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
Thursday, September 25, 2008
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…
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