Dear friends, Did your friends or relatives ever accuse you of being obsessed about this Jewish thing? I havent ever had to face this overtly, but there are many unasked questions that I feel lurk below the surface quite often. Whats even more uncomfortable is that at least some of the time the reason that the questions stay unasked is an unspoken fear that a question may lead to a long winded answer aimed at spreading The Word, with little regard to the person that I am speaking to and their individual reality. It is assumed that my answer will be patronizing and/or guilt provoking. They think I am on one side, and they are on the other side. Theres a reason that you could consider me obsessed. Its because Torah isnt just a way of thinking, it’s a way of being and doing. That means that it effects everything, and leaves you open to being accused of obsession and/or fanaticism. The fact that Torah isnt Universalist makes the difficulty of understanding what it is youre so involved with even more incomprehensible. You are perceived as being a missionary, but with no agenda to Spread the Word to the Pagans. The basic difference both between what being a Torah Jew and being a follower of the current prevailing religion, Materialsim (just joking…sort of) is kyou can take a vacation from materialism, but not from Torah. The real issue is the unasked question, Why Does It Matter? Many scholars (and even more non-scholars) discuss this. One of the most interesting approaches is one that is written in a sefer called Ben Yehoyada, written by Rav Yosef Chaim of Bagdad. Yosef Chaim (1 September 1835 – 30 August 1909) was a leading hakham (Sephardic Rabbi), authority on Jewish law (Halakha) and Master Kabbalist. He is best known as author of the work on Halakha Ben Ish Ḥai (בן איש חי) (Son of Man (who) Lives), a collection of the laws of everyday life interspersed with mystical insights and customs, addressed to the masses and arranged by the weekly Torah portion. Rabbi Yosef Chaim came to be colloquially known by the title of this book. Another book he wrote is called, Ben Yehodaya. It takes you through many of the Aggadic portions of the Tqlmud that leave you scratching your head (in addition to the many other topics he elucidates). HERE IS ONE OF THE REAL ANSWERS TO WHY IT MATTERS A passage in the Talmud concerns the laws of ritual impurity that comes through contact with the dead. A grave in which a Jew is buried brings about ritual impurity, and one in which a non-Jew is buried does not. The reason given is that the text in the written Torah states, that a human (Adam) defiles. The Talmud quotes Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai as saying only Jews are called Adam. This obviously leaves you with your mouth open wide! What does that mean the rest of mankind is? Horseradish? Tosefos explains that the phrase Adam refers to Jews, while non-Jews would be referred to as Ha-Adam, the human being. That means that each non-Jew is an individual part of a group called humans. He is-the individual link in the chain. Jews are not called the human. We are not individual links. We are a whole, with the mission of bringing Torah to every aspect of life, excluding none.. Ben Yehoyada says that this difference is the most definitive one of all, and that the word Adam itself hints at this almost mystical unity. Before I tell you what he actually says, I want to point out one thing. In todays world where anti-Semitism is rising alarmingly, religion isnt the real issue. The twitter message put by a write in candidate for the US senate had the slogan With Jews We Lose. The likelihood of his ever having met an observant Jew is microscopic. His hatred isnt about kosher, or about Shabbos. Its about our being inherenbtly different. Israel is delegitimized because it is Jewish. It was hated before 1967. It is a magnet for attracting hatred. The way some Jews respond to this is to become Jews By Hatred. Meaning that their only sense of belonging to the Jews is bond of persecution that we share to one degree or another. You see a picture of a concentration camp, and you know that whether or not you observe Torah, if you were in Europe in 1942, that may very well have been your address. I want to suggest that there is another bond. Ben Yehoyada points out that the word Adam begins with the letter aleph, which in the number-letter equivalency called gematria, equals number one. The center letter of the word Adam is mem, which is the 13th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The word echad has the gematria of 13! The final letter, daled equals 4, paralleling the four basic elements that all physical reality is made of. It is the stuff that the human body, which is made of. Once you add the letter hai, making the word ha-adam, you are adding a letter that is not unified-it is constructed of two other letters, and literally means the which focusses on the individual under discussion. All of this may seem very arcane to you. I want to tell you why it isnt. You belong to a people who dont like living fragmented lives. We take our sense of meaning to everything. Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes not. We have never succeeded becoming masses, we always are a recognizable mass. You have to be strong enough to search for the positive, definition of being Jewish if you want to enjoy it, treasure it, and let it touch your heart. You are part of the ones that the Creator believed in enough o give them the task of reflecting His unity with His world by including everything you do in your spiritual journey. The trick is to enjoy it. The fast of the tenth of Tevet is coming up. It is the first of the series of fasts commemorating the fall of Yerushalaim and destruction of the Beis HaMikdash. Dont see it as a tragedy. See it as a challenge to build. Love always, Tziporah tziporahheller/
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 13:45:29 +0000
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