Parshas Va’eschanan: I Repeat, I Repeat, I Repeat Myself

Okay okay, I know I repeat myself sometimes.  There are times when I sit down to write my dvar Torah for the week and the theme I want to address seems glaringly obvious – even though I’ve spoken about it on the blog before.  I guess we all have one-track minds from time to time, and we definitely each have our own interests and themes we want to push to the forefront in our conversations and in our lives.

You see, we all repeat ourselves from time to time.  Sometimes it’s out of habit and sometimes we just forget that we’ve told that story or joke before.  But when the Torah repeats itself, there is always a deeper reason.  The Torah never, ever wastes a word (a lesson we should also learn for our own speech).

In the book of Devarim, which we are reading now, there are 199 mitzvot listed – and only 70 of them are new.  That means there are 129 mitzvot repeated!  Why?

At this point the Jews are about to enter the land of Israel and confront the 7 nations living there.  While they were living in the desert, there were many commandments they were not tempted to break.  They were living in a world where G-d was so intimately involved with their daily lives that He provided all their food and even made sure their clothes never wore out!  They certainly were not living in a world of temptation… but when they entered the land of Canaan, they would be faced with temptation on all sides.

The laws we are reviewing now are primarily focused on preparing us for life in the real world.  It’s sort of like a father preparing his sheltered son for university: there is a lot of important advice to impart.  In this week’s parsha, for instance, Moses warns about the dangers of prosperity and assimilation – concerns the Jews did not have in the desert, but which we definitely face today.

So if I repeat myself, I hope you’ll forgive me.  After all, I am a rebbetzin and it is my job to follow in the footsteps of the Torah.  And if it’s important enough for Moses to repeat some stories and some laws over and over again, well, I guess it’s important enough for me, too!

Shabbat shalom!

Read more on Parshas Va’eschanan: Shabbat Nachamu – Finding Comfort in Unlikely Places

Read more on Parshas Va’eschanan: Building Our Own Cities of Refuge

During the times of the Temples Jews travelled to Jerusalem on pilgrimage three times a year. Thousands of Jews from all corners of Israel and neighbouring countries came to see and be seen during the festivals. On Passover they came to offer the Pascal sacrifice, and eat with family and friends. On Shavout (the harvest festival) they brought the Bikurim (the first fruits) to the priest in the Temple. Back then virtually everyone was a farmer and it boggles the mind to imagine the constant flow of pilgrims coming to Jerusalem with baskets of fruit.

Then there came the festival of Sukkot, and as the Talmud relates: “One who did not see the celebration [of Simcaht Beit Hashoeva, the water drawing] never saw a celebration in his life.” Imagine being there with perhaps hundreds of thousands of fellow Jews celebrating!

And Tisha B’Av brought an end to all of this. The Temples were destroyed and the Jews exiled. For the next two thousand years Jews sought refuge from place to place. Travel was no longer a time to celebrate, more likely it was running for your life with nothing but the shirt on your back. Crusades, Inquisitions, pogroms, a holocaust, and so much more.

Once again in the last couple of decades Jews have begun to travel for the festivals. All inclusive Passover retreats in America and Europe are popular, where participants can eat gourmet, be entertained by singers, performers, and comedians, all while the kids are kept busy with day camp activities. There are Sukkot getaways which offer more or less the same as the Passover ones. Should you choose not to go away for the whole week, there are still plenty of fun chol hamoed activities: fruit picking, circus performances, carnivals, museums, and even DisneyLand.

Please G-d may the third Beis Hamikdash be build speedily in our days, and we can once again celebrate with all Jews in Jerusalem.

Read more on Tisha B’Av: Hashem is Homeless… And So Are We…

Read more on Rabbi Lawrence Keleman on Tisha B’Av

Read more on Babies, Now You Can Celebrate Tisha B’Av, Too!

Read more on Parshas Devarim & Tisha B’Av: We Have to Look for the Good

Read more on Controversial Music: The 3 Weeks, The 9 Days, and Tisha B’Av

Read more on Avoiding Music & Bringing Jews Closer Together: The 3 Weeks, the 9 Days, and Tisha B’Av

From http://halachafortodaycom.blogspot.com.au/

 I’m posting this because I think it is very important. I touch on this idea in my book ‘Freiing Out,’ and about the importance of respecting differences in others within a halachic framework.

