Category Archives: Judaism – General

A ram’s horn, the life’s work of a bee, and a round loaf of bread

We Jews are strange people.

We cover the challah so it doesn’t get jealous when be bless the wine first.
We spend a week living in a wooden shack of sorts just so we can remember what life was like in the desert for forty years.
And we drink a lot of wine. Perhaps it’s a way to help us decipher all the symbols around us. Or to get past the stress of having to deal with them…

Tonight, we surround ourselves with a world of new symbols. The shofar is reminiscent of days of old. It awakes the mind and soul. The apples and honey nourish our bodies and invoke a sweet new year. And the round loaf of bread… it is symbolic of our world and the roundness of time.

Why not just set the table with an alarm clock, some coffee, and a calendar? Why does everything have to be symbolic? Why – when we know what is meant by all of these objects – do we use distant representations rather than realistic items?

At Rosh Hashanah, we are meant to examine ourselves individually and communally. It is the beginning of the time of renewal. A sort of yearly psychiatric check-in. This is not a symbolic check-in … to be sure, we must renew ourselves physically, emotionally, spiritually, religiously, psychologically, and in many other adverbial ways.

And so, while it would be easy enough to celebrate Rosh Hashanah with a birthday cake, we instead use symbols to do so. Because the real, concrete work that is being done is within ourselves.

On this Rosh Hashanah, I wish you all a Shanah Tovah u’Metukah – a sweet and happy new year. May this chag be a time of meaningful personal renewal, and may you find joy and happiness in the coming year.

In the meantime…

On Friday, hours before Shabbat was to arrive, I dumped some thoughts out of my head and onto this blog. Knowing that they were provocative and not merely some light reflections, I expected some sort of reaction from people. But I had no idea the kind of response it would elicit. But then, that’s the whole point of this internet thing, isn’t it.

I spent Shabbat mulling over it all. I’m still mulling. Obviously, a response is on its way. In the meantime, for those that are interested in the topic of commandedness, I recommend the following:

  • “Duties of the Soul: The Role of Commandments in Liberal Judaism,” edited by Niles E. Goldstein and Peter S. Knobel.

  • Various articles in “The Reform Judaism Reader,” specifically Emil Fackenheim’s Nothing is More Important (1954), Jakob Peteuchowski’s Experiencing the Commandment (1961), and Arnold Jacob Wolf’s The Need to Be Commanded (1967). Obviously, the entire chapter on The Halachah of Reform, with notable articles by Rabbis Mark Washofsky, Herman E. Shaalman, and David Polish, is of great importance.

  • Liberal Judaism and Halakhah” edited by Walter Jacob.

    • BZ’s article on Limmud NY’s Reform Halakah panel is also insightful.

    As for me, a response is coming… very soon.

    And I’m still very much a Reform Jew, as I indicated in my previous post.
    Take a look at the last paragraph.

    If a Jew falls in the Woods…

    While teaching my elective at the kibbutz today, one of my students brought up a delightful bit of insight. You might even call it a quintessential Jewish paradox. Or perhaps just a cultural pondering.

    My elective is entitled Yid vs. Goy: Secular, Jewish, and Israeli Culture. We’ve been covering a motley crew of topics, from traditional religious observance to modern musical expressionism. Today, we were talking about the prevalence of Jewish culture in secular society, with a specific focus on the arts. Today was a highlight.

    On a hot, sticky day, on which half of the class decided to skip to pursue other (illicit?) pursuits, one statement (a la “if a tree falls in the forest…”) resounded against the ambient noise.

    If an audience with no Jews in it went to see Spamalot, would there still be people to laugh at the Jewish jokes?”

    This was a reference to the song “You Won’t Succeed on Broadway if You Don’t Have the Jews,” which itself is an off beat satire of the very thing which we were discussing today, namely, how is it that less than one percent of the world’s population seems to exert so much cultural influence.

    A Jewish Conspiracy?

    The discussion took an incredibly interesting turn when we began to discuss who has ownership of the various Jewish cultural influences on non-Jewish society. Do we get to decide who gets to laugh at our jokes if we don’t tell them? Do we get to decide who eats our food if we don’t cook it? Do we get to decide who listens to our songs if we don’t sing them? And are they all still Jewish if we don’t?

    I know my answer. What’s yours?

    When is it Shabbat on the internet?

    From an article by Daphne Berman

    …Though seemingly theoretical, for observant people who run a Web site or an online store, the issue [when is it Shabbat on the internet?] could be potentially problematic since other Jewish people would be using and benefiting from the site during Shabbat.

    After considerable research, the rabbis determined that Shabbat exists on the Internet for a particular user only in the place that he or she uses the Internet. Their ruling – which Rabbi Carmel said was like “having to invent the wheel, because there were no available sources” on the subject – meant that a person is allowed to operate an online store on Shabbat if he or she isn’t actively doing something on the site.

    The rabbis also recommended that someone in New York, for example, not check an Israeli Web site on Friday afternoon, since it would be Shabbat in the place where the site operates, even if it wasn’t yet Shabbat in New York.

    “Almost everything we have an answer for, except spiritual or kabbalistic questions, which we tell people aren’t our specialty,” says Carmel. When someone asked if it was true that there will be fire in hell that will consume sinners, the team of rabbis replied they didn’t know, since no one has reported back to them.

    Carmel feels that people in the ultra-Orthodox camp who have shunned the Internet are missing out on a host of religious opportunities.

    “There’s lots of garbage out there, but there is also a lot of important information, which people could really use for their benefit,” Carmel says.

    “In just two clicks, you can get to sites that we don’t want people to go to, but in just two clicks, you can also get to wonderful places, where you can learn Torah.”