there have been lots of Herods. But the Harod everyone knows about (and the Herod everyone hates!) is the Herod that renovated the Temple mount in Jerusalem, built Masada and killed all those children in hopes that he got that one Jewish guy named Yeshua, otherwise know as Jesus - hey the kid was gonna take his crown away.
Well they finally found him! they got his Tomb but found that the Jewish revolt in 67 C.E. (the one that resulted in the destruction of the Temple and the final Diaspora of the Jewish people) got to him first...ah well. its tough being the bad guy sometimes...
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
i can never remember his name...
but its Pascal.
what a great name!
any how,
Pascals Wager! is a great argument although i am sure most Atheists find it infuriating...
"a person should "wager" as though God exists, because so living has potentially everything to gain, and certainly nothing to lose" --Blaise Pascal
eh i think of it as a glass is half full way of viewing Belief where as an Atheist has a glass is half empty view on Belief.
in the end...what do you lose by believing?
what a great name!
any how,
Pascals Wager! is a great argument although i am sure most Atheists find it infuriating...
"a person should "wager" as though God exists, because so living has potentially everything to gain, and certainly nothing to lose" --Blaise Pascal
eh i think of it as a glass is half full way of viewing Belief where as an Atheist has a glass is half empty view on Belief.
in the end...what do you lose by believing?
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Lessons from a Fish
Lessons from a Fish – learning to care for people who are different
There are a lot of things one learns at the oddest of moments. In my experience the moments where I learn the best lessons usually involve a child taking me to task or a student of mine making an extremely profound statement (5th graders’ insight on the Holocaust is quite remarkable I must say).
So it’s no surprise that one of those “AH HA” moments came to me when teaching my 5th grade class about the Reluctant Prophet Jonah.
The story of Jonah is read as the Haftarah portion on Yom Kippur as a lesson in forgiveness. Recent political goings on in the world and USA have made me audience to some unacceptable hate speech from people I consider friends regarding people who are different then us Jews.
Although Yom Kippur is still fresh in our minds I feel like the lesson Jonah teaches us was either not headed or fell on deaf ears. So I feel the need to revisit it because I find it very relevant at this moment in time in US history and there is something for us all in this story of not just forgiveness but of TOLERANCE and ACCEPTANCE.
To make the somewhat long story of Jonah short, G-d asks Jonah to do something and Jonah refuses. For this refusal of G-d’s wishes Jonah ends up in a fish…fun. After being spit out by the fish Jonah submits (and whines about it a lot) and does what G-d asks.
What G-d asked of Jonah was to go to the people of Nineveh – a town located very close to present day Mosul, Iraq (remember this) – and tell the people to ask for forgiveness of their sins and repent to G-d (they were misbehaving badly) or their city would be destroyed and everyone in it die – and according to the Haftarah portion it would have been more then 120k people and animals.
No big deal right? Why would a prophet be reluctant to “save” people who were misbehaving? That’s his job right?
Well yes.
But…this is Jonah and he was a reluctant prophet.
Jonah said to G-d, “these are not Jews and they do not worship you as G-d why do you care whether they live or die? Why do you care whether they ask for forgiveness?” and G-d’s response to Jonah was, “it doesn’t matter whether they have entered into a covenant with me like the Hebrews did, what matters is that they are my people, my creation, and they deserve salvation if they ask for it.”
Did you catch that?
G-d said I don’t care who they are, Jew or not I love them just the same and you should too!
Now on Yom Kippur we use this Haftarah portion to talk about the idea of forgiveness and it’s definitely in there. G-d wants the people of Nineveh to ask for forgiveness or be destroyed. They do ask for forgiveness and do acts worthy of forgiveness and G-d lets them live. Ok.
But to me the most important part of this story isn’t G-d’s forgiveness its what causes Jonah’s reluctance. This is the message I feel that is often lost. On Yom Kippur we’re very busy with receiving forgiveness and Biblical examples of people receiving forgiveness that we lose sight of the more important message in this story.
