Thursday, June 23, 2011

Appeal

                                                                                                             B-H
It’s been almost two weeks since I didn’t post anything.
I have enough material written to post every week for the next half of the year.
Unfortunately this material needs editing. It was explained in one of the first of my posts that my English language skills are rather limited do to the fact that I came to this country in age of thirty, not knowing English at all. I came with family and this family was my priority and not learning new language more than it was necessary to provide for them.
After fifteen years B-H I learn enough to express myself in this language but the grammar and spelling of my writings, was many times matter of negative critique.
Till now I hire editor who, for decent price, was doing editing for me. Now he got busy with other promising project and he does not have time to do this work for me.
It is not only matter of public laughter which may be caused by my unedited posts, like this one.
I believe there are some good ideas which I would like to share with my readers, and according to statistic tool there are many of them, but I’m afraid that because of my poor language, the idea can be lost or misunderstood.
Presently I’m looking for someone else to edit my essays but I can not pay much for this job.
This blog does not bring any monetary profit. There are no donations and advertising so far is free of charge. I can not afford paying more than I did till now and even this was much for me these days.
If you know someone who would like to edit my essays, please let me know.
Or maybe you would like to advertise on this blog and pay for it, this money would cover the cost of editing as my work I share with others because I love to do it and i do not profit from it.
Please email me if you can positively answer for my appeal.

Meanwhile, Chasde Hashem, I engaged my 19 years old daughter and it is great source of Simcha for me and for our family. Mazel Tov.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

The Yom Tov of Gerim

                                                                                                             B-H
Shvios is coming. Sometimes I call it the Yom Tov of gerim.
The parsha describing Matan Torah (the giving of Torah) is identified with a convert: Yisro. We read an entire sefer (book of Bible) about another convert (Rus) on that day. One of the most famous gerim in the history, Graf Walentyn Potocki, gave his life for G-d and his Torah on this very day. There are many other facts linking this day to gerim.
I have previously attempted to elucidate the term ger according to its meaning in Lashon Hakoidesh (the Holy Tongue). The Hebrew of the Scriptures and other Jewish writings is more like a code and cryptogram than a language. This incredible quality of verbal communication and revelation of the Holy Tongue allows reader to detect multiple meanings and ideas compressed in three or even two letters of the shoresh (root) of every Hebrew word.
The shoresh gimel raish” is one of those roots which are a common base for multiple words. Rabbi Hirsch for example, finds the shoresh GR within following words: alien, stranger, uprooted, land-less, without support for his feet, without roots, and someone without rights. This shoresh is used also to mean: cast away, without the ties, separated, uncovered, without protection of skin, naked. All of these words seem to have something in common--unsteadiness or instability--caused by a lack of foundation and an exposure to perhaps harmful elements.
The same two letters are also the shoresh of the word describing a Jewish convert, a person who consciously chose to submit himself to G-d and His Torah, a person who joined the chosen people of Yisrael in this most difficult task of being a representative of G-d.
It shares its root with the verbs and nouns listed above, and it therefore must have something in common with them. Let’s analyze.
What are the ‘mind conditions’ of a person who decides to become a Jew? What are the results of such a step? Is there any instability involved in the process when the person recognizes the path given by the Creator?
Even before that: is there any instability caused by the denial of existing conditions, e.g., cutting off the ties with the past? Conditions received from parents, teachers, and the environment? Conditions which at a certain moment lay in the rubble of disillusionment?
I believe that the ultimate personal instability is where one reaches a point in life when everything calls for reevaluation and change--but change coming from a deep desire to find answers and the truth. That moment when the dramatic change of life occurs might be called the “moment of geirus.”
It is the time when spiritual transformation takes place, transformation which gradually bears fruit later, in ways unexpected to ger at the beginning of the transformation. Once he gives his life to his Creator all the way, he is ready to accept anything from the Giver of Life. He finds his support in nothing but G-d.
It takes time and effort to climb up the ladder of self-sanctification, but it starts somewhere on the bottom of a spiritual search where the answer can be only One: I must serve my Creator. I need to serve my Creator. I love to serve my Creator.
For Yaacov Avinu, this moment happened when he awoke up from his dream and recognized that Hashem was much closer than he had thought. “Uchain yaish Hashem bamukoim hazeh vunochi lo yudati--In truth G-d is in this place! And I did not know it.” (See the commentary of RSRH on this verse, parshas Vayeytze 27:16.)
This new awareness creates a tremendous responsibility which the person can not, must not turn his back to. “Vairu--and he was afraid.” Can he undertake this responsibility? Will he have strength and courage to bring this awareness of G-d to the rest of humanity? Even to his own children? Will his children follow his path? Will they understand their mission of being a mamleches kohanim--a kingdom of priests, people leading the rest of the humanity to find their way back to the lost Gan Eden?
For approximately 60 years (see Ramban), Moishe Rabeinu was a fugitive from Pharaoh. Wandering from one land to another, taking jobs as commander in chief in one country and shepherd in another. At this time of his life he was Moishe but not yet Rabeinu.
The last place of his residence before return to Egypt was in Midian. According to the Midrash, it cost him 10 years of his life being imprisoned by Pharaoh’s adviser: Yisro. After 10 years he became Yisro’s son-in-law. Soon after, his wife Tzipoira give a birth to Moishe’s bchor--first born. Moishe named boy Gershom because: “ger huisi ba eretz nachriu--I was a ger (immigrant) in a foreign land.”
Chazal ask the questions: where someone can be a Ger if not in foreign land? Was not Moishe still in the Land of Midian? Why does he says that: ger huisi--I was--and not ger ani--I am? We may also ask: was not Moishe a ger already, in other lands, for 60 years of his life? Or is there more in his expression?
This was Moishe Rabeinu (our teacher). He was a the ultimate seeker of the Truth and the finder of ultimate Truth. He did not find it in the Pharaoh’s court, he did not find it as warrior in land of Kush, he did not find it anywhere else.
He was ready to settle and maybe even give up his search but he could not; he was Moishe. When he, perhaps, lost all his hope, possibly in the Yisro’s dungeon, this was the time for the experience described above. His moment of geirus, his tshuva, his giving up everything for his Creator for G-d of his fathers.
Michtav me’Eliahu” call this moment of life which I call the moment of geirus an “awakening from below.” For Moishe, it was a decisive moment in his life. Soon after this experience came the most important moment in his private life (Matan Torah was a more public event), an awakening from Above. Moishe met the G-d of his fathers in the desert of Sinai, and he was sent with most important mission in the history of mankind.
At the bush, he was still uncertain, and like his great-grandfather Yaacov, he was afraid. We see a man who knows that there is nothing better than the service of Creator. But will he have enough strength to lead? Will people listen to him? There, in Mitzraim, his people were waiting for him; they were already close to the last gate of Tuma (impurity). All hope was lost; they were on the brink of spiritual annihilation as Chazal describes it.
One more time Torah use this word which seem to have meaning much deeper than we usually understand. Torah calls them gerim: Ki gerim heyisem ba’eretz Mitzraim--because you were gerim in land of Egypt.”
Matys Weiser

