Land of Promise?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The purpose of this blog is to add some adventure to the Shabbat table... Please print and share...
 

Try this one at your table tonight:

Can you guess where the biggest boom in tourism happening right now?

It seems as though the hottest tourist destination is .... the Holy Land. 

I've lost track of how many people have told me recently that they are planning to go soon for a visit.

One of them asked, "I've been there many times, can you recommend something to do or see that I may not have done or seen?"

Since it's summertime, let's begin with some underground adventures:

In central Israel the Beit Guvrin caves are cool - in both senses of the word. You also have a world-class stalactite cave — Avshalom/Soreq Cave, in Stalactite Cave Nature Reserve. If you go to the Pool of Arches you can row a rowboat through a 1,200-year-old aqueduct.

(By the way, Harry Potter fans should stop and pay their respects at the nearby bona fide Harry Potter Tomb.)

Above ground, you surely won't be disappoint by a visit to Sataf Forest. Nearby is the celebrated Har Eitan goat/cheese farm.

Further north, Israel has a bird watcher's paradise - Hula Lake - where five hundred million migrating birds pause for a rest on their way from Europe to Africa and back. 

Keep going north - a summertime visit to Israel just isn't the same without a water-walk, and one of my favorite is Tel Dan.

In the opposite direction, another of my personal favorites is the Ramon Crater - the world's largest canyon! Hire a jeep tour for a day to enjoy the natural beauty and walk (or drive) in the footsteps of the Israelites who wandered in the area for 39 years before entering the Promised Land. (Even if desert wandering ain't your thing, check out the fabulous Beresheet Hotel overlooking it.

By the way, if you think you've seen everything there is to see in Jerusalem, but haven't been to its wonderful Biblical Zoo, please treat yourself - it does not disappoint.

Question for your table - if you could go to Israel for just one day - where would you go, what would you do?


Shabbat Shalom

PS - Shopping on Amazon? Please use https://smile.amazon.com and Amazon will donate a % of the sale to the non-profit of your choice (such as Jewish Spiritual Literacy), at no extra cost to you. Why not? 
 
Enjoyed this Table Talk? Vote with your fingers!  Like it, tweet it, forward it....

Dear Graduates...

The purpose of this blog is to add some color to the Shabbat table... Please print and share...

Congratulations to all the grads out there (including our own Emuna (college) and Yoseph (HS))!

And congrats to everyone else who made it through another school year (teachers and parents included)!

This week's Table Talk is devoted to all of you and to, well you know, to the places you'll go.

Since you're probably had it up to your gills in exams recently, let's start off with an easy-shmeasy question for the table:

We all know that it isn't OK to judge someone by their skin color... but why not? What's the proof that racism is wrong?

(If you say that it's obvious, then you must be immersed in Jewish values (or Dr. Seuss).)

So then - question #2 for the table - Since racism is so evil, why would God make a world of races (i.e., groups of people who look so different from one another)?

Yesterday's mail brought us a campaign flyer for a current candidate here in Maryland. To me, his skin appears the same shade as my own. Yet the flyer trumpets his founding and building "one of the largest black owned businesses in America."

Similarly, you may have heard of Michele Norris, former host of NPR's "All things Considered". As you can see from this image, she is a black woman.... ? Well, that's how I heard her describe herself once. But she looks whiter than I do.

Norris was for a time a major talking-head on the subject of race. Commenting on the Trayvon Martin shooting, she said:

"I've learned that all over the world, they may not call it racism, maybe it's bias, maybe it's tribalism."

But wait - isn't being Jewish being a "member of the Tribe"?

Norris created "The Race Card" - inviting the public to submit 6-word statements about race. Here's the link.

What 6 words would you submit?

Final question for the table - Is Norris right? Does tribalism = racism?

Shabbat Shalom

PS - if you missed last week's email, there was a glitch in the server, but it did get published online.
 

PPS - Can you guess how many days until Rosh Hashana?

PPPS - Shopping on Amazon? Please use https://smile.amazon.com and Amazon will donate a % of the sale to the non-profit of your choice (such as Jewish Spiritual Literacy), at no extra cost to you. Why not? 
 
Enjoyed this Table Talk? Vote with your fingers!  Like it, tweet it, forward it....

 

Digging Deeper...

 

The purpose of this blog is to uncover treasures at the Shabbat table....please share....
In memory of my dear grandmother Gigi (Sima bas Mordechai Yaakov), whose yahrzeit is tonight.
 

Digging Deeper...

As a counterpoint to last week's message about the stars, this week we're going down to earth. 

Or even deeper.

We are having some work done on our house that required a crew to come dig some holes next to the foundation.

Three men, three shovels, three holes. Dense Baltimore clay. Warm day.

I wanted to offer them cold drinks but they came prepared with a cooler of their favorite. So what could I offer them?

I went out when they arrived and greeted them. I went back an hour later and asked them, "Did you find any treasure? Any silver or gold?" 

