The look of love you see here is the first stage - that heady love that is a gift from G-d - next comes the step of working at building love.

Arranged marriage seems to be a topic of pretty heated debate these days.  Most Westerners, or any youth of today who are influenced by “Western” ideas and values, are strongly against arranged marriage.  However, for many thousands of years, arranged marriage was the way to go.  And in many cultures, it’s still practiced today.

In fact, arranged marriages are still quite popular among the more religiously observant groups of Jews.  I know personally and closely many couples who became engaged after only meeting one another once or twice, for a short period of time. The entire meeting and marriage was arranged by their families.  They’re still happily married.  So something about arranged marriage seems to be working at least as well as a marriage that is not arranged, if not better. Why? And how?

We find the answers to both of these questions in one simple line in this week’s parsha.  This week is the parsha where Avraham (Abraham) sends his servant Eliezer out to find a wife for Yizchak (Isaac).  Yizchak doesn’t seem to get any say in the choosing of his wife-to-be – nobody even asks him what he thinks or what he’s looking for in a woman.  They don’t need to.  They are the people who know him best, so they know exactly what to look for. Sure enough, Eliezer comes back with Rivka (Rebecca) as a wife for Yitzchak.  Yitchak takes Rebecca into his mother’s tent, marries her, and then loves her.

That’s a strange order to do things in, if you think about it.  Today, couples fall in love, then they live together, then they get married.  Instead, Yitzchak gave Rivka her own tent (rather than sharing one with her), then he marries her, and only then does he fall in love with her.  What’s going on?

The answer here is the same as to the above questions of why and how arranged marriage works in the first place.  You see, Yitzchak is the first arranged marriage in Tanach (the Bible) and we learn a lot about how marriage is supposed to work from it.  Love is not something that we are supposed to just fall into, it’s something we’re supposed to build.  Perhaps this is why so many marriages today fall apart – people expect to fall in love and they expect it to last.  But, as I learned in a shiur at Neve Yerushalayim by Mrs. Halberstadt, that the Kabbalah teaches that the first burst of love-excitement, that heady feeling with the butterflies in the stomach, is a gift from G-d, to show you what you could have in the future, if you work for it.  That feeling doesn’t last long – maybe a few months, maybe a few years, but it won’t last your entire lives… unless you work at it.  If you work at it and build it, that feeling comes back.

In arranged marriages, couples do have the chance to meet and both parties must consent (at least it works this way in most cultures), but they aren’t together enough to fall in love.  Instead, they either get that spontaneous and exciting feeling after they’re married – or they work at it together and they build love.  They have no expectation that the feeling of falling in love should last forever and so they are not disappointed when it is not there. Instead, they do have an expectation that if they both want to be in love, they have to cultivate that feeling of love.

The love we see elderly couples sharing is the third stage - the love they've built over many decades

And how do we cultivate a feeling of love? By giving.  Giving of oneself to another is the best way to cultivate a feeling of mutual love.  Think about a time when someone went out of their way to give you something – and not just anything, but something really desirable to you, perhaps something you strongly needed or wanted, something they had to think about in order to give it to you.  It could have been something material or it could have been something ephemeral, like a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen or a hug, just when you needed it.  Either way, remember how it made you feel.  You felt a surge of affection for the person who went out of their way to show you they cared.  And think about how it felt to be the one giving in a similar situation.  You felt a surge of compassion, affection, and caring for the person you were giving to.  The more you give like this and the more one person gives like this to you, the closer the two of you become.  Eventually, this mutual giving blossoms into love.

The Torah comes to teach us that love is not like what we read in the romance novels (although we do learn that Rivka almost fell off her camel when she saw Yitzchak because he was such a hunk, and we see that Yaakov (Jacob) was willing to work 14 years in order to be allowed to marry Rochel (Rachel)).  We learn from the Torah that although physical attraction is an important component, love takes more work, is built, and comes later.

In the coming week, let us all work on building and increasing the love in our lives!  Shabbat shalom!

Do We Make a Blessing/Berocha When Giving Charity/Tzedaka?

This morning after I gave some charity I thought about this. Normally we make a blessing on any mitzvah we do. Like making a blessing/berocha on lighting the menorah, eating matzah, and blowing the shofar. So if giving charity is a mitzvah, why than no blessing?

