Everybody wants spirituality. To be a good person means to walk in G-d's ways. How does that translate to reality? The only guidebook to spirituality that has stood the test of time is the Hebrew Bible. The Bible says that the Jews will be a light onto the nations. But if you are not a born Jew, you have to convert, which is not so easy!! If you do convert, it is a lot of work to be a Jew (three times a day prayer, keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath).
This blog will show you how to be Jewish without the work!!
Monday, August 29, 2022
Time to build the Holy Temple by Daniel Pinner and GIL TROY on The Jewish and intellectual origins of this famously non-Jewish Jew and the wisdom you can find in all religions and jokes
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
The Three are Rabbi Yehuda Glick, famous temple mount activist, and former Israel Mk, and then Robert Weinger, the world's greatest shofar blower and seller of Shofars, and myself after we had gone to the 12 gates of the Temple Mount in 2020 to blow the shofar to ask G-d to heal the world from the Pandemic. It was a highlight to my experience in living in Israel and I put it on my blog each day to remember.
The articles that I include each day are those that I find interesting, so I feel you will find them interesting as well. I don't always agree with all the points of each article but found them interesting or important to share with you, my readers, and friends. It is cathartic for me to share my thoughts and frustrations with you about life in general and in Israel. As a Rabbi, I try to teach and share the Torah of the G-d of Israel as a modern Orthodox Rabbi. I never intend to offend anyone but sometimes people are offended and I apologize in advance for any mistakes. The most important psychological principle I have learned is that once someone's mind is made up, they don't want to be bothered with the facts, so, like Rabbi Akiva, I drip water (Torah is compared to water) on their made-up minds and hope that some of what I have share sinks in. Love Rabbi Yehuda Lave.
Time to build the Holy Temple by Daniel Pinner
The Prophet Haggai's words about the Beit Hamikdash speak to us even as they did to the Jews in Israel of his generation:
Daniel Pinner
Model of Temple Mount iStock
Of the 200 Mitzvot listed in the Book of Deuteronomy, 55 appear in Parashat Re'eh: 17 positive and 38 negative.
The Book of Deuteronomy actually contains far more than 200 Mitzvot, and Parashat Re'eh contains more than 55; but most are restatements of Mitzvot which have already been recorded in earlier Books, so they are not counted in Deuteronomy. So it is more accurate to say that of the 200 Mitzvot in the Book of Deuteronomy which had not previously been recorded, 55 appear in Parashat Re'eh.
Among these Mitzvot is the obligation to bring offerings solely "in the place which Hashem your G-d will choose to make His Name dwell therein" (Deuteronomy 12:11).
A time there was when anyone could build a private altar anywhere and bring sacrifices to G-d upon it: Noah built an altar for sacrifices (Genesis 8:20), as did Abraham (12:7, 12:8, 13:18), Isaac (26:25), and Jacob (33:20, 35:1, 35:7) in several places in Israel.
However, as soon as Moshe had constructed the Mishkan (the Tabernacle) in the Sinai Desert, burnt offerings were permitted solely on the communal Altar in the Mishkan.
Nevertheless, there was no restriction on where the Mishkan could be erected: as a portable structure, it could be erected anywhere in the world.
But as soon as we crossed the River Jordan into Israel, it became forbidden to remove the Mishkan from Israel. It could still be erected anywhere in Israel – but nowhere else.
And as soon as King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, it became forbidden to construct any Mishkan or Holy Temple anywhere else in the world (Rambam, Hilchot Beit he-Bechirah/Laws of the Holy Temple 1:3).
And so, at the time when Parashat Re'eh was happening, "the place which Hashem your G-d will choose to make His Name dwell therein" was the Mishkan in the desert.
The phrase הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחַר ה' אֱלֹקֵיכֶם בּוֹ לְשַׁכֵּן שְׁמוֹ שָׁם ("the place which Hashem your G-d will choose to make His Name dwell therein") appears six times in the entire Tanach – five times in Parashat Re'eh, and once in Parashat Ki Tavo:
"It shall be that the place which Hashem your G-d will choose to make His Name dwell therein – to there shall you bring everything that I command you: your burnt-offerings and your festival-offerings, your tithes and your donations and the choicest of your vow-offerings which you vow to Hashem" (Deuteronomy 12:11).
-"You shall eat the tithe of your grain, your wine, and your oil, and the firstborn of your cattle and your flocks, before Hashem in the place that He will choose to make His Name dwell therein" (14:23).
-"You shall slaughter the Pesach-sacrifice – the flock and the cattle – to Hashem your G-d, in the place that Hashem will choose to make His Name dwell therein" (16:2).
