from
the
Holy
Land
from
Rabbi
Ephraim Schwartz
"Your
friend in Karmiel"
May 3rd 2024 -Volume 13 Issue 29 25th of Nisan 5784
Parshat Acharey Mos
Redemption Year
The year was 5408 from Creation. 1648 on the secular calendar. It was the year that Mashiach was supposed to come. In Ukraine there was a war. A revolt. It was the peasants against the corrupt rich landowners. It shouldn’t have had anything to do with the Jews. We weren’t even allowed to own land. We were learning Torah like never before. The previous decades saw massacres and attacks on communities here and there in 1637 and 1638 and the years before. But they were over. We survived. The redemption was coming. The great Reb Shabsi Kohen, known as the Shach, in his historical testimony of that period and the kinnos lamentations called Megilat Eifa, writes that he saw in the words of this week's parsha that it would finally be the year of Mashiach. As the Torah tells us of the High Priest Kohen Gadol coming into the Holy of Holies with the words
B’Zot yavo el Ha’Kodesh- with this he shall come into the Holy.
“Zot” being the gematria of 408. Interestingly enough and strikingly to me this year “zot” is also in mispar katan (a form of gematria which takes out the zeros) 7+1+8 and 4(00) which is 84 our year being 57-84 from creation. But the Shach was wrong. It wasn’t the year of Mashiach. And it hasn’t been this past Pesach for us either… or maybe it has.
The Ukraine, White Russia and Poland those years saw the eradication of close to 100,000 Jews by Chiemlinitzky’s revolution according to the Shach’s testimony. According to other historians the numbers were much lower at about 20-40 thousand. Some things never change when it comes to downplaying Jewish deaths. One thing that all agree upon though was that every village or city that the Cossacks got they murdered 90% of the Jews.
How does one move on after all of that? How does one count towards sefirat ha’omer with Shavuot and then the summer ahead of us when our plans were to be redeemed in Jerusalem by now? How do we keep moving, keep fighting, keep praying after the crushing disappointment of the empty Eliyahu Ha’Navi-less doorway Seder night, or havdala we made after the Seuda that Mashiach didn’t join us for on the 7th day of Pesach? How do go forward Acharey Mos- After the death- the aptly named parsha that Hashem arranged for us to read this week.
Despite my desire to write a second E-Mail over the holidays before the last days of Pesach, it didn’t work out. But Hashem, as He always does, sent the cure before the sickness. He gives us the tools and the hope, inspiration and answers, before He moves us to the stage when we will most need it. Before the Pesach Seder this year He sent me one of the most incredible insights from the Hagadda of the Lubavitcher Rebbi that truly gave me a whole new perspective about what Pesach was all about and what we are going through now. It’s a life-changer as much of his Torah is and it felt like it was being written to me and all of us today.
The Rebbi asks, among many questions on the Seder, that at the beginning of our Magid we recite a strange paragraph that we’re all familiar with of Ha Lachma Anya-
“This is the poor man’s bread that our forefather’s ate in Egypt. All that are hungry should come and join us, all that need a Pesach offering should join us. Now we are servants, next year we will be free. Now we are here next year we will be in Jerusalem.”
It’s a strange paragraph on many levels. The first question he asks is what it is doing here? It’s obviously not an invitation for people to join us, as we are already sitting down to the meal and it’s after Kiddush already. As well certainly for the Pesach sacrifice everyone has to be signed up beforehand. As well this doesn’t seem to be about telling the story of Pesach in short kind of abridged version for those that can’t wait until the end- despite mentioning the matza that we ate in Egypt. Because as we know Magid, the story has to be done in the form of questions and answers that will follow with Ma Nishtana. So what’s it all about?
As well the paragraph itself doesn’t really seem to be that accurate. First of all our forefathers didn’t necessarily eat matza in Mitzrayim. Despite the fact that some commentaries seem to suggest that was the case, there doesn’t seem to be any basis for that in Chazal. Even more perplexing is that later on in the Seder we actually say that the matza that we are eating is because Hashem couldn’t wait to take us out and we had to leave very quickly with no time for it to rise- thus traumatizing Jews for all times and is the reason why we don’t go anywhere even for a one day hike in the hills without enough food to feed an army. So what’s this about the matza being what our forefathers ate in Egypt?
