Happy Simchat Torah/Shmini Atzeret (Reverse That)

Not sure what compels and propels me to write as I watch the shutting door, right before the sun sets. I get it in my head that I need to share, though I don't know who cares. A lot of it is for me - and then it's also here for you (who?) (you- hoo!) to see:

The Chernobyler Maggid said that each of the 3 main holidays has an attribute - and that zman does not just mean the time of - rather it means the preparation station for X. Sukkot launches the simchah of the year. Perhaps the reason why we have one day extra at the end of Sukkos is because happiness is of great import, and is often neglected in terms of the work it needs to set inside us. So we take one more day to work on out attitude of happiness.


Have a great Yom Tov and a happy new year!

Like A Haiku

Some times like a snail

Other times like a Concorde

Any way time moves

Pre Shmini Atzeret Post

What is the meaning of the word atzeret, as it appears in Vayikrah 23:36 ?

2

Rashi - cites a medrash and uses a phrase (his own wording) that has caught on. He tells a story of a host that has many people over and then asks his dearest friends to stay a little bit longer, saying, "Kashah alai preidatchem," - "Your separation is difficult for me."
h

Ibn Ezra - quotes those who say that it means kehilah - gathering together (based on Yirmiyahu 9:1). Ibn Ezra points out, as others do, that this word appears in the context of the last day of Pesach (Devarim 16:8) which features a command to retreat to privacy (Devarim 16:7). He says that the word atzeret connotes stopping to make G-d primary and all else secondary (based on Shmuel 1 21:8). He backs up his explanation by noting that both here and in regard to Pesach the announcement of a day of atzeret is followed by the exhortation to refrain from melachah - work. Not doing other work allows this to be a true atzeret, a G-d centered day.

b

Sforno - says that "Atzeret is not simply the concept of holding back from regular melachah." He says that atzeret connotes, along with refraining from work, placing oneself in a holy place and praying and serving G-d there, basing himself on Shmuel 1 21:8, in addition to Yoel 1:14, and Melachim 2 10:20. He says that the day after the last day of all the holiday cycle is an appropriate day to set aside to go to holy spots and engage in happiness of Torah and kindness. He points out that on the seventh day of Pesach the Jewish People, together with Moshe, sang to G-d (Shmot 15:1) and that's why that day is called atzeret laHashem (Devarim 16:8). This, he explains, is why Shavuot is referred to as Atzeret - because on this fiftieth day after Yetziat Mitzrayim the Jews stopped together to serve G-d. (He suggests that the Torah doesn't call this day Atzeret because the Jewish People later denounced this day when they listened to the negative reports of most of the meraglim (Shmot 33:6).

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Ramban - offers a kabbalistic idea about the six days all being a pair and the seventh and the Jewish People being a pair. He says this is the idea of atzeret, the eight being us. He develops this concept and says that what we call the Omer period is really like Chol HaMoed and Shavuot is the atzeret, topping it off. So too, Sukkos has an atzeret at its completion.

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Da'at Mikrah - breaks it down into several major approaches, either a. stopping or b. closing or c. gathering.

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Chizkuni - tells the story of a group that gathers with a friend. Knowing that they'll be back in 50 days they don't make a big deal over parting. The next time, they know they will meet again in a few months, so, again, there's no major to do over separating. But the next time, as they part, they realize this is it for six months so they add on a day to deal with the long break up ahead.
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Rav Hirsch - says that atzeret is a special kind of stopping, stopping and trying to hold on to something before it slips through your hands. He says, as others before him, that Sukkos marks the end of the cycle of the Shalosh Regalim. We have a special day to try to focus before returning to the "real world."

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My Thoughts:

Today, we experience Sukkos not so much as the end of the Shalosh Regalim, but as the end of a month of holy days. We take one day to try to figure out how to bring this holiness into our regular lives.

b

"Kashah alai preidatchem/Your separation is difficult for Me." This is understood to refer to separating from G-d, kaviyachol. Some say the preidah is our separation from each other. It dawned on me on YomTov that preidah may refer to fragmentation within our selves. A dear friend of mine heard my thoughts and commented that the three are connected - it's the three relationships we have in life.

j

A man had trouble finding things in the morning. So he made a list before he went to sleep. It read, in part: My tie is on the doorknob, my shirt is on the chair, my socks are under the bed, and I am in bed. He woke up in the morning and went through the list and found gathered everything together. But when he did not see himself in bed he panicked. The idea is that everything can be in place in life, but if we are fragmented, if we don't know where we are, then nothing is in place.

h

May we be blessed, in the merit of the one more day we will take to wrap it all up, to connect to G-d, each other, and to find ourselves this year. May this be a year of unity in all directions.

