Insights and Inspiration
from the
Holy Land
from
Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz
"Your friend in Karmiel"
from the
Holy Land
from
Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz
"Your friend in Karmiel"
April 26th 2013 -Volume 3, Issue 28 –9th of Iyar
5773
Parshas Emor/Lag
Ba'Omer
So the Jew,
the priest and the blasphemer walk into the…
Jewish
holidays are strange. Non-Jews have it quite simple. On the secular holidays
you either party, memorialize, laze around watch a football game, of course
shop and sometimes all of the above. On their "religious" holidays it's
pretty much the same thing. Maybe a fast here and there, some extra
prayers, shop some more perhaps for a loved one, a child or a boss who you
might want a raise from or for an
employee you may not want to give one to and hoe the present is enough, but
overall it’s a fairly simple game-plan.
We Jews on the other hand have got our
work cut out for us. We're blowing ram's horns, wear white robes, building
temporary huts and waving citron's and branches and that's just in the month of
Tishrei. After that you'll find your Jewish neighbors lighting oil or colored
candles before spinning tops, reading from ancient scrolls in funny costumes,
cleaning their house from crumbs of bread and then of course searching for it
with a candle and burning those crumbs before 7-8 days of eating no leavened
food. Is this normal, I ask you? One thing is for certain no man and certainly
no woman in their right mind would ever make this stuff up. In fact there's no
way that anybody would ever agree to such bizzare rituals if it was created by
man…Thank God… for God. For without His ultimate wisdom we might just have had
to spend our holidays shopping for presents and watching football. I'll take
ram's horns, huts, citrons and colored candles any day.
The truth is it's not just the myriad of
details of the holidays themselves that differentiate us from them. It's not
even the frequency of our holidays. Although that in itself is pretty amazing.
8/9 days sukkot, 7/8 days Passover, 8 days Chanukah, Shavuot, Rosh Hashana, Yom
Kippur, Purim not to mention 5 fast days-3 of which revolve around the
destruction of the Temples and of course the more mystical holidays of Tu
B'Shvat and this Saturday night and Sunday's celebration of Lag Ba'Omer. Let's
not even get started on our weekly holiday of Shabbos, when we totally
disconnect from all of the distractions of the world to tap into the holiness
of our Creator, the beauty of our family and a nice big fat bowl of chulentJ. In fact the Talmud tells us
that one of the primary anti-semitic claims against the Jews was that they were
always taking off from work claiming that it was another holiday. They were
right about that one though, we certainly do the holiday thing a lot and we do
them in a big way. But it's not that frequency alone either.
Perhaps the greatest difference between
our holidays and theirs is that we don't really see them as merely hol-I-days
certainly not with an "I" in the middle and not even with the
"y" in the middle. The Torah in refers to them as Mo'ed which
according to the commentaries comes from the root Noad-to have knowledge or
va'ad-assembly or meeting. Our holidays are an encounter with the Almighty; a
time and place where we become intimate-of course in the spiritual biblical
sense with our Creator. It is for that reason why there are so many intricate
details in the observance and celebration of our holidays. I mean we're meeting
with the Almighty and Master of the world, for gosh- I mean God's sake, of
course it's gonna mean there's lots of different things that we will have to
do, that we need to do to make sure that encounter has meaning. To meet with Hashem
one has to pay attention to all the details, to put the effort and preparation
into seeing beyond the surface and to engaging our hearts, minds and souls in
every way to make sure we get the most out of that special time.
When
one has an important meeting with the president, mayor, rabbi or prospective
business partner we understand you don't just pop in and see how it goes. When
one meets the Queen or King all the little details and protocols are
significant…although they're really not. But they definitely get you excited
and engaged. When one meets their love on a first date, when one prepares to
meet her parents, when one gets ready to stand under the chupah, all the
nuances are special… are thought out… have meaning. And our meetings with
Hashem each Shabbos, each opportunity throughout our holiday filled year
shouldn't even be more so much more so?
It's interesting in this weeks' Torah
portion that discusses the holidays, that it sandwiches it discussion between two
seemingly random portions. In the beginning of the Torah portion it discusses
the laws of the Kohanim/the priests; whose sole/soul purpose is to be the full
time spiritually dedicated intermediaries between Man and God. It tells us of
the laws regarding how he deals with the deaths of close relatives, his
limitations on who he may marry and the laws of physical blemishes and
deformities that invalidate him from service. At the conclusion of the Torah
portion after the holidays, we are told of the story of the blasphemer who is
put to death for cursing the Almighty. The Torah doesn't even explicitly tell
us what led to his sin and outburst. The various midrashim suggest that he was
upset and his perceived status because of his lineage or that he felt that the
rituals of the "show-bread" didn't meet his perception of a proper
ritual. So he rejects, he curses and he is put to death. Kohein, holidays and blasphemers why are these
thrown together?
Perhaps what the Torah is telling at the
heart of this book of Vayikra- the one that is about our relationship with
Hashem is how we are meant in the real world to relate to the Divine. On one
hand we have the Kohein, who encounters Hashem and is someone who sees the
spiritual maladies in the people, who is meant to lift up the nation whose life
is dedicated to the lord's work. Yet at times he as well will have challenges,
blemishes, tragedies, limitations on who he marry. Yet rather than complaining
and rejecting he sees that these are also encounters with Hashem. They are also
from his loving Father. They are knowing they divine. One just has to be able
to see beyond the "occurrence" and change it into an encounter a love
meeting with Hashem. The Torah than tells us simple Jews that we will also have
our opportunities to meet with Hashem. We have each Shabbos, our holidays our
times to scratch behind the surface of our day-to-day lives and go a little
deeper and out of the box. We get dressed nicely, we build huts, we hear the
shofar, we eat matzah... we get in the God mode. And we become attached to
Hashem.
