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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