-"Only at the place that Hashem your G-d will choose to make His Name dwell therein shall you slaughter the Pesach-sacrifice towards evening, as the sun is setting" (16:6).
-"And you shall rejoice before Hashem your G-d – you and your son and your daughter, and your servant and your maid-servant, and the Levite who is in your gate – in the place that Hashem your G-d will choose to make His Name dwell therein" (16:11).
-"It will be, when you come to the Land which Hashem your G-d gives you as a heritage, and you will inherit it and dwell in it, then you will take from the first of every fruit of the ground that you will bring from your Land which Hashem your God gives you. You shall put it in a basket and you shall go to the place that Hashem your G-d will choose to make His Name dwell therein" (Deuteronomy 26:1-2).
I suggest that these six references to the place which Hashem will choose to make His Name dwell therein correspond to the six places which G-d chose throughout the generations:
-The Mishkan in the Sinai Desert;
-Gilgal;
-Shiloh;
-Nov;
-Giv'on;
-Jerusalem.
Ever since the yearly cycle of Torah readings was standardized towards the end of the Second Temple era, and the fixed calendar as calculated by Hillel II (Hillel ben Yehudah, Nasi or head of the Sanhedrin) was adopted in 4119 (359 C.E.), Parashat Re'eh has invariably been read either on the Shabbat of Rosh Chodesh Ellul (as this year) or on the Shabbat immediately preceding Rosh Chodesh Ellul.
Rosh Chodesh Ellul is invariably 2 days, 30th Av and 1st Ellul. The way our calendar is designed, Rosh Chodesh Ellul can only fall on Shabbat-Sunday, Sunday-Monday, Tuesday-Wednesday, or Thursday-Friday. Hence Shabbat Parashat Re'eh can only fall on the 25th, the 27th, the 29th, or the 30th of Av.
And this means that Shabbat Parashat Re'eh is often Shabbat Mevar'chin ha-Chodesh, the Shabbat on which we bless the coming month of Ellul.
This suggests that there is some connexion between Parashat Re'eh and the month of Ellul.
And so, in this context, I note the events at the very beginning of the second redemption, the redemption from Babylon and Persia-Media, when Zerubavel led the Jews back to Israel from Babylonian and Persian exile, and several years later Ezra and Nehemiah continued his mission.
"In the second year of King Daryavesh [Darius], on the first day of the sixth month [meaning Ellul], the word of Hashem came through Haggai the Prophet to Zerubavel son of Shealtiel, the Governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Yehotzadak the High Priest, saying:
"Thus says Hashem, Master of Legions, saying: This nation has said, The time has not yet come! But it is time for Hashem's Temple to be built" (Haggai 1:1-2).
The "second year of King Daryavesh" refers to King Daryavesh II. The first King Daryavesh was Daryavesh the Mede, who succeeded Belshazzar, king of Babylon, when he was assassinated (Daniel 5:29-6:1); he reigned for two years.
Daryavesh II was the son of King Achashverosh (Ahasuerus) of Persia (Daniel 9:1); according to the Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 13:5, Esther Rabbah 8:3 et al.) he was the son of Achashverosh and Esther.
He ascended the throne of Persia-Media in 3407 (353 B.C.E.), 16 years after Daryavesh I had died. Daryavesh II was the king who granted permission to the Jews to complete construction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, after his predecessor Koresh (Cyrus) had ordered a construction-freeze on the Temple Mount which had lasted for 18 years (Ezra 4:24).
Hence this event, with which the Book of Haggai opens, occurred on 1st of Ellul 3409 (351 B.C.E.), 2,373 years ago this Sunday.
The prophecy of Haggai is among the shorter of the Prophetic messages – just 38 verses long, 601 words in all. And his message is entirely about the obligation to rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
Then, as now, the Jewish nation was returning en masse to Israel. Then, as now, a large proportion of the nation preferred not to get involved with rebuilding the Holy Temple. Then, as now, a common refrain was: The nation isn't ready for the Holy Temple.
The generation of the time had one major advantage over us today: They had Prophets to lead them.
But the generation of today has two major advantages over the generation of then:
First, we are independent, whereas Israel of 2,373 years ago had, at best, local and limited autonomy under the rule of the Persian Empire. Rebuilding the Holy Temple needed permission from a ruler 1,250 km (770 miles) away. Today, all we need is our own decision.
And second, we have the benefit of all the precedents, the prophecies which had not yet been written in the second year of King Daryavesh II. Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi had not yet received their prophetic calls, the generation had no precedent of rebuilding a Holy Temple to rely on.
