Yom Kippur Insights
15 Yom Kippur Insights
- September 4, 2018
- |
- 24 Elul 5778
Rabbi YY Jacobson
28 views
Yom Kippur Insights
15 Yom Kippur Insights
Rabbi YY Jacobson
- September 4, 2018
Index:
Why Do We Pray Loud If G-d Is Not Deaf?
Waze and Yom Kippur: Creating a New Path
Our Shul Is No Exclusive Club
The Therapist Vs. the Rabbi
Sins Between You and Your Wife
Yom Kippur and the Microwave
Don’t Change the Baby
When the Queen Was Abducted
The Choice to Move On
Who Turned the Waldorf Into the Glamorous Hotel?
The Worst Thing You Can Say by a Eulogy
How We Judge Others
A Surreal Tale of Two Weddings
A Drink with G-d
You Can’t Destroy Your DNA: Machmud’s Lecha Dodi
If G-d Isn’t Deaf, Why Pray Loud?שומע תפלה עדיך...
There were these two boys who lived with their Grandma. They were about to go to bed but before they slept they would pray. The older boy started to pray; he prayed about the day he had and about everything he had done. The younger boy then started to pray, he prayed much louder than his elder brother, he prayed for a bike, an iPhone, a Tablet, a DS, video games, and all types of toys.
When he finished, the older brother asked him: “Why are you praying so loud? G-d is not deaf!”
The younger brother responded: “Yea… but Grandma is!”
Yet, we love to sometimes pray loudly, sing, and say the words with passion and oomph. G-d is not deaf, but sometimes we are… So we sing the prayers and get the movement going, so we can wake up and hear what we are saying. Sound triggers concentration. קול מעורר הכוונה
Waze and Yom Kippur: Creating a New Path
נוסח הוידוי: דרך תשובה הורית.... פיוט ונתנה תוקף: כי לא תחפץ במות המת, כי אם בשובו מדרכו וחיה. ועד יום מותו תחכה לו, אם ישוב מיד תקבלו. יומא פו, ב: זדונות נעשו לו כזכיות.
One of the most elegant metaphors for Tesuvah, the work of mending our behavior and our life style, was given to us in recent times, with the development of the Global Positioning System, or in its later morphing into Waze.
This is a brilliant device. You key in your destination, and a polite voice and a map tell you where to go.
(Of course, Jewish drivers always know better – a short cut here, a detour there. “What does the lady speaking to me know? I grew up here!”
Some Jewish men are simply allergic to obeying a woman’s voice. For them we need a man’s voice giving the instructions. Perhaps every woman reminds them of their mother or wife… Perhaps it’s an ego thing: How can this matscho successful man become so subservient to the woman giving him directions? What can she tell him that he does not know on his own?
Especially with directions, men are impossible. Many of them feel that somehow it is below their dignity to take directions. They’d rather get lost for hours, and drive by mistake to California, than to accept directions…
I was once driving with someone, who made sure to disobey the Waze directions, as often as he could. Every turn the woman suggested for him to take, he “knew” a better way…
An hour later, we were badly lost. I say, nu, maybe it’s time to start listening to her?
And he tells me: “She is an anti-Semite…”
So I told him, “Sometimes Anti-Semites got it right… Let’s listen to what she has to say.”)
So this voice cordially directs your path. It tries o give you the best, fastest and most direct path to reach your destination. If there is an accident, or traffic, it will try to help you avoid it. If there is an object on the road, it will forewarn you, so you do not hit a stumbling block.
But sometimes, I am smarter than Waze. I do my own thing. Sometimes it is intentional, sometimes it’s an innocent mistake. I take a wrong turn; I miss an exist.
Patiently, Waze recalculates and provides me with a new route.
But at times, I still do not obey. I know better. I am smarter.
And again, the GPS or Waze recalculate and find a new path.
And even if I refuse her path again and again and yet again, she never gives up on me. Waze never says: You are stubborn. You are a jerk! Just go do your own thing, and I am done with you. Never! With TLC, she finds a path for me, to get me to my ultimate destination.
And even if I really get lost, I really did not listen, I have been going in the opposite direction for hours, Waze will find for me a way back…
And that is that is the gift of Teshuvah and Yom Kippur. G-d gives us a path in life, articulated in his mop for living, the Torah. It is straight, direct, healthy, and correct.
But, for whatever reason, we often do our own thing. Sometimes, intentionally, sometimes by mistake.
But G-d never gives up on us. From wherever you are, there is a path waiting for YOU. G-d helps you find a new path back to your true destination, where you belong. In fact, as a result of your mistakes, errors and sins, you carve out a NEW path to G-d. All of our distortions, errors, and misdoings, become part of a new awareness, a new commitment, a new relationship.
No Exclusive Clubs In Our Shul
על דעת המקום ועל דעת הקהל... אנו מתירין להתפלל עם העבריינים...
O'Brien kept nudging Cohen to let him play at his Jewish Country Club. Cohen told him that only Jews could play golf there. He drove him crazy for months and he finally gave in but warned him that if anyone asked, his name was Goldberg. If asked what his occupation was, he was a manufacturer. O'Brien asked what kind of a manufacturer should he be, and was told to say that he makes Taleisim.
Sure enough, after playing 18 holes, he's approached by one of the members.
He said that he hadn't seen him before and asked his name.
"My name is Goldberg."
The next question, by Jews, is of course: "What do you do for a living, Mr. Goldberg?"
"I'm a manufacturer."
"What do you manufacture?"
"I make tallises."
"You know, Goldberg, I always wanted to know what the Hebrew letters on the neck of the tallis meant. Can you tell me?"
O'Brien said, "To tell you the truth, I only make the sleeves."
Friends, in this shul, all are welcome, those who make the sleeves and those who make the crowns… The Obrien’s and the Cohen’s, and everybody in between. We are thrilled to have you with us. Welcome! Welcome!
In real Judaism, there are no exclusive clubs. We are all children of G-d. And a healthy parent does not love one child more than any other.
The Rabbi Vs. the Therapist
נדרנא לא נדרי...
Simon has a problem. He’s had a problem for so long that it’s beginning to worry him to death. Finally, he decides he has to do something about it and goes to see Dr. Harvey Bloom, the world-renowned psychiatrist.
"Oy, doctor, have I got a problem," says Simon. "Every night, when I get into my bed, I think there's a crazy person under it ready to do me some serious harm. I'm going meshugga with fear. Please help me."
"Don’t worry, Simon," says Dr. Bloom, "I can cure you of your fears, but it will not happen overnight."
"So how long will it take, doctor?" asks Simon.
"Well," replies Dr. Bloom, thinking, "come to me twice a week for 3 years and I’ll rid you of your phobia."
"And how much do you charge a session, doctor?" asks Simon.
“My charge is $625 per session," replies Dr. Bloom. “For you, a good friend, it will be $500 a session.”
“Oy vey, Doc. I can’t easily afford that kind of money.”
“Well then you can continue living with your fear,” says the doctor.
“I will think about it.”
Many months later, Simon meets Dr. Bloom in a Wal-Mart supermarket. "So why didn't you decide to let me cure you of your fears?" asks Dr. Bloom.
"Well," replies Simon, "As I told you then, your fees were really too high for me. And then my rabbi gave me the cure for free. I was so happy to have saved all that money that I went on a month vacation to Tel Aviv."
"So how, may I ask, did your rabbi cure you?" asks Dr. Bloom.
"Easy," replies Simon, "he told me to cut the legs off my bed. The bed is now so low that nobody could possibly get under it."
With some phobias, we don’t always need to go into psychoanalysis to dissect and analyst to analyze the source of our fears. Sometimes, we can skip that and do something simple and easy that works. Don’t always get stuck in analysis; at times, a simple exercise, method, meditation, change of habit, etc. can solve the problem.
We do not worship therapy, as we do not worship anything in the world. Therapy is here to serve me, it is not an end in-and-of itself. It is here to help you function in an optimal way and live a happy, meaningful and inspired life. If you have a practical way to stay away from the ditch, there is no “mitzvah” to enter into the ditch, so you can dig tunnels and try to get out.
Between You and Your Wife
A rabbi was teaching his community the famous Mishnah (Yuma end of ch. 8): “For sins between man and G-d, Yom Kippur atones; for sins between man and his fellow, Yom Kippur does not atone.”
One of the congregants raised his hand. “How about for sins between man and his wife?”
The Rabbi responded: Yom Kippur does not get involved… And I will tell you why.
Mrs. Spiegel was called to serve for jury duty but asked to be excused because she didn't believe in capital punishment and didn't want her personal thoughts to prevent the trial from running its proper course.
But the public defender liked her thoughtfulness, and tried to convince her that she was appropriate to serve on the jury.
"Madam," he explained, "This is not a murder trial! It's a simple civil lawsuit. A wife is bringing this case against her husband because he gambled away the $12,000 he had promised to use to remodel the kitchen for her birthday."
“Plus he gambled away the $11,000 he put away to buy her a tennis bracelet for their 25th anniversary. So she is sewing him.”
"Well, okay," agreed Mrs. Spiegel, "I'll serve. I guess I could be wrong about capital punishment after all!"
Yom Kippur and the Microwave
Do you know that the microwave oven was invented by accident by a man who was orphaned and never finished grammar school?
The man was Percy Spencer. At the age of just 18 months old, Spencer’s father died, and his mother soon left him to be raised by his aunt and uncle. His uncle then died when Spencer was just seven years old. Spencer subsequently left grammar school and, at the age of 12, began working from sunrise to sundown at a spool mill, which he continued to do until he was 16 years old. Then Spencer decided to join the U.S. navy. With a skill for electrical engineering, he helped develop and produce combat radar equipment. This was of huge importance to the Allies and became the military’s second highest priority project during WWII, behind the Manhattan Project.
One day, while Spencer was working on building magnetrons for radar sets, he was standing in front of an active radar set when he noticed that the chocolate bar he had in his pocket for lunch, melted.
Now, Spencer wasn’t the first to notice something like this with radars, but he was the first to investigate it. He and some other colleagues then began trying to heat other food objects to see if a similar heating effect could be observed. The first one they heated intentionally was popcorn kernels, which became the world’s first microwaved popcorn. Spencer then decided to try to heat an egg. He got a kettle and cut a hole in the side, then put the whole egg in the kettle and positioned the magnetron to direct the micro-waves into the hole. The result was that the egg exploded in the face of one of his co-workers, who was looking in the kettle as the egg exploded.
The first microwave oven was created.
He filed a patent on October 8, 1945 for a microwave cooking oven. This first commercially produced microwave oven was about 6 feet tall and weighed around 750 pounds. The price tag on these units was about $5000 a piece. It wasn’t until 1967 that the first microwave oven that was both relatively affordable ($495) and reasonably sized (counter-top model) became available.
Now think about it. What would you do if, standing in your office, a chocolate bar in your pants melt? How would you respond to chocolate oozing down your legs? You might get upset, utter a beautiful curse word, and go change your pants. But Spencer used the opportunity to give the world a microwave oven!
This is the essence of Teshuvah and Yom Kippur. The reason G-d allows us to have “melt downs” is only to generate an invention! Every uncomfortable situation in life, Yom Kippur teaches us, can compel us to invent and discover new and precious truths that will bring healing to ourselves and our world. Yes, I may have hurt my soul. Yes, I made some grand mistakes; but from G-d’s perspective He allowed it all to happen so that I can build my own unique “microwave oven” that will bring warmth and light to the world.
Don’t Change the Baby
אם יהיו חטאיכם כשנים כשלג ילבינו...
On Yom Kippur, I am reminded of the story, when after 10 years, a wife starts to think her child looks different; he absolutely has no resemblance to neither her or her husband. She decides to do a DNA test.
She finds out that the child is from completely different parents… a broch. What a disaster!
The wife says to her husband: Darling, I have something very serious to tell you.
Husband: What’s up?
Wife: According to DNA test results, Steven is not our child...
Husband: Well don’t you remember what happened?
When we were leaving the hospital with our baby, we noticed that our baby had urinated and spoiled his nappy.
Then you said: Honey, please go change the baby, I’ll wait for you here. So I went inside the maternity room, got a clean baby and left the dirty one there…
Friends, when we have dirt in our lives, we do not get rid of the baby; we just clean the filth.
It is a tragic mistake when we associate sin with our core and essence, and we deem ourselves worthless and vile. The filth is always an accessary. It came on, and it can go off. Original Sin is not a Jewish concept.
All the Training in Vain: When the Queen Was Abducted
Some of you will remember that day in July 9, 1982, when a 31-year-old mentally challenged individual, Michael Fagan, broke into Buckingham Palace and went into the private bedroom of the queen of England, Elizabeth II, who was forced to spend time conversing with him. The visitor had evaded guardsmen, bobbies, servants, surveillance cameras and electronic devices to reach the royal bedroom. He now held her majesty the Queen in captivity.
Britons were, for once, uniformly outraged. Thundered the London Times indignantly: "So much for the guards at Buckingham Palace. The ceremony of Changing the Guard will never seem quite the same again ... All that array of scarlet tunics, burnished brass and polished leather, and still an intruder could stroll into the palace and up to the Queen's bedroom without being detected."
The Queen displayed regal presence under pressure that would have impressed even her great-great-grandmother Victoria, the stoic object of seven assassination attempts over 42 years. As Elizabeth talked with Fagan, she managed to telephone the palace police switchboard twice, in a calm voice, to intimate that she needs help. No one came to the rescue because the urgency of her situation was not realized. The queen decided to do something clever: She called and told the security officer that she did not need fire for her morning cigarette, as she already had “fire” in her room. She thought that the police would understand the subtle message and rush to eliminate the “fire.” No one did. Not one person came to rescue the Queen of England
She was finally saved when a maid – not a security guard but a maid! -- entered the bedroom, took a stunned glance at the visitor and blurted, "Bloody hell, ma'am! What's he doing in there?" The maid went and called the police.
One of the police officers was a celebrated hero, yet from World War Two -- as a very young soldier. He was in charge of security positions for many decades. He was finally promoted to this highest of positions – to safeguard Her Majesty, the Monarch of the British Commonwealth. Yet after this incident he was dismissed from duty. For as one historian put it: All of his training for over 50 years was essentially for that very moment – when the Queen would call to say that she does not need fire for her morning smoke. But when the moment came -- the most defining moment of his career – he failed.
Imagine the irony: Your entire life you are trained to be able to be ready for a single moment and act accordingly. Nobody knows when and how the moment will come, but we know it might come. And yet when it happens, you are out for lunch…
In life, we are given opportunities each day to flex our emotional and spiritual muscles, to shine, and to express our inner harmony and beauty. But it is so easy to miss the point, to forfeit opportunity, to ignore the calling of the moment.
