Being kosher seemed like a good way to be a true Jew, so I called the local Chabad House, and a nice man came and did the job. He finished, turned to go, and I asked him what I was allowed to eat. He sketched out the basic symbols and wrote “cholev yisroel” and “pas yisroel” on the bottom. I had no clue what they meant, but na’asai v’nishma: knowing nothing, I was machmir to only buy products listing those words.

Then Pesach approached. I called the same friendly man who told me to only buy things that said “non-gebroks.” End of conversation.

Thus began my Pesach minhag.

Although less naive about minhagim, my husband’s approach is always, when in doubt, you can’t go wrong by following the strictest guidelines.

Living in Monsey, it’s no problem being cholev yisroel. But gebroks gets us down year after year after year.

Pesach is the most resonant Yom Tov for most of us. I grew up gleefully eating on Yom Kippur, oblivious to Shabbos, but with a strangely nostalgic attitude about Pesach. We always had some facsimile of a seder. In speedy English and occasional bouts of broken Yiddish, my father attempted to imitate his father’s seder, while the kids snuck more and more Manishewitz. I didn’t really “chup” the point of this strange ritual. What lasted and lasted in my memory was the matzoh meal pancakes.

What an utter disappointment to make teshuva and resurrect Passover, and then find that the totem of my memory was taboo on the Yom Tov itself!

The concept of minhagim is an uncomfortable one for a BT. We all have them, but they were buried in the generation(s) of assimilation. Who knew what would be lost back when my great-grandfathers davened next to the FFBs’ great-grandfathers in the shtetl shul? Who knew that I would be only one out of dozens of my ancestors’ progeny who would regret history, and devote her life to piecing back together the broken line?

What of our history is “kosher”? Yes, I grew up eating gebroks, but I also grew up eating BLTs and dating non-Jews, practices that I am most definitely not going to pass down to my children.

How can BTs sort out our legitimate fossils? Knowing that my grandparents emigrated from there, is it okay to research Lithuanian Jewry and then adopt the customs of those frum Jews? How much has survived in my DNA? Is it because I’m a “yekkie” that I’m on time, or because I grew up inculcated with the Protestant Work Ethic?

Does aping the actions of mentors or emulating the habits of sages create a meaningful tradition? What about when there are several legitimate practices? Why do I have to tough out the “minor” fast days–my FFB female friends eat or only fast half the day, just like their mothers did. Must we also shun garlic on Pesach because two centuries ago it was transported alongside grain, and so it became some families’ practice not to use it? At what age should I put away the bobby socks and hold my pre-schooler up to the tznius standards of the big girls? How do we answer with conviction when our kids ask which way our family holds?

It’s kind of scary: at what point does twisting open the soda bottles on Shabbos morph from a habit to a tradition to an immovably holy practice that will be passed down from generation to generation?

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“Well, no, we’re not lost. We’re actually here,” I slowly answered. Long pause.

“Here? Here where?” she whispered. I just stared ahead. “You’re taking me on a date to a cemetery?

“I…er…thought you would want to meet some of my family. Don’t worry,” I added with a grin, “it’s not a commitment.” I saw the joke was going flat.

I tried to explain to her how I was interested in knowing about my roots, and how I had finally discovered where my great grandfather was buried. “And since we’re in the neighborhood anyway (I really hope there’s a mini-golf course around here somewhere), I thought I could just pop in and get more information.” My words trailed off, as I saw the adventure of it was lost on her.

“Well,” she finally said,” At least you could’ve warned me.”

All of my grandparents were born in America, and none of my immigrant great grandparents were religious at all. In fact, I don’t even know where religious observance ended on any sides of my family. When I was younger, it certainly never occurred to me to ask questions, and when I became older, it was too late. Even though my grandmother lived into her 90s, she didn’t recall much, and remarked about her own parents, “They just never spoke about their families.” After I became frum, I decided to learn more about my elusive background, especially about my father’s side. But it wasn’t easy. Information came slowly, and crossing the ocean to know what happened in the old country was almost impossible.

As the years went by, I picked up names like Shloims, and Beinish and Feivel, and I learned we came from a chassidish town in Galicia. I learned to utilize online sources like stevemorse.org and jewishgen.org, and I discovered you could even use ancestry.com completely for free if your local library has its own subscription. For a few bucks I was able to obtain my great grandfather’s naturalization records from a certain county court, which told me how he came to America (finally). On the ships manifests, you can see who they left behind, which sometimes adds more names. But included in this is much time and frustration.

To me personally, it makes a difference. I know I’m a link in some unbroken chain, but it means something to me to actually be able to trace back to anyone who was shomer Torah u’mitzvos like myself. Not everyone feels this way, and I myself go through stages when I just drop the idea of finding ancestors, and think, I’ll meet them all after I’m 120 anyway.” And I have my own children with whom the chain will continue, and I hear the side to say that the chain will continue with them, and don’t worry about the past. But deep down, I would like to know. Are there baalei tschuva who have just more than simple curiosity of knowing also? It’s a feeling that so many can’t really relate to. Little by little I still hope to chip away at it, and one day pass down to my own sons information about their illustrious background.