The message we forget is the message about loving people who are not like us; people who are not like us in many fundamental ways. More importantly we forget about loving our neighbors and doing what we can to create a bridge of understanding (and in many cases needed peace). Jonah was reluctant to create a bridge of understanding – he refused to try and understand 1) who these people were and 2) why G-d cared so much for a people he had no relationship with prior to Jonah walking into town and telling them about G-d. People who were essentially polytheistic Arabs. Remember where they lived? That’s right G-d loves Arabs! G-d told Jonah to care for these people as if they were Jews and in this G-d is telling us the same thing. Too often as Jews we get caught up in the fervor of the Middle East conflict and forget who as the People of the Covenant we are supposed to be. We stop living as Jews who are required to Tikun Olam – Heal the world and we begin to live as people who are close-minded and angry. Reluctant to build that bridge of understanding and refusing to do as G-d asks of us – to heal the world with peace and understanding and most importantly with forgiveness. We are and have been hiding out in a fish for a very long time and its time we as a community of Jews world wide come out and do as G-d bids us.
So here’s where I stop beating around the proverbial bush. Yes, this is specifically directed to Jews who feel every Arab needs to be killed or blown off the face of the Earth.
Every Shabbat you sit there and have the nerve to say prayers such as “Shim Shalom”, “Shalom Rav” and the “Osay Shalom”. And on top of that you also have the nerve to repeat the words of another prophet, Isaiah, who speaks of a day when, “They [the nations of the world] will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” But then you spout such hateful words of contempt and show a complete lack of understanding. You are blind to what G-d requested of Jonah and thus us. You are as blind as the sinners of Nineveh. But the difference is that they never had G-d until Jonah came along. We have all along had G-d. He never left our side. We have always had G-d’s guidance and words to live by, his promise and his covenant. We don’t have an excuse of not knowing we are doing wrong like the people of Nineveh. To behave with such intolerance and hate has always been inexcusable and will continue to be. As long as we choose this behavior we will never see a Messianic age.
I for one choose not to be trapped in a fish with a lack of understanding and tolerance that Jonah had. Instead I choose to build that bridge he so reluctantly built and turn our “enemies” eyes to G-d and Heal the World as I have been commanded. Leading a life with my ears closed and an unwillingness to come to the table for peace talks has gotten us no where on either side and has cost us both so much in lives. G-d gave Adam and Eve a commandment, to preserve life and create life. Every minute we waste with our ears closed and guns in our hands is a minute more of breaking those commandments.
Cheers,
Miss S
There are a lot of things one learns at the oddest of moments. In my experience the moments where I learn the best lessons usually involve a child taking me to task or a student of mine making an extremely profound statement (5th graders’ insight on the Holocaust is quite remarkable I must say).
So it’s no surprise that one of those “AH HA” moments came to me when teaching my 5th grade class about the Reluctant Prophet Jonah.
The story of Jonah is read as the Haftarah portion on Yom Kippur as a lesson in forgiveness. Recent political goings on in the world and USA have made me audience to some unacceptable hate speech from people I consider friends regarding people who are different then us Jews.
Although Yom Kippur is still fresh in our minds I feel like the lesson Jonah teaches us was either not headed or fell on deaf ears. So I feel the need to revisit it because I find it very relevant at this moment in time in US history and there is something for us all in this story of not just forgiveness but of TOLERANCE and ACCEPTANCE.
To make the somewhat long story of Jonah short, G-d asks Jonah to do something and Jonah refuses. For this refusal of G-d’s wishes Jonah ends up in a fish…fun. After being spit out by the fish Jonah submits (and whines about it a lot) and does what G-d asks.
What G-d asked of Jonah was to go to the people of Nineveh – a town located very close to present day Mosul, Iraq (remember this) – and tell the people to ask for forgiveness of their sins and repent to G-d (they were misbehaving badly) or their city would be destroyed and everyone in it die – and according to the Haftarah portion it would have been more then 120k people and animals.
No big deal right? Why would a prophet be reluctant to “save” people who were misbehaving? That’s his job right?
Well yes.
But…this is Jonah and he was a reluctant prophet.
Jonah said to G-d, “these are not Jews and they do not worship you as G-d why do you care whether they live or die? Why do you care whether they ask for forgiveness?” and G-d’s response to Jonah was, “it doesn’t matter whether they have entered into a covenant with me like the Hebrews did, what matters is that they are my people, my creation, and they deserve salvation if they ask for it.”
Did you catch that?
G-d said I don’t care who they are, Jew or not I love them just the same and you should too!
