Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Parsha Acharei Mos / Kedoshim and Emor, stories, halacha

Suffering from a brain hemorrhage is Luna Efrat Bat Kamilla.



We are in danger at the time of this writing from a world Pandemic. There is one anti-flu recipe proven over the course of many centuries: Repentance, Prayer and Charity prevent the evil decree. You need all three.

S. sent me a letter which was such a question that I began thinking that it was worth answering here. The answer is that one should be ready at all times in deed and word when nobody is watching to accept the Moshiach.

Hello Rachamim,

"You are welcome now it is time to move ‘bistra, bistra’ hurry up." (The person had a Russian background so I used a Russian word.) Why do you think we need to hurry up? Time is coming to an end?

The answer is that we have to wait for Moshiach on each and every passing day. The only time I don't believe that the Moshiach will come in any one given year is as I walk to Schul to pray Mincha as the sun is setting Erev Rosh Hashanah and then I believe that he can only come next year.

Our Sages of blessed memory tell us that when one sees trouble in the world he should review his own deeds and work on Repentance (Tshuvah), Prayer (Tephillah) and Charity (Tzedakah). We all think that before the king Moshiach can establish his rule that there will be a war of Gog and Magog. In Meseches Baba Kama 60B it states: "That in times of peace the Angel of Death walks along the side of the road and in times of war, he occupies the middle of the road." The statement can be interpreted in many ways and the first way is at face value. However, when one is at war with the forces of evil he cannot stay in the middle of the road where he is sure to die. He must take a firm stance off to the side. He must be zealous for G-D and his cause.

Now the Prophet Yeshayahu (Isa.) states in the early chapters of war, famine, poverty, etc. With the scandals, taxes, loss of trust in the stock market and collapse of companies and green energy taxes literally taxing businesses and power plants out of existence we are headed back towards the Stone Age. One cannot legislate technological advances on a commercial level it is just impossible to do. Corn aka Maize is being used for fuel for automobiles instead of feeding the hungry. In Mexico the H1N1 virus is spreading and Iran is heading towards 60 atomic bombs in the next 5 years and nobody so far is stopping it.

These appear to be signs that make me worry. Things that tell me "Beware Rachamim if HASHEM wants you to miss out on Moshiach, HE just might call you back home via an Iranian Nuke, Virus, Car accident, snake or whatever when the Angel of Death is on the prowl." So am I prepared? Have I given out charity? Have I made a commitment to strengthen myself in Torah and Prayer? Have I stopped my mad folly? - As it is written: "One does not sin unless a spirit of folly enters him".- Mishlei from Shlomo HaMelech.

Thought for the week: Chaim Yitzchok Cohen: One is never alone Hashem is always with us. 24/7 Smile and say "Hashem is always with me'' HASHEM IS WONDERFUL!!!! Let us not let the Yetzer Hara make us think any other way no matter what.



Acharei Mos / Kedoshim and Emor

As a modern person, I believe in taking a vacation for rest and relaxation. However as a Rabbi I cannot take a vacation from Torah and Mitzvos they go with me all the time. Therefore so as not to be under pressure to put out a half baked Parsha and a weak www.rabbipauli.blogspot.com I have sort of jumped the Parsha gun and added another week here and I will see how free I am or if I will have to have another triple header.

We are talking here about no small section of the Torah from Vayikra (Lev.) 16:1 to 24:23

Acharei Mos 28 of the 613 mitzvot; 2 positive, 26 prohibitions

Kedoshim 51 mitzvot; 13 positive, 38 prohibitions

Emor 63 of the 613 mitzvot; 24 pos. 39 prohibitions

This is 142 Mitzvos in all or 23.1% of the Mitzvos of the Torah 39 positive and 103 prohibitions.

16:1 And the LORD spoke unto Moses, after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they drew near before the LORD, and died;

One does not treat his king like a buddy especially the King of Kings. We know about the hint of not drinking wine and now the new prohibition about entering the Holy of Holies. What does G-D want from us to be humble and follow his commandments faithfully no extra additions and no false dress to put on an air for human beings.

2 and the LORD said unto Moses: 'Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place within the veil, before the ark-cover which is upon the ark; that he die not; for I appear in the cloud upon the ark-cover.

We now go into the laws of Yom Kippur Korbanos. What atonements Aaron and his future children are to do for the service of the Cohain Gadol and atonement for the Nation. How the scapegoats are chosen from twin goats or look alike goats. The Mishnah and Talmud Yomi go into depth with the Oral Torah how this was done. Since the Aron Kodesh was permanently placed in the Temple there was a road leading towards the wilderness in the direction of the Dead Sea where the goat was thrown to Azazel. I assume this would be slightly after the turn off to Pisgat Zev on route one something like 15 kilometers from the Temple or about 3 hours of speed walking but probably longer duration due to the goat itself stopping to eat along the way. (That is also the way of our animalist soul inside of us. Our bodies might be pushed off the cliff real soon and all we can think about is enjoying our food along the way. Thus is the nature of this false world. In the true world real values come up for our Neshama.)

3 Herewith shall Aaron come into the holy place: with a young bullock for a sin-offering, and a ram for a burnt-offering. 4 He shall put on the holy linen tunic, and he shall have the linen breeches upon his flesh, and shall be girded with the linen girdle, and with the linen mitre shall he be attired; they are the holy garments; and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and put them on. 5 And he shall take of the congregation of the children of Israel two he-goats for a sin-offering, and one ram for a burnt-offering. 6 And Aaron shall present the bullock of the sin-offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself, and for his house. 7 And he shall take the two goats, and set them before the LORD at the door of the tent of meeting. 8 And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for Azazel. 9 And Aaron shall present the goat upon which the lot fell for the LORD, and offer him for a sin-offering. 10 But the goat, on which the lot fell for Azazel, shall be set alive before the LORD, to make atonement over him, to send him away for Azazel into the wilderness. 11 And Aaron shall present the bullock of the sin-offering, which is for himself, and shall make atonement for himself, and for his house, and shall kill the bullock of the sin-offering which is for himself. 12 And he shall take a censer full of coals of fire from off the altar before the LORD, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the veil. 13 And he shall put the incense upon the fire before the LORD, that the cloud of the incense may cover the ark-cover that is upon the testimony, that he die not.

Looking towards the holy presence directly would cause the soul to depart. A bit different than pictured in raiders of the lost ark but along a similar end result in death. That is why so many unworthy Cohanim in the Second Temple perished.

14 And he shall take of the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it with his finger upon the ark-cover on the east; and before the ark-cover shall he sprinkle of the blood with his finger seven times.

As we say on Yom Kippur “one, one plus one, one plus two … one plus seven” one above and seven below.

15 Then shall he kill the goat of the sin-offering, that is for the people, and bring his blood within the veil, and do with his blood as he did with the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it upon the ark-cover, and before the ark-cover. 16 And he shall make atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions, even all their sins; and so shall he do for the tent of meeting, that dwells with them in the midst of their uncleanness. 17 And there shall be no man in the tent of meeting when he goes in to make atonement in the holy place, until he come out, and have made atonement for himself, and for his household, and for all the assembly of Israel. 18 And he shall go out unto the altar that is before the LORD, and make atonement for it; and shall take of the blood of the bullock, and of the blood of the goat, and put it upon the horns of the altar round about. 19 And he shall sprinkle of the blood upon it with his finger seven times, and cleanse it, and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel. 20 And when he hath made an end of atoning for the holy place, and the tent of meeting, and the altar, he shall present the live goat. 21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, even all their sins; and he shall put them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of an appointed man into the wilderness. 22 And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land which is cut off; and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness. 23 And Aaron shall come into the tent of meeting, and shall put off the linen garments, which he put on when he went into the holy place, and shall leave them there. 24 And he shall bathe his flesh in water in a holy place and put on his other vestments, and come forth, and offer his burnt-offering and the burnt-offering of the people, and make atonement for himself and for the people. 25 And the fat of the sin-offering shall he make smoke upon the altar. 26 And he that lets go the goat for Azazel shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he may come into the camp. 27 And the bullock of the sin-offering, and the goat of the sin-offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place, shall be carried forth without the camp; and they shall burn in the fire their skins, and their flesh, and their dung. 28 And he that burns them shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he may come into the camp. 29 And it shall be a statute for ever unto you: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls, and shall do no manner of work, the home-born, or the stranger that sojourns among you. 30 For on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins shall ye be clean before the LORD. 31 It is a sabbath of solemn rest unto you, and ye shall afflict your souls; it is a statute for ever. 32 And the priest, who shall be anointed and who shall be consecrated to be priest in his father's stead, shall make the atonement, and shall put on the linen garments, even the holy garments. 33 And he shall make atonement for the most holy place, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar; and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly. 34 And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make atonement for the children of Israel because of all their sins once in the year.' And he did as the LORD commanded Moses.

Before going on to the next section, I would like to tell a very short story. Once an officer of the King of Poland stopped at a Jewish Inn. The woman of the house broke an egg and there was blood in it and threw it out. He asked her why this was so and she replied that Jews are forbidden to eat anything with blood in it. The officer said that he was a non-Jew and could eat it. However, the Innkeeper’s wife would not put forbidden blood in eggs in her pot as she had to have strictly kosher pots. This went on for a few more eggs. He saw that the Jew was more bothered by the kashrus than the money and was very impressed. Years went by and the officer became governor of the Polish Province. He heard that there was a Pogrom in the works about the Jewish killing a Christian Child to bake their Matzos with its blood. He gathered his troops together and defended the Jews from the Pogrom quoting the incident that occurred many years earlier in the Inn. Unbeknown to the simple woman, her performance of the Mitzvah with all her heart and money had saved the Jewish Communities in that area. Now read the Torah at face value.

17:10 And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that eats any manner of blood, I will set My face against that soul that eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people. 11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life. 12 Therefore I said unto the children of Israel: No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourns among you eat blood. 13 And whatsoever man there be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that takes in hunting any beast or fowl that may be eaten, he shall pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with dust. 14 For as to the life of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life thereof; therefore I said unto the children of Israel: Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh; for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof; whosoever eats it shall be cut off. 15 And every soul that eats that which dies of itself, or that which is torn of beasts, whether he be home-born or a stranger, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even; then shall he be clean. 16 But if he wash them not, nor bathe his flesh, then he shall bear his iniquity. This last sentence forbids the eating of Trafe – something torn by beasts or Nevailah – something dying of itself and the defilement of the carcass of such a beast on the body.

The L-RD despises sexual lewdness contrary to modern media and movie propaganda. If a man uncovers the nakedness of a close female relative the sex leads to Kares the cutting off the soul(s) of the perpetrator and stoning if caught, warned and brought before a Sanhedrin. These acts may lead to the land vomiting the people out but note the words abomination or perversion are not used. However, homosexuality especially among males is considered an abomination while females should not marry Cohanim if they have done such acts. (Tractate Shabbos). The word perverse is used for bestiality. The Torah does not mince words. If incest is not perverse or abominable then these acts are the vilest of the vile acts that a lewd person can do. If the Torah thinks these acts are the lowest of the low then how can certain Reform and Conservative Rabbis approve of this. Or even the non-Jews who have this reiterated in their book of Roman (perversions and abuse) appoint a Bishop or Clerk to a post as I have seen in the States. Let me tell you that Samael has been given the ability to tempt people just before the Moshiach to weed out the pure from the impure Neshamos. Do not be astounded when you see the wicked thrive or be afraid of sudden fear because we have G-D.