They were amused by that and smiled.

I went out a few more times and complimented them on their work. I was happy to see that they were using our lawn chairs during their lunch break.

At the end of the day I asked again, "No gold or silver?" They all shook their heads with a smile and said, "Nada." They seemed to enjoy that lightheartedness. (I figured, I may not ever see them again, but they're working for me, I need to show them some hospitality.)

Before they left, they told me they'd return today at 7:30 am. But guess what? They didn't show up.

Was it something I said?

Question for your table: Some people feel that a boss needs to be tough, others say that the main thing is to be friendly. What do you say?

Shabbat Shalom


Appreciated this Table Talk? Like it, tweet it, forward it....

Galactic?

The purpose of this blog is to bring the heavens down to the Shabbat table....please share....

Imagine a project at Harvard to convene the greatest scholars in every field over a period of 100 years in order to create an encyclopedia of their collective knowledge. Who wouldn't want to see the final product?

This is the Talmud: a collection of wisdom that would surprise experts in any discipline, including law, ethics, psychology and economics. In the realm of cosmology, too, the Talmud makes assertions — sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical, and sometimes both.

To give one example, consider the Talmudic estimate of the number and distribution of stars in the universe.

In order to appreciate this passage, bear in mind two things.

First, the bulk of Talmudic wisdom is claimed to be a transmitted tradition, from Moses to Joshua, to the prophets, to the Elders, to the Great Assembly, and then to a chain of scholars until the completion of the Talmud 1,500 years ago. Hence it is called the "Oral Torah."

Second, consider the limitations of science 1,500 years ago: the telescope was invented in the 16th century, and the number of stars visible to the naked eye is approximately 9,000.

So what did the ancient rabbis say about the number of stars?

In Tractate Brachot, page 32b, the Talmud records a tradition, in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, that there are roughly 10^18 stars in the universe. This number is remarkably big and much closer to the current scientific estimate of 10^22 than common sense would allow.

Now, although it is interesting for an ancient people to have such a large estimate, this single coincidence could perhaps be explained as an extremely lucky guess. Never mind that no other ancient people had an estimate anywhere near this order of magnitude, nor did they have a conventional way to write such a number.

(I posted this passage on a discussion board of professional astronomers and no one could identify a single other ancient culture with remotely similar numbers.)

However, the Talmud doesn't merely give a raw number. The passage explains that the distribution of stars throughout the cosmos is neither even nor random. Rather, it states that they are clustered in groups of billions of stars (what we call galaxies?), which themselves are clustered into groups (what astronomers call galactic clusters?), which in turn are in mega-groups (what we call superclusters?).

To describe the stars as clustered together, both locally and in clusters of clusters, was far beyond the imaginations and the telescopes of scientists until Edwin Hubble's famous photographs of Andromeda (pictured above) in 1923. Galactic clusters and superclusters have been described only in the past couple decades.

Now, the Talmud puts the number of galaxies in a cluster at 30, the number of clusters in a supercluster at about 30, and that superclusters are themselves grouped into a bigger pattern of about 30 (megasuperclusters?) of which the universe has a total of about 360. Thus, the Talmud appears somewhat consistent with one major theory that the overall structure of the universe is shaped by the rules of fractal mathematics. I showed this data to numerous astronomers around the world and the consensus is pure astonishment.

Could it be that Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish made an extremely lucky guess? It's hard to understand how. Perhaps had he had used a number that had symbolic significance in Judaism, such as seven, 10, 18 or 40. What is the significance of the number 30? To my knowledge, there is no symbolic or religious reason for choosing that number. It therefore seems to me to be exactly what it claims to be: a conscientious oral transmission of a received tradition, rather than simply one person's guesstimate.

Moreover, Rabbi Shimon had a reputation for impeccable honesty; it is unthinkable that he would have invented these numbers or guessed without telling us so. In my opinion, the intent of the passage is to convey an oral tradition.

Question for your table: Does Rabbi Shimon want us to take him literally, or is his teaching an allegory that we should interpret? If it's an allegory, what's the meaning?

It seems to me that both could be true. He may indeed be transmitting an oral statement of scientific fact while at the same time intending to to teach a moral lesson — namely, that the vastness of the Cosmos stands in contrast to the uniqueness of Earth, of human life, of the Jewish People, and of the Torah.

Therein lies the secret of tomorrow night's festival of Shavuot: There is something special about the Torah (and rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated!). The Torah is much, much more than a mere "cultural expression" of one tiny group of ancient people, so numerically small that we reminded Mark Twain of a "nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way."

This passage about the stars is a mere five Talmudic lines, itself about as significant as a puff of star dust. But it also hints to the treasures available to those who seek them. Shavuot is a great time to begin.

Shabbat Shalom and 

Chag Sameach


Appreciated this Table Talk? Like it, tweet it, forward it....