“Tell me it’s not true,” begged the shadchan over the phone the next day. “Please.”

“I figured she was bored with hotels,” I said. “The scenery was nice.”

She sighed. “Let me suggest something. The next time you wish to take a girl somewhere…uh…different, try maybe an amusement park, or a boat ride. Much less morbid, you see?” Click. I never heard from her again.

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Once they discover their roots, people often turn to Rabbi Michael Schudrich, an American who has been the Chief Rabbi of Poland since 2004. Rabbi Schudrich has been the guide for multitudes of Jews to return to Torah Judaism. They turn to him for guidance and direction, and he tries to help them to reclaim their proud heritage that had been hidden for so many years.
Several years ago, Zbiszek, a 52 year-old man from Bialystock, came to Rabbi Schudrich’s office in Warsaw. Zbiszek told him that his mother had passed away four months earlier. Following the funeral, Zbiszek was approached by several neighbors who told him astonishing news – this woman who had raised him, whom he knew to be his mother, was not his actual biological mother.

They told Zbiszek that he had been born Jewish. In 1942, as Jews throughout Poland were being exterminated, Zbiszek’s Jewish parents gave him to the woman for adoption in case they were killed. His biological parents did not survive the Holocaust, and so the woman raised Zbiszek as her own son.

She had risked her life to save him during the war, and so she never wanted him to know the truth. She swore her neighbors to secrecy, and they dutifully remained silent for five decades. Now that she had passed away, they decided it was time to reveal the secret.

Zbiszek trembled when he first heard the news and didn’t know what to do. He spent a long time in deep introspection. Should he continue living his comfortable life as a Christian, as he had been raised, or should he embrace his newfound religion, of which he knew nothing?

Zbiszek decided he wanted to live proudly as a Jew, but didn’t know how. So here he was in Rabbi Schudrich’s office, looking for answers. Zbiszek told the rabbi that he felt most guilty that he never had a “Jewish baptism.”
Rabbi Schudrich calmed his fears and taught him the basics of Judaism. Zbiszek spent the next few years studying together with Rabbi Schudrich and attending classes in the community. Today he goes by Zecharya Asher, and is an active member of the Polish Jewish community.

Another unique story is that of Pawel Bramson. He was raised in an observant Catholic family. As a teenager, he joined a skinhead gang. He was virulently anti-Jewish, anti-black and anti-Gypsy.

Pawel married his Catholic high school sweetheart. They had two children, and at the age of twenty, Pawel’s wife found out that she was really Jewish! The news shook Pawel. However over time he was able to reconcile his previous hatred of Jews with the knowledge of his wife’s religion.

Several years later, Pawel’s wife decided to bring some Jewish traditions into their home. She began making Shabbat meals and Pawel consented to her desires. When he told his parents about the meals, they reacted with anger. They tried to pressure Pawel to make his wife sweep her Judaism back under the rug.

Pawel continued to support his wife, despite his parents objections. One day, his parents revealed the source of their anger – they were both Jews themselves! Pawel’s parents had hid their Judaism out of fear of anti-Semitism in Poland. The religious life that Pawel’s wife was beginning to explore represented everything they had tried to run away from.

The news stunned Pawel, and it took him a long time to accept it. The same Jews that he had hated as a teenager were now his own people. But Pawel slowly accepted the discovery, and he and his wife began bringing more traditions into their home. They are now fully observant.

Pawel has three brothers, one who is his twin. The twin still believed in many of the anti-Semitic myths that Pawel had rejected. And yet he has been influenced by Pawel’s religious growth in some small ways.

One Friday night, Pawel’s twin brother tried calling him on his cell phone but could not reach him. The twin went to the synagogue to try to find him, but Pawel was not there. That Friday night the synagogue had only nine men in attendance, just one short of a minyan. So when Pawel’s brother walked in, Rabbi Schudrich asked him if he could stay in the synagogue to be the tenth man. He said yes.

Such is the rebirth of Jews in Poland. Even Jews far removed from Judaism, with seemingly no connection, still have a tiny spark of Judaism deep inside them. With the right impetus, that spark can ignite into the beautiful fire of a proud Jewish soul.

————————————————————–
Michael Gros is the former Chief Operating Officer of the outreach organization The Atlanta Scholars Kollel. He writes from Ramat Beit Shemesh, Israel. The Teshuva Journey column chronicles uplifting teshuva journeys and inspiring kiruv tales. Send comments to michaelgros@gmail.com
Published in The Jewish Press in December, 2009

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I am not the only one who has witnessed this and who feels this way. I am told that this is how it is and I should just overlook it.

I want to continue to go to shul but he is rude and his shuirs are dry, but the members there are very friendly and warm.

This is the only orthodox Rabbi in the area.

I know what I should do and confront him of this, but it is nice to hear from an outside source. I am sure you have heard or seen this before.

