Brotherly Vengence

Good Shabbos.

Clearly, he's not a Jewish turkey. I'm thankful for thanksgiving (lowercase t - not the hallmark holiday, but rather merely the concept). There's a Jewish Law which requires us to notify the recipient of our kindness (not charity related where anonymity is key) of our kindness, so that they should have the opportunity to be thankful. The specific scenario recorded is having given someone's child something to eat and intentionally smearing some of the food in a visible place so the parents can notice and come to uncover the kindness done. And then be thankful. During the communal recitation of the central component of public prayer, where Jews connect as a nation after having prayed as individuals, and where we join in the single voice of our appointed chazan, when it comes to the portion of thanks, we each utter our own personal supplement because thanks can only be that - personal. That's the only way it works, when it comes from within. Most significant, however, the last line of the personal thanks in the public forum is thanking the Almighty for creating the opportunity to thank Him. Think about it - it's a fundamental Jewish message.

In this week's Parsha, Vayishlach, the Torah recounts the total slaughter of the city of Shchem by the brothers Shimon and Levi. While black friday usually witnesses the slaughter of one's neighbor for the last cabbage patch kid or wifi on the shelf at next to nothing prices, Shimon and Levi carried out their revenge after the complicit city wide abduction and defilement of their sister, Dina. With Shchem's appetite for Jewish daughters whetted, they agreed to undergo unanimous circumcision to enter into the "tribe" and continue their ways. Shimon and Levi proposed the deal, and on the third day following, where every male was in the weakest state after the procedure, they single-handedly wiped out every one of them. The Klausenberger Rebbe, a survivor of the Holocaust in his own right, was purported to have said in the DP camps afterwards that Shimon and Levi knew that by circumcising all of Shchem, they would be considered internationally as Jews, and no one cares when Jews are being killed.

On a final and more uplifting note, Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetzky writes that while Jacob chastised the brothers, he merely addressed their anger. It should be watched and controlled as its potential for wrongdoing is tremendous. But its potential for right-doing is equally relevant. He didn't condemn their actions vis a vis Shchem, just cautioned their natural proclivity for revenge. However, let it be known that no one else was prepared or courageous enough to respond to the defilement of Jacob's daughter with uncompromised commitment to the purity and holiness of the Jewish people. In this Shimon and Levi had no equal. As our tradition teaches, Jacob, and for that matter G-d Himself, appointed them with the most treasured guardianship of the most crucial Jewish undertakings. Levi was elevated to the tribe of priests from which the Cohanim would descend, the appointed tribe of Torah scholars, and the guardians and servants of the Holy Tabernacle/Temple and all of its music, service and vessels. He could be counted on to suffer no infraction of holiness or purity. Nothing un-Godly could ever be tolerated. Likewise, the tribe of Shimon was entrusted with the holiest of holies - the sanctum sanctorum of the Jewish people - our children. Where un-Godliness, impurity and profanity can never, never creep, is amongst our children's education. They are the teachers, the purveyors of generational transmission and responsibility. They have proven themselves to defend righteousness and purity with their lives. They were thus asked to continue where it counts.

Wishing you a thankful thanking to be thankful,

thanks,

Rabbi Lynn (proud member of the tribe of Levi, and humbly one of the privileged MLF turkey basters bringing Torah and Leadership to Philly and beyond)

What's in a name anyway?

Jacob and Esau. Better known as Yaakov and Eisav in their mother’s tongue. Their names tell the whole story. As we’ve learned before, a Jewish name is not just a name, but rather the essence of the thing. שם Shem means name and sham שם means there – right there’s where you’ll find it. And a thing is not just a thing, but rather only an emanation from God. דבר Davar means thing. Davar means spoken word. And we know how God creates - with His word. So His word is the thing and the thing gets a name and that name is the essence of God’s word in this world. These are the portals through which we crawl in from our end down here and reach into the recesses of the spiritual source. Knowing the name, or rather naming the name is at the heart of the named. For example:

Everything in the world was created with its counterpart. Male and Female mimic the Heavens and the Earth, and everything down below has its very own significant other (everything has a male and female component in creation, everything), signifying the process of e pluribus unum, division becoming One. Adam didn’t have it yet and he searched the expanse of creation. Every animal passed before him and he knew it (even in the biblical sense of knowing, you know?), he knew its essence and by so doing gave it its name. So someone who really understands an elephant, Hebrew, and a specific smattering of Kabala will understand why a פיל (piel) is an elephant. Got it? Can you see it?

