Vayigash- December 10, 2021
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 4:27 PM
Shabbat Ends: 5:26 PM
Torah Message:
The Promise
“I am the G-d of your father…Have no fear of descending into Egypt…I shall descend with you to Egypt and I shall surely bring you up.” (46:3-4)
It was the first night of Chanukah. The single light of the menorah gleamed with a strange radiance. Its light came neither from wax nor oil. This was a very special menorah. It was made from an old wooden clog. And the oil was boot polish. This was Chanukah in Bergen Belsen.
The Bluzhever Rav chanted the first two blessings in the customary festive tune. He was about to make the third blessing but then he stopped. He paused for what seemed like a long time. He looked around the room at all the faces in front of him. And then, with a voice filled with strength, he said: “Blessed are You, Hashem, our G-d and G-d of our fathers, Who has kept us alive and preserved us and brought us to this time.” “Amein” was the whispered reply from the huddled throng. Later, one of the men came over to the Bluzhever Rav and he said, “Can I ask the Rabbi a question?” “What is your question?” said the Rav. “How can you possibly make a blessing thanking G-d for bringing us to this time? Should we thank Him for bringing us to Bergen-Belsen? For bringing us to a time like this?”
Miketz- December 3, 2021
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 4:26 PM
Shabbat Ends: 5:25 PM
Torah Message:
“And the emaciated and inferior cows ate up the first seven healthy cows.” (41:20)
Is altruism possible? It’s often said that true altruism is impossible, because all acts of generosity and kindness leave the doer with a feeling of self-satisfaction. And we are not just talking about people who are virtue-signaling or trying to prove that they are holier-than-thou. This view says it is impossible not to feel good about doing good, and true altruism cannot exist because we always get a kick-back.
The Talmud (Pesachim 68b) relates that Rav Sheishet reviewed all his learning every thirty days. He would then say to himself, “Rejoice my soul! For you I learned (the Written) Torah! For you I learned (the Oral) Torah!” This is seemingy difficult to understand, as the gemara goes on to question: Rabbi Elazar said, “Were it not for Torah, the Heavens and the Earth would not exist.” Torah is not merely a matter of self-satisfaction. It is the raison d’être for the universe. How, then, can Rabbe Elazar learn Torah just for himself?
The gemara gives an answer, “The root of action is self-interest.”
This answer begs the question, “Should not Rav Sheishet’s motivation have been to perpetuate the world, the creation? Is it possible that he was motivated by selfishness?”
Let’s answer this with another question.
Vayeshev- November 26, 2021
This Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 4:27 PM
Shabbat Ends: 5:25 PM
Torah Message:
Yaakov settles in the land of Canaan. His favorite son, Yosef, brings him critical reports about his brothers. Yaakov makes Yosef a fine tunic of multi-colored woolen strips. Yosef exacerbates his brothers’ hatred by recounting prophetic dreams of sheaves of wheat bowing to his sheaf, and of the sun, moon and stars bowing to him, signifying that all his family will appoint him king. The brothers indict Yosef and resolve to execute him. When Yosef comes to Shechem, the brothers relent and decide, at Reuven’s instigation, to throw him into a pit instead. Reuven’s intent was to save Yosef. Yehuda persuades the brothers to take Yosef out of the pit and sell him to a caravan of passing Ishmaelites. Reuven returns to find the pit empty and rends his clothes. The brothers soak Yosef’s tunic in goat’s blood and show it to Yaakov, who assumes that Yosef has been devoured by a wild beast. Yaakov is inconsolable. Meanwhile, in Egypt, Yosef has been sold to Potiphar, Pharaoh’s Chamberlain of the Butchers.
In the Parsha’s sub-plot, Yehuda’s son Er dies as punishment for preventing his wife Tamar from becoming pregnant. Onan, Yehuda’s second son, then weds Tamar by levirate marriage. He too is punished in similar circumstances. When Yehuda’s wife dies, Tamar resolves to have children through Yehuda, as this union will found the Davidic line culminating in the Mashiach.