Thanks in Advance,
Jeff

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One of the challenges that parents face is the schooling of our children. Among the many issues in schooling, three stand out:

1) Lots of material to master in a full dual curriculum day.

2) Many schools have insufficient resources.

3) A lack of truly great teachers.

Lack of Great Teachers is a Recognized Problem

Well it seems that a lack of great teachers is a problem shared across all American schools as discussed in a worth-reading article in the NY Times on Sunday titled Building a Better Teacher:

Eric Hanushek, a Stanford economist, found that while the top 5 percent of teachers were able to impart a year and a half’s worth of learning to students in one school year, as judged by standardized tests, the weakest 5 percent advanced their students only half a year of material each year.

You Can Build a Better Teacher

Creating incentives for good teachers and firing bad teachers is being tried across the country but it is not producing better learning in students. Doug Lemov a teacher and education consultant thinks the smarter path to boosting student performance is to improve the quality of the teachers who are already teaching.

Lemov decided to seek out the best teachers he could find — as defined partly by their students’ test scores — and learn from them. This five-year project produced a 357-page treatise known among its hundreds of underground fans as Lemov’s Taxonomy. (The official title, attached to a book version being released in April, is “Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College.”)

Central to Lemov’s argument is a belief that students can’t learn unless the teacher succeeds in capturing their attention and getting them to follow instructions. Educators refer to this art, sometimes derisively, as “classroom management.”

All Lemov’s techniques depend on his close reading of the students’ point of view, which he is constantly imagining. In Boston, he declared himself on a personal quest to eliminate the saying of “shh” in classrooms, citing what he called “the fundamental ambiguity of ‘shh.’ Are you asking the kids not to talk, or are you asking kids to talk more quietly?” A teacher’s control, he said repeatedly, should be “an exercise in purpose, not in power.” So there is Warm/Strict, technique No. 45, in which a correction comes with a smile and an explanation for its cause — “Sweetheart, we don’t do that in this classroom because it keeps us from making the most of our learning time.”

After discussing Lemov and his techniques, the article goes further and asks: Is good classroom management enough to ensure good instruction? It discusses teachers who are focused on reaching every student such a Katie Bellucci, who had been teaching for only two months, yet her fifth-grade math class was both completely focused on her and completely quiet.

Lately Bellucci and her mentor teacher, Eli Kramer, a dean of curriculum and instruction at Troy who also splits fifth-grade math responsibilities with Bellucci, have advanced to a technique called No Opt Out. The concept is deceptively simple: A teacher should never allow her students to avoid answering a question, however tough. “If I’m asking my students a question, and I call on somebody, and they get it wrong, I need to work on how to address that,” Bellucci explained in February. “It’s easy to be like, ‘No,’ and move on to the next person. But the hard part is to be like: ‘O.K., well, that’s your thought. Does anybody disagree? . . . I have to work on going from the student who gets it wrong to students who get it right, then back to the student who gets it wrong and ask a follow-up question to make sure they understand why they got it wrong and understood why the right answer is right.”

Please read the whole article here.

What Can We Do?

What can we do to help our teachers become better? I think for starters we can start the conversation by sending the NY Times article to the principals and the teachers we know. When Lemov’s book comes out in April, buy a copy, read it and lend it to as many teachers as you can. Our schools want to be the best they can be and my experience has been they are receptive to constructive suggestions.

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Right away, I marked the date on my calendar and began counting down. What a fun it would be to see Adele. Thirty years my senior, Adele was a member of my family’s rapidly dying older generation and she was a great talker, funny and full of life and chock full of stories from the old days, precious recollections, I longed—living apart from any relations, I longed for her to share. As to Jan, I didn’t know her very well., but given my warm feelings to her Mom, I saw her as a potential friend.
As much as I was excited, I my stomach was in a knot. I was aware that both Norma and Jan were intermarried and their spouses would be coming along
Could I host them? What we would do about wine, washing , benching and yarmulke wearing?

When a prominent kiruv rabbi assured me that that having the entire gang, was a mitzvah—especially since Jan’s kids who were halachic Jews, my stomach unknotted. And when the rabbi added that the non Jews could wash and bench a broad smile settled on my face.

This was going to be a wonderful evening I told myself. I would be a modern day Sara Imenu bringing the strangers into the tent and winning them over with my Glatt Kosher Martha Stewart hospitality.

When Adele told me that she was salt free and Jan a vegetarian, I scoured cookbooks and cooking blogs to find the best recipes and I even bought new table linens to make everything look pretty.

I had high hopes for this evening, sky high. As I saw it, Adele who had initiated the trip and was picking up the tab was ripe for Teshuva.. Now nearly eighty, she was reeling from a devastating personal tragedy—the kind of event leads to a spiritual search. Adele loved chulent and kishka and used expressions like nishtugedach in her everyday conversation. Tom her third husband was a half Jew, from the wrong side but he shared Adele’s Judeophilia.