Sometimes, your child makes a remark to you. Your wife or your husband makes a comment. It is, what psychologists call, a “bid for connection,” and you have the opportunity to show affection, presence, caring, and sensitivity. But sometimes, we are just too caught up in our own orbit, to even realize the opportunity.
The Choice to Move On
כי עמך הסליחה...
Yocheved Brookstein shared this story. She was just a young girl at the time, attending camp Chedvah in the Catskills region of New York. It was visiting day, and her grandparents and parents came to visit. Her father and grandfather took a stroll through the campgrounds. As one older man walked past them – presumably the grandfather of another camper – Yocheved’s father, Robby, noticed his own father lock eyes with the other older man, just for a moment. Yocheved’s grandfather gave a slight nod, a sign of acknowledgement, and continued walking.
“Who was that?” Robby asked his dad.
The father pushed away the question. He did not want to answer.
This made the son doubly curious. After beseeching his father for an answer, his dad says:
“That man? That man was my best friend from before the war.”
“Your best friend? How come I’ve never heard of him? Why didn’t you stop to chat with him? If he was your best friend, why didn’t you give him an embrace?”
“No... I think it’s better that we don’t meet,” came the soft reply.
Robby was confused.
Robby’s father proceeded to tell him the story. In the early stages of World War II, Romania had tried to remain a neutral power, determined to stay out of the conflagration that was beginning to consume Europe. But, in 1940, the far-right Iron Guard overthrew the government. With a hateful fascist in power, the country was firmly in Germany’s camp.
Some Jews – like Yocheved Brookstein’s grandfather – had been able to pick up on the smoke over the horizon and began making plans to get out before everything they ever knew was burned down. With great difficulty, he managed to secure the papers and visas that would help keep his immediate family, along with his in-laws, safe across the border. He was married with a young child. Dreading the day he would ever have to use the papers, he secreted them away in a hiding spot, and told not a soul.
Except, that is, for one person.
“That man you just saw, Robby, was my best friend,” his father said. They were both religious Jews, and they studied Torah in yeshiva together. They were “chavrusas.” “When we were discussing the worsening war in Europe, and Hitler’s plans to murder us all, he asked me what I was going to do. I told him about my plan, about the visas, about the hiding place.”
The next day, when he went to take another look at the papers, they were gone. Disbelieving, he felt around with his hands. Nothing. Frantically, he turned the house upside down in search of the precious papers – had he moved them somewhere? – looking everywhere, but they were nowhere to be found. No, he hadn’t ever moved them from the hiding place.
With a sick feeling in his stomach, he made his way over to the only person who had known of the papers’ location. But, arriving at his friend’s house, he felt his heartbeat stop. It was empty. His friend had just left town and taken his entire family with him. His best friend, obviously, stole his visas and got the entire family out of Hitler’s Rumania.
Before he could even process the depths of this betrayal, everything was gone. His entire family, including his wife and baby, were transported to Auschwitz and murdered. Only he alone survived the nightmare of Auschwitz.
“Now you understand why I didn’t hug my best friend…”, the old survivor said.
Robby’s mind reeled.
“Why did you not punch him in the face? Why didn’t you kill him?”
“Listen to me,” his father replied, “it was a different time, it was a different place; people were under tremendous pressure. Everyone was looking out to do what they could to survive. When people are trying to survive, they do unthinkable things.
“Now it’s over, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“When the war was over, I had to make a choice. Will I just live with endless anger, and hate, and remain captive to my negativity. I made a different choice: I wanted to live, I wanted to start all over again. I wanted to be free. So I decided to let it go.”
Wow. Most of us were not tested in such profound ways. But let me tell you what I learnt from this tale. Many of us hold on persistently to conflicts—with our parents, our spouses, our siblings, our in laws, our brothers in law or sisters in law, our own children, friends and relatives, business partners, neighbors.
This Holocaust survivor realized he had to make a choice. He did not want to remain eternally stuck in infinite anger, bitterness and hatred. “My father is a happy man; he is full of life, vitality and gratefulness. He loves his family and celebrates his blessings,” his son says about his dad. Can you and I let go?
This does not mean the other person was right. It means, that do you want to allow negative energy to live in your brain forever, rent free. So you let go.
How the Waldorf Astoria Became the Most Glamorous Hotel
נוצר חסד לאלפים...
One stormy night in 1890, a middle-aged man and his wife entered the lobby of a small hotel in Philadelphia. Trying to get out of the rain, the couple approached the front desk hoping to get some shelter for the night.
“Could you possibly give us a room here?” the husband asked. The clerk, a friendly man with a winning smile, looked at the couple and explained that there were three conventions in town.
“All of our rooms are taken,” the clerk said. “But I can’t send a nice couple like you out in the rain at one o’clock in the morning. Would you perhaps be willing to sleep in my room? It’s not exactly a suite, but it will be good enough to make you folks comfortable for the night.”
When the couple declined, the young man pressed on. “Don’t worry about me; I’ll make out just fine here in the reception area,” the clerk told them. So the couple agreed.
As he paid his bill the next morning, the guest said to the clerk, “You are the kind of manager who should be the boss of the best hotel in the United States. Maybe someday I’ll build one for you.”
The clerk looked at the couple and smiled. The three of them had a good laugh.
Years passed. The clerk had almost forgotten the incident when he received a letter from the man. It recalled that stormy night and enclosed a round-trip ticket to New York, asking the clerk to pay them a visit.
The man met him in New York, and led him to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in Manhattan. He then pointed to a great new building there, a palace of reddish stone, with turrets and watchtowers thrusting up to the sky.
“That,” said the man, “is the hotel I have just built for you to manage.”
“You must be joking,” the young man said.
“I can assure you that I am not,” said the older man.
You see, the man’s name was William Waldorf Astor, and the magnificent structure he built was the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. When it opened on March 13, 1893, it boasted 450 rooms and an army of nearly 1,000 employees, at the time the nicest and biggest hotel in the world.
(Originally it was called the Waldorf. But after John Jacob Astor IV built the Astoria next door in 1897 (he later died on the Titanic), the two hotels were run jointly as the Waldorf-Astoria, until it was closed on 3 May 1929 to make way for what would become the world’s most famous skyscraper, the Empire State Building, and a new Waldorf-Astoria was constructed on the block extending from Park Avenue to Lexington, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets and opened in 1931.)
Although it was William Waldorf Astor who conceived and financed the opulent Waldorf Hotel, it was the Waldorf’s first manager, George C.Boldt, the clerk from the Philadelphia hotel who established the premiere level of service for which the Waldorf (and later the Waldorf-Astoria) became world-renowned.
That one favor to a person, in the middle of a rainy night, would lead him to become the manager of the world’s most glamorous hotel. As the Bible puts it:
קהלת יא, א: שַׁלַּ֥ח לַחְמְךָ֖ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י הַמָּ֑יִם כִּֽי־בְרֹ֥ב הַיָּמִ֖ים תִּמְצָאֶֽנּוּ:
Send forth your bread upon the surface of the water, for after many days you will find it.
Never ever underestimate the power of doing one favor to one person.
The Worst Thing to Say by a Eulogy
על חטא שחטאנו לפניך בטפשות פה...
Sometimes we say stupid things, and we need to be able to say, I am sorry.
What’s the worst thing a rabbi or a priest can say during a eulogy?
Well, the other day a young man died from an overdose. And the priest gets up and says:
“He died doing what he loved.”
How We Judge Others: The Milkman and the Baker
על חטא שחטאנו לפניך בפלילות
“For the sin that we have sinned before you in passing judgment.”
There's a story they tell about the town's milkman and baker:
One early morning, the milkman is bewildered to find a court summons hanging on his door. He was an honest man who always behaved as such. He never cheated, lied or stole anything. He had no idea why he was summoned to court. But the baker knew.
The baker used to buy butter and cheese from the milkman for his business. One day he suspected that the lumps of butter that the milkman sold him were under five pounds - even though the milkman insisted that each was exactly five pounds. The baker decided to check out the matter and for a period he consistently weighed every lump of butter that he bought from the milkman. He discovered that they were in fact less than five pounds. Sometimes they were four pounds, sometimes they were four-and-a-half pounds, and once one was even three pounds.
The baker was angry. "Cheating me!" he told his wife angrily, "I am not going to be quiet about it." He went to the local court and complained about the milkman. "We have to prosecute him," said the baker, "we can't let him cheat all the villagers; people trust this crook!"
Later that day, the court messenger hung a notice on the milkman's house inviting him to court. The milkman arrived at the court shaking with fear. He had never been to a courthouse and had never spoken to a Judge. The Judge evoked a sense of fear amongst the villagers.
"I assume you have a very accurate scale in your dairy," said the Judge to the milkman.
"No your honor, I do not have a scale," said the milkman.
"So how do you weigh the butter? Do you just guess that it is ten pounds?"
"No G-d forbid, your honor; I am an honest man; it never occurred to me to do something like that. Very simply I built myself a scale—the kind that needs a weight on one side to balance the butter on the other."
The Judge nodded his head, and the milkman continued. "Every morning when I come to weigh the butter for the baker, I place five pounds of bread on one side of the scale. This way I know that the butter that I will give to the baker will be exactly five pounds."
"So," says the Judge, "you're telling us that the amount of butter that you give the baker is exactly the weight of the loaf of bread he supplies to you?"
"That is exactly it!" exclaimed the milkman.
The baker's face fell. You see, the baker’s scale was dishonest; the five pounds of bread he was weighing each morning to give to the milkman were not truly five pounds. And that is exactly what came back to him.
How true this is with many of us. We judge people based on who we are. And what we put out to people is what comes back to us. In life, we often end up eating the cake which we have baked.
A Surreal Tale of Two Weddings
אדם יסודו מעפר וסופו לעפר... ואתה הוא מלך א-ל חי וקיים. אין קצבה לשנותיך... ושמנו קראת בשמך (פיוט ונתנה תוקף).
I heard the following story from the man himself. (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau shared this story with me personally, during a telephone conversation in August 2018. He added a whole piece that was unknown to me.)
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau is the Chief rabbi of Netanya, Israel, and the oldest son of former chief rabbi of Israel, Yisroel Meir Lau. In 1989, a woman phoned him. She was around 35, was getting married on this and this date and she wants him to officiate the marriage.
He checks the calendar. It is the eve of Passover. The busiest night in Jewish homes—as we prepare for the Seder, and we search the entire home to make sure it is clean from all chametz. Plus every Rabbi is consumed by Jews coming to sell the chametz and ask their Passover questions.
The Rabbi also noticed that the location of the wedding was a two-hour drive from his home. He apologized and declined the invitation.
She keeps on calling and calling, pleading with him to conduct the marriage ceremony of her and her groom. “Why can’t you get someone else?” Rabbi Lau asks. I live far away from the wedding hall; it is the busiest night of the year. Get someone else. She refuses. She said that she heard him officiate at another wedding, it moved her to the core, and she decided she wants only him to do the wedding!”
After many phone calls back and forth, Rabbi Lau consented. If she can make the chupa early, and he can leave right after to get home on time to clean his home and prepare for Pesach, he would do it. She agreed.
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau arrives to the wedding. There he is greeted by an elderly man, the father of the bride, who lives in Argentina and just arrived to Israel for his daughter’s wedding.
“Sholom Aleichem,” the father says. “Fun vanet kumt a Yid?” From where does a Jew come? The old man asks in Yiddish.
And the rabbi says: From Netanya.
“Eun fun vanet kumt a yid?” The Rabbi asks. And from where do you come?
The father of the bride says: Fun Pietrikov. From the city of Pietrikov, Poland. That is the city of my origin.
The young Rabbi Lau gets the chills. You know why? His own father, Israel’s chief Rabbi, Yisroel Meir Lau, was born in Pietrikov. That is where he was raised till he was five years old and the Nazis murdered his father, mother, his siblings, and sent him to Buchenwald.
And the old man, the father of the bride, oblivious to anything going on in the heart of the rabbi, continues, and says:
Let me tell you something. Do you know who had the last Jewish wedding in Pietrikov before its Jews were murdered by the Germans?
Me and my wife. We got married in 1942, right before the SS deported the Jews of Pietrikov to Treblinka, where they were gassed.
And do you know who married us? The Rabbi of Pietrikov. His name was Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau. This was the last wedding he ever performed.
And do you know where we got married? In the Rabbi’s house! At that time, the Germans had confined us to the ghetto. So my bride and I got married in the Rabbi’s small home in the Ghetto.
A short time after our wedding, the Germans sent Rabbi Lau and his son to Treblinka. They were both murdered there. We were the last couple to be married by this great man, this great and holy Jewish leader, the Rabbi of Pietrikov.
The man continues his tale:
My new wife and I were also sent to the death camps. We were separated. We both survived, but imagined the other one was dead…
As it happened, after the War, we both got visas to South America.
One day, in 1948, I am walking in Buenos Aires and I see a familiar face… I take a closer look—and it is my wife!
We met in Argentina three years after the Holocaust!!
Can you imagine the joy?!
We move in to a home together. We craved to have a child, but it was not successful. Only in 1955 did we manage to have one daughter.
And she is the daughter we are marring off tonight!
And the father turns to the young Rabbi and says: Did you ever hear of this man, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, the last Rabbi of Pietrikov?
And the young Rabbi, trembling, with tears in his eyes, says: My name is Moshe Chaim Lau. I am his grandson. I carry his name! My father was sent to Buchenwald as a five-year-old boy and survived the war. I am the 38th ring in a chain of Rabbis that goes back 38 generations.
My grandfather did your wedding. And your daughter insisted that I do her wedding!...
“Honestly,” he said, “I was perplexed why your daughter was so stubborn. Why she would not take no for an answer. As it turns out, she herself did not even know the real reason motivating her to get me to do this wedding.”
Friends! Here you have captured, in one story, the entire narrative of Jewish history. The grandfather, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, performed a modest wedding in a ghetto in Poland, under Nazi occupation, shortly before he was deported to his death.
And 50 years later, his grandson, a son of the youngest child Holocaust survivor, marries off the granddaughter in Israel, under the skies of the Holy Land.
Drinking with G-d
כי אנו עמך ואתה אבינו... אנו רעיתך ואתה דודנו... אנו צאנך ואתה רוענו...
On the first night of Selichos over one hundred years ago, instead of going to the large Shul to signal the beginning of the prayers, Rebbe Shalom of Belz, the first Belzer Rebbe (known as the Sar Sholom, 1779-1855, the greatest Chassidic master in Galician Jewry), ordered his attendant to harness the horses. He said they would be going into the woods.
