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)
Monday, November 21, 2011
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.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Lech-l'cha: Get to yourself... and the others
Lech-l’cha: Get to yourself… and the others
The reading portion of the week is "Lech lecha\לך לך - Go, march out, reach yourself". God said these words to Abram (Genesis/Bereishit 12:1-17:20). God insisted to make him leave his native land; go out from his father's house and homeland. The words clearly mean that Abram is called by God to "become a great nation, be blessed... and all the families of the earth (mishpechot haadamah\משפחות האדמה) shall bless themselves by you [in/through your name]”. This also implies that these humans, organized in families, were fashioned out of the earth - adamah\אדמה like the Adam haqadmon\אדם הקדמון, address themselves a blessing and not a cursing. They cannot restrict their benedictions to themselves but extend them to each other, nation to nation, family of the earth to any other nation of the earth.
"Lech lecha\לך לך" sounds beautiful and like a challenge in Hebrew. "Halach\הלך - to go, march in/out, go forth" has this short imperative form and the shortened "l-ל" from "el\אל, al\על, if not halach\הלך" shows something irrepressible. This is a major Shabbat and week in the Jewish cycle of the readings. In this portion, Abram accepts God's call to a move that, in his cultural and social environment could only appear to be as a frightful, dangerous, hopeless and meaningless goal.
Fear is worse than anxious ignorance. Fear that we may discover when life can be set in a series of dangers imperiling our freedom, freewill, change our points of views or, on the contrary, widen them unexpectedly. There is much courage in Abram's response to God. Indeed, he finally left his homeland and marched out. Did he come out as an adult? He did it twice because, when he firstly tried to leave his father's house, he got so scared according to the Tradition that he ran back or maybe did not even look too far.
Abram lived in a male civilization. We know nothing about his mom. Let's even think that the man is a character composed of different personalities that lived at a certain period in the same region of Sumer. By his time, Sumer was the cradle of reflection and self-conscience and culture. He is linked to a civilization that got aware that life is not vain. Life makes sense, comes from God and turns toward God. He had a mother like anyone of us. She might have been quite a character too! Abram does not leave his father's house, his homeland. We are told that he did leave his country and home. We know that he sent Eliezer to his father's home in order to find a suitable wife for his son Isaac. Isaac's son, Jacob did the same. The third and last patriarch of Israel always chose his home tribe and parentage to prolong and develop Abraham's call to be a great nation.
The point is that Abram left his mom when he understood that he had to break the ties that existed in his father's house. When he left Ur-Kasdim and the area of Haran, he combated and overcame idolatry, destroying the mother-like natural nourishing and nurturing idols whose natural flavor he had suckled from his mother’s breasts.
It is difficult to struggle and to go beyond the reach of this very gregarious experience. Abram has always been obedient to God… and to Sarai (Sarah) to some extent; safe when he was about to “give” her to Pharaoh. He was so afraid by Pharah that he introduced his wife as being his sister. This kind of problem of fear copes with some existential anxiety that she could resolve for a while. Sarah made Abram really quit his father’s house. Their family bond anticipated serfdom in Egypt when she proposed him to get a child with her maidservant Hagar, an Egyptian. From Mesopotamia to the Nile, Abraham and Sarah dug down to the heart of the Semitic and universal call:
“Vehifreti otcha bimeod meod\והפרתי אתך במאד מאד - I shall make you exceedingly fertile – unetatecha legoyim\ונתתיך לגוים and make nations of you” (Bereishit 17:6). This fertility is meant as “bimeod meod\במאד מאד – in the very too much = totally human as Adam, using the same consonants as when God saw that His creation was “tov meod\טוב מאד – very good” (Gen. 1:31).
We have to face in our daily life the same problem of faith: is the creation really so nice? Frankly, this is a pending cultural and environmental interrogation. The animal micro- and macro-cosmos consists in a constant fight for survival and not being swallowed, forced to be killed. On the second day of Rosh HaShanah, there is the seder tashlich\סדר תשליח : "Who is a God like You, Who pardon iniquity and forgive transgression for the remnant of His heritage? ... You will cast all their sins into the depths of sea\ותשליח במצולת ים כל חטאתם " (Micah 7:18-20). Still, the sea depths are definitely not a peaceful and magnificent place. Fish eat fish, beasts capture and capture the nicest colorful fish species. There is no harm. Ever since, the "seder Tashlich\ סדר תשליך" phrases correspond to the 13 Attributes of the Lord's loving-kindness (Exodus 34:6-7).
