Truth or Adar?

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Feb 28-Mar 1, 2025 • 1 Adar 5785 • Terumah (Ex 25-27).

The Talmud declares : "When Adar arrives, we increase our joy!"

Adar of course refers to the lunar month which begins tonight.

Woe to the teachers in Jewish schools. The merry mischief begins even today and ramps up a notch every day over the next two weeks.

It's like two weeks of old-style Halloween. Not "Trick or treat," just "Trick!"

I taught in a Jewish school like that once. My first year there I had to contend with random troops of truants bursting into my classroom, bellowing Purim songs and dancing around the room.

If it sounds cute to you, it is possibly cute the first time it occurs, but after the fourth or fifth or tenth time or actually even by the second time it is simply annoying.

And that's the lightest of examples!

(The next year I planned ahead and found an excuse to have a lock installed on the door.)

So this is actually a very profound question for your table – this very week like so many weeks we have all had such upsetting tragedies befall us - is it reasonable to expect or even talk about "When Adar arrives, we increase our joy!" ???? Does that tradition fall just a little bit flat this year?

Try asking this at your table.

A related question: Is the statement, "When Adar arrives, we increase our joy!" proscriptive or descriptive?

Maimonides (Rambam) seems to think that it's proscriptive, and his approach to "increasing joy" is instructive.

If you think about your typical "joyous moments", they're often moments of achieving something - whether it's accomplishing a task, solving a problem, winning an award, etc. There is indeed great joy in achievement.

But the Rambam says that the greatest way to increase joy is doing something for someone else.

(That's why a big part of Purim is giving money to the poor and food to everyone else.)

Not so easy you say? Easy I say. Just follow the ethic taught in our great book, Pirkei Avot:

    Greet every person with a smile.

Show them your beautiful smile. You don't think you have a beautiful smile? I beg to differ. I've literally never met someone who didn't have a beautiful smile. Any and every genuine smile is beautiful. When you smile at someone, you increase their joy. And your own.

A smile is the easiest, most affordable way of saying to another human being, "You matter."

Question for your table: Is that realistic - to greet every person with a smile?


Shabbat Shalom and 

Chodesh tov

Oy For An Aye?

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Feb 21-22, 2025 • 25 Shevat 5785 • Mishpatim (Ex 21-24).

Get Off Your...

My father z"l would occasionally season a conversation with random Yiddish words.

I suppose he heard these as a child from his grandparents – Iddish-reddendik (Yiddish-speaking) immigrants from Galicia.

Sometimes Yiddish can say it better than English. That's why Americans know what chutzpah is and can recognize schmaltz when they hear it. And from my father I learned to call my in-laws (i.e., the parents of my child's spouse) my mechutanim. 

In order to encourage a child's movement on a lazy Sunday morning, he would say, "Get off your tuchus!"

The dictionary spells it tochus and I learned recently some consider it to be rather impolite.

Hmm... Tuchus literally means "bottom" and perhaps my West Coast upbringing is showing, but my father never uttered a profanity in his life as far as I know, so I refuse to allow his clean image be tarnished by such linguistic puritanism.

It comes from the Hebrew word tachat, which is used in the Torah in a very interesting way:

Ayin tachat ayin, shayn tachat shayn. 

Translation: "An eye tachat an eye, a tooth tachat a tooth."

Now, I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, doesn't it go, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?

That's certainly what Christian's translators say (or more vividly here).

Their imprecision is understandable. It helps underscore their message that Christianity must supplant Judaism because "Old Testament" law is unbearably harsh.

My friend Shaya Cohen points out that throughout the Torah, the term tachat always means an exchange for or comparison to something of lesser value. Whenever the Torah has something tachat something, the second item is beneath or below the first one.

In this case, exchange or compensation for the eye is money. Money is certainly of lesser value than the lost eye. Can any amount of money ever truly replace an eye – a device of incredible complexity and incalculable value? Compensating someone who lost an eye with money is the epitome of tachat.

Therefore the Torah's most famous declaration of justice – ayin tachat ayin – is not at all retributive, rather is compensatory. That's the literal meaning, without needing to resort to drash interpretation. 

Question for your table: If true compensation for such bodily harm is indeed impossible, why even bother assessing damages? Since the eye, or the tooth, or the life, cannot be restored, what's the point of this imperfect justice?

Shabbat Shalom

PS - With Purim fast approaching, you may want to click on the above image.

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A version of this post may be read on the Times of Israel. 

Counting On You?

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Feb 14-15, 2025 • 17 Shevat 5785 • Yisro (Ex 18-21).

Announcement - We just released a new and improved edition of Restoring the Kuzari.

