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Friday, May 27, 2005

BeChukotay - Reward and Punishment

ואם תלכו עמי קרי, ולא תאבו לשמע לי, ויספתי עליכם מכה שבע כחטאתיכם

(ויקרא כ"ו, כ"א)

BeChukotay, the last parasha in the book of VaYikra, is one of the two parshiot in the Torah in which we find in detail the consequences of not following God's ways, also known as the tochecha, or rebuke (the second one is in VaYelech, at the end of Devarim). After spelling out the blessings that we will attain by following the laws of God, the Torah goes on to describe, in excruciating detail (more than 30 verses!), the curses that will fall upon us for not doing so.

Reading the tochecha we find a word which repeats itself several times - keri:

And if you walk contrary unto Me, and will not hearken unto Me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins

(VaYikra 26, 21)

The English translation of keri as "contrary", i.e. purposely going against God's ways, is not universally acceptable. Rashi explains the above verse by saying that keri means "impermanent", thus describing a reality in which the people of Israel fulfill the mitzvot only partially and not in a consistent manner.

But the word keri shares the same root in Hebrew as the word mikre, which means a coincidence or something that happens as if by accident. And indeed Rabenu Bechayei explains the verse using a psychological analysis of human behaviour. When people are successful and good things happen to them, they tend to attribute this success to themselves. However, when things go wrong and bad things happen, people tend to attribute this failure to chance or bad luck. The Torah here teaches us that a person should not interpret life as a coincidence, as a mikre, but rather should know that everything comes from God. If bad things come our way we should interpret it as a sign from God to repent and renounce our bad ways. Hence the use of the word keri; God says: if you think it's only keri, only bad luck, I will punish you in a way that will make you understand it is me and not chance that struck you.

Rambam expands this idea and, true to his philosophy, puts the burden of responsibility on man. He urges us to understand that there is cause and effect; that the way we behave determines the outcome. Rambam uses our parasha to prove the existence of reward and punishment in God's ways.

This view of the world poses a great dilemma. On the one hand we are encouraged to draw direct conclusions between what we do and how God rewards or punishes us. On the other hand, by doing so, we run the risk of misinterpretation of God's ways, or worse, of deluding ourselves that we understand his rules of engagement. How to solve this conflict? There seems to be no easy answer. It is our task to pave a golden path between an existence of reward and punishment ("I will do X, therefore God will do Y") and an existence that presupposes our inability to comprehend the ways of God ("I will do what God told me to do, and it is up to him to decide how to respond"). Human nature pulls us in the first direction but deeper belief in God pull us in the other. Balancing both is a never-ending task.

The idea for this week's Thought is from R. Aharon Lichtenstein

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Enough is Enough

In a blistering editorial today on NRG (Hebrew), Amnon Dankner and Dan Margalit (respectively, the editor and a leading publicist of one of Israel's dailies, Ma'ariv) express their disgust and revulsion at the seemingly epidemic proportions of "the ocean of corruption" among Israel's political elite.

They do not mince words and lash out at prime minister Ariel Sharon and his sons, foreign minister Silvan Shalom and his wife and at more obvious targets such as the pathetic Uzi Cohen (deputy mayor of Ra'anana) and Pnina Rosenblum (a pesudo-celebrity most famous for her bleached hair and young husbands).

Over a 1,000 comments posted by readers in only a few hours, almost all expressing support, prove that this feeling of disgust is widespread. Although Dankner and Margalit fail to say so directly, it is rather obvious what is in common with all the people they write about: the Likud party.

Friday, May 06, 2005

Kedoshim - The Path to Holiness

וידבר ה' אל משה לאמר: דבר אל כל עדת בני ישראל, ואמרת אליהם: קדושים תהיו, כי קדוש אני ה' אלקיכם. איש אמו ואביו תיראו ואת שבתותי תשמורו, אני ה' אלקיכם.

(ויקרא י"ט, א'-ב')

This week's parasha is full with mitzvot of all kinds, 51 in total. The parasha opens with the lofty command to being holy:

And the Lord spoke unto Moshe, saying: Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel and say unto them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

(VaYikra 19, 1-2)

God is requesting us to be holy and our first reaction might well be: "who, me?". Requesting us to be holy in our ways, and giving God as an example of holiness to follow, might seem like an awfully daunting task for most of us. How are we to understand this command and what can we do in order to fulfill it?

First, we must realise that the command is an individual one. God stresses to Moshe that he should speak to all of Israel and this additional word - "all" - seems superfluous. Did God think that Moshe would pass on his command only to some but not to all? R. Naphtali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, the Natziv of Volozhin, learns from this word that God wished to stress that the command is addressed to each and every individual, not only to the fortunate few who can truly accept the demand to be holy. Each one of us should strive to fulfill this call to be holy according to our personal capabilities and skills, even if the goal seems unattainable and we might never reach it. The effort is no less important than the result. The idea that this command is a continuous task, a vision which we should aspire to and never cease trying to fulfill, is further implied by the future sense of the verse: "you shall be holy" and not "you are holy".