Finally the Torah tragically concludes
with the blasphemer. The one who doesn't go a little deeper. The one who looked
at his status and fate and rather than see it as an encounter and a challenge
by his loving Father, sees it as an act of fate that couldn't possibly be a
holy special role. Or alternatively he saw the show-bread and only saw the
outside the panim and didn't see the warm internal heat, the p'nim of
the beauty of our rituals. He rejects it and in doing so he cuts himself off. He
crossed the line, he crossed out Hashem. The people who witnessed and heard
this are told that they must learn that this was also an encounter with God and
they in turn carry out the penalty rejecting the god-less life.
This Saturday night we celebrate the holiday
of Lag Ba'Omer. One of the reasons we celebrate we are told is because it was
on this day that the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva stopped dying. The Pri
Chadash asks the obvious question. Why is this a reason to celebrate? The
reason they stopped dying is because they were all dead. Rabbi Akiva who had
spent 24 years of his life building this army of Torah scholarship, piety and
greatness had just lost all of his students. His whole life was down the tubes.
The Jewish naition's entire spiritual future has been decimated. What makes this
into a holiday? He answers, that it was on this day that Rabbi Akiva took his
five remaining students and resolved to begin again. He came out of the ashes
and he re-lit the flame. The fire of Torah was started anew. How was he able to
do this? Because Rabbi Akiva saw and knew that what he had experienced had come
from Hashem. It was an encounter. It was a Mo'ed. It was an unfathomable for any
mere human type experience with God but at the same time Rabbi Akiva knew that
there was no one else who could have made it happen. He was able to scratch
beneath and he knew that from those ashes the fire and warmth of Hashem will ultimately
shine through once again. "Fortunate are you Israel-before whom you are
purified and who purifies you- Avinu She'BaShamyim-our loving Father in heaven.
So as you light your bonfires and stare
into your flames this Lag Ba'Omer think about how special we are, how different
we are, how fortunate we are. And may the light of those fires and the
rejoicing that we do give us hope, faith and strength as we get closer and
closer to our ultimate meeting in our home.
Have spectacular Shabbos and blazin' Lag
Ba'Omer
Rabbi
Ephraim Schwartz
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RABBI SCHWARTZ FUNNY TOP TEN LIST OF THE WEEK
Top
Ten Signs Your Rabbi has probably lost count of the Omer
10. Claims "It's too early to
count." It's 10pm.
9. Wishes the entire congregation a
"Happy Lag Baomer!" on day 23
8. When you ask him "what night did we
count last night?" He asks you for multiple choice
7. Keeps wondering when Tishah B'Av will be so
he can shave already
6. You're pretty sure you just heard him count
the 84th day of the omer
5. You just realized, he's counting down
4. Apparently Day 13 now has "9 weeks and
3 days" to it
3. First time in the history of man: rabbi
actually passes an honor off to cantor/Chazan
2. As he's reciting the blessing, you notice
his son in the back of the synagogue who is trying desperately to sign 17 with
his hands
1. Proudly recites blessing and day off of his
handy dandy Omer-Count calendar, dated 2006
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RABBI SCHWARTZES QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"All of Israel are children of royalty."- Reb Shimon Bar Yochai (Talmud bava metzia 113)
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RABBI SCHWARTZ MERON YOUTUBE LINK OF THE WEEK
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RABBI
SCHWARTZES TOUR GUIDE COURSE QUESTION OF THE WEEK
(answer below)
Muqarnas and Ablaq refer to?
(a) Mamluk architecture
(b) Abassid architecture
(c) Types of stone carving
(d) Mosque elements
RABBI SCHWARTZ COOL PLACES IN ISRAEL OF THE WEEK-
Tzomet
Somech- Not necessarily
a place to visit, but an intersection that I pass all the time on my north. This crossroads of highway 70 &
79, the 70 being the ancient Wadi Milich (the salt valley which was transported
along this road in ancient times) that crosses around the carmel and up north
and the 79 which goes from nazareth to Shefra'am, was the site of the ancient
story in the Talmud of the semicha/ordination of the 5 students of Rabbi
Yehudah Ben Bava who was martyred by the Romans. The Talmud tells us that
because the Romans had prohibited the study of Torah and its proliferation,
Rabbi Yehudah went outside of the two major cities, Usha and Shefram, between
two mountains in the valley and gave the ordination to his 5 prime students who than went on to
teach Torah. The Romans caught them and as he shielded them with his body as
they fled until he was pierced 300 times. One of the students he gave semicha
to was none other than Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai!
Answer
is A- Muqarnas
are those beehive shapes stalaglites type designs you'll find in many muslim
buildings, ablaq are the two toned stone designs that many of their buildings
are built out of either white and red or balck alternating stones. The mamluqs
who were warrior slaves of the Egyptians who rebelled against them conquered
Israel in the 13th century and threw out the Crusaders for good
ruling the country for almost three hundred years until the 16th
century Turks got rid of them. They are the ones that built up much of the
Jerusalem old city that we see today particularly the muslim quarter where one
can see all this wonderful architechture…if you really want to. Frankly I recommend
sticking with the Jewish sites-but that's just me J