Bestiality shows everywhere in a world and human societies often based on hatred and swallowing processing dynamics. The prophetic vision of the bear living with lions, sheep and a small child is not a League of Nations dream after the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian empire that gathered in so many Central and East European nations under the Habsburg while Kamal Atatürk took the lead of a new Turkish republic after the fall of the Ottoman empire 90 years ago. The Prophets did not envision peace amidst humans as being comparable with raw and wild animal instinct. The United Nations Organization remains a platform for some kind of strategical dialog and encounters.
The ancient ascetic [often monastic] way of living tries to match natural, ecological realm and respect environment and wildlife. The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomaios I of Constantinople repeatedly insists on the obligation for the faithful to respect the Earth and all plants, animals, the environment. It is and has always been a dynamic move in the Eastern Church.
Vegetarian food, avoid eating animal flesh and blood do correspond to the the Noahide Laws and St. James' decision at the Jerusalem synod (49-52?). The Eastern Orthodox tradition does focus on healthy food, recurrent fasting periods over the year. This is why the Christian Orthodox check the ingredients that are foun in oil, vegetables, products, beverages, meat and fish. These rules should positively be compared with the Laws governing Kosher food and cleansing methods because they are historically connected and reply upon the very similar fundamentals. We commemorate the memory of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the great Yiddish writer who, after World War II decided that he never will eat animal food. He became a vegetarian that seemingly was "contradictory" to his moral views as described in his books.
On the other hand, this does not mean at all that the creation is at peace. Ants eat termites and tigers eat eliphants! Animals are cruel: any veto makes this crude experience when trying to cure an injured or sick pet! Praying mantis are beautiful and swift: bees and praying mantis turn to man-eaters... the list is long but real. Now, human beings never really cared about how to protect their environment, except in the field of a respectful attitude taught by the Mitzvot. The Noahide law that prohibits to remove or break a limb from a living animal or the mitzvah/commandment not to kill the mother of fledglings introduce moral conscience and true ethics.
We have certainly reached a bottom line in the 20th century. Mass murders, genocides using gas that got more and more sophisticated systematized the fascination exercised upon human brains and masochist tendencies that always existed.
Abram left Ur-Kasdim and the house of his father and humbled himself with Sarai to go through the ten "nissayonot\נסיונות = tests'. The last one is the Akeidat Itzchak\עקדת יצחק - binding of Isaac" whose account is read every day during Shaharit\Morning prayer.
Abraham reached his "self-conscience point". This is very rare. It is a mental quest. It is even more difficult in our generation because we are hedonistic, very self-mirroring, individually self-centered. This often affects religious life: again, the faithful never compete. They are called to be one without judging the others. One of the big problems is that time passes, societies change but never repeat the same pattern. Development shows new situations and positioning. But we are slow to cope or accept that.
Nonetheless, on forthcoming Tuesday 11th of November 2011, the world will commemorate the end of the first world war. 1918 was a real deadline, an unimaginable turn in our civilization. It stopped a period of some sort of European connections, empire and conflicts, caused the fall of other grandiose leaderships.
In 1917, the Balfour Declaration confirmed His Majesty's positive views that backed the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine... Russia, China, Japan, East Africa, Spain and Germany along with the raise of the American states or Canadian provinces, Argentina and Brazil, the French recovery of Alsace-Lorraine and cultural impact... Europe and the world will start its strong addiction to oil - petrol and gas.
Ur-Kasdim, the Near and Middle-East became with the Indian peninsula, Pakistan and the birthplaces for profitable actions. The area got the feedback or boomerang slap of spirituality that erased the first fundamentals born in the region. This paradox continues in the shape of a burning metamorphose.
The Eastern Orthodox Church proposes the reading of the "Jesus' priestly prayer" in St. John ch. 17: "Father, I have manifested Your Name unto the men that You gave me out of the world: Yours they were and You gave them me; and they have kept Your word... I pray not that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil... Sanctify them through Your truth: Your word is truth".
Go, march in, forward consists in reaching this Divine Truth, i.e. not only the heart of who we are but Who "Ehyeh Asher Eyeh\אהיה אשר אהיה - I am the One I am [become the One I am in the process of becoming constantly], the Living Lord.