The astonished attendant wanted to remind the Rebbe that thousands of Chassidim were waiting in the Shul, but he knew better than to ask questions and went out to prepare the wagon. After a half-hour drive the Rebbe signaled him to stop. They alighted and walked down a narrow path till they saw a small hut in the distance. The Rebbe signaled the attendant to wait for him, and then tiptoed alone up to the window and peeked in.
An old Jewish man was sitting alone at a table. On the table was a bottle of vodka and two small cups, one in front of him and the other before the empty seat opposite him.
Through the window the Rebbe couldn’t hear what the old man was saying, but he saw him raise his cup in a toast, drink it, and then drink the second cup as well. This he repeated two more times, after which the Rebbe tiptoed back to the attendant. They walked quickly to the wagon and the Rebbe motioned him to drive back to the city of Belz.
Meanwhile the Chassidim had been waiting for over an hour and were becoming worried. But when the doors of the Synagogue opened and the Rebbe entered, the congregation fell silent. All eyes followed him to his place at the front of the Shul, and the room burst into prayer as they began Selichos.
When the prayer ended the Rebbe turned to his secretary and said, "There is an old man that came in to shul after everyone, and I’m sure he will finish after everyone also. He’s the one I saw in the house in the woods. Please wait for him to finish. Tell him I want him to come to my study and speak to him alone."
Half an hour later the simple Jew was standing in fear and trepidation before the Holy Rebbe.
"Sit down, Zelig," said the Rebbe, "I want you to tell me what you did in your house before you came here tonight. What were those two cups of vodka for and that strange L'Chaim you made?"
He started to shake. "How does the Rebbe know?"
"I sensed that something important was going to happen," the Rebbe answered, "so I drove to the woods and peeked in your window. But I want to understand what you were doing."
Now the poor Chassid was really confused. He was silent for a moment. Then, realizing that there was no alternative, he sank down onto a chair and began to explain.
"I’m a poor man, Rebbe, I have no children and my wife passed on years ago. I just live alone with my few farm animals, that’s all. That is, until a few months ago when my cow became sick. So I prayed to G-d to heal the cow. 'After all', I said to G-d, 'You create the entire world and everything in it, certainly you can heal one cow!'
"But the cow got worse. So I said 'Listen G-d, if You don’t heal that cow I’m not going to the shul anymore!' I figured that if G-d doesn’t care about me - I mean, it’s nothing for Him to heal one old cow - so why should I care about His place, the shul?
"But the cow died and so I, I got mad and I stopped going to synagogue. Then my goat got sick! I said to G-d, 'What! You haven’t had enough? Do you think I’m bluffing? Listen, if this goat dies I’m not putting on tefillin anymore!' So the goat died and I stopped putting on tefillin.
"Next, my chickens got ill and I told G-d that if they die I’m not going to recite Kiddush or keep Shabbos. Well, a week later I was without chickens and G-d was without my Shabbos.
"I held out for over a week until suddenly I realized that the time for Selichos was approaching. I thought to myself, 'What, Zelig, you aren’t going to go say Selichos with the Rebbe? What, are you crazy? Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are approaching, how can you be so callous?' But on the other hand I was angry at G-d and vowed I wasn’t going to the shul.
"But then I remembered that once I had an argument with Shmerel the butcher. For about a month we didn’t even say hello to each other. Then one night he came to my house with a bottle of vodka and said, 'Let’s forget the past and be friends, enough enemies we have among the gentiles, the goyim; why be enemies?!' So we made three L'Chaims, shook hands and even danced around a little together and we were friends again.
"So I figured I would do the same thing with G-d. I invited G-d to sit opposite me, poured us two cups and said, 'Listen, G-d, you forget my faults and I’ll forget yours. All right? A deal?' L'Chaim!
"So I drank my cup and understood that since G-d doesn’t drink, He probably wanted me to drink His. And after we did it twice more I stood up and we danced together! Then I felt better and came to Selichos."
The Rebbe looked deeply into Zelig’s innocent eyes. In a serious tone, he said, "Listen to me, Zelig. Before we began Selichos I saw that in heaven there was a negative decree on our holy congregation, because the Chassidim were saying the words in the prayer book but they weren’t really praying seriously to G-d. There was no sincerity; it was robotic.
"But you, Zelig, you talked to G-d like He is your friend. Zelig, your sincerity saved the entire congregation!"
Like a Best Friend
Some of us feel so many different type of emotions to G-d. Some of those emotions we feel are inappropriate.
But the most important thing is honesty. To have an honest, bare, and raw relationship with G-d. So today, fear not sharing everything on your mind and heart. Be real; tell G-d everything.
Treat G-d like your best friend; share with Him the good, the bad and the ugly. He wants a relationship with all of you. There is no need for you to “amputate” any part of yourself to enter into a relationship with him. You can and must show up with your entire self, with your entire heart, all of your emotions, feelings, and experiences.
You Can’t Destroy Your DNA: Machmud’s Lecha Dodi
וכל מאמינים...
A story:
After the concluding prayer on Friday evening, Dan searched if he could invite a guest at the Western Wall to his Shabbat dinner.
Dan noticed a young man, dungarees, backpack, dark skin, curly black hair -- looks Sephardi, maybe Moroccan. A moment more for consideration, and he was moving toward the boy with his hand extended in welcome. "Good Shabbos. My name is Dan Eisenblatt. Would you like to eat at my house tonight?"
The young man nodded. He picked up his backpack, and together they walked out of the Kotel plaza.
"Is there a song you want to sing? Do you have a song you like?” the host asked his guest in middle of the meal.
The guest said, "There is a song I'd like to sing, but I can't find it here. I really liked what we sang in the synagogue tonight. What was it called? Something ‘dodi.'"
"You mean Lecha Dodi. That’s the song we sing in middle the Shabbos evening prayers.” The host and his family sang the song.
The guest looked embarrassed, but after a bit of encouragement said firmly, "I'd really like to sing Lecha Dodi again."
Strange it is but the guest asked the song to be sung again and again. "I just really like that one," he mumbled. "Just something about it -- I really like it." In all, they must have sung "The Song" eight or nine times. Dan wasn't sure -- he lost count.
Later, when they had a quiet time to talk, Dan said, "I was just wondering, we haven't had more than a few moments to chat. Where are you from?"
The boy looked pained, then stared down at the floor and said softly, "Ramallah."
Dan's heart skipped a beat. He was sure he'd heard the boy say "Ramallah," a large Arab city on the West Bank, and the origin of many a suicide bomber.
Dan’s thoughts were racing. Will he blow himself up? If so, why did he wait so long?
What is your name? asked Dan. The boy looked terrified for a moment, then squared his shoulders and said quietly, "Machmud Ibn-esh-Sharif."
"I was born and grew up in Ramallah. I was taught to hate my Jewish oppressors, and to think that killing them was heroism. But I always had my doubts. I asked questions to my father, and he threw me out of the house. Just like that, with nothing but the clothes on my back. By now my mind was made up: I was going to run away and live with the Yahud, until I could find out what they were really like."
Machmud continued: "I snuck back into the house that night, to get my things and my backpack. My mother caught me in the middle of packing. She looked pale and upset, but she was quiet and gentle to me, and after a while she got me to talk. I told her that I wanted to go live with the Jews for a while and find out what they're really like, and maybe I would even want to convert.
"She was turning more and more pale while I said all this, and I thought she was angry, but that wasn't it. Something else was hurting her, and she whispered, 'You don't have to convert. You already are a Jew.'
"I was shocked. My head started spinning, and for a moment I couldn't speak. Then I stammered, 'What do you mean?'
"'In Judaism,' she told me, 'the religion goes according to the mother. I'm Jewish, so that means you're Jewish.'
"I never had any idea my mother was Jewish. I guess she didn't want anyone to know. She sure didn't feel too good about her life, because she whispered suddenly, 'I made a mistake by marrying an Arab man. In you, my mistake will be redeemed.'
"My mother always talked that way, poetic-like. She went and dug out some old documents, and handed them to me: things like my birth certificate and her old Israeli ID card, so I could prove I was a Jew. I've got them here, but I don't know what to do with them.
"My mother hesitated about one piece of paper. Then she said, 'You may as well take this. It is an old photograph of my grandparents, which was taken when they went looking for the grave of some great ancestor of ours. They went up north and found the grave, and that's when this picture was taken.'"
Dan gently put his hand on Machmud's shoulder. Machmud looked up, scared and hopeful at the same time. Dan asked, "Do you have the photo here?"
The boy reached in his backpack and pulled out an old, tattered envelope.
Dan gingerly took the photo from the envelope, picked up his glasses, and looked carefully at it. The first thing that stood out was the family group: an old-time Sephardi family from the turn of the century.
Then he focused on the grave they were standing around. When he read the gravestone inscription, he nearly dropped the photo. He rubbed his eyes to make sure. There was no doubt. This was a grave in the old cemetery in Tzfat, and the inscription identified it as the grave of the great Kabbalist and tzaddik Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz -- the author of "Lecha Dodi."
Dan's voice quivered with excitement as he explained to Machmud who his ancestor was. "He was a friend of the Arizal, a great Torah scholar, a tzaddik, a mystic. And Machmud, your ancestor wrote that song we were singing all Shabbos: Lecha Dodi!"
(Postscript: Machmud changed his name and enrolled in yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he studied diligently to "catch up" on his Jewish education. He got married to a nice Jewish girl, and gained popularity as a lecturer, recounting his dramatic story.)
You can’t obliterate the DNA of your soul.
- Comment
Class Summary:
Index:
Why Do We Pray Loud If G-d Is Not Deaf?
Waze and Yom Kippur: Creating a New Path
Our Shul Is No Exclusive Club
The Therapist Vs. the Rabbi
Sins Between You and Your Wife
Yom Kippur and the Microwave
Don’t Change the Baby
When the Queen Was Abducted
The Choice to Move On
Who Turned the Waldorf Into the Glamorous Hotel?
The Worst Thing You Can Say by a Eulogy
How We Judge Others
A Surreal Tale of Two Weddings
A Drink with G-d
You Can’t Destroy Your DNA: Machmud’s Lecha Dodi
Index:
Why Do We Pray Loud If G-d Is Not Deaf?
Waze and Yom Kippur: Creating a New Path
Our Shul Is No Exclusive Club
The Therapist Vs. the Rabbi
Sins Between You and Your Wife
Yom Kippur and the Microwave
Don’t Change the Baby
When the Queen Was Abducted
The Choice to Move On
Who Turned the Waldorf Into the Glamorous Hotel?
The Worst Thing You Can Say by a Eulogy
How We Judge Others
A Surreal Tale of Two Weddings
A Drink with G-d
You Can’t Destroy Your DNA: Machmud’s Lecha Dodi
If G-d Isn’t Deaf, Why Pray Loud?
שומע תפלה עדיך...
There were these two boys who lived with their Grandma. They were about to go to bed but before they slept they would pray. The older boy started to pray; he prayed about the day he had and about everything he had done. The younger boy then started to pray, he prayed much louder than his elder brother, he prayed for a bike, an iPhone, a Tablet, a DS, video games, and all types of toys.
When he finished, the older brother asked him: “Why are you praying so loud? G-d is not deaf!”
The younger brother responded: “Yea… but Grandma is!”
Yet, we love to sometimes pray loudly, sing, and say the words with passion and oomph. G-d is not deaf, but sometimes we are… So we sing the prayers and get the movement going, so we can wake up and hear what we are saying. Sound triggers concentration. קול מעורר הכוונה
Waze and Yom Kippur: Creating a New Path
נוסח הוידוי: דרך תשובה הורית.... פיוט ונתנה תוקף: כי לא תחפץ במות המת, כי אם בשובו מדרכו וחיה. ועד יום מותו תחכה לו, אם ישוב מיד תקבלו. יומא פו, ב: זדונות נעשו לו כזכיות.
One of the most elegant metaphors for Tesuvah, the work of mending our behavior and our life style, was given to us in recent times, with the development of the Global Positioning System, or in its later morphing into Waze.
This is a brilliant device. You key in your destination, and a polite voice and a map tell you where to go.
(Of course, Jewish drivers always know better – a short cut here, a detour there. “What does the lady speaking to me know? I grew up here!”
Some Jewish men are simply allergic to obeying a woman’s voice. For them we need a man’s voice giving the instructions. Perhaps every woman reminds them of their mother or wife… Perhaps it’s an ego thing: How can this matscho successful man become so subservient to the woman giving him directions? What can she tell him that he does not know on his own?
Especially with directions, men are impossible. Many of them feel that somehow it is below their dignity to take directions. They’d rather get lost for hours, and drive by mistake to California, than to accept directions…
I was once driving with someone, who made sure to disobey the Waze directions, as often as he could. Every turn the woman suggested for him to take, he “knew” a better way…
An hour later, we were badly lost. I say, nu, maybe it’s time to start listening to her?
And he tells me: “She is an anti-Semite…”
So I told him, “Sometimes Anti-Semites got it right… Let’s listen to what she has to say.”)
So this voice cordially directs your path. It tries o give you the best, fastest and most direct path to reach your destination. If there is an accident, or traffic, it will try to help you avoid it. If there is an object on the road, it will forewarn you, so you do not hit a stumbling block.
But sometimes, I am smarter than Waze. I do my own thing. Sometimes it is intentional, sometimes it’s an innocent mistake. I take a wrong turn; I miss an exist.
Patiently, Waze recalculates and provides me with a new route.
But at times, I still do not obey. I know better. I am smarter.
And again, the GPS or Waze recalculate and find a new path.
And even if I refuse her path again and again and yet again, she never gives up on me. Waze never says: You are stubborn. You are a jerk! Just go do your own thing, and I am done with you. Never! With TLC, she finds a path for me, to get me to my ultimate destination.
And even if I really get lost, I really did not listen, I have been going in the opposite direction for hours, Waze will find for me a way back…
And that is that is the gift of Teshuvah and Yom Kippur. G-d gives us a path in life, articulated in his mop for living, the Torah. It is straight, direct, healthy, and correct.
But, for whatever reason, we often do our own thing. Sometimes, intentionally, sometimes by mistake.
But G-d never gives up on us. From wherever you are, there is a path waiting for YOU. G-d helps you find a new path back to your true destination, where you belong. In fact, as a result of your mistakes, errors and sins, you carve out a NEW path to G-d. All of our distortions, errors, and misdoings, become part of a new awareness, a new commitment, a new relationship.
No Exclusive Clubs In Our Shul
על דעת המקום ועל דעת הקהל... אנו מתירין להתפלל עם העבריינים...
