"The Pangs of Birth"
There are times of emergency and times of slow-slow moves. We may not notice that some very dramatic events affecting our personal lives and the society we live and work in and with may move off and speed up unexpectedly. We may subconsequently show some tendency to moral "laziness" refusing to accept changes.
Israeli society is very special: we are assembled beyond our differences in coping or not with modernity, swiftness or slowness, sort of stagnation. There is a spiritual disease called "akedia/ακεδια" in Greek that corresponds to some extent to Talmudic "atslut\עצלות-עצלנות - laziness, indolence". Talmud Sukka 27b states: "I like laggards (atslanim\עצלנים) because they cannot even leave their home on a festive day". True, "akedia" is a very severe absence of motion affecting human will and desire to evolve. Reflection, thoughts, dynamics shelter into the swindling caves of our consciousness in order to sleep in. They also may be on a play and faint to ignore outside realities.
Is it possible to dawdle or loiter as how to reach a minimum of efforts and always expect assistance from others, then slow-slow fall asleep or lose our alertness? This can be a personal selfish and own tendency that leads a soul and the body that shelters the soul to sleep and auto-mutilation. Both become lame or sleep as in a fake death context. This can lead to suicide.
There are people who are contented because they do not have to move or wake up. This can be the consequence of strong authoritarism that progressively wipes out and erases mind and brain capacities. It has always been the case. On the other hand, by the time of the Hebrew Patriarchs, people were on a move. Not in train, buses, planes, subways or even escalators. Muscles had to go on whilst neurones were on high alert.
Our present disease is not that God directly tells us we have to face the challenges of our lives; Abraham had to be tested and overcome, surface ten Tests. He did it without any claim. He did not intervene for his sake, but for the inhabitants of Sodom. Prophet Elijah was also depressed. Job too as Jonah. As saint Paul stated, Abraham went through the tests in full confidence to God. His son Isaac and grandson Jacob wandered back and fro.
Abraham was a decider. Yitzchak is reminded in this week's reading portion "Vayetzei/" ויצא as having a “Pachad HaShem\פחד ה' - Fear for God”. "Fears-pachadim\פחדים" can be a very respectful feelings in front of God's almighty powers and creative capacities. In human society, this can be compared to brakes that would curb any move in order to avoid resolving pending problems.
Yaakov was a mild mom's kid and he will remain a sweet boy until he fought with some angel who slashed his hip and thigh sinew. Then, in his weakness, he will limp ahead with more self-confidence. But to begin with, he is a "ish tam\איש תם - a mild man", though "tam\תם" involves some "fulfillment". He went out of Beer Sheva and met Rachel, a shepherdess, Laban’s daughter, in order to obey his father and mother's commandment to marry within the original tribe, their kinsmen. There he spent a long time not doing anything, a kind of non-paying non-profitable guest. Laban told him it was not fair even for a relative.
They spoke "wages" and Jacob agreed to work seven years for Laban to be given Rachel as a wife. The reality of the deal concluded in his receiving her sister Leah first. And, indeed - for the sake of love – he only was given Rachel after fourteen years of labor. This is the kind of local agreement that often turns to cheat and fraud as we have it daily in our society, including women issues.
With regards to Jacob, this is typical consequence of some childlike and fresh boyish mellowed-out attitude. He woke up and faced burdening problems. On the other hand, the wives were doing fine. Well, more or less: full competition and here is Rachel's plus over Leah. Firstly, Yaakov loved her and she loved him. Leah was unloved ("s'nu'a\שנוא - hated") and thus God "opened her womb - rachmah\רחמה = showing loving-kindness”, i.e. four babies in a row while Rachel remained barren.
There will not be any love, but Leah will grow in some sort of "aversion-hate" toward Yaakov that can drive a woman totally mad till she will even think she can, as Leah declared: "yillaveh\ילוה - be fastened, bound to her husband through Levi, their son. And she stopped bearing with Yehudah.
Unfavored Rachel, nebech (too bad, poor thing, a key word in Yiddish), is furious, envious of her sister. And there goes the gung ho! Well, she was not in the WWII Pacific battalion that adopted these words, but she hit the sack, did not remain a gizmo, and like any female "flak" violently burst her shells against her mild husband. She gave him an order: "Take Bilhah, my servant and get me children". And the man did obey his wife as he had obeyed his parents. Then Rachel is still gung ho at getting her own children: "Give me children or I shall die", she says to Jacob who is incensed at her. The word is delicious in English.
Violence and passion? Yes, because of true love facing unborn children, sterility. We can understand that in this region in constant baby boom. The competitors are basically the same as at the time of Yaakov and Rachel. The problems are the same: to bear babies because God is merciful. Can children replace the absence of love between the parents? Would a wife, a partner, a lover be willing to tie up a man and get more love or possess their children because of a some frustration. This is so current and archaically fits with special niches in many women intense emotions. Children are also those who can work when the parents get old or they can prevent accidents. The West is far to hedonistic and selfish, wealthy or thinks it is; Westerners only trust themselves and have a selected sense of history. For the Jewish tradition, birthing means to introduce into redemption.
Yaakov’s answer might not show that often… though… who knows? He had said to Rachel: “Can I take the place of God?” We are in a region, samples of cultures where sterility can be considered as a proof or an argument that love is absent; then, marriage, family life can be released to err here and there, which, at the present, raises the problem of secular divorces, separation, difficult gittin (religious divorce bills).
Sterility is in crisis. Men are fragilized just as women can be but seminal loss of fertility is something different from women's ovulation process. Jewish tradition focuses on something else.
Is it possible to replace individuals as tumors may be removed, period? Or are we bound to emotional imprints that, developing from early age to adulthood, allows some people to find the chosen or very special one and build a family with God’s love. In Leah’s and Rachel’s bonds to Yaakov, the acting factor is the closure or opening of the women’s wombs.
“Ekeret\עקרת - barren” means “uprooted, rootless”, mutilated in her womanhood and capacity as a woman in witnessing that love does exist and can more: lead to the fecundity of bodies and souls. Talmud Berakhot 44b states: “There will be no barren one amongst you (cf. Deuteronomy 7:14 referring to “Ekev\עקב = Yaakov”), i.e., there will be no one ignoring or not knowing the Scripture”.
When finally “God opened Rachel’s womb… and she bore a son, she said: “God has taken away (asaph\אסף = harvested) my disgrace” and she called the him “Yoseph\יוסף” (added as an growth). There is a kind of “harvest” in either removing a disgrace or adding a son of man who, as Rachel’s Yoseph, will be rejected by his brothers, sold and save them and their father from the famine as he held an unexpected position in Egypt and married an Egyptian woman, the mother of Ephraim and Menashe.
Rachel won in a special way: Jacob was finally willing to leave Laban and he did. Leah bore the ancestor of the Leviim\לויים – Levites; Rachel birthed the man who pardoned the jealousy of his people represented by his own brothers who had left him half dead in a cistern, then sold him – out of envious jealousy. In return, he nourished them.
Maybe because of our demographic “requirements or fears”?, or because we reached a time when high-technology and scientific knowledge indeed give the possibility to challenge human laws governing what is normal or abnormal, admissive or prohibited in order to give birth without harming authentic womanhood? Who really knows or understands?
The Israeli Jewish cultural realm need the “teshuvot\תשובות – responsae” provided by scholars like Rav Tzitz Eliezer Waldenberg who was a Talmudic decision-maker in matters of abortion. And also to read them with consideration to scientific developments. The recent development of the State of Israel and the big impact of women in all the sectors of our society should give them the opportunity to improve, with the insight of their women’s views and own experience to achieve male explanations that can only be like Yaakov answer: “Can we be God?”
Is it healthy or simply wise to bear children at 50 years old or more? Does it make sense to “hire wombs” in order to “replace ours”? Or to force a woman to give birth at any price? The challenge is whether we confide in God or rely upon selfish desires. The question is real, can hurt… or be convenient. And this concerns very young girls or women without experience, at odds with their environment as with mature wives struggling with age or senior male husbands or partners.
The Gospel starts with the same question. The first chapter of the Evangelist Luke (1:1-2:14) reports the birth of John the Baptist or Forerunner into an aging couple, Elizabeth and Zechariah who was of the priestly division of Abijah. Elizabeth was an “Ekeret\עקרת” and old. On the other hand, she received the visit of her cousin, Mary, who was a very young maiden.
In both cases, as Yaakov dealing with Leah and Rachel, the priest Zechariah and Joseph, who was betrothed to Mary, face the same attitude of faith and trust as Jacob: “Can I replace God who can open your womb?”
Is there any border to love and trust or, on the contrary, the Scripture shows us the combat of men and women on their way to faith, debating with pragmatic human emotional disputes and responses?
Av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Food And Famine
Food and famine
The national emblematic animal we have in Israel is undoubtedly the cow, the nourishing milky Israeli cow. One of the most conflicting issues we face today is "food" and how to eat properly, decently, with measure in order to avoid growing fat or “phat” and distort the image of human forms.
The "few extra pounds" can dramatically change into full overweight that endangers life and flexibility, even at the mental level. This is known, for example, that the Samoan people in the Pacific Ocean islands were put on a strict diet. North Americans have also their reputation connecting hours of television with junk food. Hebrew slang "jank/ז'אנק" corresponds to fat, unhealthy food basically due to laziness and absence of body motion.
Look at the children at 2 pm. in the Old City; small Arabs boys and girls, teens swallow over-sugar junk, always the same candies. The kids grow fat very quickly. Same hour, another day in a city bus, Jewish pupils and elder people "nosh" huge munchies, full of oil, French fries or choco-something with strudels and various cakes. Oily King and Queen Size pizzas...
In restaurants, the tables are still full of half-crunched plates. They will be thrown to the trash because the Law is very strict - at least it is health-centered! But what a waste of food and quite often of very expensive dishes. At the same time, all kinds of wonderful volunteering associations distribute more and more food to impoverished families that are more and more in dire indigence. I know families whose kids go every night to bed with only two yoghurts or so. This is in Jerusalem and other cities of the country.
In Europe, privation and poverty lead the association and benefactors to create Winter "food providing centers and points" and hunger is a major concern everywhere, also affecting so-called "wealthy" states as the United States...
It is a must and a real mitzvah to share meals, ot only to invite to banquets. Isaiah said that people could come and eat freely = gratis; it is not that clear in English. Matthew 10:8 repeats the basic rule "You received freely, give freely".
Food and distribution of food to everybody has always been a major concern in the Jewish tradition. Middle-Easterners have suffered from hunger and famine throughout history. This is why the "Birkat HaMazon/ברכת המזון - Blessing (after) of Meal(s)" is a positive commandment that cannot be swallowed up speedily. "Eretz chemdah\ארץ חמדה - a nice (because nurturing) earth" whose fruit and plants are excellent.
As mentioned in the prayer's psalm: "yachlu anavim | veyisba'u\יאכלו ענוים- וישבעו - let the lowly eat | and be satisfied" (Psalm 22:27), food does not only aim to nurture or feed, but also to satisfy and rejoice the belly, i.e. individuals and collectivities. Food is a challenging question for survival. In the TaNaCH, "hunger/r"av = רעב-ה" is a significant plague that attacks a region on regular basis.
The Middle-East region has always been endangered by the conquest of desert and wilderness over nature and fields. The soil can become emptied or dried out and crops disappear. Hebrew makes no distinction between "hunger" and "famine" which is a rather high-level wide-spread epidemic catastrophe. "Ra'av\רעב" means people are hungry or affected by a famine. Talmud Bava Bathra 8b states that "famine is a severer affliction than war". Chapter 5:8 of the "Pirkey Avot\פרקי אבות - Sayings of the Fathers" insists on the fact that the "sacrificial meat never became putrid” and that God always provided with space and abundance.