From 5767: 18:22 Thou shall not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination. All the other prohibited or animalist type of acts one could do with close relatives or a married woman is not called ‘normal’ but only this last one is called an abomination. 23 And thou shall not lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith; neither shall any woman stand before a beast, to lie down thereto; it is perversion. While the Torah detests all the above behavior the words get strong on this filth. Otherwise as we see in 25 below, Eretz Yisrael will vomit the violators out! 24 Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things; for in all these the nations are defiled, which I cast out from before you. 25 And the land was defiled, therefore I did visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land vomited out her inhabitants. … 20:13 And if a man lie with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

From 5768: 18:28 that the land vomit not you out also, when ye defile it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. 29 For whosoever shall do any of these abominations, even the souls that do them shall be cut off from among their people. 30 Therefore shall ye keep My charge, that ye do not any of these abominable customs, which were done before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the LORD your God. G-D has a way of purging the abominations and that is by having the land vomit the culprits out. There can be no tolerance on a public scale perhaps one individual to his neighbor but publicly we cannot tolerate a Jew doing an action that will cut himself off from the people and delay redemption of Am Yisrael by the Moshiach. This is liken to a man on the private scale is overwhelmed with love for a woman who does not fully observe Shabbos so much that he can think of her as a potential marriage partner but in the end he must try to persuade her to be flexible to observe Shabbos for her own Neshama’s sake.

19:1 And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: 2 Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them: Ye shall be holy; for I the LORD your God am holy.

We should learn from G-D – you want to be a leader set an example. Not like most of our politicians in most of the countries “Do as I say not as I do.” G-D is holy so we should be holy. Period! We have an example of our ruler being that way something to look at with awe and respect.

3 Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, and ye shall keep My Sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.

Again the honoring of ones parents and the holiness of the Shabbos. Fearing a mother is hard to do. She help you with a bottle or nursing you at nights and changed your diapers yet you as an adult perhaps taller and stronger than she is have to fear her and be awed by her presence. One’s father is easier as while growing up he was the strength and disciplinarian of the family. We also have one sentence next to another about the L-RD being holy and the holy Shabbos so we should have some degree of respect here.

12 And ye shall not swear by My name falsely, so that thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD. 13 Thou shalt not oppress thy neighbor, nor rob him; the wages of a hired servant shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.

It is not easy to be a Jew and sometimes in modern times a check, credit card, contract etc. can meet this requirement. L.W.P was a fellow in my second grade class. He had a hot temper and we got into a fight. I was not a tough guy or a bully but he attacked me. I literally flipped him over. I was told that he had a kidney operation and was very weak. Instead of stepping on him and crushing him, I used less strength just enough to prevent him from hurting me until he calmed down and not down trod on him. We later became quite good friends until I left for Brooklyn Technical High School and he for Stuyvesant and we kept in touch for a few more years. Although as a second grader I had no knowledge of the mitzvah of not oppressing my neighbor who in this case was of a different religion, I had enough common sense not to be a bully. One thing is not to crush a classmate or colleague at work and one thing is to be soft on terrorism to your enemy. The later is a mitzvah to crush the wicked for who is merciful to the wicked is cruel to the merciful.

14 Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the blind, but thou shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD. 15 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment; thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor favor the person of the mighty; but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor.

It is the natural order of things to have extra respect for a wealthy person of stamina dressed tip top over the average Joe. Thus the Torah comes along to warn us that both get equal treatment before G-D. Whom HASHEM has made poor does not mean that he is less of a person than the wealth one.

We now have a series of Mitzvos against Lashon Hara, carrying a grudge and taking vengeance, the laws of Shatnes (forbidden mixtures of animals, clothing and purposely cross breeding fruits). A slave girl had rights to husband and engagement but if she was forced by a free person, she is not put to death and neither is he. I am sure that if this were to become a plague, then even more than a guilt offering would be required.

16 Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people; neither shalt thou stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor: I am the LORD. The first section is talking Lashon Hara and the second section about the blood is listening to Lashon Hara. There comes a fine distinction when a husband or wife come to a Rav to complain about a spouse and ask how to correct his/her bad behavior because chances are this is out of love and not the normal tale bearing. 17 Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart; thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. Many years ago at work I had a colleague who was married to a woman who was loyal a real baalabusta (a Jedi of a housekeeper and cook). However, her cute plumpness turned into fat and his IQ vs. her IQ were worlds apart but she loved him very much. He, however, was lacking companionship and became a bit of Don Juan going with different females more for the intelligent give and take than for anything else. At one point about the 25th female, he found somebody whom he really fell for and wanted to divorce his wife of 25 years for her. I told did not gossip to his wife but instead asked him, “You are working for this company for 27 years. How would you feel after all your loyalty that you were given the boot for some younger person to work at half or a third of your salary?” He got the message. But if you are not going to have any effect but make the person change or only make an enemy of that person try to say that you don’t want any partnership in his/her sin.

18 Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD. Boy this one line would put most criminals out of business. No vengeance on the killing of Don So and So or bearing a grudge against somebody of course if he lied and cheated you and was very wicked you don’t have to have dealings with him. But under normal circumstances that the person has just a plain obnoxious personality you should still love your neighbor as thyself.

19 Ye shall keep My statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind; thou shalt not sow thy field with two kinds of seed; neither shall there come upon thee a garment of two kinds of stuff mingled together. This is the law of grafting and interbreeding. It once happened that a Donkey and a Zebra at the Biblical Zoo mated and they produced a Zebkey but that was an accident. I also had a purple flowering plant that was near my Geraniums on my porch. The end result due to natural pollination was a very strong resistant red flowering plant that had the properties of both but not grafted by me in my wildest dreams.

20 And whosoever lies carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid, designated for a man, and not at all redeemed, nor was freedom given her; there shall be inquisition; they shall not be put to death, because she was not free. It is forbidden for a man to lie with a bondwoman especially if she was supposed to marry a Jewish slave or non-Jewish bondman. However, her lack of freedom and not having family around to defend her exempts them in this world from a penalty but perhaps in the next he could be accused of a real sinister crime.

21 And he shall bring his forfeit unto the LORD, unto the door of the tent of meeting, even a ram for a guilt-offering. … 29 Profane not thy daughter, to make her a harlot, lest the land fall into harlotry, and the land become full of lewdness. A Jewish Woman is to be treated as a daughter or granddaughter of kings and must of us over the centuries have some blood from Cohanim, Leviim and from royalty.

30 Ye shall keep My Sabbaths, and reverence My sanctuary: I am the LORD. One of the many-many warnings about Shabbos in the Torah and if I am not mistaken, these warnings are more numerous than the 39 Melachos (creative work) listed as categories of things forbidden on Shabbos.

20:7 Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy; for I am the LORD your God. 8 And keep ye My statutes, and do them: I am the LORD who sanctify you. … 23 And ye shall not walk in the customs of the nation, which I am casting out before you; for they did all these things, and therefore I abhorred them. 24 But I have said unto you: 'Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land flowing with milk and honey.' I am the LORD your God, who have set you apart from the peoples. 25 Ye shall therefore separate between the clean beast and the unclean, and between the unclean fowl and the clean; and ye shall not make your souls detestable by beast, or by fowl, or by any thing wherewith the ground teems, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. 26 And ye shall be holy unto Me; for I the LORD am holy, and have set you apart from the peoples, that ye should be Mine. Not only are we to keep the Mitzvos but we are to be holy in deeds and all our actions. We all are supposed to live a life of Kiddush HASHEM for what ever we do, somebody is looking at us a Jew first an a human second. “That Jewish doctor saved my foot from being amputated.”

27 A man also or a woman that divines by a ghost or a familiar spirit, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones; their blood shall be upon them. This refers to séances and other things. One should know that card readings come from Shaydim at best and charlatans at worst. I once learnt the rules of card reading just for knowledge but the most important thing that I learned was that similar to the interpretation of dreams that if one takes out the bad from the interpretation or the bad cards from the interpretation, then a good interpretation can be found. After I learned that knowledge similar to the Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol story and Rabbi Akiva with the laws of witchcraft, I immediately forgot every thing only the general knowledge of how it worked. On the other hand, Palmistry and knowledge of reading ones face if done for the sake of heaven can be like a spiritual doctor reading the ailments of the soul and the weakness of a person.

21:1 And the LORD said unto Moses: Speak unto the priests the sons of Aaron, and say unto them: There shall none defile himself for the dead among his people; 2 except for his kin, that is near unto him, for his mother, and for his father, and for his son, and for his daughter, and for his brother; 3 and for his sister a virgin, that is near unto him, that hath had no husband, for her may he defile himself. 4 He shall not defile himself, being a chief man among his people, to profane himself. 5 They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corners of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their flesh. 6 They shall be holy unto their God, and not profane the name of their God; for the offerings of the LORD made by fire, the bread of their God, they do offer; therefore they shall be holy. 7 They shall not take a woman that is a harlot, or profaned; neither shall they take a woman put away from her husband; for he is holy unto his God. These laws are separating a Cohain from an ordinary Jew. A divorced woman can be one of the greatest women in the world and even divorced because the husband was a criminal, wife beater, had other wives and Beis Din forced him to divorce, yet she has this mild blemish and is forbidden for a Cohain. The laws of how a Cohain must check for the wife back six generations are the most important thing that she comes from good stock. Being on call before the L-RD 24/7 he could not defile himself with the dead except for very close relatives which the Torah made an exception of.

22:1 And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: 2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: The appointed seasons of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are My appointed seasons. 3 Six days shall work be done; but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation; ye shall do no manner of work; it is a Sabbath unto the LORD in all your dwellings. At this juncture the Torah the Torah repeats the holiness of the Shabbos, Pessach and all the Yomim Tovim mentioned in the Torah. This is a repetition of special holiness for the Cohanim and since the Torah brings it down again it is for reinforcing the holidays into the minds of the Bnei Yisrael. No words are minced in Torah and so again and again the importance of Shabbos and Yom Tov observance is emphasized by the Torah. Believe me if I was not bound to HASHEM, I too would be out with a sailboat and swimming at a beach on Shabbos as a form of rest and relaxation. Therefore the Torah tells me it is more than that type of rest but a rest from all forms of creative work – “Every type of Melacha one should not do.” The Torah does this for us not for G-D – Shabbos observance is our own reward. My private asylum from a crazy planet full of crazy people – where for around 25 hours there is not existence of stock markets, H1N1 virus, Iranian attempt at gaining nuclear devices, UN (in)-Security Councils, Israeli Drivers with Road Rage, etc. OK, I have to give up sailing up and down the coast of Israel and being free with the breeze or even like waltzing along with the breeze and the breeze drifting over the sea. But I get in return a stronger family unit and a chance to sit and read things other than the internet and the fast pace of information. The amount of Frum people with stress related disorders are much lower than the rest of the population because we have Shabbos. I am not saying that Frum Jews don’t have stress and some do have disorders from stress but it is relatively smaller than the rest of the population.