O'Brien kept nudging Cohen to let him play at his Jewish Country Club. Cohen told him that only Jews could play golf there. He drove him crazy for months and he finally gave in but warned him that if anyone asked, his name was Goldberg. If asked what his occupation was, he was a manufacturer. O'Brien asked what kind of a manufacturer should he be, and was told to say that he makes Taleisim.
Sure enough, after playing 18 holes, he's approached by one of the members.
He said that he hadn't seen him before and asked his name.
"My name is Goldberg."
The next question, by Jews, is of course: "What do you do for a living, Mr. Goldberg?"
"I'm a manufacturer."
"What do you manufacture?"
"I make tallises."
"You know, Goldberg, I always wanted to know what the Hebrew letters on the neck of the tallis meant. Can you tell me?"
O'Brien said, "To tell you the truth, I only make the sleeves."
Friends, in this shul, all are welcome, those who make the sleeves and those who make the crowns… The Obrien’s and the Cohen’s, and everybody in between. We are thrilled to have you with us. Welcome! Welcome!
In real Judaism, there are no exclusive clubs. We are all children of G-d. And a healthy parent does not love one child more than any other.
The Rabbi Vs. the Therapist
נדרנא לא נדרי...
Simon has a problem. He’s had a problem for so long that it’s beginning to worry him to death. Finally, he decides he has to do something about it and goes to see Dr. Harvey Bloom, the world-renowned psychiatrist.
"Oy, doctor, have I got a problem," says Simon. "Every night, when I get into my bed, I think there's a crazy person under it ready to do me some serious harm. I'm going meshugga with fear. Please help me."
"Don’t worry, Simon," says Dr. Bloom, "I can cure you of your fears, but it will not happen overnight."
"So how long will it take, doctor?" asks Simon.
"Well," replies Dr. Bloom, thinking, "come to me twice a week for 3 years and I’ll rid you of your phobia."
"And how much do you charge a session, doctor?" asks Simon.
“My charge is $625 per session," replies Dr. Bloom. “For you, a good friend, it will be $500 a session.”
“Oy vey, Doc. I can’t easily afford that kind of money.”
“Well then you can continue living with your fear,” says the doctor.
“I will think about it.”
Many months later, Simon meets Dr. Bloom in a Wal-Mart supermarket. "So why didn't you decide to let me cure you of your fears?" asks Dr. Bloom.
"Well," replies Simon, "As I told you then, your fees were really too high for me. And then my rabbi gave me the cure for free. I was so happy to have saved all that money that I went on a month vacation to Tel Aviv."
"So how, may I ask, did your rabbi cure you?" asks Dr. Bloom.
"Easy," replies Simon, "he told me to cut the legs off my bed. The bed is now so low that nobody could possibly get under it."
With some phobias, we don’t always need to go into psychoanalysis to dissect and analyst to analyze the source of our fears. Sometimes, we can skip that and do something simple and easy that works. Don’t always get stuck in analysis; at times, a simple exercise, method, meditation, change of habit, etc. can solve the problem.
We do not worship therapy, as we do not worship anything in the world. Therapy is here to serve me, it is not an end in-and-of itself. It is here to help you function in an optimal way and live a happy, meaningful and inspired life. If you have a practical way to stay away from the ditch, there is no “mitzvah” to enter into the ditch, so you can dig tunnels and try to get out.
Between You and Your Wife
A rabbi was teaching his community the famous Mishnah (Yuma end of ch. 8): “For sins between man and G-d, Yom Kippur atones; for sins between man and his fellow, Yom Kippur does not atone.”
One of the congregants raised his hand. “How about for sins between man and his wife?”
The Rabbi responded: Yom Kippur does not get involved… And I will tell you why.
Mrs. Spiegel was called to serve for jury duty but asked to be excused because she didn't believe in capital punishment and didn't want her personal thoughts to prevent the trial from running its proper course.
But the public defender liked her thoughtfulness, and tried to convince her that she was appropriate to serve on the jury.
"Madam," he explained, "This is not a murder trial! It's a simple civil lawsuit. A wife is bringing this case against her husband because he gambled away the $12,000 he had promised to use to remodel the kitchen for her birthday."
“Plus he gambled away the $11,000 he put away to buy her a tennis bracelet for their 25th anniversary. So she is sewing him.”
"Well, okay," agreed Mrs. Spiegel, "I'll serve. I guess I could be wrong about capital punishment after all!"
Yom Kippur and the Microwave
Do you know that the microwave oven was invented by accident by a man who was orphaned and never finished grammar school?
The man was Percy Spencer. At the age of just 18 months old, Spencer’s father died, and his mother soon left him to be raised by his aunt and uncle. His uncle then died when Spencer was just seven years old. Spencer subsequently left grammar school and, at the age of 12, began working from sunrise to sundown at a spool mill, which he continued to do until he was 16 years old. Then Spencer decided to join the U.S. navy. With a skill for electrical engineering, he helped develop and produce combat radar equipment. This was of huge importance to the Allies and became the military’s second highest priority project during WWII, behind the Manhattan Project.
One day, while Spencer was working on building magnetrons for radar sets, he was standing in front of an active radar set when he noticed that the chocolate bar he had in his pocket for lunch, melted.
Now, Spencer wasn’t the first to notice something like this with radars, but he was the first to investigate it. He and some other colleagues then began trying to heat other food objects to see if a similar heating effect could be observed. The first one they heated intentionally was popcorn kernels, which became the world’s first microwaved popcorn. Spencer then decided to try to heat an egg. He got a kettle and cut a hole in the side, then put the whole egg in the kettle and positioned the magnetron to direct the micro-waves into the hole. The result was that the egg exploded in the face of one of his co-workers, who was looking in the kettle as the egg exploded.
The first microwave oven was created.
He filed a patent on October 8, 1945 for a microwave cooking oven. This first commercially produced microwave oven was about 6 feet tall and weighed around 750 pounds. The price tag on these units was about $5000 a piece. It wasn’t until 1967 that the first microwave oven that was both relatively affordable ($495) and reasonably sized (counter-top model) became available.
Now think about it. What would you do if, standing in your office, a chocolate bar in your pants melt? How would you respond to chocolate oozing down your legs? You might get upset, utter a beautiful curse word, and go change your pants. But Spencer used the opportunity to give the world a microwave oven!
This is the essence of Teshuvah and Yom Kippur. The reason G-d allows us to have “melt downs” is only to generate an invention! Every uncomfortable situation in life, Yom Kippur teaches us, can compel us to invent and discover new and precious truths that will bring healing to ourselves and our world. Yes, I may have hurt my soul. Yes, I made some grand mistakes; but from G-d’s perspective He allowed it all to happen so that I can build my own unique “microwave oven” that will bring warmth and light to the world.
Don’t Change the Baby
אם יהיו חטאיכם כשנים כשלג ילבינו...
On Yom Kippur, I am reminded of the story, when after 10 years, a wife starts to think her child looks different; he absolutely has no resemblance to neither her or her husband. She decides to do a DNA test.
She finds out that the child is from completely different parents… a broch. What a disaster!
The wife says to her husband: Darling, I have something very serious to tell you.
Husband: What’s up?
Wife: According to DNA test results, Steven is not our child...
Husband: Well don’t you remember what happened?
When we were leaving the hospital with our baby, we noticed that our baby had urinated and spoiled his nappy.
Then you said: Honey, please go change the baby, I’ll wait for you here. So I went inside the maternity room, got a clean baby and left the dirty one there…
Friends, when we have dirt in our lives, we do not get rid of the baby; we just clean the filth.
It is a tragic mistake when we associate sin with our core and essence, and we deem ourselves worthless and vile. The filth is always an accessary. It came on, and it can go off. Original Sin is not a Jewish concept.
All the Training in Vain: When the Queen Was Abducted
Some of you will remember that day in July 9, 1982, when a 31-year-old mentally challenged individual, Michael Fagan, broke into Buckingham Palace and went into the private bedroom of the queen of England, Elizabeth II, who was forced to spend time conversing with him. The visitor had evaded guardsmen, bobbies, servants, surveillance cameras and electronic devices to reach the royal bedroom. He now held her majesty the Queen in captivity.
Britons were, for once, uniformly outraged. Thundered the London Times indignantly: "So much for the guards at Buckingham Palace. The ceremony of Changing the Guard will never seem quite the same again ... All that array of scarlet tunics, burnished brass and polished leather, and still an intruder could stroll into the palace and up to the Queen's bedroom without being detected."
The Queen displayed regal presence under pressure that would have impressed even her great-great-grandmother Victoria, the stoic object of seven assassination attempts over 42 years. As Elizabeth talked with Fagan, she managed to telephone the palace police switchboard twice, in a calm voice, to intimate that she needs help. No one came to the rescue because the urgency of her situation was not realized. The queen decided to do something clever: She called and told the security officer that she did not need fire for her morning cigarette, as she already had “fire” in her room. She thought that the police would understand the subtle message and rush to eliminate the “fire.” No one did. Not one person came to rescue the Queen of England
She was finally saved when a maid – not a security guard but a maid! -- entered the bedroom, took a stunned glance at the visitor and blurted, "Bloody hell, ma'am! What's he doing in there?" The maid went and called the police.
One of the police officers was a celebrated hero, yet from World War Two -- as a very young soldier. He was in charge of security positions for many decades. He was finally promoted to this highest of positions – to safeguard Her Majesty, the Monarch of the British Commonwealth. Yet after this incident he was dismissed from duty. For as one historian put it: All of his training for over 50 years was essentially for that very moment – when the Queen would call to say that she does not need fire for her morning smoke. But when the moment came -- the most defining moment of his career – he failed.
Imagine the irony: Your entire life you are trained to be able to be ready for a single moment and act accordingly. Nobody knows when and how the moment will come, but we know it might come. And yet when it happens, you are out for lunch…
In life, we are given opportunities each day to flex our emotional and spiritual muscles, to shine, and to express our inner harmony and beauty. But it is so easy to miss the point, to forfeit opportunity, to ignore the calling of the moment.
Sometimes, your child makes a remark to you. Your wife or your husband makes a comment. It is, what psychologists call, a “bid for connection,” and you have the opportunity to show affection, presence, caring, and sensitivity. But sometimes, we are just too caught up in our own orbit, to even realize the opportunity.
The Choice to Move On
כי עמך הסליחה...
Yocheved Brookstein shared this story. She was just a young girl at the time, attending camp Chedvah in the Catskills region of New York. It was visiting day, and her grandparents and parents came to visit. Her father and grandfather took a stroll through the campgrounds. As one older man walked past them – presumably the grandfather of another camper – Yocheved’s father, Robby, noticed his own father lock eyes with the other older man, just for a moment. Yocheved’s grandfather gave a slight nod, a sign of acknowledgement, and continued walking.
“Who was that?” Robby asked his dad.
The father pushed away the question. He did not want to answer.
This made the son doubly curious. After beseeching his father for an answer, his dad says:
“That man? That man was my best friend from before the war.”
“Your best friend? How come I’ve never heard of him? Why didn’t you stop to chat with him? If he was your best friend, why didn’t you give him an embrace?”
“No... I think it’s better that we don’t meet,” came the soft reply.
Robby was confused.
Robby’s father proceeded to tell him the story. In the early stages of World War II, Romania had tried to remain a neutral power, determined to stay out of the conflagration that was beginning to consume Europe. But, in 1940, the far-right Iron Guard overthrew the government. With a hateful fascist in power, the country was firmly in Germany’s camp.
Some Jews – like Yocheved Brookstein’s grandfather – had been able to pick up on the smoke over the horizon and began making plans to get out before everything they ever knew was burned down. With great difficulty, he managed to secure the papers and visas that would help keep his immediate family, along with his in-laws, safe across the border. He was married with a young child. Dreading the day he would ever have to use the papers, he secreted them away in a hiding spot, and told not a soul.
Except, that is, for one person.
“That man you just saw, Robby, was my best friend,” his father said. They were both religious Jews, and they studied Torah in yeshiva together. They were “chavrusas.” “When we were discussing the worsening war in Europe, and Hitler’s plans to murder us all, he asked me what I was going to do. I told him about my plan, about the visas, about the hiding place.”
The next day, when he went to take another look at the papers, they were gone. Disbelieving, he felt around with his hands. Nothing. Frantically, he turned the house upside down in search of the precious papers – had he moved them somewhere? – looking everywhere, but they were nowhere to be found. No, he hadn’t ever moved them from the hiding place.
With a sick feeling in his stomach, he made his way over to the only person who had known of the papers’ location. But, arriving at his friend’s house, he felt his heartbeat stop. It was empty. His friend had just left town and taken his entire family with him. His best friend, obviously, stole his visas and got the entire family out of Hitler’s Rumania.
Before he could even process the depths of this betrayal, everything was gone. His entire family, including his wife and baby, were transported to Auschwitz and murdered. Only he alone survived the nightmare of Auschwitz.
“Now you understand why I didn’t hug my best friend…”, the old survivor said.
Robby’s mind reeled.
“Why did you not punch him in the face? Why didn’t you kill him?”
“Listen to me,” his father replied, “it was a different time, it was a different place; people were under tremendous pressure. Everyone was looking out to do what they could to survive. When people are trying to survive, they do unthinkable things.
“Now it’s over, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“When the war was over, I had to make a choice. Will I just live with endless anger, and hate, and remain captive to my negativity. I made a different choice: I wanted to live, I wanted to start all over again. I wanted to be free. So I decided to let it go.”
Wow. Most of us were not tested in such profound ways. But let me tell you what I learnt from this tale. Many of us hold on persistently to conflicts—with our parents, our spouses, our siblings, our in laws, our brothers in law or sisters in law, our own children, friends and relatives, business partners, neighbors.
This Holocaust survivor realized he had to make a choice. He did not want to remain eternally stuck in infinite anger, bitterness and hatred. “My father is a happy man; he is full of life, vitality and gratefulness. He loves his family and celebrates his blessings,” his son says about his dad. Can you and I let go?
This does not mean the other person was right. It means, that do you want to allow negative energy to live in your brain forever, rent free. So you let go.
How the Waldorf Astoria Became the Most Glamorous Hotel
נוצר חסד לאלפים...
One stormy night in 1890, a middle-aged man and his wife entered the lobby of a small hotel in Philadelphia. Trying to get out of the rain, the couple approached the front desk hoping to get some shelter for the night.
“Could you possibly give us a room here?” the husband asked. The clerk, a friendly man with a winning smile, looked at the couple and explained that there were three conventions in town.
“All of our rooms are taken,” the clerk said. “But I can’t send a nice couple like you out in the rain at one o’clock in the morning. Would you perhaps be willing to sleep in my room? It’s not exactly a suite, but it will be good enough to make you folks comfortable for the night.”
When the couple declined, the young man pressed on. “Don’t worry about me; I’ll make out just fine here in the reception area,” the clerk told them. So the couple agreed.