Meanwhile, Yosef rises to power in the house of his Egyptian master. His extreme beauty attracts the unwanted advances of his master’s wife. Enraged by his rejection, she accuses Yosef of attempting to seduce her, and he is imprisoned. In prison, Yosef successfully predicts the outcome of the dream of Pharaoh’s wine steward, who is reinstated, and the dream of Pharaoh’s baker, who is hanged. In spite of his promise, the wine steward forgets to help Yosef, and Yosef languishes in prison.
Vayishlach- November 19th, 2021
Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 4:29PM
Shabbat Ends: 5:27 PM
Torah Message:
A Minimal Attention Span
“Yaakov was left alone and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.” (32:25)
We live in an era of distraction. Television advertising and music video driven by big BPM (bucks-per-minute) have accelerated the cutting rates of film and video to the microsecond. The ubiquitous cell phone interrupts thoughts, conversations and lives. Many do not think anymore — just surf through their thoughts. Now this and now this and now this. How long can a normal person hold an idea in his head? Everyone is invited to try it. Whoops? Try again! How long can the average person concentrate on an idea without any other thought intruding? Ten seconds? Twenty? Twenty is pretty “Olympic” in my own experience.
In this week’s Torah portion, an incorporeal spiritual force (trans. angel) attacks Yaakov and wrestles with him until the dawn. This angel was the protecting force of the nation of Esav. Why did the angel of Esav not attack Avraham or Yitzchak? Why did he wait for Yaakov?
This world stands on three pillars: On kindness, on prayer and on Torah. The three Patriarchs represent these three pillars: Avraham is the pillar of kindness, Yitzchak, the pillar of prayer, and Yaakov, the pillar of Torah. The Torah is the unique possession of the Jewish People. No other nation in the world has the Torah. Therefore, an attack on Torah is the one that hits at the heart of Judaism.
The angel of Esav attacked Yaakov because he knew that the most effective way to destroy the Jewish People is to deter them from learning Torah.
Even though the angel of Esav was unsuccessful in his fight with Yaakov, he managed to damage him in the thigh. The thigh is the place in the body that represents progeny and the continuation of Jewish continuity. In the era before the arrival of the Mashiach, Esav will try to make it very difficult to educate our children with Torah. Torah demands commitment, application and concentration. The essence of Torah study is to be able to contain several ideas in one’s head and to synthesize and counterpoint these ideas. A distracted person cannot learn Torah. Our era is one in which distraction has become an industry.
In the generation before the Mashiach in which we currently find ourselves, maintaining a minimal attention span will be a gigantic battle in itself. May we all be successful with the help of Heaven.
Veyeitzei- November 12th, 2021
Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 4:33PM
Shabbat Ends: 5:30 PM
Torah Message:
How Long is the Coast of Britain?
“And he dreamt, and behold! A ladder was set earthward and its top reached heavenward; and behold angels of G‑d were ascending and descending on it.” (28:12)
Benoit B. Mandelbrot (1924-2010) was a Jewish Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath. “What is the essence of a coastline?” he once asked. Mandelbrot asked this question in a paper that became a turning point for his thinking: “How Long is the Coast of Britain?”
Mandelbrot had come across the coastline question in an obscure posthumous article by an English scientist, Lewis F. Richardson. Wondering about coastlines and wiggly national borders, Richardson checked encyclopedias in Spain and Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands, and discovered discrepancies of twenty percent in the estimated lengths of their common frontiers. Mandelbrot argued that any coastline is, in a sense, infinitely long. In another sense, the answer depends on the length of your ruler.
“Consider one plausible method of measuring. A surveyor takes a set of dividers, opens them to a length of one yard, and walks them along the coastline. The resulting number of yards is just an approximation of the true length, because the dividers skip over twists and turns smaller than one yard — but the surveyor writes the number down anyway.
“Then he sets the dividers to a smaller length — say, one foot— and repeats the process. He arrives at a somewhat greater length, because the dividers will capture more of the detail and it will take more than three one-foot steps to cover the distance previously covered by a one-yard step. He writes this new number down, sets the dividers at four inches and starts again.
