Prayers for
Men: Shalom Charles ben Gracia, Yosef ben Esther, Daniel ben Rivka, Moshe ben
Briendel, Avrum ben Fagel, Moshe ben Bella, Ephraim ben Mazel,
Women: Karen Neshama bas Esther Ruth,
Chaya Melecha Rachel bas Baila Alta, Rachel bas Chana, Hodaya Nirit bas Mazel
Yaish, Rivka bas Idit, Tsvia Simcha bas Devorah Yachad, Miriam bas Irene Taita
Malka, Shulamis bas Etta, Chana Friedel bas
Sara, Esther bas Alice, Drorah Rivka bas Chana, Devorah bas Sara, Penina Bas Zeisa Preeya,
The following persons
are recovering from long term non-threatening injuries and need Psalms. Binum
Benyamin Tuvia ben Chana Friedel, Avraham HaCohain ben Yocheved, Melech David ben Sulah
Pearla, Golda Shulamis bas
Celia,
Torah
Statistics. Vayikra had 247 Mitzvos in a shorter book than Devarim which has
over 200 Mitzvos leaving Bamidbar with less than 50 Mitzvos.
Torah time and space. Sometimes we see incidents
like no bread or no meat repeating itself in the Torah and the Rabbis stated
there is no early and no late in the Torah. We already saw in chapter one of
Beresheis the Creation of mankind and then Chapter two and three more details
on the Creation.
One last mention to my readers outside
of Eretz Yisrael please note that last week I published in the blogspot Parsha
Bechukosai and you can read it. I continue further with Inyanay Diyoma as our
time line continues. Eventually, during the three weeks, just before Tisha B’Av
the diaspora catches up with Israel. If you look at Torah.org and other sites
may times you will see them on sync. with diaspora. The only site that deals
with both is the Rashi made simple site:
Parsha Bamidbar
Last
week and the previous week, we saw that the Mitzvos were given on Mt. Sinai.
Little time has passed since the Dedication of the Mishkan which was on the
first day of the first month of the second year.
1:1 And the LORD spoke unto Moses in
the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first day of the second
month, in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt,
saying:
We came to the wilderness of Sinai a few
days before Matan Torah (giving of the law aka Rosh Chodesh Sivan)
2 'Take ye the sum of all the
congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers'
houses, according to the number of names, every male, by their polls; 3 from twenty years
old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel: ye shall number
them by their hosts, even thou and Aaron. 4 And with you there shall be a man of every tribe, every one head
of his fathers' house.
Each ben Yisrael is dear to HASHEM and we
do it within the tribes and households so that the cherished names go on.
5 And these are the names of the men
that shall stand with you: of Reuben, Elizur the son of Shedeur. 6 Of Simeon, Shelumiel the son of
Zurishaddai. 7 Of
Judah, Nahshon the son of Amminadab. 8 Of Issachar, Nethanel the son of Zuar. 9 Of Zebulun, Eliab the son of Helon. 10 Of the children
of Joseph: of Ephraim, Elishama the son of Ammihud; of Manasseh, Gamaliel the
son of Pedahzur. 11
Of Benjamin, Abidan the son of Gideoni. 12 Of Dan, Ahiezer the son of Ammishaddai. 13 Of Asher, Pagiel the son of Ochran.
14 Of Gad,
Eliasaph the son of Deuel. 15 Of Naphtali, Ahira the son of Enan.' 16 These were the elect of the
congregation, the princes of the tribes of their fathers; they were the heads
of the thousands of Israel.
These people were leaders, approved by the
elders of each Tribe and popular. Nachshon was going to sire the future king of
Israel. In the meantime, it is his heroics that led to the splitting of the sea
as mentioned in Parsha Beshalach in past blogspots.
17 And Moses and Aaron took these men
that are pointed out by name. 18 And they assembled all the congregation together on the first
day of the second month, and they declared their pedigrees after their
families, by their fathers' houses, according to the number of names, from
twenty years old and upward, by their polls. 19 As the LORD commanded Moses, so did
he number them in the wilderness of Sinai. … 44 These are those that were numbered, which
Moses and Aaron numbered, and the princes of Israel, being twelve men; they
were each one for his fathers' house. 45 And all those that were numbered of the children of Israel by
their fathers' houses, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to
go forth to war in Israel; 46 even all those that were numbered were six hundred thousand and
three thousand and five hundred and fifty.
Over the years I have explained and
examined the numbers of each of the four camps with Machane Yehuda being the
largest as they went first and others close to equal except the rear guard.
47 But the Levites after the tribe of
their fathers were not numbered among them.
The Tribe of Levi in
total was numbered from one month upwards and not 20 years. However, there was
another number used for the service of the Leviim later on.
48 And the
LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: 49 'Howbeit the tribe of Levi thou shalt not number, neither shalt
thou take the sum of them among the children of Israel; 50 but appoint thou the Levites over
the tabernacle of the testimony, and over all the furniture thereof, and over
all that belongs to it; they shall bear the tabernacle, and all the furniture
thereof; and they shall minister unto it, and shall encamp round about the
tabernacle. 51
And when the tabernacle sets forward, the Levites shall take it down; and when
the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up; and the common
man that draws nigh shall be put to death.
Just as the common man or common Levi
could not do the service of a Cohain so the common Ben Yisrael could not do the
service of the Levi.
2:1 And the
LORD spoke unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying: 2 'The children of Israel shall pitch by their fathers' houses;
every man with his own standard, according to the ensigns; a good way off shall
they pitch round about the tent of meeting. 3 Now those that pitch on the east side toward the sunrising shall
be they of the standard of the camp of Judah, according to their hosts; the
prince of the children of Judah, … and the tribe of Zebulun; … 9 all that were numbered of the camp
of Judah being a hundred thousand and fourscore thousand and six thousand and
four hundred, according to their hosts; they shall set forth first.
The Guardian Angel here
was Michael and inside were Cohanim and Moshe.
10 On the south side shall be the
standard of the camp of Reuben according to their hosts; Simeon; … 14 and the tribe of Gad; 16 all that were numbered of the camp
of Reuben being a hundred thousand and fifty and one thousand and four hundred
and fifty, according to their hosts; and they shall set forth second.
The Guardian Angel was Rafael. The sub-tribe
of Kohath was anchored here.
18 On the west side shall be the
standard of the camp of Ephraim according to their hosts; Manasseh; … 22 and the tribe of Benjamin; 24 all that were numbered of the camp
of Ephraim being a hundred thousand and eight thousand and a hundred, according
to their hosts; and they shall set forth third.
They were rear guards as Yehuda went
forward and the other camps on the sides. They were last but had the Angel
Gavriel watching over them. The Leviim inside were the children of Gershon.
25 On the north side shall be the
standard of the camp of Dan according to their hosts; Asher; … 29 and the tribe of Naphtali; … 31 all that were numbered of the camp
of Dan being a hundred thousand and fifty and seven thousand and six hundred;
they shall set forth hindmost by their standards.'
Their Angel was Uriel
and the Leviim insider were from Merari. At the center of the camp was the
Mishkan and the Machane of the Shechina (HOLY SPIRIT OF HASHEM).
32 These are they that were numbered
of the children of Israel by their fathers' houses; all that were numbered of
the camps according to their hosts were six hundred thousand and three thousand
and five hundred and fifty.
The Torah does not mince words like
politicians. When the Torah repeats itself it is to teach us sometime and this
time is to show how wonderful each Ben Yisrael is to HASHEM.