As to Jan, though I harbored less hope Her husband was a 100 per cent goy–Polish, but her kids were full fledged seedlings of Avraham Avinu. Who knew how high they could climb, especially after dinner at my house?

But as the date grew near, my stomach knotted again. The spiritual futures of six souls and so much could go wrong. The meal could flop or it could simply not hit the spot for people accustomed to Cordon Bleu.Adele or Jan or one of the grandkids could appeared dressed in something outrageous. Was I to preempt that potential disaster with a cautionary phone call or would that strategy be off putting?

Even if the food worked and everyone’s clothing was okay, the conversation could hit a snag.. One of my kids could say something rude—or one of theirs or one of the adults could say something outrageous.

But before I could devise a coping strategy , Adele left a long message on my voice mail. She was cancelling, pulling. The family was just too busy; their guide was wearing them down. She was so sorry and she hoped that we’d meet the next time I was in Coral Gables, Florida—which would most likely be never.

Maybe Adele sensed my overly high expections and attendant anxiety or maybe she or Jan or the kids or the husbands were freaked by the prospect an evening in a hareidi home or maybe Adele was telling the truth, that they were simply too pooped out to visit their only blood relations in the entire middle east.

I will never know that true reason why the dinner didn’t happen.

What I do know that this is all for the best. Rejection is Hashem’s form of protection. This family reunion was not meant to be. Our paths were not meant to cross at this time. Perhaps because neither I nor my family were up for this challenge or perhaps because of problems on the other side.

But that doesn’t eliminate the sadness. I’m sad, full of regrets, mourning the evening’s unfulfilled promise, just as the Shehina mourns for the millions of estranged Jews who never visit the relatives at all.

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You may have seen the book we are distributing: The Neshamah Should Have an Aliyah – What you can do in memory of a departed loved one. This new book stands at the forefront of our mission, which is both simple and profound: To help people perform mitzvos in memory of loved ones or friends who have passed away.

Very often, family and friends wish they could do something, anything, when someone passes away – something that would help keep their memory of that person fresh, something that would keep his legacy alive. Yet all too often these goals are not realized because they simply do not know where to start or what to do. When a loved one passes away, many people are inspired to do good deeds – perhaps more than at any other time in their lives.

But they just don’t know where to turn.

The Neshamah Project was created to fill this void. We help people accomplish personal Mitzvah projects – big or small – l’zecher nishmas those who have passed away.

Read a few pages of this remarkable book and we guarantee that you will be inspired – inspired to do a mitzvah yourself and inspired to give the book to someone else, so they too can start a mitzvah project on behalf of a loved one. As you will see, everyone who reads it is moved to give it to someone they know.

You can help spread this important message by telling anyone you know who may benefit from this valuable resource. Do you have a website or online newsletter? Please post information there as well.

You can see more about us online at www.NeshamahProject.org or email us for further information at info@neshamahproject.org.

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What issues do your non-observant friends and family seem to have?

What are the issues that you have trouble explaining to others?

Some issues:
- Equal Rights vs Segregation of the sexes
- Equal Rights vs Different roles for men and women
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Remember “Fernando,” Billy Crystal’s Saturday Night Live character whose mantra was, “I don’t feel mahvelous, but I look mahvelous, which is okey dokey with me ‘cause you know my credo, it is better to look good than to feel good?” Satirical? Sure. But a true word is often said in jest and in this case, it highlights secular society’s obsession with looking good. Of course, since most people recognize that much of what we see is merely a facade, who cares if the popular culture indulges?

Putting aside the propriety of engaging in behavior merely to portray a certain image, permit me to pose the following question: is it better to act your way into a new way of thinking or think your way into a new way of acting? In other words, if a person dresses and behaves as a frum yid, that person may eventually be constrained to live as such. Indeed, we see this in the performance of mitzvos. Chazal tell us that it is better to perform a mitzvah without the proper intention since it will hopefully lead to its performance with the proper intention.

I guess what I’m really asking is that since we grow and develop al ha derech (on the path) of Torah in our own manner and at our own pace, when it is the appropriate time to wear tzitzis and a kippah, give away the jeans and shorts, limit the wardrobe to white shirts or long skirts (whichever the case may be) and put the television in the closet? Is there some rite of passage we must achieve before “playing the part” or are we being disingenuous or intellectually dishonest for creating an image which makes us appear to be something we’re not?

I hope this is not the case and I don’t believe it is. If it were, I’d be in trouble. Having become observant while attending law school, I had no time to attend shiurim and certainly didn’t possess even basic skills to learn on my own. Aside from reading a few books on yiddishkeit in the spare time that I didn’t have, any learning I accomplished was done through accretion. Growing up, I attended public school and after nearly twenty years of observance, have not yet attended a yeshiva. My lovely wife used to continually remind since Rebbe Akiva didn’t start until he was forty, I had a head start. Of course, since turning forty a few years ago, she doesn’t tell me that anymore. Now, we talk about a time when I will be able to sit and learn. It may not be until we retire or win lotto, but we certainly hope it will come.