Did you ever see a child counting on her fingers to solve a math problem and think, "She's got to learn how to do that without her fingers!"

Well, it has been known for almost a decade that counting on your fingers is actually good for your brain.

Brain scans have shown how a person who learned to add and subtract with their fingers has more brain activity in the "sensory" areas of the brain even later in life when they are no longer using their fingers. This connection may help explain why musical skill and especially piano often goes hand-in-hand with numeracy. 

(It also underscores the power of using physical "manipulatives" in education. Visual is great - hands-on is even better. I don't know how to get this message across to our school leaders, but I'll keep shouting it until somebody listens.)

Now, try this at your table: ask everyone to hold up their hands and look at their fingers. Then ask: "What Jewish connection do they invoke?"

I wonder how many Jewish v. non-Jewish people would immediately say, "The 10 Commandments!"

It never ceases to amaze me how many Jews are tuned out of the 10 Commandments and how many non-Jews care about them.

So then try this one at your table: "Name the 10 Commandments, in order."

(You may have to add, "OK, how about out of order?")

Let's appreciate this a little deeper.

For one time in your life, put yourself in a Christian's shoes.

You believe that the Torah has become the "Old Testament" and that the New Testament reigns supreme.

You don't practice circumcision (although you're a bit fuzzy on the why...).

You "affirm the moral authority of the 10 Commandments" but believe that only 9 are presently binding. Why only 9? Again, a bit fuzzy...

(The one that they believe is no longer binding or at least not on Gentiles is the mitzvah of stoping your normal routine on the Seventh Day and to sanctify it.)

Question for your table – Is it a net positive for the Jews and/or the world that the Evangelicals like to post the Top 10 in public spaces? (Never mind that we can't seem to agree on what they are.)

Ironically, Jews agree that the Torah (including the 10) does not pertain to Gentiles and yet we have no quarrel with someone who wants to follow them ... with one exception - the Sabbath.   

So it's a double-irony.

Here's one more question that most Jews and Gentiles equally cannot answer - What does the Torah call the 10 Commandments? After all, aren't there 613 commandments?

The answer: The 10 Declarations.

Question: What's the significance of that nuance? 


Shabbat Shalom

PS - The pic above links to a great book for helping children develop their numeracy.

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Are You a Whitey Or a Pinky?

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Feb7-8, 2025 • 10 Shevat 5785 • Bishalach (Ex 13-17).

Here's a follow-up to last week's follow up to the Moral Compass question from two weeks ago...

This week's title refers to salt. Are you a plain Norton Table Salt kind of person, or are you a fancy pink Himalayan salt kind of person?

I can tell you why I personally jumped on the pink bandwagon for awhile. 

- It's cool.
- It's reasonably priced on Amazon.
- It doesn't come from the polluted ocean.

The ocean has microplastics, heavy metals and who knows what.

I just discovered that our favorite Nori seaweed carries the California Prop 65 warning - it's likely tainted with lead or mercury.

The scariest thing about microplastics is that nobody has any idea if and how they may harm us - and now they're being found in all parts of the human body, including the brain.

We at least have a clue about the source of oceanic microplastic - much comes from the tire wear of 1,500,000,000 cars on the world's roads (the tires on your car are more than ¼ plastic).

But what about the microplastics they're now finding high in the Himalayas? And one study found that the Himalayan pinks rank worst among salts for microplastic contamination.

And just as bad - some Himalayan pink salts have lead and arsenic above the Prop 65 levels. Here's a full article by consumer activist Leah Segedie who tested them. She states: "The good news is no salt product came back with the equivalent levels that would require a Prop. 65 warning based on serving size per day."

And there's an additional issue: iodine - Himalayan salt, Trader Joe's boutique seasonings, salt in processed foods - none of those are iodized, and iodine deficiency is a real concern.

So what salt(s) to choose?

I'm happy to report that good ol' fashioned Morton iodized table salt has tested very favorably in terms of heavy metals. But no info on the microplastics. And the common critique of Morton salt is that:

Typical table salts such as Morton’s has been heavily processed, bleached and heated. This high heat changes the chemical structure of sodium chloride, transforming it into a state that is no longer natural and different from what our bodies are designed to digest and use. An additive called calcium silicate is then added to prevent clumping.

According to the principle "the less processed, the better," here are interesting options that I'm currently looking at.... 

Seasonello - from Sardinia (one of the Blue Zones) - iodized
Redmond Real Salt - from a Utah salt mine - not iodized

(BTW, if you use non-iodized salt, you can get your daily RDA from a couple glasses of milk, 12 or so ounces of Greek yogurt, or six eggs. Or a sheet of seaweed, if you can find any without the Prop 65 warning!)