33 But the Levites were not numbered
among the children of Israel; as the LORD commanded Moses. 34 Thus did the children of Israel:
according to all that the LORD commanded Moses, so they pitched by their
standards, and so they set forward, each one according to its families, and
according to its fathers' houses.
…3:11 And the LORD spoke unto Moses,
saying: 12 'And I, behold, I
have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of every
first-born that opens the womb among the children of Israel; and the Levites
shall be Mine;
For not one member of the tribe of Levi
(Sheves Levi) participated in the Golden Calf. This made them replace the
Bechor children as some of the first born children were involved in the Egel
HaZahav (golden calf).
13 for all the first-born are Mine: on
the day that I smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt I hallowed unto Me
all the first-born in Israel, both man and beast, Mine they shall be: I am the
LORD.'
While the first born
were for HASHEM in the family, they had to be redeemed unless their mother was
from the tribe of Levi including a Bas Cohain.
14 And the LORD spoke unto Moses in
the wilderness of Sinai, saying: 15
'Number the children of Levi by their fathers' houses, by their families; every
male from a month old and upward shalt thou number them.' …
Gershon: 22 Those that were numbered of them, according to the
number of all the males, from a month old and upward, even those that were
numbered of them were seven thousand and five hundred.
As we see this is the whole number of
viable males of the tribe and not those who served in the Mishkan.
23 The families of the Gershon were to
pitch behind the tabernacle westward; 24
the prince of the fathers' house of the Gershon being Eliasaph the son of Lael,
25 and the charge of the sons of
Gershon in the tent of meeting the tabernacle, and the Tent, the covering
thereof, and the screen for the door of the tent of meeting, 26 and the hangings of the court, and
the screen for the door of the court--which is by the tabernacle, and by the
altar, roundabout--and the cords of it, even whatsoever pertains to the service
thereof.
The Kedusha was great but not the highest
and the heavy curtains were able to be dismantled to ride in wagons.
… 28 according to the number
of all the males, from a month old and upward, eight thousand and six hundred,
keepers of the charge of the sanctuary. 29 The families of the sons of Kohath were to pitch on
the side of the tabernacle southward; 30
the prince of the fathers' house of the families of the Kohathites being
Elizaphan the son of Uzziel, 31
and their charge the ark, and the table, and the candlestick, and the altars,
and the vessels of the sanctuary wherewith the priests minister, and the
screen, and all that pertains to the service thereof; 32 Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest being prince of the princes
of the Levites, and having the oversight of them that keep the charge of the
sanctuary.
Because they were in charge of the holiest
of objects, they carried everything on their shoulders.
33 Of Merari … 34 And those that were numbered of
them, according to the number of all the males, from a month old and upward,
were six thousand and two hundred; 35
the prince of the fathers' house of the families of Merari being Zuriel the son
of Abihail; they were to pitch on the side of the tabernacle northward; 36 the appointed charge of the sons of
Merari being the boards of the tabernacle, and the bars thereof, and the
pillars thereof, and the sockets thereof, and all the instruments thereof, and
all that pertains to the service thereof; 37 and the pillars of the court round about, and their sockets,
and their pins, and their cords. 38
And those that were to pitch before the tabernacle eastward, before the tent of
meeting toward the sunrising, were Moses, and Aaron and his sons, keeping the
charge of the sanctuary, even the charge for the children of Israel; and the
common man that drew nigh was to be put to death.
The heavy boards could not be supported by
men for a long time and they too received wagons for loading them.
39 All that were numbered of the
Levites, whom Moses and Aaron numbered at the commandment of the LORD, by their
families, all the males from a month old and upward, were twenty and two
thousand.
We shall see that most
of the first born could be redeemed by a Levi but some could not and these had
to pay 5 Shekels in silver coins of The Mishkan.
…40 And the LORD said unto Moses:
'Number all the first-born males of the children of Israel from a month old and
upward, and take the number of their names. 41 And thou shalt take the Levites for Me, even the LORD, instead
of all the first-born among the children of Israel; and the cattle of the
Levites instead of all the firstlings among the cattle of the children of
Israel.' 42 And Moses numbered,
as the LORD commanded him, all the first-born among the children of Israel. 43 And all the first-born males
according to the number of names, from a month old and upward, of those that
were numbered of them, were twenty and two thousand two hundred and threescore
and thirteen.
Since there were more
numbered of the first born than the Leviim, the remainder had to be redeemed.
44 And the LORD spoke unto Moses,
saying: 45 'Take the Levites
instead of all the first-born among the children of Israel, and the cattle of
the Levites instead of their cattle; and the Levites shall be Mine, even the
LORD'S. 46 And as for the
redemption of the two hundred and three score and thirteen of the first-born of
the children of Israel, that are over and above the number of the Levites, 47 thou shalt take five shekels apiece
by the poll; after the shekel of the sanctuary shalt thou take them--the shekel
is twenty gerahs. 48 And thou
shalt give the money wherewith they that remain over of them are redeemed unto
Aaron and to his sons.'
Please
note, I want to put all the subtribes of Levi together for next week so next
week we will continue with Chapter 4 despite the fact that Naso is the largest
Parsha in the Torah.
The
famous author and two Lubavitcher Rebbes by R’ Y. Tilles
The great American novelist Herman
Wouk, who passed away this month on May 17 (12 Iyar 5779), just 10 days
shy of his 104th birthday, [1] was a man who went against the grain.
In a life and career that spanned the modern era, from World War I to iPhones, he stood out for his personal Orthodox Jewish observance, for the sense of mission he felt carrying the title "Jewish writer" and for the optimistic lens through which he saw the Jewish future. In all this and more, Wouk drew deeply from his intense, decades-long relationship with the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, and the Chabad movement.
In his life and art, Wouk was an unabashedly proud practicing Jew. He started his day studying Jewish texts and closed it with a regimen of Talmud. In his work, including his earliest novels, he allowed his Jewish characters to struggle with faith-not by mocking it, but by taking seriously the intricacies of observance, and in certain cases to allow its transcendent beauty to touch and move them. When fellow novelists and critics took unkindly to this, he simply brushed off their critique.
He would remain "one of the few living novelists concerned with virtue," his biographer, Arnold Bleichman, told the Palm Springs Desert Sun when Wouk turned 100.
Wouk was already a popular and successful novelist when he became a playwright, adapting his best-selling The Caine Mutiny into a Broadway play and later a movie. But even amid the nonstop world of Broadway, Wouk would disappear as Shabbat approached, "leaving the gloomy theatre, the littered coffee cups, the jumbled scarred-up scripts, the haggard actors, the shouting stagehands, the bedeviled director, the knuckle-gnawing producer … and the dense tobacco smoke and backstage dust" for home. There, he would join his family at "a splendid dinner, at a table graced with flowers and the old Sabbath symbols: the burning candles, the twisted loaves, the stuffed fish, and my grandfather's silver goblet brimming with wine."
Wouk wrote these words in another book, This Is My God, which he composed in response to an offhand question by a Jewish friend asking him if he knew of any educational Jewish reading material. This Is My God, with the later added subtitle of The Jewish Way of Life, became an invaluable resource for non-Jews seeking to understand Judaism and had a revolutionary impact on Jews from all backgrounds.