Counting Omer

                                                                                                             B-H
Just days before commemoration of the most important event in the history of the mankind (Matan Torah - receiving of Torah), I will post two posts. The first one is the conclusion of Rabbi’s Shimshon Refuel Hirsch or if anyone likes it better Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, experts from his ‘Collected Writings’ elucidating meaning of Sfira – counting fifty days from Pesach to Shvios (Passover to Shavuot). Together with other fragment of his comment on parshas Bechikoysay posted the other week, these posted by me experts can change your view on Judaism regardless if you are non observant Jew or Satmar Chusyd. Without exaggeration it can change your self-understanding and meaning of your Jewishness. It may be difficult to go trough Rav’s Hirsch sophisticated but beautiful language but reward is worth of it. Please if you didn’t read these experts from the beginning, start from the first week after Pesach. To make it appear different than my writings I use thin font for rav Hirsch’s comments and as usually thick font for writings authored by me.
Enjoy!

We did not value freedom and land according to Jewish Truth, under which they should be valued only to the extent that they afford us the means to an ever more complete fulfillment of the Godly Law. Instead, in accordance with the popular delusions, we saw the Godly Law as being meaningful to us only in that it afforded, secured, and protected freedom and land for us. However, where we thought we could better and more independently secure and increase freedom and land through other means, acceptable everywhere else, we thoughtlessly exchanged the Godly Law as an impediment which had become useless, antiquated and stale. But this exchange was always a deception; and in the meantime we lost the single condition which permits us to hope for freedom and land.

The experience of the centuries will one day bear its fruit. We will grasp forever the true, eternal, and inalienable worth of the Godly Law so that we can truly count from freedom and land to Torah. Only then may we trust "that God will again graciously bless us and again cause His Countenance to shine among us!" We therefore will not yearn for the recovery of freedom and land as ends in themselves, in order to be redeemed by freedom from the drudgery of servitude, and by land from the humiliation of dependency. Rather, the purpose will be: Sheibone Bays Hamikdash Bimherah Biyamenu Vesan Chelkanu Besoirosecho, that the Divine Sanctuary might rise again, and we might do our duty in complete fulfillment of His Law.

And then when the land will have yielded its produce, and the sickle will again be put to work on our own soil, then we will not mistakenly see in the ownership of land the sole means of attaining healing and blessing. Rather we will then hope for the Divine blessing, that God as our God, may bless us through all the worldly goods that He will have given to us. We will use all the rich abundance only in His service, and serve only God as our God, in every way and with everything we have, and bring His Law to its exaltation in fulfillment.

We see now, however, in what a wide, wide perspective these Psalm-reflections celebrate Israel's return to life. Far beyond the narrow confines of Jewish nationality, they include all peoples at once in the same hope. God's Way on earth and His salvation will be recognized among all nations, as all peoples render homage to God "and the nations rejoice in this homage." Only through this homage, and in it alone, will the solution finally be found: how to establish permanently the salvation of nations on earth. The solution, hinted at in the Psalm, consists in regulating the order in which everyone and everything will feel and move: "at a moderate level"—neither too high nor too low—rather in exactly such a position that most closely corresponds to everyone's own nature and results in the benefit of all. "Then the Kingdom and the leadership of the nations on earth will have risen to God".