There is an insightful but so obvious statement in Sukka 52b: "a small organ is in man (stomach), when you starve it is is satisfied; when you satisfy it, it is hungry". “Re’avon\רעבון” also means “hunger, famine” as in Kohelet Rabba V:10: “Did the Lord give the manna as food of famine in scantiness?” whereas “ra’avtan\רעבתון” is a voracious eater, a glutton and a greedy person that eats on his own, i.e. that he does not restrict his appetite for drink (Talmud Bava Betsia 25b).
In the Bible, famine and hunger alternate with periods of abundance appeared from Genesis and the warning to Joseph who interpreted Pharaoh’s bovine dreams. Somehow, he finally anticipated the miracle of manna in the wilderness; famines are indeed worse than wars and gave a push to conquerors when Jerusalem was besieged during the time of the two destructions of the Temples. The Book of Lamentation/Eycha-איכה cries out a profound distress as mothers were eating theirs kids (Lamentation 3:20). A horrible question that makes “swallow” or frentically eat up, a sort of disease made of anxiety and lust for short-term satisfaction that sways up between overweight or anorexia for young girls and women.
Eating is also the banquet like the “se’udah hashlishit\סעודה השלישית – third Shabbat meal” when the tzadik shares the meat and delivers his teaching: word becomes a banquet or a festive “farbrengen\פארברענגען” (ingathering). The same as when Jesus asked his disciples to feed the crowd on the mount and they were reluctant considering the people could go and buy the food (Matthew 14:13, Luke 9:13). In the Eastern Orthodox Church, one similarly uses to blessing five loaves, grains, oil and wine as sharing “lechem\לחם – bread” that remains “lachma\לחמא-ה – meat, flesh” in Arabic and consists in distributing food to the full (cf. the plentiful measure of barley gathered by Ruth 3:15).
Harvesting is a feast everywhere and whatever religious beliefs. Thus, in fall 1621, the Mayflower pilgrims shared the bread with the native Indians who were having their Keepunumuk = harvest feast. Nice partaking of fowl, fish, wheat and corn as in so many parts of the world. President Abraham Lincoln’s intuition of a national day for all the Americans to thank God for the homeland’s wealth was a bit prophetic but not realistic at that time. It became possible in 1863.
Interestingly, Thanksgiving Day – which as in Canada is a harvest feast – was determined as the fourth Thursday of November by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939, by the time of the Great Depression. The law came into force in 1943, during World War II. The day is a secular, national and international turkey festive harvest meal (earlier in October Canada because of the time for harvesting).
Curiously, the final date was defined during the hardships of the Great Depression in which lots of Americans lost their money, suddenly fell in need and meals were distributed all over an impoverished country. At this point, the Goldene Medine\גאלדענע מדינה (“Golden State” in Yiddish) still reckons a huge number of needy and people who do not have enough to eat.
In Israel, huge portions of fat oily pizzas or greasy big hamburgers (that originally were the usual meals for the poor Jews on board to America! Cf. P. Kriwaczek: Yiddish Civilisation, p.311). They settled among nations that always need to chew or absorb food. But he waste is unbelievable.
Turning back to the East and looking to the Ukraine, November 25th is the official Ukrainian national Day of remembrance for all the victims who died of “Holodomor/Голодомор – famine killings, using famine for mass murders”.
The famine was projected as a political way to hunger and thus kill the Ukrainian inhabitants of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic. The word, in Ukrainian comes from “moryty holodom\морити голодом – to let impose death through famine, hunger” as it happened in 1932-1933. Before the first World War, my family was exporting grains from the Ukraine to Europe and the Ukraine was known for “feeding Europe”.
After 1920, the Soviets favored the Ukrainians for a short while, then obliged by law to implement a process collectivization. In these wide regions of rich fields and harvesting where small family farms were normal and often rather big compared to Europe or in our region, collectivization suddenly introduced a system that stopped private properties. This allowed the emergence of less and less productivity.
The government of Moscow decided that a certain amount of grain supply should be delivered in 1932, but by the end of the year, it was clear that the target would not be reached. On January 15, 1933, more than 100.000 people were sentenced either to death or deportation. The government required to be given all the “harvest” and available grains, which drastically provoked the famine. It appears that, contrary to the other famines that afflicted the former Soviet Union from 1921 recurrently till 1947 etc., there has been a political decision to hunger the Ukrainian nation, in particular the peasants who had backed the independence movements in 1917 by the time of the Revolution.
The Soviet government never accepted to recognize this form of extermination of the Ukrainian people, mainly in the agricultural regions. It seems that some grains were provided, still in low quantity. On the other hand, the famine caused the death of ca. 3,2 million people, mostly Ukrainians, but also Russians, Jews, Poles, Volga German and Tatars.
The statistics are not clearly upgraded at the present. They show that these peoples were intentionally submitted to hunger in order to kill them. Nowadays, the Ukraine has defined this period as a “genocide”; other specialists speak of a “mass murder”. It is not possible here to explain all the elements that were interwoven in the backgrounds of the Ukrainian society at that time. Since the early days of this “holodomor/голодомор – famine mass murder” we have had here eyewitnesses who were multi-survivors as so many Jews lived in the Ukraine.
How peculiar that a lot of Jews first fled from the Ukraine to North America where the time of harvesting and getting the crops became a feast of “Thanksgiving”;or others arrived just recently to Israel. Faith often obliges to refrain from eating at certain periods of the year; but never to die of hunger.
Just the opposite: between feeling hungry and “malle\מלא – full, satisfied”, there is the need for wellness. Bread and soup do save.
Av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
The national emblematic animal we have in Israel is undoubtedly the cow, the nourishing milky Israeli cow. One of the most conflicting issues we face today is "food" and how to eat properly, decently, with measure in order to avoid growing fat or “phat” and distort the image of human forms.
The "few extra pounds" can dramatically change into full overweight that endangers life and flexibility, even at the mental level. This is known, for example, that the Samoan people in the Pacific Ocean islands were put on a strict diet. North Americans have also their reputation connecting hours of television with junk food. Hebrew slang "jank/ז'אנק" corresponds to fat, unhealthy food basically due to laziness and absence of body motion.
Look at the children at 2 pm. in the Old City; small Arabs boys and girls, teens swallow over-sugar junk, always the same candies. The kids grow fat very quickly. Same hour, another day in a city bus, Jewish pupils and elder people "nosh" huge munchies, full of oil, French fries or choco-something with strudels and various cakes. Oily King and Queen Size pizzas...
In restaurants, the tables are still full of half-crunched plates. They will be thrown to the trash because the Law is very strict - at least it is health-centered! But what a waste of food and quite often of very expensive dishes. At the same time, all kinds of wonderful volunteering associations distribute more and more food to impoverished families that are more and more in dire indigence. I know families whose kids go every night to bed with only two yoghurts or so. This is in Jerusalem and other cities of the country.
In Europe, privation and poverty lead the association and benefactors to create Winter "food providing centers and points" and hunger is a major concern everywhere, also affecting so-called "wealthy" states as the United States...
It is a must and a real mitzvah to share meals, ot only to invite to banquets. Isaiah said that people could come and eat freely = gratis; it is not that clear in English. Matthew 10:8 repeats the basic rule "You received freely, give freely".
Food and distribution of food to everybody has always been a major concern in the Jewish tradition. Middle-Easterners have suffered from hunger and famine throughout history. This is why the "Birkat HaMazon/ברכת המזון - Blessing (after) of Meal(s)" is a positive commandment that cannot be swallowed up speedily. "Eretz chemdah\ארץ חמדה - a nice (because nurturing) earth" whose fruit and plants are excellent.
As mentioned in the prayer's psalm: "yachlu anavim | veyisba'u\יאכלו ענוים- וישבעו - let the lowly eat | and be satisfied" (Psalm 22:27), food does not only aim to nurture or feed, but also to satisfy and rejoice the belly, i.e. individuals and collectivities. Food is a challenging question for survival. In the TaNaCH, "hunger/r"av = רעב-ה" is a significant plague that attacks a region on regular basis.
The Middle-East region has always been endangered by the conquest of desert and wilderness over nature and fields. The soil can become emptied or dried out and crops disappear. Hebrew makes no distinction between "hunger" and "famine" which is a rather high-level wide-spread epidemic catastrophe. "Ra'av\רעב" means people are hungry or affected by a famine. Talmud Bava Bathra 8b states that "famine is a severer affliction than war". Chapter 5:8 of the "Pirkey Avot\פרקי אבות - Sayings of the Fathers" insists on the fact that the "sacrificial meat never became putrid” and that God always provided with space and abundance.
There is an insightful but so obvious statement in Sukka 52b: "a small organ is in man (stomach), when you starve it is is satisfied; when you satisfy it, it is hungry". “Re’avon\רעבון” also means “hunger, famine” as in Kohelet Rabba V:10: “Did the Lord give the manna as food of famine in scantiness?” whereas “ra’avtan\רעבתון” is a voracious eater, a glutton and a greedy person that eats on his own, i.e. that he does not restrict his appetite for drink (Talmud Bava Betsia 25b).
In the Bible, famine and hunger alternate with periods of abundance appeared from Genesis and the warning to Joseph who interpreted Pharaoh’s bovine dreams. Somehow, he finally anticipated the miracle of manna in the wilderness; famines are indeed worse than wars and gave a push to conquerors when Jerusalem was besieged during the time of the two destructions of the Temples. The Book of Lamentation/Eycha-איכה cries out a profound distress as mothers were eating theirs kids (Lamentation 3:20). A horrible question that makes “swallow” or frentically eat up, a sort of disease made of anxiety and lust for short-term satisfaction that sways up between overweight or anorexia for young girls and women.
Eating is also the banquet like the “se’udah hashlishit\סעודה השלישית – third Shabbat meal” when the tzadik shares the meat and delivers his teaching: word becomes a banquet or a festive “farbrengen\פארברענגען” (ingathering). The same as when Jesus asked his disciples to feed the crowd on the mount and they were reluctant considering the people could go and buy the food (Matthew 14:13, Luke 9:13). In the Eastern Orthodox Church, one similarly uses to blessing five loaves, grains, oil and wine as sharing “lechem\לחם – bread” that remains “lachma\לחמא-ה – meat, flesh” in Arabic and consists in distributing food to the full (cf. the plentiful measure of barley gathered by Ruth 3:15).
Harvesting is a feast everywhere and whatever religious beliefs. Thus, in fall 1621, the Mayflower pilgrims shared the bread with the native Indians who were having their Keepunumuk = harvest feast. Nice partaking of fowl, fish, wheat and corn as in so many parts of the world. President Abraham Lincoln’s intuition of a national day for all the Americans to thank God for the homeland’s wealth was a bit prophetic but not realistic at that time. It became possible in 1863.
Interestingly, Thanksgiving Day – which as in Canada is a harvest feast – was determined as the fourth Thursday of November by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939, by the time of the Great Depression. The law came into force in 1943, during World War II. The day is a secular, national and international turkey festive harvest meal (earlier in October Canada because of the time for harvesting).
Curiously, the final date was defined during the hardships of the Great Depression in which lots of Americans lost their money, suddenly fell in need and meals were distributed all over an impoverished country. At this point, the Goldene Medine\גאלדענע מדינה (“Golden State” in Yiddish) still reckons a huge number of needy and people who do not have enough to eat.
In Israel, huge portions of fat oily pizzas or greasy big hamburgers (that originally were the usual meals for the poor Jews on board to America! Cf. P. Kriwaczek: Yiddish Civilisation, p.311). They settled among nations that always need to chew or absorb food. But he waste is unbelievable.