In it, the writer turned his pen to explaining the Jewish faith in a relatable, down-to-earth way. It proved unexpectedly popular, was reprinted numerous times and translated into many languages, becoming a basic guide and reference book for anyone interested in authentic Jewish practice. In the Soviet Union, where decades of state-sponsored oppression had rendered its millions of Jews lacking basic Jewish knowledge, it became a wildly popular manual for the spiritually thirsty population, offering them a foundational Jewish education.
Wouk dedicated This Is My God to his grandfather, Mendel-Leib Levine, who had served as a rabbi in Minsk, and later New York and Tel Aviv.
"From my [maternal] grandfather I caught an enthusiasm for learning, and a simple unashamed love of our faith," Wouk wrote in a 1967 letter. "[He] was a Lubavitcher who studied … in the Chabad tradition of knowledge joined with piety…. When my grandfather came he brought a whole different attitude into our lives. What he said was in his action. There is nothing more important than being a Jew. Nothing.""
This steadfast enthusiasm and love, as well as the moral backbone that it implied, never left him. In a career that saw him write nearly two-dozen books (he maintained a steady work regimen until the end of his life, publishing his latest book, Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year Old Author, in 2015), he candidly invoked the moral choices facing humankind, spoke with clarity on the existence of good and evil, and emphasized that an individual's thoughts, words and actions do indeed matter.
Wouk's own steadfast Orthodox Jewish observance combined with his stature served as an example for his brethren and brought Jewish practice into the public eye. Like the time in 1955 when Wouk made an appearance in the New York Post's "Lyon's Den" gossip column-not for scandal, but because the governor of Maryland had made sure the full dinner served at a state function attended by Wouk would be kosher.
Later, throughout the decades that Wouk lived in Palm Springs, California, he gave a weekly Shabbat morning Chumash (bible) class at the Chabad House-where he was known as "Reb Chaim-Zelig"-and taught Mishnah on Shabbat afternoon. He also maintained numerous regular Talmud study partners, and when weakness forced his classes to relocate to his home, continued his study sessions via Skype.
"His Torah study, his Jewish practice, that's who he was," explains Rabbi Yonason Denebeim, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Palm Springs and Wouk's longtime rabbi and friend of many decades, who officiated at Wouk's modest funeral. "He was a gifted storyteller through his words, but that was ancillary to who he was, he was a Jew. The medium was the writing. He was the young vibrant one teaching 'old men' as he called them, who were twenty years younger than him."
City Boy and the Zeide
Chaim Aviezer Zelig ('Herman') Wouk was born on May 27, 1915 [14 Sivan 5675], to Abraham Isaac and Esther Shaina Wouk. He and his siblings grew up in a Bronx fourth-floor walk-up, and as their parents hailed from White Russia, the family prayed at the neighborhood's Minsker shul, where Wouk's bar mitzvah was held. His parents were Orthodox Jews, religious but working hard to fit in with American life.
Wouk attended Columbia University, majoring in comparative literature and philosophy, and beginning his literary career by writing a campus humor column and editing a college humor magazine. For a short few years around and after college, he tested the waters of secular life, before returning to Jewish practice. After graduating, he got a job as a radio gag writer before landing a position in 1936 as a staff writer for the then-popular radio comedian Fred Allen.
Wouk enlisted in the Navy after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was eventually posted in the Pacific on the USS Zane, an old World War I minesweeper that would serve as a base for his fictional USS Caine.
His mother, Esther, told her midshipman son that there was no way he was going off to war without first receiving a blessing from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. This was 1943, and his recently widowed mother took him by subway all the way down to the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the two had a private audience with the sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef-Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory.
"The [sixth] Rebbe told him he should be especially careful with Tefillin," recalls Denebeim, who together with his wife, Sussie, befriended the Wouks when the author and his wife settled in Palm Springs and began attending Chabad on a daily basis. "The Rebbe told him that even though during times of emergency and war one was allowed to be more lenient doing practical mitzvahs, Wouk should nevertheless be careful with tefillin."
Wouk would recount the details of the audience in The Will to Live On, describing Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak as a "gentle personage of imposing presence, recently escaped from Nazi-ruled Europe after a harrowing ordeal of Soviet imprisonment," remembering how he "received us with grace, and we conversed in Yiddish, his voice weakened by asthma to a near-whisper. As I left, he gave me a blessing and with it a dime …"
Wouk held onto Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak's dime throughout his years in the South Pacific and donned Tefillin daily. He spent most of the war on the Zane doing the hazardous work of clearing mines before being transferred, in January of 1945, to the USS Southard, where he became the executive officer. Aboard the Southard, which had earlier survived a kamikaze attack, Wouk became the "bad cop" rule enforcer to the captain's "good cop," earning the enmity of those reporting to him.
The Pacific war ended in August. A month later, on Sept. 17, just as Wouk was about to become captain of the Southard and command the ship back to Brooklyn, they were hit by a typhoon at Okinawa. Somehow-"miraculously," Wouk would emphasize on numerous occasions-they managed to save everyone aboard. The ship was later declared lost.
Once ashore the next morning, everyone started "showing great deference to him and he felt really strange about it" since he hadn't been very popular with the men previously, says Denebeim. "He went to his chief petty officer and asked him what's going on?
"You saved everyone on the boat," came the reply.
"What?
"Not you. The black boxes you wore on the bridge every day!"
Wouk recalled the day clearly because it was also Yom Kippur, and he hadn't eaten a thing. When the Southard was struck, Wouk rescued two things: the precious tefillin that Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak had asked him to wear daily and the draft of his first book, Aurora Dawn.
For the duration of his life Wouk had a special affinity for the biblical 'Book of Jonah,' the haftorah read on Yom Kippur. It tells the tale of a man nearly lost at sea and the doomed city he helped save.
What Makes a Jewish Writer?
Wouk married Betty (Sarah) Brown in 1945, with the couple having three children and remaining married for more than six decades until her passing in 2011. His debut novel, Aurora Dawn, published two years later, and was followed by City Boy. It was his third book, however, The Caine Mutiny, that brought him fame, fortune and a Pulitzer Prize. Yet Wouk bucked the popular trend; instead of abandoning tradition, he held steadfastly to the Jewish practices and beliefs of his parents, grandparents and ancestors.
Two decades later saw the publication of his epic war novels, The Winds of War (1971) and War and Remembrance (1978), which tell the tales of the non-Jewish Henry clan and the Jewish Jastrow family. The combined nearly 2,000 pages, which Wouk saw as his life's "main task," paint an intricate picture of a world at war and brought the horrors of the persecution of the Jews in the Holocaust home to generations of readers. The Winds of War ends off with Natalie Jastrow, a young American Jewish woman stuck in Europe with a newborn baby in tow, blocked from escaping by German Nazis, Italian fascists and American bureaucrats.
One of the novel's countless readers was Vivi Deren, then a young Chabad emissary on campus in Amherst, Massachusetts. Wouk was practically mishpachah, or family, with Deren's parents (and Denebeim's in-laws), Rabbi Zalman and Risya Posner, the Chabad emissaries in Nashville, Tennessee. He would stay at the Posner home during his frequent visits to the city, where his nephew and family lived. One afternoon on the eve of Shavuot during the gap years before War and Remembrance came out, Deren was on the phone with her mother, who told her that Wouk was staying with them for the holiday.
"I said, 'Please ask him what happens to Natalie?'" Deren remembers.
"Say Tehillim (psalms)," came Wouk's reply. It would seem that he still did not know whether his protagonists would perish together with their brethren.
