Sunday, March 26, 2017

Dad Trump--buy my Chametz!!! and Rehearsal of the Passover Sacrifice on April 6, 2017

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Rabbi Yehuda Lave

Your Personal Story About Your Self-Confidence

We all tell ourselves our life story. Even if a person doesn't consciously recognize that he is telling himself a story about his life, his life story has a major impact. Everyone's story about his life has major themes running through it. Some people have a highly spiritual life story. Some people have life stories about developing positive character traits while others don't.  Some life stories are full of gratitude, others aren't.

Even if someone isn't satisfied with his life story until now, he can choose to change the theme of his life story at any given moment. It's never too late.

This concept of our personal life stories applies to our thoughts about our self-confidence. What stories do you tell yourself about your self-confidence? Change the way you view your life story to improve your self-confidence.

When you think about different situations that might arise in your life, see yourself thinking, speaking and acting with greater self-confidence.

These thoughts will lead to improved words and actions.

Love Yehuda Lave

Four Jewish brothers left home for college, and eventually, they became successful doctors and lawyers, and prospered.

Some years later, they chatted after having dinner together.

They discussed the gifts that they were able to give to their elderly mother, who lived far away in another city.

The first said, "I had a big house built for Mama."

The second said, "I had a hundred thousand dollar theater built in the house."

The third said, "I had my Mercedes dealer deliver her a SL 600 with a chauffeur."

The fourth said, "Listen to this. You know how Mama loved reading the Torah and you know she can't anymore because she can't see very well. I met this Rabbi who told me about a parrot that can recite the entire Torah. It took twenty rabbis 12 years to teach him. I had to pledge to contribute $100,000 a year for twenty years to the temple, but it was worth it. Mama just has to name the chapter and verse and the parrot will recite it." The other brothers were impressed.

After the holidays Mama sent out her Thank You notes.

Milton - Bubbeleh, the house you built is so huge, I live in only one room, but I have to clean the whole house. Thanks anyway.

Marvin - Mine Shayne Kindeleh. I am too old to travel. I stay home. I have my groceries delivered, so I never use the Mercedes and the driver you hired is a Nazi. The thought was good. Thanks.

Menachem - Tataleh, you give me an expensive theatre with Dolby sound, it could hold 50 people, but all my friends are dead. I've lost my hearing and I'm nearly blind. I'll never use it. Thank you for the gesture just the same.

Dearest Melvin - You were the only son to have the good sense to give a little thought to your gift. The chicken was delicious.

Rehearsal of the Passover Sacrifce on April 6, 2017

The traditional "rehearsal" of the Pascal sacrifice ceremony which the Temple Organizations Headquarters runs before Passover every year – just in case the Messiah would arrive and insist we revive the practice – this year was moved to the Kotel area, on Thursday afternoon, April 6, 2017.

In years past we've seen the same practice run carried out for the benefit of packed crowds in school yards and synagogues. The ritual back then was being pushed and often hosted by MK Yehuda Glick (Likud) in the days before he was an MK. Happily, the enthusiasm in Jerusalem has been growing to the point where it makes more sense to hold it at a central enough and big enough a location.

Also, should the Messiah actually show up, moving the whole thing up to the Temple Mountain should take only a few minutes, literally.

So, we're all invited (alas, without the Messiah on hand this is still not compulsory) to the Pascal Sacrifice Demonstration and Drill, with white-clad Kohanim-priests, gold and silver elongated trumpets, blood sprinkling vessels, and, most important, the holy bar-b-cue.

A goat will be slaughtered, skinned and stretched on a spit fire – the Torah commands us not to break any of its parts, a show of our "holy chutzpa," as Reb Shlomo would have put it, in the face of Egyptian idolatry (barbecuing a goat in April, the month ruled by Aeries, was tantamount to eating a cow in downtown New Delhi).

The Davidson Center, Jerusalem / Photo credit: Google Earth

Chief rabbis from many Israeli cities, government ministers, Knesset members and members of the Jerusalem City Council will be on hand. The schedule, as per the poster disseminated online will be:

4 PM – Classes on the renewal of the Pascal sacrifice in our day at the Kotel Yeshiva auditorium. Turns out there are some halachic opinions suggesting we are obligated to carry out the sacrifice even before the arrival of the Messiah.

5:30 PM – The launch of the application "The Temple Mount Is in my Hands," which one could play to accompany his or her ascent to the Temple Mount.

6 PM – The sacrifice drill at the Jerusalem Archaeological Park – Davidson Center, the Temple Mount Excavations, near the Dung Gate.

