The mounds of garbage left by Sunday revelers colored my Monday morning hike around Van Cortland Park. One large square of the park was obviously the scene of a child’s birthday party. There were balloons, broken toys, an abandoned grill, Dora the Explorer cups and plates strewn all over the park. I walked a little further into the park and saw an inebriated swan swerving among the leftovers of a serious beer party. They use the park. They love the park, but they do not follow its rules.

How can people expect the city to provide a safe and clean park for their parties if they ruin the park when they use it? They are even worse than my children!

I wonder if the Jerusalem sanitation department had to worry about such things after the three Pilgrimage Festivals when the entire nation would gather in Jerusalem.

I wonder because, although the people are warned in this portion that once the Temple is built we may not make offering on private altars (Deuteronomy 12:13) the people never stopped. They continued to have private places of worship all through the First Temple period. They did not feel a special attachment to Jerusalem. I suspect that people who did not feel drawn and connected to God’s Temple did not respect the Temple and its surrounding area. So, I wonder if the JSD – Jerusalem Sanitation Department – had experience dealing with the kinds of messes that were all over Van Cortland Park.

“Three times a year all your males should appear before God, your Lord, in the place that He will choose.” (Deuteronomy 16:16) The Temple was a place where we came to be “seen” by God. We would celebrate. (Deuteronomy 16:14) We would celebrate the opportunity to strengthen our relationship with God, to be ‘seen” by Him, as it were. People continued to observe the Pilgrimage festivals even as they maintained their private altars. They understood the power of the place, yet they did not experience a sense of connection.

That is not much different from people who religiously attend synagogue but do not feel connected to their place of worship. These are the same people who would drop garbage in synagogue or even speak during prayers. We do not always connect. Perhaps the issue is rules vs. connection:

It is unlikely that I will feel connected to prayer if I pray only because it is the rule, because I must. How will I ever feel connected to the place I pray if I cannot connect to my prayers?

People who kept a private altar in their backyards would not experience the Temple as their place of connection with God. They had a strong awareness of God’s Presence, so strong, in fact, that they felt they could connect with God anywhere. They did not need the Temple. They traveled to Jerusalem for each of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals because they “had to”: it was the rule.

No wonder God asks us to view the Torah as offering a path filled with blessings: “Re’ei” – See the Torah as an opportunity to discover the blessings it offers. The Torah wants us to feel connected and attached to her. It is not a list of rules, but a relationship workbook, a treasure map of the wonderful opportunities that enrich a life lived with that attachment.

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Learn & discover the Divine prophecies with Rabbi Simcha Weinberg from the holy Torah, Jewish Law, Mysticism, Kabbalah and Jewish Prophecies. The Foundation Stone is the ultimate resource for Jews, Judaism, Jewish Education, Jewish Spirituality & the holy Torah.

“In the “Judgment” of the Book of Changes, whenever one encounters dangerous circumstances the advice is always: “Cross the river.” One can see from this that the real purpose of boats is to deliver people from danger rather than to provide comfort.” Pleasure Boat Studio by Ou-yang Hsiu (1007 – 1072)

We seem to take Hsiu’s advice quite seriously. We refer to our first patriarch, Abraham as “Ivri” – what Hsiu would call a river crosser. In fact, many people referred to us as Ivrim for a long time.

But we do not cross the river to avoid dangerous circumstances. We actually cross towards them: “For you are crossing the Jordan to come and possess the Land that God, your Lord, gives you.” We are certainly river crossers, not to avoid, but to confront.

Our definition of Ivri is not “from the other side” but one who can bridge both sides of the river. Our challenge is to stand on both sides of the river – to bridge the spiritual and physical worlds.

We also differ from Hsiu’s definition of a boat’s purpose: “This world is like the shore and the World to Come like the sea.” (Kohelet Rabbah 1:36) The Midrash compares the World to Come as a journey on the sea. There will be no dangers to escape. The journey will be filled with joy and comfort.

We are Ivrim – River Crossers and Bridges – in order to prepare for the ultimate journey on the sea of the Coming World. No wonder we live by Halacha – Instructions for Journeying!

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Rabbi Katz zt”l was my rebbi in the laws and practice of Shechita – Ritual Slaughtering. He was a magnificent human being in many ways. He always spoke gently. He never spoke negatively of anyone or anything. He spent every moment possible studying Talmud. He felt and acted as if he was sitting in the Telshe Yeshiva Beit Midrash each time he sat before an open Gemara, a volume of the Talmud.

I learned a lesson from him about Halacha, Jewish Law, on the day I first actually slaughtered an animal. I had not been able to eat meat since I began spending my days in Shamrock Meats in Los Angeles. Rav Katz repeatedly spoke of compassion for each animal before and during Shechita. He even cared about the care and dignity we gave the animal after Shechita. On the day I first actually shechted, he invited me to eat dinner at his home. Rebbitzen Katz served steak, and I was so shaken by my experiences that day that I didn’t want to eat.