Av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
The reading portion of the week is "Lech lecha\לך לך - Go, march out, reach yourself". God said these words to Abram (Genesis/Bereishit 12:1-17:20). God insisted to make him leave his native land; go out from his father's house and homeland. The words clearly mean that Abram is called by God to "become a great nation, be blessed... and all the families of the earth (mishpechot haadamah\משפחות האדמה) shall bless themselves by you [in/through your name]”. This also implies that these humans, organized in families, were fashioned out of the earth - adamah\אדמה like the Adam haqadmon\אדם הקדמון, address themselves a blessing and not a cursing. They cannot restrict their benedictions to themselves but extend them to each other, nation to nation, family of the earth to any other nation of the earth.
"Lech lecha\לך לך" sounds beautiful and like a challenge in Hebrew. "Halach\הלך - to go, march in/out, go forth" has this short imperative form and the shortened "l-ל" from "el\אל, al\על, if not halach\הלך" shows something irrepressible. This is a major Shabbat and week in the Jewish cycle of the readings. In this portion, Abram accepts God's call to a move that, in his cultural and social environment could only appear to be as a frightful, dangerous, hopeless and meaningless goal.
Fear is worse than anxious ignorance. Fear that we may discover when life can be set in a series of dangers imperiling our freedom, freewill, change our points of views or, on the contrary, widen them unexpectedly. There is much courage in Abram's response to God. Indeed, he finally left his homeland and marched out. Did he come out as an adult? He did it twice because, when he firstly tried to leave his father's house, he got so scared according to the Tradition that he ran back or maybe did not even look too far.
Abram lived in a male civilization. We know nothing about his mom. Let's even think that the man is a character composed of different personalities that lived at a certain period in the same region of Sumer. By his time, Sumer was the cradle of reflection and self-conscience and culture. He is linked to a civilization that got aware that life is not vain. Life makes sense, comes from God and turns toward God. He had a mother like anyone of us. She might have been quite a character too! Abram does not leave his father's house, his homeland. We are told that he did leave his country and home. We know that he sent Eliezer to his father's home in order to find a suitable wife for his son Isaac. Isaac's son, Jacob did the same. The third and last patriarch of Israel always chose his home tribe and parentage to prolong and develop Abraham's call to be a great nation.
The point is that Abram left his mom when he understood that he had to break the ties that existed in his father's house. When he left Ur-Kasdim and the area of Haran, he combated and overcame idolatry, destroying the mother-like natural nourishing and nurturing idols whose natural flavor he had suckled from his mother’s breasts.
It is difficult to struggle and to go beyond the reach of this very gregarious experience. Abram has always been obedient to God… and to Sarai (Sarah) to some extent; safe when he was about to “give” her to Pharaoh. He was so afraid by Pharah that he introduced his wife as being his sister. This kind of problem of fear copes with some existential anxiety that she could resolve for a while. Sarah made Abram really quit his father’s house. Their family bond anticipated serfdom in Egypt when she proposed him to get a child with her maidservant Hagar, an Egyptian. From Mesopotamia to the Nile, Abraham and Sarah dug down to the heart of the Semitic and universal call:
“Vehifreti otcha bimeod meod\והפרתי אתך במאד מאד - I shall make you exceedingly fertile – unetatecha legoyim\ונתתיך לגוים and make nations of you” (Bereishit 17:6). This fertility is meant as “bimeod meod\במאד מאד – in the very too much = totally human as Adam, using the same consonants as when God saw that His creation was “tov meod\טוב מאד – very good” (Gen. 1:31).
We have to face in our daily life the same problem of faith: is the creation really so nice? Frankly, this is a pending cultural and environmental interrogation. The animal micro- and macro-cosmos consists in a constant fight for survival and not being swallowed, forced to be killed. On the second day of Rosh HaShanah, there is the seder tashlich\סדר תשליח : "Who is a God like You, Who pardon iniquity and forgive transgression for the remnant of His heritage? ... You will cast all their sins into the depths of sea\ותשליח במצולת ים כל חטאתם " (Micah 7:18-20). Still, the sea depths are definitely not a peaceful and magnificent place. Fish eat fish, beasts capture and capture the nicest colorful fish species. There is no harm. Ever since, the "seder Tashlich\ סדר תשליך" phrases correspond to the 13 Attributes of the Lord's loving-kindness (Exodus 34:6-7).