Turning back to the East and looking to the Ukraine, November 25th is the official Ukrainian national Day of remembrance for all the victims who died of “Holodomor/Голодомор – famine killings, using famine for mass murders”.
The famine was projected as a political way to hunger and thus kill the Ukrainian inhabitants of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic. The word, in Ukrainian comes from “moryty holodom\морити голодом – to let impose death through famine, hunger” as it happened in 1932-1933. Before the first World War, my family was exporting grains from the Ukraine to Europe and the Ukraine was known for “feeding Europe”.
After 1920, the Soviets favored the Ukrainians for a short while, then obliged by law to implement a process collectivization. In these wide regions of rich fields and harvesting where small family farms were normal and often rather big compared to Europe or in our region, collectivization suddenly introduced a system that stopped private properties. This allowed the emergence of less and less productivity.
The government of Moscow decided that a certain amount of grain supply should be delivered in 1932, but by the end of the year, it was clear that the target would not be reached. On January 15, 1933, more than 100.000 people were sentenced either to death or deportation. The government required to be given all the “harvest” and available grains, which drastically provoked the famine. It appears that, contrary to the other famines that afflicted the former Soviet Union from 1921 recurrently till 1947 etc., there has been a political decision to hunger the Ukrainian nation, in particular the peasants who had backed the independence movements in 1917 by the time of the Revolution.
The Soviet government never accepted to recognize this form of extermination of the Ukrainian people, mainly in the agricultural regions. It seems that some grains were provided, still in low quantity. On the other hand, the famine caused the death of ca. 3,2 million people, mostly Ukrainians, but also Russians, Jews, Poles, Volga German and Tatars.
The statistics are not clearly upgraded at the present. They show that these peoples were intentionally submitted to hunger in order to kill them. Nowadays, the Ukraine has defined this period as a “genocide”; other specialists speak of a “mass murder”. It is not possible here to explain all the elements that were interwoven in the backgrounds of the Ukrainian society at that time. Since the early days of this “holodomor/голодомор – famine mass murder” we have had here eyewitnesses who were multi-survivors as so many Jews lived in the Ukraine.
How peculiar that a lot of Jews first fled from the Ukraine to North America where the time of harvesting and getting the crops became a feast of “Thanksgiving”;or others arrived just recently to Israel. Faith often obliges to refrain from eating at certain periods of the year; but never to die of hunger.
Just the opposite: between feeling hungry and “malle\מלא – full, satisfied”, there is the need for wellness. Bread and soup do save.
Av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
Monday, November 14, 2011
Blessings Only!
"Blessings only”
As time passes, we seem to face more and more periods of peaks of violence that cool down and start again and again. We expect some other troubles that we have to affront with renewed mental or physical aggressiveness. We are facing rough times of spiritual, societal and identity probation. It is not new, it is only simple and ordinary day-to-day human "on the go". It does not include development or growth necessarily.
The reading portion of the week is "Chayei Sarah/חי שרה - the span of Sarah's time" which, to begin with, accounts her death and ends with Abraham's burial. This is the main purpose of the reading portion: not life, but because life is meaningful, why and how should the humans be brought to everlasting repose, rest, eath.
How to bury somebody in a place where the considered person is "foreign"? What to do when a foreigner loses abroad somebody of his close parentage? Abraham’s attitude toward his wife witnesses to a rare act of loving-kindness.. In Egypt, he was about to abandon Sarah to Pharaoh as his sister. She turned to be a natural plague (Pharaoh got seriously ill) that kicked them out of the country much quicker than by Moses' time (Bereishit/Genesis 12:14-17)!
The Jewish tradition considers that Abraham did not love (le'ehuv/לאהוב) Sarah but they did spend their life together and were true life companions. He showed compassion (rachamim\רחמים) bwhen he bought a cave at Machpelah for 400 silver Shekels (quite a fortune at that time) to bury his long-life wife Sarah in the land of the Hittites. Abraham was considered as a "stable" resident (sort of ger toshav/גר תושב). Love showed by steps: it was more emotional with Yitzchak and Rebecca and reach out to the fulfillment of love with Yaakov who travailed 14 years and was even cheated by his step-father to marry his beloved Rachel.
But the point is that Abraham was not rejected nor told to bury Sarah in his homeland, Ur-Kasdim, in Mesopotamia. Ephron the Hittite took the cash and said : "Go and bury your dead". Thus, Machpelah\מכפלה passed from Ephron to Abraham at the going merchants' rate "as a burial place". Abraham was also to be buried there (Genesis 25:10). This act of compassion turned to seeds of life and grafting for a wandering God-seeking couple that could peacefully and legally "plant their bones" to blossom with the promise of a numerous lineage.
Looking into the journey of this exceptional - say a bit "history-symbolic" couple of our ancestors, they felt obliged to steafastly fight paganism, amorality, human sacrifices. They acknowledged a covenant in the flesh and this act that only concerns males has a strong imprint on their souls.
They trusted in the Omnipresent Lord. Abraham argued with Him to save a handful of sinners, if any, those who were fenced in Sodom. It has nothing to do with our usual claims and requirements: that God should be human and have the same ethic patterns as ours.
Sarah and Abraham - in this order because of the privilege she gave to her husband to bear Yitzchak unexpectedly - never imposed any way of divine regulations. Nonetheless, Judaism considers and teaches that Abraham complied with all the Mitzvot/Commandments of the Torah and of the Talmud, i.e. all the Commandments of the Written and Oral Laws. They faced a spiritual combat, choosing to clutch to the words of the One God of the living as opposed to the world of idols, ruthless violence and hatefully hostile evictions/deportations.
Jesus said something very similar to his disciples about this path: "As you go, do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic or sandals or walking stick. The laborer deserves his keep” (Matthew 10:10).
At the present, we face doubts that confront faith or a society of believers with non-believers, atheists, secular or free-spirited people. In a context where people can mark a territory, a quarter but can hardly close planetary connectedness.
This is the first proposition. In fact, there are strong trends to show off faith and creeds. Faith come and go like waves. They are not constant. They show and disappear. One, two three generations have shown that "faith" is an essential value, but "faith" is not moral. Faith shows Divine Will and goals. Subsequently "Faith" is a gift that we may apprehend, understand and cope with the moral "barriers" that exist in order to comply with "extant, essential and life-giving ethics".
"Pulsa d'nura/פולסא דנורא" is a typical Talmudic expression in Aramaic used in Talmud Baba Metzia 47b, Hagiga 15b or in Leviticus Rabba 37 ("pulsin\פולסין")."Pulsa = a disk, circular, round plate or even a ring" used as measure of weight or money ("pilas\פילס”). As any payment coin is of great importance in the Middle-East and our cultural backgrounds in Judaism and Christianity. Yet, in the Gospel, a woman turned half mad in sweeping her house in order to find a "lost coin" but called her friends for a party when she found it (Luke 15:8).
By extension, "pulsa d'nura" were fiery disks put on whipping lashes (Talmud Baba Metzia 85b) envisioned as a punishment against sinners in heaven (i.e. after death...) in the absence of a any presupposed Divine pardon (Yoma 77a). Rashi would have considered this "harsh condemnation" as an equivalent to the "cherem/חרם = ban or eviction from the community".
Since the Second Temple is not "alive - qayam\קיים" the sacrifices are suspended without the existence of a coherent and legal Sanhedrin, death sentences are not applicable. Then, any attempt to evict somebody from a Jewish community is very problematic. Since the Era of Enlightment, a secular movement that appeared in Christianized Europe as a questioning system about beliefs and creeds (17th century). This has still been a problem for some groups at the dawn of the 20th century, e.g. Marc Chagall (his Christian-oriented paintings), Shalom Asch (his books in Yiddish about "Jesus" and "Mary") have been about to be excluded from the Jewish community, i.e. under a "cherem\חרם - ban of expelling from the community".
The "pulsa d'nura\פולסא דנורא" seems to be a sort of alternative "death curse" pronounced against one or some individuals who profoundly offended or trespassed the Jewish laws in force. It has been noticed that "death penalties" are not in force in Judaism since Jews are called to bless and not to curse (Genesis 22:18). The "cherem\חרם" or eviction from the community is no more in force or can more easily be circumvented, though not everywhere.
The Churches could initially pronounce anathemas (ban) or excommunications, i.e. the faithful could were either excluded from the Sacraments and the catholic community; the Eastern Orthodox tradition referred to the prohibition of receiving the Communion.
Death curses or "pulsa d'nura" have been at the heart of the very in-depth debate and essential fight led by the secular Jews and the various practicing Jewish ultra-orthodox groups who did allow a constant death-facing survival of Jewishness in hostile environments.
Eliezer Ben Yehudah, the reviver of the living Modern Hebrew tongue was seemingly the first "Israeli" to be picked on such a death curse as it was unthinkable for pious Jews to speak the language of G-d. But the need for a common language convinced that Hebrew was the most avaconvenient and resourceful heritage. Still until recently, Yiddish should have remained the only "national" colloquial in very orthodox quarters or specific groups.
Death curses were also cited about late PM Yitzchak Rabin, eventually against Shimon Peres vs. Moshe Katzav as both were candidates to the presidency of the State. Late Rav I. Kaduri and Menachem Mendel (Lubavich) intervened as spiritual leaders. Though some authorities protested against the existence of such curses - pulsa d'nura, if any. Last... the curse was cited with regard to the pullout from the Gaza Strip and Ariel Sharon.
Cursing appears to recurrently be a violent and very passionate, emotional reaction in the Semitic and religious way of thinking faithfulness to God's Commandments and the pagan aspect or secular attitude of social bodies that do not commit their lives with the requirements of faith.
"Charam" (ban, expel somebody) is often heard in Arabic.Physical violence as spitting at the Christian clergy or ignoring them by closing the eyes are frequent in Jerusalem. In return, mutual ignorance stigmatizes the wounds of aggressive positions that often influenced each group in the name of ritual purity. Thus, the long-life loving-kindness shown by Abraham and Sarah wandering towards their identity is a good example of hospitality and love of the unknowns as at terebinths of Mamre.
Each day, the Jewish communities start to pray with the words of Bilaam, the prophet who had been paid to curse Israel and was pulsed to understand he was wrong because his she-donkey refused to move, laid down and told him how to behave. He converted and said: "How goodly are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel" (Numbers/VaYikra 24:5).
av aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
As time passes, we seem to face more and more periods of peaks of violence that cool down and start again and again. We expect some other troubles that we have to affront with renewed mental or physical aggressiveness. We are facing rough times of spiritual, societal and identity probation. It is not new, it is only simple and ordinary day-to-day human "on the go". It does not include development or growth necessarily.
The reading portion of the week is "Chayei Sarah/חי שרה - the span of Sarah's time" which, to begin with, accounts her death and ends with Abraham's burial. This is the main purpose of the reading portion: not life, but because life is meaningful, why and how should the humans be brought to everlasting repose, rest, eath.
How to bury somebody in a place where the considered person is "foreign"? What to do when a foreigner loses abroad somebody of his close parentage? Abraham’s attitude toward his wife witnesses to a rare act of loving-kindness.. In Egypt, he was about to abandon Sarah to Pharaoh as his sister. She turned to be a natural plague (Pharaoh got seriously ill) that kicked them out of the country much quicker than by Moses' time (Bereishit/Genesis 12:14-17)!
The Jewish tradition considers that Abraham did not love (le'ehuv/לאהוב) Sarah but they did spend their life together and were true life companions. He showed compassion (rachamim\רחמים) bwhen he bought a cave at Machpelah for 400 silver Shekels (quite a fortune at that time) to bury his long-life wife Sarah in the land of the Hittites. Abraham was considered as a "stable" resident (sort of ger toshav/גר תושב). Love showed by steps: it was more emotional with Yitzchak and Rebecca and reach out to the fulfillment of love with Yaakov who travailed 14 years and was even cheated by his step-father to marry his beloved Rachel.