So, after having been observant for about two years, I began wearing a hat on Shabbos. During the week, I wore jeans. When I was dating, I wore a kippah srugah (knitted) and my big, ostentatious college ring. For about a year after getting married, I wore a wedding band and my tzitzis out. Actually, that’s how I ended up getting my first chavrusa (learning partner) – he was curious about that combination and after striking up a conversation, we began a seder (regular learning time). Please don’t misunderstand me. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wearing a knitted kippah, a school ring or a wedding band. Plenty of my friends do – and most are far more learned and have better middos (character) than I. The point is, I recognized that I was a work in progress (my wife tells me that I still am, but she isn’t referring to my yiddishkeit). I also recognized that wearing a black velvet kippah, a black hat or my tzitzis in or out (I actually wear them out but wrap them around my belt) would inevitably “label” me. I was certainly no yeshiva bochur, but often looked like one. Indeed, dressing that way was, and is, a statement. I looked like an affiliated Jew. I may not have felt as such, but nevertheless, I knew that I was. I may not have felt mahvelous about my lack of Torah knowledge and ignorance of halacha, but it didn’t really matter because I looked mahvelous.

Make no mistake. My desire to “look” frum was in no way out of arrogance or contempt for others. Clearly, learning Torah and developing middos tovos (good character) are indispensable to life’s Torah marathon. And although I generally wouldn’t advocate that it is better to look frum than to be frum, it certainly beats waiting for the right time. Who knows whether that time will ever come? Hmm, perhaps Fernando was really onto something. Or maybe now his name is Feivel.

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For all its outward vigor, the Orthodox community, which is my own, appears to harbor a sickness. You don’t have to be an ideological critic of traditional Judaism to wonder if the cause should be sought in Orthodoxy itself.

The past year has brought what seems like a never-ending stream of financial or sexual scandals. Prominent rabbis have been charged with money-laundering. The scandal unleashed by accounts of mistreatment of workers and animals in a kosher meat facility continues to reverberate. An influential rabbi specializing in conversions allegedly conducted a squalid relationship with a woman wishing to convert. There have been repulsive accounts of molestation of boys in yeshivas. Most recently, a prominent rabbi and communal powerbroker was charged with trying to extort money from a hedge fund.

Of course, not every allegation turns out to be true (and you certainly cannot believe everything you read, especially on the Internet with its bias in favor of grudges and witch-hunts). Yet the pattern of accusations can’t be coincidental.

For a convert or a baal teshuvah, like me, the greatest stumbling block to faith may indeed be the Orthodox community itself. If Torah is true, why do Torah Jews not stand out as particularly impressive? Deuteronomy says of our Torah observance: “It is your wisdom and discernment in the eyes of the peoples, who shall hear all these decrees and who shall say, ‘Surely a wise and discerning people is this great nation’” (4:6). No one would say such a thing of us today. How can this be?

The answer, I think, lies in the nature of Torah that has allowed its adherents to persist for millennia. While liberal Jewish movements inevitably fade into the broader gentile society, traditional Judaism survives thanks to a hedge of religious laws that keep Jews somewhat separate from others: “Behold! It is a nation that will dwell in solitude and not be reckoned among the nations” (Numbers 23:9). Paradoxically, our ministering to and illuminating humanity as the “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6) that God calls us to be is conditioned on this apartness from other people.

But insularity also has its risks. For communities, as for individual human beings, there’s a madness that often goes with spending too much time by yourself. Reality becomes a little unreal. So too, alas, in our Orthodox world.

At times you feel you are on Planet Frum, where eccentricities and trivialities — “Orthodox” jargon and accents, minutely observed quirks of attire, tribal foods — loom large, as if reflected in a funhouse mirror. This is pronouncedly so on the East Coast (which is one reason I moved to Seattle). For example, not long ago I was talking with a young woman who grew up in a Hasidic community. I was trying to get clear what exactly distinguished her former community from other Hasidic groups. Her answer kept coming back not to beliefs but to styles of socks and hats.

I recall another conversation with a New York woman, Modern Orthodox, who was seeking to locate another woman along the spectrum of religiosity. “Basically, she wears pants and eats fish out,” was her summary statement that would sound insane to any outsider. (She meant the other woman doesn’t strictly observe rules regarding modesty in attire or not eating in non-kosher restaurants.)

In an insular community, Torah can easily be reduced to cosa nostra — merely “our thing,” a game of chess with arcane rules that bear no meaning outside a narrow context. The serious danger lies in Judaism becoming a hermetically sealed environment, irrelevant and indifferent to the world. The highest ethics and values to be found in the wider society — which Judaism praises as derech eretz — are then minimized or even discarded as somehow goyish.

The visionary spokesman of Modern Orthodoxy in 19th-century Germany, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, warned of the peril Jews face in living up to our calling. In his Torah commentary, Hirsch wrote, “The sanctification of certain persons, things, times or places can very easily result in the pernicious idea that holiness and sanctification are limited to these persons, things, times and places. With the giving over of these things to holiness, the tribute has been paid, and the demand of holiness for everything else has been bought off.”