Bestiality shows everywhere in a world and human societies often based on hatred and swallowing processing dynamics. The prophetic vision of the bear living with lions, sheep and a small child is not a League of Nations dream after the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian empire that gathered in so many Central and East European nations under the Habsburg while Kamal Atatürk took the lead of a new Turkish republic after the fall of the Ottoman empire 90 years ago. The Prophets did not envision peace amidst humans as being comparable with raw and wild animal instinct. The United Nations Organization remains a platform for some kind of strategical dialog and encounters.
The ancient ascetic [often monastic] way of living tries to match natural, ecological realm and respect environment and wildlife. The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomaios I of Constantinople repeatedly insists on the obligation for the faithful to respect the Earth and all plants, animals, the environment. It is and has always been a dynamic move in the Eastern Church.
Vegetarian food, avoid eating animal flesh and blood do correspond to the the Noahide Laws and St. James' decision at the Jerusalem synod (49-52?). The Eastern Orthodox tradition does focus on healthy food, recurrent fasting periods over the year. This is why the Christian Orthodox check the ingredients that are foun in oil, vegetables, products, beverages, meat and fish. These rules should positively be compared with the Laws governing Kosher food and cleansing methods because they are historically connected and reply upon the very similar fundamentals. We commemorate the memory of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the great Yiddish writer who, after World War II decided that he never will eat animal food. He became a vegetarian that seemingly was "contradictory" to his moral views as described in his books.
On the other hand, this does not mean at all that the creation is at peace. Ants eat termites and tigers eat eliphants! Animals are cruel: any veto makes this crude experience when trying to cure an injured or sick pet! Praying mantis are beautiful and swift: bees and praying mantis turn to man-eaters... the list is long but real. Now, human beings never really cared about how to protect their environment, except in the field of a respectful attitude taught by the Mitzvot. The Noahide law that prohibits to remove or break a limb from a living animal or the mitzvah/commandment not to kill the mother of fledglings introduce moral conscience and true ethics.
We have certainly reached a bottom line in the 20th century. Mass murders, genocides using gas that got more and more sophisticated systematized the fascination exercised upon human brains and masochist tendencies that always existed.
Abram left Ur-Kasdim and the house of his father and humbled himself with Sarai to go through the ten "nissayonot\נסיונות = tests'. The last one is the Akeidat Itzchak\עקדת יצחק - binding of Isaac" whose account is read every day during Shaharit\Morning prayer.
Abraham reached his "self-conscience point". This is very rare. It is a mental quest. It is even more difficult in our generation because we are hedonistic, very self-mirroring, individually self-centered. This often affects religious life: again, the faithful never compete. They are called to be one without judging the others. One of the big problems is that time passes, societies change but never repeat the same pattern. Development shows new situations and positioning. But we are slow to cope or accept that.
Nonetheless, on forthcoming Tuesday 11th of November 2011, the world will commemorate the end of the first world war. 1918 was a real deadline, an unimaginable turn in our civilization. It stopped a period of some sort of European connections, empire and conflicts, caused the fall of other grandiose leaderships.
In 1917, the Balfour Declaration confirmed His Majesty's positive views that backed the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine... Russia, China, Japan, East Africa, Spain and Germany along with the raise of the American states or Canadian provinces, Argentina and Brazil, the French recovery of Alsace-Lorraine and cultural impact... Europe and the world will start its strong addiction to oil - petrol and gas.
Ur-Kasdim, the Near and Middle-East became with the Indian peninsula, Pakistan and the birthplaces for profitable actions. The area got the feedback or boomerang slap of spirituality that erased the first fundamentals born in the region. This paradox continues in the shape of a burning metamorphose.
The Eastern Orthodox Church proposes the reading of the "Jesus' priestly prayer" in St. John ch. 17: "Father, I have manifested Your Name unto the men that You gave me out of the world: Yours they were and You gave them me; and they have kept Your word... I pray not that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil... Sanctify them through Your truth: Your word is truth".
Go, march in, forward consists in reaching this Divine Truth, i.e. not only the heart of who we are but Who "Ehyeh Asher Eyeh\אהיה אשר אהיה - I am the One I am [become the One I am in the process of becoming constantly], the Living Lord.
Av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Do you have a "friend"?
Do you have a « friend »?
