In honor of the yom neshama (anniversary of the passing on) of Rahel Imenu just passed; also for the yom neshama of my uncle, Sam ben Nazira uMoshe, which was 20 Heshvan.
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The videos below, by the twin Ravs Shimon and Mendel Kessin, respectively, have been stewing around in my neshama for the last couple of weeks, and I thought I'd share a few of my thoughts from them.
Rahel Imenu (daughter of Lavan, who was Rivka's brother and Avraham and Sarah's great-nephew) played a large part in Jewish survival by doing several things related to family issues:
giving up her position as Yaacov Avinu's only wife, which she would have been if she hadn't given her sister Leah the secret codes and arranged for her go first.
giving up her place in the grave beside her husband, in Hevron, and being buried on the side of a road going out of Eretz Yisrael, so that she could cry for her descendants when they were forced out, and help them in times of trouble, even in our times. We still go to her grave during wartime, and Israeli soldiers have even seen and been helped by her. Here's another story on that. And yet another.
by doing all the above, she enabled us to survive galuth. She even passed on this trait to special people in her line of descent, like Esther haMalkah, who gave up her position among the Jewish People in Persia and the other 126 countries in the Persian empire in order to save them from Haman the Agagite (descended from Amalek).
and, by the way, we wouldn't have Yosef haTzaddik, the ancestor of Mashiah ben Yosef, without his mother, Rahel.
So what would hurt if we prayed for the revelation of Mashiah ben Yosef ben Rahel and Mashiah ben David ben Leah? Since we're praying for living people here, we usually identify them by their mother's name. Sephardim often identify passed-on people by their mother's name also.
About 5:00 on the yolk: The last time I found a blood spot in an egg, Hanukkah 5778 - HDG
I threw the whole egg out, but saved this picture to show my readers just how much Jews abhor eating blood.
We Jews have been accused of various heinous crimes throughout our long and tragic history. Perhaps, the most devastating accusation we have faced is the Blood Libel - murdering Christian children and then using their blood for baking Matzoh on Pesach. Of course, this vile accusation is absolutely ludicrous and false.
The Torah warns us numerous times never to taste any blood. We are halachically obligated to soak and salt chicken and meat to ensure that all the blood is drawn out before we take a morsel into our mouths. We even check eggs for bloodspots to make sure that we don't ingest even a drop of blood.
Nevertheless, our enemies continue to make this false, slanderous and vile accusation against us.
These charges have not ended since the time of medieval Europe. The Arab world has now adopted this canard from the Christians. There have been many books and dozens of newspaper articles published in the Arab press and media accusing Jews of murdering Arab children to use their blood.
A few years ago, a series of articles appeared in a Saudi Arabian newspaper with a new twist – Jews don't just use blood of Arab children on Pesach for Matzos, but also use Arab blood on Purim for our hamantaschen!
How did we become the subjects of such an absurd and horrible accusation that runs so contrary to our basic beliefs as Jews?
Rav Elchanan Wasserman HY”D explains this bizarre accusation with the concept of "MAASEI AVOT SIMAN L'BANIM" (The deeds of the Forefathers are a sign to the children). The traits and deeds, instilled into Am Yisrael by our forefathers, work both in the positive and negative sense. The Torah in Bereshit 37 tells us about the internal strife and hatred of Yosef and his brothers.
The Zohar explains that the Sinat Chinam that has plagued our nation since its inception, causing the Second Beis Hamikdosh to be destroyed, had its root in the hatred of the brother's behavior toward Yosef.
This is a frightening phenomenon. Once the seeds of hatred and strife were planted into the history of our nation by Yosef's slander of his brothers and their bitter revenge, it continues to affect us throughout the centuries. Thus, internal hatred is a problem that Jews will have to deal with until Moshiach comes.
Rav Elchanan Wasserman HY”D takes this concept one step further. After the brothers sold Yosef, how did the brothers explain Yosef's disappearance to Yaakov? "They took Yosef's coat, slaughtered a goat and dipped the coat in the blood." (Bereshit 37:31) Then they showed Yosef's bloody coat to Yaakov, who then assumed that Yosef had been torn apart by a wild animal.
