Jerusalem Follow-up
5759 March 6,199918 Adar,
Hi Fellowshippers:
We hope everyone had an enjoyable Purim (and that you're recovering faster than we
are.)
Partners in Torah
a) anyone to learn with
b) the time in your schedule
c) both a and b
UPCOMING EVENTS
Internship for Leaders:
June 6 - July 4, 1999Check out the Fellowships web-site, www.jerusalemfellowships.org for more information.
EMAIL ADDRESS
CHANGES AND UPDATESThis is a message from N.Y. the holy city to the whole world.
The whole world is invited to the wedding of Esther Mandel to Moshe (Unclemoe, not magic) Deutsch. For good tunes, good booze and lots of dancing (hopefully the food won't be too bad) come to, Astoria World Manor at 6:30pm on March 18th. 25-22 Astoria Blvd.,Astoria, N.Y. 11102 718-278-7766
P.S. bring your friends
P.P.S. Wemember mawwiage is what bwings us together.
Good SHABBOS, Good YOM TOV, Good PURIM
Love your favorite uncle,
Unclemoe
Joke of the "Weak"
A Jewish young man was seeing a psychiatrist for an eating and sleeping disorder. "I am so obsessed with my mother...
As soon as I go to sleep, I start dreaming, and everyone in my dream turns into my mother. I wake up in such a state, all I can do is go downstairs and eat a piece of toast."
The psychiatrist replies:
"What, just one piece of toast, for a big boy like you?"
Inspiration
Lakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in business we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment.
10. Change the requirements declaring that "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Do a Cost Analysis Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
20. Declare this horse was procured with another department's budget.
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.
22. Add more riders to the dead horse.
23. Provide status reports daily on the dead horse.
24. Change the ratio of hay and oats in the feedbag.
25. Provide more managers / supervisors per dead horse.
26. Provide an incentive bonus for the Jockey.
27. Open a ticket to upgrade the dead horse.
28. "Reboot" the dead horse.
29. Terminate all live horses to redefine productivity.
30. Schedule a meeting with the dead horse to discuss his productivity problems.
31. Rename the horse.
32. Hire a consultant to give their opinion on dead horses.
YAAKOV'S CAMPUS CORNER
(Rabbi Yaakov Singer joined our North American Fellowships staff this past summer as our Campus Coordinator. If you are currently in college and would like to get more involved in our campus programming, please contact him by email at
ysinger@aish.edu, or call him toll free at 877-472-5412. Yaakov is a regular contributor to our Jerusalem Follow-up Newsletter)With Purim behind us, it is not too early to focus on the freedom of Pesach. This freedom is related to the spring cleaning that goes on in Jewish houses this time of year. Cleaning the chametz, food stuffs with leavening in them, out of the house is a very physical and demanding task. Its spiritual counterpart is the effort to clean out all the puffy, ego-centered stuff out of ourselves in order that we can enjoy the relationship we really desire with the Almighty.
When we are surrounded with friends who are lacking in their Jewish identity, the spiritual chametz sometimes takes the form of inhibitions that stop of us from sharing our Israel experience and our appreciation of Jewish ideas with our friends. That’s the battle, to get beyond our selves and give to others. Thank goodness we have so many good examples of how to do it.
The Penn State crowd from Summer ’98, Mike Schutz, Francine Sadiky, Josh Silverman, Jill Weinstein, and Abby Wolf, have been big contributers to PSU’s Jewish life, helping to bring speakers and Shabbos to Penn State students. We just spent Shabbos with them in State College. It was great to see new faces for the summer programs and people already making plans for an exciting Fall.
Daniel Hyman, Summer ’98, and Mark Chess, Summer ’97, are organizing Wednesday night farbreggens and Shabbos dinners for the students of the University of Texas Chabad house. Attendance is on the rise, and these guys have set their sights high.
We have to mention Alex Rubinstein, Winter ‘96, and Diana Landau, Winter ’97, who quietly have been running Shmoozes at Towson University for at least a year now. Consistent and persistent!
Everybody loves to hear success stories. We are encouraged by them, encouraged to grow Jewishly and encouraged to share. So many campuses are being infused with Jewish themes by Fellowships alumni. Let us know what’s happening in your neck of the woods.
Good Shabbos,
Rabbi Singer
Now here's a success story from Nir Eyal at Emory:
On Friday, February 19th, what was expected to be a few friends getting
together for dinner, became a wonderful Shabbat experience. I had invited a handful of close friends to celebrate a quiet dinner together, however what started as a few quickly became 18 people. As parts of the dinner, we partook in as many traditional Shabbat customs as possible. First, we washed hands, and proceeded with the rest of the ceremonies. My goal in bringing my Jewish friends together was to show them the beauty that I had seen while experiencing Shabbat in Israel. It was obvious that's those in attendance got a taste of what I had felt. After the meal we participated in a wonderful Shmooze discussion in which everyone took part. The Shmooze brought up several interesting discussion points and prompted the attendees to consider their ethical perception of the issue. The discussion also gave Judaism's point of view in an engaging manner. It was wonderful to see how much people enjoyed the Shabbat meal, especially considering that for some Jews in attendance, this was the first Shabbat they had ever attended. After the meal, several friends asked me when the next gathering would be and how excited they were to attend again. I want to sincerely thank Aish HaTorah for making this meal and the lively interaction that came forth from it possible!Have something you'd like to say? An article, a bad joke, a Mazel Tov? Send it in and we'll include it in the next issue. Our email address is
jf@aish.edu. Now here's the Weekly...B"H
18 Adar, 5759
March 6, 1999GOOD MORNING! Thirty days before each holiday we are directed by the Sages to prepare for the holiday. We are now 30 days and closing on Passover! The seders are Wednesday night, March 31st and Thursday night, April 1st. In order to transform what may have become an overly ritualized family reunion into a fountainhead of insight and inspiration, I cannot recommend highly enough, The Passover Survival Kit. It’s for people with a lot more than four questions. Available at your local Jewish bookstore or call 877-758-3242. Also, check out the Aish website on Passover—www.aish.edu. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to also save the next four weeks’ copies of the Shabbat Shalom to have at the Seder table ...