As he paid his bill the next morning, the guest said to the clerk, “You are the kind of manager who should be the boss of the best hotel in the United States. Maybe someday I’ll build one for you.”
The clerk looked at the couple and smiled. The three of them had a good laugh.
Years passed. The clerk had almost forgotten the incident when he received a letter from the man. It recalled that stormy night and enclosed a round-trip ticket to New York, asking the clerk to pay them a visit.
The man met him in New York, and led him to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in Manhattan. He then pointed to a great new building there, a palace of reddish stone, with turrets and watchtowers thrusting up to the sky.
“That,” said the man, “is the hotel I have just built for you to manage.”
“You must be joking,” the young man said.
“I can assure you that I am not,” said the older man.
You see, the man’s name was William Waldorf Astor, and the magnificent structure he built was the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. When it opened on March 13, 1893, it boasted 450 rooms and an army of nearly 1,000 employees, at the time the nicest and biggest hotel in the world.
(Originally it was called the Waldorf. But after John Jacob Astor IV built the Astoria next door in 1897 (he later died on the Titanic), the two hotels were run jointly as the Waldorf-Astoria, until it was closed on 3 May 1929 to make way for what would become the world’s most famous skyscraper, the Empire State Building, and a new Waldorf-Astoria was constructed on the block extending from Park Avenue to Lexington, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets and opened in 1931.)
Although it was William Waldorf Astor who conceived and financed the opulent Waldorf Hotel, it was the Waldorf’s first manager, George C.Boldt, the clerk from the Philadelphia hotel who established the premiere level of service for which the Waldorf (and later the Waldorf-Astoria) became world-renowned.
That one favor to a person, in the middle of a rainy night, would lead him to become the manager of the world’s most glamorous hotel. As the Bible puts it:
קהלת יא, א: שַׁלַּ֥ח לַחְמְךָ֖ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י הַמָּ֑יִם כִּֽי־בְרֹ֥ב הַיָּמִ֖ים תִּמְצָאֶֽנּוּ:
Send forth your bread upon the surface of the water, for after many days you will find it.
Never ever underestimate the power of doing one favor to one person.
The Worst Thing to Say by a Eulogy
על חטא שחטאנו לפניך בטפשות פה...
Sometimes we say stupid things, and we need to be able to say, I am sorry.
What’s the worst thing a rabbi or a priest can say during a eulogy?
Well, the other day a young man died from an overdose. And the priest gets up and says:
“He died doing what he loved.”
How We Judge Others: The Milkman and the Baker
על חטא שחטאנו לפניך בפלילות
“For the sin that we have sinned before you in passing judgment.”
There's a story they tell about the town's milkman and baker:
One early morning, the milkman is bewildered to find a court summons hanging on his door. He was an honest man who always behaved as such. He never cheated, lied or stole anything. He had no idea why he was summoned to court. But the baker knew.
The baker used to buy butter and cheese from the milkman for his business. One day he suspected that the lumps of butter that the milkman sold him were under five pounds - even though the milkman insisted that each was exactly five pounds. The baker decided to check out the matter and for a period he consistently weighed every lump of butter that he bought from the milkman. He discovered that they were in fact less than five pounds. Sometimes they were four pounds, sometimes they were four-and-a-half pounds, and once one was even three pounds.
The baker was angry. "Cheating me!" he told his wife angrily, "I am not going to be quiet about it." He went to the local court and complained about the milkman. "We have to prosecute him," said the baker, "we can't let him cheat all the villagers; people trust this crook!"
Later that day, the court messenger hung a notice on the milkman's house inviting him to court. The milkman arrived at the court shaking with fear. He had never been to a courthouse and had never spoken to a Judge. The Judge evoked a sense of fear amongst the villagers.
"I assume you have a very accurate scale in your dairy," said the Judge to the milkman.
"No your honor, I do not have a scale," said the milkman.
"So how do you weigh the butter? Do you just guess that it is ten pounds?"
"No G-d forbid, your honor; I am an honest man; it never occurred to me to do something like that. Very simply I built myself a scale—the kind that needs a weight on one side to balance the butter on the other."
The Judge nodded his head, and the milkman continued. "Every morning when I come to weigh the butter for the baker, I place five pounds of bread on one side of the scale. This way I know that the butter that I will give to the baker will be exactly five pounds."
"So," says the Judge, "you're telling us that the amount of butter that you give the baker is exactly the weight of the loaf of bread he supplies to you?"
"That is exactly it!" exclaimed the milkman.
The baker's face fell. You see, the baker’s scale was dishonest; the five pounds of bread he was weighing each morning to give to the milkman were not truly five pounds. And that is exactly what came back to him.
How true this is with many of us. We judge people based on who we are. And what we put out to people is what comes back to us. In life, we often end up eating the cake which we have baked.
A Surreal Tale of Two Weddings
אדם יסודו מעפר וסופו לעפר... ואתה הוא מלך א-ל חי וקיים. אין קצבה לשנותיך... ושמנו קראת בשמך (פיוט ונתנה תוקף).
I heard the following story from the man himself. (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau shared this story with me personally, during a telephone conversation in August 2018. He added a whole piece that was unknown to me.)
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau is the Chief rabbi of Netanya, Israel, and the oldest son of former chief rabbi of Israel, Yisroel Meir Lau. In 1989, a woman phoned him. She was around 35, was getting married on this and this date and she wants him to officiate the marriage.
He checks the calendar. It is the eve of Passover. The busiest night in Jewish homes—as we prepare for the Seder, and we search the entire home to make sure it is clean from all chametz. Plus every Rabbi is consumed by Jews coming to sell the chametz and ask their Passover questions.
The Rabbi also noticed that the location of the wedding was a two-hour drive from his home. He apologized and declined the invitation.
She keeps on calling and calling, pleading with him to conduct the marriage ceremony of her and her groom. “Why can’t you get someone else?” Rabbi Lau asks. I live far away from the wedding hall; it is the busiest night of the year. Get someone else. She refuses. She said that she heard him officiate at another wedding, it moved her to the core, and she decided she wants only him to do the wedding!”
After many phone calls back and forth, Rabbi Lau consented. If she can make the chupa early, and he can leave right after to get home on time to clean his home and prepare for Pesach, he would do it. She agreed.
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau arrives to the wedding. There he is greeted by an elderly man, the father of the bride, who lives in Argentina and just arrived to Israel for his daughter’s wedding.
“Sholom Aleichem,” the father says. “Fun vanet kumt a Yid?” From where does a Jew come? The old man asks in Yiddish.
And the rabbi says: From Netanya.
“Eun fun vanet kumt a yid?” The Rabbi asks. And from where do you come?
The father of the bride says: Fun Pietrikov. From the city of Pietrikov, Poland. That is the city of my origin.
The young Rabbi Lau gets the chills. You know why? His own father, Israel’s chief Rabbi, Yisroel Meir Lau, was born in Pietrikov. That is where he was raised till he was five years old and the Nazis murdered his father, mother, his siblings, and sent him to Buchenwald.
And the old man, the father of the bride, oblivious to anything going on in the heart of the rabbi, continues, and says:
Let me tell you something. Do you know who had the last Jewish wedding in Pietrikov before its Jews were murdered by the Germans?
Me and my wife. We got married in 1942, right before the SS deported the Jews of Pietrikov to Treblinka, where they were gassed.
And do you know who married us? The Rabbi of Pietrikov. His name was Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau. This was the last wedding he ever performed.
And do you know where we got married? In the Rabbi’s house! At that time, the Germans had confined us to the ghetto. So my bride and I got married in the Rabbi’s small home in the Ghetto.
A short time after our wedding, the Germans sent Rabbi Lau and his son to Treblinka. They were both murdered there. We were the last couple to be married by this great man, this great and holy Jewish leader, the Rabbi of Pietrikov.
The man continues his tale:
My new wife and I were also sent to the death camps. We were separated. We both survived, but imagined the other one was dead…
As it happened, after the War, we both got visas to South America.
One day, in 1948, I am walking in Buenos Aires and I see a familiar face… I take a closer look—and it is my wife!
We met in Argentina three years after the Holocaust!!
Can you imagine the joy?!
We move in to a home together. We craved to have a child, but it was not successful. Only in 1955 did we manage to have one daughter.
And she is the daughter we are marring off tonight!
And the father turns to the young Rabbi and says: Did you ever hear of this man, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, the last Rabbi of Pietrikov?
And the young Rabbi, trembling, with tears in his eyes, says: My name is Moshe Chaim Lau. I am his grandson. I carry his name! My father was sent to Buchenwald as a five-year-old boy and survived the war. I am the 38th ring in a chain of Rabbis that goes back 38 generations.
My grandfather did your wedding. And your daughter insisted that I do her wedding!...
“Honestly,” he said, “I was perplexed why your daughter was so stubborn. Why she would not take no for an answer. As it turns out, she herself did not even know the real reason motivating her to get me to do this wedding.”
Friends! Here you have captured, in one story, the entire narrative of Jewish history. The grandfather, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, performed a modest wedding in a ghetto in Poland, under Nazi occupation, shortly before he was deported to his death.
And 50 years later, his grandson, a son of the youngest child Holocaust survivor, marries off the granddaughter in Israel, under the skies of the Holy Land.
Drinking with G-d
כי אנו עמך ואתה אבינו... אנו רעיתך ואתה דודנו... אנו צאנך ואתה רוענו...
On the first night of Selichos over one hundred years ago, instead of going to the large Shul to signal the beginning of the prayers, Rebbe Shalom of Belz, the first Belzer Rebbe (known as the Sar Sholom, 1779-1855, the greatest Chassidic master in Galician Jewry), ordered his attendant to harness the horses. He said they would be going into the woods.
The astonished attendant wanted to remind the Rebbe that thousands of Chassidim were waiting in the Shul, but he knew better than to ask questions and went out to prepare the wagon. After a half-hour drive the Rebbe signaled him to stop. They alighted and walked down a narrow path till they saw a small hut in the distance. The Rebbe signaled the attendant to wait for him, and then tiptoed alone up to the window and peeked in.
An old Jewish man was sitting alone at a table. On the table was a bottle of vodka and two small cups, one in front of him and the other before the empty seat opposite him.
Through the window the Rebbe couldn’t hear what the old man was saying, but he saw him raise his cup in a toast, drink it, and then drink the second cup as well. This he repeated two more times, after which the Rebbe tiptoed back to the attendant. They walked quickly to the wagon and the Rebbe motioned him to drive back to the city of Belz.
Meanwhile the Chassidim had been waiting for over an hour and were becoming worried. But when the doors of the Synagogue opened and the Rebbe entered, the congregation fell silent. All eyes followed him to his place at the front of the Shul, and the room burst into prayer as they began Selichos.
When the prayer ended the Rebbe turned to his secretary and said, "There is an old man that came in to shul after everyone, and I’m sure he will finish after everyone also. He’s the one I saw in the house in the woods. Please wait for him to finish. Tell him I want him to come to my study and speak to him alone."
Half an hour later the simple Jew was standing in fear and trepidation before the Holy Rebbe.
"Sit down, Zelig," said the Rebbe, "I want you to tell me what you did in your house before you came here tonight. What were those two cups of vodka for and that strange L'Chaim you made?"
He started to shake. "How does the Rebbe know?"
"I sensed that something important was going to happen," the Rebbe answered, "so I drove to the woods and peeked in your window. But I want to understand what you were doing."
Now the poor Chassid was really confused. He was silent for a moment. Then, realizing that there was no alternative, he sank down onto a chair and began to explain.
"I’m a poor man, Rebbe, I have no children and my wife passed on years ago. I just live alone with my few farm animals, that’s all. That is, until a few months ago when my cow became sick. So I prayed to G-d to heal the cow. 'After all', I said to G-d, 'You create the entire world and everything in it, certainly you can heal one cow!'
"But the cow got worse. So I said 'Listen G-d, if You don’t heal that cow I’m not going to the shul anymore!' I figured that if G-d doesn’t care about me - I mean, it’s nothing for Him to heal one old cow - so why should I care about His place, the shul?
"But the cow died and so I, I got mad and I stopped going to synagogue. Then my goat got sick! I said to G-d, 'What! You haven’t had enough? Do you think I’m bluffing? Listen, if this goat dies I’m not putting on tefillin anymore!' So the goat died and I stopped putting on tefillin.
"Next, my chickens got ill and I told G-d that if they die I’m not going to recite Kiddush or keep Shabbos. Well, a week later I was without chickens and G-d was without my Shabbos.
"I held out for over a week until suddenly I realized that the time for Selichos was approaching. I thought to myself, 'What, Zelig, you aren’t going to go say Selichos with the Rebbe? What, are you crazy? Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are approaching, how can you be so callous?' But on the other hand I was angry at G-d and vowed I wasn’t going to the shul.
"But then I remembered that once I had an argument with Shmerel the butcher. For about a month we didn’t even say hello to each other. Then one night he came to my house with a bottle of vodka and said, 'Let’s forget the past and be friends, enough enemies we have among the gentiles, the goyim; why be enemies?!' So we made three L'Chaims, shook hands and even danced around a little together and we were friends again.
"So I figured I would do the same thing with G-d. I invited G-d to sit opposite me, poured us two cups and said, 'Listen, G-d, you forget my faults and I’ll forget yours. All right? A deal?' L'Chaim!
"So I drank my cup and understood that since G-d doesn’t drink, He probably wanted me to drink His. And after we did it twice more I stood up and we danced together! Then I felt better and came to Selichos."
The Rebbe looked deeply into Zelig’s innocent eyes. In a serious tone, he said, "Listen to me, Zelig. Before we began Selichos I saw that in heaven there was a negative decree on our holy congregation, because the Chassidim were saying the words in the prayer book but they weren’t really praying seriously to G-d. There was no sincerity; it was robotic.
"But you, Zelig, you talked to G-d like He is your friend. Zelig, your sincerity saved the entire congregation!"
Like a Best Friend
Some of us feel so many different type of emotions to G-d. Some of those emotions we feel are inappropriate.
But the most important thing is honesty. To have an honest, bare, and raw relationship with G-d. So today, fear not sharing everything on your mind and heart. Be real; tell G-d everything.
Treat G-d like your best friend; share with Him the good, the bad and the ugly. He wants a relationship with all of you. There is no need for you to “amputate” any part of yourself to enter into a relationship with him. You can and must show up with your entire self, with your entire heart, all of your emotions, feelings, and experiences.
You Can’t Destroy Your DNA: Machmud’s Lecha Dodi
וכל מאמינים...
A story:
After the concluding prayer on Friday evening, Dan searched if he could invite a guest at the Western Wall to his Shabbat dinner.
