure any of this makes sense... just a thought.

So Am I a Kofer?

So what is this blog about? Well, it's about Jewish thought, but not just any Jewish thought... My Jewish thought, which frankly can be a bit different; certainly different than the "accepted" views of many. There a number of major areas in which these difference are manifest:

1. I do not believe that previous generations were quasi-magical beings who never did anything wrong, or without in some way having pure intentions. I believe that while they were, great and learned people, they were also human, with human failings. Sometimes they made mistakes. Sometimes they did bad things. And contrary to making them less, I believe that makes them more. They were able to rise to their levels of greatness despite their failings.
   
2. I think that Chazal were very real about the world in which they lived, believing that God put us in this world to reckon with, and appreciate, as it is. This doesn't mean the world is perfect. It doesn't mean there isn't even extreme ugliness in the world. But even the unpleasant aspects of life are part of God's world, just as the beautiful parts.
   
3. I believe in Science, and that most of the time, it is possible to reconcile it with Torah. I do believe there are aspects of the Bri'ah that we don't understand... parts that are, perhaps, mystical. But in General, I believe that God created the universe, and the scientific rules that govern it. And if God believes in Science, that's good enough for me.
4. I do not believe that Chazal were never mistaken about the universe. I believe that they lived within the context of their day, and that understood things within those frames of reference. So if the Gemara talks about spontaneous generation, which it does, that doesn't mean that it really happens. It doesn't even mean, as I've heard many explain, that things used to be that way, but then nature changed. I think that's a ridiculous assumption. It makes much more sense to assume that peoples' understanding of the World changed, and hence their descriptions and explanations of it would do likewise.

Those are some the kinds of things you'll find here. I hope that most of them will be at least marginally coherent, but I make no promises. If you truly don't understand what I'm trying to say, by all means, let me know. If you understand, but disagree, and can make a coherent argument, please feel free to post. If you're really good, you might even get me to change my mind; I try to be intellectually honest. If you understand, disagree, and just want to harangue me about my views with comments like, "How can you say such things about the Gedoilim?", you probably shouldn't bother... unless, of course, they're truly stupid and worthy of serious ridicule, in which case, by all means, please post them. And if you're being mean and nasty, I'll just delete your comments anyway, so don't bother.

Finally, and I really don't mean to offend, but the purpose of this blog is to express my ideas, and allow some dialogue about them, as I continually quest to hone my understanding of things, and my own thoughts about God, Judaism, and the Universe. If it interests you, and you are able to take anything away from it, I'll be thrilled. But if some of the concepts, or terms, are a bit too esoteric - and depending on whom you are, and your background, they may just be that - I'm not going to slow down to explain much... at least not here. Mi she'yavin, yavin...

So, am I a kofer? I don't think so, but based on many of my conversations with the yeshivishe velt through the years, I think some of you will conclude that I am. That's your perogative. You're welcome not to read this stuff. If you do, well... you've been warned.

-- The Half-Heretic