P.S. Three years ago after the last days of Chag I wrote this one paragraph post. I love that it elicited comments from six different people. I stand by the post and what's in it.

Sigh, a Haiku

The Grand Canyon

A beautiful chasm

Between you and me

VeZot HaBrachah - I've Been to the Mountain Top

Rabbi Josh Hoffman has a beautiful essay this week (as always). I posted it in its entirety on parshapost. Till you go there, here's a taste:

The Ramban says that the reason God showed Moshe the entire land is that Moshe loved the Jewish people, and wanted to see the reward that God had in store for them when they would settle the land of their forefathers. from this perspective, we can understand why God also showed Moshe the enter history of the nation, including both its good times and its bad times. When someone loves another, he wants to know everything about the person, both the good and the bad. Although the bad aspects may cause the one who loves some anguish, in a deeper sense they only serve to strengthen the love held for the other, and the bad times may serve to strengthen that love even more than the good times do. God, therefore, showed Moshe, the true lover of the Jewish people, all that would befall them in the future just as he was about to die, to endear them to him even more, so that he could take that love with him as God removed him from their midst.

Early Light

Call in the morning

G-d asks of us with hope

Somehow we forget

The Time: KeChatzot, The Scene: Getting Out of Personalized Mitzrayim (A Haiku)

Middle of the night

Though of course not exactly

We leave our Egypt

The Perfect Esrog and Why We Learn Gemorah

Some days I feel like I should post. I work on it a bit, think about it more, and then the hour gets later than I fess up to.


Sometimes I start long posts, too long to finish for me for a while.


Here then are two halves of posts as my piece for today.

_____________________________________

I've been thinking about a classic story. Here's my take on it - copyright 2010 by Neil Fleischmann:

The Esrog Shaleim - The Perfect Esrog

PART I

Once there was a man named Kasriel and his wife Etta. They had a wonderful life together, had been happily married for 9 years. They had no children. Kastriel worked as a bank teller. He made a decent living. he was kind to all he came in contact with, as best as he could be. He learned Torah, he gave Tzedakah. He cherished his Jewish life. Some aspects of observance came easier to him than others. But he worked on every element of his religious life. When he was young he had serious anger issues. In eighth grade he threw a tray of food at a kid (Avrumi) who teased him - and that's a small example. He learned classic mussar works and practiced what he read in these books - Orchot HaTzadikim was his favorite. He took wisdom wherever he could find it and together with friends, rabbis, and other advisors worked very seriously on chiseling himself into a mentsch, particularly in regard to controlling his anger.


Some Jews spend money freely on vacations, fancy food, high end clothing, and distractions of all kinds. Some of those people scrimp when it comes to mitzvot. Kasriel was a rare breed. He didn't spend too much money on his own entertainment or comfort - he made sure he and his wife had what they needed but didn't indulge. When it came to mitzvot though he went all out. He regularly bought many sefarim with great excitement on a regular basis, he put a twenty dollar bill in the tzedakah box every day (besides many other donations and acts of chesed), and every week for Shabbos he kept the sacred tradition of acquiring the best of the best. When it came to the holidays he also wanted the best.


Sukkos was coming and Kasriel wanted the best ways of serving G-d and growing close to him at this season of Happines, when he himself felt great joy. He put his his wood walls up in his backyard and it was like a clubhouse for him and G-d. The day after Yom Kippur Kasriel went to Moishie's sefarim store on Main Street. He asked the proprietor to see the best esrog in the house. The store owner said that they had esrogim ranging from twenty to eighty dollars. "Nothing else?" Kasriel looked at what the esrogim on on the table, but none of them sang to him.


