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R' Weismandel reflected, "True, we seek to acquire an etrog which is free of the minutest blemish. Are we as meticulous in our demands for truth, that a person who represents us before our Creator should be without a blemish of falsehood?" While R. Weismandel was moved by the congregants correct ideal that a Shaliach Tzibur or a rabbi for that matter need to be of 'clean hands and of clean heart,' he did take the fellow aside, and teach him about the grievous sin of embarrassing another as being tantamount to murder in Talmudic law.
Some Talmud: Bavli Tractate Shabbat 119b: ''The world only exists because of the breath of children learning Torah in school. '' One of the major functions of any synagogue is a Beth Midrash, a house of study. We all know too well, that Temples are used for Beth Knesset, houses of getting together, i.e social halls. But it we do not teach our children a minimum of 6 hrs a week, after their regular school, they will know more about soccer, than they will know about ethical and spiritual Judaism. Every summer, and it is starting already, moms call me when their kids are home from college, because they are dating Christians, going to church with them, and have discovered the ''God of love and compassion on Sunday'', and are dumping the Hebrew God of smiting and rules that they learned on Friday nights, or Sundays mornings. And they want me to fix a problem that was started when they didn't go to services on Saturday (Shabbat day), didn't demand from their lay leadership or rabbinic leadership Tuesday and Thursday afternoon Religious school, and didn't start their meals off with a simple motzi. As we have learned, Judaism's God is universal and of love, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, etc and is the foundation of Christianity.
Some Midrash:Genesis Rabba Parsha 11: Shabbat said before the Holy One: Every day was given a partner, but You did not give me one. The Holy One answered: Your partner is the community of Israel. And when Israel stands on Mount Sinai, the Holy One will say, "Remember the Sabbath to hallow it." (Exodus 20:8) Remember that I said to Shabbat that the community of Israel is your partner.
Some more Talmud: Bavli Tractate Shabbat 10b 'A good gift have I for Israel and Shabbat is her name. Go and tell them.'
Two more bits of Talmud and we are done:Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 118a: One who celebrates Shabbat will be given an inheritance without, indeed beyond, limitation.
Talmud, Bavli Tractate Beitza 16a: Resh Lakish said that on Shabbat Eve one is given an extra soul, and when Shabbat leaves, it is taken from him.
The third of three uses of a Temple is a Beth Tephela, a house of prayer. As a rabbi, I teach. I don't preach. Each individual is responsible for doing what they wish. We do not live in a ghetto with a beth din that will take a Jew who continually breaks Shabbat and publicly flog him (makkoth). Shabbat is a gift. If one wants to ignore a gift, one can do so. But, our Synagogues need to be open on Shabbat for those Jews who wish to pray. By locking a temple on Shabbat, we are forcing Jews who wish to do the mitzvoth associated with Shabbat, the inability to do so. This is called lifne iver. It literally means putting a stumbling block before the blind and forcing them to fall. Lifne iver forces Jews to fall , i.e. sin. If 90% of a Temple's membership doesn't want to come to temple on Saturday, that is no reason to lock the doors. The sin of lifne iver is one of Juaism's worst. When it is done by someone who was taught what was correct, and still teaches or allows wrong to be done, the Talmudic rabbis would call this person an apikoret. We must always remember that the Temple is not the membership's building. Any money that we put into it, from our hard work, is all a loan from God. It is God's House.
Shabbat Shalom:
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Parasha Beha'alotchah: Numbers 8:01-12:16
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"Must Be the Season of the Witch"
This parasha wins two awards for brevity, as opposed to the last one, which holds the record for being the Chumash's longest parasha. This Shabbat's readings give us the Torah's shortest prayer as well as the Torah's shortest book.
The name, beha'alotchah, comes from God commanding Moses about kindling the Mishkan's desert Tabernacle menorah. All of the lamps were to shine into the middle stem of the candelabra. Rashi writes that because this light was not spread out, it symbolized God, the source of all light. The Midrash credits God Himself with making this menorah. It says that Moses threw a talent of gold into the fire and from it emerged the finished menorah. The Talmud points out that this menorah symbolized God's wisdom through Torah. Since the menorah stood on the south side of the Mishkan, the sages reasoned that anyone who wished to increase his wisdom should pray facing south.