We have a real desire to socialize with others. Nothing pathetically or gorgeously new. Just humans trying to meet, talk, "paltalk", "messengerize"through wireless connections, online forums. This sounds highly computerized though our hearts and brains may prefer such a hype medium that may be "so very, so much" but not "that real". This kind of connections presupposes that there might be a huge loose pitch of loneliness to overcome and heal. Look, we were so close decades ago. Today, we can search the good old schoolmates we lost. Distance, life... what about friendship?
Totally sacred for the Russians: "druzhba/дружба" (friendship) includes amity between the nations of the world by the time of the communists. In the Slavic cultures, it flows as loving ties and enduring fully trusted fidelity. Very difficult to get to that kind of relationships, but once you're there, don't betray. Never. "Drug/друг" (pron. /droog/), male and "podruzhka\подружка" (female) come from "drugii\другий" (second, other, different and though similar). There is a deep longing for some double - sort of natural and intellectual clone that is so pregnant in the Jewish tradition to find one's " perfect double, alter ego" as the "achawah\אחווה-א" (loving friendship) mentioned in Talmud Sanhedrin 58b.
This question was raised in order to know if love exists or not. Is it physical, mechanical, technical, emotional, i.e. moving and thus to what extent? Are there limits or not? But the Russians do focus on friendship first. In English, "friend" is related and opposes "feud" (enemy) as in German: "Freund" vs. "Feind". In Icelandic "freyja" is a mixture of "friendly mate, love and flirty-wooing”. It gave the word "Friday", a day for zooing before "laudry-day, Laugardagur".
Drop the "r" (that deliciously sounds non-kosher and "oyster-eating month") and love rotates to hatred. Well, "guest" is the same in Germanic languages: to begin with, a foreign person - an adversary who becomes a host, exactly as a "password" originally allows to distinguish between a friend and a foe.
Now, in Hebrew, we have a commandment/mitzvah-מצוה: “You shall love your fellow (neighbor) as yourself - veahavta lere’akha kamokha\ואהבת לרעך כמוך”” (Leviticus/Vayikra 18:19): which means something else. a) Hebrew suggests a fellowman or some closeness, “re’a\רע” would be rooted in “foe” comes to be a friend and companion”. b) There is definitely no “love” as the root and the spelling shows rather that “evil, foreigners, enemies” may be approached, get acquainted, tamed and develop peaceful and even loving relationships without being cheerfully passionate… although this is the real goal: ahavat chinam\אהבת חינם – gratuitous love is possible without implying any “repayment”.
The commandment to “love as yourself” is wise and psychologically witty or insightful. If we don’t love ourselves, whom can we respect and appreciate till we reach full love toward someone else? It might be somehow narcissistic at the present on both sides and lead to split. Paul of Tarsus is right about marriage and love: “So husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it” (Ephesians 5:28-29).
“Friends” is undoubtedly one of the best top-notch terrific television series of the past century. Some more decades and they would really get engaged, but they would rather postpone any long-term bond. Always young and buzzing around, not that mature and grownup teens for ever, they were and remain “friends”. They had decided to live as mates in vicinity flats. In the Former Soviet Union, two or three generations of different families often lived in small flats that mainly caused divorces and family splits.
On the other hand, the Soviets were “comrades”, from French “camarades” (originally “room-mates”) that belongs to the ancient relationships of fraternity or brotherhood. The Quakers call themselves “Friends” and they love each other “more than brothers”, “compagnons = companions” who share bread (cum-, panis), or “sputniki\спутники” (who walk together on the same road).
Ulrich Honecker, the last East German communist leader, would have addressed his fellow people : “Brüder, Brüderinnen! Brothers, Brotheresses” in local speech. “Comrades” was firstly “chaver/chaverim-ot\חבר-חברים-ות” in Yiddish/Hebrew by the time of the Bund and the numerous kibbutzim developed after the fall of Tzarist Russia. The chaverte\חברתא (Yid.) was the brave strong Jewish girl who left university to grow grains in a kibbutz before settling in Palestine. The prestigious Ghetto Fighters’ kibbutz near Akko (Lochamey HaGetta’ot\לוחמי הגטאות) has a unique listing and map in Hebrew and Yiddish of all the first kibbutzim set up in the then Belorussia.