TO BE CONTINUED

_______________________

Why We Learn Gemorah

In high school I had two pet questions that I’d ask teachers all the time. One was if Rashi had Ruach HaKodesh. And the other was why we learn Gemorah. The first one went out of fashion. I took the second one with me to Israel and beyond. I had a serious problem with learning Gemorah; I really did. When I went to Israel after high school, my Rebbe – Rav Yitzchak Mirsky went around the room and asked us each to say something about ourselves. I said that I liked learning, but I didn’t like learning Gemorah. It got a big laugh from the room. I wasn’t joking. In high schhol I stood out a bit for taking notes when Rav Margolis did parsha from a mysterious little green book on Fridays. I read Ethics From Sinai cover to cover, as well as Eight Questions People Ask About Judaism (that was the title when I read it and I was traumatized when they changed it to nine because I felt secure about having all the answers). I liked learning. But I felt tormented by Gemorah. It was more similar to a math book than to Rejoice Oh Youth (which I had borrowed from a Rebbe and read on his dare).

Time Flies

You Can't

They go Too Fast

I use this brain teaser to teach the idea of a hava amina and a maskana and how one of the benefits of Gemorah is learning to view things in an out of the box way:

What does it mean? The tricky part is the third line. However you try to explain it (and kids do say the darndest, smartest things) it sounds like a stretch. But when I tell you that "time" is the verb and "flies" are the noun, it makes sense in a new way. It's a command: "Time those things called flies. I'll bet you can't. You know why? because they go too fast."

After exploring many options, I’ve decided that the reason for learning Gemorah which sings to me is that it teaches us to think in broad and unconventional ways, to not be distracted by the box.

TO BE CONTINUED

Good Moed Al Jaffee

11:23 PM - Just got home from Yom Tov/Shabbos is Spring Valley. Intense in a good way. Heard a nice Torah from the Chernobyl Maggid. Zman usually is translated as time, it also means to prepare. The various zmanim in the Jewish year prepare us to have that theme carried through the year. Thus, freedom is initiated at Pesach, Torah at Shavuot and Happiness at Sukkot. It reminds me of the idea of ma'ase avot siman lebanim - that the avot allowed certain energies to be taken and run with by their descendants. May we be blessed to have happiness opened up for us now for the year.

On a related note, rreconnecting to G-d from a place of love (teshuva mei'ahava) accomplishes what can not be done through a fear based repentance (teshuva miyirah).When you do teshuva mei'ahava your aveirot - negative actions become zechuyot - merits. Up to and including Yom Kippur is a time when most people focus on fear of G-d. Sukkot is referred to as yom rishon lecheshbon avonot - usually translated as - the opening day for the reckoning of sins.

Sukkot is zman simchateinu. Rav Nachman MiBreslov explains that on Sukkot we re-focus our teshuva and do it mei'ahava. The true meaning of yom rishon lecheshbon avonot, may be that in the post Yom Kippur days we want to re-count our avonot and work on recycling the avonot as zechuyot - to switch things around through teshuva mei'ahava.

On Rosh HaShana, at Tashlich, we throw our sins into the water. On Sukkot we gather in the water with joy - u'she'avtem mayim besason - we collect back those aveirot with great joy!

"11:59 PM" - It's later than that, but it's still Motzei Shabbos, Saturday Night, and not yet Sunday morning.


The head of my school's English department, Tikvah Weiner, made my day recently when she told me that she quotes me all the time. She's presently teaching The Things They Carried and when asked if it's a true story she used my line that it's true although it may not have happened. That just came into my mind. I'm thinking a lot about one of my favorite stories. I think it will need to be a post of its own. Maybe soon.


On erev Yom Tov I wrote about the new book on Al Jaffee. Over Yom Tov I did some asking and thinking about the head shaving issue raised in that post. I once heard that this was a custom done by one Chassidic group. I was just informed by a very reliable source that this has nothing to do with sect but is contingent upon geography. The prevalent custom in Galicia was for women to shave their heads when they got married. Jaffee's mother was from Lithuania, which explains why she did not keep that custom.