Also, when we’re born or have children, parents get Ruach HaKodesh (holy spirit, but that has really terrible connotations for Jews in a Christian world – doesn’t mean anywhere near the same thing). Meaning, the Almighty puts the thought and affinity for the name in your head because He knows the essence of the soul, and its name needs to be its name. No joke. This is normative Judaism. Now, of course, this probably only works for parents who are anyways looking for the kid’s essence in the name and using the soul’s language (not modern Hebrew, sorry) where Rodderick and Winifred are not really options. But nonetheless, the name is achieved through Divine intervention. If you don’t know your Hebrew name, it’s high time to get one.

So too with Yaakov and Eisav. Our Sages tell us that Eisav’s name עשו comes from נעשה na’ase which means done/completed. He was born with so much hair, red hair no less, that he appeared several years older. Why? Because hair grows where we are expressed out in the world. Eisav’s whole existence was as a warrior, conqueror, trapper and man of earthly conquest. His entire being was in the world of action. Once he chose his heretical ways, Yaakov was left with the task of absorbing Eisav’s earthly prowess, poetically played out in his disguising himself with woolen hands as Eisav before his blind father Yitzhok.

Yaakov, on the other hand, is a construct of two ideas. יעקב Yaakov means taking the yud י , the letter representing the most refined spiritual presence in the physical dimension (the least amount of ink and suspended well above ground level), down to the עקב the heel, the bottom and final point of the creation of man, the central figure in and purpose of creation. He was created to bring out the spiritual source and purpose in all of creation, even to the thickened and trodden “heels” of this world, and accomplish total self-perfection.

The battle between Yaakov and Eisav is the essential battle between Jew and pure physicality. While Art Garfinke and Woody Allen sing pagan praises to Manhattan, we might just shudder at the hairy hands of Eisav and the seeming nonexistence of the underlying mystical truths of creation. And that’s from a former fan of Art and Woody’s, NYU film school, all things Yankee, and the Staten Island Ferry.

Wishing you all a very holy Shabbos.

Rabbi Lynn

Chayai Sarah - eight is enough

Have you ever seen a ches up close? What’s a ches? One of these: ח in Hebrew. This one doesn’t do it justice because the one I’m really looking for is the Torah one (that font has escaped the standard Word collection). In the Torah, the ches is written with two zions זז attached with a tiny chuppah on top (a wedding canopy). Chuppah begins with a ches. The Chuppah makes the ches. A Chuppah is a ches. You see, zion is the seventh letter of the aleph beis. Seven always represents completion in the physical realm – six sides/dimensions to everything corporeal and the seventh dimension correlates to its spiritual source/purpose. For example, a table is the wood in the physical -6- and its use in the spiritual -7. Ches is the eighth letter. The next dimension. That which connects the seven to its spiritual mirror image above. Seven is the spiritual manifest in the physical. Eight is spiritual at its source.

A Chuppah, a Jewish wedding, enjoins two complete and separate entities (man and woman who are physically mature and spiritually whole – if you’re not sure of either of those qualifications, see me another time). Miraculously – meaning beyond the laws of nature – they become one, and that “one” is greater than the sum total of its parts, well beyond what either could ever have achieved independently. “One” becomes doubled. Two “sevens” turn to eight – above and beyond the limits of the natural order. This week’s Torah portion overflows with ches.

Abraham mourns his beloved Sarah, purchases from the people of CHES the Kever Hamachpaylah (the “doubled cave”, otherwise known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the heavily contested Hebron) where she is to be buried, and in turn sets the stage for other couples as well, (as it happens, Adam and Eve were already there) Isaac and Rivka, Jacob and Leah. Quite the romantic resting place, no?

The Torah then turns to the journey of Eliezer, Abraham’s trusted servant entrusted with finding a wife for Isaac. Rivka’s kindness and flawlessness of character win her the role with miraculous fanfare, and Isaac is thus consoled from the death of his mother. A new Ches is born, in place of the old. The Chuppah of the Jewish people continues its legacy intact.

The Cave itself represents more doubling, more “ches”. It was the place towards which our patriarchs and matriarchs prayed. It was there where they calibrated their physical existence with their spiritual source. Each of us has an eighth dimension – a purely spiritual “double” which never tars from our physical blemishes. It lays above us in perfection, representing ourselves having achieved 100% of our spiritual potential. Those who achieved their own perfection and simultaneously their marital perfection are forever entombed beneath the earth of the “doubling cave”.

Those of us still on the journey can draw strength from its inhabitants and can calibrate our own lives with our spiritual double. We can strive for our own fluid synthesis of body and soul, and hope to find refuge in a marriage of similar caliber, where we finally stand the chance of catapulting ourselves towards transcendence and purpose of being. It ain’t easy, I know. But a valiant effort will be well rewarded, and to not try is a crying shame.

Good Shabbos,
Rabbi Lynn and the merry mlf’ers.