… 15 And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the waving; seven weeks shall there be complete; 16 even unto the morrow after the seventh week shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall present a new meal-offering unto the LORD. 17 Ye shall bring out of your dwellings two wave-loaves of two tenth parts of an ephah; they shall be of fine flour, they shall be baked with leaven, for first-fruits unto the LORD. 18 And ye shall present with the bread seven lambs without blemish of the first year, and one young bullock, and two rams; they shall be a burnt-offering unto the LORD, with their meal-offering, and their drink-offerings, even an offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the LORD. 19 And ye shall offer one he-goat for a sin-offering, and two he-lambs of the first year for a sacrifice of peace-offerings. 20 And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the first-fruits for a wave-offering before the LORD, with the two lambs; they shall be holy to the LORD for the priest. 21 And ye shall make proclamation on the selfsame day; there shall be a holy convocation unto you; ye shall do no manner of servile work; it is a statute for ever in all your dwellings throughout your generations. 22 And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corner of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleaning of thy harvest; thou shalt leave them for the poor, and for the stranger: I am the LORD your God. This is the reason for the counting of the Omer in line 15 and the gleaming of the wheat and barley harvest and the bringing of these crops of first fruits (meaning wheat and barley) before the L-RD on Chag Shevous through the other 5 Species during the summer until Sukkos. Line 21 hints at the confession that the crop or fruit farmer makes before the L-RD that is spelled out in Oral Torah.

24:8 Every Sabbath day he shall set it in order before the LORD continually; it is from the children of Israel, an everlasting covenant. 9 And it shall be for Aaron and his sons; and they shall eat it in a holy place; for it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the LORD made by fire, a perpetual due.'

This is the Lechem Hapanim or Showbread before the L-RD and it went from Shabbos unto Shabbos and when it was taken off the table was as fresh and warm as if it came out of the baker’s oven. This was one of the Miracles of the Temple.

Halacha

If you forget to count the Omer at night, then you should count the next day - but without a Bracha. You then continue counting (at night) as usual with a Bracha. If you forgot to count during the night as well as the following day, then you should still continue counting the Omer, but you may no longer make the Bracha.
If you're unsure if you counted the previous night, you may continue counting with a Bracha.
Source: Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 120:2

Before making the Bracha on counting the Omer one should know which day one is going to count. If one has not yet counted the Omer, and somebody wants to know which day we're up to, you should tell them "yesterday was such-and-such". If, instead, you replied "today is such-and-such" you may not be allowed to make a Bracha on that night's count, since you already counted. However, you should still count "properly" (without a Bracha) since you have to mention the weeks as well. Source: Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 120:3

Living in Eretz Yisrael is a Mitzva. Walking 4 Amos (about 2 meters) in Eretz Yisrael is a Mitzva. Even moving to Eretz Yisrael is considered part of the Mitzva.
One may not leave Eretz Yisrael except to learn Torah, to get married, to escape from danger or for business trips.
Source: - Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 248:4

If one experiences a miracle, one should celebrate the day of the miracle every year. On this day one should set aside time to thank Hashem for the miracle and to talk about the miracle. Source: Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 61:3 It was 43 years ago that an Atheist or at best agnostic College student experienced a phenomena that could not be explained by four dimensional Physics. This led him to the Principle of Cosmic Unity which is above time and space. This is why I don’t say Tachanun on both Hay and Vav of Iyar and Hallel without the Bracha on Hay. The story will be repeated again for the 45th anniversary ble neder or if I publish a book.

In the time of Rabbi Mordechai Sason who lived in Baghdad, a high ranking officer fell sick. The officer went from doctor to doctor but no one was able to cure him- there was no cure for his sickness. Seeing this, his parents saw the doctors could not help so they went to the house of the rabbi. With tears in their eyes they started begging the Rabbi to save their son.

Rabbi Mordechai Sason had one condition for them: if they are willing to sanctify G-d’s name in this world and to notify everyone that there is a G-d who obligates man to do His will and listen to his commandments.
“Only if you accept this and accept upon yourself not to harm any Jew, I can agree to cure your son”

The parents accepted.

Rabbi Mordechai stood and prayed on behalf of the officer, and in a short time he was healed.

All better, the officer came to Rabbi Mordechai. In appreciation to him he gave him an expensive shirt as a gift. Rabbi Mordechai wore the shirt to remind all who saw him the sanctification of G-d that was shown clearly in the eyes of the gentiles.

Many similar stories has taken place in Europe in the middle east and especially in IRAN.

Our sages have directed and enlightened and caused miracles for gentiles.
But in return what are we getting back!!!?

This story took place in Germany. A mother once called the doctor to come urgently. Her baby was extremely sick he was running with very high fever, and his face turned blue, his shallow breathing was sure to stop any minute. Petrified the mother saw her baby dying in her hands.
She started screaming repeatedly "Where is the doctor"? Finally she heard the door bell ring- it was the doctor.

He looked at the baby, gave him a shot and the baby fell asleep. “I saved your baby in the last minute, no need to worry the baby will live” the doctor said. “What’s the baby’s name Mrs. Shiklagberger”?

“Adolf and thank you” his mother answered.

“No problem just doing my duty” the doctor smiled and turned to leave.
The baby grew up and changed his last name from Shiklagberger to HITLER.

Let's do kindness to Those that really deserve help.

Rosh Chodesh Tov and Shabbat Shalom,
Binyamin Jadidi – thanks to Gene There is a moral to this story as I once saw the Tzaddik Rabbi Glixsman Zatzal pray for a non-Jewish nurse who became ill and she was a great help to the Jewish community. We do pray for the righteous among the Nations of the world.

Enjoy Your Last Eggs
 
A simple grocer once came to Rabbi Shmuel Salant and started complaining.

“I am going to go bankrupt soon, every night thieves break into my store and
steal sixty eggs. I have no clue who it is, and if this continues any further I will be forced to close my store”.

Rabbi Shmuel answered him “tonight before you close your store cook sixty eggs and place them on the top of the cases of eggs in your store”.
The grocer did as he was told. The next day he entered his store and he saw to his great surprise a huge snake lying dead on the ground. He quickly understood that it was the snake that ate sixty of his eggs every night but tonight he choked on the cooked egg.

Word spread out, the city was shocked- how did the Rabbi know they wondered,
is he a prophet?

Rabbi Shmuel explained: “It’s simple, I thought to myself who can be the thief? Either it’s an animal who’s hungry or a person who wants to make profit out of it. If it’s an animal then the best solution will be to cook it in order for him to choke on it. And if it’s a person who is stealing it cooking the eggs will cause a stir in the city – everyone will hear of a person trying to sell cooked eggs and then it wouldn’t be so hard to catch him…

The total number killed in 9/11 attacks: 2,819
The estimated number of New Yorkers suffering from post-traumatic-stress disorder as a result of 9/11: 422,000
In Israel countless number of babies, pregnant women were blown up in busses as a result of suicide bombers.

But the snake is still enjoying the eggs....
Nobody bothers himself to boil the eggs and choke the snake. Sadly, its not just a simple egg and a hungry snake anymore.
Unfortunate are the people (men, women and children) that vicious mentality has caused agony for the world.
Boiled eggs is not enough.
Binyamin Jadidi

Mussar from an Idea that I got from Binyamin Jadidi Shlita: What does one do when he wants to board an airplane or cruise ship? He plans his trip gets prepared for the day of departure and books his tickets and packs his bag. He reviews prior to his trip things like did I pack my Siddur, Mishnayos for reading, Tallis & Tephillin, Passport, proper clothing of the climate and weather? He of course has to purchase his ticket in advance. Will he be down below deck for the cruise or an inner cabin with no ocean view? Will he have an ocean view, ocean view with a balcony, or a suite? Will he travel economy, economy plus, business or first class on his flight? One he is in the middle of his flight or the middle of the ocean, he cannot change his class of seating or quarters. So too is this world we have either prepared for our departure into the next world or not. Once we have departed it is too late for trip preparations.

 
Philosophy of Reb Simcha Bunim
 
From Yitzchak R. : The problem with keeping or not violating commandments 
because of fear of punishment is that basically you are saying that you will obey the
 person with the biggest stick who can inflict the most damage on you. So you are 
acting strictly out of self-preservation.

In other words there is no recognition of who Hashem is – other then the Being with the biggest stick. The Commandments don’t really mean anything they are just something you have to do or otherwise a powerful being will hurt you.

Keeping the Torah out of fear actually negates the very essence of the Torah.

We should be keeping commandments because of recognition that Hashem as our Creator is infinitely wise and understands how humans operate at our core and therefore is giving us the greatest gift by helping us to actualize our greater selves by keeping the Commandments.

Its about recognizing that the love and appreciation that we have for a
Being that created us and gives us infinite abundance and is giving us a great opportunity – how can we violate that sacred trust and love? In essence we are violating ourselves when we disregard a Commandment from Hashem.

Keeping the Torah is about recognition of Hashem’s role in your life – which should fill us with love, appreciation, thankfulness, loyalty, willingness to sacrifice and do anything for such a Being of infinite loving-kindness and wisdom. Awe - is realizing that not only can’t I violate the trust of the Being that I owe my greatest allegiance and love (1000 times higher then the allegiance and love for a soul mate) but all that He asks of me is directly for my benefit to grow and develop as a human being.

That is what Years Shemayim – Awe of heaven translates to when we move beyond the simplest reading of the Torah. The Torah was given for comprehension on many levels, from the simplest, basest, level of thinking to an elevated growth oriented way of thinking.

The purpose of this group and the Rabbis and people of Peshischa was to move beyond simplistic thinking and strive for truth and elevation. Certainly in Peshischa “Yerah” would be translated as AWE.
 
 
"The heart which involves the desire of the soul, i.e. the will, is a very important 
sensibility. Bina by itself is not enough, if emotion is not joined with it. There must 
be a unity of brain and heart, a harmony of intelligence and emotion.

…Human beings who think that they can come to know G-d through research, philosophy and intellectual insight, are mistaken. “The teachings of his G-d are in his heart” (Psalms 37:31) There is no more suitable insight to attain the divine than through the heart. When a person purifies his traits, he will find the Divinity in his heart

…“From there you will seek G-d, your Lord, and if you pursue Him with all your heart and soul, you will find Him.” (Deut.4:29)

Reb Simcha Bunim explained it this way:

“All the efforts to know G-d which comes only through wisdom and research will not reach the desired objective because those efforts do not flow from this other special source. Thus it is written ‘From there,’ i.e. from another place. ‘From there you will seek G-d, your Lord…’ A person may twist and turn to seek G-d through research and study but he loses his way because he is seeking ‘from there’. Suddenly a ‘finding’ appears upon his path in front of him, ‘a ray of light’, a wondrous light, which breaks through all his darkness, ‘and you will find’. Why? ‘Because you pursue Him with all your heart’; one needs to pursue G-d with all ‘your heart’.”
 

A powerful film by Rabbi Beryl Wein Shlita: http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhistory/Survivors_and_Sefardic_Jews_Miracl.asp



A little Parable from R’ A.L.: Ribono Shel Olam, I almost sold a Yid for a quarter.'


Several years ago, a rabbi from out-of-state accepted a call to a community in Houston, Texas. Some weeks after he arrived, he had an occasion to ride the bus from his home to the downtown area. When he sat down, he discovered that the driver had accidentally given him a quarter too much change.


As he considered what to do, he thought to himself, 'You'd better give the quarter back. It would be wrong to keep it.' Then he thought, 'Oh, forget it, it's only a quarter. Who would worry about this little amount? Anyway, the bus company gets too much fare; they will never miss it. Accept it as a 'gift from God' and keep quiet.'