Holiness is not something we are born with; it is something we teach and discipline ourselves to try and become. And the path to holiness is given to us immediately following the command to be holy: the mitzvot. We are all familiar with the categorization of mitzvot into those that relate to our relationship with God (ben adam la'makom) and those that relate to our relationship with our fellow human beings (ben adam la'chavero). Reading the 51 mitzvot in this week's parasha we see that they encompass all areas of life and that the two categories are intertwined as one. For example, the first two mitzvot are:

You shall fear every man his mother and his father, and you shall keep My sabbaths, I am the Lord your God.

(VaYikra 19, 3)

Fearing ones' parents is ben adam la'chavero; keeping the shabbat is ben adam la'makom. Yet both of them appear in the same verse and conclude with the ubiquitous phrase of this parasha, the official "seal" of God that indicates this commane is his: "I am the Lord your God".

All too often, we are educated that being a good Jew means we should keep the shabbat, we should put teffilin on every day, we should pray three times a day and we should keep kosher. A common phrase used by religious people to enquire whether someone is religious is: "nu, is he a shomer shabbat?" - does he keep the shabbat? We do not ask: "does he fear his parents?", or "does he respect the elderly?", or "does he love his neighbour as he loves himself?". The murderer of Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's prime minister, is a "religious" Jew who until this day keeps all the laws of kashrut and shabbat in jail, yet still fails to comprehend that "thou shall not kill" is also a mitzva.

What Kedoshim teaches us is that there is no difference between the mitzvot. Just as it is important to keep shabbat so it is important to fear one's parents and to love others like we love ourselves. God stressed "I am the Lord your God" on all the mitzvot and taught us that the path to holiness is seeing the entire body of the Torah as one unit, as one recipe for striving to be holy and follow his ways.

The idea for this week's Thought is from Yohanan Flusser.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Golden Week in Tohoku - Addendum

As I noted below, we stayed at a business hotel in Morioka City. Today we received the following email. The last sentence is a relatively mild example of Engrish:

Thank you very much for choosing your stay in TOYOKO INN Morioka Ekimae. This email is sent to the customer who made reservation of the hotel using online reservation system "Yado-Chokuhan".

How was the quality of your stay in TOYOKO INN Morioka Ekimae? It would be most grateful if you use simple and convenient online reservation system "Yado-Chokuhan" next time.

TOYOKO INN Morioka Ekimae Manager

We are waiting for your next coming from bottom of our heart.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Golden Week in Tohoku

This week is Golden Week in Japan, so named for the fortunate grouping of four national holidays together – Greenery Day, Constitution Day, National Day and Children’s Day - giving the week its auspicious name. We took advantage of this golden opportunity, so to speak, and joined throngs of Japanese vacationers on a 3-day trip to the Tohoku region in the northern part of Honshu, the main island of Japan.

Day 1 – Hiraizumi and Ichinoseki

We left Tokyo on the north-bound bullet train, the Tohoku Shinkansen. Two and half hours later we got off at Ichinoseki, a small city in Iwate prefecture. The plan was to drop our bags in a station locker and connect 20 minutes later to a local train that would take us to the town of Hiraizumi. Unsurprisingly, all the lockers at the station were taken and we had to search for lockers outside the station, resulting in a last-minute dash to catch the train. Normally, I would avoid unnecessary exercise when on vacation, but the next train was almost an hour later…

Hiraizumi is a small peaceful town that used to be of some importance in the 11th and 12th centuries, when it was ruled by the Fujiwara family. They built several temples and dwellings but then fell out with the shogun of the time, Minamoto Yorimoto, who got very angry and practically razed Hiraizumi to the ground. Indeed, when one walks around the grounds of the temples today, all that is left are signs explaining which building used to stand at which spot and a few foundations here and there. Not very impressive.

From Hiraizumi train station we walked to Motsuji temple. A block away from the station we heard someone call out our names; it was an Israeli couple from Tokyo we know, who are also touring this area. We were supposed to meet up with them in Morioka City in the evening, so meeting them like this in Hiraizumi was somewhat of a surprise… After the appropriate polite exchanges, we continued on to Motsuji.

This formerly large temple is mostly known today for its expansive garden with a big pond in the middle. Apparently, it is a special garden, categorized as a Pure Garden, a Buddhist concept of designing paradise-like gardens. To me, it looked pretty standard; much like many other parks in Japan.

Motsuji Temple, Hiraizumi

A short taxi ride away is the most famous temple in Hiraizumi: Chusonji. Actually, it is a collection of temples of varying sizes and shapes, strung along a mountain road which, at this time of year, was unsurprisingly packed with people. Of the original 300 buildings or so that made up Chusonji, only around 20 remain standing today. We walked along the road, popping into the various temples. Shortly after 2pm, while we were purchasing some ice cream, we heard drums and hurried over with everyone to watch a group of masked old ladies perform some ancient dance, accompanied by an octogenarian drummer. The children were mesmerised by the performance.