When War and Remembrance finally came out, Wouk revealed that Natalie and her baby boy do indeed survive. Yet her uncle, Dr. Aaron Jastrow, a professor and writer who had become an apostate years earlier, does not. In the Nazis' hands, the elder Jastrow returns to the faith of his fathers, begins donning Tefillin, teaching Talmud and documenting his path to repentance in a manuscript he titles A Jew's Journey. The elderly man dies in the gas chambers with the hallowed and holy words "Shema Yisrael, Hear, O Israel," on his lips.
"I have experienced a strange bitter happiness in Theresienstadt that I missed as an American professor and as a fashionable author living in a Tuscan villa. I have been myself," Jastrow writes in his final entry. "I was born to carry that flame."
This Jewish flame, this light, permeated Wouk's work. When Natalie Jastrow is finally reunited with her young son, Louis, she rocks him back and forth and begins singing to him in Yiddish:
"Dos vet zein dein baruf. Rozhinkes mit mandlen. Slof-zhe, Yidele, shlof" ("This will be your calling, too. [Trading in] raisins and almonds. Sleep, Yidele, sleep.")
"Almost at the same moment," writes Wouk describing the scene, "Byron and Rabinovitz each put a hand over his eyes, as though dazzled by an unbearable sudden light."
Wouk's inner need to communicate the "sudden light" of a Jewish mother singing "raisins and almonds" in Yiddish, or a Talmud class in Theresienstadt, made him stand out.
Faith
"Faith," Wouk once explained, "is belief in what cannot rationally be justified. It's a knowledge that goes beyond logic."
Wouk exuded this faith. While audiences scooped up his books and made him popular, critics launched attacks, citing his popularity as proof that he was a second-rate writer. Worse, in their eyes, was what they saw as his simplistic, old-fashioned morals.
"He writes out of a strong sense that Jewish life… can only disintegrate and wither away if it ventures beyond the moral and spiritual confines of a Judaic bourgeois style," wrote one critical reviewer of Marjorie Morningstar [the character's original family name was Morgenstern].
And yet, Wouk held his ground. "Among Jewish writers of the day I remain odd man out in point of view, of that I am well aware," he wrote. "In some of them I think I discern rueful second thoughts about religion, but any relevance of eschewing lobsters to the grand question of man's fate [as Wouk pondered in Marjorie Morningstar], in a vast baffling universe, may well seem to them a persisting petty absurdity. On that I have had my say in This Is My God, where I lay out my cards face up."
Mission
Wouk maintained a lengthy correspondence with the Rebbe and visited him numerous times for private audiences, receiving his guidance, direction and encouragement. He cherished the advice he got from the Rebbe about his literary work (they discussed his books in detail).
Nevertheless, it was the Rebbe's positive outlook on the Jewish condition and his urgent work to make it so that he would recount most often, recalling how during one of those audiences the Rebbe had negated the nay-sayers predicting doom. "The American Jewish community is wonderful," the Rebbe told Wouk. "While you cannot tell them to do anything, you can teach them to do everything."
The Rebbe didn't miss an opportunity to encourage the author to keep writing in ever more consequential ways, to keep impacting and to keep doing more for the good of the Jewish people.
1972, on the occasion of the Rebbe's 70th birthday, Wouk came to the Rebbe's farbrengen gathering in Brooklyn as the personal representative of U.S. President Richard Nixon. Bearing a letter of greeting from the president, he had a private audience with the Rebbe (forcing then-Israeli ambassador to the United States Yitzchak Rabin to wait his turn). Then, in a period of just a few days, Wouk flew to both Minnesota and Los Angeles to speak at local gatherings celebrating the same event.
In a life and career that spanned the modern era, from World War I to iPhones, he stood out for his personal Orthodox Jewish observance, for the sense of mission he felt carrying the title "Jewish writer" and for the optimistic lens through which he saw the Jewish future. In all this and more, Wouk drew deeply from his intense, decades-long relationship with the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, and the Chabad movement.
In his life and art, Wouk was an unabashedly proud practicing Jew. He started his day studying Jewish texts and closed it with a regimen of Talmud. In his work, including his earliest novels, he allowed his Jewish characters to struggle with faith-not by mocking it, but by taking seriously the intricacies of observance, and in certain cases to allow its transcendent beauty to touch and move them. When fellow novelists and critics took unkindly to this, he simply brushed off their critique.
He would remain "one of the few living novelists concerned with virtue," his biographer, Arnold Bleichman, told the Palm Springs Desert Sun when Wouk turned 100.
Wouk was already a popular and successful novelist when he became a playwright, adapting his best-selling The Caine Mutiny into a Broadway play and later a movie. But even amid the nonstop world of Broadway, Wouk would disappear as Shabbat approached, "leaving the gloomy theatre, the littered coffee cups, the jumbled scarred-up scripts, the haggard actors, the shouting stagehands, the bedeviled director, the knuckle-gnawing producer … and the dense tobacco smoke and backstage dust" for home. There, he would join his family at "a splendid dinner, at a table graced with flowers and the old Sabbath symbols: the burning candles, the twisted loaves, the stuffed fish, and my grandfather's silver goblet brimming with wine."
Wouk wrote these words in another book, This Is My God, which he composed in response to an offhand question by a Jewish friend asking him if he knew of any educational Jewish reading material. This Is My God, with the later added subtitle of The Jewish Way of Life, became an invaluable resource for non-Jews seeking to understand Judaism and had a revolutionary impact on Jews from all backgrounds.
In it, the writer turned his pen to explaining the Jewish faith in a relatable, down-to-earth way. It proved unexpectedly popular, was reprinted numerous times and translated into many languages, becoming a basic guide and reference book for anyone interested in authentic Jewish practice. In the Soviet Union, where decades of state-sponsored oppression had rendered its millions of Jews lacking basic Jewish knowledge, it became a wildly popular manual for the spiritually thirsty population, offering them a foundational Jewish education.
Wouk dedicated This Is My God to his grandfather, Mendel-Leib Levine, who had served as a rabbi in Minsk, and later New York and Tel Aviv.
"From my [maternal] grandfather I caught an enthusiasm for learning, and a simple unashamed love of our faith," Wouk wrote in a 1967 letter. "[He] was a Lubavitcher who studied … in the Chabad tradition of knowledge joined with piety…. When my grandfather came he brought a whole different attitude into our lives. What he said was in his action. There is nothing more important than being a Jew. Nothing.""
This steadfast enthusiasm and love, as well as the moral backbone that it implied, never left him. In a career that saw him write nearly two-dozen books (he maintained a steady work regimen until the end of his life, publishing his latest book, Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year Old Author, in 2015), he candidly invoked the moral choices facing humankind, spoke with clarity on the existence of good and evil, and emphasized that an individual's thoughts, words and actions do indeed matter.
Wouk's own steadfast Orthodox Jewish observance combined with his stature served as an example for his brethren and brought Jewish practice into the public eye. Like the time in 1955 when Wouk made an appearance in the New York Post's "Lyon's Den" gossip column-not for scandal, but because the governor of Maryland had made sure the full dinner served at a state function attended by Wouk would be kosher.
Later, throughout the decades that Wouk lived in Palm Springs, California, he gave a weekly Shabbat morning Chumash (bible) class at the Chabad House-where he was known as "Reb Chaim-Zelig"-and taught Mishnah on Shabbat afternoon. He also maintained numerous regular Talmud study partners, and when weakness forced his classes to relocate to his home, continued his study sessions via Skype.
