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!!
Saturday, July 16, 2022
The fast of the 17th of Tammuz is today, starting at 4:27 AM (Dawn) and The Tragic Story Of Herzl’s Family By Saul Jay Singer and The Farm at Beit Hogla Celebrates its 21st Anniversary on July 28th!
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.
Seventeenth of Tammuz starts today
The Seventeenth of Tammuz (Hebrew: שבעה עשר בתמוזShivah Asar b'Tammuz) is a Jewish fast day commemorating the breach of the walls of Jerusalem before the destruction of the Second Temple. It falls on the 17th day of the 4th Hebrew month of Tammuz and marks the beginning of the three-week mourning period leading up to Tisha B'Av. Because this was yesterday (Shabbat), the fast is pushed off until today (the 18th of Tammuz)
The day also traditionally commemorates the destruction of the two tablets of the Ten Commandments and other historical calamities that befell the Jewish people on the same date.
The fast of Tammuz, according to Rabbi Akiva's interpretation, is the fast mentioned in the Book of Zechariah as "the fast of the fourth [month]" (Zechariah 8:19). This refers to Tammuz, which is the fourth month of the Hebrew calendar.
According to the Mishnah, five calamities befell the Jewish people on this day:
Moses broke the two tablets of stone on Mount Sinai;
The Babylonian Talmud places the second and fifth tragedies in the First Temple period.
The Book of Jeremiah (39.2, 52.6–7) states that the walls of Jerusalem during the First Temple were breached on the 9th of Tammuz. Accordingly, the Babylonian Talmud dates the third tragedy (breach of Jerusalem's walls) to the Second Temple period. However, the Jerusalem Talmud (Taanit IV, 5) states that in both eras the walls were breached on 17th Tammuz, and that the text in Jeremiah 39 is explained by stating that the Biblical record was "distorted", apparently due to the troubled times.
The Seventeenth of Tammuz occurs forty days after the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. Moses ascended Mount Sinai on Shavuot and remained there for forty days. The Children of Israel made the Golden Calf on the afternoon of the sixteenth of Tammuz when it seemed that Moses was not coming down when promised. Moses descended the next day (forty days by his count), saw that the Israelites were violating many of the laws he had received from God, and smashed the tablets.
Customs
As a minor fast day, fasting lasts from dawn to shortly after dusk. It is customary among Ashkenazi Jews to refrain from listening to music, public entertainment, and haircuts on fast days, and on this occasion, because it is also part of The Three Weeks (see below, Bein haMetzarim); other deprivations applicable to the major fasts (i.e. Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av) do not apply.
If the 17th of Tammuz falls on a Shabbat, the fast is instead observed the next day, the 18th of Tammuz (on Sunday). This last happened in 2019 (21 July 2019 which was 18 Tammuz 5779),[12] and happens again in 2022 (17 July 2022 which is 18 Tammuz 5782).
A Torah reading, a special prayer in the Amidah (Aneinu), and in many, but not all, Ashkenazic communities Avinu Malkenu are added at the morning Shacharit and afternoon Mincha services. Ashkenazi congregations also read a haftarah (from the Book of Isaiah) at Mincha. Congregations also recite during Shacharit a series of Selichot (special penitential prayers) reflecting the themes of the day.
Cycle of fasts
The 17th of Tammuz is the second of the four fasts commemorating the destruction of the Temple and the Jewish exile in Babylon. It is preceded by the fast of the Tenth of Tevet and arrives three weeks prior to the full-day fast of the Ninth of Av. The cycle is also associated historically with the Fast of Gedalia, which is observed on the third day of Tishrei.
The three weeks beginning with the 17th of Tammuz and ending with the Ninth of Av are known as Bein haMetzarim ("between the straits", i.e. between the days of distress), or The Three Weeks. Some customs of mourning, which commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem, are observed from the start of the Three Weeks.
The oldest extant reference to these days as Bein haMetzarim – which is also the first source for a special status of The Three Weeks – is found in Eikhah Rabbati 1.29 (Lamentations Rabbah, fourth century CE?). This midrash glosses Lamentations 1:3, "All [Zion's] pursuers overtook her between the straits."
The three weeks of mourning between the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av is cited as a rabbinically instituted period of fasting for the "especially pious". Such fasting is observed from morning to evening, common with other rabbi-decreed fasts.
The Farm at Beit Hogla Celebrates its 21st Anniversary!