“Did you shecht or did you kill?” he asked. “I can understand that if you killed those animals that you would not want to eat. Shechting however, is a Mitzvah, and if done properly was a holy act. Halacha transformed the act of killing the animal into an act of making it holy. If that is what you did, you will not have a problem eating.”

I ate.

Rav Katz reminded me that Halacha is not a series of prescribed acts. It is a way to transform everyday actions into something holy. It had never been as clear to me as it was at that moment.

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The fruit on the left is known by a Jewish name: Mangosteen, although some pronounce it Mangostein. No matter the pronunciation, this magical, tasty and wonderfully shaped creation, one of the benefits of globalization, has challenged my choice of blessings. I will make the blessing for fruit: “Who creates the Fruit of the Tree”. I play out the blessing in my mind: 1) Wonder: The four buds at the bottom of the stem. The reddish-brown-black speckled color of the shell. 2) Wonder #2: Observe and admire whole, garlic-shaped fruit inside thick container. 3) I will check the fragrance of the outside and then the inside of the shell. I will then sniff the fruit, and if it has a special fragrance, I will recite an extra blessing: “Who gives a good fragrance to fruit”. 4) I will take my time opening the fruit into pieces. I will pay careful attention to texture and moisture.

The problem occurs at this point: I must recite a second blessing after “Who creates fruit of the trees”: “Shehechiyanu”: The blessing we recite over a new fruit. The problem, specifically because of globalization is this:

The fruit on the left is a Noni. Just a glance at this fruit and its flowers and buds catches my attention, even before I consider its taste. I want my “Shehechiyanu” to be on the best fruit in front of me, and the Noni certainly offers serious competition to the Mangosteen. You have small, light-green buds, and slightly larger white buds that have yet to unfold, and then you can see the flower with the little world inside its petals. When placed just next to a ripe Noni, as in the photograph, you can see how each buds enlarges as it ripens. I wonder if it is a form of cactus. How shall I choose between the Mangosteen and the Noni for my “Shehechiyanu”?

Just as I am about to flip a coin: which is not a very good way to choose a fruit for this important blessing, some chocolates appear.

One minute: They look like chocolate truffles but they are not. They are Acai berries. I can’t flip a coin between three possibilities of “Shehechiyanu”.

To make things even more confusing, some Goji berries appear.

Each deserves its own “Shehechiyanu”. How shall I choose? That is my problem with globalization!

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Learn & discover the Divine prophecies with Rabbi Simcha Weinberg from the holy Torah, Jewish Law, Mysticism, Kabbalah and Jewish Prophecies. The Foundation Stone is the ultimate resource for Jews, Judaism, Jewish Education, Jewish Spirituality & the holy Torah.

This Week On The Foundation Stone:

Haftarah: Chukat – Balk: Variations on a Theme

Table Talk: Chukat

Parah Adumah – Links to Essays and Podcasts

Table Talk: Balak

The Torah Connection: Rabbi Yaakov Shlomo Weinberg

Life Lessons: The Heileger Chana Chaya: Chukat: Are You Missing The Miracles? and Do It Anyway

The Music of Halacha: Telling it Like It Is – An Introduction to the Laws of Rebuke

Bentzion of Medziboz’s Stories of the Baal Shem Tov: The Well of the Baal Shem Tov

Keter Shem Tov: Chapter 145

Forms of Prayer: Using the Siddur As A Workbook

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Learn & discover the Divine prophecies with Rabbi Simcha Weinberg from the holy Torah, Jewish Law, Mysticism, Kabbalah and Jewish Prophecies. The Foundation Stone is the ultimate resource for Jews, Judaism, Jewish Education, Jewish Spirituality & the holy Torah.

We have posted the essays for this week:

Haftarah – Nasso: Identity

Table Talk – Nasso: Impressions

The Music of Halcha – Shabbat 26: Fire

The Voice of The Torah: Rabbi Chaim Goldberger

The Torah Connection: Rabbi Yaakov Shlomo Weinberg

Words Can Heal: Rabbi Irwin Katsof: Your Kids May Be Armed and Dangerous

Stories of the Baal Shem Tov: Bentzion of Medziboz: Nasso

Keter Shem Tov: Bentzion of Medziboz: Chapter 140

For Our Members in Israel we have posted:

Haftarah: Beha’alotecha: Walkers

They can also review the Haftarah for Shabbat Chanukah:

Table Talk: Beha’alotecha: The Challenge of Change & The Vocabulary of Evil

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Learn & discover the Divine prophecies with Rabbi Simcha Weinberg from the holy Torah, Jewish Law, Mysticism, Kabbalah and Jewish Prophecies. The Foundation Stone is the ultimate resource for Jews, Judaism, Jewish Education, Jewish Spirituality & the holy Torah.