Next question is that it’s kind of strange I’m sure for those of us that are in Jerusalem already to say next year in Jerusalem. Of course we mean with the Beit Ha’Mikdash and the temple mount, but still it definitely doesn’t seem to be accurate or relevant. And finally are we really slaves and not free men today? The law of the Pesach Seder is as we will say in the Hagadda, is that we have an obligation to feel as if we are leaving Egypt ourselves. That Hashem is saving us literally. We dress up, we eat the food of Egypt, the maror, the matza, we recline like redeemed people on a pillow. It’s all good and fun and so the children will ask,but besides the dress up and choking on maror and saltwater tears are we really leaving Egypt? Are we still slaves? How do we get that feeling?
Those questions, the Rebbi suggest as well as others that will crop up are the purpose of the Ha Lachma Anya. It’s what we need to read, say and understand before we even begin this process. It’s the introduction of it all. It answers the big question that is on the table. The elephant in the middle of the room. Are we redeemed or are we free? If Hashem saved us and we’re celebrating our redemption and reclining then why are there still poor people who don’t have what to eat? Didn’t we leave b’rechush gadol- with great wealth? Where is it? Why are there still wicked sons sitting at the seder? Weren’t they all killed out? Why are we not in Jerusalem? Why is there no Beit HaMikdash? Why in each generation do they come up against us to destroy us and Hashem Saves us from their hands? Why is October 7th still happening?
On the other hand as well, how is it that we became slaves in the first place? A Jew is never a slave. We all have a spark of holiness that can never be enslaved. That is burning bright. They may enslave our bodies but our soul and spirit is just waiting for redemption. It took a special promise to Avraham that we would even be enslaved in the first place and there was 400-year expiration date on that decree. According to all accounts that would be up by now. Once it was up we revert to our natural state of free men, so why we would still be enslaved. Our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren? Why are we? If it is and was Hashem Himself who redeemed us, then why didn’t He do the full job?
And thus we introduce the seder with this fundamental idea that the matza before us is the reason why. It’s the poor man’s bread our forefathers ate when we were in Egypt because when we were leaving Egypt we didn’t want to really leave. We didn’t really want to become free men. We just wanted to continue living a little better with what had become our reality of the centuries and the millennia since. The night of the seder when we ate our korban pesach we were really free. That spark inside of us shined. It may have looked like we were in Egypt still, but we weren’t. We were free men ready to serve Hashem. Ready to come to Israel. We were there.
As a result of that slave “contzeptzia” that still hasn’t entirely been broken, we can understand that we really are still leaving Egypt. Today. Now. We're still on the road. The journey to Yerushalayim hasn’t ended yet. To the Beis Ha’Bechira. It’s not our forefathers. It’s not our history. It’s us today still leaving that Egypt. It’s us today on the 7th day of Pesach standing by the Yam and being overwhelmed and looking for solutions on how to confront the Egyptian army that we thought had been wiped out. Murta’aim- deterred. They no longer posed any threat. We can live normally again. The Crusades are over, the Inquisition too, There are no more Babylonians, Romans Cossacks, Nazis, Hamas or Columbia and UCLA college students. But there are. There always are in each generation. Because we still don’t get that we’ve left Egypt. That we were redeemed already eternally. That the four cups have been drunk and that all we need to do is drink the fifth. Vi’Heyveisi- to come to the land.
Hashem told us as we stood by that sea on that first 7th of Pesach, by that first of Seuda of Mashiach to stop trying to figure it out. It’s not the group that said to go back to Egypt, it’s not the ones that said we should commit suicide and jump in the sea. It’s not the ones that said we should pick up our swords and fight and not even the ones that said we should daven and do teshuva. “Quiet” Hashem said. Just march. You’re out. You’re free. I know it looks like a sea in front of you. I know it looks like there’s a fierce army behind you on the other side of the fence. In the halls of international courts. In congress. In Europe. In the elite campuses around the world. It looks like a sea that will overwhelm you. But they’re not real. They will split, as long as you can march forward. As long as you can keep coming undeterred to the House I have chosen since Creation to reside with you in and shine out to the rest of the world from.