But the point is that Abraham was not rejected nor told to bury Sarah in his homeland, Ur-Kasdim, in Mesopotamia. Ephron the Hittite took the cash and said : "Go and bury your dead". Thus, Machpelah\מכפלה passed from Ephron to Abraham at the going merchants' rate "as a burial place". Abraham was also to be buried there (Genesis 25:10). This act of compassion turned to seeds of life and grafting for a wandering God-seeking couple that could peacefully and legally "plant their bones" to blossom with the promise of a numerous lineage.
Looking into the journey of this exceptional - say a bit "history-symbolic" couple of our ancestors, they felt obliged to steafastly fight paganism, amorality, human sacrifices. They acknowledged a covenant in the flesh and this act that only concerns males has a strong imprint on their souls.
They trusted in the Omnipresent Lord. Abraham argued with Him to save a handful of sinners, if any, those who were fenced in Sodom. It has nothing to do with our usual claims and requirements: that God should be human and have the same ethic patterns as ours.
Sarah and Abraham - in this order because of the privilege she gave to her husband to bear Yitzchak unexpectedly - never imposed any way of divine regulations. Nonetheless, Judaism considers and teaches that Abraham complied with all the Mitzvot/Commandments of the Torah and of the Talmud, i.e. all the Commandments of the Written and Oral Laws. They faced a spiritual combat, choosing to clutch to the words of the One God of the living as opposed to the world of idols, ruthless violence and hatefully hostile evictions/deportations.
Jesus said something very similar to his disciples about this path: "As you go, do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic or sandals or walking stick. The laborer deserves his keep” (Matthew 10:10).
At the present, we face doubts that confront faith or a society of believers with non-believers, atheists, secular or free-spirited people. In a context where people can mark a territory, a quarter but can hardly close planetary connectedness.
This is the first proposition. In fact, there are strong trends to show off faith and creeds. Faith come and go like waves. They are not constant. They show and disappear. One, two three generations have shown that "faith" is an essential value, but "faith" is not moral. Faith shows Divine Will and goals. Subsequently "Faith" is a gift that we may apprehend, understand and cope with the moral "barriers" that exist in order to comply with "extant, essential and life-giving ethics".
"Pulsa d'nura/פולסא דנורא" is a typical Talmudic expression in Aramaic used in Talmud Baba Metzia 47b, Hagiga 15b or in Leviticus Rabba 37 ("pulsin\פולסין")."Pulsa = a disk, circular, round plate or even a ring" used as measure of weight or money ("pilas\פילס”). As any payment coin is of great importance in the Middle-East and our cultural backgrounds in Judaism and Christianity. Yet, in the Gospel, a woman turned half mad in sweeping her house in order to find a "lost coin" but called her friends for a party when she found it (Luke 15:8).
By extension, "pulsa d'nura" were fiery disks put on whipping lashes (Talmud Baba Metzia 85b) envisioned as a punishment against sinners in heaven (i.e. after death...) in the absence of a any presupposed Divine pardon (Yoma 77a). Rashi would have considered this "harsh condemnation" as an equivalent to the "cherem/חרם = ban or eviction from the community".
Since the Second Temple is not "alive - qayam\קיים" the sacrifices are suspended without the existence of a coherent and legal Sanhedrin, death sentences are not applicable. Then, any attempt to evict somebody from a Jewish community is very problematic. Since the Era of Enlightment, a secular movement that appeared in Christianized Europe as a questioning system about beliefs and creeds (17th century). This has still been a problem for some groups at the dawn of the 20th century, e.g. Marc Chagall (his Christian-oriented paintings), Shalom Asch (his books in Yiddish about "Jesus" and "Mary") have been about to be excluded from the Jewish community, i.e. under a "cherem\חרם - ban of expelling from the community".
The "pulsa d'nura\פולסא דנורא" seems to be a sort of alternative "death curse" pronounced against one or some individuals who profoundly offended or trespassed the Jewish laws in force. It has been noticed that "death penalties" are not in force in Judaism since Jews are called to bless and not to curse (Genesis 22:18). The "cherem\חרם" or eviction from the community is no more in force or can more easily be circumvented, though not everywhere.
The Churches could initially pronounce anathemas (ban) or excommunications, i.e. the faithful could were either excluded from the Sacraments and the catholic community; the Eastern Orthodox tradition referred to the prohibition of receiving the Communion.
Death curses or "pulsa d'nura" have been at the heart of the very in-depth debate and essential fight led by the secular Jews and the various practicing Jewish ultra-orthodox groups who did allow a constant death-facing survival of Jewishness in hostile environments.
Eliezer Ben Yehudah, the reviver of the living Modern Hebrew tongue was seemingly the first "Israeli" to be picked on such a death curse as it was unthinkable for pious Jews to speak the language of G-d. But the need for a common language convinced that Hebrew was the most avaconvenient and resourceful heritage. Still until recently, Yiddish should have remained the only "national" colloquial in very orthodox quarters or specific groups.
Death curses were also cited about late PM Yitzchak Rabin, eventually against Shimon Peres vs. Moshe Katzav as both were candidates to the presidency of the State. Late Rav I. Kaduri and Menachem Mendel (Lubavich) intervened as spiritual leaders. Though some authorities protested against the existence of such curses - pulsa d'nura, if any. Last... the curse was cited with regard to the pullout from the Gaza Strip and Ariel Sharon.
Cursing appears to recurrently be a violent and very passionate, emotional reaction in the Semitic and religious way of thinking faithfulness to God's Commandments and the pagan aspect or secular attitude of social bodies that do not commit their lives with the requirements of faith.
"Charam" (ban, expel somebody) is often heard in Arabic.Physical violence as spitting at the Christian clergy or ignoring them by closing the eyes are frequent in Jerusalem. In return, mutual ignorance stigmatizes the wounds of aggressive positions that often influenced each group in the name of ritual purity. Thus, the long-life loving-kindness shown by Abraham and Sarah wandering towards their identity is a good example of hospitality and love of the unknowns as at terebinths of Mamre.
Each day, the Jewish communities start to pray with the words of Bilaam, the prophet who had been paid to curse Israel and was pulsed to understand he was wrong because his she-donkey refused to move, laid down and told him how to behave. He converted and said: "How goodly are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel" (Numbers/VaYikra 24:5).
av aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Bound for the sake of life and love
Bound for the sake of life and love
Some years ago, we went on a tour around Jerusalem with some former Soviet newcomers. We were speaking Russian, mainly because of the parents. Their children were definitely not reluctant to speak Hebrew. The yhad learnt to discuss quite well. This was part one of the "quarrel". For the parents, Hebrew was then a sort of social Esperanto. They did not really care about finding their roots here in the revival of the national tongue.
The children were nice boys and girls, strong-minded and a bit over-protected. They felt in need for the tenderness and cultural backgrounds from “tam/там = there”, i.e. some former Soviet region. They were captivated by the quick development of the Hebrew culture and the street westernized culture. They were chewing some gum ready to explode out of their mouths plus a lit cigarette hold in manicured fingers.
They were aggressive: dad and mom were totally unplugged and should understand that the local youths had a deep desire to speak Arabic fluently. The parents were in shock. Good gracious, lesser British it sounds "B-ozhe, izbavi/Боже избави!" (G-d preserve), why Arabic? Because it is a must, they answered! Millions of Arabs live around Israel as also in or along our cities. It is a Semitic tongue as Hebrew, with an immense scientific and literary prestige, the native tongue of many Jews but of course Arabs, both Christians and Muslims.
"Bubele-Babushka/Бубеле-Бабушка = granny" was on the verge to faint. The educated part of the band explained how the Mongols had attacked the Ukraine and Russia. Correct! Russia has always been a protection wall against violent conquerors : Russians had resisted and saved the many nations of Central and East Europe that had never showed very grateful for the help.
Our Ottomans (the same that occupied Eretz Israel/Palestine for centuries) stopped at Vienna (leaving croissants, viennoiseries and Turkish/Arabic or Greek coffee). From the 13th to the defeat of Kulikovo in 1380, the Mongol Golden Horde ruled over Russia and only disappeared in 1480.
The Ukraine and the main Russian cities were profoundly marked by the Tatar and Mongol Golden Horde conquest. The Mongols allowed the immense country to benefit from a social and fiscal, post system. The Russians, the White Russians and the Ukrainians have been pinched between the Tatar-Mongol rulers coming from the East. They were far more frightened by the Western invaders, in particular the crusaders that often deeply threatened Christian Eastern Orthodoxy and their lifestyles.
This suspicion against both East and West does explain some sort of border protections from ethnic aggressions. These protections often developed into the deportation of numerous nations, especially affecting the Tatars, but also some Baltic peoples and the Jews, displacing some nationals from West to the Far East, along the Chinese border.
The Jews have been traditionally enclosed in borderland regions, in micro-societal "shtetlech/שטאטלעך - ghettos" with "strach-touha : attraction/ repulsion" relationships as Franz Kafka described in Czech such postures made of some interest and love and profound repulsion on both sides.
Most former Soviet citizens living in Israel have directly landed in Israel. They had left a sort of mental prison system and they arrived in Israel, discovering a multicultural and new country without having ever experienced any system of freedom in different countries.
The second generation has somehow partly or totally assimilated. it depends on the lifestyle, the cultural background. Those who were born in Israel or arrived very early feel a ttoal clutch with Israel and the Jewish-Israeli style. Some other people, especially the youths are tormented, cannot find their place, take all possible benefits from the country but they hate the culture and the language.
Over the many decades, in particular the past twenty years, I saw all sorts of situations. It started long before the fall of communism and the rebirth of the Church in Eastern Europe and the Slavic "block", mainly the former Soviet "Empire" or Union of "free republics".
At the present, many newcomers from the former Soviet Union are glad to discover a world that is connected to the planet. Today, it is much easier for them to move and travel, inside of the country and abroad. As numerous migrants, they also exercise a kind of selection. Some decide to settle in Israel. Others prefer to go on a trip to the Western part of the world. Many cannot break the profound ties with Russia or the Ukraine.
Over the specific period of the past twenty years, I encounter a lot of "true Israelis". Others wander on their own trip, journey to egos that are pretty difficult to find. Many would acculturate in the society by mixing up with the Arabs, especially in the Old City of Jerusalem. The Christian Arabs need women and many "non-halachically recognized Jewesses" prefer their society. They get baptized among the Arab milieu or men and women will integrate among the Galilean Arab Christian youths. Or the ywill choose to leave the country for North America, Australia or Europe (Germany or Scandinavia, Italy or Spain).
Basically, the process of integration in Israeli society proceeds from the very powerful capacity of the "society as a body" to assimilate all kinds of human backgrounds and to insert them into the reality of Judaism. I also met many cases of personal "lifepaths" where the Jewish authorities continue to accept that newcomers find their road or cross-roads through the many possible options, inside or outside Jewishness. The whole process can be a real "way of the Cross", with immense personal sufferings and "mal-d'être", "Unbehagen in der Kultur".
This is also due to the exceptional flexibility of Israeli society. Some people are trained to follow the right path. Others will make their way(s) as through a jungle and think that everything is permitted, which is definitely wrong in the country. For some reason, numerous "Christians" come around and can spend years as true "anti-Semites and anti-Judaic "true" believers" without being bothered by any "social or national system of control". In the meanwhile, the Churches that had been present locally for centuries are at pains with the new and rather unexpected Israeli and Jewish State rules in force.
Thus, the Jewish tradition is wider than any kind of limitations and rejections.