Now on Yom Kippur we use this Haftarah portion to talk about the idea of forgiveness and it’s definitely in there. G-d wants the people of Nineveh to ask for forgiveness or be destroyed. They do ask for forgiveness and do acts worthy of forgiveness and G-d lets them live. Ok.
But to me the most important part of this story isn’t G-d’s forgiveness its what causes Jonah’s reluctance. This is the message I feel that is often lost. On Yom Kippur we’re very busy with receiving forgiveness and Biblical examples of people receiving forgiveness that we lose sight of the more important message in this story.
The message we forget is the message about loving people who are not like us; people who are not like us in many fundamental ways. More importantly we forget about loving our neighbors and doing what we can to create a bridge of understanding (and in many cases needed peace). Jonah was reluctant to create a bridge of understanding – he refused to try and understand 1) who these people were and 2) why G-d cared so much for a people he had no relationship with prior to Jonah walking into town and telling them about G-d. People who were essentially polytheistic Arabs. Remember where they lived? That’s right G-d loves Arabs! G-d told Jonah to care for these people as if they were Jews and in this G-d is telling us the same thing. Too often as Jews we get caught up in the fervor of the Middle East conflict and forget who as the People of the Covenant we are supposed to be. We stop living as Jews who are required to Tikun Olam – Heal the world and we begin to live as people who are close-minded and angry. Reluctant to build that bridge of understanding and refusing to do as G-d asks of us – to heal the world with peace and understanding and most importantly with forgiveness. We are and have been hiding out in a fish for a very long time and its time we as a community of Jews world wide come out and do as G-d bids us.
So here’s where I stop beating around the proverbial bush. Yes, this is specifically directed to Jews who feel every Arab needs to be killed or blown off the face of the Earth.
Every Shabbat you sit there and have the nerve to say prayers such as “Shim Shalom”, “Shalom Rav” and the “Osay Shalom”. And on top of that you also have the nerve to repeat the words of another prophet, Isaiah, who speaks of a day when, “They [the nations of the world] will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” But then you spout such hateful words of contempt and show a complete lack of understanding. You are blind to what G-d requested of Jonah and thus us. You are as blind as the sinners of Nineveh. But the difference is that they never had G-d until Jonah came along. We have all along had G-d. He never left our side. We have always had G-d’s guidance and words to live by, his promise and his covenant. We don’t have an excuse of not knowing we are doing wrong like the people of Nineveh. To behave with such intolerance and hate has always been inexcusable and will continue to be. As long as we choose this behavior we will never see a Messianic age.
I for one choose not to be trapped in a fish with a lack of understanding and tolerance that Jonah had. Instead I choose to build that bridge he so reluctantly built and turn our “enemies” eyes to G-d and Heal the World as I have been commanded. Leading a life with my ears closed and an unwillingness to come to the table for peace talks has gotten us no where on either side and has cost us both so much in lives. G-d gave Adam and Eve a commandment, to preserve life and create life. Every minute we waste with our ears closed and guns in our hands is a minute more of breaking those commandments.
Cheers,
Miss S
Friday, October 17, 2008
this is how i'd like to spend our honeymoon in Italy...
and yes E and i have already decided that is where we will be going...and greece too...
enjoy! Roman Rugby Stadium meets Dead Romans
enjoy! Roman Rugby Stadium meets Dead Romans
Thursday, September 25, 2008
those that need...
dear all,
the moral of this story is that every person counts.
cheers.
Can we throw a homeless person out of our Shul?
By Tzvi Freeman
Dear Rabbi,
Recently, at our shul, a homeless man named Joe1 who has been attending every week was asked by the rabbi not to enter the building anymore. The reason was that Joe was storing things at the shul without permission and he had washed up for Shabbat in the bathroom in order to change his shirt and made a mess. The rabbi has told me that people do not want to sit next to him and some feel afraid. He said that people have complained that Joe sometimes has an odor. It is interesting that they are mad at him for having an odor and also for washing in the bathroom.
So I'm scheduled to speak on Joe's behalf. I know what the Torah says and what Isaiah says about treating the homeless in our midst. But I need to provide a solution, as well. So I would appreciate whatever advice you could give me on how to address the board of our shul.
Sincerely yours,
--Joe's Rep
Dear Rep,
The solution is quite simple: Provide Joe a place either in the shul or elsewhere to store his things. Find other ways that he can be helped without embarrassment.