The Rashba, who is a commentator on the Talmud, says that in order to make a blessing/berocha a on a mitzvah it must be entirely 100% in our hands. When we give tzedaka it is not totally up to us. We can make the blessing, and then try and hand over the money but there is no guarantee that the person we are giving to will take it. True that this is highly unlikely as most people collecting charity will gladly accept it from you, but nevertheless we can only make a blessing/berocha on that which is 100% in our hands to complete.

For example when we make a blessing on food, the food should be in our hand and at the least in front of us. More than once, when I was younger, I recall making a blessing on water and then pushing the water fountain button and no water came out. With a water fountain it is important to first push the button so we see the water and then make the berocha.

Riding a scooter in the rain around Bali. My back pack is in the plastic bag in the front. It was an amzing trip but it rained a alot and made the roads slippery. I stayed sometimes in guesthouses and other times in villages. Bali is a beautiful place if you can get away form the main tourist spots.

A Blessing for rain in Shmoneh Esrei

The shmoneh esrei, also known as the Amidah, is recited three times daily. In one of the blessings we ask Hashem to bless the year along with the produce of the land. Because the blessing refers to things growing from the ground we change the blessing slightly from winter season to summer season to reflect what the ground needs.

In Israel starting on the seventh day of the month of Cheshvan (this year Nov 2011) they begin to say ‘V’sein Tal Umatar’ (asking for rain). However we only begin to say this insertion outside of Israel on December 4^th or 5^th.

Say one is in Israel now but plans on flying outside of Israel. What should he or she say?

There are two main opinions. 1) Say it like wherever you are according to the custom of the place. 2) If you are planning to return to Israel within the year, continue saying like they do in Israel even if you have left the country.

It is best to ask your local Rabbi to find out what you should do in this situation.

In India I learned to let go of my ego. Do you think any of these people cared about my job, my clothes, or what I own? Nobody was judging me based on those things. I had to learn to recognize within myself what is truly valuable. It is only by letting go of this ego that we can finally open up to true self-sacrifice for G-d.

We all have egos.  In fact, most of us have very big egos.  Sometimes our egos are so huge that they block out the “real” us.

When I went to India for the first time, it was the first time in my life that I really had to throw my ego away.  Up until then, if you asked me who I was, I would say, “I am an attorney. I work in one of the best law firms in downtown Miami. I have an apartment and a car and two cats. I wear nice clothes and I use an iPhone and I like photography so I have a fancy camera.”  Of course, all of that is ego speaking.  But nobody ever pointed this out to me – I don’t even think anyone noticed.  Why? Because everyone was speaking the same way. “My name is XYZ. I work for ABCorp.  I just got a new car.  Look at my nice new phone and my new laptop.”  But wait… that person didn’t tell me anything about themselves except their name!

In India, none of that external stuff mattered.  I was unemployed, so I didn’t have a job I could brag about. In fact, nobody cared whether I was an attorney or a street sweeper.  I gave up my apartment and my car and have a friend (bless her) watching my cats, so none of that stuff is with me. In India, nobody gives two hoots if I’m wearing nice clothes or even if my clothes are dirty – I am lucky that I have clothes at all.  And I lost my camera and my phone, so I couldn’t even fixate on either of those things.  Heck, I didn’t even have my family or friends around, so I couldn’t even exercise ego by association.  I had to strip all that away and come face to face with… myself.

Which is kind of what Avraham has to do in this week’s parsha.  I heard in a shiur this week given by Rabbi Shmueli Feldman on one of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s sichas all about it.  This week Avraham is asked by G-d to go sacrifice Yitzchak (Isaac), his beloved son.  The Talmud says that if it were not for this last one of Avraham’s 10 tests, then the first 9 would mean nothing.  What on earth does this mean? Being thrown in a fiery furnace counts for nothing? Leaving your home and your world behind and venturing out into the unknown means nothing? The answer to all of these questions is the same: ego.

Up until now, Avraham could have been doing the mitzvot for himself, in one way or another.  He stood to gain some benefit, even if it was just in being proved right.  He didn’t have a lot of choice about being thrown in the furnace, for example, and he could have left home to travel just because he had a midlife crisis involving too much wanderlust. But being asked to sacrifice his son? Nobody could say that was selfish, nobody could say that was ego!  It wasn’t just that he would have to sacrifice his son, when killing your own child is difficult enough, but it was that he would be sacrificing the child that G-d had told him would give him grandchildren.  He was sacrificing generations as numerous as the stars in the sky.  He was also flying in the face of everything he had spent the last 100 or so years teaching.  He had taught that human sacrifices and child sacrifices were wrong.  He had taught that murder is wrong.  He had taught so much from the Torah that was the exact opposite of what he was about to do.  So how could he possibly do it?