Dan noticed a young man, dungarees, backpack, dark skin, curly black hair -- looks Sephardi, maybe Moroccan. A moment more for consideration, and he was moving toward the boy with his hand extended in welcome. "Good Shabbos. My name is Dan Eisenblatt. Would you like to eat at my house tonight?"
The young man nodded. He picked up his backpack, and together they walked out of the Kotel plaza.
"Is there a song you want to sing? Do you have a song you like?” the host asked his guest in middle of the meal.
The guest said, "There is a song I'd like to sing, but I can't find it here. I really liked what we sang in the synagogue tonight. What was it called? Something ‘dodi.'"
"You mean Lecha Dodi. That’s the song we sing in middle the Shabbos evening prayers.” The host and his family sang the song.
The guest looked embarrassed, but after a bit of encouragement said firmly, "I'd really like to sing Lecha Dodi again."
Strange it is but the guest asked the song to be sung again and again. "I just really like that one," he mumbled. "Just something about it -- I really like it." In all, they must have sung "The Song" eight or nine times. Dan wasn't sure -- he lost count.
Later, when they had a quiet time to talk, Dan said, "I was just wondering, we haven't had more than a few moments to chat. Where are you from?"
The boy looked pained, then stared down at the floor and said softly, "Ramallah."
Dan's heart skipped a beat. He was sure he'd heard the boy say "Ramallah," a large Arab city on the West Bank, and the origin of many a suicide bomber.
Dan’s thoughts were racing. Will he blow himself up? If so, why did he wait so long?
What is your name? asked Dan. The boy looked terrified for a moment, then squared his shoulders and said quietly, "Machmud Ibn-esh-Sharif."
"I was born and grew up in Ramallah. I was taught to hate my Jewish oppressors, and to think that killing them was heroism. But I always had my doubts. I asked questions to my father, and he threw me out of the house. Just like that, with nothing but the clothes on my back. By now my mind was made up: I was going to run away and live with the Yahud, until I could find out what they were really like."
Machmud continued: "I snuck back into the house that night, to get my things and my backpack. My mother caught me in the middle of packing. She looked pale and upset, but she was quiet and gentle to me, and after a while she got me to talk. I told her that I wanted to go live with the Jews for a while and find out what they're really like, and maybe I would even want to convert.
"She was turning more and more pale while I said all this, and I thought she was angry, but that wasn't it. Something else was hurting her, and she whispered, 'You don't have to convert. You already are a Jew.'
"I was shocked. My head started spinning, and for a moment I couldn't speak. Then I stammered, 'What do you mean?'
"'In Judaism,' she told me, 'the religion goes according to the mother. I'm Jewish, so that means you're Jewish.'
"I never had any idea my mother was Jewish. I guess she didn't want anyone to know. She sure didn't feel too good about her life, because she whispered suddenly, 'I made a mistake by marrying an Arab man. In you, my mistake will be redeemed.'
"My mother always talked that way, poetic-like. She went and dug out some old documents, and handed them to me: things like my birth certificate and her old Israeli ID card, so I could prove I was a Jew. I've got them here, but I don't know what to do with them.
"My mother hesitated about one piece of paper. Then she said, 'You may as well take this. It is an old photograph of my grandparents, which was taken when they went looking for the grave of some great ancestor of ours. They went up north and found the grave, and that's when this picture was taken.'"
Dan gently put his hand on Machmud's shoulder. Machmud looked up, scared and hopeful at the same time. Dan asked, "Do you have the photo here?"
The boy reached in his backpack and pulled out an old, tattered envelope.
Dan gingerly took the photo from the envelope, picked up his glasses, and looked carefully at it. The first thing that stood out was the family group: an old-time Sephardi family from the turn of the century.
Then he focused on the grave they were standing around. When he read the gravestone inscription, he nearly dropped the photo. He rubbed his eyes to make sure. There was no doubt. This was a grave in the old cemetery in Tzfat, and the inscription identified it as the grave of the great Kabbalist and tzaddik Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz -- the author of "Lecha Dodi."
Dan's voice quivered with excitement as he explained to Machmud who his ancestor was. "He was a friend of the Arizal, a great Torah scholar, a tzaddik, a mystic. And Machmud, your ancestor wrote that song we were singing all Shabbos: Lecha Dodi!"
(Postscript: Machmud changed his name and enrolled in yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he studied diligently to "catch up" on his Jewish education. He got married to a nice Jewish girl, and gained popularity as a lecturer, recounting his dramatic story.)
You can’t obliterate the DNA of your soul.
Categories
Yom Kippur 5779
Rabbi YY Jacobson
- September 4, 2018
- |
- 24 Elul 5778
- |
- 28 views
Yom Kippur Insights
15 Yom Kippur Insights
Rabbi YY Jacobson
- September 4, 2018
Index:
Why Do We Pray Loud If G-d Is Not Deaf?
Waze and Yom Kippur: Creating a New Path
Our Shul Is No Exclusive Club
The Therapist Vs. the Rabbi
Sins Between You and Your Wife
Yom Kippur and the Microwave
Don’t Change the Baby
When the Queen Was Abducted
The Choice to Move On
Who Turned the Waldorf Into the Glamorous Hotel?
The Worst Thing You Can Say by a Eulogy
How We Judge Others
A Surreal Tale of Two Weddings
A Drink with G-d
You Can’t Destroy Your DNA: Machmud’s Lecha Dodi
If G-d Isn’t Deaf, Why Pray Loud?שומע תפלה עדיך...
There were these two boys who lived with their Grandma. They were about to go to bed but before they slept they would pray. The older boy started to pray; he prayed about the day he had and about everything he had done. The younger boy then started to pray, he prayed much louder than his elder brother, he prayed for a bike, an iPhone, a Tablet, a DS, video games, and all types of toys.
When he finished, the older brother asked him: “Why are you praying so loud? G-d is not deaf!”
The younger brother responded: “Yea… but Grandma is!”
Yet, we love to sometimes pray loudly, sing, and say the words with passion and oomph. G-d is not deaf, but sometimes we are… So we sing the prayers and get the movement going, so we can wake up and hear what we are saying. Sound triggers concentration. קול מעורר הכוונה
Waze and Yom Kippur: Creating a New Path
נוסח הוידוי: דרך תשובה הורית.... פיוט ונתנה תוקף: כי לא תחפץ במות המת, כי אם בשובו מדרכו וחיה. ועד יום מותו תחכה לו, אם ישוב מיד תקבלו. יומא פו, ב: זדונות נעשו לו כזכיות.
One of the most elegant metaphors for Tesuvah, the work of mending our behavior and our life style, was given to us in recent times, with the development of the Global Positioning System, or in its later morphing into Waze.
This is a brilliant device. You key in your destination, and a polite voice and a map tell you where to go.
(Of course, Jewish drivers always know better – a short cut here, a detour there. “What does the lady speaking to me know? I grew up here!”
Some Jewish men are simply allergic to obeying a woman’s voice. For them we need a man’s voice giving the instructions. Perhaps every woman reminds them of their mother or wife… Perhaps it’s an ego thing: How can this matscho successful man become so subservient to the woman giving him directions? What can she tell him that he does not know on his own?
Especially with directions, men are impossible. Many of them feel that somehow it is below their dignity to take directions. They’d rather get lost for hours, and drive by mistake to California, than to accept directions…
I was once driving with someone, who made sure to disobey the Waze directions, as often as he could. Every turn the woman suggested for him to take, he “knew” a better way…
An hour later, we were badly lost. I say, nu, maybe it’s time to start listening to her?
And he tells me: “She is an anti-Semite…”
So I told him, “Sometimes Anti-Semites got it right… Let’s listen to what she has to say.”)
So this voice cordially directs your path. It tries o give you the best, fastest and most direct path to reach your destination. If there is an accident, or traffic, it will try to help you avoid it. If there is an object on the road, it will forewarn you, so you do not hit a stumbling block.
But sometimes, I am smarter than Waze. I do my own thing. Sometimes it is intentional, sometimes it’s an innocent mistake. I take a wrong turn; I miss an exist.
Patiently, Waze recalculates and provides me with a new route.
But at times, I still do not obey. I know better. I am smarter.
And again, the GPS or Waze recalculate and find a new path.
And even if I refuse her path again and again and yet again, she never gives up on me. Waze never says: You are stubborn. You are a jerk! Just go do your own thing, and I am done with you. Never! With TLC, she finds a path for me, to get me to my ultimate destination.
And even if I really get lost, I really did not listen, I have been going in the opposite direction for hours, Waze will find for me a way back…
And that is that is the gift of Teshuvah and Yom Kippur. G-d gives us a path in life, articulated in his mop for living, the Torah. It is straight, direct, healthy, and correct.
But, for whatever reason, we often do our own thing. Sometimes, intentionally, sometimes by mistake.
But G-d never gives up on us. From wherever you are, there is a path waiting for YOU. G-d helps you find a new path back to your true destination, where you belong. In fact, as a result of your mistakes, errors and sins, you carve out a NEW path to G-d. All of our distortions, errors, and misdoings, become part of a new awareness, a new commitment, a new relationship.
No Exclusive Clubs In Our Shul
על דעת המקום ועל דעת הקהל... אנו מתירין להתפלל עם העבריינים...
O'Brien kept nudging Cohen to let him play at his Jewish Country Club. Cohen told him that only Jews could play golf there. He drove him crazy for months and he finally gave in but warned him that if anyone asked, his name was Goldberg. If asked what his occupation was, he was a manufacturer. O'Brien asked what kind of a manufacturer should he be, and was told to say that he makes Taleisim.
Sure enough, after playing 18 holes, he's approached by one of the members.
He said that he hadn't seen him before and asked his name.
"My name is Goldberg."
The next question, by Jews, is of course: "What do you do for a living, Mr. Goldberg?"
"I'm a manufacturer."
"What do you manufacture?"
"I make tallises."
"You know, Goldberg, I always wanted to know what the Hebrew letters on the neck of the tallis meant. Can you tell me?"
O'Brien said, "To tell you the truth, I only make the sleeves."
Friends, in this shul, all are welcome, those who make the sleeves and those who make the crowns… The Obrien’s and the Cohen’s, and everybody in between. We are thrilled to have you with us. Welcome! Welcome!
In real Judaism, there are no exclusive clubs. We are all children of G-d. And a healthy parent does not love one child more than any other.
The Rabbi Vs. the Therapist
נדרנא לא נדרי...
Simon has a problem. He’s had a problem for so long that it’s beginning to worry him to death. Finally, he decides he has to do something about it and goes to see Dr. Harvey Bloom, the world-renowned psychiatrist.
"Oy, doctor, have I got a problem," says Simon. "Every night, when I get into my bed, I think there's a crazy person under it ready to do me some serious harm. I'm going meshugga with fear. Please help me."
"Don’t worry, Simon," says Dr. Bloom, "I can cure you of your fears, but it will not happen overnight."
"So how long will it take, doctor?" asks Simon.
"Well," replies Dr. Bloom, thinking, "come to me twice a week for 3 years and I’ll rid you of your phobia."
"And how much do you charge a session, doctor?" asks Simon.
“My charge is $625 per session," replies Dr. Bloom. “For you, a good friend, it will be $500 a session.”
“Oy vey, Doc. I can’t easily afford that kind of money.”
“Well then you can continue living with your fear,” says the doctor.
“I will think about it.”
Many months later, Simon meets Dr. Bloom in a Wal-Mart supermarket. "So why didn't you decide to let me cure you of your fears?" asks Dr. Bloom.
"Well," replies Simon, "As I told you then, your fees were really too high for me. And then my rabbi gave me the cure for free. I was so happy to have saved all that money that I went on a month vacation to Tel Aviv."
"So how, may I ask, did your rabbi cure you?" asks Dr. Bloom.
"Easy," replies Simon, "he told me to cut the legs off my bed. The bed is now so low that nobody could possibly get under it."
With some phobias, we don’t always need to go into psychoanalysis to dissect and analyst to analyze the source of our fears. Sometimes, we can skip that and do something simple and easy that works. Don’t always get stuck in analysis; at times, a simple exercise, method, meditation, change of habit, etc. can solve the problem.
We do not worship therapy, as we do not worship anything in the world. Therapy is here to serve me, it is not an end in-and-of itself. It is here to help you function in an optimal way and live a happy, meaningful and inspired life. If you have a practical way to stay away from the ditch, there is no “mitzvah” to enter into the ditch, so you can dig tunnels and try to get out.
Between You and Your Wife
A rabbi was teaching his community the famous Mishnah (Yuma end of ch. 8): “For sins between man and G-d, Yom Kippur atones; for sins between man and his fellow, Yom Kippur does not atone.”
One of the congregants raised his hand. “How about for sins between man and his wife?”
The Rabbi responded: Yom Kippur does not get involved… And I will tell you why.
Mrs. Spiegel was called to serve for jury duty but asked to be excused because she didn't believe in capital punishment and didn't want her personal thoughts to prevent the trial from running its proper course.
But the public defender liked her thoughtfulness, and tried to convince her that she was appropriate to serve on the jury.
"Madam," he explained, "This is not a murder trial! It's a simple civil lawsuit. A wife is bringing this case against her husband because he gambled away the $12,000 he had promised to use to remodel the kitchen for her birthday."
“Plus he gambled away the $11,000 he put away to buy her a tennis bracelet for their 25th anniversary. So she is sewing him.”
"Well, okay," agreed Mrs. Spiegel, "I'll serve. I guess I could be wrong about capital punishment after all!"
Yom Kippur and the Microwave
Do you know that the microwave oven was invented by accident by a man who was orphaned and never finished grammar school?
The man was Percy Spencer. At the age of just 18 months old, Spencer’s father died, and his mother soon left him to be raised by his aunt and uncle. His uncle then died when Spencer was just seven years old. Spencer subsequently left grammar school and, at the age of 12, began working from sunrise to sundown at a spool mill, which he continued to do until he was 16 years old. Then Spencer decided to join the U.S. navy. With a skill for electrical engineering, he helped develop and produce combat radar equipment. This was of huge importance to the Allies and became the military’s second highest priority project during WWII, behind the Manhattan Project.
One day, while Spencer was working on building magnetrons for radar sets, he was standing in front of an active radar set when he noticed that the chocolate bar he had in his pocket for lunch, melted.
Now, Spencer wasn’t the first to notice something like this with radars, but he was the first to investigate it. He and some other colleagues then began trying to heat other food objects to see if a similar heating effect could be observed. The first one they heated intentionally was popcorn kernels, which became the world’s first microwaved popcorn. Spencer then decided to try to heat an egg. He got a kettle and cut a hole in the side, then put the whole egg in the kettle and positioned the magnetron to direct the micro-waves into the hole. The result was that the egg exploded in the face of one of his co-workers, who was looking in the kettle as the egg exploded.