When parents bring their children to shul and the children ask what the Torah is talking about, what does the prophet mean, they can introduce their children to Joe. They can show how the shul helps him out, without embarrassing him, as a peer and a friend—because we are Jews and this is what we were chosen to teach the world.
And when they ask, "Where is the most holy place in our shul?" You can tell them, it is not the seat where the rabbi sits, it is not the aron that stores the Torah, it is not even the bimah where the Torah is read. It is the little cubby we gave to Joe to store his things.
King David said in his psalms, "Let the world sit before G_d." The Midrash tells that he was complaining to G_d. "Why did you create inequality in the world?" he said. "Why did you make some poor and some rich, some wise and some dull, some joyful and some sad? Make a world in which all are equal!"
And G_d replied with the second half of the verse, "Who then will guard kindness and truth?"
Meaning: "If everyone had all that they need, then how would kindness fit into my world? Rather, I made an unbalanced world, so that the rich would have the opportunity to give to the poor, the wise could teach the dull, the joyful could cheer those who are sad. And this way all could merit to enter the eternal life of truth—those who gave because they gave, and those who received because they suffered only in order that others should be able to give."
"When you meditate on this," the Rebbe once said, "that fellow human being had to suffer only so that your soul should have the opportunity to help him out, then you give and give again and the giving crushes your heart and humbles you even more."
--Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
--Chabad.org Interactivity-With-People Team
Every person counts
the moral of this story is that every person counts.
cheers.
Can we throw a homeless person out of our Shul?
By Tzvi Freeman
Dear Rabbi,
Recently, at our shul, a homeless man named Joe1 who has been attending every week was asked by the rabbi not to enter the building anymore. The reason was that Joe was storing things at the shul without permission and he had washed up for Shabbat in the bathroom in order to change his shirt and made a mess. The rabbi has told me that people do not want to sit next to him and some feel afraid. He said that people have complained that Joe sometimes has an odor. It is interesting that they are mad at him for having an odor and also for washing in the bathroom.
So I'm scheduled to speak on Joe's behalf. I know what the Torah says and what Isaiah says about treating the homeless in our midst. But I need to provide a solution, as well. So I would appreciate whatever advice you could give me on how to address the board of our shul.
Sincerely yours,
--Joe's Rep
Dear Rep,
The solution is quite simple: Provide Joe a place either in the shul or elsewhere to store his things. Find other ways that he can be helped without embarrassment.
When parents bring their children to shul and the children ask what the Torah is talking about, what does the prophet mean, they can introduce their children to Joe. They can show how the shul helps him out, without embarrassing him, as a peer and a friend—because we are Jews and this is what we were chosen to teach the world.
And when they ask, "Where is the most holy place in our shul?" You can tell them, it is not the seat where the rabbi sits, it is not the aron that stores the Torah, it is not even the bimah where the Torah is read. It is the little cubby we gave to Joe to store his things.
King David said in his psalms, "Let the world sit before G_d." The Midrash tells that he was complaining to G_d. "Why did you create inequality in the world?" he said. "Why did you make some poor and some rich, some wise and some dull, some joyful and some sad? Make a world in which all are equal!"
And G_d replied with the second half of the verse, "Who then will guard kindness and truth?"
Meaning: "If everyone had all that they need, then how would kindness fit into my world? Rather, I made an unbalanced world, so that the rich would have the opportunity to give to the poor, the wise could teach the dull, the joyful could cheer those who are sad. And this way all could merit to enter the eternal life of truth—those who gave because they gave, and those who received because they suffered only in order that others should be able to give."
"When you meditate on this," the Rebbe once said, "that fellow human being had to suffer only so that your soul should have the opportunity to help him out, then you give and give again and the giving crushes your heart and humbles you even more."
--Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
--Chabad.org Interactivity-With-People Team
Every person counts
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
the pesky mikvah
The pesky Mikvah
Before I even began working on my graduate degree I had already decided what I wanted to write my thesis on – this of course changed the minute I took a philosophy class on Hermeneutics and Polysemy – BUT before discovering that fantastic aspect of theology (which we will get into another day) I wanted to write my thesis on Ritual bathing and Menstruation. In fact I managed to make a linguistics professor of mine blush when I wrote a paper on this subject in my intro to Judaism class senior year at UT.