"His Torah study, his Jewish practice, that's who he was," explains Rabbi Yonason Denebeim, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Palm Springs and Wouk's longtime rabbi and friend of many decades, who officiated at Wouk's modest funeral. "He was a gifted storyteller through his words, but that was ancillary to who he was, he was a Jew. The medium was the writing. He was the young vibrant one teaching 'old men' as he called them, who were twenty years younger than him."
City Boy and the Zeide
Chaim Aviezer Zelig ('Herman') Wouk was born on May 27, 1915 [14 Sivan 5675], to Abraham Isaac and Esther Shaina Wouk. He and his siblings grew up in a Bronx fourth-floor walk-up, and as their parents hailed from White Russia, the family prayed at the neighborhood's Minsker shul, where Wouk's bar mitzvah was held. His parents were Orthodox Jews, religious but working hard to fit in with American life.
Wouk attended Columbia University, majoring in comparative literature and philosophy, and beginning his literary career by writing a campus humor column and editing a college humor magazine. For a short few years around and after college, he tested the waters of secular life, before returning to Jewish practice. After graduating, he got a job as a radio gag writer before landing a position in 1936 as a staff writer for the then-popular radio comedian Fred Allen.
Wouk enlisted in the Navy after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was eventually posted in the Pacific on the USS Zane, an old World War I minesweeper that would serve as a base for his fictional USS Caine.
His mother, Esther, told her midshipman son that there was no way he was going off to war without first receiving a blessing from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. This was 1943, and his recently widowed mother took him by subway all the way down to the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the two had a private audience with the sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef-Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory.
"The [sixth] Rebbe told him he should be especially careful with Tefillin," recalls Denebeim, who together with his wife, Sussie, befriended the Wouks when the author and his wife settled in Palm Springs and began attending Chabad on a daily basis. "The Rebbe told him that even though during times of emergency and war one was allowed to be more lenient doing practical mitzvahs, Wouk should nevertheless be careful with tefillin."
Wouk would recount the details of the audience in The Will to Live On, describing Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak as a "gentle personage of imposing presence, recently escaped from Nazi-ruled Europe after a harrowing ordeal of Soviet imprisonment," remembering how he "received us with grace, and we conversed in Yiddish, his voice weakened by asthma to a near-whisper. As I left, he gave me a blessing and with it a dime …"
Wouk held onto Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak's dime throughout his years in the South Pacific and donned Tefillin daily. He spent most of the war on the Zane doing the hazardous work of clearing mines before being transferred, in January of 1945, to the USS Southard, where he became the executive officer. Aboard the Southard, which had earlier survived a kamikaze attack, Wouk became the "bad cop" rule enforcer to the captain's "good cop," earning the enmity of those reporting to him.
The Pacific war ended in August. A month later, on Sept. 17, just as Wouk was about to become captain of the Southard and command the ship back to Brooklyn, they were hit by a typhoon at Okinawa. Somehow-"miraculously," Wouk would emphasize on numerous occasions-they managed to save everyone aboard. The ship was later declared lost.
Once ashore the next morning, everyone started "showing great deference to him and he felt really strange about it" since he hadn't been very popular with the men previously, says Denebeim. "He went to his chief petty officer and asked him what's going on?
"You saved everyone on the boat," came the reply.
"What?
"Not you. The black boxes you wore on the bridge every day!"
Wouk recalled the day clearly because it was also Yom Kippur, and he hadn't eaten a thing. When the Southard was struck, Wouk rescued two things: the precious tefillin that Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak had asked him to wear daily and the draft of his first book, Aurora Dawn.
For the duration of his life Wouk had a special affinity for the biblical 'Book of Jonah,' the haftorah read on Yom Kippur. It tells the tale of a man nearly lost at sea and the doomed city he helped save.
What Makes a Jewish Writer?
Wouk married Betty (Sarah) Brown in 1945, with the couple having three children and remaining married for more than six decades until her passing in 2011. His debut novel, Aurora Dawn, published two years later, and was followed by City Boy. It was his third book, however, The Caine Mutiny, that brought him fame, fortune and a Pulitzer Prize. Yet Wouk bucked the popular trend; instead of abandoning tradition, he held steadfastly to the Jewish practices and beliefs of his parents, grandparents and ancestors.
Two decades later saw the publication of his epic war novels, The Winds of War (1971) and War and Remembrance (1978), which tell the tales of the non-Jewish Henry clan and the Jewish Jastrow family. The combined nearly 2,000 pages, which Wouk saw as his life's "main task," paint an intricate picture of a world at war and brought the horrors of the persecution of the Jews in the Holocaust home to generations of readers. The Winds of War ends off with Natalie Jastrow, a young American Jewish woman stuck in Europe with a newborn baby in tow, blocked from escaping by German Nazis, Italian fascists and American bureaucrats.
One of the novel's countless readers was Vivi Deren, then a young Chabad emissary on campus in Amherst, Massachusetts. Wouk was practically mishpachah, or family, with Deren's parents (and Denebeim's in-laws), Rabbi Zalman and Risya Posner, the Chabad emissaries in Nashville, Tennessee. He would stay at the Posner home during his frequent visits to the city, where his nephew and family lived. One afternoon on the eve of Shavuot during the gap years before War and Remembrance came out, Deren was on the phone with her mother, who told her that Wouk was staying with them for the holiday.
"I said, 'Please ask him what happens to Natalie?'" Deren remembers.
"Say Tehillim (psalms)," came Wouk's reply. It would seem that he still did not know whether his protagonists would perish together with their brethren.
When War and Remembrance finally came out, Wouk revealed that Natalie and her baby boy do indeed survive. Yet her uncle, Dr. Aaron Jastrow, a professor and writer who had become an apostate years earlier, does not. In the Nazis' hands, the elder Jastrow returns to the faith of his fathers, begins donning Tefillin, teaching Talmud and documenting his path to repentance in a manuscript he titles A Jew's Journey. The elderly man dies in the gas chambers with the hallowed and holy words "Shema Yisrael, Hear, O Israel," on his lips.
"I have experienced a strange bitter happiness in Theresienstadt that I missed as an American professor and as a fashionable author living in a Tuscan villa. I have been myself," Jastrow writes in his final entry. "I was born to carry that flame."
This Jewish flame, this light, permeated Wouk's work. When Natalie Jastrow is finally reunited with her young son, Louis, she rocks him back and forth and begins singing to him in Yiddish:
"Dos vet zein dein baruf. Rozhinkes mit mandlen. Slof-zhe, Yidele, shlof" ("This will be your calling, too. [Trading in] raisins and almonds. Sleep, Yidele, sleep.")
"Almost at the same moment," writes Wouk describing the scene, "Byron and Rabinovitz each put a hand over his eyes, as though dazzled by an unbearable sudden light."
Wouk's inner need to communicate the "sudden light" of a Jewish mother singing "raisins and almonds" in Yiddish, or a Talmud class in Theresienstadt, made him stand out.
Faith
"Faith," Wouk once explained, "is belief in what cannot rationally be justified. It's a knowledge that goes beyond logic."
Wouk exuded this faith. While audiences scooped up his books and made him popular, critics launched attacks, citing his popularity as proof that he was a second-rate writer. Worse, in their eyes, was what they saw as his simplistic, old-fashioned morals.
"He writes out of a strong sense that Jewish life… can only disintegrate and wither away if it ventures beyond the moral and spiritual confines of a Judaic bourgeois style," wrote one critical reviewer of Marjorie Morningstar [the character's original family name was Morgenstern].