If you have “bought off” the Torah’s call to be holy by sanctifying yourself and your community, while ignoring all else, it becomes easier to overlook behaviors that run the gamut from silly to grotesque or worse.

When I lived in New York, I saw countless instances of Orthodox Jews behaving in public with little refinement or dignity. Visit the Kiddush table on Shabbos morning at many a shul. Grown men and women push and grab for food with all the manners and elegance that I regularly observe in my 2-year-old twins. Isolation from outsiders has something to do with it. In our bubble floating undisturbed through the world, we forget how to behave.

With our childishness goes a naiveté that may also explain how abusers are able to get away with it. Rabbis are regarded with childlike reverence. There is a guileless, ingenuous failure to confront reality.

The picture of a tragedy is complete when you consider how our unimpressiveness, our mediocrity, assures that even if we suddenly decided to accept the priestly role that God commanded us to fill, the world would hardly take us seriously. The credibility we might have, we have squandered.

I note this in sadness and frustration, not because I have any immediate remedy to propose. However, we can at least put the matter into its proper spiritual context, understanding that God appears to have built directly into the Torah the dilemma in which we’re caught. There is a necessary separation between clergy and congregation — the Jews and other men and women. Without it, there can be no priesthood. But isolation carries with it a risk that must be vigilantly guarded against.

By our observing Shabbat or kashrut, the Torah intends to remind us of our high calling, not to dispense us from it. It’s hard to avoid the impression that this year has been, as a rabbi friend suggested to me, a wake-up call from God.

David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the author of “The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy” (Free Press, 1998). He writes the Kingdom of Priests blog on Beliefnet.
–
Originally published in the Forward

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Mark Frankel, one of BBT’s Administrators and its resident IT guru explained the endeavor: “Every week, from just before sundown Friday to just after nightfall Saturday evening, we are asking that all of our fellow Jews do not use the internet.” In order to encourage full participation, David Linn, also an Administrator at BBT and its resident Blackberry*** expert, explains “We at BBT will not be posting during the designated “blackout time” and will not be monitoring the site. We encourage all Jewish blogs and websites to follow suit in a show of solidarity.”

Frankel and Linn added that those who have chosen to participate are encouraged to light candles just prior to the blackout period and take advantage of the free time by dining with friends and family.

Dr. I.V. Poll, BBT’s resident medical Resident, explains that the idea is actually healthy and that concerns about going cold turkey are unfounded. “Those who are nervous about going without internet for 25 hours should not be concerned. Those with strong addictions however, are encouraged to print out BBT posts to have at hand in case the need arises.” Dr. Poll does not recommend use of the transdermal patch.

*The internet, invented by former Vice-President Al Gore, is an electronic medium for the transmission of information. Users sit at devices called computers and watch as words magically appear on their screens. (Ed: Wow, those Jetsons writers were prescient!)

** Beyond Teshuva is the internet’s most popular web site with the name Beyond Teshuva.

*** Blackberry is an edible fruit produced by any of several species in the Rubus genus of the Rosaceae family. It is, botanically, an aggregate fruit. The plants typically have biennial canes and perennial roots. Blackberries are also called caneberries or brambles. Many of its over 375 species, are closely related apomictic microspecies native throughout the temperate Northern hemisphere and South America.

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Is “Happy Purim” the traditional Purim greeting ?

Well, yes. “Happy Purim” is the principle anglicized version of a number of transliterated Hebrew variations of “Happy Purim”.

What are the transliterated Hebrew versions of “Happy Purim” ?

There are many traditional Purim greetings in Hebrew. The following are the transliterated versions:

* Chag Purim Sameach [Joyous (or Happy) Festival (of) Purim]
* Chag Sameach Purim [Joyous (or Happy) Purim Festival]
* Hag Purim Sameach [Joyous (or Happy) Festival (of) Purim]
* Hag Sameach Purim [Joyous (or Happy) Purim Festival]
* Purim Sameach [Joyous (or Happy) Purim]
* Purim Chag Sameach [Purim Joyous (or Happy) Festival]
* Purim Hag Sameach [Purim Joyous (or Happy) Festival]
* Chag Purim (Purim Festival)
* Hag Purim (Purim Festival)

Happy Purim Transliterations From Hebrew Into English

Chag = Festival

Hag = Festival

Sameach = Joyous, Happy

Samayach = Joyous, Happy

Someach = Joyous, Happy

Somayach = Joyous, Happy

Found here:

They did leave out Freilichin Purim – which also means Happy Purim.

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I had intended to keep the scope of the conference call limited to practical advice that my dear chaver Dr. Benzion Twerski and I would offer parents on setting appropriate limits on Purim activities and to teach their children how to resist negative peer pressure to engage in hard drinking. However, as soon as we announced the conference call, we were inundated with questions from many people who asked me to clarify the words of our chazal (sages) “Chayav einish l’besumei be’puria ad deloi yoda bein arur Haman l’baruch Mordechai” which loosely translated says that one is obligated to drink [on Purim] until he cannot discern between Haman and Mordechai. With that in mind, I asked the Rosh Yeshiva shlit’a, who has served as our posek in Project Y.E.S. since its inception thirteen years ago, to take a few precious moments from his busy schedule and share his da’as Torah with our listeners.