Avraham let go of his ego.  Publicly, in a way that everyone could see, he showed that he was willing to do whatever G-d wanted, even if he did not understand it. Without arguments, without questions, without ego, he went to do G-d’s will.  And when G-d made it clear that He did not want Avraham to sacrifice Yitzchak after all, he complied with that, too.  Avraham made it clear, in his thoughts, his speech, and his actions, that he was giving of himself.  Self-sacrifice for G-d!

In India, you can't look around at daily life and remain self-absorbed. If the poverty doesn't touch you, there is really something wrong. This was my wakeup call to start letting go of my ego so I would have more room within me for G-d to dwell. Avraham teaches us just how important it is to let your ego go. Where your ego exists, G-d cannot be. There is only enough space for one or the other.

This is how we must be in our lives.  If we strip away all those ego-driven externals, we can begin to see our true selves.  We can begin to see that what really matters are the mitzvot (good deeds/commandments) that we do and the middot (good character traits) that we cultivate.  How much more meaningful would it be, if you were able to introduce yourself saying, “Who am I? I help collect and deliver food to the poor. I play music to cheer up elderly and ill people.  I enjoy learning Torah.  I practice every day on controlling my anger and on being more patient.  I am very busy all the time because I am trying to say tehillim (psalms) in my free time.  I am working on smiling more, even at complete strangers.”  Meeting someone and hearing that, you can really say, “Wow! This person sounds like a great person! I want to get to know them better. I want to spend more time with them.”  The first examples, working in a fancy job, owning a nice house or car or phone, wearing fancy clothing… well, none of that really tells you anything about a person.

Avraham’s job in doing G-d’s will and taking his son as a sacrifice opened up the channels of self-sacrifice for us.  We can tap into the heavenly gates he opened for us and take advantage of them.  It is possible to let go of our own egos and dedicate ourselves to serving G-d.  We don’t even have to travel to India to do it.  We can do it right now, in our own lives.  We only have to try.

Shabbat shalom.

And I’m learning as I go,
Don’t you know there are days when it hurts so bad
Everybody changes with a chance,
And I came around…
-Amie Miriello, “I Came Around”

Wine plays a big role in Judaism… it features prominently in Jewish festivals from the weekly Shabbat celebration to wedding ceremonies and, of course, the rowdy Purim parties.  One of my favorite wines is called Malbec and the most delicious Malbec wines in the world come from Mendoza, Argentina.  So during my time in Argentina, I took a trip to Mendoza to ride horses, go white water rafting, and, of course, to check out the wineries!

Anybody who’s been to a wine store has seen that there are many more non-kosher wines than kosher wines.  However, if you look into your foreign kosher wines (basically any of those not produced in Israel), you’ll find that those same wineries are producing non-kosher wines also.  How is this possible?  Most wineries will do a “run” of kosher wines once a year.  When those bottles are ready, they’re sent to the distributor who stores them for sales throughout the year.  This saves wineries a lot of money because since only Sabbath-observant Jews can handle the grapes and wine in order for the wine to be kosher. In places like Mendoza, where the small Jewish population is reform only, this means they have to import employees specially.

It happened that when I went to Mendoza there were still snow flurries, so it wasn’t exactly wine-making season.  When I did the rounds of the wineries, none of them had kosher wines on hand and so I wasn’t able to taste-test any.  Which makes me want to ask the next question: Why is it so important for wine to be kosher?

The laws regarding kosher wines are in place to prevent Jews from deriving any benefit from idolatry. Wines are often used in religious ceremonies for idol-worshiping religions and often a blessing is made over them or they are made for this purpose specifically.  I used to think this sounded ridiculous because, looking at the secular American society around me, I couldn’t imagine anyone using wine for idol worship.  But when I went to Mendoza, I noticed a giant life-sized statue of an idol sitting among the barrels in one winery.  And in another place, I saw lots of painting of non-Jewish dieties on the casks of wine themselves.  So next time you’re thinking of drinking a non-Kosher wine, please keep this in mind!