While praying toward the south is no substitute for study, this Shabbat is an excellent time for us, especially those who claim to have no time to study, to start and finish an entire book of Torah! Here is the entire book. It is from Numbers 10:35-36: "When the
Why are the nun letters reversed? The obvious answer is that they look like parentheses. But the Talmud Bavli gives us another clue. In Tractate Berachot 4B, the rabbis teach that the 145th Psalm makes up our daily Ashrei (Happy) prayer. It is an acrostic prayer made up of verses starting with a letter of the aleph bait in the correct order of the Hebrew alphabet. The letter nun is missing. The sages teach that this letter is omitted because the "fall of
Talmud Bavli Tractate Eruvin 13B even goes a step further with our short book. The Hebrew for the phrase, "when it rested" (nucho) is derived from the same root word as "noach." This word means to comfort, to be gentle or to be sweet. Our history as a people will be assured when we use Torah to teach love and inclusiveness. When the Talmudic sages would argue over the words of Hillel versus the words of Shammai, the sages agreed after three years of debate that the words of both were God's. However, they decided to make their rulings follow the teachings of Rabbi Hillel because Hillel and his students were gentle and accepting. They would always give courtesy and credit to Rabbi Shammai and his pupils. If we remember to be humble, gentle, accepting, loving, inclusive, comforting and sweet, it will be difficult for any enemy's philosophy to triumph over our Torah.
The Talmud Bavli in Tractate Shabbat 115B and 116A states that these two "set off" verses are a separate book of the Torah. The sages posited that these verses are bracketed because God did not want to record three sins of the Jews in a row. What were the three sins? The Midrash claims that when verse 10:33 says we left
The second sin is the kvetching and complaining found in verses 11:01-4. Our people – who had just received the Torah on
The third sin was committed by Miriam. Miriam calls Moses' wife a "Cushite." She discusses his marital relationship. She further complains that she and Aaron also talk with God, so why is Moses the leader? God hears this slander and strikes Miriam with tzaraat. The sages say that this is the skin disease (mistranslated as leprosy) that God inflicts on people when they do loshan ha ra (gossip). Moses then asks God to forgive and heal Miriam with the Torah's shortest prayer. 'Please, God, heal her now" (Num. 12:13). The traditional view of these short verses in Numbers 12:01-2 has produced volumes.
Tzipporah, Moses' wife was a Midianite. Miriam calls her a Cushite. A Cushite is a black Ethiopian. The sages state that Miriam was talking with Tzipporah one day and was told that Moses was not having marital relations with her. Miriam was unaware of what God told Moses. Since Moses had to be ready at any time to talk with God, he needed to be ritually pure. Therefore, Moses was not allowed to have sex with his wife.
To get pure, he would have had to dip in the mickvah and remain impure until evening. As we were taught in a previous parasha, if a male had sex, he was impure until nightfall. Tzipporah and Moses were to keep this their private business but Tzippie slipped and told Miriam, without stating the reason why. So, our sages teach, when Miriam gossiped to Aaron she was not doing it to be mean to Moses, but to help (hopefully) the lovesick Tzipporah.
But why did Miriam call Tzipporah a "Cushite?" Was she complaining jealously that Moses married a dark-skinned foreign woman? Our sages say no. Miriam's use of the word Cushite was a euphemism for beauty. To avoid the evil eye, she used a negative word to give a compliment. I guess the sages are saying this is like Michael Jackson's song, Bad, which played on the vernacular use of the word "bad" to actually mean "good." Rashi says the numerical value of the Hebrew word for Cushite is the same as the Hebrew words for "beautiful in appearance" (yafat mareh). The Rashbam (Rashi's grandson Rabbi Shlomo ben Meir of twelfth-century
But the sages ask why, if Miriam was not doing anything wrong, was she punished? They answer that it was a warning to
What do we know of Miriam? Why are the Talmudic and Midrashic sages protecting her from what is an obvious fit of sibling rivalry? Miriam was the older sister of Moses and Aaron; their parents were Amram and Yochebed. She was born in
Another Midrash tells of her parents divorcing because Amram did not want to produce any children that would be killed under Pharaoh's decree. Miriam and Aaron were born prior to Pharaoh's decree. Her father was a leader of Levi. Miriam said to Amram, "You are worse than Pharaoh. He has only condemned our male babies to death. If B'nai Israel follows your example, both the male and female babies will be condemned." Amram remarried Yochebed and Moses was soon born.