Question for your table - Does this entire discussion really matter, or is it mere alarmism? 


Shabbat Shalom

and Happy Tubishvat (next week)


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Are You An Inny Or An Outty?

 

 

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Jan 31/Feb 1, 2025 • 3 Shevat 5785 • Bo (Ex 10-13).

Here's a follow-up to last week's Moral Compass question...

Ask at the table: In the Passover story, what's the part about the blood?

To refresh your memory: the Israelites are commanded to take a sheep, slaughter it, and paint some of its blood on the doorposts and lintel of their homes.

The sheep, you may recall, was a sacred animal to Egypt. Slaughtering it and putting its blood anywhere would have been a tremendous symbolic act. 

It would be akin to a modern-day Moses telling the Jews of America to burn an American flag on their lawn. (Or pick a country and its flag.) 

In the merit of this mitzvah, they would be spared suffering Plague #10 - the Death of the Firstborn.

They dutifully do so, and at precisely midnight every first-born in Egypt dies, but the Israelite first-borns are spared. 

This blow is so severe that Pharaoh and his people finally tell the Jews, "OK, please go now! And good riddance!"

There are many questions we could ask about this episode. Here's one that always interested me: On which side of the doorpost did they put the blood? Inside or outside?

But how does it impact the symbolism if the blood is on the inside or the outside?

Typically, the Midrash contains both opinions.

Is it possible that they're both true? That some Jews who were afraid of offending their neighbors kept the whole ritual on the inside, while the more bold put it on the outside?

Question for your table - What about you? If you had to burn your country's flag on your lawn, would you burn it on the front lawn or the back lawn? Are you an Inny or an Outty?

Shabbat Shalom

PS - For the record I'm not advocating flag-burning! It's a thought experiment. No flags were burnt in the writing of this email.

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Finding True North?

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Jan 24-25, 2025 • 25 Teves 5785 • Va'eira (Ex 6-9).

Dovetailing on last week's theme of exercising your brain every day....

Yesterday I learned something about the North Pole.

Let's start it off with a trivia question for your table:

Which way does a compass point?

The answer is not north nor towards the North Pole.

The correct answer is: toward magnetic north.

Second question for your table: Where is the magnetic north pole?

I've always understood it vaguely to be somewhere north of Canada. Meaning, if you are in the center of North America, your compass may actually point north. But further east, your compass will actually point northwest and in the west, the your compass is going to be point northeast!

Like many topics in the world (and in Torah), it's actually WAY more complicated than that, because:

A compass aligns itself to the local geomagnetic field, which varies in a complex manner over Earth's surface, as well as over time (Wikipedia).
    
It has also been known for a long time that the Earth's magnetic field (and magnetic north) has shifted over time.

What I learned this week is that it's shifting a lot faster than I had thought – it actually appears to be accelerating. It's now moving about 35 miles per year – that's about 500 feet per day! Which is about 20 feet (6m) per hour, or 4 inches (10cm) every minute! 

And the shifting seems to be sending magnetic north towards Siberia.

As you might guess, there are two longitudinal locations on Earth where compasses do perform as advertised. Try asking everyone at the table to guess where?

According to the maps, one is in central US and the other runs through central Africa and Europe. But if it continues to move towards Siberia, it looks to me like soon the line of 0 declination will run through Israel.

Question for your table - Is a moral compass analogous? Is there such thing as "True North" on a moral compass that many people miss because Moral Magnetic North is not only different, it's always changing?

If so, how does one find True North?

Shabbat Shalom

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The Most Important Thing To Be Doing Right Now?

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Jan 17-18, 2025 • 18 Teves 5785 • Shemos (Ex 1-5).

Dovetailing on last week's Superman theme, many people I talk to feel the need to be a superhero.

They feel a great weight on their shoulders of big problems. National problems. Global problems.

And of course they feel helpless, because most of the time they are helpless. 

Look, if you know me, you know that I've been the first one on the block to roll up the sleeves and do something. I'm not usually armchair-quarterbacking through life. 

Yes, everyone should vote. Every vote counts, right?

Sort of. Maybe. Sometimes, maybe. 

Does it really matter if I try to plant trees to offset my carbon footprint? 

Does it really matter if I walk to work and avoid adding some tiny amount of microplastics to the oceans?

Does it really matter if I write my Member of Congress to ask him to stop wasting money on mailing out customized 2025 We, the People Calendar to constituents? 

This calendar is the epitome of government waste. Putting aside the fact that it's a wall calendar adorned with humdrum pictures of Washington, DC, every date of the year is pre-filled with "factoids for each day corresponding to the same date 200 years earlier."