For assistance call 054-572-0066 or 054-534-3545

 

 

K A H A N E

The magazine of the Authentic Jewish Idea

March-April 1989   Adar-Nissan 5749

 

Arrogance of Ignorance

 

In day days when men were humble enough to know what they were – and what they were not; what they knew – and what they did not, the ignoramus knew his place.  Whatever arrogance existed was the province of those who were, at least, nominally scholars.  And so, while ignorance and arrogance are both attributes to be shunned, their separation was at least a small favor for which to be grateful.  But, times have changed and we are today, victims of the ultimate curse – the arrogance of ignorance.  The unabashed and haughty readiness to display one's abysmal and absurd ignorance before people and congregation is the symbol of our wretched times.

 

The latest exhibitionist of sheer nescience is one Yitzhak Ro'eh, a leftist writer for the Histadrut Daily Davar.  What prompted his latest outburst of superficiality was anger.  Mr. Ro'eh is angry.

 

And why is Mr. Ro'eh angry?  Because, following an attempt by four Arab terrorists to infiltrate into Israel and murder Jews, the Israeli Army superbly met them and eliminated all of them. And then – and this is what causes the blood to rise in Mr. Ro'eh's head – and then, photographers were allowed to snap photos of the dead terrorists who had sought to murder Jews. 

 

"Gevald!" shouts Mr. Ro'eh who – as we will soon see, is a very moral person.  What an outrage against decency and morality to rejoice and exhibit the bodies of four people who attempted to murder Jews and were killed by the Jewish army.  Or in his words:

 

"Every person and his own associations.  When I saw the large color photos of the four terrorists who were eliminated in Lebanon, the following line from the Passover Hagada, began to ring in my ear: 'The work of my hands are drowning in the sea and you sing?'"

 

And Mr. Ro'eh then spends the next four paragraphs detailing all the things that were outrageous about those photographs, and concludes:  "All this adds up to a growing insensitivity, a deepening dulling of the senses… The one who wrote 'do not rejoice when your enemy falls,' would, probably, agree with me:  When your enemy falls do not be photographed with him.

 

One hardly knows where to begin to plough through this trash heap of utterly foul ignorance and arrogance.  But we shall try.  To begin with, the words, "the work of My hands are drowning in the sea…" do not appear anywhere in the Hagada but are to be found in the Babylonian Talmud (Megila 10b and Sanhedrin 39b), an area of Jewish knowledge that remains for Ro'eh the ignoramus, a dark, exotic, virgin area, untouched by him or his study.  Indeed the utter superficiality of the man leads one to wonder whether, when he writes "the one who wrote 'do not rejoice,' etc…,"  does he really know who did write it.

In any event, one more thought before disposing of the arrogant ignoramus.  I am always impressed by the intellectual fraud that is an inevitable part of all the secular haters of Judaism of observant Jews.  They are blessed with an amazing ability to selectively choose what they wish from the very same books of Judaism that are filled with verses, sayings, concepts and laws that run counter to the most basic things in which they believe.  The very same religious books they despise for "racism," "cruelty," "barbarity" and "obscurantism," suddenly become proper repositories of truth when they spy in them a thing that apparently agrees with their own warped concepts.  Intellectual honesty was never the strong suit of the schizophrenic secularists, leftists and Hellenists who lack the courage to entirely drop the Jewishness they so desperately despise.

 

In any event, back to Mr. Ro'eh, so that we can dispose of him before the same people and congregation in whose presence he so arrogantly displayed his naked ignorance.  The need to do this is compounded a thousand times over by the fact that the ignoramus Ro'eh is joined not only by so many semi-ignorant others, but worst of all – by so many tortured Moderdox types who cannot bear to accept the stark truth of authentic Jewish values

 

As always, the Ro'ehs (and others) of the world selectively and very partially quote the Talmud.  The selection they bring down really begins with R. Yeshoshua ben Levi starting his lecture on Megilat Esther with the verse "As the L-rd rejoiced over you ("sas") to do you good, so the L-rd will rejoice over you ("yasis") to cause you to perish." (Dvarim 28).  And the Talmud asks: Does the Almighty then rejoice over the fall of the wicked?  And to prove that he does not rejoice, the story of the angels asking to sing praise is brought.  And this is where Ro'eh, the ignoramus, stops.  But there is more.  The Talmud continues with answers as follows:

 

"Rabbi Elazar said:  it is true that He does not rejoice, but he causes others to rejoice."