The Prophet Haggai's words speak to us even as they did to the Jews in Israel of his generation:
"Is this your time for you to dwell in your securely-roofed houses, while this Temple remains destroyed? … Consider your ways: You have sown a lot, yet brought in so little! You have eaten, without being satiated!... Consider your ways: Ascend the [Temple] Mount, bring wood and build the Temple. I will be pleased with it and I will be glorified – says Hashem" (Haggai1:4-8).
And the Prophet continues by promising G-d's bounty on the Land – rain, plentiful produce, generous harvest – if the generation but builds the Holy Temple.
And indeed history bore out this Divine promise. As soon as the Jews set their determination to rebuild the Holy Temple, King Daryavesh II gave his royal assent to rebuilding it.
We are now in the final few weeks of the year, on the final approach to Rosh Hashanah. It is a time when the Haftarot (the Prophetic readings which follow the Torah-reading on Shabbat morning) are germane to the time of year, not to the Torah-reading.
The Haftarah is usually a Reading from the Prophets which somehow echoes or complements the theme of the Torah-reading. But the final ten weeks of the year follow a different paradigm:
The Haftarot of the three Shabbatot of the Three Weeks, from the 17th of Tammuz to the 9th of Av, are called the תְּלָתָא דְּפֻרְעָנוּתָא , the Three of Castigation (Aramaic), chilling prophecies of destruction from Jeremiah and Isaiah.
And then, from the first Shabbat after the 9th of Av until the final Shabbat of the year are the שֶׁבַע דְּנֶחֱמָתָא, the Seven of Comforting (Aramaic), some of the most beautiful and inspiring and magnificent prophecies from Isaiah depicting the glorious and majestic future that awaits us.
This is the time of year, especially on the 1st of Ellul, to begin – at the very minimum – to increase our awareness of the tragic lack of the Holy Temple, and to increase our determination to rectify this desperate defect.
We pray, three times every day:
תְּקַע בְּשׁוֹפָר גָּדוֹל לְחֵרוּתֵינוּ
"Blast the Great Shofar for our freedom…".
On Sunday 1st of Ellul, we will indeed begin to blow the shofar every day in Synagogues throughout the world. This should be, all too literally, our national clarion call to begin clearing the Temple Mount in preparation for rebuilding the Holy Temple.
And G-d Himself has promised us, through His Prophet Haggai, that if we take the first few simple and painless steps, then He will be pleased with us and our actions and will send His blessings on us and our future endeavours.
Daniel Pinneris a veteran immigrant from England, a teacher by profession and a Torah scholar who has been active in causes promoting Eretz Israel and Torat Israel.
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
H. L. Mencken, JOURNALIST
I like the silent church before the service begins,
better than any preaching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ESSAYIST
The first time I sang in the church choir;
two hundred people changed their religion.
Fred Allen, COMEDIAN
Too many church services start at eleven sharp and end at twelve dull.
Vance Havner, EVANGELIST
The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, ACTIVIST
People don't come to church for preachments, of course,
but to daydream about God.
Kurt Vonnegut, AUTHOR
Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats;
then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.
Fred Allen, COMEDIAN
Baseball is like church.
Many attend, few understand.
Leo Durocher, COMEDIAN
Every day people are straying away from the church
and going back to God.
Lenny Bruce, COMEDIAN
We all know that a church is not a building.
Robert H. Schuller
Minister
Joining a new church and starting a new life
is never easy and often frightening.
Joseph B. Wirthlin, Religious Leader
Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves.
The Jewish and intellectual origins of this famously non-Jewish Jew
In Herzl's household—like so many other bourgeois Jewish homes—the success in looking normal on the streets came at a high Jewish cost, even at home.
editor's note: Excerpted from the new three-volume set, "Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings," the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People edited by Gil Troy, to be published this August marking the 125th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress. This is the second article in a series. The first in the series is available here.
Theodor Herzl was born on May 2, 1860, in Pest, Hungary, across the River Danube from Buda. The second child and only son of a successful businessman, Jakob, he was raised to fit in to the elegant, sophisticated society his family and a fraction of his people had fought so hard to enter. But it is too easy to caricature his upbringing as fully emancipated and assimilated.
His paternal grandfather, Simon Loeb Herzl, came from Semlin, today's Zemun, now incorporated into Belgrade. There, Simon befriended Rabbi Judah ben Solomon Chai Alkalai. This prominent Sephardic leader was an early Zionist, scarred by the crude anti-Semitism of the Damascus Blood Libel of 1840, inspired by the old-new Greek War of Independence in the 1820s—and energized by the spiritual and agricultural possibilities of returning the Jews to their natural habitat, their homeland in the Land of Israel. It is plausible that the grandfather conveyed some of those ideas, some of that excitement, to his grandson.
Still, the move from Semlin to Budapest, from poverty to wealth, from intense Jewish living in the ghetto to emancipated European ways in the city, placed the Herzl family at the intersection of many of his era's defining currents.