Why such a topic? Ritual bathing (going to the Mikvah) and the reasons for going to the Mikvah were very interesting. The Mikvah could make anything that was unholy and unclean holy and clean again. Purity could be found in the bath even though you may be in the water less then 5 minutes. It was the Mikvah that gave birth to baptism.
Life vs death
In Judaism purity equates to life and impurity equates to death.
For example, touching a dead body is a big “no-no” and requires the toucher to go to the Mikvah to become pure again. The Menstruation period for a woman as well makes her impure because of its relation to a loss of life. When a woman has her period it means that she lost that particular chance to create a life, thus death. This concept is fascinating considering the fact that in Judaism a fetus is not considered [equal to] a life so how can the loss of an egg be mourned as a loss of life? Because it is a loss of potential life.
Another curiosity of women’s impurity is the idea that a woman is impure after she gives birth (creating life) and depending on whether she has a boy or a girl may be subjected to 33 or 66 days of Niddah (separation) until she can become “clean” again. There is no explanation as to why the time period is different.
Consider another concept of why menstruation is impure as well, in kosher food blood is unclean and for the meat to be kosher (assuming all other kashrut laws were also followed) it must be removed of all blood before it can be eaten. Blood is an impure entity regardless of whom or where it is coming from.
Along the same lines (sort of) put your self in a place and time where they had limited knowledge of a woman's system and consider how you would have reacted to seeing a woman bleed for as long as 8 days and not die.
So essentially blood is unclean because it occurs in/around death.
Separate lives
Those who are unclean are separated from the community. The age old adage “one rotten apple can spoil the bunch” is very true in Jewish ideas on purity.
Lepers were unclean because they were sick and contagious. Death always carried the stigma of disease (as in death and decomposition = disease) as well. And so any situation relating to a disease and death – whether there was something to catch or not was not taken lightly. Quarantine, quarantine, quarantine.
Jesus was a maverick because he wanted to bring the lepers back into the community. But the lepers had no place because they were unclean not because they were bad people. Although this is often a parable about being accepted, forgiven and welcoming the stranger these are incorrect correlations to make because the assumption is that these people are being punished with rejection when in fact they were being made to follow the law because they were contagious.
Even in modern secular society we quarantine people for health reasons. Ritual purity in Judaism was a way to regulate the health of the population not punish individuals for being born a certain sex or catching a particular illness.
Impurity is always able to be “cured” – one does not have to live with this mark for life.
Take a dead body. We have to do something with death it can’t be left unattended and untouched. Even though touching a dead body is bad (esp. on the Sabbath i.e. the story of Jesus’ death) we must perform the act of cleaning and preparing the body for burial. Once this has been done we are able to go to the Mikvah and become pure again.
Everyone becomes impure at some point in their lives yet at the same time we always have the opportunity to reverse this.
However, as stated above, impurity forces us to lead separate lives from the community. There are many social taboos that must be respected when one is not pure. The preparation of food, the sharing of beds, sex, touching others who are pure, going to the Temple and making sacrifices, these are things one can not do.
But even Judaism contradicts its self for one CAN make a sacrifice in order to become clean again, as is the case of a woman who is Niddah after birth. This is a contradiction because technically she can not enter into the Temple grounds unclean yet she has to, to be able to make this sacrifice to become clean…
I often think of this like I do the rabbinical teaching of “sin as if you were a holy person sinning”. I know that sounds silly but the idea is, if you’re going to sin do it in a holy way…if you lie, lie so that you can give more to charity, or something like that. It’s almost like the adage “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
So the correlation to this and the unclean woman is, she can be unclean and enter the Temple as long as she is going to make a sacrifice, which will make her clean. Sinning in a Holy way.
One thing I have always told my students is there is an exception to every rule in Judaism you just have to look for it. Oh, and it is usually a “if you're going to do it, do it holy” kind of exception.
How do you Mikvah?
Going to the Mikvah is such a process. Let’s just say it’s easier to be dirty then clean in Judaism.
First there are the Kosher laws…ah the good ole Kosher laws.
Now I LOVE Kosher laws I find them just as interesting as the purity/impurity Mikvah issue, but Kosher laws can be daunting. And the whole rotten apple spoiling the bunch saying also applies to the Kosher laws as well – oh and just like being dirty is easier then being clean, being unkosher is easier then being kosher in Judaism too. However unlike purity laws (where one esp. a woman is always in a vicious cycle of pure and impure) once you get things going Kosher in most cases its easy to maintain (like your kitchen for instance).