יום נישואין שמח
!בית חגלה
Dear Shofar So Great Partners, Friends, and Family,
This year 2022, 5782 on the Biblical Calendar, has special significance for Shofar So Great and my home at Beit Hogla. This is the seventh year in the shmita cycle where the land lays fallow, untouched for the entire year.
In Leviticus 25, Hashem made an agreement with the Children of Israel, and our right as Jews over Eretz Yisrael is dependent on our keeping the covenant of shmita. We renew our contract with God when we keep it. This contract applies only to Jews and Jewish farmland in Israel.
Interestingly, this is also a shmita for Shofar So Great which was birthed in a shmita year fourteen years ago, February 2008. Seven years ago I arrived at Beit Hogla, a humble, spartan agricultural outpost in the Jordan River Valley to establish residency and begin my aliyah journey to obtain Israeli citizenship.
It is here that twenty-one years ago, Erna Covos began expanding her life's work, transforming a barren piece of desolate land into today's blooming desert farm oasis of date palms, olive, and pomegranate orchards that followed her forced evacuation from Jericho amidst Arab violence perpetrated after the Oslo Accords.
To access the previous newsletter and full commentary regarding the implications of the shmita to observant Jewish farmers and the direct impact on the Farm at Beit Hogla. Here you will find a brief history of Erna's role as Founder and Matriarch.
There seems to be a very special and unique convergence of the number seven playing out this year at Beit Hogla. It is Judaism's perfect number. Seven represents completeness, wholesomeness, and perfection. The holy Shabbat is the seventh day that joins the Creator and His Creation, God and HIS people. And, the Jubilee (Yovel) is the culmination of seven cycles of seven years.
Seven years in the Land coinciding with shmita, fourteen years since Shofar So Great was launched, and now the trifecta 3 X 7, the twenty-first anniversary since the establishment of modern-day Beit Hogla. A work that is a flourishing testimony to God's redemptive plan for the restoration of Israel for the Jews.
To celebrate the miracles Hashem has done in keeping HIS promises to HIS people for this Land, the flyer below announces in Hebrew the event on July 28th, the evening of the new Month of Av on the Hebrew Calendar, "we invite you to attend the 21st Anniversary Celebration of The Farm at Beit Hogla. Feel free to rejoice with us and other public figures including former IDF General and MK, Haim Uzi Dayan, Rabbi Dov Lior Shalit, and conversation by Dr. Hagi Ben Artzi, with music accompaniment by flutist Yuval Aharoni at The Visitor Center at Beit Hogla."
One highlight of the event is the Premiere of the film, "A Fire is Burning in Jericho," which connects this place to its Biblical past and promotes Beit Hogla as a must-visit historical site for all Israelis and tours from the nations. Below is a sneak peek of the film.
Founder and visionary, Erna Covos, takes you on a brief tour of the land she has restored over the last 21 years with the help of Hashem. Enjoy this historical look back in time and invitation to visit in the future.
The Farm at Beit Hogla sits on the eastern flank of Israel's border with Jordan, where the Dead Sea meets the Jordan River in the Biblical Gilgal. Founder and Pioneer, Erna Covos with her Husband, Yosef, oversee the newly established Wedding Garden whose signature view encompasses Mt. Nevo where Moses died.
Also visible are the Caves of Elijah, and the place Elijah ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot which the film premiere depicts! The Wedding Garden concept grew out of the need to sustain the Farm for the coming year where there will be no income from the fruit of the land while it laid fallow.
Usually, the shmita lasts one full year, twelve months. But, this year is a leap year containing 13 months, adding another thirty days to the financial burden observant farmers like Erna already have. The real financial impact will hit in the coming year as there are no products produced from this year's crop to be sold.
God asks us to partner with Him. HE asks us to "Observe and Perform." Will you consider being part of this work at Beit Hogla and sharing in the blessing God promises those who bless Israel? The Sages tell us that one who performs a commandment and perseveres to its completion, the fulfillment of the commandment will be credited to the one who finishes the task. Are you able to provide a generous contribution directed to supporting the Farm at Beit Hogla this coming year? Thank you in advance for your generous gift, it is a "Mitzvah!"
"He shall cause them that come of Ya'akov to take root; Yisrael shall blossom and bud, and fill with fruit the face of the world." – Isaiah 27:6
May the G~d of Israel Bless you mightily!