By using blood to cover up their crime, says Rav Wasserman, the brothers sealed the fate of Am Yisrael. Yosef's brothers use of blood to deceive their father has caused us to suffer from deceitful blood libels until this very day - Midah K'Neged Midah (measure for measure).
*** NOTES: I've written about Yosef and his brothers here – I had a she'elah during its writing about which I consulted with R' Sprecher. The above video also reveals some interesting information, including a possibility that Yosef had doubted his father's love for him during the separation period.
1 Tevet 5776 Rosh Hodesh Bet
7th Candle of Hanukkah
NOTE: Pray for the refuah shlemah of Gennady Chaim Noteh ben Ra'ayah Rahel, Shaul Chai ben Aviva and Rahel bat Sarah.
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What if Joseph never forgave his brothers?
During the weeks of parashioth Vayeshev, Miketz and Vayehi we learn about the bad, the ugly and finally some good in the relationship between Joseph (hereafter in Hebrew, Yosef) and his brothers. We see that as a result of his father Yaaqov’s apparent favoritism, the rest of the family grew jealous of him, with the exception of his same-mother sibling, his younger brother Binyamin, who alone did not participate in the kidnapping and sale that led him to Egypt (Mitzrayim), to be jailed due to a false accusation until he was 30, and afterward to become second-in-command (in English, usually translated as viceroy) in Mitzrayim, the superpower of the day, and the eventual reconciliation when the brothers journey “down to Egypt-land” to look for him. I know that a lot is missing in this synopsis, but my focus will soon be clear to you, my dear reader.
A search of the Internet comes up with all kinds of lessons taken from the forgiveness of his brothers by Yosef. But, what if he didn’t?
Rabbi Ephraim Sprecher of Diaspora Yeshiva, speaking at the OU Center in Yerushalayim, says that Yosef had not forgiven his brothers. Else why were the 10 greatest Sages who lived during the Roman Empire put to death for his sale? (The story of the Ten Martyrs is read every year as part of the climax of Yom Kippur during Mincha when the two goats are sacrificed (one goes to Azazel – the origin of the modern day Israeli epithet “Lech l’Azazel”) and the white smoke goes up signifying Divine forgiveness.) Also why does the blood libel persist until today? Even the Arabs continue to promote it (even though Snopes says it's false), while other nationssupport them.
Although he took care of them and made sure they were safe and able to live their lifestyle out of the sight of the Egyptians who detested it, Yosef never used the Hebrew terms for forgiveness, selicha סליחה and mechila מחילה, with his brothers.
So...I had what I thought was a great idea when I heard about this from my husband last erev Shabbat, which I managed to write down afterwards and ask R’ Sprecher on Sunday: why doesn't a large number of Jews go to Kever Yosef and beg his forgiveness from HaShem. Since the rav found them to have no merit because Yosef only had his lifetime to forgive his brothers and because we should not risk more danger than we are in already, I thought and prayed again. It bothered me that there seems to be no solution whatsoever because the world will not look with favor on anything that helps the Jews! The nations prefer to slander, libel us and hold us guilty for even reasonable self-defense, to the point where, they think, we would rather choose death rather than live through the horror (I believe this is the plan of the ‘powers-that-be’ – to depress us off the planet, or have someone else kill us all off, starting with the Jews. See my series “The Conspiracy of the Mekatregim,” starting here.).
But the main thing is that we need to stop selling each other out. R’ Sprecher says that the reason we keep suffering from the blood libel is because we continue to perpetuate the sin of the Sale of Joseph — long before the Sin of the Golden Calf and the Sin of the Spies — amongst ourselves.