This week, the reading portion of the Torah accounts how Abraham and Sarah got Itzchak and how Hagar and Ishmael were sent away to the desert.
Later on, God tested Abraham again. Early in the morning, Abraham swiftly left his home with his son Isaac (the boy was supposedly 37 years-old) and they quitted the servants telling them they will soon come back. Abraham gathered the wood to bind his “only son- b’no yechido\בנו יחידו” as a “olah\עולה – burnt offering”, which removed – for this special time – any reference to his first-born Ishmael\ישמעאל. But Itzchak\יצחק (“God laughed”) is the son of pure Providence, beyond any natural patterns, a laughter to challenge generations – toledot\תלדות = history and perduration.
Abraham seems to accomplish God’s goodwill as if he were blind. Talmud Taanit III:65d points out that the Lord “yire\ירא- shall see and provide” because of this total act of confidence in God that has been disputed at length by the monotheistic traditions (Quran 37:99-111). God provided a ram - ayil\איל: in Hebrew the root is powerful and energizing. It comes from “awal\אוו\א\ל = to circle, to rise (cf. olah\עולה-אולא), beginning, early season” as in Targum Hosea 9:10 in Aramaic.
The Divine Providence supplies and replaces in order to generate tiny seeds of life. But “ayil\איל” is linked to the beginning of “olam\עולם = the universe, world” as a visible and consistant project, with a switch from consonant "one, alef" to consonant "ayin, multitude".
It seems that Abraham is submitted to special series of tests. They seem to be beyond all rational views, dragging slaughtering and high-violent impulses with total trust in God’s capacity to preserve life. This challenge is that of a deathproof experience among groups fascinated by their own destroying abilities or their will to killing. On the third day, Abraham returned to Beer Sheva.
The text of the “binding of Itzchak – Akeidat Itzchak\עקדת יצחק” is read every day in the Jewish tradition during the morning Shacharit Service. It is the most developed prayer, rising from early archaic prayers to sophisticated phrases of fulfillment.
In the account of Genesis/Bereishit chapter 22 the binding of the “ben yachid\בן יחיד – only son” summons us every day to take into profound consideration Abraham’s call to constant survival.
This last and seemingly inhumane “good deed or mitzvah” to obey would be and has been compared to and considered as ancient and pagan men sacrifices. It reaches out to trust that life respect can indeed be stronger than any compulsion to death or extermination.
Curiously, it is so close to the text that Christianity considers as an early example of envisioning Jesus as being put onto the wood (the Cross) that is defined as an "altar" in the Christian traditions. The question has been discussed and analyzed for centuries.
The point is that Judaism does consider that this chapter unveils God’s good and positive projects of rescuing all mankind from death and destruction.
In the Gospel, it is stated that “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, "In Isaac your seed shall be called” (Hebrews 11:17-19). At this point, the “act of faith” should never evolve to some evil and corruptible spirit of rivalry. Some modern Jewish authors have depicted how God could only be reluctant to putting to death the “only begotten son”. This is also clearly mentioned in the last verse that was added lately to Psalm 51 (50): "Then they shall offer bulls on Your altar" (Psalm 51:19) in which "bull/parim-פרים" corresponds to the traditional "offering accepted by the Jew(s) as "strong-minded and complying with the meaning of sacrifice".
Interestingly, the reading portion of the week also includes the reading of Sodom’s and Gomorrah that precedes the binding of Itzchak. The “binding\עקדה” is a climaxing event that supersedes all trials. The outrage of the two cities came to mainly refer to sexuality and handling of our human carnality.
True, we see how inflaming these matters can be, in particular in the "complicated" contexts of imperiled social or structural destinies. The great sin of the inhabitants was that they showed their total absence of hospitality to Lot and Abraham's kin. Rejection and systematic exclusion arepart of a recurrent and very trendy socio-cultural tendency.
There maybe more than cultural outrages. It can be provoked by geo-physical circumstances such as tellurium melting processes or temblors, unpredictable earthquakes that still can affect our minds with much violence, beyond our control. We are in a period of great and averall planetarian revolving process that affects the Earth, the weather, climatic changes...
Israel is a land that intertwines all sorts of individuals and identities without tearing them up and down them. They can only lash themselves and be reduced to nil.
On the other hand, God wants to bless, to save and to sow. This is why we can be bound to Him like Abraham, Isaac and the Son of Man for the sake of life and love. It may cost a lot. The price of hope beyond hope.
Before they split into a multitude of separate groups, Judaism as Christianity had envisioned a full-openness that is called “hospitality”. We live in a guest-homeland. We are praying and grace-begging guests, often dazzled by the power of our uncontrolled passions.
In this country, people can ask anywhere and anytime if they see you having a suitcase "where you are leaving to…" “Chutzah\חוצה – To outside”. This can be heard in all languages. That was not Abraham’s choice: “he was sitting by the terebinths of Mamre, at the entrance of his tent “bechom hayom\בחום היום” as the day was growing very hot” (Genesis 18:1).
This shows the profound impact of long personal journeys, exiles and dispersions as a pedagogical training to welcome everybody. “Baruch haba\ברוך הבא” = “Blessed be the one who comes, arrives”; the answer is “venimtza\ונמצא = and is found"; somehow the individual has found him-herself at the right place”.
It is a miracle that, in a context like ours in which most elements are likely to collect and clutch to some powers of evil and wrongdoing - we can’t help; yet we accept a simple fact: “God makes rise His sun on the bad and the good and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? If you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that?” (Matthew 5:45-47).
av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
Some years ago, we went on a tour around Jerusalem with some former Soviet newcomers. We were speaking Russian, mainly because of the parents. Their children were definitely not reluctant to speak Hebrew. The yhad learnt to discuss quite well. This was part one of the "quarrel". For the parents, Hebrew was then a sort of social Esperanto. They did not really care about finding their roots here in the revival of the national tongue.
The children were nice boys and girls, strong-minded and a bit over-protected. They felt in need for the tenderness and cultural backgrounds from “tam/там = there”, i.e. some former Soviet region. They were captivated by the quick development of the Hebrew culture and the street westernized culture. They were chewing some gum ready to explode out of their mouths plus a lit cigarette hold in manicured fingers.
They were aggressive: dad and mom were totally unplugged and should understand that the local youths had a deep desire to speak Arabic fluently. The parents were in shock. Good gracious, lesser British it sounds "B-ozhe, izbavi/Боже избави!" (G-d preserve), why Arabic? Because it is a must, they answered! Millions of Arabs live around Israel as also in or along our cities. It is a Semitic tongue as Hebrew, with an immense scientific and literary prestige, the native tongue of many Jews but of course Arabs, both Christians and Muslims.
"Bubele-Babushka/Бубеле-Бабушка = granny" was on the verge to faint. The educated part of the band explained how the Mongols had attacked the Ukraine and Russia. Correct! Russia has always been a protection wall against violent conquerors : Russians had resisted and saved the many nations of Central and East Europe that had never showed very grateful for the help.
Our Ottomans (the same that occupied Eretz Israel/Palestine for centuries) stopped at Vienna (leaving croissants, viennoiseries and Turkish/Arabic or Greek coffee). From the 13th to the defeat of Kulikovo in 1380, the Mongol Golden Horde ruled over Russia and only disappeared in 1480.
The Ukraine and the main Russian cities were profoundly marked by the Tatar and Mongol Golden Horde conquest. The Mongols allowed the immense country to benefit from a social and fiscal, post system. The Russians, the White Russians and the Ukrainians have been pinched between the Tatar-Mongol rulers coming from the East. They were far more frightened by the Western invaders, in particular the crusaders that often deeply threatened Christian Eastern Orthodoxy and their lifestyles.
This suspicion against both East and West does explain some sort of border protections from ethnic aggressions. These protections often developed into the deportation of numerous nations, especially affecting the Tatars, but also some Baltic peoples and the Jews, displacing some nationals from West to the Far East, along the Chinese border.
The Jews have been traditionally enclosed in borderland regions, in micro-societal "shtetlech/שטאטלעך - ghettos" with "strach-touha : attraction/ repulsion" relationships as Franz Kafka described in Czech such postures made of some interest and love and profound repulsion on both sides.
Most former Soviet citizens living in Israel have directly landed in Israel. They had left a sort of mental prison system and they arrived in Israel, discovering a multicultural and new country without having ever experienced any system of freedom in different countries.
The second generation has somehow partly or totally assimilated. it depends on the lifestyle, the cultural background. Those who were born in Israel or arrived very early feel a ttoal clutch with Israel and the Jewish-Israeli style. Some other people, especially the youths are tormented, cannot find their place, take all possible benefits from the country but they hate the culture and the language.
Over the many decades, in particular the past twenty years, I saw all sorts of situations. It started long before the fall of communism and the rebirth of the Church in Eastern Europe and the Slavic "block", mainly the former Soviet "Empire" or Union of "free republics".
At the present, many newcomers from the former Soviet Union are glad to discover a world that is connected to the planet. Today, it is much easier for them to move and travel, inside of the country and abroad. As numerous migrants, they also exercise a kind of selection. Some decide to settle in Israel. Others prefer to go on a trip to the Western part of the world. Many cannot break the profound ties with Russia or the Ukraine.
Over the specific period of the past twenty years, I encounter a lot of "true Israelis". Others wander on their own trip, journey to egos that are pretty difficult to find. Many would acculturate in the society by mixing up with the Arabs, especially in the Old City of Jerusalem. The Christian Arabs need women and many "non-halachically recognized Jewesses" prefer their society. They get baptized among the Arab milieu or men and women will integrate among the Galilean Arab Christian youths. Or the ywill choose to leave the country for North America, Australia or Europe (Germany or Scandinavia, Italy or Spain).
Basically, the process of integration in Israeli society proceeds from the very powerful capacity of the "society as a body" to assimilate all kinds of human backgrounds and to insert them into the reality of Judaism. I also met many cases of personal "lifepaths" where the Jewish authorities continue to accept that newcomers find their road or cross-roads through the many possible options, inside or outside Jewishness. The whole process can be a real "way of the Cross", with immense personal sufferings and "mal-d'être", "Unbehagen in der Kultur".
This is also due to the exceptional flexibility of Israeli society. Some people are trained to follow the right path. Others will make their way(s) as through a jungle and think that everything is permitted, which is definitely wrong in the country. For some reason, numerous "Christians" come around and can spend years as true "anti-Semites and anti-Judaic "true" believers" without being bothered by any "social or national system of control". In the meanwhile, the Churches that had been present locally for centuries are at pains with the new and rather unexpected Israeli and Jewish State rules in force.
Thus, the Jewish tradition is wider than any kind of limitations and rejections.
This week, the reading portion of the Torah accounts how Abraham and Sarah got Itzchak and how Hagar and Ishmael were sent away to the desert.
Later on, God tested Abraham again. Early in the morning, Abraham swiftly left his home with his son Isaac (the boy was supposedly 37 years-old) and they quitted the servants telling them they will soon come back. Abraham gathered the wood to bind his “only son- b’no yechido\בנו יחידו” as a “olah\עולה – burnt offering”, which removed – for this special time – any reference to his first-born Ishmael\ישמעאל. But Itzchak\יצחק (“God laughed”) is the son of pure Providence, beyond any natural patterns, a laughter to challenge generations – toledot\תלדות = history and perduration.
Abraham seems to accomplish God’s goodwill as if he were blind. Talmud Taanit III:65d points out that the Lord “yire\ירא- shall see and provide” because of this total act of confidence in God that has been disputed at length by the monotheistic traditions (Quran 37:99-111). God provided a ram - ayil\איל: in Hebrew the root is powerful and energizing. It comes from “awal\אוו\א\ל = to circle, to rise (cf. olah\עולה-אולא), beginning, early season” as in Targum Hosea 9:10 in Aramaic.