This book is written so well. It is a brillian collaboration. One critique that I have is that it contains a small amount of crude words and images. As I enjoyed the book and bumped into these pieces I was reminded of something I recently read in another excellent book. Christine Lavin worked many years ago with Robert Klein. She helped him out by taking notes offstage as to what new bits were working or not. Afterwards he said that instead of paying her money (she would have liked the money) he would give her advice (she cherishes the advice to this day, even though she would have liked the money). He told her to never go crude in her performances. He said that you immediately knock away a percentage of your audience, and why would you want to do that? I think that Jaffee and Weisman will lose some readers that would have been ripe for this book due to the bits of crudeness that they included. Sigh.







Here's a sample of Weisman's writing, from the very start of the work (to the right of the drawing above):


"The plausible impossible" is a term of art unique to cartooning. It is what holds Bugs Bunny up when he runs off a cliff, traverses a yawning chasm, and continues running on the other side, completely ignorant of the terrible fate that, except for a magical, momentary suspension of the laws of gravity, should have been his. It is the guiding comic principle - at once thrilling and ridiculous - that lies at the heart of cartooning. This willing suspension of disbelief has a logic all its own. What keeps Bugs aloft, what makes the impossible plausible, is not looking down. It is a talent that eighty-nine year old Al Jaffee has displayed in his life as well as his art."


She writes masterfully here, and throughout the book. She returns to this theme repeatedly emphasizing how throughout his travails Al keeps his balance by not looking down but rather looking ahead, and moving on.


It's interesting to note that Al has issues with traditional Judaism. Perhaps more interesting is that he has offered his services for many years, and continues to do so (as did his colleague Dave Berg) to Chabad's Moshiach Times. About this Al says, "I have a warm relationship with my editor, Dovid Shalom Pape. Even though I abandoned all of religious zealotry years ago in Lithuania. I like the kind and gentle souls of the people of Orthodoxy. Or maybe I'm doing penance for my mother. I keep asking Dovid, 'Where was our G-d while they were roasting our people?' I know it's an elementary question, but I still haven't gotten an elementary answer." (Al Jaffee's Mad Life pg. 93)

The Anxious Haiku

The anxious people

hear the voices that you don't

We should all hear them

Erev Sukkos In The Library With Neil

Yesterday was my Hebrew Birthday - I hung one more shanah on the wall (to paraphrase Paul Simon).

The YU library is open today til 3:45 PM, bad if you're a frum librarian, good if you're a frum local. A colleague asked me to return a book for him, so that's why I'm here. And how could I visit that YU library (while it's nice and quiet) and not sit and blog a bit? I just printed out some teaching related sources. I'm pretty excited about teaching.

Yesterday I received a pre-release copy of a book that I'm impressed with. it's a biography of the Mad cartoonist Al Jaffee called Al Jaffee's Mad Life by Mary-Lou Weisman. it's a straight up bio on the one hand but it's filled with pictures drawn by the subject so it's kind of a graphic novel. I was wondering why it was offered to me to read and write about. About 30 pages into it I understand.

Jaffeee, now pushing 90 had, parents who came from frum homes. His father let go of the traditions. His mother wouldn't. They had four kids in six years and then she made the unusual move of leaving a comfortable acculturated life in Savannah, Georgia and heading back (surprising everyone) to Lithuania. I'm now up to the part where boisterous young Al has won over the kids who beat him up when he first arrived in the Old Country.

Looking back, Al wonders if his mother was really Orthodox because she covered her hair, but hadn't shaved her head. And I wonder too, how myths and misinformation carry on.

It seems like a well done book, written by an old friend of Al's who really knows what she's doing. The drawings fit well and add a lot. It's a page turner.

I just picked a few magazines off of the shelves. The National Review's cover wonders "what marriage is for." The article is political rather than philosophical, agenda driven rather than being an honest exploration. Disappointing. The New Republic has a strong poem called "Chance" by Anjie Mazakis, which includes and adapts a beautiful quote from Wuthering Heights, "She's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, it is the same." Psychology today has a cover story called "Revenge of the Introverts" and observes that because things are set up to have it appear that everyone is an extrovert "it's hard not to feel like an outsider in your own culture." Forbes' thoughts on the business of life are focused on sports and they quote a pro saying "...There's going to be a life after tennis that's a lot longer than your tennis life."

I am pleased that my new insight on Sukkos has been received positively by others. May we all be blessed with a Chag Sameach.