When his stop came, he paused momentarily at the door, and then he handed the quarter to the driver and said, 'Here, you gave me too much change.'

The driver, with a smile, replied, 'Aren't you the new rabbi in town?'

'Yes' he replied.

'Well, I have been thinking a lot lately about going somewhere to worship. I just wanted to see what you would do if I gave you too much change. I'll see you in Schul on Shabbos.'

When the rabbi stepped off of the bus, he literally grabbed the nearest light pole, held on, and said, 'Oh Ribono Shel Olam, I almost sold a Yid for a quarter.'

Our lives are the only thing some people will ever read.

This is a really scary example of how much people watch us as Jews, and will put us to the test! Always be on guard -- and remember -- You carry the name of Hashem on your shoulders when you call yourself a 'JEW.'

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.


I'm glad a friend forwarded this to me as a reminder.
So, I choose to forward it to you - my friend. May Hashem bless you; I hope you are having a wonderful day!

If you don't pass this on to anybody, nothing bad will happen; but, if you do, you will have reminded someone that he is being watched.


After R’ A.L. sent this to me he received back the following story from Abe B. Just as Mitzvah brings upon another Mitzvah about 5 years ago, I was sure that I would run out of stories to write or post. But some how story brings on story.


Let me give you the flip side of thje story as told to me by Rabbi Lozer Eichenstein, zt’l.

In the 1930s the Novominsker Rebbe who was his father in law sent Reb Lozer to America to do Kiruv work before it even had such a title.

While he was looking for a rare safer in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, he had to go to a very secluded part of the library where the sefer he was looking for was located.

While there he comes upon a Professor of Talmud at the Seminary, who had originally learned in the Volozhin Yeshiva, sitting over a Gemara and crying like a baby. Reb Lozer asked him what was the matter - to which he replied that he "sold his Olam Haba" for a pair of pant - isn't that a good reason to sit and cry?"

An American Torah Giant goes against most of the Rabbis of Eretz Yisrael and I follow them this came from R’A.L.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw91yrKuQec&feature=related

Very shocking from R.S. how Islam will overcome by demographics Christianity in most western countries in 50 years. The world as we know it today will not exist either culturally, financially or ethically. The US can survive longer through Mexican Immigration but not for long. We are on a collision course with cultures and they are about to win unless we stop worrying about population control and global warming and focus on the first commandment given to Adam and Noach in the Torah. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU

Inyanay Diyoma



Israel wants more ties with Africa: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3706003,00.html

I warned my Democratic friends before the election but I was pooh-poohed as a Conservative Republican: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131020

Black Jewish NY Jet player is angry at the NFL for scheduling games on the High Holidays: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvY98WQ5n9g

Beating back the pirates: http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3706848,00.html

HAMAS HAS POWERFUL FRIENDS IN WASHINGTON. BIDEN IS AGAINST ISRAEL ON IRAN. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3707195,00.html Non Compass Mentis on Iran: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710795607&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Why should they get a state? Modern Palestinian demand for state stems from anti-Semitic desire to harass Jews by Hagai Segal

Our independence celebrations this year will be held against the backdrop of the upcoming Palestinian independence. We are the only state in the world excited ahead of the establishment of an enemy state. Some groups around here are already planning huge parties.

To our new government’s credit, it’s not taking part in the celebrations. As opposed to the previous government, it does not show religious longing to the 1967 borders. However, it’s making life easy for itself by focusing on reciting the security risks posed to us by the Mitchell plan: A second Hamastan, Qassam rocket attacks on central Israel, the right of return, etc.

Netanyahu and his people are in fact admitting that the Palestinians deserve a state, but they claim that it won’t be safe enough to have one, and therefore it cannot be established now; perhaps we can do it later.

It appears that even the most right-wing Likudniks ran out of the courage to question the basic assumptions entrenched here by the Left. Only 30-40 years ago, we were arguing whether there’s even such thing as a Palestinian people, and today there are almost no reservations over its demand for complete sovereignty. Its sophisticated PR agents managed to bring it into the family of nations via a fast tracked registration procedure. As opposed to what is customarily required, it was not required to present documents that prove longtime existence, cultural uniqueness, and previous experience in running a country.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz once ruled that even a kitchen table is allowed to present itself as a people, and the Palestinians jumped on the bandwagon of this simplistic criterion. However, even Leibowitz refrained from arguing that every fresh nation immediately deserves a state. After all, earth is too small to contain all the different desires for sovereignty of the people who live here.

Anti-Semitic trick

The Kurds, for example, a people boasting a rich history and numbering 25 million souls, are forced to get by without a state of their own. The Basques, Catalonians, Corsicans, and Scots also have no state. Even the Native Americans, Flemish, the Copts and the Maronites have no state. Therefore, it is quite odd that it is precisely the absence of a Palestinian state that preoccupies the international community and the Israeli consciousness.

But in fact, it’s not so odd. The demand for the establishment of a Palestinian state, speaking of the recent Durban II conference, is another type of anti-Semitic trick against us. With all the giant states in the Middle East, it is the Jewish State that is required to share with the Palestinians the little territory that we have. Instead of our neighboring countries crowding a little more in favor of their repressed brethren, we are the only ones required to make do with less territory.

All the archeological and biblical findings prove that we were here much before them, yet the contemporary narrative insists on equality of historical rights between us.

The Palestinians claim to have lived here for many generations, yet they remembered to present their desire for self-determination only when we returned here from the Diaspora. They didn’t speak about two states for two peoples when the Jordanians ruled Judea and Samaria and when the Egyptians took over Gaza. They also said nothing when Damascus referred to Palestine as southern Syria.

Their modern demand for independence stems from a desire to harass us. Should Obama suddenly proposes not to have any state here – neither ours nor theirs – they may be sympathetic to the idea. Try it and you’ll see.

William sent me this: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131077#replies




Now for M.Wolfberg's Good Shabbos Story: Too Salty

Good Shabbos Everyone. Shlomo HaMelech states "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." (Mishlei - Proverbs 18,21) This verse is self- explanatory. The commentator Orchos Tzadikim comments on this verse by saying "There is no limit to the amount of mitzvahs one can do with their mouth." (Gate of Lashon HaRah 25) The opposite is also true: there is no limit to the amount of evil one can cause with his mouth.
The Chofetz Chaim (Reb Yisroel Hacohen, 1838-1933) readily agreed when another prominent rabbi requested his help with a communal matter in another city in Poland. The participation of the renowned Chofetz Chaim was sure to add considerably to the success of the mission because of his high standing in the eyes of all his co-religionists.

In the course of their trip the two rabbis stopped at a roadside inn to partake of a meal. They were happy to eat at this establishment as a Jewish woman who was well respected for her high standards of kashrus ran it. The two rabbis were seated at a special table and accorded every mark of honor. After they had finished the meal the proprietress came to their table to inquire how they had enjoyed the food.
The Chofetz Chaim smiled politely and replied: "It was very tasty, and I enjoyed it very much. Thank you."
The other rabbi answered: "The meal was very good, thank you. Only, if I might say, the soup might have used a bit more salt." Then the owner left the table the Chofetz Chaim turned to his companion, and in an anguished voice said: "Unbelievable! All my life I have avoided speaking or listening to lashon hara (slander about a fellow Jew), and here I am, going on a trip to perform a mitzva (commandment), and I have been put into a situation of having to hear you speak lashon hara! I deeply regret my involvement in this mission, for it cannot be a true mitzva. If it were, such a terrible thing would never have happened to me!"
The other rabbi was shocked and upset by the Chofetz Chaim's reaction. To him it seemed to be a perfectly innocent remark. "What was so terrible about my comment? I only mentioned that a little salt would help the food, which was otherwise very good." The Chofetz Chaim began to explain himself. "You certainly don't understand the power that words possess! Just see what a chain reaction your words have set off: I'm sure that the woman who owns the inn doesn't do her own cooking; she probably employs some poor person to do it, maybe even a widow who depends upon this job for her living.
"Because of your thoughtless comment the employee will be reprimanded for not adding enough salt to the food. She will try to defend herself before replying that she certainly did put in enough salt, which will be a lie. Then the owner will accuse her of lying, since she will certainly take your word over that of the poor cook. This exchange will lead to an argument and the owner will, in her anger, fire the poor cook, who will then have no income with which to support herself and her family. "And just think how many sins have been caused by one off-handed remark: You spoke lashon hara and caused others to hear it; you caused the owner of the inn to repeat the lashon hara; the poor cook was prompted to tell a lie; the owner caused pain to a poor person; your remark caused an argument. All of these are violations of the Torah!"
The rabbi, who had listened closely to the Chofetz Chaim's explanation, replied respectfully: "Reb Yisroel Meir, I simply can't help but feel that you are overreacting to the whole incident. My few casual words couldn't have created all that damage. I think that your scenario just isn't realistic."
The Chofetz Chaim rose from his seat, still in an agitated state, and said: "If you don't believe me, then follow me into the kitchen and you will see with your own eyes what has happened!" The two rabbis quietly entered the kitchen, and a sorry sight met their eyes. The proprietress was standing before an elderly woman and giving her a sharp tongue-lashing; while the woman stood there with tears streaming down her face.
The shocked rabbi ran up to the cook and begged her to forgive him for all the pain she was suffering. He then turned to the owner of the inn and pleaded with her to forgive him and to forget that he had ever made a comment. He had never intended that it be taken so seriously. The proprietress of the inn, who was really a kind person by nature, had never actually intended to dismiss her elderly employee and was happy to accede to the rabbi's request. She explained that she had merely wanted to impress upon the cook her responsibility to be more careful in the future. She assured the rabbi that the woman's job was secured and he had no grounds for worry. The rabbi turned to the Chofetz Chaim with an understanding look. He had certainly acquired a new profound respect for the awesome power of words. Good Shabbos Everyone.

M.Wolfberg is sponsored by: Mazal Tov to Elazar Friedman on his recent Chasuna

Refuah Shleima to Golda Chiyena bas Chaya Gittle Refuah Shleima to Mordechai Menachem Mendel ben Tziporah Yitta In memory of Shosha Malka bas R' Avrohom 21 Cheshvan Refuah Shleimah to Chana Ashayra bas Dodi

Be well and have a wonderful next too weeks. I will be taking a little vacation and hence a regular combined Parsha and Emor during my vacation. I should have e-mail access for questions, comments etc.
Good Shabbos and don't forget to count the Omer - by the time I return it will be
after Lag B'Omer and appoximately 5 weeks in the Omer.
Rachamim Pauli
.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Parsha Tazria - Metzora, Many stories and Inyanay DiYoma

Dear Blog Readers,
As much as on my "word" program this appears in a uniform size Arial type style somehow when it is copy and pasted here, all sorts of type styles and sizes come into place. Perhaps some things are embedded.

Moriah bas Chana is no longer receiving cancer treatments, let us hope that the 
child will be cancer free in the future. 
I received the following from a friend regarding her sister with cancer – 
please pray for: Tzvia Simcha bas Devorah Yached
 
 

Quote of the week from R’ Benyamin Jadidi: AHMAGHINEJAD (Ahmadinejad) In Persian, AHMAGH means stupid. This is the right name for the leader of Iran.