It’s Your Choice

The teenager finished high school and is home, bored out of his mind. He has nothing to do. He spent a day or two pounding the pavements of the city looking for a job.

Unfortunately, he failed to find one. So, he spends his day sitting in his room and doing something on his computer. (His parents don’t want to ask.)

My perspective is that he is choosing not to work. He feels that it is not his choice because he cannot find a job. “I want to work,” he claims. “If you wanted to work, you would be out there everyday, looking for work,” I respond. “OK, maybe I don’t really want to work, but I want to make money.” To which I respond, “You would look for work if you wanted to make money. I believe that you want to have money without working for it. Your parents are giving you spending money so you have money. You are choosing to spend your day hiding from life in your room, rather than face the frustration of looking for work and then actually working.”

His parents are also making a choice: They are choosing to provide him with all his basic needs despite the fact that serves as a disincentive for him to go out and look for work. His parents are choosing to not ask him what he does on his computer all day.

We all constantly make choices. We don not necessarily articulate them as choices because we are not aware that we are making choices. Please note: I am not referring to Bechira Chofshit – Free Choice, which is an entirely different level of choice. We choose what to eat. We choose whether we want the immediate pleasure of a piece of cake rather than watch our waistlines and health. We choose to speak in anger. We choose to say destructive things. We choose to waste time. We constantly make choices. We won’t necessarily acknowledge them as choices, but we are always choosing.

The Shabbat laws insist that we understand that we are constantly making choices and that choosing is creative, or, in the context of Halacha, choosing is self-defining.

When I have a bowl of mixed peanuts and raisins before me and I prefer the peanuts and reach for one, Halacha says that I am choosing. The Shabbat laws teach that if someone puts a bowl of good old-fashioned chicken soup in front of me, and I see a large piece of chicken and want to select it from the soup, I am choosing. Halacha warns me that if I allow all my paperwork and books to pile up during the week waiting for Shabbat to organize everything, that not only am I choosing to use my Shabbat in a certain way, I am making a choice with each piece of paper I pick up and decide where to place it in my file cabinet. Halacha treats the decision where to place one piece of paper from a pile of papers as a choice, a creative act, that may be prohibited on Shabbat.

The Shabbat laws want us to understand and appreciate that we are constantly choosing. It wants that teenage boy and his parents to understand everything that they are doing as choices. When people understand that they are making choices, and that those choices are self-defining, they will rethink their actions and words.

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I confront the same problem each week: Shabbat has begun and there are piles of books spread all over the desk, chairs and floor of my study. I need all the books in order to learn and to prepare my classes, columns and podcasts. However, things pile up. I may have used five or six sefarim to prepare an answer to What is the Reason and simply added them to the Reason pile on my floor. I still have my Purim books out, just next to my Parah books. Can I replace the piles of different books into their proper shelves? Perhaps not!

One of the 39 Categories of Thoughtful Creative Action on Shabbat is “Borer”, or Sorting. After the wheat was threshed, a mixed pile of waste matter remained on the threshing floor together with the grain kernels. There would often be pebbles and similar debris mixed in. The pebbles were too heavy to be separated by winnowing, and too small to be sifted out. They had to be sorted and removed by hand. This process is “Borer” or Sorting.

Any form of selecting from, or sorting of, a mixture or combination, may be Borer. This includes removing undesired objects or matter from a mixture or combination.

As I reach for each book and sort one from the other I am treading on Borer.

The Talmud, Shabbat 73b, clarifies the distinctions between Borer – Sorting, Zoreh – Winnowing and Merakaid – Sifting. They all deal with different forms of separation between what I desire and what I do not. I believe that each of these Melachot deals with a different aspect of decision-making and choice.

I hope to use the next series of The Music of Halacha, with a break for the laws of Passover, to focus on these three Melachot and the lessons they can teach us about making choices.

My basic premise is that Choice is actually considered a creative act. The physical action of sorting between what I want – Ochel – and what I do not want – Pesolet, and between good and bad is sufficiently creative to be considered one of the 39 categories of prohibited work on Shabbat.

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He is a gifted musician. She is a master horsewoman. They live in a very hot part of Florida.

The musician cannot play his piano nor can the rider ride her horse. The swimmer may not swim. The sages considered these activities dangerous. The musician would never try to fix his $25,000 piano himself. The horsewoman will never break a branch and the “human fish” will never build a raft. The sages will not bend. Each of these artists will have to find other expressions than their greatest passions to connect to God on the day of connection.