So Mikvahs like many things of spiritual and health issues in Judaism must be Kosher.
Technically, the world’s natural bodies of water — oceans, rivers, spring-fed lakes — are all valid Mikvah. However, for obvious reasons like accessibility, privacy and safety, so-called “domesticated Mikvahs” have been in use for thousands of years.
What makes a [domesticated] Mikvah Kosher?
• A Mikvah must be connected to a natural spring or well of naturally occurring water
• A Mikvah must, according to the classical regulations, contain enough water to cover the entire body of an average-sized man; the necessary volume of water was estimated as being 40 seah of water. The exact volume referred to by a seah is debated, and classical rabbinical literature only specifies that it is enough to fit 144 eggs; most Orthodox Jews use the stringent ruling of the Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, according to which one seah is 14.3 litres, and therefore a Mikvah must contain approximately 575 litres.
• The water must flow naturally to the Mikvah from the source, which essentially means that it must be supplied by gravity or a natural pressure gradient, and the water cannot be pumped there by hand or carried. It was also forbidden for the water to pass through any vessel which could hold water within it, (however pipes open to the air at both ends are fine) as a result, tap water could not be used as the primary water source for a Mikvah, although it can be used to top the water up to a suitable level
And then of course there is the list of how to make your self “kosher” to go into the Mikvah. Let me tell you removing my nose piercing for the Mikvah was no fun!
• No jewelry
• No body hair
• No scabs
• No makeup
And there is always someone there to look you up and down to make sure these requirements are met…
John who Baptizes
John was making “Christians” right? Well really John was making clean Jews. John was immersing people in a Mikvah to cleanse them of there sins – there impurities. This is where the concept of baptism comes from – the idea that we are being cleansed of our sins by immersion. It would have been very common for not just John and the people he was immersing but for Jesus to go to the Mikvah regularly as a Jew. Jesus just happened to be in the right place at the right time and everything snowballed from there.
So needless-to-say there is a lot to the Mikvah and it’s a very interesting concept.
One of my students this year was adopted by a Jewish family in our synagogue last year. She proudly showed me the invitations to her conversion ceremony which had both the time of her Mikvah at 2pm at Barton Springs and the time of her Shabbat service Blessing and Conversion ceremony.
Going to the Mikvah before one goes through their conversion ceremony makes a person pure as they enter into the tribe.
This concept is clear and the same in Christianity where one must be Baptized (ritually cleansed) before one can go through confirmation and become a member of the church/community…
Before I even began working on my graduate degree I had already decided what I wanted to write my thesis on – this of course changed the minute I took a philosophy class on Hermeneutics and Polysemy – BUT before discovering that fantastic aspect of theology (which we will get into another day) I wanted to write my thesis on Ritual bathing and Menstruation. In fact I managed to make a linguistics professor of mine blush when I wrote a paper on this subject in my intro to Judaism class senior year at UT.
Why such a topic? Ritual bathing (going to the Mikvah) and the reasons for going to the Mikvah were very interesting. The Mikvah could make anything that was unholy and unclean holy and clean again. Purity could be found in the bath even though you may be in the water less then 5 minutes. It was the Mikvah that gave birth to baptism.
Life vs death
In Judaism purity equates to life and impurity equates to death.
For example, touching a dead body is a big “no-no” and requires the toucher to go to the Mikvah to become pure again. The Menstruation period for a woman as well makes her impure because of its relation to a loss of life. When a woman has her period it means that she lost that particular chance to create a life, thus death. This concept is fascinating considering the fact that in Judaism a fetus is not considered [equal to] a life so how can the loss of an egg be mourned as a loss of life? Because it is a loss of potential life.
Another curiosity of women’s impurity is the idea that a woman is impure after she gives birth (creating life) and depending on whether she has a boy or a girl may be subjected to 33 or 66 days of Niddah (separation) until she can become “clean” again. There is no explanation as to why the time period is different.
Consider another concept of why menstruation is impure as well, in kosher food blood is unclean and for the meat to be kosher (assuming all other kashrut laws were also followed) it must be removed of all blood before it can be eaten. Blood is an impure entity regardless of whom or where it is coming from.