The word is very ancient in Semitic tongues and thus in Hebrew. The Tehillim say something simple: “You need no fear the terror by nigh, or the arrow that flies by day, the plague that stalks in the darkness/ or the scourge that ravages at noon… the Lord will order His angels to guard you wherever you go” (Psalm 91:5-6.11). The same as at the present: all local, wandering or settled tribes and the Children of Israel were and still are frightened by wild nature, earthquakes, animals, humans that can firstly be wild or weird and foes. It is difficult to feel self-confident and to trust anyone in such conditions. Harder to structure “chevrah\חברה – society” based on reliable relationships in view to achieve full co-working activities of “chaverim/ot”.
These “chaverim-ot” are aggregated as socially reliable friends who eventually become “friends, sweethearts, buddies”. English “buddy” refers to “work-mates”, originally a group of plunderers! In the desert, fears and visions, ghosts and dreams can be misleading. This is why the Hebrew language has a large lexicon of words expressing “unity, joint, clutch, gather”. Hebrew requires to violently make efforts in order to overcome individualism, loneliness, solitude and threats. Aramaic “chevra qaddisha,חברא קדישא” is the compassionate association of faithful Jews who would bury the departed. “Chevrah, chavurah\חברה-חברותה-א” is a business organization or a congregation.
But “chaver\חבר” was, in the old days, the first step in the process to becoming a rabbi as a student who was given a letter allowing him to more closely participate in holy Services (Talmud Shabbat 63a). It may be linked to “chabbar” (Parsee priest) as recorded in Talmud Shabbat 11a. This aspect of dedication to praying/learning/preaching activities was the main feature of the spiritual structure of the Jewish people.
Interestingly, Jesus might have used “chaver\חבר” as a certain of confirmation given to his disciples. He never performed any “semichah\סמיכה – ordination” that developed with his disciples in the Acts of the Apostles. On the other hand, he said to his disciples: “I no longer call you slaves (avadim\עבדים) because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I call you “friends (chevarim\חברים)” because I have told you everything I heard from my Father (God). It was not you who chose me, but I chose you and appointed you to bear fruit that will remain… love one another” (John 15:15-17).
It is quite possible that his disciples became “associates, friends, chaverim” in a spiritual sense that developed over two thousand years in various ways to define what grew until now into a very wide open range of possible connectedness.
Av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
We have a real desire to socialize with others. Nothing pathetically or gorgeously new. Just humans trying to meet, talk, "paltalk", "messengerize"through wireless connections, online forums. This sounds highly computerized though our hearts and brains may prefer such a hype medium that may be "so very, so much" but not "that real". This kind of connections presupposes that there might be a huge loose pitch of loneliness to overcome and heal. Look, we were so close decades ago. Today, we can search the good old schoolmates we lost. Distance, life... what about friendship?
Totally sacred for the Russians: "druzhba/дружба" (friendship) includes amity between the nations of the world by the time of the communists. In the Slavic cultures, it flows as loving ties and enduring fully trusted fidelity. Very difficult to get to that kind of relationships, but once you're there, don't betray. Never. "Drug/друг" (pron. /droog/), male and "podruzhka\подружка" (female) come from "drugii\другий" (second, other, different and though similar). There is a deep longing for some double - sort of natural and intellectual clone that is so pregnant in the Jewish tradition to find one's " perfect double, alter ego" as the "achawah\אחווה-א" (loving friendship) mentioned in Talmud Sanhedrin 58b.
This question was raised in order to know if love exists or not. Is it physical, mechanical, technical, emotional, i.e. moving and thus to what extent? Are there limits or not? But the Russians do focus on friendship first. In English, "friend" is related and opposes "feud" (enemy) as in German: "Freund" vs. "Feind". In Icelandic "freyja" is a mixture of "friendly mate, love and flirty-wooing”. It gave the word "Friday", a day for zooing before "laudry-day, Laugardagur".
Drop the "r" (that deliciously sounds non-kosher and "oyster-eating month") and love rotates to hatred. Well, "guest" is the same in Germanic languages: to begin with, a foreign person - an adversary who becomes a host, exactly as a "password" originally allows to distinguish between a friend and a foe.
Now, in Hebrew, we have a commandment/mitzvah-מצוה: “You shall love your fellow (neighbor) as yourself - veahavta lere’akha kamokha\ואהבת לרעך כמוך”” (Leviticus/Vayikra 18:19): which means something else. a) Hebrew suggests a fellowman or some closeness, “re’a\רע” would be rooted in “foe” comes to be a friend and companion”. b) There is definitely no “love” as the root and the spelling shows rather that “evil, foreigners, enemies” may be approached, get acquainted, tamed and develop peaceful and even loving relationships without being cheerfully passionate… although this is the real goal: ahavat chinam\אהבת חינם – gratuitous love is possible without implying any “repayment”.