I quote from the future classic, Shabbat: Gateway to Transcendence, by Professor Yeshayahu Vernoff:

“Creation is the greatest of all actions. We were granted Bechira – Free Choice – in order to become creators and, thereby, emulate God, the Ultimate Creator. We are preoccupied with exercising our own creativity – our own maipulation of the forces and substances of the world toward actualizing our own purposes.

So deeply preoccupied are we with our own creating that humans easily lose sight of the living background Reality of God, the Creator. How can we resolve the apparent paradox that the Divine Will toward human creating results as a byproduct in the dangerous obscuring of Divine creating? How could God will that humans, made in God’s image to be His children, not be able to know Him? Is it possible, on the other hand, that human creating need not obscure the Divine activity occurring at every moment?

The resolution of this vexing paradox could only be a partial abstinence from human creating sufficient for humans to become sensitized once more to the Reality of Divine Creation. If periodically humans fully lay aside their own creative activity, Divine Creating could gradually move from the unconscious background to the foreground of awareness – could come into actual focus. Human beings could come to know the world as Creation, testifying to the reality of its Creator. This awareness would profoundly illumine human creating when it resumes.

What we are talking about, then, is not the abolition but a regular fast from human creating, a periodic cessation, which is exactly the meaning of the Hebrew word Shabbat.”

We are on a “Creative Action Fast” on Shabbat. This is the day when we do not emulate the Creator with our Melachah – our Thoughtful Creative Work – but by glimpsing the transcendence of the Creator, Who stood back, so to speak, from His active involvement with His Creation and sanctified His work and set it apart.

We, too, step back from our creative powers and connect to the transcendent; we set ourselves apart from the world of our creativity, and submerge ourselves in the world of the Creator.

He is a gifted musician, a sweet soul, who is constantly searching for God in his life. He loves Shabbat and inspires many others to learn about this special day. He feels closest to God when he uses God’s gifts, his musical abilities, to connect to his Source. A magnificent grand piano stands in his living room waiting to vibrate with his music. His fingers itch to play; his soul thirsts to compose and sings songs of praise to the Creator. The only day he has time to sit at his piano is Shabbat. The sages of the Oral Law, with great regret, do not allow him to play his precious piano on Shabbat, no matter how admirable his intentions. “Sorry! Your piano is a finely tuned and valuable instrument and something may go wrong. A string may break. You may feel that it needs some adjustment or tuning. You will be so involved in your playing that you may forget that it is Shabbat and unconsciously violate the Shabbat, and repair your instrument.”

She is a master horsewoman. She won literally tens of ribbons, medals and prizes for her skills. She only feels free when she rides. Her spirit soars as she flies on the back of her horse. She fills with joy as her horse gallops through the fields and hills of Connecticut. She is free of the distractions of the world as she rides what she calls “her wings”. Her soaring spirit, joy, freedom allow her to connect with the infinite as she rides. She is so attuned to her horse that she can feel his energy and power flowing through her as she rides. These are the moments when she feels closest to God. This is how she would celebrate Shabbat, her day for closeness to God. The sages of the Oral Law regret her terrible loss, but they will not allow her to ride her beloved horse on Shabbat. She will have to find other ways to discover the joy, spirit and freedom that only surge through her as she does what she does best and loves most: when she can ride. “Sorry! You may ride past a tree; break off a branch to use as a whip. That would violate Shabbat.”

There are no trees where she lives. She would never hit her horse. She never has to. They ride as a unit, his power controlled and directed by her will. She is desperate, but the sages stand firm, she may not ride on Shabbat.

They live in a very hot part of Florida. They swim everyday. They are miserable on Shabbat when they cannot swim. Their son is more fish than human. He is happiest when he swims, but he cannot swim on Shabbat: He may forget that it is Shabbat and build a raft. He hates rafting. He only wants to swim. His mother would kill him for even considering building a raft in her gorgeous pool. He has never even thought of building a raft during the week. Why be concerned that he will on Shabbat?

The musician cannot play his piano. The rider is not allowed to ride her horse. The human fish may not swim. The sages considered these activities dangerous. The musician will never try to fix his $25,000 piano himself. The horsewoman will never break a branch and the human fish will never build a raft. The sages will not bend. Each of these artists will have to find something other than their greatest passions to connect to God on the day of connection.

The sages love and admire our creativity and passion. They celebrate the musician’s music, the rider’s riding and the boy’s swimming. The sages encourage creativity. They also understand that Shabbat demands a certain state of mind, one that is fragile and easily lost. The sages remind us that we can momentarily forget, even if only for a moment, that it is Shabbat. Our passions can distract us. Part of Shabbat is guarding its integrity.

The Sages are challenging us to take out the time and listen to the music of Halacha even when at first it seems so unexplainable. How can we protect Shabbat? How can we apply this concept to other areas of our relationship with God?