Dance at Chusonji Temple, Hiraizumi

To head back to the station we hailed a taxi. Strangely enough, it was the same driver that took us from Motsuji to Chusonji.

We took the train back to Ichinoseki and walked to the local river to have a bite to eat; we found a yakimo (sweet potato) vendor right by the river, which was fortunate. Several groups of Japanese were having a picnic and the flags they put up indicated they belonged to labour organizations, so apparently they were celebrating May Day. While eating we suddenly heard a choir singing; we turned around and saw a group of male singers accompanied only by a guitar singing some local songs. They were pretty good and seemed to be content to move around the picnic area and sing to different groups of people only to be rewarded by clapping and ample amounts of sake for free.

Singing by the river, Ichinoseki

Back at Ichinoseki station we boarded the shinkansen again, north to Morioka City, the biggest city in Iwate prefecture, where we were going to spend the night. While walking from Morioka station to the hotel, my son noticed a Tully’s coffee shop (a Japanese Starbucks-wannabe) and remarked wryly: “fancy that, a Tully’s; now that’s a good start”. A whole day in the countryside with no coffee shops, he finally reached what for him is a mark of civilization. Such an urban child…

Our hotel, a 2-minute walk from the station, belongs to a new chain of the so-called “business hotels”, catering mostly to business people and offering decent lodgings for a relatively low rate. During the holiday season, these hotels are very popular with tourists, mainly because of their convenient locations (near train stations) and their affordable prices. After showering and changing clothes we met up with our Israeli friends and trekked together to the only Starbucks in town, across the river; after a week-long abstention due to Pessach, we were eager for our dose of caffeine and hot chocolate.

Day 2 – Kakunodate and Tazawako

We got up around 8am to check the breakfast offered by the hotel. Turned out to be a buffet of miso soup, two types of onigiri (rice cakes) and coffee; not much help for us…

Around 10am we took the west-bound Akita Shinkansen to Kakunodate, less than an hour away in Akita prefecture. Because the cherry trees blossom in this area of Japan only in late April or early May, Kakunodate during Golden week is a powerful magnet for tourists. They flock to the area by train, bus and car to see the local sakura matsuri (cherry blossom festival). The city, a former castle town well-known for its preserved samurai district, turns almost totally white during this season. Aside from the “standard” somei yoshino variety of cherry trees, seen throughout Japan, this area is mostly known for the shidezakura variety, the so-called “weeping cherry trees”, with branches hanging down almost to the ground.

Weeping Sakura, Kakunodate

From the train station we walked for about half an hour to the old samurai district. Along one street are several old houses and mansions, some of which are open to the public and exhibit the way of life of the samurai. We walked along the street and took a look at some of the houses. We also tried what seemed to be a local specialty: rice on a stick, dipped in miso sauce and cooked for a couple of minutes on a charcoal grill. Beats the hell out of those grilled fish on sticks, a standard fare for any fair in Japan.

On the walk back to the station we walked along the Hinokinai river, where several hundred cherry trees provided the perfect background for hundreds of hanami (“flower watching”) picnics. Fortunately, despite the forecasted rain, we had a rather pleasant weather.

Hinokinai River, Kakunodate

Back at Kakunodate station we boarded the train again for a short ride to Tazawako station, at which we took a bus to Tazawako lake. The guide books say this lake is a popular spot for vacationers, but when we got there it was practically deserted. On the beach, the kids bounced up and down on a trampoline and their cries of joy echoed around the empty shores. The lady selling the tickets for the boat rides in the lake looked royally bored. Perhaps at this late hour (around 3pm) everyone was away at the onsen, enjoying a nice dip before dinner.

The ride back to Morioka City was uneventful. Back to our hotel (and a visit to Starbucks, needless to say) on our 2nd and final night.

Day 3 – Morioka City

Got up a bit later today, to check out and take a walk around Morioka City. First we walked around a shopping district not far from the hotel, but it was evidently too early (10am) for the shops to open. So we headed towards the main attraction of the city: Morioka Castle. This castle dates back to the early 17th century, but it was destroyed during the Meiji Restoration period and today all that remains are the huge stone walls that used to surround it. Here too many people were enjoying their hanami picnics under the cherry trees, although the blossom here was almost all gone.

We continued past the castle into the main business district. A distinctive building turned out to be the Bank of Iwate, looking oddly out of place with its European-style facade. We continued on to another of Morioka’s famous sites and a national treasure: the Rock-Splitting Cherry tree. This tree sprouted from a crack in a giant granite boulder, splitting the rock neatly in the middle as it grew. The sign said the tree is 300-400 years old and today it sits in the yard of the Morioka Court of Justice building.

Splitting Rock Cherry Tree, Morioka

On our way back to the station we walked through the main shopping area, a pedestrian mall which this time turned out to be rather lively. During our stroll we noticed a handful of gaijin; we noticed them because up until now we had seen no Western faces during this trip.

At 1:40pm we boarded the shinkansen back to Tokyo, "tired but content" as the saying goes.