“This mental experiment, using imaginary dividers, is a way of quantifying the effect of observing an object from different distances, at different scales. An observer trying to estimate the length of England’s coastline from a satellite will make a smaller guess than an observer trying to walk its coves and beaches, who will make a smaller guess in turn than a snail negotiating every pebble.”
If we measure our ascent on the spiritual ladder of our life like a snail, we will become disillusioned very quickly, for life has many twists and turns and setbacks. But if we take the satellite view, each one of us can follow in the footsteps of our father Yaakov — the ladder that is set on the ground but whose head reaches the heavens.
Toldot- November 5th, 2021
Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 5:39 PM
Shabbat Ends: 6:34 PM
Torah Message:
No Fit for Counterfeit
“And Hashem said to her (to Rivka about Esav and Yaakov), ‘Two regimes are in your womb…’” (25:23)
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton forms the foundation of classical mechanics. In it, Newton expounds his laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. The Principia is considered one of the most important works in the history of science. But Newton was not only a scientist. He was also responsible for supervising the minting of money and amassed a considerable fortune himself. D. T. Whiteside, who became the twentieth century’s preeminent scholar and shepherd of Newton’s mathematical work, could not help but remark: “Only too few have ever possessed the intellectual genius and surpassing capacity to stamp their image upon the thought of their age and that of centuries to follow. Watching over the minting of a nation’s coin, catching a few counterfeiters, increasing an already respectably-sized personal fortune, being a political figure, even dictating to one’s fellow scientists — it should all seem a crass and empty ambition once you have written a Principia.” (“Isaac Newton” by James Gleick)
Being a great scientist, it seems, does not necessarily make you a great person.
Almost certainly not coincidentally, there is another well-known work with the title Principia Mathematica. In 1910, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell published a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics also titled Principia Mathematica. Russell’s contributions to logic, epistemology, and the philosophy of mathematics established him as one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century.
Sadly, it seems that as a person he fared no better than Newton. During his tenure as a professor at Cambridge University in England, Russell was once giving a lecture in a large amphitheater. In the middle of his discourse, a young lady raised her hand to ask a question. Russel indicated that he would take the question and she began, “Doctor Russell, you are one of the preeminent philosophers of your day. I would like to ask you, please, how you manage to equate this with the fact that you are having an illicit affair with one of your students?” Russell looked at the young lady and without missing a beat replied, “Madam, as I am a mathematician, do you also expect me to be a triangle?”
In Judaism, you have to be a triangle.
“And Hashem said to her, ‘Two regimes are in your womb…’”
Nothing in Judaism is more despised and nothing creates a greater desecration of Hashem’s name than a Torah scholar who is corrupt. The regime of Esav allows and indulges in the foibles of the bright and the witty, but the regime of Torah allows no counterfeiting whatsoever.
Chayei Sarah- October 29th, 2021
Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 5:45 PM
Shabbat Ends: 6:40 PM
Torah Message:
The Master of Chaos
“And Avraham expired and died at a good old age, mature and content…” (25:08)
A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.
Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary theory and branch of mathematics focusing on the study of chaos: dynamical systems whose apparently random states of disorder and irregularities are actually governed by underlying patterns and deterministic laws that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. Chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization. The butterfly effect, an underlying principle of chaos, describes how a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state (meaning that there is sensitive dependence on initial conditions). A metaphor for this behavior is that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.
Chayei Sarah- October 29th, 2021
Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 5:45 PM
Shabbat Ends: 6:40 PM
Torah Message:
The Master of Chaos
“And Avraham expired and died at a good old age, mature and content…” (25:08)
A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.
Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary theory and branch of mathematics focusing on the study of chaos: dynamical systems whose apparently random states of disorder and irregularities are actually governed by underlying patterns and deterministic laws that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. Chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization. The butterfly effect, an underlying principle of chaos, describes how a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state (meaning that there is sensitive dependence on initial conditions). A metaphor for this behavior is that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.