Robert Weinger - Rosh Tekiah robert@ShofarSoGreat.com www.ShofarSoGreat.com www.JewishJericho.co.il
Theodore Herzl's heartbreaking family history is marked by psychopathy, severe depression, and suicide, and his wife and all three of his children suffered from varying degrees of mental illness.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy in the legacy of this great Jewish luminary and visionary is that his lineage has come to an ignominious end and, sadly and ironically, the "Father of modern Zionism" has no remaining progeny.
During his life, the Herzl family enjoyed a middle-class lifestyle, but he spent every penny on his pursuit of the Zionist cause and his death in 1904 left his family impoverished. The Zionist movement raised over $3 million for their support, but its investment in Austro-Hungarian bonds became worthless after World War I and, with limited Zionist support, the family's financial situation became dire.
Announcement of Julie Herzl's death in the November 24, 1907, Yidishes Tageblat. Ironically, although she was never a great supporter of her husband's Zionist work – in fact, she was hostile to it – her death was characterized as a great loss to the Zionist movement.
Several times Herzl prevented his wife, Julie (nee Nachauer), from slitting her wrists and from inducing the miscarriage of their children and, after several hospitalizations for opium addiction and mental illness, Julie died three years after her husband and was cremated. Their daughter, Pauline, who also suffered from mental illness and drug abuse as well as heart disease, died at age 40 of a heroin overdose, and their son, Hans, killed himself on the very day of his sister's funeral. Herzl's youngest daughter, Margarethe ("Trude"), who also suffered from depressive mental illness and spent her life in and out of various sanitoria, was murdered at Theresienstadt and her body was burned by the Nazis.
The three Herzl children were raised in a highly assimilated and dysfunctional Jewish household where their mostly absentee father and mentally disturbed mother loathed each other. They were isolated from other children, raised by governesses and strangers, and educated by private tutors. The great "visionary of the Jewish State" did not bother to provide his children with even the rudiments of Jewish education or a Jewish identity; in fact, he taught them that assimilation, liberalism, and an enlightened education would finally bring an end to antisemitism and Jewish isolation. He poured his life and his fortune into the dream of a Jewish state with his family always taking a backseat to his all-encompassing mission.
Trude (1893-1943), Herzl's youngest child, had serious mental issues and fought against depression her entire life. After her release from a sanitorium, she married Richard Neumann (1917), a divorced and much older businessman but, two months after the birth and circumcision of their only child Stephan Theodor – his middle name was after his grandfather – Richard institutionalized her.
After receiving a temporary discharge in 1919, Trude demanded a separation agreement but, with Richard having sustained grave financial losses, he was unable to maintain two households and struggled to pay her high sanitorium fees. The couple were forced to resume living together and after Trude, who became even more delusional, was declared legally incompetent, the court appointed a guardian over her and she was in and out of sanitoria for the rest of her life.
Although they were never Zionists and never gave Stephan even the semblance of a Zionist education, Richard turned to the Zionist Organization for financial support for Stephan, but it responded that it would only do so if Richard agreed to have him Jewishly educated in Eretz Yisrael. Richard agreed to send Stephan to Haifa, but only after first sending him to London. Richard even made inquiries regarding employment prospects in Haifa, but Stephan remained in England.
It was only while attending a Jewish boarding school in London that Stephan learned about his grandfather's great legacy, which led to his becoming the only Zionist descended from Herzl. He anglicized his name to Stephen Norman and, after serving in India and Ceylon during World War II as a captain in the British Royal Artillery, he visited Eretz Yisrael to witness firsthand the flowering of his grandfather's dream. As he wrote in his diary:
I had long determined to see this Palestine that had grown from the prayers and longing of centuries of dispersed Jews; that had been shown the way to practical realism by Herzl . . . I looked around, and there they were, the children. They were playing, like children play in an English street. But here they romped in a Jewish street . . . These children bore the mark of freedom . . .
In the midday sun we stood at the foot of the Wailing Wall, towering high above our heads in space and in time. Untold numbers of Jews had come here throughout the centuries, had wept, and had received consolation. Into its thousands of crevices the prayers of our people had been inserted. I had never been a religious Jew, but the silent, regal dignity of the Wall stirred me deeply . . .
I still wanted to see most of all a room that means a great deal to Jews the world over, to Palestine's Jews even more, and that had for me a great personal interest: The room from his house in Vienna where Theodor Herzl worked for Zionism . . . It is difficult for me to describe my feeling as I entered that room and saw, for the first time, all those belongings of which I had heard so much . . .
Stephan wrote that "to go away (from Eretz Yisrael) is to die a little" but his possible aliyah plans were stymied by the British who, knowing very well who he was, denied him an immigration permit. He returned to England, took a position with the British Commonwealth of Nations Institute, and was posted in Washington.