The first microwave oven was created.
He filed a patent on October 8, 1945 for a microwave cooking oven. This first commercially produced microwave oven was about 6 feet tall and weighed around 750 pounds. The price tag on these units was about $5000 a piece. It wasn’t until 1967 that the first microwave oven that was both relatively affordable ($495) and reasonably sized (counter-top model) became available.
Now think about it. What would you do if, standing in your office, a chocolate bar in your pants melt? How would you respond to chocolate oozing down your legs? You might get upset, utter a beautiful curse word, and go change your pants. But Spencer used the opportunity to give the world a microwave oven!
This is the essence of Teshuvah and Yom Kippur. The reason G-d allows us to have “melt downs” is only to generate an invention! Every uncomfortable situation in life, Yom Kippur teaches us, can compel us to invent and discover new and precious truths that will bring healing to ourselves and our world. Yes, I may have hurt my soul. Yes, I made some grand mistakes; but from G-d’s perspective He allowed it all to happen so that I can build my own unique “microwave oven” that will bring warmth and light to the world.
Don’t Change the Baby
אם יהיו חטאיכם כשנים כשלג ילבינו...
On Yom Kippur, I am reminded of the story, when after 10 years, a wife starts to think her child looks different; he absolutely has no resemblance to neither her or her husband. She decides to do a DNA test.
She finds out that the child is from completely different parents… a broch. What a disaster!
The wife says to her husband: Darling, I have something very serious to tell you.
Husband: What’s up?
Wife: According to DNA test results, Steven is not our child...
Husband: Well don’t you remember what happened?
When we were leaving the hospital with our baby, we noticed that our baby had urinated and spoiled his nappy.
Then you said: Honey, please go change the baby, I’ll wait for you here. So I went inside the maternity room, got a clean baby and left the dirty one there…
Friends, when we have dirt in our lives, we do not get rid of the baby; we just clean the filth.
It is a tragic mistake when we associate sin with our core and essence, and we deem ourselves worthless and vile. The filth is always an accessary. It came on, and it can go off. Original Sin is not a Jewish concept.
All the Training in Vain: When the Queen Was Abducted
Some of you will remember that day in July 9, 1982, when a 31-year-old mentally challenged individual, Michael Fagan, broke into Buckingham Palace and went into the private bedroom of the queen of England, Elizabeth II, who was forced to spend time conversing with him. The visitor had evaded guardsmen, bobbies, servants, surveillance cameras and electronic devices to reach the royal bedroom. He now held her majesty the Queen in captivity.
Britons were, for once, uniformly outraged. Thundered the London Times indignantly: "So much for the guards at Buckingham Palace. The ceremony of Changing the Guard will never seem quite the same again ... All that array of scarlet tunics, burnished brass and polished leather, and still an intruder could stroll into the palace and up to the Queen's bedroom without being detected."
The Queen displayed regal presence under pressure that would have impressed even her great-great-grandmother Victoria, the stoic object of seven assassination attempts over 42 years. As Elizabeth talked with Fagan, she managed to telephone the palace police switchboard twice, in a calm voice, to intimate that she needs help. No one came to the rescue because the urgency of her situation was not realized. The queen decided to do something clever: She called and told the security officer that she did not need fire for her morning cigarette, as she already had “fire” in her room. She thought that the police would understand the subtle message and rush to eliminate the “fire.” No one did. Not one person came to rescue the Queen of England
She was finally saved when a maid – not a security guard but a maid! -- entered the bedroom, took a stunned glance at the visitor and blurted, "Bloody hell, ma'am! What's he doing in there?" The maid went and called the police.
One of the police officers was a celebrated hero, yet from World War Two -- as a very young soldier. He was in charge of security positions for many decades. He was finally promoted to this highest of positions – to safeguard Her Majesty, the Monarch of the British Commonwealth. Yet after this incident he was dismissed from duty. For as one historian put it: All of his training for over 50 years was essentially for that very moment – when the Queen would call to say that she does not need fire for her morning smoke. But when the moment came -- the most defining moment of his career – he failed.
Imagine the irony: Your entire life you are trained to be able to be ready for a single moment and act accordingly. Nobody knows when and how the moment will come, but we know it might come. And yet when it happens, you are out for lunch…
In life, we are given opportunities each day to flex our emotional and spiritual muscles, to shine, and to express our inner harmony and beauty. But it is so easy to miss the point, to forfeit opportunity, to ignore the calling of the moment.
Sometimes, your child makes a remark to you. Your wife or your husband makes a comment. It is, what psychologists call, a “bid for connection,” and you have the opportunity to show affection, presence, caring, and sensitivity. But sometimes, we are just too caught up in our own orbit, to even realize the opportunity.
The Choice to Move On
כי עמך הסליחה...
Yocheved Brookstein shared this story. She was just a young girl at the time, attending camp Chedvah in the Catskills region of New York. It was visiting day, and her grandparents and parents came to visit. Her father and grandfather took a stroll through the campgrounds. As one older man walked past them – presumably the grandfather of another camper – Yocheved’s father, Robby, noticed his own father lock eyes with the other older man, just for a moment. Yocheved’s grandfather gave a slight nod, a sign of acknowledgement, and continued walking.
“Who was that?” Robby asked his dad.
The father pushed away the question. He did not want to answer.
This made the son doubly curious. After beseeching his father for an answer, his dad says:
“That man? That man was my best friend from before the war.”
“Your best friend? How come I’ve never heard of him? Why didn’t you stop to chat with him? If he was your best friend, why didn’t you give him an embrace?”
“No... I think it’s better that we don’t meet,” came the soft reply.
Robby was confused.
Robby’s father proceeded to tell him the story. In the early stages of World War II, Romania had tried to remain a neutral power, determined to stay out of the conflagration that was beginning to consume Europe. But, in 1940, the far-right Iron Guard overthrew the government. With a hateful fascist in power, the country was firmly in Germany’s camp.
Some Jews – like Yocheved Brookstein’s grandfather – had been able to pick up on the smoke over the horizon and began making plans to get out before everything they ever knew was burned down. With great difficulty, he managed to secure the papers and visas that would help keep his immediate family, along with his in-laws, safe across the border. He was married with a young child. Dreading the day he would ever have to use the papers, he secreted them away in a hiding spot, and told not a soul.
Except, that is, for one person.
“That man you just saw, Robby, was my best friend,” his father said. They were both religious Jews, and they studied Torah in yeshiva together. They were “chavrusas.” “When we were discussing the worsening war in Europe, and Hitler’s plans to murder us all, he asked me what I was going to do. I told him about my plan, about the visas, about the hiding place.”
The next day, when he went to take another look at the papers, they were gone. Disbelieving, he felt around with his hands. Nothing. Frantically, he turned the house upside down in search of the precious papers – had he moved them somewhere? – looking everywhere, but they were nowhere to be found. No, he hadn’t ever moved them from the hiding place.
With a sick feeling in his stomach, he made his way over to the only person who had known of the papers’ location. But, arriving at his friend’s house, he felt his heartbeat stop. It was empty. His friend had just left town and taken his entire family with him. His best friend, obviously, stole his visas and got the entire family out of Hitler’s Rumania.
Before he could even process the depths of this betrayal, everything was gone. His entire family, including his wife and baby, were transported to Auschwitz and murdered. Only he alone survived the nightmare of Auschwitz.
“Now you understand why I didn’t hug my best friend…”, the old survivor said.
Robby’s mind reeled.
“Why did you not punch him in the face? Why didn’t you kill him?”
“Listen to me,” his father replied, “it was a different time, it was a different place; people were under tremendous pressure. Everyone was looking out to do what they could to survive. When people are trying to survive, they do unthinkable things.
“Now it’s over, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“When the war was over, I had to make a choice. Will I just live with endless anger, and hate, and remain captive to my negativity. I made a different choice: I wanted to live, I wanted to start all over again. I wanted to be free. So I decided to let it go.”
Wow. Most of us were not tested in such profound ways. But let me tell you what I learnt from this tale. Many of us hold on persistently to conflicts—with our parents, our spouses, our siblings, our in laws, our brothers in law or sisters in law, our own children, friends and relatives, business partners, neighbors.
This Holocaust survivor realized he had to make a choice. He did not want to remain eternally stuck in infinite anger, bitterness and hatred. “My father is a happy man; he is full of life, vitality and gratefulness. He loves his family and celebrates his blessings,” his son says about his dad. Can you and I let go?
This does not mean the other person was right. It means, that do you want to allow negative energy to live in your brain forever, rent free. So you let go.
How the Waldorf Astoria Became the Most Glamorous Hotel
נוצר חסד לאלפים...
One stormy night in 1890, a middle-aged man and his wife entered the lobby of a small hotel in Philadelphia. Trying to get out of the rain, the couple approached the front desk hoping to get some shelter for the night.
“Could you possibly give us a room here?” the husband asked. The clerk, a friendly man with a winning smile, looked at the couple and explained that there were three conventions in town.
“All of our rooms are taken,” the clerk said. “But I can’t send a nice couple like you out in the rain at one o’clock in the morning. Would you perhaps be willing to sleep in my room? It’s not exactly a suite, but it will be good enough to make you folks comfortable for the night.”
When the couple declined, the young man pressed on. “Don’t worry about me; I’ll make out just fine here in the reception area,” the clerk told them. So the couple agreed.
As he paid his bill the next morning, the guest said to the clerk, “You are the kind of manager who should be the boss of the best hotel in the United States. Maybe someday I’ll build one for you.”
The clerk looked at the couple and smiled. The three of them had a good laugh.
Years passed. The clerk had almost forgotten the incident when he received a letter from the man. It recalled that stormy night and enclosed a round-trip ticket to New York, asking the clerk to pay them a visit.
The man met him in New York, and led him to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in Manhattan. He then pointed to a great new building there, a palace of reddish stone, with turrets and watchtowers thrusting up to the sky.
“That,” said the man, “is the hotel I have just built for you to manage.”
“You must be joking,” the young man said.
“I can assure you that I am not,” said the older man.
You see, the man’s name was William Waldorf Astor, and the magnificent structure he built was the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. When it opened on March 13, 1893, it boasted 450 rooms and an army of nearly 1,000 employees, at the time the nicest and biggest hotel in the world.
(Originally it was called the Waldorf. But after John Jacob Astor IV built the Astoria next door in 1897 (he later died on the Titanic), the two hotels were run jointly as the Waldorf-Astoria, until it was closed on 3 May 1929 to make way for what would become the world’s most famous skyscraper, the Empire State Building, and a new Waldorf-Astoria was constructed on the block extending from Park Avenue to Lexington, between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets and opened in 1931.)
Although it was William Waldorf Astor who conceived and financed the opulent Waldorf Hotel, it was the Waldorf’s first manager, George C.Boldt, the clerk from the Philadelphia hotel who established the premiere level of service for which the Waldorf (and later the Waldorf-Astoria) became world-renowned.
That one favor to a person, in the middle of a rainy night, would lead him to become the manager of the world’s most glamorous hotel. As the Bible puts it:
קהלת יא, א: שַׁלַּ֥ח לַחְמְךָ֖ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י הַמָּ֑יִם כִּֽי־בְרֹ֥ב הַיָּמִ֖ים תִּמְצָאֶֽנּוּ:
Send forth your bread upon the surface of the water, for after many days you will find it.
Never ever underestimate the power of doing one favor to one person.
The Worst Thing to Say by a Eulogy
על חטא שחטאנו לפניך בטפשות פה...
Sometimes we say stupid things, and we need to be able to say, I am sorry.
What’s the worst thing a rabbi or a priest can say during a eulogy?
Well, the other day a young man died from an overdose. And the priest gets up and says:
“He died doing what he loved.”
How We Judge Others: The Milkman and the Baker
על חטא שחטאנו לפניך בפלילות
“For the sin that we have sinned before you in passing judgment.”
There's a story they tell about the town's milkman and baker:
One early morning, the milkman is bewildered to find a court summons hanging on his door. He was an honest man who always behaved as such. He never cheated, lied or stole anything. He had no idea why he was summoned to court. But the baker knew.
The baker used to buy butter and cheese from the milkman for his business. One day he suspected that the lumps of butter that the milkman sold him were under five pounds - even though the milkman insisted that each was exactly five pounds. The baker decided to check out the matter and for a period he consistently weighed every lump of butter that he bought from the milkman. He discovered that they were in fact less than five pounds. Sometimes they were four pounds, sometimes they were four-and-a-half pounds, and once one was even three pounds.
The baker was angry. "Cheating me!" he told his wife angrily, "I am not going to be quiet about it." He went to the local court and complained about the milkman. "We have to prosecute him," said the baker, "we can't let him cheat all the villagers; people trust this crook!"
Later that day, the court messenger hung a notice on the milkman's house inviting him to court. The milkman arrived at the court shaking with fear. He had never been to a courthouse and had never spoken to a Judge. The Judge evoked a sense of fear amongst the villagers.
"I assume you have a very accurate scale in your dairy," said the Judge to the milkman.
"No your honor, I do not have a scale," said the milkman.
"So how do you weigh the butter? Do you just guess that it is ten pounds?"
"No G-d forbid, your honor; I am an honest man; it never occurred to me to do something like that. Very simply I built myself a scale—the kind that needs a weight on one side to balance the butter on the other."
The Judge nodded his head, and the milkman continued. "Every morning when I come to weigh the butter for the baker, I place five pounds of bread on one side of the scale. This way I know that the butter that I will give to the baker will be exactly five pounds."
"So," says the Judge, "you're telling us that the amount of butter that you give the baker is exactly the weight of the loaf of bread he supplies to you?"
"That is exactly it!" exclaimed the milkman.
The baker's face fell. You see, the baker’s scale was dishonest; the five pounds of bread he was weighing each morning to give to the milkman were not truly five pounds. And that is exactly what came back to him.
How true this is with many of us. We judge people based on who we are. And what we put out to people is what comes back to us. In life, we often end up eating the cake which we have baked.
A Surreal Tale of Two Weddings
אדם יסודו מעפר וסופו לעפר... ואתה הוא מלך א-ל חי וקיים. אין קצבה לשנותיך... ושמנו קראת בשמך (פיוט ונתנה תוקף).
I heard the following story from the man himself. (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau shared this story with me personally, during a telephone conversation in August 2018. He added a whole piece that was unknown to me.)
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau is the Chief rabbi of Netanya, Israel, and the oldest son of former chief rabbi of Israel, Yisroel Meir Lau. In 1989, a woman phoned him. She was around 35, was getting married on this and this date and she wants him to officiate the marriage.