 

Ah, what a difference.  And a clear answer to the obvious question:  If G-d does not want us to rejoice and praise Him when our enemy falls why in the world does it say:  "Then Moses and the children of Israel sing this song unto the L-rd…?" (Shmot15) 

 

And a clear answer to why the rabbis say:  (Mechilta, B'shalach, II):  "The L-rd shall perform for you miracles and glories and you will stand and do nothing?  Said Israel unto Moses: What are we to do?  Said he unto them:  You will glorify and praise and give song and glory and greatness to the One to whom wars belong."

 

Of course the Almighty, the totality of compassion, the Father of all, grieves for His children – all of them.  He does not sing.  His angels, who are not of this world, do not sing.  But the Jews do.  Not only are they allowed to, they are commanded to… For the very same reason that the very same Almighty, though He does not sing, does destroy the work of His hands because they are evil.

 

Yes, of course He grieves.  He grieves that those who were made in His image have so perverted and destroyed the greatness of that image.  That those who were made in the image of good, were so evil.  And so, He grieves for the perversion of His purpose in making the world, for His works that have so gone astray.  And in His grief He does not have pity:  He destroys them: He knows that evil and He cannot share the same world, as our rabbis say:  "As long as the wicked rule in the world, the Holy One Blessed be He, so to speak, cannot sit on His throne." (Yalkut Tehilim, Chapter 47).

 

And so, because the arrogance of the enemy of the Jewish people, their brazen persecution of the people of G-d with no fear of G-d, is the very essence of Hillul Hashem, the Almighty in wrath destroys them and the Children of Israel must sing and glorify G-d.  And thus do the rabbis declare (Shmot Raba 23):  "then did Moses and the Children of Israel sing," this is what is meant by the verse (Psalms' 9):  "The L-rd is known by the judgment He executes."  This speaks of Egypt whom G-d smote at the Red Sea."

 

The seal of the Almighty is truth and only that truth will emerge from His lips and His teachings.  One imagines the agony of the soul that Ro'eh must endure every Purim as all the misguided and insensitive and sense-dulled Jews celebrate, rejoice and drink to the death of their enemy, Haman.  One sees the lonely Ro'eh the lost of the Just sitting gloomily alone in his apartment, bemoaning the spiritual fall of the Jew and the spread of Kahanism among us all.  Even as the Jewish people rejoice on Purim. Mr. Roe'h sits with the following ringing through his ear:  "The work of My hand…"

Americans don't understand English.. from my English friend Yvette

                                                                                        by Rabbi Moses Joshua Hoffman
                                                                                                          משה יהושע בן יונינה 
     My Rebbe, Rav Ahron Soloveichik zt"l, suffered a stroke (in his mid-sixties), and was paralyzed partially by it. He derived a great lesson from  that, which he explained in an article  "A Glimpse of Eternity from a Hospital Dungeon". There he wrote "I think that the fact that I am now constantly under the impact of a biological sensation of carrying a foreign, detached object consisting of the left side of my body corroborates the preposition that the human soul is a separate entity having an identity of its own and extraneous to the body."...."Prior to the stroke on Sunday evening, May 29, 1983, my belief in the extraneous existence of the soul was grounded exclusively in emunah. Now my belief in the extraneous character of the soul and immortality of the soul is grounded in a physical perception through the biological senses." (p. 33)
This emunah inspired him to continue teaching Torah for 18 years subsequently.
In this week's parsha, the building of the Mishkan and the making of the priestly garments is given on a practical [physical] level, and the stress is on the practical [physical] level. Our emphasis in Torah is on a practical [physical] level to carry it out. 
As Rav Ahron showed us, I will try, with G-d's help, to continue in that tradition.

  Special message from Netvort's medical editor Eliyahu from Wednesday evening: Perspective and context: Rabbi Hoffman wrote this (on Sunday) with tremendous mesirus nefesh, two days after being resuscitated three times. It seems that he physically experienced a similar physical sensation while his heart was stopped (and perhaps afterwards, as well) to the experience of his Rebbe, zt"l. He wrote this in critical condition while on a ventilator (which he is still on at this time.) We pray that Rabbi Hoffman (שליט"א) will continue to be zoche to follow in the glorious example of his Rebbe zt"l for a very long time to come. Please pray for his Refuah Sh'laima.  
(משה יהושע בן יונינה, בתוך שאר חולי ישראל - among the other ill of the nation - editor)

See you tomorrow

Love Yehuda Lave

Rabbi Yehuda Lave

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