I believe it starts at the top: The secular government calls various minorities, especially religious ones, nasty names, as othersand I have pointed out before, and punishes the settlers beyond all measure, for instance equating their writing graffiti such as Tag Mehir (price tag – not even bothering to prove whether they even wrote the graffiti), with Arabs’ murder or attempted murder and jailing them for murders they have not committed (this reminds me of the onerous laws, today referred to as the Jim Crow Laws, that the United States had against blacks in the 1850s, before the Civil War). These are just a few examples; I cannot possibly list them all. The trickle-down effect, the term invented during Ronald Reagan’s presidency referring to financial benefit, in our time and place I am using to refer to the negative effect on our character and propensity to slander and libel one another, emulating behavior from the top. We need to raise our awareness of this and stop it:
No, we will not hate Rabbi Meir Kahane, zz”l. Too many of us believe he was right.
No, we will not automatically consider all those young Jewish men you have put into detention guilty of crimes you will not reveal.
No, we will not consider all settlers — or all haredim, Holocaust survivors, Ethiopians, Russians, or Mizrahim, for that matter — “not our brothers.”
No, we will not regard everyone who reacts negatively to the presence of our Yishmaelite enemies among us with disgust and abhorrence. These are normal people caught in a dysfunctional situation the government demands that we accept as normal. No, it is not.
We do not wish it on you, but if some of them make it up to your perches between Hadera and Gadera, I think you will change your tune quickly. I hope it will not take that. But for some reason you are quite calm while the southwest part of the country, whose children now suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, are still taking rocket hits even though Operation Tzuk Eitan (2014; literally strong cliff; translated Protective Edge in English) is long over and has been taken over by stabbings everywhere, and while every siren anywhere near Hevron (for that matter, anywhere in Yehuda and the Shomron) means absolute trouble. You do not care about the periphery of the country and by the admission of your leftist supporters, as written by Evelyn Gordon:
In its ostensibly noble desire to ensure that no
suffering goes unnoticed or unattended, it [today’s
multicultural left] has abandoned the very
essence of morality – the ability to draw distinctions, which is
essential to make moral choices.
In other words, you cater to the suffering of others and ignore the suffering of Jews, particularly the ones in your country, that you and your spiritual ancestors caused; by so doing, you leave the door open to YOUR OWN PUNISHMENT. Won't you be shocked.
Maybe you think you will escape with your foreign passports. Should you go that route, you will find out personally just how much you are considered just as much a Jew as the rest of us, and how hated we all are. I lived there for over a half-century. I understand that it is far worse now than before I made aliyah less than ten years ago.
Israeli government, are you listening? Did you not just convict Jews for the burning of the house in Duma and the murder of most of its inhabitants, for no reason? If there is a reason, why have you not revealed all? Why are you keeping it a secret?
Rav Alexandri on
concluding his prayer used to add the following: Master of the Universe, it is
known full well to You that our will is to perform Your will. What prevents us?
The yeast in the dough and subjection to the foreign powers.
(Brochos 17a)
We all have the ‘yeast in the dough’ – that is the yetzer hara’ – the evil inclination. Each of us must deal with that.
Who keeps us subjected to the foreign powers? Those who believe in and trust natural law rather than the One who created it and completely dominates it: These dominate the government we now have. Those of us who grew up with Greco-Roman philosophy (what we call ‘secular’ today) have a more difficult challenge when we encounter the Torah view. It is easier, but by no means ‘a piece of cake,’ to find evidence that our Creator runs the world here in Eretz Yisrael.
Just one example: Low-casualty wars, like the ones we have had, are NOT the norm in the rest of the world. Our enemies acknowledge that HQB”H holds them back in their war against us. When we become too used to His protective miracles, we think the whole world experiences them. No, it does not – and, with the exception of those of us who experience the opposite, has v’shalom, we tend to take it for granted. We need to wake up and turn to Him. The time of His anger would be over by now if the majority of Jews, both within Israel and without, did that.
Let us cry out to HaShem and beg Him not to harden our hearts anymore, as he did (l’havdil) with Par’o. We must not be as adaptable to our situation as we have been; it may worsen before it gets better (I say it this way because I don't claim to know exactly where we are in the process.). But it will get better and He will save us! We must cling to this hope! More on this, next post, be"H.