 

I was asked either by a woman named Kim on Facebook or somebody else about the Canonization of the Nach. After all we have books like the Wisdom of Ben Sira, Macabee one and two, and others mentioned in the Talmud that were well known to all Jews in the times of the second Beis HaMikdash and yet these were not Canonized. Even the books of Daniel, Yechezkiel and two books by Shlomo HaMelech were almost thrown out.

The Talmud in Shabbos 13B starts the story of the Canonization. : MISHNAH. AND THESE ARE OF THE HALACHOTH WHICH THEY STATED IN THE UPPER CHAMBER OF HANANIAH B. HEZEKIAH B. GARON, WHEN THEY WENT UP TO VISIT HIM. THEY TOOK A COUNT, AND BETH SHAMMAI OUTNUMBERED BETH HILLEL.; AND ON THAT DAY THEY ENACTED EIGHTEEN MEASURES.
GEMARA. Abaye said to R. Joseph: Did we learn, THESE ARE or AND THESE ARE? Did we learn AND THESE ARE [viz,] those that we have stated [in the former Mishnah]; or did we learn THESE ARE [viz.,] those that are to be stated soon? — Come and hear: One may not search his garments by the light of a lamp, nor read by the light of a lamp; and these are of the Halachos stated in the upper chamber of Hananiah b. Hezekiah b. Garon. This proves that we learnt, AND THESE ARE; this proves it.
Our Rabbis taught: Who wrote Megilat Taanis? Said they, Hananiah b. Hezekiah and his companions, who cherished their troubles. R. Simeon b. Gamliel observed: We too cherish our troubles, but what can we do? For if we come to write [them down], we are inadequate. Another reason is: a fool is not assailed. Another reason: the flesh of the dead does not feel the scalpel. But that is not so, for did not R. Isaac say, Worms are as painful to the dead as a needle in the flesh of the living, for it is said, But his flesh upon him hath pain, And his soul within him mourns? Say: The dead flesh in a living person does not feel the scalpel.
Rab Judah said in Rab's name: In truth, that man, Hananiah son of Hezekiah by name, is to be remembered for blessing: but for him, the Book of Ezekiel would have been hidden, for its words contradicted the Torah. Ezek. XVIII, 6. What did he do? Three hundred barrels of oil were taken up to him and he sat in an upper chamber and reconciled them.

Parsha Tazria – Metzora

This week we start our double Parsha with a woman giving birth. S.R. Hirsh Zatzal writes in a way that we read the woman giving birth as germination of our species as the over all way of Nature (even in Gan Eden, Adam was told to be fruitful and multiply). The Parsha starts out with a difference in blood coming from a mother giving birth between a male and a female. For a male the bleeding is impure for seven days and she goes to the Mikvah and afterwards the blood is ritually pure blood until the 40th day and then she brings her Korban on the 41st day. While for a female the period is double. The only reason I could see behind the apparent lack of logic is that during biblical times and in primitive societies today a girl is considered a lesser species and the longer confinement would make the husband want his wife back even through she “only produced a girl”. I have to go no further than my brother’s adopted daughter from China to show that girls are less desirable in certain cultures. Four years ago I wrote the following (since those days I have added a few thousand more readers so it is worth repeating).

The Parsha comes to teach us a tremendous amount of things. The first is Tahor and Tuma. Although we translate it as 'pure or purity' and 'impure or impurity' in a spiritual sense it is rather a spiritual state of being. The woman gives birth produces a child. However, there is bleeding and the placenta dies it has no physical use in this world anymore. Death is one of the things that produces Tuma or perhaps negative spirituality. While the placenta was nourishing the future infant in the womb it had physical and spiritual use. Now it is lacking that, it is Tamay. The Torah gives us certain rules that distinguish from the sexes at birth. A mother, if she were Tamay, would be saddened at the Bris of her son, so the Torah tells her that even if she is bleeding, the blood is now pure for the next 33 days. We would be discriminating against a daughter who brings about 14 days of Tuma if we did not have as a balance 66 days of Tahor afterwards. The little boy is introduced to Mitzvos at the age of 8 days. The Torah gives responsibility to the female at the age of 12 years of age, while the male has 13 years of age.
The daughter will follow in her mother's path and the son will put on Tallis and Tephillin at 1320like the father. Now there are many Ashkenazim that wait until marriage for the wearing of the Tallis in daily prayer. The Torah wants to put us in our place. When the bride walks around the groom under the Chupa Canopy, she may appear subservient to him on the other hand she is like setting territorial limitations on the groom as if lassoing him. The Ketuvah provides a written contract that the wife is obliged to 5 things for her husband and he has 10 to her (Eben HaEzer 80). It does not matter if a female soul is embedded for one incarnation in that of a male or visa versa, the lesson HASHEM wants the soul to learn is not to be tampered with. As A. L. Tennyson wrote: "It is not to ask the reason why, but for us to do our die." - The charge of the light brigade.
As long as I mentioned women’s rights in Judaism here is one that was instituted between 2100 to 2200 years ago while other peoples were justifying rapes and other abuses to women. Talmud Shabbos 16B 'Simeon b. Shetah instituted a woman's marriage settlement and imposed uncleanness upon metal utensils.' But [the uncleanness of] metal ut ensils is Biblical, for it is written, howbeit the gold, and the silver [… etc.]? — This [the Rabbinical law] was necessary only in respect of former uncleanness. For Rab Judah said in Rab's name: It once happened that Queen Shalomzion made a banquet for her son and all her utensils were defiled. Thereupon she broke them and gave them to the goldsmith, who melted them down and manufactured new utensils of them. But the Sages declared, They revert to their previous uncleanness. What is the reason? — They were concerned there to provide a fence against the water of separation.
Certain aspects of Tuma and Tahara, even Melech Shlomo could not figure out so we do not try. Our Sages tell us that Tzaras which is translated as Leprosy comes from speaking Lashon Hara. It is hard for people to pass up a juicy tid-bit on somebody. In this case I always say that it is better for a person to talk what is happening on TV shows such as The Days of Our Lives, The Bold and The Beautiful, The Young and the Restless, etc. Now please don’t misunderstand me that I have given a blank heter for watching these nonsensical TV s hows where there is changing of partners and marriages which most violate every Kares sin written in Parsha Emor. It is only to show that if one cannot overcome such a Yetzer to speak Lashon Hara it is better to talk about the fictional characters instead of a real Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Leah. The Tzaras is described in different forms on the skin and then later on in the Parsha how to determine it's nature if there is burn, bald patch, white spots on the skin, etc. The Tzaras on clothing and later in the Torah on buildings are also defined and the ways the priests examine them.
It happened years ago probably during the winter of 5732 that I was new to Israel and I put up plastic on the windows like American Storm Windows. This cut off most of the fresh air to my apartment in Ashdod. The winters in Israel get quite damp and one day it get pretty cool or even a bit cold and the next day or week warm. Airing out the room from time to time during the warmer period freshens up the house. It did not take more than 3 or 4 months when I noticed on an old woolen suit from my father of blessed memory that a greenish fungus mold with orange borders was appearing on the pants – probably from p erspiration when sitting for long periods in the Synagogue. It was easily brushed off and washed off with water. From then on, I learned to air out the apartment from time to time and not leave it like a heated home in New York during the winter. (I don’t know if I merited to see such a thing as Tzaras on a woolen garment or sinned so badly that it happened to one of the woolen garment in my possession. Or possibly just a plain fungus mold.)
Vayikra 15:1 And the LORD spoke unto Moses and to Aaron, saying: 2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them: When any man hath an issue out of his flesh, his issue is unclean. 3 And this shall be his uncleanness in his issue: whether his flesh run with his issue, or his flesh be stopped from his issue, it is his uncleanness. 4 Every bed whereon he that hath the issue lies shall be unclean; and every thing whereon he sits shall be unclean. 5 And whosoever touches his bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 6 And he that sits on any thing whereon he that hath the issue sat shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 7 And he that touches the flesh of him that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 8 And if he that hath the issue spit upon20him that is clean, then he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 9 And what saddle soever he that hath the issue rides upon shall be unclean. 10 And whosoever touches any thing that was under him shall be unclean until the even; and he that bears those things shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 11 And whomsoever he that hath the issue touches, without having rinsed his hands in water, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 12 And the earthen vessel, which he that hath the issue touches, shall be broken; and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water. 13 And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue, then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes; and he shall bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean. 14 And on the eighth day he shall take to him two turtle-doves, or two young pigeons, and come before the LORD unto the door of the tent of meeting, and give them unto the priest. 15 And the priest shall offer them, the one for a sin-offering, and the other for a burnt-offering; and the priest shall make atonement for him before the LORD for his issue. 16 And if the flow of seed go out from a man, then he shall bathe all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even. 17 And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the flow of seed, shall be washed with water , and be unclean until the even. 18 The woman also with whom a man shall lie carnally, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even. 19 And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be in her impurity seven days; and whosoever touches her shall be unclean until the even. 20 And every thing that she lies upon in her impurity shall be unclean; every thing also that she sits upon shall be unclean. 21 And whosoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 22 And whosoever touches any thing that she sits upon shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 23 And if he be on the bed, or on any thing whereon she sits, when he touches it, he shall be unclean until the even. 24 And if any man lie with her, and her impurity be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days; and every bed whereon he lies shall be unclean. {S} 25 And if a woman have an issue of her blood many days not in the time of her impurity, or if she have an issue beyond the time of her impurity; all the days of the issue of her uncleanness she shall be as in the days of her impurity: she is unclean. 26 Every bed whereon she lies all the days of her issue shall be unto her as the bed of her impurity; and every thing whereon she sits shall be unclean, as the uncleanness of her impurity. 27 A nd whosoever touches those things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. 28 But if she be cleansed of her issue, then she shall number to herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. 29 And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtle-doves, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tent of meeting. 30 And the priest shall offer the one for a sin-offering, and the other for a burnt-offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness. 31 Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness; that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile My tabernacle that is in the midst of them. 32 This is the law of him that hath an issue, and of him from whom the flow of seed goes out, so that he is unclean thereby; 33 and of her that is sick with her impurity, and of them that have an issue, whether it be a man, or a woman; and of him that lies with her that is unclean.
Written in 5766: 15:1-16:11 distinguishes between a Zav, Zava and a Niddah (next week). The first has seminal discharges and the second one sees blood flow in addition to her period. The first two have been called a Trichomonas infection or a sexually transmitted parasite but the medical symptoms described are a bit different from the Torah description. In Talmud Bavli Shabbos, we are told that a Zav should not eat with a Zava even though they are on the same level of Tuma lest they come to perform an act involving the cutting off their Neshamos (souls). It is important to note that for the Zav one is unclean until the evening and for the Tzava and Niddah it takes 7 days. The Parsha defines a Niddah as a woman who has her period. Our Sages but a fence around the Torah and required 7 clean days from the ending of the 5th day at sundown until the night after the 12th day. If a woman can only become pregnant between the 8th and 12th days, there are halachic ways today with medications to make her impure for one day and then 7 clean days. The Zava is bleeding outside of the time of the woman’s expected period or the average period.
A man who is constantly involuntarily dripping seed tw ice or more a day is considered a Zav. This would not apply to a newly wed or a husband and wife ignoring the Rabbinical advice about relationships. The Zava is a woman who during her 12th through 21st day after her period starts bleeding. Even from an injury she would have to count 7 clean days.
Shabbos 13A to 13B until the next Mishnah: SIMILARLY … A ZAB MUST NOT DINE, [etc.]. It was taught, R. Simeon b. Eleazar said: Come and see how far purity has spread in Israel! For we did not learn, A clean man must not eat with an unclean woman, but A ZAB MUST NOT DINE TOGETHER WITH A ZABAH, AS IT MAY LEAD To SIN. Similarly, a zab, a parush may not dine with a zab, who is an 'am ha-arez, lest he cause him to associate with him. But what does it matter if he does cause him to associate with him? Rather say [thus]: lest he offer him unclean food to eat. Does then a zab who is a parush not eat unclean food? — Said Abaye: For fear lest he provide him with unfit food. Raba said: The majority of the 'amme ha-arez do render tithes, but [we fear] lest he associate with him and he provide him with unclean food in the days of his purity.
The scholars propounded: May a niddah sleep together with her husband, she in her garment and he in his? — Said R. Joseph, Come and hear: A fowl may be served together with cheese at the [same] table, but not eaten [with it]: this is Beth Shammai's view. Beth Hillel rule: It may neither be served nor eaten [together]! — There it is different, because there are no [separate] minds. It is reasonable too that where there are [separate] minds it is different, because the second clause teaches, R. Simeon b. Gamaliel said: Two boarders eating at the same table, one may eat meat and the other cheese, and we have no fear. But was it not stated thereon, R. Hanin b. Ammi said in Samuel's name: This was taught only when they do not know each other; but if they do, they are forbidden? And here too they know each other!-How compare! There we have [separate] minds but no unusual feature; but here there are [separate] minds and an unusual feature.
Others state, Come and hear: R. Simeon b. Gamaliel said: Two boarders may eat at the same table, one meat and the other cheese. And it was stated thereon, R. Hanin b. Ammi said in Samuel's name: This was taught only if they do not know each other, but if they do, it is forbidden; and these two know each other! — [No.] There we have [separate] minds but nothing unusual, whereas here there are [separate] minds and an unusual feature.
Come and hear: A ZAB=2 0MUST NOT DINE TOGETHER WITH A ZABAH, LEST IT LEAD TO SIN! — Here too there are [separate] minds but nothing unusual.
Come and hear: And hath not eaten upon the mountains, neither hath lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, neither hath defiled his neighbour's wife, neither hath come near to a woman who is a niddah: thus a woman who is a niddah is assimilated to his neighbour's wife: just as his neighbour's wife, he in his garment and she in hers is forbidden, so if his wife is a niddah, he in his garment and she in hers is forbidden. This proves it. Now, this disagrees with R. Pedath. For R. Pedath said: The Torah interdicted only intimacy of incestuous coition, as it is said, None of you, shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness.
'Ulla, on his return from the college, used to kiss his sisters on their bosoms; others say, on their hands. But he is self-contradictory, for 'Ulla said, Even any form of intimacy is forbidden, because we say, 'Take a circuitous route, O nazirite, but do not approach the vineyard.'
[It is taught in the] Tanna debe Eliyahu: It once happened that a certain scholar who had studied much Bible and Mishnah and had served scholars much, yet died in middle age. His wife=2 0took his tefillin and carried them about in the synagogues and schoolhouses and complained to them, It is written in the Torah, for that is thy life, and the length of thy days: my husband, who read [Bible], learned [Mishnah],
-13B- and served scholars much, why did he die in middle age? and no man could answer her. On one occasion I was a guest at her house, and she related the whole story to me. Said I to her, 'My daughter! how was he to thee in thy days of menstruation?' 'God forbid!' she rejoined; 'he did not touch me even with his little finger.' 'And how was he to thee in thy days of white [garments]?' 'He ate with me, drank with me and slept with me in bodily contact, and it did not occur to him to do other.' Said I to her, 'Blessed be the Omnipresent for slaying him, that He did not condone on account of the Torah! For lo! the Torah hath said, And thou shalt not approach unto a woman as long as she is impure by her uncleanness.' When R. Dimi came, he said, It was a broad bed. In the West [Palestine] they said, R. Isaac b. Joseph said: An apron interposed between them.