Q & A: What is Pesach (Passover) and How is it Celebrated?
Every Jewish holiday is an opportunity to work on a certain aspect of personal growth. Succot is the time to work on Joy; Yom Kippur the time to work on Teshuva, spiritual accounting; Shavuot is the time to work on Kabbalat HaTorah, taking Torah seriously.
Passover is the holiday of Freedom—spiritual freedom. For this the Almighty brought us out of Egypt. So, what is the essence of Freedom?
Is Freedom the ability to do what one desires unhampered and without consequence? That is license, not freedom. James Bond had a "license to kill," not the freedom to kill. Freedom means having the ability to use your free will to grow and develop.
People think they are free when in reality they are often "slaves" to the fads and fashion of their society. Slavery is non-thinking action, rote behavior, following the impulse desires of the body. Our job on Pesach is to come out of slavery into true freedom!
All of the commandments associated with Pesach enable us to relive and experience the freedom our forefathers experienced in leaving the land of Egypt in order to serve the Almighty.
During all eight days of Pesach we are forbidden to own chametz (leavened bread—i.e.., virtually any flour product not especially produced for Pesach) or have it in our possession. Why the emphasis on being chametz-free? Chametz represents arrogance ("puffing up").
The only thing that stands between you and G-d ... is you. To come close to the Almighty, which is the ultimate pleasure in life and the opportunity of every mitzvah and holiday, one must remove his own personal arrogance. The external act brings the internal appreciation; we remove chametz from our homes and we must likewise work on the character trait of humility.
On the evening preceding Pesach there is a serious search of the home for chametz. There is a custom to put 10 pieces of bread out so there will be something to find during the search. (I believe this is the source for the Easter Egg hunt amongst Christians). It is done by the light of a candle or with a flashlight. It is a memorable experience for the whole family!
TORAH PORTION: Ki Tisah, Exodus 30:11 - 34:35
The Torah portion includes: instructions for taking a census (by each person donating a half shekel); instructions to make the Washstand, Anointing Oil, and The Incense for the Mishkan, the Portable Sanctuary; appointing Bezalel and Oholiab to head up the architects and craftsmen for the Mishkan; a special commandment forbidding the building of the Mishkan on Shabbat (people might have thought that they would be allowed to violate the Shabbat to do a mitzvah ...).
The Torah portion continues with the infamous story of the Golden Calf. The people wrongly calculated that Moses was late in coming down from Mt. Sinai and the people were already seeking a replacement for him by making the Golden Calf (there is a big lesson in patience for us here). Moses sees them dancing around the calf and in anger breaks the Two Tablets; he then punishes the 3,000 wrongdoers (less than .1% of the 3 million people), pleads to G-d not to wipe out the people, requests to see the Divine Glory, and receives the second set of Tablets of the Ten Commandments.
DVAR TORAH: based on Growth Through Torah by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
The Torah states, "And the Almighty spoke to Moshe saying, ‘Speak to the Children of Israel saying, my Shabbat you shall keep, for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Almighty Who sanctifies you." (Exodus 31:12,13) How is Shabbat ("Shabbos" in the Ashkenazic pronunciation) a sign of the relationship between the Almighty and the Jewish people?
The Chofetz Chaim, Rabbi Yisroel Meir Kagan, the leading rabbi of his generation until he passed on in 1933, gives two parables to illustrate how Shabbat serves as a sign of the relationship between the Jewish people and the Almighty. When two people are engaged to be married they send each other gifts. Even if difficulties arise between them, as long as they keep the gifts, then we know that they still plan to get married. If they return the gifts, then we know that the relationship between them is over. Similarly, as long as a person observes Shabbat we see that he still has a relationship with the Almighty. The Talmud (Shabbat 10b) describes the Shabbat as a special gift the Almighty gave to the Jewish people. If a person, as it were, returns this gift of Shabbat, it signifies difficulties with the relationship.
The second parable: "When a person opens a new store, he puts a sign outside that tells everyone what kind of store it is. A tailor will have a symbol that shows he is a tailor; a shoemaker will have a symbol that he is a shoemaker. Even if a person travels away for a while, as long as his sign is still on the outside of the store, everyone can expect him to eventually return. As soon as he takes down his emblem from his store, we know that he no longer plans to return."
"When you observe Shabbat," continues the Chofetz Chaim, "you testify that the Almighty created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. By keeping Shabbat you proclaim that you have this awareness. A person who fails to keep Shabbat removes this sign. This is the reason for the importance of Shabbat."
CANDLE LIGHTING: Jerusalem 5:02 Miami 6:07 New York 5:33 LA 5:35 Hong Kong 6:11 Singapore 7:01 Guatemala 5:53 Honolulu 6:19 J’Burg 6:16 Melbourne 7:37 London 5:31 Moscow 5:53
"QUOTE OF THE WEEK": Don't belittle... Be Big!
Shabbat Shalom,
Dedicated in Honor of
Max and Debbi Lebersfeld & Family
for their Stalwart Support of the
Jewish Community and Israel
Compiled by Rabbi Josh Boretsky
Edited by Rabbi Chaim Dubin