For example:

January 16 — 1825: J. Q. Adams dines with J. W. Taylor.
January 17 — 1825: PA legislature condemns an act passed in NY allowing NY to use PA lands for mining.
January 18 (spoiler alert!) — 1825: House considers appropriation to complete "the Public Road" from Pensacola to St. Augustine, in teh Florida Territory.

I'm not sure what's more stunning, that our dear Congressman would consider it appropriate to purchase and send out these calendars, or that someone would consider it an appropriate use of resources to research and produce them.

Given this context of problems large and small, today's burning question is, What's the most important thing to be doing right now?

I would like to suggest an answer based on the Rambam (Maimonides). He says that the reason we were put on this Earth is not to solve the world's problems. There is no such tikkun olam imperative in Classical Judaism. The imperative is tikkun hanefesh - to repair yourself. And that means - per the Rambam - to think. We were put here to learn how to think.

Question for your table: What does he mean by that?


Shabbat Shalom

PS - The book linked in that image above will change the way you think!

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What Do You Do For ... Living?

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Jan 10-11, 2025 • 11 Teves 5785 • Vayechi (Gen 47-51).

Your dream is to have a fabulous home. On the beach. Where you can watch a beautiful sunset every day of the year.

You work hard for that dream. Then you achieve it.

Then what? What are you going to do with the next fifty years of your life?

We don't wish suffering or loss on ANYONE (with perhaps a few exceptions...). 

When it's someone else's suffering, our only response is sympathy and lending a hand.

But when it's our own suffering, we're allowed to ask this question - what is this tragedy or catastrophe teaching me? What lesson can I learn about life or about myself from this?

Christopher Reeve did it. He was at the top of the American dream - Hollywood, wealth, fame, honor, great health.

And then one misstep while competitive horseback riding, in one second he became a paraplegic. 

He spent two years feeling sorry for himself.

Then he decided to stop moping and to try to do something meaningful with his life.

Life as a paraplegic was extremely challenging. Just getting dressed in the morning was a laborious, time-intensive chore.

Even speaking was a struggle, and he had ot pause after every few words to catch his breath.

And what's the most important thing he wanted audiences to know about his life?

How he landed the role of Superman?

How beautiful was his house in Malibu? (OK, it wasn't Malibu, but was indeed beautiful).

Nope.... he wanted the audience to know this: "I've never been happier than I've been since my accident."

Every member of the audience was thinking, "Did I hear him right?"

He continued: "I've never been happier, because my accident taught me something that I might have never learned. Before my accident, I thought that I was my body. Everything was about my body. But since my accident, I barely have a body. Yet I'm still able to live! I'm able to make my wife happy, I'm able to speak to children and cheer them up. My accident taught me that I am not my body."

There is something about us that transcends our bodies and our homes, and everything physical. But we're so busy feeding our bodies, seeking pleasures for our bodies, taking care of our bodies and homes and other things, we're sometimes so enveloped by the physical part of living that the spiritual part is fast asleep.

Every loss is a loss. After the pain subsides, it's also an opportunity, a wake-up call. 

This is my own "Superman" meditation, about me and my own sufferings.

(For anyone else, only sympathy, empathy, and a helping hand.)

Question for your table: What's your superman vision - when push comes to shove, what makes life worth living for you?

 

Shabbat Shalom

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 This message can also be read on Times of Israel.

The Jew Who Wore Two Hats

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Jan 3-4, 2025 • 4 Teves 5785 • Vayigash (Gen 44-47).

Did you ever hear the one about the Jew who wore two hats?

The punchline is, When was there ever a Jew who did NOT wear two hats?

Certainly not for the past 2,500 years, which is the majority of our history.

For most of Jewish history, we have done this balancing act between two IDs.

For example, we have our Jewish ID, in which we've been living in the year '85 since Rosh Hashanah. 

But we also have our .... Christian (yes, I went and said it - Gregorian calendar is from Pope Gregory XII) ID, which just began it's year '25. 

We have our Chanukah, with our candles in the window.

But when we to the public Menorah-lighting next to the giant decorated tree, we have our "Jewish Christmas."  

At home, we have the rhythm and richness and tradition of Shabbat.

But outside, we have le weekend.

At home, we have the wisdom of Torah.

But everywhere else, we have "Biblical literature."

For your table, here are some other concepts that can make us wear two hats. Try challenging everyone to come up with the two (or more) versions of each.

• Ethics
• Faith
• Kindness
• Miracle
• Peace
• Pleasure

Question for your table: Are we forced to wear two hats, or is it a choice?

Shabbat Shalom


PS - This dichotomized analysis of Judaism was inspired by the above book (click on the image).
 

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