Halacha

One Halacha not really mentioned in the States but very important. : The "five grains" are wheat, barley, spelt, oats and rye. Grain that was planted and started taking root before the first day Chol HaMoed Pessach may be eaten immediately - and is called "Yoshon" (old). Grain that took root thereafter is "Chodosh" (new) and may not be eaten until after the 2nd day Chol HaMoed Pessach of the coming year. In Israel, Chol HaMoed Pessach starts on 16th Nissan, in the Diaspora on the 17th Nissan. The Torah prohibition of eating Chodosh applies to grain grown on Jewish land, according to all opinions. There is a minority opinion that Chodosh does not apply to grain grown in the Diaspora on non-Jewish land; the custom is to rely on this opinion in emergency.
Source: Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 172:1-3

During the Omer period the great sage Rabbi Akiva (who lived during and after the destruction of the second Temple) lost almost all of his thousands of Torah students; reducing Torah Scholars to a handful. As a result, 33 days of the Omer are customarily observed as days of mourning, during which weddings and haircuts are forbidden. One may get engaged during the Omer and even celebrate with a meal, but dancing and music is not allowed. The Sandek, Mohel and father of the newborn may take haircuts the day before the Brit. Source: Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 120:6 – 9

On Shabbat we will take out 2 Sifrei Torah; the first for the double-Parsha 
"Tazria-Metzora" and the second for Rosh Chodesh.
 In the second Sefer Torah we will read Maftir from Pinchas (Bamidbar 28:9-15) 
- וביום בשבת - one of the rare occasions when we read about the Shabbat sacrifice 
on Shabbat.
The Haftorah is the one for "Shabbat-Rosh Chodesh" - הַשָּׁמַיִם כִּסְאִי - 
from Yeshayahu Ch. 66. Source: Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 79:7
Chodesh Tov and Shabbat Shalom - Danny

Don’t You Worry

Thanks to Gene Alberts

 
Alexander Mookdon (Alexander the Great) once found a huge stream with
 an enjoyable and pleasant smell emanating from it. He thought to himself it
 seems like this stream is coming from the Garden of Eden. So he announced
 “Open the gates (of Gan Eden)” they answered him “this gate is specified for
 those who fear G-d and only the righteous ones can enter”. 
 
Alexander answered them “I am an important king, and I came till here, pleas
e at least give me a gift from you”. They gave him something round. When he
 came home he weighed the object, but as much gold and silver coins he placed
 on the scale the object did not move. 
 

He decided to ask someone wiser than him; he went to the sages for an 
explanation. They told him this object is an eye from a person who was 
never satisfied. Whatever he saw he desired there was no end to it. 
 
“Prove it to me”. 
 
“Put some dirt on its eyes and you’ll see” the sages said. Alexander did so and 
quickly the scale tipped to the side. This is a person as long as he is alive he is 
never satisfied with how much he has. Only after he dies it stops when they put
 dirt on his eyes. 
 
Put some dirt on the eyes of AHMAGHINEJAD (Ahmadinejad) In Persian, 
AHMAGH means stupid. This is the right name for the leader of Iran.
 
Please use this name only for the leader of Iran. And don’t you worry, 
lots of dirt is going to cover his body very soon, when G-d defeats him,  Amen.
 
Binyamin Jadidi

A Holocaust Story an embarrassment to FDR and the Allies

Thanks to R’ A.L.

This month marks the 65th anniversary of a daring escape from Auschwitz by a teenager who then revealed the truth about the death camp - only to be ignored by the Allied leadership. In March 1944, the Germans occupied Hungary and began preparing to deport that country's Jews - numbering approximately 750,000 - to Auschwitz. A 19-year-old prisoner named Rudolf Vrba, together with fellow-inmate Alfred Wetzler, decided to do something that almost nobody had ever done before: escape from Auschwitz. They were determined to alert the world about the d oom that Hungarian Jews would soon face. On April 7, Vrba and Wetzler slipped away from their slave labor battalion and hid in a hollowed-out woodpile near the edge of the camp. On the advice of Soviet prisoners of war, the fugitives sprinkled the area with tobacco and gasoline, which confused the German dogs that were used to search for them.
On their second day in the woodpile, Vrba and Wetzler heard Allied warplanes overhead. "They came closer and closer - then bombs began to crunch not far away," Vrba later recalled in his searing memoir I Cannot Forgive. "Our pulses quickened. Were they going to bomb the camp? Was the secret out? Was this the end of Auschwitz?"
The Allied planes were actually bombing German oil factories in and around the Auschwitz complex. The idea of bombing the death camp had not yet been proposed to the Allied leadership, and details such as the location of the gas chambers and crematoria were not yet known to the Allied war command. But that was about to change.
On April 10, in the dead of night, Vrba and Wetzler emerged from the woodpile and began an 11-day, 80-mile trek to Slovakia. There they met with Jewish leaders and dictated a 30-page report that came to be known as the "Auschwitz Protocols." It included details of the mass-murder process, maps pinpointing the gas chambers and crematoria and warnings of the impending slaughter of Hungary's Jews.
"One million Hungarian [Jews] are going to die," Vrba told them. "Auschwitz is ready for them. But if you tell them now, they will rebel. They will never go to the ovens."
A copy of the report was given to Rudolf Kastner, a Budapest Jewish leader. Instead of publicizing the information, Kastner negotiated a deal that involved bribing the Germans to permit a train with 1,684 of his relatives, friends and Hungarian Jewish leaders to leave the country. Kastner's action became the centerpiece of a controversial trial in Israel after the war.
Another copy of Vrba's Auschwitz Protocols was given to Rav Michoel Ber Weissmandl zt"l, the hatzolah rescue hero in Bratislava, who then wrote the first kn own appeal for the use of Allied air power to disrupt the mass murder. Rav Weissmandl's plea to the Allies to bomb the railroad lines between Hungary and Auschwitz reached the Roosevelt administration in June.
Assistant secretary of war John McCloy responded that the request was "impracticable" because it would require "diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations." He also claimed the War Department's position was based on "a study" of the issue. But no evidence of such a study has ever been found by researchers. In reality, McCloy's position was based on the War Department's standing policy that no military resources should be allocated for "rescuing victims of enemy oppression." The Nazis were not as stupid as the allies and knew that these rail lines were available for transporting troops and ammunition.
Vrba's report convinced the Jewish Agency leadership in Palestine to change its position on bombing. Agency leaders initially opposed bombing Auschwitz because they believed it was a labor camp, not a death camp. But after receiving the Auschwitz Protocols in June, agency officials lobbied British, American and Soviet off icials to bomb the camp or the railways leading to it. Their requests were rebuffed.
Most important, a condensed version of the Auschwitz Protocols reached the US government's War Refugee Board in June. It helped galvanize the board to mobilize international pressure on Hungary to halt the deportations to Auschwitz. Although that effort came too late for the more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews who had been shipped to their doom, it did spare the 200,000-plus who were still alive in Budapest.
The full version of the Vrba report was actually held up in Switzerland for three months by US diplomats who regarded it as low priority. And when the report finally reached Washington in October, the Office of War Information opposed distributing it; OWI director Elmer Davis claimed the report was actually part of a Nazi conspiracy to "create contempt for the [Jewish] inmates" by showing that the Jews were not resisting their killers.
Fortunately, Davis and his cockamamie theories were too late to blunt t he impact of the Auschwitz Protocols. The Hungarian deportations had been stopped, and Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler had played a significant role in bringing that about.
{Rafael Medoff-The Jerusalem Post/Matzav.com Newscenter-Elisha Ferber}
Article taken from Matzav.com - The Online Voice of Torah Jewry - http://matzav.com URL to article: http://matzav.com/the-teenager-who-exposed-auschwitz/
 
 
The Holiest Generation by Isaac Steven Herschkop Special To The Jewish Week
 from Chaim B.

l could not have been more than 4 or 5 when I asked her. It seemed to me,
 at the time,  to be an innocent, straightforward question: “Mommy, when
 do I get my number?” I was, of course, upset when she burst into tears and ran
 out of the kitchen, but I was also confused. This was Washington Heights in the
 1950s. It was an enclave of survivors. Every adult I knew had a number.
 Even my teenage sister had one in blue ink tattooed on her forearm. 
They were as ubiquitous on the benches of Riverside Drive as they were on the
 footpaths of Fort Tryon Park. If you saw an adult with some sort of hat on his
 head, he invariably also had a number on his arm. In the summer, when the
 community traveled en masse to Catskill bungalow colonies, 
or to Rockaway beaches, the numbers came too. 
I presumed it was a ceremonious part of becoming bar mitzvah, or perhaps
 graduation from Breuer’s or Soloveichik, our local yeshivas. No one appeared
 to be embarrassed by their number. ARG! 