Along the same lines (sort of) put your self in a place and time where they had limited knowledge of a woman's system and consider how you would have reacted to seeing a woman bleed for as long as 8 days and not die.
So essentially blood is unclean because it occurs in/around death.
Separate lives
Those who are unclean are separated from the community. The age old adage “one rotten apple can spoil the bunch” is very true in Jewish ideas on purity.
Lepers were unclean because they were sick and contagious. Death always carried the stigma of disease (as in death and decomposition = disease) as well. And so any situation relating to a disease and death – whether there was something to catch or not was not taken lightly. Quarantine, quarantine, quarantine.
Jesus was a maverick because he wanted to bring the lepers back into the community. But the lepers had no place because they were unclean not because they were bad people. Although this is often a parable about being accepted, forgiven and welcoming the stranger these are incorrect correlations to make because the assumption is that these people are being punished with rejection when in fact they were being made to follow the law because they were contagious.
Even in modern secular society we quarantine people for health reasons. Ritual purity in Judaism was a way to regulate the health of the population not punish individuals for being born a certain sex or catching a particular illness.
Impurity is always able to be “cured” – one does not have to live with this mark for life.
Take a dead body. We have to do something with death it can’t be left unattended and untouched. Even though touching a dead body is bad (esp. on the Sabbath i.e. the story of Jesus’ death) we must perform the act of cleaning and preparing the body for burial. Once this has been done we are able to go to the Mikvah and become pure again.
Everyone becomes impure at some point in their lives yet at the same time we always have the opportunity to reverse this.
However, as stated above, impurity forces us to lead separate lives from the community. There are many social taboos that must be respected when one is not pure. The preparation of food, the sharing of beds, sex, touching others who are pure, going to the Temple and making sacrifices, these are things one can not do.
But even Judaism contradicts its self for one CAN make a sacrifice in order to become clean again, as is the case of a woman who is Niddah after birth. This is a contradiction because technically she can not enter into the Temple grounds unclean yet she has to, to be able to make this sacrifice to become clean…
I often think of this like I do the rabbinical teaching of “sin as if you were a holy person sinning”. I know that sounds silly but the idea is, if you’re going to sin do it in a holy way…if you lie, lie so that you can give more to charity, or something like that. It’s almost like the adage “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
So the correlation to this and the unclean woman is, she can be unclean and enter the Temple as long as she is going to make a sacrifice, which will make her clean. Sinning in a Holy way.
One thing I have always told my students is there is an exception to every rule in Judaism you just have to look for it. Oh, and it is usually a “if you're going to do it, do it holy” kind of exception.
How do you Mikvah?
Going to the Mikvah is such a process. Let’s just say it’s easier to be dirty then clean in Judaism.
First there are the Kosher laws…ah the good ole Kosher laws.
Now I LOVE Kosher laws I find them just as interesting as the purity/impurity Mikvah issue, but Kosher laws can be daunting. And the whole rotten apple spoiling the bunch saying also applies to the Kosher laws as well – oh and just like being dirty is easier then being clean, being unkosher is easier then being kosher in Judaism too. However unlike purity laws (where one esp. a woman is always in a vicious cycle of pure and impure) once you get things going Kosher in most cases its easy to maintain (like your kitchen for instance).
So Mikvahs like many things of spiritual and health issues in Judaism must be Kosher.
Technically, the world’s natural bodies of water — oceans, rivers, spring-fed lakes — are all valid Mikvah. However, for obvious reasons like accessibility, privacy and safety, so-called “domesticated Mikvahs” have been in use for thousands of years.
What makes a [domesticated] Mikvah Kosher?
• A Mikvah must be connected to a natural spring or well of naturally occurring water
• A Mikvah must, according to the classical regulations, contain enough water to cover the entire body of an average-sized man; the necessary volume of water was estimated as being 40 seah of water. The exact volume referred to by a seah is debated, and classical rabbinical literature only specifies that it is enough to fit 144 eggs; most Orthodox Jews use the stringent ruling of the Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, according to which one seah is 14.3 litres, and therefore a Mikvah must contain approximately 575 litres.