The 1800s were years of change—and of isms. Creative ideas erupted amid the disruptions of industrialization, urbanization and capitalism. Three defining ideologies were rationalism, liberalism and nationalism—with each one shaping the next. The Age of Reason, the Enlightenment—science itself—rose thanks to rationalism. Life was no longer organized around believing in God and serving your king, but following logic, facts, objective truth. The logic of reason flowed naturally to liberalism, an expansive political ideology rooted in recognizing every individual's inherent rights. Finally, as polities became less God-and-king-centered, nationalism filled in the God-sized hole in many people's hearts. Individuals bonded based on their common heritage, language, ethnicity, or regional pride—and needs.
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Ideas are not static. In an ideological age rippling with such dramatic changes, the different isms kept colliding and fusing, like atoms becoming molecular compounds. Some combinations proved more stable—and constructive—than others.
Liberalism combined with nationalism created Americanism, the democratic model wherein individual rights flourished in a collective context yielding the liberal-democratic nation-state. An offshoot of liberalism emphasizing equality more than rights fused with rationalism and created Marxism, although Karl Marx admitted his theories could only be enacted with irrational terror. Marxism with that violent streak, drained of liberalism, became communism, while a hyper-nationalism, rooted in blood-and-soil loyalty, and the kind of Marxist rationalism and totalitarianism also drained of any liberalism, created Nazism.
A similar impressionistic summary of the Jewish experience would track how the nineteenth century's ideological clashes shaped the major movements and institutions still defining Judaism, from the Reform movement to Zionism, from the modern synagogue to the State of Israel. Judaism and rationalism set off the explosion of scholarship—the Wissenschaft—while Judaism mixed with liberalism triggered the Reform and Conservative movements' theological inventiveness. In response, ultra-Orthodoxy emerged, hostile to change—essentially subtracting liberalism from Judaism. Modern Orthodoxy synthesized, accepting some liberalism in Judaism and eventually Jewish nationalism without too much rationalism. And, thanks to Herzl and others, the compound of Judaism and liberalism and nationalism yielded Zionism.
The actual historical process was much messier. It began with the great double-edged sword of European Emancipation. First in the West, then in the East, some Europeans welcomed Jews with equal rights and extraordinary opportunities, liberating many to move to the cities—and for a few to succeed on legendary scales. Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), the Herzl of the Haskala—Enlightenment—was a Jew who as a philosopher dazzled Berlin. But, unlike Herzl, Mendelssohn was so fluent in Judaism and Hebrew that in 1783 he started translating much of the Bible into High German, adding commentary sporadically too. Mendelssohn epitomized the Haskala ideal of being a full, functioning, literate Jew in the house and a full, functioning, popular man on the street. And, unlike Herzl, Mendelssohn was ugly, infamously so, a walking ghetto stereotype with his crooked back and hooked nose.
Mendelssohn was accepted. Jews, however, realized that Europe's embrace often came at a cost: Jews had to be willing to give up their Jewishness, to fit in so much that many lost their way. Mendelssohn had six children who survived into adulthood—only two remained Jewish. Most disturbing, the Jewish rush into modern European society triggered a backlash, an updated, racist Jew-hatred that became increasingly potent as nationalist demagogues blamed the era's problems on Europe's traditional scapegoat, the Jews.
Rather than being welcomed smoothly into European life, most Jews felt mugged by modernity. The complex realities never matched the euphoric hopes of the maskilim, the Enlightened Reformers, that their people would "awake" from their ghetto-imposed long "slumber," as the Russian-Jewish maskil Y. L. Gordon would write in Hebrew in 1866.
Developing Mendelssohn's vision as the pioneering Jewish modernizer, Gordon celebrated the essential bargain Jews like Theodor and his parents accepted. The deal was: "Be a man when you wander outside and a Jew when at home." In Herzl's household—like so many other bourgeois Jewish homes—the success in looking normal on the streets came at a high Jewish cost, even at home.
For Herzl and his family, Middle European Jews caught in the middle, every educational choice became a marker. Were you looking backward to your traditional past or forward to your enlightened future? Initially, Herzl's parents, Jakob and Jeannette née Diamant, tried doing both. When their son was eight days old, they initiated their son Theodor into the great identity juggle by giving him a Hebrew name—Binyamin Ze'ev.
Ultimately, then, Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl was far more rooted in Judaism—and the Jewish struggle of the nineteenth century, than most legends acknowledge.
Professor Gil Troy is the author of The Zionist Ideas and the editor of the three-volume set Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings, the inaugural publication of the Library of the Jewish People, to be published this August marking the 125th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress.
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