The Divine Providence supplies and replaces in order to generate tiny seeds of life. But “ayil\איל” is linked to the beginning of “olam\עולם = the universe, world” as a visible and consistant project, with a switch from consonant "one, alef" to consonant "ayin, multitude".
It seems that Abraham is submitted to special series of tests. They seem to be beyond all rational views, dragging slaughtering and high-violent impulses with total trust in God’s capacity to preserve life. This challenge is that of a deathproof experience among groups fascinated by their own destroying abilities or their will to killing. On the third day, Abraham returned to Beer Sheva.
The text of the “binding of Itzchak – Akeidat Itzchak\עקדת יצחק” is read every day in the Jewish tradition during the morning Shacharit Service. It is the most developed prayer, rising from early archaic prayers to sophisticated phrases of fulfillment.
In the account of Genesis/Bereishit chapter 22 the binding of the “ben yachid\בן יחיד – only son” summons us every day to take into profound consideration Abraham’s call to constant survival.
This last and seemingly inhumane “good deed or mitzvah” to obey would be and has been compared to and considered as ancient and pagan men sacrifices. It reaches out to trust that life respect can indeed be stronger than any compulsion to death or extermination.
Curiously, it is so close to the text that Christianity considers as an early example of envisioning Jesus as being put onto the wood (the Cross) that is defined as an "altar" in the Christian traditions. The question has been discussed and analyzed for centuries.
The point is that Judaism does consider that this chapter unveils God’s good and positive projects of rescuing all mankind from death and destruction.
In the Gospel, it is stated that “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, "In Isaac your seed shall be called” (Hebrews 11:17-19). At this point, the “act of faith” should never evolve to some evil and corruptible spirit of rivalry. Some modern Jewish authors have depicted how God could only be reluctant to putting to death the “only begotten son”. This is also clearly mentioned in the last verse that was added lately to Psalm 51 (50): "Then they shall offer bulls on Your altar" (Psalm 51:19) in which "bull/parim-פרים" corresponds to the traditional "offering accepted by the Jew(s) as "strong-minded and complying with the meaning of sacrifice".
Interestingly, the reading portion of the week also includes the reading of Sodom’s and Gomorrah that precedes the binding of Itzchak. The “binding\עקדה” is a climaxing event that supersedes all trials. The outrage of the two cities came to mainly refer to sexuality and handling of our human carnality.
True, we see how inflaming these matters can be, in particular in the "complicated" contexts of imperiled social or structural destinies. The great sin of the inhabitants was that they showed their total absence of hospitality to Lot and Abraham's kin. Rejection and systematic exclusion arepart of a recurrent and very trendy socio-cultural tendency.
There maybe more than cultural outrages. It can be provoked by geo-physical circumstances such as tellurium melting processes or temblors, unpredictable earthquakes that still can affect our minds with much violence, beyond our control. We are in a period of great and averall planetarian revolving process that affects the Earth, the weather, climatic changes...
Israel is a land that intertwines all sorts of individuals and identities without tearing them up and down them. They can only lash themselves and be reduced to nil.
On the other hand, God wants to bless, to save and to sow. This is why we can be bound to Him like Abraham, Isaac and the Son of Man for the sake of life and love. It may cost a lot. The price of hope beyond hope.
Before they split into a multitude of separate groups, Judaism as Christianity had envisioned a full-openness that is called “hospitality”. We live in a guest-homeland. We are praying and grace-begging guests, often dazzled by the power of our uncontrolled passions.
In this country, people can ask anywhere and anytime if they see you having a suitcase "where you are leaving to…" “Chutzah\חוצה – To outside”. This can be heard in all languages. That was not Abraham’s choice: “he was sitting by the terebinths of Mamre, at the entrance of his tent “bechom hayom\בחום היום” as the day was growing very hot” (Genesis 18:1).
This shows the profound impact of long personal journeys, exiles and dispersions as a pedagogical training to welcome everybody. “Baruch haba\ברוך הבא” = “Blessed be the one who comes, arrives”; the answer is “venimtza\ונמצא = and is found"; somehow the individual has found him-herself at the right place”.
It is a miracle that, in a context like ours in which most elements are likely to collect and clutch to some powers of evil and wrongdoing - we can’t help; yet we accept a simple fact: “God makes rise His sun on the bad and the good and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? If you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that?” (Matthew 5:45-47).
av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Just Move!
Just move!
It is getting cold in Jerusalem. I am told every day. The first rain fell, the expecteg blessings. As every year, not that chilly, really cold after some days of sharav-שרב / khamsin, the desert wind I love when it rises up from the desert and looks "orange" in Hebrew, "yellow" in Arabic and Russian. This year I shall return to Jerusalem soon, after the fall of the leaves (Listopad = Листопад in Ukrainian).
Five years ago, I buried a woman in the South. The wind was swirling around the family and it was so dark, with a yelling thunderstorm, sand was blowing and covered us. It was about to absorb the departed. She was reposing not so far from the place where Abraham found his call to settle after her long journey through human life and long distances. The parshat "lekh lekha\לך-לך" (reading portion) of the week accounts Abraham's journey from his homeland Ur-Kasdim, in Chaldea (Mesopotamia) till his circumcision at the age of 99 years-old with his young son Ishmael (Genesis/Bereishit 17:26).
There is this call: "lekh\לך - go! move on/out" and according to the tradition, Abram could not leave his father's house or make up his mind. Thus, God told him again "lekh lekh\לך לך - go on, move out really, leave!" with another goal : "lekh lekh\לך לך - go on, go out (into the unknown) and you will reach out to yourself".
We know that Abram before he became Abraham quit his homeland and his father Terach after he destroyed all the idols as symbols of abomination; then, he went on a trip... It was certainly far more than a simple family clash. A serious search for God, the meaning of His call.
Still going on some "stumbling trip". Judaism considers that Abraham was committed to ten "temptations - nissayonot\נסיונות", but these were more tests than "luring temptations" and rather "experiences, experimental zigzagging ways" to find the right place and become a man.
Abraham committed himself to a major human experience willingly, with the intimate conviction that it did make sense. It was called to become the one individual and person, conscious human being who he was called to be. This ahd been "warranted" by the promise that he would be given numerous blessings dispatched over all generations.
This seems a bit too much for one man. It also means that "zigzagging" (linso'a\לנסוע = to travel, hinassot\הנסות = to try, test, tempt) is not morally wrong. It may be a sort of additional educational system!
We were in the state of embryos (golem\גולם); there is a right to wander, err, stay outside proper bounds provided that we don't fall. Israeli youths love to travel after school to Kathmandu and maybe enjoy a Chabad Pessach Seder on the roof of the world, then take off to Europe, Asia, America, Australia and India. This year 5772/2011, one of the best known Israeli women in the street protests, Stav Shaffir, refers to Bhutan and Dzongkha, its national language... Aung San Suu Kyi, the Birman Nobel Prize woman winner was married to a British specialist of the Bhutanese culture... the land where "happiness and welfare" are a rule and a must at the present... I had it and kept it throughout my life when I studied Tibetan and learnt Himalayan Lepcha of Gangkok/Sikkim that I could practice online through the web. Himalaya is swallowing the Jewish globe-trotters of human nature and spirituality till they have a Seder and get into the cultural realm of the East.
Spiritual places are hits. It is exciting to discover that Jews do exist abroad as well as other human groups in their own environments. I know Japanese restaurants where nobody speaks Japanese, Thai cooks work with Arabs and Russians and waitresses are young Israeli girls whose ancestors lived in the Habsburg Empire, Romania or Caucasus.
When they are on their journey abroad, Abraham's children continue to look at landscapes and peoples; they discover who they are, with a lot of multi-faceted variety of possible variants and choices. Other peoples would be more inquisitive and go through some psychoanalytic in-depth or surface introspection processes. Indeed, we are in a special area, with tons of youths circulating with “themselves” and writing thick copybooks in order to slice down their internal journeys.
They discover with much self-delight how pleasant it is to be en route to their ego’s. Some would nicely agree to share their rare if not unique self-picturing during a talk while others would wrap themselves into some their apparent certitudes, like fences
. The Russian connection does exist through extensive blogs of young Israelis who would never dare confide how life is both a joyous playtime and a burden for uncertain identities who should be protected and respected in order to mature and grow consistantly.
The trip may often be as painful as it was a hard test for Abraham. But his example is pretty much a unique model of all possible wanderings. Israel is maybe one of the very special countries where souls definitely cannot get sold for any spiritual or economic goals. There is no harm, no sin, nothing that can affect or injure the souls.
There is no way to control the development of the souls. Every soul has to knock here and there and find the way. It may include the need to take over wide ranges of open personal capacities. The Jews have learned in their turbulent journeys to face the various "paysages/landscapes" of the Nations as late Rav Yehudah Leon Askenazi used to say. It was his 15th hazkarah/הזכרה on November 3/ Mar 'Heshvan 6, 5772.
Thirty years ago, I had been asked to assist him in writing a book on his life and religious convictions. He never rejected our co-work. We had a full year series of meetings, also in Jerusalem. He has been very touched that because of our working together, I could ask the hand of my wife on the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem. I had met him as a child at the Scouts Israélites de France. He never argued or attacked my being a Christian and got to the specificity of a "tantamount testimony to be a Jew without pretence inside of the Church".It is based on something that has no clutch with social or assimilation to any Gentile "paysage/landscape and context".
Immense crowds of Jews experienced that over the long periods of dispersion.
This is why misconducts are so shameful since we instinctively have the keys to correct all human situations. At time it seems that we think to be rather reluctant to changes...
Six years ago, I unexpectedly was rather close, in Jerusalem, to the annual gay and lesbian pride as I was trying to get out of the mob. The police were everywhere and fights started down the street.
All monotheistic religions do condemn homosexuality. Today, American has "samesex" which means quite the same, but sounds "nicer". I am rather reluctant to use the word "gay" for women. As it often happens in psychosocial analysis, "temptations and perversions or abnormalities to commonly admitted behaviors" are referred by the name of the place where it was usually. Lesbians have a "harbor" in the island of Lesbos, a maculine name. But Poetess and "teacheress" Sappho wrote there her hymns and songs, poems to womanhood.
Before the time of Noah - and this concerns himself as well -, sex and sins were mixing up with unclear moral rules. The Jewish attitude of total reluctance toward same-sex intercourses (Leviticus/VaYikra 18:22) is based on the rejection of the pagan (Egyptian, Sumerian, Greek and Latin pre-Christian). Before the Giving of the Torah and the firs tCommandments (Noahide) sexual practices were intermingling and not pre-determined (Sifra Aharey Mot 8:8-9).
"To'evah\תועבה = abomination" consists in the process of reducing Humanity to a lower state. "Awah\עוה " - to crook, be crooked, wind feelings in displeasure" as in Talmud Sanhedrin 97b). "To'evah\תועבה" means to "be wandering/mistaken away from the path of nature".Abomination evolves into something else: the journey turns to be hellish and devilish. It is not a way to freedom, but to more than slavery or addiction. It destroys which is the goal of sins. Human nature and brains need to be educated and to understand how to overcome a sin. Sin is in the world. But the major element is that we can ask and get the way how never to lose our freedom and quit the scope of sins.
Paul of Tarsus has very severe words: "Do not be deceived: neither fornicators nor idolaters, adulterers, boy prostitutes, practicing homosexuals... will inherit the Kingdom of God... The body is not for immorality but for the Lord" (1 Corinthians 6:9-11.13). Thus, it is definitely normal and a part of the spiritual task of "spiritual guides" to strongly oppose same-sex demonstrations that often turn to provocative showoffs.