 Also ‘Halach for Today’ is a great site to sign up to. You will receive a daily halacha. I’ve been receiving their email now for over a year and have found the content very interesting.

 ……

This solemn period in the Jewish calendar is a time for reflection of our relationship to one another, especially as it relates to “Sinas Chinam, baseless hatred”, the sin that brought about the destruction of the Bais Hamikdash, the sin which the Talmud states is equal in severity to transgressing the three cardinal sins of idol worship, murder and sexual depravity.(Talmud Yoma 9b)

The Netziv, HaRav Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (in Shu”t Mayshiv Davar Vol.1 Siman 44) famously expounds upon this “baseless hatred” and explains that it was not just a hatred towards people for petty iniquities, rather it included a hatred for any Jew who practiced their “Avodas Hashem” in a different manner than them

 If one saw another Jew relying on a Halachic leniency which was accepted in that person’s community, but wasn’t relied upon in their own circles, instead of accepting that “Eilu V’Eilu Divrei Elokim Chaim” (See Talmud Eruvin 13b) , that person was deemed a heretic and was baselessly hated to the point that people were attacked or even killed for being different!

All Jews who long for the arrival of Mashiach and the rebuilding of the Bais Hamikdash – and the Jewish nation- to its former glory, should try and rectify themselves during this period, especially in this crucial area of Sinas Chinam.

Akiva Seems to have  a mind of his own and likes to wonder of in search of an adventure. I will not be surprised if he’s climbing mountains, and going on multi-day treks within the next few years. Please G-d I hope I’ll be able to keep up with him.

Parshas Devarim: The Importance of History

A month or two ago, a friend of Rabbi Ben’s let him know about a meeting of a local genealogy society and asked if he’d like to attend.  Because the subject was old photographs and I love photography, Rabbi Ben offered for me to go instead.  The talk was interesting to me as an artist and photography enthusiast, but the best part was all the people I met there.  I was by far the youngest attendee, which to me meant the opportunity to hear interesting things from the more experienced people around me.

I did have a bit of an interesting debate with one man I met.  We were debating the importance of knowing the true history of an event.  As they say, history is written by the victors.  For example, most people I know believe the American civil war was fought over slavery – the North wanted to free the slaves while the South wanted to oppress them.  Growing up in the South, I learned a different version of the story, one that actually sounds much more believable and makes a lot more sense.  The South was the agricultural producer and the North processed the cotton, tobacco, and other products into goods that could be consumed or worn.  Of course, processed goods can be sold for a much higher price than raw materials, so the North was economically doing very well while the South was just scraping by (hence their need for slaves).  The South wanted to build their own factories but the North blocked them from doing so.  The American Civil War, which in the South is known as The War of Northern Aggression (the name alone tells you something), was started, as many wars are, for economic reasons.

But which story is the real one? Does it even matter?  The man I was discussing this with said that he thought it didn’t really matter what the true facts or history were – the victor’s history is sufficient.  I disagreed; I think it’s the true history that teaches us so we can learn for the future.  If we don’t know what really happened, how can we make it never happen again? How can we prevent something if we don’t know how it really came about? A government can learn from the lesson of the American Civil War by knowing never to allow one region (such as the agricultural sector) to become too impoverished while other regions flourish.  Either mass migration from the poor to the wealthy sector will result (as has happened in Mexico) or a rebellion will eventuate.

So, too, we Jews must learn from our history.  This week we begin the book of Devarim, the final book of the Torah.  The entire fifth book of the Torah is a summary of the Jewish history that has gone before.  But although the Jews are the main protagonists of the story, they are not cast in such a wonderful light.  Usually the victors who write the story make themselves look as good and as right as possible, but the Torah was not written by the Jews – it was written for the Jews by G-d Himself.  And G-d made sure to get the history as accurate as possible.

In fact, we reiterate this history of the Jews particularly so that was can learn from it.  And the only way we can learn from it is if we know what really happened, gory details and all.  We can learn from the story of the spies (read more about this story here, here, and here) not to doubt G-d’s plan for us, but to have faith in Him, to have emunah and bitachon.  We read about the story of the golden calf so that we should never ever repeat it.  We read and learn about what we did wrong precisely so that we learn never to do it again.

Shabbat shalom!

Read more about Parshas Devarim: To Sum It All Up, Just Have Faith

Read more about Parshas Devarim & Tisha B’Av: We Have to Look for the Good