He checks the calendar. It is the eve of Passover. The busiest night in Jewish homes—as we prepare for the Seder, and we search the entire home to make sure it is clean from all chametz. Plus every Rabbi is consumed by Jews coming to sell the chametz and ask their Passover questions.
The Rabbi also noticed that the location of the wedding was a two-hour drive from his home. He apologized and declined the invitation.
She keeps on calling and calling, pleading with him to conduct the marriage ceremony of her and her groom. “Why can’t you get someone else?” Rabbi Lau asks. I live far away from the wedding hall; it is the busiest night of the year. Get someone else. She refuses. She said that she heard him officiate at another wedding, it moved her to the core, and she decided she wants only him to do the wedding!”
After many phone calls back and forth, Rabbi Lau consented. If she can make the chupa early, and he can leave right after to get home on time to clean his home and prepare for Pesach, he would do it. She agreed.
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau arrives to the wedding. There he is greeted by an elderly man, the father of the bride, who lives in Argentina and just arrived to Israel for his daughter’s wedding.
“Sholom Aleichem,” the father says. “Fun vanet kumt a Yid?” From where does a Jew come? The old man asks in Yiddish.
And the rabbi says: From Netanya.
“Eun fun vanet kumt a yid?” The Rabbi asks. And from where do you come?
The father of the bride says: Fun Pietrikov. From the city of Pietrikov, Poland. That is the city of my origin.
The young Rabbi Lau gets the chills. You know why? His own father, Israel’s chief Rabbi, Yisroel Meir Lau, was born in Pietrikov. That is where he was raised till he was five years old and the Nazis murdered his father, mother, his siblings, and sent him to Buchenwald.
And the old man, the father of the bride, oblivious to anything going on in the heart of the rabbi, continues, and says:
Let me tell you something. Do you know who had the last Jewish wedding in Pietrikov before its Jews were murdered by the Germans?
Me and my wife. We got married in 1942, right before the SS deported the Jews of Pietrikov to Treblinka, where they were gassed.
And do you know who married us? The Rabbi of Pietrikov. His name was Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau. This was the last wedding he ever performed.
And do you know where we got married? In the Rabbi’s house! At that time, the Germans had confined us to the ghetto. So my bride and I got married in the Rabbi’s small home in the Ghetto.
A short time after our wedding, the Germans sent Rabbi Lau and his son to Treblinka. They were both murdered there. We were the last couple to be married by this great man, this great and holy Jewish leader, the Rabbi of Pietrikov.
The man continues his tale:
My new wife and I were also sent to the death camps. We were separated. We both survived, but imagined the other one was dead…
As it happened, after the War, we both got visas to South America.
One day, in 1948, I am walking in Buenos Aires and I see a familiar face… I take a closer look—and it is my wife!
We met in Argentina three years after the Holocaust!!
Can you imagine the joy?!
We move in to a home together. We craved to have a child, but it was not successful. Only in 1955 did we manage to have one daughter.
And she is the daughter we are marring off tonight!
And the father turns to the young Rabbi and says: Did you ever hear of this man, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, the last Rabbi of Pietrikov?
And the young Rabbi, trembling, with tears in his eyes, says: My name is Moshe Chaim Lau. I am his grandson. I carry his name! My father was sent to Buchenwald as a five-year-old boy and survived the war. I am the 38th ring in a chain of Rabbis that goes back 38 generations.
My grandfather did your wedding. And your daughter insisted that I do her wedding!...
“Honestly,” he said, “I was perplexed why your daughter was so stubborn. Why she would not take no for an answer. As it turns out, she herself did not even know the real reason motivating her to get me to do this wedding.”
Friends! Here you have captured, in one story, the entire narrative of Jewish history. The grandfather, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, performed a modest wedding in a ghetto in Poland, under Nazi occupation, shortly before he was deported to his death.
And 50 years later, his grandson, a son of the youngest child Holocaust survivor, marries off the granddaughter in Israel, under the skies of the Holy Land.
Drinking with G-d
כי אנו עמך ואתה אבינו... אנו רעיתך ואתה דודנו... אנו צאנך ואתה רוענו...
On the first night of Selichos over one hundred years ago, instead of going to the large Shul to signal the beginning of the prayers, Rebbe Shalom of Belz, the first Belzer Rebbe (known as the Sar Sholom, 1779-1855, the greatest Chassidic master in Galician Jewry), ordered his attendant to harness the horses. He said they would be going into the woods.
The astonished attendant wanted to remind the Rebbe that thousands of Chassidim were waiting in the Shul, but he knew better than to ask questions and went out to prepare the wagon. After a half-hour drive the Rebbe signaled him to stop. They alighted and walked down a narrow path till they saw a small hut in the distance. The Rebbe signaled the attendant to wait for him, and then tiptoed alone up to the window and peeked in.
An old Jewish man was sitting alone at a table. On the table was a bottle of vodka and two small cups, one in front of him and the other before the empty seat opposite him.
Through the window the Rebbe couldn’t hear what the old man was saying, but he saw him raise his cup in a toast, drink it, and then drink the second cup as well. This he repeated two more times, after which the Rebbe tiptoed back to the attendant. They walked quickly to the wagon and the Rebbe motioned him to drive back to the city of Belz.
Meanwhile the Chassidim had been waiting for over an hour and were becoming worried. But when the doors of the Synagogue opened and the Rebbe entered, the congregation fell silent. All eyes followed him to his place at the front of the Shul, and the room burst into prayer as they began Selichos.
When the prayer ended the Rebbe turned to his secretary and said, "There is an old man that came in to shul after everyone, and I’m sure he will finish after everyone also. He’s the one I saw in the house in the woods. Please wait for him to finish. Tell him I want him to come to my study and speak to him alone."
Half an hour later the simple Jew was standing in fear and trepidation before the Holy Rebbe.
"Sit down, Zelig," said the Rebbe, "I want you to tell me what you did in your house before you came here tonight. What were those two cups of vodka for and that strange L'Chaim you made?"
He started to shake. "How does the Rebbe know?"
"I sensed that something important was going to happen," the Rebbe answered, "so I drove to the woods and peeked in your window. But I want to understand what you were doing."
Now the poor Chassid was really confused. He was silent for a moment. Then, realizing that there was no alternative, he sank down onto a chair and began to explain.
"I’m a poor man, Rebbe, I have no children and my wife passed on years ago. I just live alone with my few farm animals, that’s all. That is, until a few months ago when my cow became sick. So I prayed to G-d to heal the cow. 'After all', I said to G-d, 'You create the entire world and everything in it, certainly you can heal one cow!'
"But the cow got worse. So I said 'Listen G-d, if You don’t heal that cow I’m not going to the shul anymore!' I figured that if G-d doesn’t care about me - I mean, it’s nothing for Him to heal one old cow - so why should I care about His place, the shul?
"But the cow died and so I, I got mad and I stopped going to synagogue. Then my goat got sick! I said to G-d, 'What! You haven’t had enough? Do you think I’m bluffing? Listen, if this goat dies I’m not putting on tefillin anymore!' So the goat died and I stopped putting on tefillin.
"Next, my chickens got ill and I told G-d that if they die I’m not going to recite Kiddush or keep Shabbos. Well, a week later I was without chickens and G-d was without my Shabbos.
"I held out for over a week until suddenly I realized that the time for Selichos was approaching. I thought to myself, 'What, Zelig, you aren’t going to go say Selichos with the Rebbe? What, are you crazy? Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are approaching, how can you be so callous?' But on the other hand I was angry at G-d and vowed I wasn’t going to the shul.
"But then I remembered that once I had an argument with Shmerel the butcher. For about a month we didn’t even say hello to each other. Then one night he came to my house with a bottle of vodka and said, 'Let’s forget the past and be friends, enough enemies we have among the gentiles, the goyim; why be enemies?!' So we made three L'Chaims, shook hands and even danced around a little together and we were friends again.
"So I figured I would do the same thing with G-d. I invited G-d to sit opposite me, poured us two cups and said, 'Listen, G-d, you forget my faults and I’ll forget yours. All right? A deal?' L'Chaim!
"So I drank my cup and understood that since G-d doesn’t drink, He probably wanted me to drink His. And after we did it twice more I stood up and we danced together! Then I felt better and came to Selichos."
The Rebbe looked deeply into Zelig’s innocent eyes. In a serious tone, he said, "Listen to me, Zelig. Before we began Selichos I saw that in heaven there was a negative decree on our holy congregation, because the Chassidim were saying the words in the prayer book but they weren’t really praying seriously to G-d. There was no sincerity; it was robotic.
"But you, Zelig, you talked to G-d like He is your friend. Zelig, your sincerity saved the entire congregation!"
Like a Best Friend
Some of us feel so many different type of emotions to G-d. Some of those emotions we feel are inappropriate.
But the most important thing is honesty. To have an honest, bare, and raw relationship with G-d. So today, fear not sharing everything on your mind and heart. Be real; tell G-d everything.
Treat G-d like your best friend; share with Him the good, the bad and the ugly. He wants a relationship with all of you. There is no need for you to “amputate” any part of yourself to enter into a relationship with him. You can and must show up with your entire self, with your entire heart, all of your emotions, feelings, and experiences.
You Can’t Destroy Your DNA: Machmud’s Lecha Dodi
וכל מאמינים...
A story:
After the concluding prayer on Friday evening, Dan searched if he could invite a guest at the Western Wall to his Shabbat dinner.
Dan noticed a young man, dungarees, backpack, dark skin, curly black hair -- looks Sephardi, maybe Moroccan. A moment more for consideration, and he was moving toward the boy with his hand extended in welcome. "Good Shabbos. My name is Dan Eisenblatt. Would you like to eat at my house tonight?"
The young man nodded. He picked up his backpack, and together they walked out of the Kotel plaza.
"Is there a song you want to sing? Do you have a song you like?” the host asked his guest in middle of the meal.
The guest said, "There is a song I'd like to sing, but I can't find it here. I really liked what we sang in the synagogue tonight. What was it called? Something ‘dodi.'"
"You mean Lecha Dodi. That’s the song we sing in middle the Shabbos evening prayers.” The host and his family sang the song.
The guest looked embarrassed, but after a bit of encouragement said firmly, "I'd really like to sing Lecha Dodi again."
Strange it is but the guest asked the song to be sung again and again. "I just really like that one," he mumbled. "Just something about it -- I really like it." In all, they must have sung "The Song" eight or nine times. Dan wasn't sure -- he lost count.
Later, when they had a quiet time to talk, Dan said, "I was just wondering, we haven't had more than a few moments to chat. Where are you from?"
The boy looked pained, then stared down at the floor and said softly, "Ramallah."
Dan's heart skipped a beat. He was sure he'd heard the boy say "Ramallah," a large Arab city on the West Bank, and the origin of many a suicide bomber.
Dan’s thoughts were racing. Will he blow himself up? If so, why did he wait so long?
What is your name? asked Dan. The boy looked terrified for a moment, then squared his shoulders and said quietly, "Machmud Ibn-esh-Sharif."
"I was born and grew up in Ramallah. I was taught to hate my Jewish oppressors, and to think that killing them was heroism. But I always had my doubts. I asked questions to my father, and he threw me out of the house. Just like that, with nothing but the clothes on my back. By now my mind was made up: I was going to run away and live with the Yahud, until I could find out what they were really like."
Machmud continued: "I snuck back into the house that night, to get my things and my backpack. My mother caught me in the middle of packing. She looked pale and upset, but she was quiet and gentle to me, and after a while she got me to talk. I told her that I wanted to go live with the Jews for a while and find out what they're really like, and maybe I would even want to convert.
"She was turning more and more pale while I said all this, and I thought she was angry, but that wasn't it. Something else was hurting her, and she whispered, 'You don't have to convert. You already are a Jew.'
"I was shocked. My head started spinning, and for a moment I couldn't speak. Then I stammered, 'What do you mean?'
"'In Judaism,' she told me, 'the religion goes according to the mother. I'm Jewish, so that means you're Jewish.'
"I never had any idea my mother was Jewish. I guess she didn't want anyone to know. She sure didn't feel too good about her life, because she whispered suddenly, 'I made a mistake by marrying an Arab man. In you, my mistake will be redeemed.'
"My mother always talked that way, poetic-like. She went and dug out some old documents, and handed them to me: things like my birth certificate and her old Israeli ID card, so I could prove I was a Jew. I've got them here, but I don't know what to do with them.
"My mother hesitated about one piece of paper. Then she said, 'You may as well take this. It is an old photograph of my grandparents, which was taken when they went looking for the grave of some great ancestor of ours. They went up north and found the grave, and that's when this picture was taken.'"
Dan gently put his hand on Machmud's shoulder. Machmud looked up, scared and hopeful at the same time. Dan asked, "Do you have the photo here?"
The boy reached in his backpack and pulled out an old, tattered envelope.
Dan gingerly took the photo from the envelope, picked up his glasses, and looked carefully at it. The first thing that stood out was the family group: an old-time Sephardi family from the turn of the century.
Then he focused on the grave they were standing around. When he read the gravestone inscription, he nearly dropped the photo. He rubbed his eyes to make sure. There was no doubt. This was a grave in the old cemetery in Tzfat, and the inscription identified it as the grave of the great Kabbalist and tzaddik Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz -- the author of "Lecha Dodi."
Dan's voice quivered with excitement as he explained to Machmud who his ancestor was. "He was a friend of the Arizal, a great Torah scholar, a tzaddik, a mystic. And Machmud, your ancestor wrote that song we were singing all Shabbos: Lecha Dodi!"
(Postscript: Machmud changed his name and enrolled in yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he studied diligently to "catch up" on his Jewish education. He got married to a nice Jewish girl, and gained popularity as a lecturer, recounting his dramatic story.)
You can’t obliterate the DNA of your soul.
- Comment
Class Summary:
Index:
Why Do We Pray Loud If G-d Is Not Deaf?
Waze and Yom Kippur: Creating a New Path
Our Shul Is No Exclusive Club
The Therapist Vs. the Rabbi
Sins Between You and Your Wife
Yom Kippur and the Microwave
Don’t Change the Baby
When the Queen Was Abducted
The Choice to Move On
Who Turned the Waldorf Into the Glamorous Hotel?
The Worst Thing You Can Say by a Eulogy
How We Judge Others
A Surreal Tale of Two Weddings
A Drink with G-d
You Can’t Destroy Your DNA: Machmud’s Lecha Dodi
Please help us continue our work
Sign up to receive latest content by Rabbi YY
Join our WhatsApp Community
Join our WhatsApp Community
Ways to get content by Rabbi YY Jacobson
Connect now
Please leave your comment below!