“Chas v’shalom (Heaven forbid) that our Torah would consider getting drunk to be a mitzvah,” said Reb Shmuel. He explained that the word l’besumei is derived from the root word which means to sniff something – and said that this means that one should have only “a whiff” of drinking.

The Rosh Yeshiva also shed light on the words “ad deloi yoda bein arur Haman l’baruch Mordechai” and said that when one sings a song when he is in a heightened state of simcha (joy) he occasionally will sing the verses in incorrect order – meaning that he will sing the verse of Arur Haman in the place of the verse of Baruch Mordechai. It is inconceivable, he stated, that the words of our chazal condone the type of drunkenness which render a person incapable of performing the mitzvos of our Torah.

Reb Shmuel shlit’a is hardly a da’as yachid (a lone voice) in this matter. There is a kol korei issued by Agudas Yisroel and disseminated by my dear chaver Elly Kleinman signed by 26 leading gedolim, admorim, rabbonim and mechanchim that states in unequivocal terms that “chayav ainish…” only refers to wine and not whiskey. And it states that “free use of whiskey” is entirely inappropriate and contrary to da’as chachamim. Obviously, the term “free whisky” was used to denote hard drinking as opposed to a moderate amount of drinking. (A hard copy of the kol korei can be downloaded from my website www.rabbihorowitz.com. Just click here.)

Responsible vs. Irresponsible Drinking

To be perfectly clear, the Rosh Yeshiva shlit’a was discussing irresponsible drinking – and not the moderate drinking which allows a person to break free of his day-to-day inhibitions and arrive at the type of exalted “neshama yeseira” that allows him to connect to Hashem and all that is beautiful in Yiddishkeit with “soaring spirits” (pun intended).

My brother, Reb Yehudah shlit’a, who is the Mashgiach in Yeshiva South Shore, drinks along those lines on Purim. It would be fair to describe him as being above the legal drinking limit during the latter hours of the Purim Seudah. He would never think of driving home from the seudah on Purim, not should he, for it would be illegal, and he would be putting his life in sakana as well as the lives of others. So in technical terms or legally for driving purposes, he certainly could be classified as “drunk” during that time. But the words that would come to mind when observing him in that state would be, “Kedusha, elevated, hisorirus, simcha shel mitzvah, … perhaps even funny.” My brother sings “gramen,” gives brachos to all he speaks to, tells them how wonderful they are, talks about Mashiach and how he needs to do teshuvah. Honestly; I make sure my wife and I, and all our children and now our grandchildren go to him for a bracha when he is in this spiritual high. Far from being “drunk,” he has the “whiff” of intoxication that the Rosh Yeshiva was referring to.

However, the flat-drunk state that some adults and bachurim are engaging in under the guise of Purim which is in a very different category. This is the type of hefkarus (frivolity) that does not lead to any of the attributes of one who is drinking with true Simchas Purim, and that is the aveira that Reb Shmuel s’hlita was discussing. And Reb Shmuel firmly added that “It is an aveirah to say it [hard drinking] is a mitzvah.”

Some point to people of generations past who engaged in serious drinking on Purim and use that to support their claim that getting drunk on Purim is “a mitzvah.” However, I propose that it is illogical to bring proof from anyone who allowed or condoned Purim drinking back then and apply it to today’s climate. That would be like saying that one need not wear a seat belt today because someone in the 1950’s (before it became the norm and the law) didn’t wear one.

Times have very much changed in the thirty-five years since I was a teenager. None of my friends drank aside from Purim – including those who were less than model students – and many didn’t even drink on Purim itself. None of us. Period. Pull up a chair at a Shalom Zachor or Vort nowadays and see if that is the case today.

I also invited Professor Lazer Rosman, who is one of the original members of Hatzoloh, served as an active volunteer for the past 40 years and is currently the senior coordinator of Boro Park Hatzolah to join our conference call as well so our listeners can hear firsthand of the devastation caused by out-of-control drinking. He spoke about the chilul Hashem, injuries, carnage, full-blown toxic shock comas and even deaths that he personally witnessed as a direct result of Purim (and Simchas Torah) drinking. With all that in mind, I maintain that the dynamics have changed dramatically and in light of the sakana hard drinking represents nowadays we must completely end its existence in our community.

I very strongly recommend that all parents with pre-teen and teenage children at home listen to this conference call to hear the da’as Torah of the Rosh Yeshiva shlit’a and the wisdom and life lessons of Dr. Twerski and Professor Rosman. You can do so easily by visiting our website, www.rabbihorowitz.com, or by calling (712)432-1011 and entering access code: 455963558#. The content of that conference call is most certainly appropriate for children of any age and I suggest that you have your children listen along with you if possible.

