What Makes a Hero?

Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

July 28, 2023 • 11 Menachem Av 5783 • Parshas Va'eschanan (Deut 4-7)

The purpose of this blog is to make you a hero at the Shabbat table - please share.

The story of Roi Klein has been told and told and told and told. It must be a story worth telling.

On July 26, 2006, Klein dove on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers.

In the last seconds before the grenade exploded beneath him, his comrades heard him say - loudly and passionately - Shema Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Echad! 

(That's what we're taught we should want to be on our lips in our last moment of life.)

Click on the image above for the inspiring book about his life, or watch this 5-minute video.

Two questions for your table.

First: Roi saved fellow Jews that day, but made his wife a widow and his children orphans (not to mention other bereft loved ones). He could perhaps have saved himself that day and returned home to his wife and two young children — did he do the right thing?

Second: When you read about his life, you realize that his martyrdom was not in a vacuum – he was an extraordinary individual in many respects. Does everyone have such opportunities for heroic self-sacrifice, in their own contexts? Or is heroism only reserved for the extraordinary individuals?

(Here's his official memory site with inspiring details about his life and personality.)


Shabbat Shalom

 

Enjoyed this Table Talk? Vote with your fingers! Like it, tweet it, forward it....

If You Can't Stand the Heat...?

Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

July 21, 2023 • 4 Menachem Av 5783 • Parshas Devarim (Deut 1-3)

The purpose of this blog is to make Shabbat great again - please share.

Alert: we just added a very useful page about how to stay healthy while working at a desk job - go to TorahHealth.org and see the Exercise section.

Get out of the kitchen...?

Isn't that what you're supposed to do?

First question for your table: 

What if there's nowhere else to go?

Yesterday, a friend told me a remarkable story about his father.

His father grew up in the classic Jewish town of Dubno. One day, the Germans arrived and rounded up all of the young men. This was  apparently at first a military roundup, not yet a "Holocaust" roundup (but the distinction may be irrelevant). 

Naturally, they separated the Jewish boys from the Gentile ones and locked them in separate rooms. Both groups were fed the same daily ration, about one piece of stale bread per day. 

These bread rations were precisely cut, in true German fashion.

One day, the German guard thought he'd have a little fun. He went to the Gentile group, opened the door, and instead of lining them up to distribute the bread, he dumped the entire container onto the floor.

What ensued was pandemonium - a veritable brawl that resulted in the stronger boys getting food and the weaker ones getting nothing.

The Jewish boys didn't witness this; they heard the sounds of pandemonium but only understood what had happened after the guard pulled the same stunt on them.

He came to the Jewish cell to extend the fun, dumping the container of precision-cut stale bread morsels onto the floor.

Nobody moved. 

After a long pause, one boy stood up, gathered all of the bread, and the Jewish boys lined up and each received his ration.

These were not necessarily religious boys. They were just Jewish boys. They were the product of 3,000 years of transmitting the values of the Torah from parents and grandparents to children and grandchildren.

Shabbat Shalom

Enjoyed this Table Talk? Vote with your fingers! Like it, tweet it, forward it....

Yes, both images are clickable!!

The mission of Jewish Spiritual Literacy, Inc. (JSLI) is to foster a paradigm-shift in spiritual and moral education in general, including but not limited to Jewish education, towards an experiential pedagogy that transforms students with its spiritual vision and relevance to their daily lives.

We envision a future when every human being can access and enjoy the incredible database of 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom.

The Measure of a Man?

Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

July 7, 2023 • 19 Tamuz 5783 • Parshas Pinchas (Num 25-30)

The purpose of this blog is to measure yourself up at the Friday night dinner table - please share.

Yes, it's true: TorahHealth.org has new resources this week - check it out.

I wonder how many people share my mixed feelings about government leakers. I love them and hate them at the same time.

This image is of the late Daniel Ellsberg in the prime of his fame/infamy.

He died three weeks ago at age 92. All major news media carried an obituary.

He of course helped hastened the end of the Vietnam War by leaking the secret history of the war that he himself helped write at the State Department.

Hero or traitor? That's the political question that everyone loves to debate.

I'd like to ask a different question: What drove him to do it?

What led this patriotic Harvard graduate to violate his sacred duty to keep government secrets secret?

The dilemma was very real:

"Do I keep my silence, go along with presidential deception, not reveal it to Congress or the public? Or should I take what I knew was the very great risk of giving Congress a real indication of where the country was going on this? And I decided that it was worth a life in prison to do that."

If you dig deeply enough into his biography, there are two pieces of random information that I think need to be connected together.

One is his parents - Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. They converted to Christian Science but (per their son) always considered themselves part of the Jewish "family." That's Exhibit A.

Fast forward to his release of the Pentagon Papers. President Nixon tried to stop the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. This is the oft-told story of a great test case for freedom of the press.

Meanwhile, Ellsberg was arrested and tried for espionage, facing a potential prison sentence of 110 years. This was no surprise, he and his Jewish wife, Patricia (née Marx) were prepared for that consequence.

In other words, his leak of the Pentagon Papers was done fully conscious that he might spend the rest of his life in prison.

"Did you have any second thoughts at the time?" an AP reporter asked him after Judge Byrne declared a mistrial.

Ellsberg's response:

How can you measure the jeopardy that I'm in - whether it's 10 years, 20 years, 115 years or other ludicrous amounts like that - to the penalty that has been paid already by 50,000 American families here and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese families?

In my opinion, that's the voice of a pintele Yid - a Jewish neshamah. That's the voice of 3,300 years of Jewish history. Being Jewish doesn't determine whether or not you'd blow the whistle, but it does make you seriously contemplate doing so.

Let's put this to the table: Had you been in Ellsberg's shoes, what would you have done?

Shabbat Shalom

PS - Want more about Ellsberg? Click the pic above. 

Enjoyed this Table Talk? Vote with your fingers! Like it, tweet it, forward it....