I never saw anyone try to cover it up when they went swimming. It seemed to be a

matter of fact part of life. When, as children, we would ask our parents why there was a “Mother’s Day” and a “Father’s Day,” but no “Children’s Day,” the automatic response was “Every day is ‘Children’s Day’!” In Washington Heights, in the ’50s, every day was Yom HaShoah. Ironically enough, at the same time, no day was Yom HaShoah. The commemoration, as it exists today, was not around then. Breuer’s and Soloveichik consisted almost exclusively of children of survivors, yet neither school had any assembly, or recognition of any type, of the Shoah. The very word Shoah didn’t exist. The word Holocaust did, but it was never invoked. When on rare occasion our parents would make reference to the events that led them to leave Europe to come to America, they would label it “the War.” They spoke nostalgically of life “before the War”; they never spoke of what happened during “the War.” They spoke reverently of their parents and siblings who were “lost in the War”; they never spoke of their spouses or children who perished. After all, they had new spouse s and new children who didn’t need to be reminded that they were replacements.

I was already bar mitzvah when I first realized that my parents had been previously
 married and had prior children. Years later I was shocked to discover that my 
sister with whom I was raised was not my father’s daughter. When I finally came
 to understand that not every adult was a survivor, and people would ask me what
 survivors were really like, I never knew what to answer. There was Mr. Silverberg, 
our seatmate in shul, as jovial as Santa Claus, who always had a good word for 
everyone. On the other hand, there was Mr. Grauer, our neighbor whose face was
 indelibly etched in a frown and was always threatening to hit his wife or his 
children. In retrospect, as a psychiatrist, I could understand both, but who truly 
defined what it meant to be a survivor?  Did anyone, or anything?
I learned the answer from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. This Gadol HaDor, the
 greatest sage of his generation, was so renowned he was referred to
 simply as “Rav Moshe.” The closest I came to this legend was at Yeshiva 
University High School, where my rebbe was his son-in-law, Rabbi Moshe Tendler. 
Rabbi Tendler, and every other rabbi, would speak of Rav Moshe in awe-stricken
 tones usually reserved for biblical forefathers.
One summer I was spending a week with my aunt and uncle in upstate Ellenville.
 Uncle David and Aunt Saba, survivors themselves, as the doctor and nurse in 
charge of the concentration camp infirmary, had managed to save the lives of
 innumerable inmates, including my mother and sister. After “the War” they had 
set up a medical practice in this small Catskill village, where, I discovered, to my
 amazement, they had one celebrity patient — Rav Moshe.
My aunt mentioned casually that Rav Moshe had an appointment the next day.
 Would I like to meet him? Would I? It was like asking me, would I like to meet God.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I agonized over what I should wear.  Should I approach
 him? What should I say? Should I mention that his son-in-law was my rebbe? 
Should I speak to him in English, or my rudimentary Yiddish? I was seated in the
 waiting room, in the best clothing I had with me, an hour before his appointment.
 It seemed like an eternity, but eventually he arrived, accompanied by an assistant
 at each side.  He didn’t notice me. I was frozen. I had intended to rise deferentially
 when he entered, but I didn’t. I had prepared a few sentences that I had repeatedly 
memorized, but I sensed that my heart was beating too quickly for me to speak
 calmly.
My aunt had heard the chime when he entered and came out of the office to 
greet him: “Rabbi Feinstein, did you meet my nephew Ikey? Can you believe a 
shaygitz 
[unobservant] like me has a yeshiva bochur [student] in the family?” Rav Moshe
 finally looked at me. I was mortified. My aunt was addressing him irreverently. 
She was joking with him. She had called me Ikey, not Yitzchok, or even Isaac. 
Then it got even worse. She walked over to him. Surely she knew not to shake 
his hand. She didn’t. She kissed him affectionately on the cheek as she did 
many of her favorite patients. She then told him my uncle would see him in a 
minute and returned to the office.
Rav Moshe and his attendants turned and looked at me, I thought accusingly.
 I wanted to die. In a panic, I walked over to him and started to apologize 
profusely: “Rabbi Feinstein, I apologize. My aunt, she isn't frum [religious]. 
She doesn’t understand...” He immediately placed his fingers on my lips to 
stop me from talking. He then softly spoke two sentences in Yiddish that I
 will remember to my dying day: “She has numbers on her arms. She is holier
 than me.” Rav Moshe had understood what I had not. Our holiest generation
 was defined by the numbers on their arms.
 
Dr. Isaac Steven Herschkopf is an attending psychiatrist at the NYU Medical 
Center and the author of “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: Embracing Anger to 
Heal Your Life.” This excerpt is from a forthcoming memoir.

Technological Innovator Felix Zandman and the Shoah (Charity saves from death) by R. Pauli

Young F elix grew up in the city of Grodna in Lithuania. His grandparents were well off people with a summer cottage and their own house with a Polish maid. Poland and Lithuania were together at that time. They owned a factory. One day the Polish maid towards the end of her pregnancy came to grandma Zandman that her husband was drunk and had gotten violent with her. Grandma gave the maid their country house to live in. This act of Chessed did not go unrewarded as in 1943 it saved Felix from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. In 1944 he was saved from death another 8 times. Somehow he found refuge in Vichay while his family perished there. He was never to forget that.

In 1962, Felix with the help of others set up a company called Vichay. Vishay Intertechnology is one of the world's largest manufacturers of semiconductors and passive electronic components. Vishay has several production centers in=2 0Israel, China and five other Asian countries, Europe and the Americas where it produces rectifiers, diodes, MOSFETs, optoelectronic products, selected integrated circuits, resistors, capacitors, inductors, sensors, and transducers.
Felix got his idea for making a smaller resistor one day at lunch and jotted his idea down on either a paper napkin or a small piece of paper. He managed by no easy means to set up a company. I met him when he came to our electronics company to sell his resistors and capacitors as a passive components engineer. He may have sold more as I know other electronic component engineers were present that day. I believe in those days the company was called Vichay Electronics.I was impressed with the humbleness and hands on approach of this multimillionaire. I tried to encourage him to visit the Grodna Yeshiva in Ashdod about two to three blocks from my company and perhaps have him donate them some money but to no avail. On Yom HaShoa there was an interview with him and pictures of him receiving an award from President Bush.
I can tell you that his components are in every aircraft in the west and perhaps the east, missiles, the space program, navigation, radar, ships, electronic warfare devices and airport comptrollers and all this could have been destroyed by the Nazis had G-D not wanted this man to succeed and help the world progress. I can only wonder how many Felix Zandmans, Einsteins, Lisa Meitners and others perished by the hands of these Nazis and so few survived.
The Company put out their own history: Early Technology Breakthroughs
In the 1950s, patents were issued for the PhotoStress® products developed by Dr. Felix Zandman. These products reveal and measure stress distribution in airplanes, cars, and other structures under live load conditions. His research in this area led him to develop Bulk Metal® foil resistors, the most precise and stable resistors available — both then and now, over four decades later.
Dr. Zandman, with the financial support of Alfred P. Slaner, founded Vishay in 1962 to develop and manufacture Bulk Metal foil resistors. The Company was named after the village in Lithuania where relatives of Dr. Zandman and Mr. Slaner had perished during the Holocaust. The Comp any’s initial product portfolio consisted of foil resistors and foil resistance strain gages.
Passive Component Acquisitions
During the 1960s and 1970s, Vishay became known as the world’s leading manufacturer of foil resistors, PhotoStress products, and strain gages. Vishay’s subsequent decision to grow through acquisitions proved very successful. Starting in 1985, Vishay acquired resistor companies Dale Electronics, Draloric Electronic, and Sfernice. These acquisitions helped produce dramatic sales growth. In the early 1990s, Vishay applied its acquisition strategy to the capacitor market by purchasing Sprague Electric, Roederstein, and Vitramon.
Vishay acquired BCcomponents (former passive components businesses of Philips Electronics and Beyschlag) in 2002. This acquisition expanded Vishay’s portfolio of passive components and greatly enhanced its global market position.
Solutions for Weighing and Measurement
Through strategic acquisitions, Vishay’s original strain gage business has become the foundation of an extensive portfolio of products for weighing and measurement that includes resistance strain gages (in which Vishay is the worldwide leader), transducers (the metallic structures to which strain gages are cemented), electron ic instruments that measure and control output of the transducers, and complete systems for process control and on-board weighing applications that include hardware and software. Vishay designs, installs, and maintains customized systems for process control in paper mills, food processing plants, and other facilities worldwide. Vishay on-board weighing systems are used in the waste handling, trucking, forestry, quarry and mining, and aerospace industries.
Growth in Semiconductors
In 1998, Vishay acquired the Semiconductor Business Group of TEMIC, which included Telefunken and 80.4% of Siliconix, producers of MOSFETs, RF transistors, diodes, optoelectronics, and power and analog switching integrated circuits.
Vishay’s next semiconductor acquisition came in 2001, with the purchase of the infrared components business of Infineon Technologies. That was followed the same year by Vishay’s acquisition of General Semiconductor, a leading global manufacturer of rectifiers and diodes. The addition of Infineon’s infrared components group and General Semiconductor enhanced Vishay’s existing Telefunken and Siliconix businesses and propelled Vishay into the top ranks of discrete semiconductor manufacturers. In 2005, Vishay purchased the remaining 19.6% of Siliconix shares.
In April 2007, Vishay completed the a cquisition of selected discrete semiconductor and module product lines from International Rectifier®. The acquired product lines, which complement Vishay’s existing product portfolio, consist of planar high-voltage MOSFETs, Schottky diodes, diode rectifiers, fast-recovery diodes, high-power diodes and thyristors, power modules (a combination of power diodes, thyristors, MOSFETs, and IGBTs), and automotive modules and assemblies. The extension of Vishay’s product offerings in the high-voltage and high-power range for discrete semiconductors represents another step in Vishay’s successful strategy of being able to offer “one-stop-shop” service for discrete electronic components.
Vichay gained all this not through ruthlessness but through good engineering ideas and foresight. I took this ethics information from the company manual with names of people to call in the Americas, Asia, Europe and Israel: To Our Employees, Customers, Suppliers, and Subcontractors
Maintaining ethical business practices is the highest priority at Vishay. Our firm commitment to ethical business practices guides all activities by Vishay personnel, both internally and in interactions with Vishay’s customers, suppliers, and subcontractors. Vishay, as a Company, encourages and relies upon the integrity of all parties, both inside and outside Vishay.
If you are aware if any improper, unethical, or illegal activities involving Vishay, or if you have any questions about Vishay’s Corporate Ethics Program, we strongly encourage you to contact the appropriate person listed below.