Clerics of all denominations and their congregations have to face at the present aggravated pedophilia and same-sex scandals. Some Churches push to consecration of open gay and lesbian pastors. Relations between Faith and religion, freedom of body/soul and renouncement to any sin or defective attitudes have led to constant combats that put human nature to carnal trials.
This is concomitant with our marching in to holy things and places (qodesh\קודש). In this respect, God’s call to Abraham to “go on and leave, find himself” can be a personal and social inflamed problem. Secularization has brought us to new idolatry and we need a lot of inner resources to handle such modern-style sexual issues that are often discussed in psychology and anthropology.
More than ever before, it is so difficult to get mature and act with awareness and in a responsible way. It is even harder because sexual conducts and deviances did show from the beginning of human experience and history.There are terrible sufferings that derive from waves of freedom and they changed to severe restrictions. Thirty years ago HIV and AIDS obliged to carrying a full reconsideration of diseases, morals, but also humane care, social care, theological and spiritual care and loving-kindness.
I have spent two years as a social and spiritual assistant to the street people, which included a lot of male and female prostitutes. People just lost or cast away, totally desperate, drug-addicted, often dying of Aids. Trans-genders of all backgrounds that were far from the beaming queers.
We were quite amazed to see many Jews/Jewesses as if some absence of any hope would lead them astray from morals. Many of all these men and women had some basic faith that could keep them somehow on surface. This had been a very peculiar experience that made me understand a lot about identity problems as they show at the present in Israel. This is definitely not judgmental. There is more. The commandment “Lo tiqrevu legalot ervah\לא תקרבו לגלות ערוה = you shall not approach a human being in view to commit a sexual crime” (Leviticus 20:13 on "abomination\תועבה) requires a very profound capacity of loving-kindness.
The religious history of the Holy Land is paved, in all denominations, with the lives of all sexual wrongdoers who left themselves to reach out more mature and coherent ways. We are in times of deep violence shown in rampant wars, distrust, sexual criminal cases on probe. Homosexuals were deported as Jewish boys and girls were abused in the concentration camps, disrespected in their bodies and souls. Just as Lesbians and transgenders or people reduced to sexual objects.
It is thus a real question to correctly appraise why the secular body of Israeli society – the Supreme Court and the Police - is given the duty to protect any group, to safeguard their rights and to prevent various national communities against their violence and intense animosity. In the meanwhile, cleric of all monotheistic religions condemn and may fall into the same deviations that they strongly reprove.
Gay and Lesbian Prides are everywhere. The point is to understand why faith and spirituality call so many individuals and societies to "convert" or adopt new moral conducts while others dance in other life-styles.
Abraham returned unharmed to Beersheva. He had gotten to himself at a very high price. He got to the point as if it were evident. Indeed, it is evident and the normal life path fvcor each humane being to be tested. Then, things are more difficult to face in "solitude". Nobody is alone, but it is the result of having found themselves. It is a must to welcome everybody joyously and with radiant care!
av aleksandr (Winoradsky Frenkel)
It is getting cold in Jerusalem. I am told every day. The first rain fell, the expecteg blessings. As every year, not that chilly, really cold after some days of sharav-שרב / khamsin, the desert wind I love when it rises up from the desert and looks "orange" in Hebrew, "yellow" in Arabic and Russian. This year I shall return to Jerusalem soon, after the fall of the leaves (Listopad = Листопад in Ukrainian).
Five years ago, I buried a woman in the South. The wind was swirling around the family and it was so dark, with a yelling thunderstorm, sand was blowing and covered us. It was about to absorb the departed. She was reposing not so far from the place where Abraham found his call to settle after her long journey through human life and long distances. The parshat "lekh lekha\לך-לך" (reading portion) of the week accounts Abraham's journey from his homeland Ur-Kasdim, in Chaldea (Mesopotamia) till his circumcision at the age of 99 years-old with his young son Ishmael (Genesis/Bereishit 17:26).
There is this call: "lekh\לך - go! move on/out" and according to the tradition, Abram could not leave his father's house or make up his mind. Thus, God told him again "lekh lekh\לך לך - go on, move out really, leave!" with another goal : "lekh lekh\לך לך - go on, go out (into the unknown) and you will reach out to yourself".
We know that Abram before he became Abraham quit his homeland and his father Terach after he destroyed all the idols as symbols of abomination; then, he went on a trip... It was certainly far more than a simple family clash. A serious search for God, the meaning of His call.
Still going on some "stumbling trip". Judaism considers that Abraham was committed to ten "temptations - nissayonot\נסיונות", but these were more tests than "luring temptations" and rather "experiences, experimental zigzagging ways" to find the right place and become a man.
Abraham committed himself to a major human experience willingly, with the intimate conviction that it did make sense. It was called to become the one individual and person, conscious human being who he was called to be. This ahd been "warranted" by the promise that he would be given numerous blessings dispatched over all generations.
This seems a bit too much for one man. It also means that "zigzagging" (linso'a\לנסוע = to travel, hinassot\הנסות = to try, test, tempt) is not morally wrong. It may be a sort of additional educational system!
We were in the state of embryos (golem\גולם); there is a right to wander, err, stay outside proper bounds provided that we don't fall. Israeli youths love to travel after school to Kathmandu and maybe enjoy a Chabad Pessach Seder on the roof of the world, then take off to Europe, Asia, America, Australia and India. This year 5772/2011, one of the best known Israeli women in the street protests, Stav Shaffir, refers to Bhutan and Dzongkha, its national language... Aung San Suu Kyi, the Birman Nobel Prize woman winner was married to a British specialist of the Bhutanese culture... the land where "happiness and welfare" are a rule and a must at the present... I had it and kept it throughout my life when I studied Tibetan and learnt Himalayan Lepcha of Gangkok/Sikkim that I could practice online through the web. Himalaya is swallowing the Jewish globe-trotters of human nature and spirituality till they have a Seder and get into the cultural realm of the East.
Spiritual places are hits. It is exciting to discover that Jews do exist abroad as well as other human groups in their own environments. I know Japanese restaurants where nobody speaks Japanese, Thai cooks work with Arabs and Russians and waitresses are young Israeli girls whose ancestors lived in the Habsburg Empire, Romania or Caucasus.
When they are on their journey abroad, Abraham's children continue to look at landscapes and peoples; they discover who they are, with a lot of multi-faceted variety of possible variants and choices. Other peoples would be more inquisitive and go through some psychoanalytic in-depth or surface introspection processes. Indeed, we are in a special area, with tons of youths circulating with “themselves” and writing thick copybooks in order to slice down their internal journeys.
They discover with much self-delight how pleasant it is to be en route to their ego’s. Some would nicely agree to share their rare if not unique self-picturing during a talk while others would wrap themselves into some their apparent certitudes, like fences
. The Russian connection does exist through extensive blogs of young Israelis who would never dare confide how life is both a joyous playtime and a burden for uncertain identities who should be protected and respected in order to mature and grow consistantly.
The trip may often be as painful as it was a hard test for Abraham. But his example is pretty much a unique model of all possible wanderings. Israel is maybe one of the very special countries where souls definitely cannot get sold for any spiritual or economic goals. There is no harm, no sin, nothing that can affect or injure the souls.
There is no way to control the development of the souls. Every soul has to knock here and there and find the way. It may include the need to take over wide ranges of open personal capacities. The Jews have learned in their turbulent journeys to face the various "paysages/landscapes" of the Nations as late Rav Yehudah Leon Askenazi used to say. It was his 15th hazkarah/הזכרה on November 3/ Mar 'Heshvan 6, 5772.
Thirty years ago, I had been asked to assist him in writing a book on his life and religious convictions. He never rejected our co-work. We had a full year series of meetings, also in Jerusalem. He has been very touched that because of our working together, I could ask the hand of my wife on the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem. I had met him as a child at the Scouts Israélites de France. He never argued or attacked my being a Christian and got to the specificity of a "tantamount testimony to be a Jew without pretence inside of the Church".It is based on something that has no clutch with social or assimilation to any Gentile "paysage/landscape and context".
Immense crowds of Jews experienced that over the long periods of dispersion.
This is why misconducts are so shameful since we instinctively have the keys to correct all human situations. At time it seems that we think to be rather reluctant to changes...
Six years ago, I unexpectedly was rather close, in Jerusalem, to the annual gay and lesbian pride as I was trying to get out of the mob. The police were everywhere and fights started down the street.
All monotheistic religions do condemn homosexuality. Today, American has "samesex" which means quite the same, but sounds "nicer". I am rather reluctant to use the word "gay" for women. As it often happens in psychosocial analysis, "temptations and perversions or abnormalities to commonly admitted behaviors" are referred by the name of the place where it was usually. Lesbians have a "harbor" in the island of Lesbos, a maculine name. But Poetess and "teacheress" Sappho wrote there her hymns and songs, poems to womanhood.
Before the time of Noah - and this concerns himself as well -, sex and sins were mixing up with unclear moral rules. The Jewish attitude of total reluctance toward same-sex intercourses (Leviticus/VaYikra 18:22) is based on the rejection of the pagan (Egyptian, Sumerian, Greek and Latin pre-Christian). Before the Giving of the Torah and the firs tCommandments (Noahide) sexual practices were intermingling and not pre-determined (Sifra Aharey Mot 8:8-9).
"To'evah\תועבה = abomination" consists in the process of reducing Humanity to a lower state. "Awah\עוה " - to crook, be crooked, wind feelings in displeasure" as in Talmud Sanhedrin 97b). "To'evah\תועבה" means to "be wandering/mistaken away from the path of nature".Abomination evolves into something else: the journey turns to be hellish and devilish. It is not a way to freedom, but to more than slavery or addiction. It destroys which is the goal of sins. Human nature and brains need to be educated and to understand how to overcome a sin. Sin is in the world. But the major element is that we can ask and get the way how never to lose our freedom and quit the scope of sins.
Paul of Tarsus has very severe words: "Do not be deceived: neither fornicators nor idolaters, adulterers, boy prostitutes, practicing homosexuals... will inherit the Kingdom of God... The body is not for immorality but for the Lord" (1 Corinthians 6:9-11.13). Thus, it is definitely normal and a part of the spiritual task of "spiritual guides" to strongly oppose same-sex demonstrations that often turn to provocative showoffs.
Clerics of all denominations and their congregations have to face at the present aggravated pedophilia and same-sex scandals. Some Churches push to consecration of open gay and lesbian pastors. Relations between Faith and religion, freedom of body/soul and renouncement to any sin or defective attitudes have led to constant combats that put human nature to carnal trials.
This is concomitant with our marching in to holy things and places (qodesh\קודש). In this respect, God’s call to Abraham to “go on and leave, find himself” can be a personal and social inflamed problem. Secularization has brought us to new idolatry and we need a lot of inner resources to handle such modern-style sexual issues that are often discussed in psychology and anthropology.
More than ever before, it is so difficult to get mature and act with awareness and in a responsible way. It is even harder because sexual conducts and deviances did show from the beginning of human experience and history.There are terrible sufferings that derive from waves of freedom and they changed to severe restrictions. Thirty years ago HIV and AIDS obliged to carrying a full reconsideration of diseases, morals, but also humane care, social care, theological and spiritual care and loving-kindness.
I have spent two years as a social and spiritual assistant to the street people, which included a lot of male and female prostitutes. People just lost or cast away, totally desperate, drug-addicted, often dying of Aids. Trans-genders of all backgrounds that were far from the beaming queers.