That is our seder. That is where we are today. Acharey Mos Shnei Bnai Aharon- after the death of all of the contzepziot of the two children of Aharon. B’korvasam La’Hashem vayamusu- They felt they had to do something more to get close to Hashem. They needed to reinvent the wheel. They didn’t understand that the shechina was already there. That they just needed to serve as they had been told. Once that contzeptzia has been broken. Acharey Mos- once it's dead. Then B’Zos Yavo Aharon el Ha’Kodesh- with this Aharon will finally be able to come in. Just walk right in. We’ve already been redeemed. We just need to come.
The Zohar HaKodesh brings us another hint for the year of the redemption. We will read the portion of the Yovel in a few weeks before Shavuot and the verse tells us
B’Shnas Ha’yovel ha’zot tashuvu ish el achuzoso- in the year of yovel each man will return to his portion.
The Zohar notes that this is a prophecy that in the year of "ha’zot" will be the ultimate return and resurrection of the dead. Ha’zot, the Rabbis in 1648 thought, was referring to their year of 5408 the gematria of ha’zos. Yet if one takes the next two letters of tashuvu- they will return that follow ha’zot we have “taf-(400)” and “shin (300)” which of course added together is 700 with the number 7+1 =8 and 4, making it the year 5784, our year.
This year it may seem like we are still here. Here in the same place we’re we’ve been for 3000 years locked in that slavery of our minds only. But L’Shana Ha’ba’ah – next year we will realize that in truth we’ve been in Yerushalayim the entire time. If we have that redeemed mindset then from Acharey Mos we will next week god willing already read the parsha of Keshoshim tihiyu- that we will be holy because we will have recognized that ki kadosh ani- that the holiness of Hashem is already within us.
Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz
************************
CHIZUK/TZEDAKA OPPORTUNITY OF THE WEEK
Smiles for the Kids- I’ve heard about this organization for a while already and this Pesach I was privileged to finally work with Aron Schoenfeld and American Oleh’s chesed organization since the beginning of the war. Aron is an incredible marketing and event coordinator developer who moved here not many years ago. And since the begging of the war he formed this incredible volunteer organization to bring joy and happinesss to the thousands of children suffering from the traumas that this war has taken on them.
Smiles For The Kids supports Israelis struggling with
the emotional and physical aftermath of the recent terrorist attack in the
south, and the ongoing military operations occurring across Israel. Their team
is delivering food, shopping for groceries, and providing critical necessities
like clothing and household goods to displaced families, single parent
households whose loved ones are serving on the front lines, and teens or young
adults living together while their parents work long shifts at hospitals caring
for the wounded, or far from home on army bases defending the borders of the
Jewish state. Smiles For The Kids is doing whatever we can, for whomever we
can, to support one another as Israel recovers from the atrocities of the
Simchat Torah attack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y16Sk8bGlQU
And here’s the link to donate
DONATE TO THE CAMPAIGN
givebutter.com/SmilesForTheKids2023
venmo.com/ThePFAPFoundation
-*Reference ‘Smiles For The Kids’ in ‘What this for?’
https://my.israelgives.org/en/fundme/SmilesfortheKids
aron.schoenfeld@gmail.com
" Der
emess shtarbt nit ober er lebt vi an oreman.” The truth doesn’t die
but it lives like a poor man.
RABBI
SCHWARTZ'S TOUR GUIDE EXAM QUESTION OF THE WEEK
answer
below at end of Email
4.
The Sapir Site is part of the national infrastructure project known by the name
of
______.
A.
Because in the Judean Desert large amounts of rain fall at once.
B.
Because the level of the Dead Sea is declining due to increased mineral
mining.
C.
Because the desert covering is mostly made of chalk that can hardly be
permeated.
D.
Because the desert covering is mostly made of granite that can hardly be
permeated.
RABBI SCHWARTZ’S COOL VIDEO OF THE WEEK
https://soundcloud.com/ephraim-schwartz/al-eileh-acapella – For Yom Ha”Shoah this week as well as for all of those kedoshim we have lost in this sefira period… my only Acapella mournful song Al eileh.. Amazing Dovid Lowy vocals and arrangements!
RABBI
SCHWARTZ’S PARSHA PRAYER INSPIRATION OF THE WEEK
708 BC-The Major Reform- OK, we just went through the holiday of Pesach and experienced some miracles and yet the redemption is not here yet. Similarly in Tanach we will embark upon the great Pesach miracle of Chizkiya when they were besieged by the army of Sancheirev of Assyria. First a bit of location. The kingdom of Assyria in the 8th century spanned all of modern-day Syria and Lebanon, as well as Jordan, Iraq and even parts of modern-day Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey and even parts of Iran which is Babylonia. Their capital Ninveh was in Iraq which today is Mosul. It was huge. They were warriors and a powerful army; the largest in the world at the time.