And yet, Wouk held his ground. "Among Jewish writers of the day I remain odd man out in point of view, of that I am well aware," he wrote. "In some of them I think I discern rueful second thoughts about religion, but any relevance of eschewing lobsters to the grand question of man's fate [as Wouk pondered in Marjorie Morningstar], in a vast baffling universe, may well seem to them a persisting petty absurdity. On that I have had my say in This Is My God, where I lay out my cards face up."
Mission
Wouk maintained a lengthy correspondence with the Rebbe and visited him numerous times for private audiences, receiving his guidance, direction and encouragement. He cherished the advice he got from the Rebbe about his literary work (they discussed his books in detail).
Nevertheless, it was the Rebbe's positive outlook on the Jewish condition and his urgent work to make it so that he would recount most often, recalling how during one of those audiences the Rebbe had negated the nay-sayers predicting doom. "The American Jewish community is wonderful," the Rebbe told Wouk. "While you cannot tell them to do anything, you can teach them to do everything."
The Rebbe didn't miss an opportunity to encourage the author to keep writing in ever more consequential ways, to keep impacting and to keep doing more for the good of the Jewish people.
1972, on the occasion of the Rebbe's 70th birthday, Wouk came to the Rebbe's farbrengen gathering in Brooklyn as the personal representative of U.S. President Richard Nixon. Bearing a letter of greeting from the president, he had a private audience with the Rebbe (forcing then-Israeli ambassador to the United States Yitzchak Rabin to wait his turn). Then, in a period of just a few days, Wouk flew to both Minnesota and Los Angeles to speak at local gatherings celebrating the same event.
In a brief interlude during a 1975 farbrengen Wouk attended in Brooklyn,
during which the author vigorously sang and clapped in rhythm with the crowd [I
was there and I remember this clearly--YT], Wouk joyfully reported to the Rebbe
(in Yiddish) that his Israeli publisher had translated and published not just a
novel of his, but a serious book on Judaism, This Is My God, and added that a
special low-priced edition had been printed for the benefit of the soldiers in
the Israel Defense Forces as well.
The Rebbe was happy to hear this, but then reminded Wouk that his work was not done. "It's needed in America as well," the Rebbe added. "Don't forget the Jews in the United States!"
(This Is My God was also translated into Russian by Professor Herman Branover, a Lubavitcher Chassid and scientist who directed the Shamir organization, which worked on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the USSR and abroad. Branover's translation of Wouk's book made its way clandestinely into the Soviet Union, where it had a revolutionary impact, becoming a popular manual for the spiritually thirsty Jewish population, offering them a foundational religious education.)
In a 1985 letter Wouk addressed to the "Revered Rebbe," he concluded by saying "it remains for me to thank you for your too kind words about my very modest acts in [the] field [of Jewish education], and to welcome your blessings with profoundest gratitude."
The Rebbe would not hear of it. "I must challenge this self-assessment," the Rebbe wrote back, "on the ground that the record speaks for itself. Moreover, in wide segments of Jewry, especially among American Jews, the impact of your 'modest acts' strikes deeper and wider than similar acts of a Rabbi or Rebbe (myself included) could attain, for obvious reasons.
"For the sake of a mutual consensus, I am prepared to accept your claim of 'very modest acts'-in a relative sense, in terms of your potential and future acts, which will dwarf your past accomplishments by comparison …"
Jewish Survival
Wouk shared the overwhelming concerns of Jewish leaders about intermarriage, assimilation and basic lack of Jewish knowledge affecting American and world Jewry in a modern, post-Holocaust world. "Leaders fear threat to Jewish survival in today's 'crisis of freedom,' " reads the subtitle of a 1964 Look magazine cover story ominously titled 'The Vanishing American Jew.' Wouk agreed: "I think the Jewish people is in danger-in mortal danger," he said. From where, Wouk asked his audience in a talk in Minnesota as much as himself, could one derive faith in the Jewish people's apparently bleak future?
"The Lubavitch Rebbe has that faith [in a bright Jewish future]," Wouk said in reply to his own query. "I think that the Rebbe is an inspired Jew, perhaps the inspired Jew among us," he explained. The Rebbe "looked me in the eye and said it was so … And so it is the truth."
The Lubavitch movement, Wouk said, is the "red ember on the underside of the smoldering log of Judaism in our century," and the Rebbe "is the flame." Moved in this way by what he saw as the Rebbe's vital role in the very survival of the Jewish people in the modern era, Wouk spoke passionately to audiences large and small, from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia to London, about Lubavitch's dynamic standing on the Jewish landscape. "In the thundering footsteps of the young Chabad Chassidim I did not hear the voice of the past," Wouk told a Los Angeles audience in late 1972. "This is the life of Judaism and this is the future of Judaism. It was the voice of the future."
Wouk prayed at Chabad of Palm Springs, supported it, gave classes and lectures there, and considered its rabbi, Rabbi Yonason Denebeim, his own. They were friends, and Wouk on occasion wrote about Denebeim and his admiration for him. Denebeim, in turn, regularly spent hours in study and conversation with his famous congregant, whom he described as his "surrogate father … for 40 years," while fiercely guarding the writer's privacy on his behalf. Wouk regarded Denebeim's children, who continued to visit and study with him at his home until the end of his life, as if his own.
"Mr. Wouk was a special human being," says Rabbi Denebeim. "Where many artists become defined and thus limited by their art, he shined beyond those limitations, a quiet lamplighter."
Wouk often reflected on the Rebbe's vision for world Jewry and the effect it continued to have even after the Rebbe's passing in 1994, expressing a measure of this in a short note he wrote to author Joseph Telushkin following publication of the latter's best-selling biography, Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History.
Telushkin's book, Wouk wrote, was "the truth, simply and ably told, about a great man, a Jewish 20th century teacher and leader. … The man emerges as himself, in all his simplicity and majesty. … He will live on, I think, as his work lives on, and steadily grows in impact."
What Makes a Lubavitcher?
In 1978, Wouk sent the Rebbe a copy of his then-new book, War and Remembrance. The book was dedicated to his eldest son, Abraham Isaac ("Abe"), who had tragically passed away years earlier in a childhood accident, and Wouk inscribed on the title page the prophet Isaiah's words, Bila Ha'Moves Lo'Netzach, or "He will destroy death forever." The Rebbe replied by thanking him for the book, noting the beautiful dedication and stating that he hoped to have the chance to go through the 1,039-page book at a later date.
At the conclusion of the letter the Rebbe did, however, take issue with Wouk's oft-repeated description of himself as an admirer, but not an actual member of, Lubavitch. "In the estimate of many, myself included, you have been a Lubavitcher for quite some time," the Rebbe wrote. "For as you surely know, being a Lubavitcher does not come by virtue of a formal membership card, or membership dues or anything like this, but to do what a Lubavitcher does: to spread Judaism with Ahavat Yisrael … "
Herman Wouk was a successful man, winning awards, selling many millions of books and the movie rights to his creations, all the while holding strong in his convictions. He studied and taught Torah not as a layman, but as a scholar, once calling himself "a Jew of the Talmud." And he was, above all else, a lover of the Jewish people.
