On Your Honor

The purpose of this blog is for due respect at the Shabbat table. Please print, share, forward, etc.

As many authors know, the hardest thing about self-publishing is distribution.

Even in the age of Amazon, if you want exposure in the few remaining brick-and-mortar bookstores, it ain't easy.

In the summer of 5643 (1883), Rabbi Yisroel Meir Kagan published Volume I of his magnum opus, the Mishnah Berurah.

He then traveled personally from town to town to sell his books.

His previous book, the 1873 Chofetz Chaim, had been a best-seller.
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In one town, he noticed a notice about himself that someone had posted in a shul.

It stated that the Chofetz Chaim was the author of two books, Chofetz Chaim and Mishna Berurah. He immediately took out a pencil and added a few words to the bottom of the notice:

 

"Only the first volume of Mishnah Berurah has been published so far."

First question for your table: Why would he do that?

The Chofetz Chaim did this so that people would not give him respect for something he had not yet done. He wanted them to know the exact truth about what he had written and what he had not yet written.

As the Talmud says, if a person knows one tractate of Talmud well and he arrives in a place where people honor him as though he were an expert in two tractates, he is obligated to say, “I know only one!”

Second question for your table: Do ordinary people face this kind of test of avoiding undue honor, or only the honorable ones like the Chafetz Chaim?


​Shabbat Shalom

PS - https://cchf.global/

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How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Exams

The purpose of this blog is for a perspicacious Shabbat table. Please print, share, forward, etc

Happy Birthday shoutout to Elliott and Happy Anniversary to Marc+Lily & Joel+Lisa!

It has been a bitter-sweet week.

Alas, the myriads of myriads of cicadas have peaked. Their daily din has diminuendoed from fortissimo to forte to piano.

Just in time for myriads of students to concentrate on their exams, a bit late for myriads of others.

Those who didn't pass, I recommend you blame it on the cicadas and ask for a retest.

It's a once-in-seventeen-years excuse!

Every year, it seems to me there are several kinds of tests, both in school and in life:

A. A memory test - how many facts can you accurately recall?
B. A writing test - how well and fast can you write under pressure?
C. A character test - how well can you maintain your cool under pressure?
D. A thinking test - how well can you synthesize and apply the information you learned to a new situation?
E. An alacrity test - how well can you overcome your laziness and hit peak performance?

(I suppose that some tests combine two or more of the above.)

Questions for your table....

Do you enjoy or hate any of the above?
Do you excel at any of the above?
Can you improve at any of the above?
Do you want to?


​Shabbat Shalom

PS we are in the process of finding a cover design for the forthcoming Torah Health and Fitness book and would love your help. If you would like to look at 10 submissions and vote on the best, please send me an email and let me know!

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We're On First, But Who's On Second?

The purpose of this blog is for a controversial Shabbat table. Please print, share, forward, etc.

Last week I blogged about the awesome phenomenon of peak-cicada.

The other day, a friend gave me a list he had made of 17 things one can learn from cicadas.

Myself, I'm just observing them. Remember the sound I shared with you last week (it' has now dropped from fortissimo to forte)?

One thing you cannot miss when listening to them - millions of them - singing together is that the collective sound goes in waves.

I actually went under a tree this week with my hand-held sound meter and registered the wave fluctuating between 85-96 db. That unity, that harmony, is phenomenal. 

On the theme of multiplicity v. unity, here's a simple question for your table:

Does the Shema Yisrael mean that God is one or that God is three?

Obvious answer, right? 

Well, maybe not.

To many Christians, the Shema is in fact a declaration of the Trinity. 

You think this is just academic. It isn't. For nearly 2,000 years there has been an active effort to convert Jews to Christianity. 

This effort continues today both openly and surreptitiously (read this).

Question for your table: in our free-market world, should missionaries be allowed to operate in Jewish communities? 

Final question: How do we know that our interpretation of the Shema is right and their's is wrong?
 

​Shabbat Shalom
 

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Are Cicadas Sick?

The purpose of this blog is for a sick Shabbat table. Please print, share, forward, etc.

Here's another angle on the theme of unity (see Is G-d G--d and How to Be Mivatayr).

A common enemy unifies. So does a common experience.

Here in the East, everyone is sharing the experience of cicadas (sick-ay-daz), back in town after 17 years underground.

Are they a common enemy?

They are amazing creatures. After 17 years living on sap from tree roots, billions of them burrow out and climb up trees (some can't find a tree so they choose a tall blade of grass) where they use gravity to assist shedding their exoskeleton. You can see them doing this in real time - just walk up to a tree and you'll probably find one or more cicadas (or dozens) in some stage of mulching. 

Then they have to pump out their wings with hemorphin.

Then they have to learn to fly, which they practice on the ground. The problem with this stage is that many of them become road-kill and sidewalk-kill.

After a few days of flight practice, the males will fly up to a tree and select the best branch for egg-laying. These guys will then start chirping for the ladies to come and lay their eggs.

But because there are so many of them (estimated 1.5 million per acre), the chirping is getting louder and louder, each one chirping at around 100dB. Here is a recording I made yesterday in front of our house.

(Here in my office, where I rarely hear thunderstorms, I can now hear them.)

The best branch for egg-laying is a small, soft one, because she's going to saw into it and lay her eggs in there.

The larvae need to get to the ground, and often bring that branch with them. They burrow down and we'll see them in 17 years....

• The process naturally prunes trees, resulting in more flowers and fruit.
• They feed birds, bears, raccoons, reptiles and amphibians; as well as fish (bass, trout, carp, catfish, bluegill, walleye and muskie) contributing to a huge boom in these populations. Fly-fishing heaven!
• They also fertilize the ground, benefitting the trees and surrounding plants and their holes aerate your yard.

Question for your table - While they are like grasshoppers in our eyes, do you think they are like grasshoppers compared to us in their eyes?
 

​Shabbat Shalom

PS for a great book on amazing insects, click the image above.

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