People often celebrate the 4th of July with fireworks. In South Florida, people enjoy setting them off over the water at the beach.

The flags are flying outside and people are walking around in a happy mood. Even if they don’t care much for what the fourth of July represents, they are in a good mood because they don’t need to work today.

I believe it is important for Jewish people to show their support to the United States, which gives freedom of religion. America’s freedom of religion goes back as far as 1649 and was a blessing for Jewish people seeking a place to practice Judaism freely.

What’s interesting is that there were countries that gave the freedom to openly practice one’s religion long before America. People in Poland had the right to worship freely throughout the 15^th century, and in 1573 complete freedom of religion was granted. But as history has shown us, what is written on paper and what is actually practiced can be two different things.

Thank G-d Americans actually do practice freedom of religion and for this we must be thankful, and besides since when does one need an excuse to get together with some friends and celebrate!

Happy Fourth of July?

This Shabbos Rabbi Ben performed as chazzan at The Shul of Bal Harbor, a major synagogue, one of the biggest in South Florida.  He sang kabbalat Shabbat and maariv Friday night and on Saturday he sang shacharit and mussafe.  Plus, it was Shabbos Rosh Chodesh, so he sang hallel and welcomed in the new month.

Friday night we ate dinner with a really wonderful elderly couple and their two elderly friends.  Their fifth floor apartment had a perfect view straight out onto the ocean.  It was fascinating to listen to their many stories about their youth and travels in a time and world so different from ours.  Like Rabbi Ben and I (who met while traveling in Peru), one woman at the table had met her husband while traveling in Europe!  Another man told of his participation in World War Two and Normandy, and told us about the weekend trips to Cuba he used to take when he was younger and Castro was not yet in power.

To our surprise, there was also a simcha at The Shul on Shabbos! There was a bar mitzvah and we were very happy to take part in the boy’s coming of age ceremony and celebration.  The family of the boy were delighted to have a trained chazzan present and Rabbi Ben’s singing made the experience even more special for them.

The bar mitzvah was followed on Saturday afternoon by a gigantic Kiddish.  There were about 5 or 6 large areas of tables set up around the walls of the social hall, and in an air conditioned tent set up outside.  One table held fish dishes of every description, another meat and cholent, a third of desserts, and the rest were full of salads.  It was a beautiful celebration of Shabbos and a really fantastic was to celebrate the simcha!

Many of the sights we saw in India made no sense to us. We followed the signs to the Pushkar Valley Resort only to find this sight. Logical? Well, that depends on whose logic!

I like to think of myself as a fairly logical person.  After all, I did pass my university logic class with flying colors and logic games were so great that they made the LSAT seem fun.  For me, that’s part of the appeal of Judaism – logic, arguments, explanations – Judaism just makes sense!  Or does it?

In this week’s parsha we encounter quite a few laws that don’t seem to have any logic at all.  In fact, the laws concerning the red heifer are downright paradoxical.  How can it make sense that something that contaminates the Kohen is used to purify the people? Why should contact with a dead body – any dead body, even that of your parents or, G-d forbid, your child – make you spiritually impure?  And how is it that contact – even a simple touch – with a spiritually impure person could make someone else spiritually impure?  Really, these, and many other laws in the Torah, don’t seem to make any sense.  They’re certainly illogical.  So what’s going on?

When Rabbi Ben and I first went to India, he warned me: “In India, the logic is that there is no logic.”  It didn’t take long to understand what he meant.  Even simple tasks that we take for granted in the first world suddenly became a huge challenge.  I could write pages on end about the crazy experiences we had, but Rabbi Ben often tells a story from his first (solo) trip to India that I think illustrates the point best of all.  One day, he went to get some papaya juice.  He was the only one in the shop, but after 20 minutes of waiting, he still didn’t have his juice.  He went up to the owner, saying, “If you’re waiting for the papaya to grow, it’s ok, I’ll get something else!” “Oh, so sorry sir,” said the proprietor with a waggle of his head, “but we have no papaya today. Someone has gone to market to purchase one.”  What normal restaurant would keep its only customer waiting while an employee went – on foot – to the market to purchase the necessary ingredients?  Why wouldn’t they just tell him it’s not available, or at least let him know it’ll be a long wait? Because it wouldn’t even occur to them.  In India, that’s just the way things are: there’s no logic and they don’t make any sense.