• The water must flow naturally to the Mikvah from the source, which essentially means that it must be supplied by gravity or a natural pressure gradient, and the water cannot be pumped there by hand or carried. It was also forbidden for the water to pass through any vessel which could hold water within it, (however pipes open to the air at both ends are fine) as a result, tap water could not be used as the primary water source for a Mikvah, although it can be used to top the water up to a suitable level
And then of course there is the list of how to make your self “kosher” to go into the Mikvah. Let me tell you removing my nose piercing for the Mikvah was no fun!
• No jewelry
• No body hair
• No scabs
• No makeup
And there is always someone there to look you up and down to make sure these requirements are met…
John who Baptizes
John was making “Christians” right? Well really John was making clean Jews. John was immersing people in a Mikvah to cleanse them of there sins – there impurities. This is where the concept of baptism comes from – the idea that we are being cleansed of our sins by immersion. It would have been very common for not just John and the people he was immersing but for Jesus to go to the Mikvah regularly as a Jew. Jesus just happened to be in the right place at the right time and everything snowballed from there.
So needless-to-say there is a lot to the Mikvah and it’s a very interesting concept.
One of my students this year was adopted by a Jewish family in our synagogue last year. She proudly showed me the invitations to her conversion ceremony which had both the time of her Mikvah at 2pm at Barton Springs and the time of her Shabbat service Blessing and Conversion ceremony.
Going to the Mikvah before one goes through their conversion ceremony makes a person pure as they enter into the tribe.
This concept is clear and the same in Christianity where one must be Baptized (ritually cleansed) before one can go through confirmation and become a member of the church/community…
Friday, August 29, 2008
we like to get shaken up a bit...
the smart people lived where the earth shook!
it just adds to the excitement...i mean who wants a boring civilization?
it just adds to the excitement...i mean who wants a boring civilization?
History can be bad but does get better with time...
Underground Jewish History in Vienna
August 27, 2008
Vienna, Austria has a dark history with regard to the Jewish community. The horror of the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938 and the successive deportation of Jews from the city by the Nazis are events that are firmly inscribed in the historical annals of the 20th century. Fortunately, the post-war era ushered in a change in the attitude of Vienna towards its Jewish citizens, and in 1995 a design was selected for a memorial monument to the victims of the Holocaust that was to be erected in Judenplatz, the central area of the medieval Jewish quarter of Vienna. Before the memorial was to be erected, however, the city officials of Vienna launched an archaeological investigation of the Judenplatz, bringing to light a remarkable layer of Jewish history.
Eerily reminiscent of the tragic events of the 20th century, these recent excavations have unearthed the remains of a beautiful medieval synagogue that was destroyed in 1421, during another pogrom against the Jews. The 500-year-old predecessor of the Nazi-organized aggression was ordered by Duke Albrecht V at the behest of the Catholic Church. It was determined by archaeologists that the synagogue, which had stood for approximately 20 years before it was destroyed, had undergone three distinct phases of expansion and modification between 1236, when it was first thought to have been constructed, and 1421, when the building was destroyed. Today the remains of this medieval synagogue are on display in an underground museum beneath the Judenplatz.
The Jerusalem Post reports on Vienna’s underground synagogue
August 27, 2008
Vienna, Austria has a dark history with regard to the Jewish community. The horror of the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938 and the successive deportation of Jews from the city by the Nazis are events that are firmly inscribed in the historical annals of the 20th century. Fortunately, the post-war era ushered in a change in the attitude of Vienna towards its Jewish citizens, and in 1995 a design was selected for a memorial monument to the victims of the Holocaust that was to be erected in Judenplatz, the central area of the medieval Jewish quarter of Vienna. Before the memorial was to be erected, however, the city officials of Vienna launched an archaeological investigation of the Judenplatz, bringing to light a remarkable layer of Jewish history.
Eerily reminiscent of the tragic events of the 20th century, these recent excavations have unearthed the remains of a beautiful medieval synagogue that was destroyed in 1421, during another pogrom against the Jews. The 500-year-old predecessor of the Nazi-organized aggression was ordered by Duke Albrecht V at the behest of the Catholic Church. It was determined by archaeologists that the synagogue, which had stood for approximately 20 years before it was destroyed, had undergone three distinct phases of expansion and modification between 1236, when it was first thought to have been constructed, and 1421, when the building was destroyed. Today the remains of this medieval synagogue are on display in an underground museum beneath the Judenplatz.
The Jerusalem Post reports on Vienna’s underground synagogue
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