Small differences in initial conditions, such as those due to errors in measurements or due to rounding errors in numerical computation, can yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction of their behavior impossible in general. This can happen even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior follows a unique evolution and is fully determined by their initial conditions with no random elements involved. In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos. The theory was summarized by Edward Lorenz as: Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.
Chaotic behavior exists in many natural systems, including fluid flow, heartbeat irregularities, weather and climate. It also occurs spontaneously in some systems with artificial components, such as the stock market and road traffic. This behavior can be studied through the analysis of a chaotic mathematical model, or through analytical techniques such as recurrence plots and Poincaré maps. Chaos theory has applications in a variety of disciplines, including meteorology, anthropology, sociology, environmental science, computer science, engineering, economics, ecology, pandemic crisis management.
I’ve just finished reading a fascinating book called “Chaos: Making a New Science” by James Gleick. It’s a tantalizing book that made me regret not having applied myself with more seriousness to learning mathematics at school. “Chaos” turns much of classical physics on its head:
“The idea that all these classical deterministic systems we’d learned about could generate randomness was intriguing. We were driven to understand what made that tick. You can’t appreciate the kind of revelation that is unless you’ve been brainwashed by six or seven years of a typical physics curriculum. You’re taught that there are classical models where everything is determined by initial conditions, and then there are quantum mechanical models where things are determined but you have to contend with a limit on how much initial information you can gather. Nonlinear was a word that you only encountered in the back of the book. A physics student would take a math course and the last chapter would be on nonlinear equations. You would usually skip that, and, if you didn’t, all they would do is take these nonlinear equations and reduce them to linear equations, so you just get approximate solutions anyway. It was just an exercise in frustration. We had no concept of the real difference that nonlinearity makes in a model. The idea that an equation could bounce around in an apparently random way — that was pretty exciting. You would say, ‘Where is this random motion coming from?’”
And:
“It was a realization that here is a whole realm of physical experience that just doesn’t fit in the current framework. Why wasn’t that part of what we were taught? We had a chance to look around the immediate world—a world so mundane it was wonderful—and understand something. They enchanted themselves and dismayed their professors with leaps to questions of determinism, the nature of intelligence, the direction of biological evolution. The glue that held us together was a long-range vision… It was striking to us that if you take regular physical systems which have been analyzed to death in classical physics, but you take one little step away in parameter space, you end up with something to which all of this huge body of analysis does not apply. The phenomenon of chaos could have been discovered long, long ago. It wasn’t, in part because this huge body of work on the dynamics of regular motion didn’t lead in that direction. But if you just look, there it is. It brought home the point that one should allow oneself to be guided by the physics, by observations, to see what kind of theoretical picture one could develop. In the long run we saw the investigation of complicated dynamics as an entry point that might lead to an understanding of really, really complicated dynamics.”
People don’t know what they see. They see what they think they know.
“And Avraham expired and died at a good old age, mature and content…”
In what sense was Avraham “mature and content”? He could see the order in the “chaos” after looking into every aspect of Creation — higher and further than anyone before him. As a result, he could recognize his Creator. Avraham was indeed a very special soul who could see that “mother nature” has a Father.
Vayera- October 22nd, 2021
Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 5:53 PM
Shabbat Ends: 6:47 PM
Torah Message:
Make Yourself at Home!
“And behold – three men were standing over him!” (18:2)
There are some people who look like they are giving but they are really taking. And there are some people who look like they are taking when they are really giving.
Anyone who buys a $5,000-a-plate charity dinner is giving a lot of charity, but he is also getting a lot of status mixed in with his sushi.
On the other hand, there are people who look like they are takers but they are really giving.
Once there was a Jewish traveling salesman who found himself in a largely non-Jewish town on Friday afternoon. His business had delayed him way beyond his expectations and there was now no way he could get home for Shabbat. He had heard that there was just one Orthodox family in town where he could spend Shabbat, and as the sun was starting to set he made his way there.