We were quite amazed to see many Jews/Jewesses as if some absence of any hope would lead them astray from morals. Many of all these men and women had some basic faith that could keep them somehow on surface. This had been a very peculiar experience that made me understand a lot about identity problems as they show at the present in Israel. This is definitely not judgmental. There is more. The commandment “Lo tiqrevu legalot ervah\לא תקרבו לגלות ערוה = you shall not approach a human being in view to commit a sexual crime” (Leviticus 20:13 on "abomination\תועבה) requires a very profound capacity of loving-kindness.
The religious history of the Holy Land is paved, in all denominations, with the lives of all sexual wrongdoers who left themselves to reach out more mature and coherent ways. We are in times of deep violence shown in rampant wars, distrust, sexual criminal cases on probe. Homosexuals were deported as Jewish boys and girls were abused in the concentration camps, disrespected in their bodies and souls. Just as Lesbians and transgenders or people reduced to sexual objects.
It is thus a real question to correctly appraise why the secular body of Israeli society – the Supreme Court and the Police - is given the duty to protect any group, to safeguard their rights and to prevent various national communities against their violence and intense animosity. In the meanwhile, cleric of all monotheistic religions condemn and may fall into the same deviations that they strongly reprove.
Gay and Lesbian Prides are everywhere. The point is to understand why faith and spirituality call so many individuals and societies to "convert" or adopt new moral conducts while others dance in other life-styles.
Abraham returned unharmed to Beersheva. He had gotten to himself at a very high price. He got to the point as if it were evident. Indeed, it is evident and the normal life path fvcor each humane being to be tested. Then, things are more difficult to face in "solitude". Nobody is alone, but it is the result of having found themselves. It is a must to welcome everybody joyously and with radiant care!
av aleksandr (Winoradsky Frenkel)
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Les éléections aux Iles Féroé
Les élections aux Iles Féroé
Le samedi 29 octobre 2011, les Féroiens ont élu leurs représentants au Løgting (Lagting en danois), le parlement local. Il s'agissait de choisir les 33 représentants de diverses tendances politiques chargés d'administrer cet archipel situé dans l'Atlantique Nord. Ils ont pour fonction de gérer toute la politique locale, l'éducation, la culture, l'industrie. La politique étrangère est assurée par le royaume du Danemark.
Les Iles Féroé (« Føroyar » en féroien, « Færøerne » en danois : « Iles des moutons ») est un territoire de 18 îles dont 17 sont habitées ; la capitale est Tórshavn. On compte plus de 50 000 habitants dans les îles, dont près de 20 000 résident dans la capitale.
Les îles furent d'abord habitées, aux Ve-VIe siècles, par des moines venus d'Écosse. On trouve de nombreux mots gaéliques dans la langue courante comme dans l'ADN des femmes féroïennes... Les Vikings s'installèrent vers 850, créant l'un des plus anciens parlements à Tinganes (pointe du port de Thorshavn). Ils apportèrent la culture norroise. La langue féroïenne n'a vraiment connu son essor qu'au XIXe siècle. V. U. Hammershaimb, pasteur et linguiste, entreprit de fixer la langue parlée de manière étymologique. Il rattacha le féroïen à la tradition norroise par la codification des sagas locales (Færeyinga Saga). Le féroïen est lié à l'islandais bien que la prononciation soit éloignée de l'écriture. Il fut « régularisé » au XIXe siècle comme Nynorsk norvégien d'I. Aasen... mais aussi le croate et l'hébreu moderne.
Le christianisme fut ré-introduit au tournant de l'an 1000 par les compagnons de saint Olav de Norvège, dont Sigmundur Brestisson. Il reste une profonde imprégnation de l'Église celtique dont la voie se serait poursuivie depuis l'archipel et l'Islande jusqu'à l'Amérique du Nord.
Les Iles font partie du royaume du Danemark depuis 1388. C'est ainsi qu'en 1540, la Réforme luthérienne s'imposa. L'Église protestante (Fólkakirkja) devint indépendante en 2007. Le pays reste religieux et se singularise par une forte imprégnation biblique.
Pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale, les Féroé furent sous le contrôle des Britanniques. Ils construisirent le seul aérodrome, aujourd'hui modernisé, à Vágar. En 1948, après des hésitations à proclamer une indépendance problématique, les Iles décidèrent de bénéficier d'une large autonomie au sein du royaume du Danemark. Le Parlement fut rétabli. Le Danemarl contribue pour une large part au soutien financier de l'archipel.
Les Iles Féroé ont refusé de faire partie de l'Union Européenne et sont membres du Conseil Nordique. L'économie a connu des évolutions diverses. La pêche constitue l'élément principal d'une industrie qui cherche à se diversifier. La situation géographique des Iles est particulièrement stratégique entre l'Islande, le Royaume-Uni et la Scandinavie continentale. Elles sont reliées par des tunnels et des routes modernes (très appréciées des motards !). Le pays est connu pour le développement de la high-tech comme de la musique (Eivør Pálsdóttir, Færoe). Les industries de la laine et des viandes de mouton sont dynamiques. Le pays est apprécié pour sa nature et le souci écologique de ses habitants. Même si la traditionnelle chasse aux baleines provoque une contestation internationale.
L'accent est actuellement mis sur l'éducation et le déploiement industriel. Après des périodes de grande insécurité, le chômage est faible (— 3 %). Le pays tente de retenir ses ressortissants. Ils furent trop souvent obligés de s'expatrier au Danemark, en Europe ou dans le monde. Basculant entre un nationalisme rarement agressif et une participation utile et raisonnable à la société moderne, les partis soutiennent une forte natalité et espèrent atteindre les 50 000 habitants en 2020. Malgré l'isolement, plus de 70 nationalités sont représentées dans ce petit espace européen.
Les élections ont souligné la victoire du parti de gauche libérale (Sambandsflokkurin) dont le chef, Kaj Leo Holm Johannesen, est aussi le Løgmaður/Premier Ministre. Cette double casquette constitue un élément novateur par rapport à 1948. Dix femmes ont été élues au Parlement, dont Annika Olsen (Conservateur/Fólkaflokkurin). Elle est originaire de Klaksvík, ville industrielle du Nord qui connaît un grand développement intellectuel et économique.
Les Iles Féroé ont su se distancier par rapport aux turbulences européennes actuelles. Certes, le gouvernement local proposa d'adopter l'Euro (contre la Couronne danoise), sans passer à l'acte. Un emprunt à l'Islande indique un désir encore incertain d'indépendance.
Les élections qui ont eu lieu ces derniers jours laissent entrevoir un avenir plus affermi des Iles Féroé pour les années qui viennent.
Il est intéressant de considérer ces évolutions depuis Jérusalem. L'archipel est très marqué par la vie religieuse et offre des points de similitudes avec la Terre Sainte à un niveau micro-social que je préciserai dans un prochain article.
Av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
Prêtre Orthodoxe, en charge des communautés dans la société israélienne.
Le samedi 29 octobre 2011, les Féroiens ont élu leurs représentants au Løgting (Lagting en danois), le parlement local. Il s'agissait de choisir les 33 représentants de diverses tendances politiques chargés d'administrer cet archipel situé dans l'Atlantique Nord. Ils ont pour fonction de gérer toute la politique locale, l'éducation, la culture, l'industrie. La politique étrangère est assurée par le royaume du Danemark.
Les Iles Féroé (« Føroyar » en féroien, « Færøerne » en danois : « Iles des moutons ») est un territoire de 18 îles dont 17 sont habitées ; la capitale est Tórshavn. On compte plus de 50 000 habitants dans les îles, dont près de 20 000 résident dans la capitale.
Les îles furent d'abord habitées, aux Ve-VIe siècles, par des moines venus d'Écosse. On trouve de nombreux mots gaéliques dans la langue courante comme dans l'ADN des femmes féroïennes... Les Vikings s'installèrent vers 850, créant l'un des plus anciens parlements à Tinganes (pointe du port de Thorshavn). Ils apportèrent la culture norroise. La langue féroïenne n'a vraiment connu son essor qu'au XIXe siècle. V. U. Hammershaimb, pasteur et linguiste, entreprit de fixer la langue parlée de manière étymologique. Il rattacha le féroïen à la tradition norroise par la codification des sagas locales (Færeyinga Saga). Le féroïen est lié à l'islandais bien que la prononciation soit éloignée de l'écriture. Il fut « régularisé » au XIXe siècle comme Nynorsk norvégien d'I. Aasen... mais aussi le croate et l'hébreu moderne.
Le christianisme fut ré-introduit au tournant de l'an 1000 par les compagnons de saint Olav de Norvège, dont Sigmundur Brestisson. Il reste une profonde imprégnation de l'Église celtique dont la voie se serait poursuivie depuis l'archipel et l'Islande jusqu'à l'Amérique du Nord.
Les Iles font partie du royaume du Danemark depuis 1388. C'est ainsi qu'en 1540, la Réforme luthérienne s'imposa. L'Église protestante (Fólkakirkja) devint indépendante en 2007. Le pays reste religieux et se singularise par une forte imprégnation biblique.
Pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale, les Féroé furent sous le contrôle des Britanniques. Ils construisirent le seul aérodrome, aujourd'hui modernisé, à Vágar. En 1948, après des hésitations à proclamer une indépendance problématique, les Iles décidèrent de bénéficier d'une large autonomie au sein du royaume du Danemark. Le Parlement fut rétabli. Le Danemarl contribue pour une large part au soutien financier de l'archipel.
Les Iles Féroé ont refusé de faire partie de l'Union Européenne et sont membres du Conseil Nordique. L'économie a connu des évolutions diverses. La pêche constitue l'élément principal d'une industrie qui cherche à se diversifier. La situation géographique des Iles est particulièrement stratégique entre l'Islande, le Royaume-Uni et la Scandinavie continentale. Elles sont reliées par des tunnels et des routes modernes (très appréciées des motards !). Le pays est connu pour le développement de la high-tech comme de la musique (Eivør Pálsdóttir, Færoe). Les industries de la laine et des viandes de mouton sont dynamiques. Le pays est apprécié pour sa nature et le souci écologique de ses habitants. Même si la traditionnelle chasse aux baleines provoque une contestation internationale.
L'accent est actuellement mis sur l'éducation et le déploiement industriel. Après des périodes de grande insécurité, le chômage est faible (— 3 %). Le pays tente de retenir ses ressortissants. Ils furent trop souvent obligés de s'expatrier au Danemark, en Europe ou dans le monde. Basculant entre un nationalisme rarement agressif et une participation utile et raisonnable à la société moderne, les partis soutiennent une forte natalité et espèrent atteindre les 50 000 habitants en 2020. Malgré l'isolement, plus de 70 nationalités sont représentées dans ce petit espace européen.
Les élections ont souligné la victoire du parti de gauche libérale (Sambandsflokkurin) dont le chef, Kaj Leo Holm Johannesen, est aussi le Løgmaður/Premier Ministre. Cette double casquette constitue un élément novateur par rapport à 1948. Dix femmes ont été élues au Parlement, dont Annika Olsen (Conservateur/Fólkaflokkurin). Elle est originaire de Klaksvík, ville industrielle du Nord qui connaît un grand développement intellectuel et économique.
Les Iles Féroé ont su se distancier par rapport aux turbulences européennes actuelles. Certes, le gouvernement local proposa d'adopter l'Euro (contre la Couronne danoise), sans passer à l'acte. Un emprunt à l'Islande indique un désir encore incertain d'indépendance.
Les élections qui ont eu lieu ces derniers jours laissent entrevoir un avenir plus affermi des Iles Féroé pour les années qui viennent.
Il est intéressant de considérer ces évolutions depuis Jérusalem. L'archipel est très marqué par la vie religieuse et offre des points de similitudes avec la Terre Sainte à un niveau micro-social que je préciserai dans un prochain article.
Av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
Prêtre Orthodoxe, en charge des communautés dans la société israélienne.
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