The commandment to “love as yourself” is wise and psychologically witty or insightful. If we don’t love ourselves, whom can we respect and appreciate till we reach full love toward someone else? It might be somehow narcissistic at the present on both sides and lead to split. Paul of Tarsus is right about marriage and love: “So husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it” (Ephesians 5:28-29).
“Friends” is undoubtedly one of the best top-notch terrific television series of the past century. Some more decades and they would really get engaged, but they would rather postpone any long-term bond. Always young and buzzing around, not that mature and grownup teens for ever, they were and remain “friends”. They had decided to live as mates in vicinity flats. In the Former Soviet Union, two or three generations of different families often lived in small flats that mainly caused divorces and family splits.
On the other hand, the Soviets were “comrades”, from French “camarades” (originally “room-mates”) that belongs to the ancient relationships of fraternity or brotherhood. The Quakers call themselves “Friends” and they love each other “more than brothers”, “compagnons = companions” who share bread (cum-, panis), or “sputniki\спутники” (who walk together on the same road).
Ulrich Honecker, the last East German communist leader, would have addressed his fellow people : “Brüder, Brüderinnen! Brothers, Brotheresses” in local speech. “Comrades” was firstly “chaver/chaverim-ot\חבר-חברים-ות” in Yiddish/Hebrew by the time of the Bund and the numerous kibbutzim developed after the fall of Tzarist Russia. The chaverte\חברתא (Yid.) was the brave strong Jewish girl who left university to grow grains in a kibbutz before settling in Palestine. The prestigious Ghetto Fighters’ kibbutz near Akko (Lochamey HaGetta’ot\לוחמי הגטאות) has a unique listing and map in Hebrew and Yiddish of all the first kibbutzim set up in the then Belorussia.
The word is very ancient in Semitic tongues and thus in Hebrew. The Tehillim say something simple: “You need no fear the terror by nigh, or the arrow that flies by day, the plague that stalks in the darkness/ or the scourge that ravages at noon… the Lord will order His angels to guard you wherever you go” (Psalm 91:5-6.11). The same as at the present: all local, wandering or settled tribes and the Children of Israel were and still are frightened by wild nature, earthquakes, animals, humans that can firstly be wild or weird and foes. It is difficult to feel self-confident and to trust anyone in such conditions. Harder to structure “chevrah\חברה – society” based on reliable relationships in view to achieve full co-working activities of “chaverim/ot”.
These “chaverim-ot” are aggregated as socially reliable friends who eventually become “friends, sweethearts, buddies”. English “buddy” refers to “work-mates”, originally a group of plunderers! In the desert, fears and visions, ghosts and dreams can be misleading. This is why the Hebrew language has a large lexicon of words expressing “unity, joint, clutch, gather”. Hebrew requires to violently make efforts in order to overcome individualism, loneliness, solitude and threats. Aramaic “chevra qaddisha,חברא קדישא” is the compassionate association of faithful Jews who would bury the departed. “Chevrah, chavurah\חברה-חברותה-א” is a business organization or a congregation.
But “chaver\חבר” was, in the old days, the first step in the process to becoming a rabbi as a student who was given a letter allowing him to more closely participate in holy Services (Talmud Shabbat 63a). It may be linked to “chabbar” (Parsee priest) as recorded in Talmud Shabbat 11a. This aspect of dedication to praying/learning/preaching activities was the main feature of the spiritual structure of the Jewish people.
Interestingly, Jesus might have used “chaver\חבר” as a certain of confirmation given to his disciples. He never performed any “semichah\סמיכה – ordination” that developed with his disciples in the Acts of the Apostles. On the other hand, he said to his disciples: “I no longer call you slaves (avadim\עבדים) because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I call you “friends (chevarim\חברים)” because I have told you everything I heard from my Father (God). It was not you who chose me, but I chose you and appointed you to bear fruit that will remain… love one another” (John 15:15-17).
It is quite possible that his disciples became “associates, friends, chaverim” in a spiritual sense that developed over two thousand years in various ways to define what grew until now into a very wide open range of possible connectedness.
Av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)
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