Aside from the short-term danger, the brutal fact is that the vast majority of people in our community have their first exposure to drinking and smoking on Purim. Alcohol and tobacco are “Gateway Drugs,” meaning that nearly every single hard-core addict started with these substances. Worded differently, keeping your kids from early experimentation with alcohol and tobacco is by far the best way to keep them from becoming addicted later on in life. Just read these stunning statistics from the Center for Alcohol and Substance Abuse that I’ve been quoting in the dozens of columns I’ve written on drinking and smoking over the past 12 years:

• “A child who gets through age 21 without smoking, using illegal drugs or abusing alcohol is virtually certain never to do so.”

• “Teens who smoke cigarettes are 12 times likelier to use marijuana and more than 19 times likelier to use cocaine.”

The message is crystal clear – stop your kids from experimenting with smoking and drinking and they are almost certain to remain drug free all their lives.

In light of the danger of long-term addictions and their subsequent consequences, I honestly feel that any adult who encourages or even condones hard drinking on Purim bears some moral (and probably legal responsibility for short-term effects in many cases) responsibility for the ruined marriages and lives of those in his care who later become alcoholics and substance abusers.

One also must take in mind what message adult hard drinking gives to our children. Many things start out as neutral or commendable actions and then become distorted beyond recognition a generation or two later. So bear in mind, that your (what you may think is) “under-control” hard drinking might be giving free license to your children and grandchildren to get “toasted” on Purim in a manner that is far, far removed from yours, and certainly not what you had intended. And, sadly, you cannot “unring that bell,” once you decide it has gone too far.

Finally, please understand that kids really do “get it” regarding drinking and drunkenness – or almost any other topic – at a very young age. My jaw dropped some twenty years ago when a friend of mine casually asked our eldest son – then eight or nine years old – if his father gets drunk on Purim. (I had never really discussed this with him previously and his response was purely what he had picked up about this matter by osmosis.) My son responded, “No way. My father knows so many secrets about other people’s families [due to my work with teens-at-risk and shalom bayis] that he always keeps to himself. He would never get drunk because if he would, he might start telling people all those private things.”

© 2010, Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, all rights reserved

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What do you think is a reasonable amount of time to learn each weekday?
a) less than 1hour
b) between 1 and 2 hours
c) more than 2 hours

What keeps you from learning more?
a) too many other obligations.
b) learning is too difficult
c) I don’t have classes to attend or chavrusas to learn with

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Nevertheless, for all that I have to be thankful, I still come home exhausted every day and have trouble meeting my responsibilities with adequate energy and attention, even when I’m stationary and pain-free. As it turns out, the amount of concentration required to think about every single step is profoundly debilitating. I can’t follow my routine on autopilot. Every movement demands intense planning and caution so that, after the most insignificant foray from here to there, my mind rebels against further taxation.

Needless to say, the loss of any capacity serves to restore our appreciation for those things we take for granted. In this case, my broken ankle has prompted me to give more thought to a bracha we recite every morning.

Boruch atah Hashem, Elokeinu Melech ha’olam, HaMeichin mitzadei gover – Blessed are You Hashem, Our G-d, King of the universe, who prepares the steps of man.

Rav Shimon Schwab explains that all the preceding blessings we recite at the outset of each day serve to reflect upon the past – our spiritual identity and the resources with which the Almighty has endowed us to fulfill our potential. With the blessing HaMeichin mitzadei gover, however, we turn our attention to the future.

Hashem creates every human being with free will, so that we can earn our eternal reward by resisting temptation and doing good. But Hashem has not left us to grope in the darkness of moral confusion. Rather, He has illuminated our way with the mitzvos of His Torah, requiring us only to follow the derech ha’emes – the path of truth that He has laid out before us. By providing us with a clear path, Hashem has prepared our steps; all we have to do is follow the path and not stray to either side.

But familiarity and habit are powerful opiates, and we easily slip into the narcotic rhythm of routine. To concentrate on every step, to weigh and calculate every action, exhausts us to the point that we would rather trust the unreliable patterns of yesterday than reevaluate our actions from day to day and moment to moment.

And so Hashem has no choice, so to speak, but to trip us up from time to time, to place obstacles in our way and sometimes let us fall, thereby forcing us to mind the path that lies ahead.

“If one comes to purify himself,” teach the sages, “then his is enabled to become pure” (Shabbos 104a). If we mind every step and choose our path carefully, Hashem will lead us along the road to spiritual success. If we drift into a trance of routine and thoughtlessness, then we have only ourselves to blame for the consequences of inattention.

When that happens, Hashem has countless ways of steering us back on the straight path. So I’m not complaining about my broken ankle. If that’s the worst I need to remind me to mind my step, I’ll try to be more attentive and be grateful for the warning.

With praise for and gratitude to the Master of the World, Rabbi Goldson is pleased to announce the publication of his first book:
Dawn to Destiny: Exploring Jewish History and its Hidden Wisdom

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