A Midrash says that Miriam was one of the midwives who disobeyed Pharaoh and let the Jewish male babies live. When Pharaoh's officers came to arrest her, Miriam made herself invisible. She was five years old at the time. While her mother was pregnant with Moses, Miriam had a prophetic vision that the baby would be the savior of
Miriam stood watch while her mother placed her baby brother Moses in the reed basket and placed him in the
The Talmud Bavli in Tractate Taanit 9B gives equal credit to Miriam, along with Moses and Aaron, for
Just as Miriam supplied Moses with food, so did she supply
Miriam's brother Moses complains to God in this Parasha that he is forced to act like a woman. Moses, frustrated with the complaints of the Jews, asks God in Numbers 11:12 if he himself had "conceived this people?" He asks, "Have I given birth to them" so that I must carry them in my bosom and suckle them?"
The Zohar teaches that Mordechai raised (
In Kabbalistic terms, this allows the hidden potential, the true Divine "something," to enter the symbol of the worldly something. The Zohar teaches that this is how physical reality encloses deep spiritual concepts and how the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm. God manifests a level of nothingness (tzimtzum) that allows His infinite supply of love and energy emanating from within His essence to flow down to the world, like milk to a baby.
While God's milk is Torah brought to us by Moses, Miriam's milk, through the well that followed us in the desert, was life itself. Perhaps this is why the rabbis were apologists for Miriam's behavior.
When Moses took on the role of leader, teacher, judge, provider and nursemaid for the Jewish people, he lost touch with his own wife and family. Judaism is against celibacy. Service to God, our sages taught, did not release someone from the mitzvah to be fruitful and multiply.
Marriage is not inferior to celibacy. Instead, it is part of creation's order. Our Talmud teaches that we are to sell a holy Torah scroll if we need funds to get married. The Zohar compares women to the body and men to the soul. A person consists of both. Moses' sublime soul was on such a lofty level that he could not relate to the physical needs of his wife or of his people for meat.
The Zohar teaches that the Messiah will be more of a flesh and blood man than Moses. He will not be detached from the material like Moses. The Zohar teaches that the Messiah will be married and that his wife will empower him to achieve spiritual rectification of all humanity.
The Talmud addresses the problem of men being too involved with their work or studies (or computers?) to attend to their wives' needs. They ruled that if a man forbade himself to his wife, he could only do so for a week, and that his wife must first agree. Torah students could go away to study for no more than a month at a time. Laborers could only leave their wives for a week at a time. Rich men must have sex with their wives daily, laborers twice a week, ass-drivers once a week, camel drivers once a month, and sailors twice a year. This is from Tractate Ketubot 61A and 62B. But on Daf (folio) 63A, the sages ruled that Torah scholars could leave to study for two or three years at a time. But then Rabbi Adda said that they risk their lives if they do this.
Rabbi Adda told the story of a rabbi who would only come home once a year and have sex with his wife before Kol Nidre. One year, he was so distracted with his Torah studies that he lost track of the calendar. He was studying on a roof. The roof collapsed, and he was killed. Then Rabbi
How men could wish to avoid their wives may seem unclear to us now, although not to all of us. But it was not uncommon in ancient times. Women were a "strange group" to our ancient rabbis and they were "unable to decide what they want."
Women were often accused of witchcraft, especially with their words, which may be why Miriam was punished for her loshan ha ra, and Aaron was not for his.
In Exodus 22:17 we were commanded to not let a witch live. The Hebrew term used is "mekasefa," which is a female witch. This is odd because up to this time in the Torah no mention was made of female witches. Male sorcerers, however, especially Pharaoh's and later Balaam, are mentioned to us. In the Midrash Genesis Rabbah the rabbis write that Sarah tried to use witchcraft against Hagar. The same Midrash says that when Eve was created "Satan was created along with her." But these Midrashim were written millennia after the stories in Genesis.
In I Samuel 28, we are told that King Saul visited a witch in Ein Dor who used an
The Talmud Bavli in Tractate Chagigah 77 tells of Rabbi Simeon who hanged 80 witches at
Rabbi Yose said in discussions on when to say blessings, that one should not say a blessing over a spice if one doesn't see where the good smell is coming from "because Jewish women offer incense to witchcraft" (Talmud Bavli Beracoth 53A).
In Talmud Bavli Tractate Eruvin 64A the rabbis teach that while it is a law to pick up bread that one sees on the road, this does not apply now (at the writing of the Talmud circa 500 C.E.) as "Jewish daughters are flagrantly involved in witchcraft" and the bread may be cursed. Women cause dogs to become rabid (Tractate Yoma 83B). As soon as Satan was created, according to the rabbis in Tractate Kiddushin 81A, he sought a wife to be his partner in evil witchcraft. The Zohar states that Satan, in the form of the serpent, had sex with Eve producing Cain.