The owner of the house opened the door to him and showed him into the living room. “May I stay here for Shabbat?” asked the traveling salesman. “If you like,” replied the host. “The price is $200.” “$200!” exclaimed the traveling salesman. “That’s more than a first-class hotel!” “Suit yourself,” replied the host.
Realizing that he had no option, the salesman reluctantly agreed. In the short time left before Shabbat, the host showed the salesman his room, the kitchen and the other facilities for his Shabbat stay.
As soon as the host left the room, the salesman sat down and thought to himself. “Well, if this is going to cost me $200, I am going to get my money’s worth.” During the entire Shabbat he availed himself unstintingly of the house’s considerable facilities. He helped himself to the delicious food in the fridge. He had a long luxurious shower, both before and after Shabbat. He really made himself “at home.”
When he had showered and packed, he made his way downstairs and plunked two crisp $100 bills down on the table in front of his host.
“What’s this?” inquired the host. “That’s the money I owe you,” replied the salesman. “You don’t owe me anything. Do you really think I would take money from a fellow Jew for the miztvah of hospitality?” “But you told me that Shabbat here costs $200.”
“I only told you that to be sure that you would make yourself at home.”
When a guest comes to your home, his natural feeling is one of embarrassment. No one likes being a taker. When a guest brings a present, the worst thing you can say is, “You shouldn’t have done that!” Rather, take the bottle of wine (or whatever it is), open it, place it in the middle of the table, and say, “Thank you so much!” By allowing him to contribute to the meal, you will mitigate his feeling of being a taker and you will have done the mitzvah of hospitality to a higher degree.
The mitzvah of hospitality is greater than receiving the Divine Presence. We learn this from the beginning of this week’s Torah portion. G-d had come to visit Avraham on the third day after his brit mila, the most painful day. G-d made the day extremely hot so that Avraham should not be bothered by guests. When G-d saw that Avraham was experiencing more pain from his inability to do the mitzvah of hospitality than the pain of the brit mila, He sent three angels who appeared as men so that Avraham could do the mitzvah of hospitality. When these “men” appeared, Avraham got up from in front of the Divine Presence to greet his guests.
Hospitality is greater than receiving the Divine Presence.
- Sources: Rashi, Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler and others
Lech Lecha- October 15th, 2021
Shabbat:
Friday Candle Lighting: 6:01 PM
Shabbat Ends: 6:55 PM
Torah Message:
A famine forces the first Jew to depart for Egypt, where beautiful Sarai is taken to Pharaoh’s palace; Abram escapes death because they present themselves as brother and sister. A plague prevents the Egyptian king from touching her, and convinces him to return her to Abram and to compensate the brother-revealed-as-husband with gold, silver and cattle.
Back in the land of Canaan, Lot separates from Abram and settles in the evil city of Sodom, where he falls captive when the mighty armies of Chedorlaomer and his three allies conquer the five cities of the Sodom Valley. Abram sets out with a small band to rescue his nephew, defeats the four kings, and is blessed by Malki-Zedek the king of Salem (Jerusalem).
G‑d seals the Covenant Between the Parts with Abram, in which the exile and persecution (galut) of the people of Israel is foretold, and the Holy Land is bequeathed to them as their eternal heritage.
Still childless ten years after their arrival in the Land, Sarai tells Abram to marry her maidservant Hagar. Hagar conceives, becomes insolent toward her mistress, and then flees when Sarai treats her harshly; an angel convinces her to return, and tells her that her son will father a populous nation. Ishmael is born in Abram’s eighty-sixth year.
Thirteen years later, G‑d changes Abram’s name to Abraham (“father of multitudes”), and Sarai’s to Sarah (“princess”), and promises that a son will be born to them; from this child, whom they should call Isaac (“will laugh”), will stem the great nation with which G‑d will establish His special bond. Abraham is commanded to circumcise himself and his descendants as a “sign of the covenant between Me and you.” Abraham immediately complies, circumcising himself and all the males of his household.