Today one can visit the amazing site of Tel Lachish. There were incredible finds that go back to the times of Sancheirev’s siege there including the oldest and only rampart in the entire Middle East from the Ashurite/ Assyrian period, that was used to attack the cities walls with battering rams. It’s estimated that it was about 200 feet wide and 40 feet high! As well in 2016 they uncovered the remains of a former “temple” and altar that seemingly was destroyed by the reform and Teshuva movement of Chizkiya. There’s a lot more finds at Lachish and we even have testimony that was written and uncovered in Sancheirev’s palace in Ninveh. Where it was written on the wall there of his conquest of Lachish by name. It’s always nice when Archeology uncovers scientific evidence to support our true Tanach stories.
School of Palestinian
Victimhood
Motto: Ignorantia
Veritas
No previous knowledge
of Middle East required
Course Fee: 25,000 Dollars
paid in any form of used notes at any branch of the Bank of Qatar. Reduction
for Jewish Students
Albanese theory
Length: 7 Minutes
Learn how to insert
the words “Occupied Palestinian Territory” at least twice into every sentence.
Beating Israeli
Hasbara
Length: 2 Minutes
Learn how to stick
your fingers in your ears and sing la la la very loudly.
Module three
The Guiteres Method
Length : 8 Minutes
This will teach you
how to tweet about how terrible the Gaza war is without doing anything about
it.
Module Four
Learn Palestinian
Length 30 Minutes
This will teach you the new definition of old
words. How to use the words “Occupation” “Genocide” and “refugee” and more. No
previous knowledge of English required.
Module Five
International Law
Length:12 Minutes
Learn how everything that
Israel does is in breach of International Law. No previous knowledge of Law is
required for this Module.
Module Six
Zionism as a threat to
world Peace
Length: a Half hour
including coffee
This module is
voluntary and is for those students considering a career in the United Nations.
Field Trip
Sponsored By the UNWRA
A practical course in
Tunnel building taught by a visiting Professor of Engineering from the University
of Gaza. Bring your own hostage and packed lunch.
Module Seven
History of the Middle
East
Length: 4 years
This is an optional
module and not required to be offered a professorship at Columbia University
Hello Mudda, Hello
Fadda, Here I am at Camp Intifada.
And they say the quad
sprinkler will stop raining.
The tuition is so
pricey.
To attend a poison “Ivy”
You remember Ilhan’s daughter
She’s no homeless for
defending Jewish slaughter
All the comrades hate
the Zios
Who hate pronouns in
their bios
And we want to charm
the Houthis
So we hold hands and
chant “Death to the Yahudis”
I’ve made new friends
Who are less white
And my Hebrew
Is now left-right
And when Jew kids
Start to roll in
We demand that they
all go back to Poland
Let me stay of Muddah
Fadda
Globalize the intifada
Don’t bring me back to
the suburb camp
Cancel my tuition for
next year
Let me stay
I’ll proudly wear my
Kefiyiyaa
And loudly shout
Death to America”
I know everything to
say
I’ve been here one
whole day…
Dearest Father,
Darling Mother,
I’ll stay one way
Or another
You paid thousands
To this college.
So our camp could make
the Janitor a hostage.
Wait a minute
Cops are coming
We’re uprising
They are stunning
Mother, Father
I’m expelled from your
Alma Matta
Columbia is doing an immercie experience so that students can relate to Anne Frank on a visceral level. Jewish students are taking classes remotely in their attics.
**********************************
The answer to this week”s question is C– Fairly easy one… The Sapir site is on the North side of the Kinneret and is the first pumping station of the National Water Carrier or Movil Artzi of water all across Israel. As far as flash floods that’s also pretty easy as the reason despite the fact that there is not a lot of rainfall in the Desert, but the water that flows down doesn’t have any trees or shrub to stop it and the ground being of chalkstone becomes smooth like glass and it just flows very hard. So got this right and thus the score is Rabbi Schwartz 3 and Ministry of Tourism 1 on this exam so far.