From Aharon HaCohen: Tattoos From Auschwitz Horror Reunite Lost Inmates http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517103,00.html

Chaim Yitzchak Cohen posted this on facebook: Kabbalist Rav Dahan ("the mekubal who foresaw the tsunami") says in his latest shiur: You should know Yacov Avinu chai v'kayam (alive & well), Moshiach Tzidkaynu chay v'kayam. I'll reveal this secret--there is very little left, for Moshiach to receive the complete soul of Moshiach. He has received almost 95% of the Neshama--only 5% remains. When that descends to him, he will be complete & he the n will be revealed So as not to confuse people who heard from Chabad, the Rav Kadouri of saintly memory – this means that the Moshiach is here but still lacking 5% כח

Koach = strength or power to complete the will of HASHEM and the redemption.

A non-Jewish woman sent me this about Bible Codes. As you know a lot of the things with Bible codes should be taken with a grain of salt. But this particular post about Yishmael coincides with what the Malbim wrote on Daniel and the neither the author nor Kim would have read the Malbim on Daniel so quickly.

PETA in the USA or Europe always anti-semitic. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710726742&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull and a related story: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517233,00.html

Enora made a comment:
"it's not dark humor I'm laughing at. It's nonsense. You can say A LOT
 about countries
 like France. Having lived there for 20 yrs there's a lot I'd say myself about
 their blatant Antisemitism. I mean really, I'm living in a Muslim country now
 and feel LESS Antisemitism (and that says a ton about France doesn’t it?).
That said, for once France is the loudest country protesting against this
 European bill. (Huge meat producers, not because they care for Jews or Muslims)
 
Never the less, there is no point in outrage this time since the
 BILL DOESN'T APPLY TO RELIGIOUS RITUAL SLAUGHTERING! It's on the
 European Union’s agriculture site (the bill that is) and anyone can read it and 
see for themselves. Crazy that an Israeli newspaper would lack such journalistic 
professionalism before writing such an article."

From Marcie: My best friend is a Sabra living here in the US.
Both parents still with us -(B'H") who survived Auschwitz. I adore them, their immense chessed… Her father was taken, a boy around age 12ish on Glasnost Krystal Nacht ("Night of Broken Glass). He has told us everything in great detail. He always says: 'No matter what your eyes see or your ears hear, know ... Read More that it is the British who are our (all Jews) constant and greatest enemies in this world.' I have to just go with that. He has numbers ion his arm, and he's still got a twinkle in his eyes. We are yammering on about what we cannot know about. We can try to imagine, but we cannot know. We must look to our elders and teachers- and to our Precious Holy Toras Emes/Torat Emet and into our own Yiddishe Neshamos (well, not ours- Hashem's)! and create opportunities to be kind, decent loving and respectful of fellow Jews- maybe especially those who do not yet know that they do not yet know.

Friday and Shabbos are Rosh Chodesh Iyar followed in Israel by Soldiers Memorial Day and Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel Independence Day).

Marcie wrote me this with the hope of the near appearance of Moshiach: "No fear! 
Hashem is with us, but- are we with Hashem? Calling all JEWS. WAKE UP! 
WAKE UP. Our alarm is going off very loudly. If you hear it and know Jews 
who do not, Knock 'em "No fear! Hashem is with us, but- are we with Hashem? 
Calling all JEWS. WAKE UP! WAKE UP. Our alarm is going off very loudly. If you
 hear it and know Jews who do not, Knock 'em in the 'keppe'(Kepelah' Yiddish
 for HEAD) wake them 'em up! I am sounding a teeny alarm, one among so few. 
Get those Shofarot ready, JEWISH MEN, YOU WILL NEED TO BLOW them 
LOUDLY. Our still, small voices are being overrun. Over 80% of us have 
run away from Toras Emes. HELP! We promised Hashem at Har Sinai... 
They just murdered 6 million of us about a minute ago. 500,000 in WWI. In 
every generation...
WHEN WILL WE STOP JUST IDENTIFYING WITH JEWISH JOKES 
AND BECOME A HOLY NATION? The more of us that do this, make this
 effort to learn ALL of TORAH... Somehow, I think The Mighty Israeli Army 
will nip that in the bud, like they did 19+ years ago when the 
OTHER Hussein (Sadam) had one pointed at Israel. 
One strike by the IAF (by the Hand of HaKadosh Baruch Hu: -POOF- no more nuke.
HaShem is calling us. Do you hear?"
 
From Rishona an article which is partially reflective since I know a sweet 
Korean woman married to a Yemenite Jew her age and we believe that every
 “pot has its lid” aka marriage partner. This does not mean that it is easy:
 http://web.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/race/2001/judaica_kordova.shtml
 
 
 

Inyanay Diyoma

Iran could produce first nuke in 60 days with 7,000 centrifuges working 24/7 – Western experts

DEBKAfile's military sources cite some Western intelligence and nuclear weapons experts as predicting that Iran could turn out nuclear weapons some time in the next 12 months.
This estimate is based on Tehran's announcement that 7,000 centrifuges are in operation to enrich uranium. If all those machines were to work at top speed day and night, seven days a week, they could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a bomb in 60 days, say some intelligence sources. According to American experts, given the current rate of the program's development, Iran will be in a position to manufacture as many as 60 nuclear bombs and warheads in 12 to 18 months.
This judgment was confirmed by Israel's military intelligence (AMAN) chief, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin in his latest briefing to the cabinet Monday, April 20. He reported that Iran is going all-out for enriched uranium from overseas to shorten the process.
Japanese sources recently reported that a North Korean boat shipped a large quantity to Iran earlier this year. According to the big-circulation The Nikkei, the North Korean vessel's hold carried a secret cargo of uranium highly-enriched to 50-60 percent. The ship set out for Iran in December, moving moved at a leisurely pace so as not to call attention from Western spy satellites, surveillance vessels and warships. Earlier this year, the illegal consignment was dropped at an Iranian port for transport to a facility near Tehran, according to the Japanese paper.
Yadlin noted that extreme economic crisis has not delayed Tehran's headlong nuclear progress or curtailed its designs on other Middle East countries – Hizballah's subversive activities in Egypt are not a lone instance. Inflation is officially put at 30 percent but is probably closer to 50 percent, while unemployment is deepening, yet Tehran upped the 2009 appropriation for its nuclear program by 15 percent.
Rather than translating the crisis into leverage for persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear objectives, the Israeli intelligence chief noted that the Obama administration has opened the door to dialogue with all the extremists of the Middle East, including Iran, albeit "with open eyes."
Iran, for its part, is accelerating its nuclear program, taking full advantage of the undercover communications with Washington which are aimed at gaining Tehran's cooperation for the US war effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obama’s softness on Iran could spark the war of Gog and Magog: http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1387

And why are my friends from Chicago not surprised by this on the war front: http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=6039

From Shmuel: http://torahfromzion.blogspot.com/2009/04/foreign-policys-evenhandedness-unfair.html

This story is like Amir Peretz in Lebanon in '06 a man with no military experi ence. Strike while the iron is hot. I received this from Stephanie K. http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=95451

From now on only a Miami Dolphin fan: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3702692,00.html

Pre-Moshiach Troubles: http://wejew.com/media/4299/Moshiach-Imminent-Feature-Part-1-of-2/

After his border police ruined the ability of a number of young men and women to reproduce this could not have happened to a more deserving person: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3703360,00.html

India beefs up anti-terrorist security with an all weather satellite: http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=6031

Wake up the pintele Yid inside and stop bullying Israel: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710730438&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Chavez and the overthrow of the USA: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/130937

Lithuania still has anti-semites running around: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3703848,00.html

For those who remember the story of my father’s escape from the Nazis via Munich to Switzerland will remember that he managed to stay on a student visa because he had an uncle in Zurich while the other Jew was shipped back to Munich: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710735725&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Christians against anti-semitism: http://christianactionforisrael.org/antiholo/norway.html

Pieter sent me this book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Behind-Humanitarian-Mask-Nordic-Countries/dp/9652180661/ref=cm_lmf_tit_10

What the stimulus really means to your pocket in the long run not the here and the now of politicians: http://www.a mericansolutions.com/Blog/Read.aspx?guid=7539cd4b-ad92-4ee5-a778-971df08f63f7

Dick Cheney videos: http://www.freedomslighthouse.com/2009/04/former-vp-dick-cheney-interview-with.html http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=13075969&ch=4226716&src=news

Defense for Sderot: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710746752&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

From Tsila: Victory in Florida!!

The Florida House of Representatives passes a “Free Speech Protection” bill by Guy Rodgers, Executive Director

Dear Tsila,

On Saturday, while our staff was conducting training sessions at the “Citizens in Action” conference in Northern Virginia, I received an email from Adam Hasner, the Florida House Majority Leader, informing us that Florida’s version of “Rachel’s Law” had just passed. In a conference call a week earlier Rep. Hasner pointed out that ACT! for America chapter leaders and members in Florida played an active part in reaching out to legislators in the Florida House on this legislation.

As Rep. Hasner noted so eloquently: “This bill protects Floridians from having their right to free speech suppressed by those with radical ideologies. Foreign courts that do not place the same value on our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech will no longer be used to intimidate Florida citizens.”

You may recall that “Rachel’s Law” was originally passed in New York about a year ago. It protects authors and publishers from intimidation lawsuits filed in foreign countries, and was dubbed “Rachel’s Law” because of a lawsuit filed against Rachel Ehrenfeld who wrote the book Funding Evil. A version of the legislation, entitled “The Free Speech Protection Act,” has been introduced in the U.S. Congress. We will be sending you an action alert on this legislation in the near future, so stay tuned!

I hope you are seeing the pattern we are seeing. Eighteen months ago there was very little good news we could report to you. That is no longer the case. We and our allies are going on the offensive and we’re winning victories. I fully expect that, over the next twelve months, we’ll see more victories like these. More and more people are waking up – and more and more elected officials are waking up. Yes, we have a long ways to go and a long fight ahead, but there is a message being sent loud and clear to radical Islamists, and that message is that America is a sleeping giant that is beginning to stir from its slumber, and that Americans are not going to roll over and allow Islamism to steamroller us as it has done in Europe.

In this vein, we have a simple action we would like you to take to help us improve our ability to educate and persuade elected officials throughout the country. Lisa Piraneo, our new Director of Government Relations, wants to build a database of every one of our members who has a relationship with at least one elected official, at any level.

Compiling this database will enable us to more effectively and strategically advance our legislative priorities and stop legislation that is harmful – whether at the city, county, state or federal level.

So please read over the following ACTION ALERT and help us once again help you!

Guy Rodgers

Stephanie K. sent me this article about self hating Jews: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/jonathan/mark_passover09.php3

Have a wonderful and peaceful Shabbos and stay healty,

Rachamim Pauli