In 1938, Stephan urged his parents to leave Europe for Eretz Yisrael, but it was too late. After the Anschluss, when Hitler occupied Austria, the Nazis ordered that all Jewish hospital patients, which included Trude, be transferred to Jewish hospitals and, soon after, to Theresienstadt (1942), where she was found among a pile of corpses burned in the crematoria. When Stephan received the news in 1946 that his parents had been murdered by the Nazis, he responded by leaping off the Massachusetts Bridge in Washington D.C. His funeral was held at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington and he was buried in the synagogue cemetery.
In this postcard to Pauline, then age eight, during his only trip to Eretz Yisrael in 1898, Herzl writes "To my good Pauline, tender kisses are sent to you from your faithful Papa in Jerusalem." (The original is at the National Library of Israel)
Herzl named Pauline (1890-1930), his first child, for his older sister who had died young from typhus. She had married Joseph Hift to escape her unstable mother, but the marriage lasted only a year and she spent the rest of her life bouncing from one promiscuous relationship to another and from one sanitorium to another. She became addicted to morphine and, after a long period of homelessness, she died of an overdose, which may well have been a suicide.
Hans Herzl (1891-1930) was only 13 years old when his father died, leaving him with the burden of his late father's unrealistic expectation that Hans would complete his work and with a disturbed mother unable to care for him. After his mother's funeral, Hans, then 16, forgot the urn containing his mother's ashes on the train, spent a few months in a sanatorium to recover from his mother's loss, and it was essentially all downhill from there.
Like all of Herzl's children, Hans had only superficially been introduced to Judaism and, at the time of his father's death, he had almost no Jewish social, cultural, or religious background. Nonetheless, the leadership of the Zionist movement expected him, as Herzl's only son and heir apparent, to assume the mantle of Zionist leadership, but he proved not up to the task. Even more upsetting to Zionist authorities, he often spoke in anti-Zionist terms. For example, in a 1929 letter, he wrote:
My father was a great man, whom I loved . . . But I've come to see that he made a great historical error in his attempt to rebuild the Jewish State . . . My father did not realize the true mission of the Jewish people, which has proven that the living and fertilizing spirit does not need territorial boundaries, and that a people can live and exist even when fortifications and borders have disappeared. I would ask them not to attempt to add to the decadent civilizations but to remember their true identity and work for the cultural reconstruction of their homeland – and this homeland is the entire world.
After Herzl's death, the trustees appointed by the Zionist Organization to care for the family decided to send Hans to be educated in England, and he lived there under the dedicated care and supervision of his guardian, Zionist leader Joseph Cowen, a politician and journalist who was a great friend to Anglo-Jewry and an early Herzl supporter. Herzl had been adamant about not circumcising his only son, so Hans underwent the rite at age 15. He studied at Cambridge during World War I, but he proved uninterested in formal education and, after dropping out, he sought to enlist with the regular British army, but he was only permitted to serve in the home guard.
Hans became a homeless "wandering Jew" with no family support, no financial security, and no religion within which to find comfort. He claimed that he sought to travel to Eretz Yisrael but was denied admission there by the British authorities. Unlike his sister Trude, who effectively traded on her name and her Zionist connections to save her son's life, Hans could probably have gained entry had he identified himself to the British Mandatory Government as Herzl's son – which he refused to do. He ultimately settled in London, where he earned a meager living translating his father's writings, but the work was intermittent and he struggled financially all his life.
To the disgust of Zionist leadership and the Jewish world, Hans was baptized as a Baptist in 1924. According to Herzl's biographer Jacob deHaas, Hans turned to Christianity because he was disappointed in the lack of sincere religiosity amongst Zionist leaders. Some authorities credibly suggest that at least part of his motivation for taking such an extreme step was to effectively terminate his identity as "Herzl's son" and to become his own man.
When Hans became quickly disillusioned with the Baptist faith, he was rebaptized as a Catholic (1925) which, as might be expected, the Church viewed with great delight: the son of the greatest Jewish leader of the day was going to set an example and help lead the way to the mass conversion of Jews. However, he soon became disenchanted with Catholicism as well and left the Church after only a few months. In an April 20, 1926, statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency shortly thereafter, he discounted all faiths:
I belong to no church and discount all creeds. I cannot be a member of a synagogue. It denies the messiahship of Jesus which to me is an indisputable historical fact. I cannot adhere to any Christian church since I do not hold that Jesus was [G-d]. My faith I would therefore call nationalism.
