Keinehara!

The purpose of this blog is to hear, see, and speak no evil at the Shabbat table....please print and share...

Dedicated to the refuah sheleima (full recovery) of Akiva Aryeh ben Eliya.

This weekly Table Talk is of course all about stirring up healthy table talk.

And last week's proposal for a new Olympic medal generated even more controversy than expected - including at our own table.

Keeping to that spirit, here's something to talk about that hopefully will generate just as much passion on both sides of the proverbial aisle.

Raise your hand if you ever heard someone say, "Keinehara!"

What does it mean and when is it said?

It came up in a conversation yesterday and I realized that there's a lot of confusion around this old Jewish expression.

My Bubbe (born in Chicago in 1911) used to say it. Not often, but enough for me to ask her about it. She said that her parents would say it after saying some good news, as in, "Rachel Schwartz is engaged, keinehara!" Or, "Keinehara, Murray Goldstein won the raffle!"

Notice how in these example, the good news being reported is about someone else.

In other words, it means something like, "I do not have a begrudging eye."

What's that supposed to mean?

Maybe the person saying, "Rachel Schwartz is engaged" also has a daughter of marriageable age. So keinehara means "I'm happy for her and don't envy them."

Here's another example. Let's say Reuvain is curious how many cars Shimon owns. If he simply asks, "Hey, Shimon, how many cars do you own?" maybe he's envious, or maybe the question comes in a spirit of criticism. In that case, Shimon should probably ignore him.

But what if Reuvain has a good reason to ask? Maybe he's Shimon's insurance agent. So he says, "Shimon, how many cars do you own, keinehara?"

In other words, you can feel safe answering me because it won't cause envy.

The etymology of keinehara is "without the evil eye". The evil eye is the eye of envy.

For your table: Who's being protected by saying keinehara - the person under discussion, or the person speaking?


Shabbat Shalom


PPS -  This week's 11-minute podcast is called "Nursing Home Insurance?" and there are 10 ways to hear it:

iTunes/iPhone … YidPod … Spotify … Google Podcasts … Pocketcasts … Stitcher … Podbean … Amazon Podcasts … RSS … or just on the web.

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

Radiant

When Moses descended from Mount Sinai after 80 days of learning the Torah directly from God, his face was karan-ohr - radiating light. Since Torah scrolls are written without vowels, a Christian translator (St Jerome) made an understandable error: he misread the word karan as keren - horn!

Consequently, Michelangelo's monumental sculpture of Moses, seen to this day in Rome, includes a pair of horns jutting from his head.

(Excerpted from the Amazing Jewish-Fact-a-Day Calendar)

Here's a pic in case you don't believe me! (You may want to print this to share at the dinner table...)

Wait a sec - when the chuckling dies down at your table, try asking these 2 questions:

Question 1 - How is a man's face shining with rays of light (so brightly that he had to wear a veil) less plausible than him growing horns?

Question 2 - Would you say the translator was WRONG or is it truthfully a matter of interpretation?

Shabbat Shalom


PS - If you think about it, everything is subject to this kind of debate around interpretation. Think about the US Constitution, think about the word "freedom".... For something meaningful and memorable to do with the family on President's Day, check out Freedom's Feast.

Just...Stop

The goal of this blog is to give you a conversation-starter at your dinner table. How about typing “CTRL-P” and taking it home?

Look at this unbelievable headline:

S Korea child 'starves as parents raise virtual baby'.

A South Korean couple who were addicted to the internet let their three-month-old baby starve to death while raising a virtual daughter online, police said.

Question for your Table: What's wrong with these people?

It's really simple, as tragic as it is:

They didn't know how to stop.

Someone recently asked me, "How can our family make Shabbat more meaningful?"

I answered, "What do you mean, 'Shabbat'?"

"You're asking me?"

"I know what I mean by Shabbat. But what do you mean by Shabbat?"

"I don't know. I guess that's part of the problem. I don't really know what it means."

Step 1: Look at the headlines. Look at your life. Do you sometimes go overboard, putting too much on your plate?

Step 2: Tonight, allow yourself to stop.

Just stop.

Try with the email.

Ooo, I know this is hard. See if you can go one evening (let's say Friday, for the sake of discussion), without doing email or internet.

Can you? Then you can do Shabbat.

Can't you? Then you need Shabbat.

Shabbat
Shtabbat
Shtab
Stab
Stop

Shabbat Shalom