In Talmud Bavli Tractate Kiddushin 66B Rabbi Simeon says, "The best of women is filled with witchcraft." When the rabbis ask themselves why the Torah uses the feminine word for witch and not the masculine, they answer in Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin 67A that God is teaching "that most women are involved with witchcraft."
In the Midrash Sifre the rabbis teach that a man should not be afraid to go into battle against other men, but that he should be fearful of doing battle against a woman and her witchcraft. Talmud Bavli Tractate Sanhedrin 100B explains that a daughter is valueless because when she is a child the father fears she will be seduced. When she is a young woman, he worries that she will not marry. And when she is old, she will be involved in witchcraft. Talmud Bavli Tractate Pesachim 111A warns us that if we see two women at crossroads facing each other, they are witches.
Talmud Bavli Tractate Gitten 45A tells of the daughters of Rabbi Nahman who stirred a boiling pot of witch's brew with their bare hands. Ironically, the two books of witchcraft of the Talmudic era - Harba de Moshe and Sefer ha Razim - are written by men. With further irony it is noted that the same Rabbi Simeon who gives us so many examples of women being such bad witches was a sorcerer himself! In Talmud Bavli Tractate Me'ilah 17B he exorcised an evil spirit from the emperor's daughter. In Talmud Bavli Tractate Shevi'it 38B, Rabbi Simeon turned his opponent into a heap of bones by use of the evil eye. When Moses turned his rod into a snake it was a miracle by God. When the Egyptian sorcerers did the same thing, it was magic.
In the Bible women leaders are few but not rare. Our matriarchs were quite vocal and visible, as were Miriam, Judge Deborah, and Queen Esther. By the time of the Rabbinic era women who were charismatic or vocal were feared and conveniently labeled as witches. There is one notable exception. Rabbi Nachman's wife
Jewish women of the time were certainly treated and protected better than their pagan counterparts. As we have seen in past d'vrei Torah, superstitious, erroneous conclusions die hard. Only 400 years ago in this country, we were burning and drowning suspected witches in
The Chofetz Chaim (Rabbi Israel Kagan of twentieth-century
Pirkei Avot 2:5 teaches us "not to judge your fellow until you have reached his place." It is impossible to reach anyone's "place," as we all have such varied experiences. Therefore we should not make judgments against people.
As Moses asked of God in the Torah's shortest prayer, let us wish healing, rfua sheilehma, to each other, as few of us are truly complete and whole. As we learned in the Torah's shortest book, let us strive to live our lives with sweetness, love, humility and inclusiveness. Let us renew our Jewish Spirituality. These traits do not make us weak. They make us strong and beloved by others.
Shabbat Shalom:
Rabbi Arthur Segal
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 Click to Order | THE HANDBOOK TO JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal distills millennia of sage advice into a step-by-step process to reclaim your Judaism and your spirituality in a concise easy-to-read and easy-to-follow manner. If you find yourself wishing for the strength to sustain you through the ups and downs of life; if you want to learn how to live life to its fullest without angst, worry, low self-esteem or fear; or if you wish that your relationships with family, friends and co-workers were based on love and service and free of ego, arguments, resentments and feelings of being unloved...this book is for you. Price: $19.99 254 Pages Published by: Amazon's BookSurge |
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 Click to Order | A SPIRITUAL AND ETHICAL COMPENDIUM TO THE TORAH AND TALMUD Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal dissects each of the Torah's weekly sections (parashot) using the Talmud and other rabbinic texts to show the true Jewish take on what the Torah is trying to teach us. This companion to The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew brings the Torah alive with daily relevance to the Modern Jew. All of the Torah can be summed up in one word: Chesed. It means kindness. The Talmud teaches that the Torah is about loving our fellow man and that we are to go and study. The rest is commentary. This compendium clarifies the commentary and allows one to study Torah and Talmud to learn the Judaic ideals of love, forgiveness, kindness, mercy and peace. A must read for all Jews and deserves a place in every Jewish home. Price: $24.99 494 Pages Published by: Amazon's BookSurge |
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(001) The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal
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In The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew, Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal distills millennia of sage advice to reclaim your Judaism and your spirituality.
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(002) A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud
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A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud dissects each of the Torah's weekly sections (parashot) using the Talmud and other rabbinic texts to show the true Jewish take on what the Torah is trying to teach us.
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(003) Tzadakkah Bundle
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The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal and A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud. Purchase both books as a set, and I will donate a portion of the sales price in your name to the tzadakkah of your choice. -- Rabbi Segal
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