It seems to me that many things in this world are outside of the confines of logic.  So many things don’t make any sense, seem very strange, are downright illogical.  The way banks have responded to homeowners’ financial distress in the U.S. – by raising interest rates and foreclosing on drastically devalued homes – helped nobody and even hurt the banks.  It doesn’t make sense.  And what about a fight you’ve had with your parents, friends, siblings, or spouse? We often get emotional and logic goes out the window… and sometimes that’s the very best.  Not everything in this world is logical and not everything needs to be.  So why should we expect G-d, in all His wisdom, to give us a Torah that does not match our own real-world experiences?

To take this a step further, I will admit gladly that many people will disagree with the assessment that India has no logic.  Instead, it is a different type of logic: Indian logic.  To the Indian person, the most sensible thing to do when someone orders a dish for which you do not have the main ingredient is to go to the market to buy it.  That your customer might wait a long time is unimportant – in India, few people are in such a big hurry.  And, after all, the employees in the shop don’t have anything better to do when there are no other customers around, so why not?  In some way, it makes sense, just not to our culture… so it’s hard to understand.

If it is so difficult even to understand the logic of another culture, then how could we possibly expect to understand G-d’s logic?  He’s way out of our league, much more so than Indians are.  That a commandment in the Torah does not make sense does not mean there is something wrong with it, or with our following it.  If we don’t understand something in the Torah, the flaw is within us… and if we aren’t able to figure it out, the best we can do is just to have faith.  Until moshiach comes and all is revealed to us, we will simply have to trust in something bigger and infinitely more intelligent than ourselves.

Shabbat shalom.

Last night I had the privilege of being able to speak at the Chabad of Golden Beach’s famous Wednesday night shiur.  Rabbi Chay Amar has been giving a weekly inspiration shiur for years.  It was an honor to be invited as a guest speaker!

I spoke on the topic of “Traveling the World with G-d in my Backpack.”  I hope I was able to inspire someone by sharing stories from my own life.  I spoke a lot about the funny situations G-d has thrown my way and I told stories about how I dealt with Jewish challenges as I travel.  I shared stories like the one about losing my tefillin in Guatemala.

Once again, thank you all of you who came to hear me speak last night at Rabbi Amar’s Wednesday evening class. It was an honor and privilege to have the opportunity to share with you from my experiences. I hope you each got something practical to take away and that I had the opportunity to talk with you if you wanted to.

Florida coast from the airplane

Over Shabbat I was talking to friend who works in Airport Security. These guys have a rough time because it

seems that nobody likes them.

I travel a lot and there have been times when it seems like I am getting on and off airplanes every day. Sometimes I do get a slightly irritating feeling of having to take my laptop out of its bag, off with the shoes and the belt etc., all of course done while rushing to a plane for which I am late.

I remember this one time my carry-on bag came up positive on an explosive scan, not sure why. But I had to wait while a security officer took the bag and all its contents apart piece by piece. I was late for my flight and made it only because the airline had not yet located my checked bag to remove it from the plane.

At the end of the day the security is there for us. We don’t realize but as my friend told me, “At least once every few weeks in most major United States airports the security will foil an attempted terrorist attack. These attacks go unreported because the government does not want to scare people off from flying which would severely hurt the flight industry and the general economy.”

Airport Security

My friend said he would love to share the details about some pretty incredible terrorist attempts which he and his team caught, however he is not permitted.

I have always been happy when I get searched at an airport and I’ll often thank the security officer for doing his job and keeping us safe. At the end of the day, they are there for us. They are not getting on the plane - we are - and it is our well-being which they are protecting.

So perhaps next time you are being harassed by a security officer, maybe thank them.