But he was not transient; he did not rest on his laurels. Wouk spent his nearly 104 years on earth on an upward journey, both personal and professional, taking him from skeptic to optimist, from defender of the faith to forward-looking emissary. Recognizing the slumbering embers deep in the log of American Jewry, he sought the flame, to warm himself and draw energy from it. Then he marshalled his immense talents in its service to help it grow into a roaring fire.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnotes
The Rebbe was happy to hear this, but then reminded Wouk that his work was not done. "It's needed in America as well," the Rebbe added. "Don't forget the Jews in the United States!"
(This Is My God was also translated into Russian by Professor Herman Branover, a Lubavitcher Chassid and scientist who directed the Shamir organization, which worked on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the USSR and abroad. Branover's translation of Wouk's book made its way clandestinely into the Soviet Union, where it had a revolutionary impact, becoming a popular manual for the spiritually thirsty Jewish population, offering them a foundational religious education.)
In a 1985 letter Wouk addressed to the "Revered Rebbe," he concluded by saying "it remains for me to thank you for your too kind words about my very modest acts in [the] field [of Jewish education], and to welcome your blessings with profoundest gratitude."
The Rebbe would not hear of it. "I must challenge this self-assessment," the Rebbe wrote back, "on the ground that the record speaks for itself. Moreover, in wide segments of Jewry, especially among American Jews, the impact of your 'modest acts' strikes deeper and wider than similar acts of a Rabbi or Rebbe (myself included) could attain, for obvious reasons.
"For the sake of a mutual consensus, I am prepared to accept your claim of 'very modest acts'-in a relative sense, in terms of your potential and future acts, which will dwarf your past accomplishments by comparison …"
Jewish Survival
Wouk shared the overwhelming concerns of Jewish leaders about intermarriage, assimilation and basic lack of Jewish knowledge affecting American and world Jewry in a modern, post-Holocaust world. "Leaders fear threat to Jewish survival in today's 'crisis of freedom,' " reads the subtitle of a 1964 Look magazine cover story ominously titled 'The Vanishing American Jew.' Wouk agreed: "I think the Jewish people is in danger-in mortal danger," he said. From where, Wouk asked his audience in a talk in Minnesota as much as himself, could one derive faith in the Jewish people's apparently bleak future?
"The Lubavitch Rebbe has that faith [in a bright Jewish future]," Wouk said in reply to his own query. "I think that the Rebbe is an inspired Jew, perhaps the inspired Jew among us," he explained. The Rebbe "looked me in the eye and said it was so … And so it is the truth."
The Lubavitch movement, Wouk said, is the "red ember on the underside of the smoldering log of Judaism in our century," and the Rebbe "is the flame." Moved in this way by what he saw as the Rebbe's vital role in the very survival of the Jewish people in the modern era, Wouk spoke passionately to audiences large and small, from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia to London, about Lubavitch's dynamic standing on the Jewish landscape. "In the thundering footsteps of the young Chabad Chassidim I did not hear the voice of the past," Wouk told a Los Angeles audience in late 1972. "This is the life of Judaism and this is the future of Judaism. It was the voice of the future."
Wouk prayed at Chabad of Palm Springs, supported it, gave classes and lectures there, and considered its rabbi, Rabbi Yonason Denebeim, his own. They were friends, and Wouk on occasion wrote about Denebeim and his admiration for him. Denebeim, in turn, regularly spent hours in study and conversation with his famous congregant, whom he described as his "surrogate father … for 40 years," while fiercely guarding the writer's privacy on his behalf. Wouk regarded Denebeim's children, who continued to visit and study with him at his home until the end of his life, as if his own.
"Mr. Wouk was a special human being," says Rabbi Denebeim. "Where many artists become defined and thus limited by their art, he shined beyond those limitations, a quiet lamplighter."
Wouk often reflected on the Rebbe's vision for world Jewry and the effect it continued to have even after the Rebbe's passing in 1994, expressing a measure of this in a short note he wrote to author Joseph Telushkin following publication of the latter's best-selling biography, Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History.
Telushkin's book, Wouk wrote, was "the truth, simply and ably told, about a great man, a Jewish 20th century teacher and leader. … The man emerges as himself, in all his simplicity and majesty. … He will live on, I think, as his work lives on, and steadily grows in impact."
What Makes a Lubavitcher?
In 1978, Wouk sent the Rebbe a copy of his then-new book, War and Remembrance. The book was dedicated to his eldest son, Abraham Isaac ("Abe"), who had tragically passed away years earlier in a childhood accident, and Wouk inscribed on the title page the prophet Isaiah's words, Bila Ha'Moves Lo'Netzach, or "He will destroy death forever." The Rebbe replied by thanking him for the book, noting the beautiful dedication and stating that he hoped to have the chance to go through the 1,039-page book at a later date.
At the conclusion of the letter the Rebbe did, however, take issue with Wouk's oft-repeated description of himself as an admirer, but not an actual member of, Lubavitch. "In the estimate of many, myself included, you have been a Lubavitcher for quite some time," the Rebbe wrote. "For as you surely know, being a Lubavitcher does not come by virtue of a formal membership card, or membership dues or anything like this, but to do what a Lubavitcher does: to spread Judaism with Ahavat Yisrael … "
Herman Wouk was a successful man, winning awards, selling many millions of books and the movie rights to his creations, all the while holding strong in his convictions. He studied and taught Torah not as a layman, but as a scholar, once calling himself "a Jew of the Talmud." And he was, above all else, a lover of the Jewish people.
But he was not transient; he did not rest on his laurels. Wouk spent his nearly 104 years on earth on an upward journey, both personal and professional, taking him from skeptic to optimist, from defender of the faith to forward-looking emissary. Recognizing the slumbering embers deep in the log of American Jewry, he sought the flame, to warm himself and draw energy from it. Then he marshalled his immense talents in its service to help it grow into a roaring fire.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnotes
[1]One month shy on the Jewish calendar.
[2] This very popular lullaby was part of a song composed in 1880 for
the Yiddish theater opera "Shulamis."
Source: Excerpted (80%) and adapted by Yerachmiel Tilles from the excellent,
lengthy (4500+ words) article by Dovid Margolin for //chabad.org/4393510, which is accompanied by a number of
notable photos.
Connection: Prepared during the Week of Shiva for Mr. Herman Wouk
Motzei
Shabbos is Yom Yerushalayim and is very appropriate for those Jews reading this
week Bechukosai as 5 of you shall chase 100. It is now 52 years since the
liberation and the handing of the keys to the Temple Mount to the Arabs by pork
loving Moshe Dayan. Tumay food makes one Mitumtam (into an idiot or imbecile).
That is why Kosher is so important. Even today our non-kosher and Shabbos
violators are our political leaders they more than not go against the Torah.
The miracles of 52 years ago will not repeat themselves for ungrateful
politicians but because of the great Chessed of HASHEM, we still have a united
Yerushalayim despite the UN and the world against us.
Completing the Omer Daily Omer
Meditation by Rabbi Simon Jacobson
Day 41 ― Yesod of Yesod: Bonding in Bonding
Every person needs and has the capacity to bond with other people, with significant undertakings and with meaningful experiences. Do I have difficulty bonding? Is the difficulty in all areas or only in certain ones? Do I bond easily with my job, but have trouble bonding with people? Or vice versa?
Examine the reasons for not bonding. Is it because I am too critical and find fault in everything as an excuse for not bonding? Am I too locked in my own ways? Is my not bonding a result of discomfort with vulnerability? Have I been hurt in my past bonding experiences? Has my trust been abused? Is my fear of bonding a result of the deficient bonding I experienced as a child?