However, in the depths of spiritual and emotional depression, he began to study Bible in his last days and, in a personal letter to Joseph Leftwich, editor of the London Jewish Daily Bulletin, he affirmed that he considered himself "a member of the House of Israel." He found his way to the Liberal Synagogue in London and asked Claude Montefiore, the founder and president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (and a noted anti-Zionist leader), to accept him as a member of the Union. Toward the end of his life, he wrote:
If a ritual can really calm our spirits and give us the illusion of being in the company of our beloved dead once more I can't think of anything better than a visit to the Temple; there I can pray for my parents, ask their forgiveness and repent my apostasy before G-d. I am destitute and sick, unhappy and bitter. I have no home. Nobody pays any attention to the words of a convert. I cannot suddenly turn my back on a community which offered me its friendship . . . I have burned all my bridges, my life is ruined… Nobody would regret it if I were to put a bullet through my head . . .
A Jew remains a Jew, no matter how eagerly he may submit himself to the disciplines of his new religion, how humbly he may place the redeeming cross upon his shoulders for the sake of his former coreligionists, to save them from eternal damnation: a Jew remains a Jew . . . I can't go on living. I have lost all trust in [G-d]. All my life I've tried to strive for the truth, and must admit today at the end of the road that there is nothing but disappointment. Tonight I have said Kaddish for my parents – and for myself, the last descendent of the family. There is nobody who will say Kaddish for me, who went out to find peace – and who may find peace soon . . .
At age 39, Hans, lacking family, education, and a career, essentially lived as a dependent of Zionist caretakers. Already well aware of his own failures, unable to find meaning in his life, and living in his father's broad shadow, Pauline's death was apparently the last straw: blaming himself for somehow being responsible for her demise, he shot himself in the head on September 15, 1930. He left a suicide note with a final request that he be buried together with Pauline and to eventually join their beloved father, who had been buried in his native Vienna.
Hans was buried with his sister in Bordeaux, France which, according to a September 22, 1930, JTS Bulletin, marked the first time that a convert was knowingly buried in a Jewish cemetery. Deeply embarrassed by Hans, the Zionist establishment quietly buried his casket adjacent to Pauline's; privately erected his tombstone; and thereafter obscured his life, which was quickly forgotten.
Herzl had specified in his will that his remains and those of his close relatives should be buried in the Jewish state that he fervently believed would exist one day and, before his death, Hans had advised deHaas that he would consent to the removal of his father's remains to Eretz Yisrael. In 1949, shortly after Israel's birth, Herzl's body was disinterred, brought to Jerusalem with great fanfare, and buried in the national cemetery on the mountain named for him.
Jewish Agency officials went to Bordeaux in 1949, but they decided to leave the remains of Pauline and Hans there. They returned in 1956 to erect a sign marking official Agency recognition of the burial site but, again, the remains were not unearthed and moved to Israel. When the issue received renewed attention in 2004 on the centenary of Herzl's death, many rabbinical leaders vociferously opposed the reburials on two important halachic grounds: first, because Hans had converted and, second, because he had committed suicide. However, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, recognizing that Hans was a Jew who had recanted his conversion and who had suffered from severe mental illness – he had even been treated by both Freud (Herzl's neighbor in Vienna), who diagnosed him as having a profound Oedipal Complex, and by Carl Jung – found a heter (Jewish legal leniency) to permit the reburial in Israel.
However, in a macabre and ironic development, much as Hans had left his mother's ashes behind on a train, members of the Chevra Kadisha (religious burial society) in Bordeaux sent to disinter his remains discovered that his coffin was missing. After receiving halachic permission to sieve the earth in the grave, they found two handles and skeletal remains, which were declared to be those of Hans.
Marker at Stephan Neumann's burial site.
A ceremony eulogizing Pauline and Hans attended by many dignitaries was held at the Bordeaux Jewish cemetery. On September 20, 2006, Herzl's children were reunited with their father at a ceremony at the Mount Herzl Cemetery attended by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, other senior officials, and several of Herzl's cousins and their descendants. Finally, Stephan's remains were exhumed and reburied on Mount Herzl in December 2007, and the Norman Memorial Garden nearby was named for him.
Alas, in the final analysis, Herzl proved far better at raising Jewish consciousness than raising Jewish children, and it was easier for him to will into existence a homeland for the Jish people than to will the continuity of his own family.______________
See you tomorrow bli neder, have a meaningful fast day
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