To cultivate your capacity to bond, even if you have valid reasons to distrust, you must remember that God gave you a Divine soul that is nurturing and loving and you must learn to recognize the voice within, which will allow you to experience other people's souls and hearts. Then you can slowly drop your defenses when you recognize someone or something you can truly trust.
One additional point: Bonding breeds bonding. When you bond in one area of your life, it helps you bond in other areas.
Exercise for the day: Begin bonding with a new person or experience you love by committing designated time each day or week to spend together constructively.
Day 42 ― Malchut of Yesod: Nobility in Bonding
Bonding must enhance a person's sovereignty. It should nurture and strengthen your own dignity and the dignity of the one you bond with. Does my bonding inhibit the expression of my personality and qualities? Does it overwhelm the one I bond with?
Exercise for the day: Emphasize and highlight the strengths of the one with whom you bond.
During the seventh and final week of counting the Omer, we examine and refine the attribute of Malchut ― nobility, sovereignty and leadership. Sovereignty is a state of being rather than an activity. Nobility is a passive expression of human dignity that has nothing of its own except that which it receives from the other six emotions. True leadership is the art of selflessness; it is only a reflection of a Higher will. On the other hand, Malchut manifests and actualizes the character and majesty of the human spirit. It is the very fiber of what makes us human.
Malchut is a sense of belonging. Knowing that you matter and that you make a difference. That you have the ability to be a proficient leader in your own right. It gives you independence and confidence. A feeling of certainty and authority. When a mother lovingly cradles her child in her arms and the child's eyes meet the mother's affectionate eyes, the child receives the message: "I am wanted and needed in this world. I have a comfortable place where I will always be loved. I have nothing to fear. I feel like royalty in my heart." This is Malchut, kingship.
Day 43 ― Chesed of Malchut: Loving-kindness in Nobility
Healthy sovereignty is always kind and loving. An effective leader needs to be warm and considerate. Does my sovereignty make me more loving? Do I exercise my authority and leadership in a caring manner? Do I impose my authority on others?
Exercise for the day: Do something kind for your subordinates
Day 44 ― Gevurah of Malchut: Discipline in Nobility
Although sovereignty is loving, it needs to be balanced with discipline. Effective leadership is built on authority and discipline. There is another factor in the discipline of sovereignty: determining the area in which you have jurisdiction and authority.
Do I recognize when I am not an authority? Do I exercise authority in unwarranted situations? Am I aware of my limitations as well as my strengths? Do I respect the authority of others?
Exercise for the day: Before taking an authoritative position on any given issue, pause and reflect if you have the right and the ability to exercise authority in this situation.
Day 45 ― Tiferet of Malchut: Compassion in Nobility
A good leader is a compassionate one. Is my compassion compromised because of my authority? Do I realize that an integral part of dignity is compassion? Tiferet ― harmony ― is critical for successful leadership. Do I manage a smooth-running operation? Am I organized? Do I give clear instructions to my subordinates? Do I have difficulty delegating power? Do we have frequent staff meetings to coordinate our goals and efforts?
Exercise for the day: Review an area where you wield authority and see if you can polish it up and increase its effectiveness by curtailing excesses and consolidating forces.
Day 46 ― Netzach of Malchut: Endurance in Nobility
A person's dignity and a leader's success are tested by his endurance level. Will and determination reflect the power and majesty of the human spirit. How determined am I in reaching my goals? How strong is my conviction to fight for a dignified cause? How confident am I in myself? Is my lack of endurance a result of my low self-esteem? Do I mask my insecurities by finding other excuses for my low endurance level?
Exercise for the day: Act on something that you believe in but have until now been tentative about. Take the leap and just do it!
Day 47 ― Hod of Malchut: Humility in Nobility
Sovereignty is God's gift to each individual. Hod of Malchut is the humble appreciation of this exceptional gift. Does my sovereignty and independence humble me? Am I an arrogant leader? Do I appreciate the special qualities I was blessed with?
Exercise for the day: Acknowledge God for creating you with personal dignity
Exercise for the day: Take a moment and concentrate on yourself, on your true inner self, not on your performance and how you project to others; and be at peace with yourself knowing that God created a very special person which is you.
Remember
that next Motzei Shabbos is Shavuos and there is a need to purchase 48 hour
candles for Israel or 72 hour candles for the diaspora. It is tradition to eat
cheese and cheese products on Shavuos. If you are like me with lactose
intolerance, you may want to try goat or sheep cheese. Sometimes cheeses like
American Cheese and even butter are tolerated. So do your shopping
appropriately.
Homes
for Israeli Charedi Soldiers. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5509244,00.html
Extortion
of Lieberman will not be forgotten. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5517924,00.html
Jay
Shapiro on unnecessary elections. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263947
Bennett
– Feiglin to run together. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263954
Latest
Public Opinion Poll (must be wrong because the Charedim got 16 just now). http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263950
Inyanay Diyoma
Young
Israeli Engineers bring clean drinking water to Uganda. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5514130,00.html
Israeli
Burial for Shoah Victim. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5512732,00.html
Jewish
cabbie stabbed in France. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263643
Irrational fear of Islam. https://dianebederman.com/yes-islamophobia-is-the-irrational-fear-of-islam/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork&fbclid=IwAR1gzKCNE492Y6biQhzbg_Uz1sT9WM9eatVVU4lpNBkl-x_bqwPwQHTBrmI
Syria
shot, we retaliated. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263763
IDF
destroys spy device in Lebanon. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263766
Man
with Swastika Tattoo saved by Yeshiva Students. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263699
Antisemitism
in Argentina. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263780
Swiss,
Iraqi and Japanese try to have US-Iranian meeting. https://www.debka.com/a-swiss-diplomat-iraqs-president-go-betweens-for-first-us-iranian-talks/
Miraculously
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s Library not completely destroyed. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263735
Tokyo
stabbing attack by loon. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263779
Elections
cost money but Lieberman doesn’t care. https://www.debka.com/netanyahu-48-hours-remain-to-form-a-government-and-thats-plenty/
Annexation
and corruption Ed-Op https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5515455,00.html
Suspected
Arson victims could get compensation. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263686
Another
victim of on-line vendors. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263847
CEO
of Microsoft Israel steps down. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3763076,00.html
Yesterday
Yacov Kanjiefski the grandson of the Gaon tried to negotiate with Lieberman to
save a possible government from two days ago: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263705
Netanyahu
considering giving Shaked a high post. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263850
Israel
and the death of Europe. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263741
The
public will not forgive those who bring down the government. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263698
Al-Widaa Juma, is the last Friday in the month of Ramadhan
before Eid-ul-Fitr, stabbing victim now in serious condition. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263967
Foreign
Minister of Israel Netanyahu to host Russian-US ME security conference. https://www.debka.com/netanyahu-is-implicitly-touted-by-trump-and-putin-in-his-fight-for-re-election/
Lyon
bomber pledged to ISIS. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263959
New
Israeli Elections. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263889
After
Mueller the debate: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263921
Islamic
Jihad Drones: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263928
World’s
smallest baby. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263929
Reform
Jews & Al Sharpton. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/23947
Jihad
can fire 1000 rockets a day. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263960
Jay
Shapiro on unnecessary elections. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263947
Extortion
of Lieberman will not be forgotten. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5517924,00.html
Bennett
– Feiglin to run together. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263954
Latest
Public Opinion Poll (must be wrong because the Charedim got 16 just now). http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263950
Have
a pleasant and wonderful Shabbos,
Rachamim
Pauli
