Tefilas HaShelah

You can say it every day, of course, but today's the day most people make a point of reciting the prayer of the Shelah Hakadosh for one's children.

The Hebrew text and English translation are here: http://artscroll.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/prayer.pdf

Most Jewish prayers are written in the plural, on behalf of the world or the entire Jewish people - Rabbi Dr. R. likes to point out that this is also true of the Shemoneh Esrei, the whispered, meditative nut of the entire liturgy - but then there is a side literature of personal requests, like this one.

I happen to especially relate to this one - he really nails everything I wanted to say.

Iyar, cont.

This is the follow-up to this post.
I think the one sentence I'd pick to summarize the month of Iyar is this:

"The way to Sinai lay, and still lies, only through the wilderness."
(Collected Writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Vol. I, p.158, with the permission of Feldheim Publishers)


I'm not going to elaborate on how this plays out in the different eras of Jewish history and in our own feathery era, simply because I don't have time to do it justice.

I'll just throw another line of Rav Hirsch at you.

"When we gather together in peaceful houses of God in the early summer evening hours to count our days and weeks until the joyful day of our Torah festival, we probably reflect very little on the completely different circumstances and atmosphere under which our fathers counted these days. How often did they begin the counting and then wonder whether they would live to complete the counting at all and, if so, where they would complete it!"
(p. 163)


He's talking about the era of the Crusades.

It isn't about the persecutions; it's about
The devoted, the just, and the blameless,
The holy communities that gave up their lives for the sanctification of His Name,
Who in life were beloved by Him and devoted to Him,
And who even in death did not separate themselves from Him...
(p. 141)

Sewing challenge no. 4: Tish Bekishe

A tish bekishe is like a long Victorian smoking jacket, worn to the Shabbat table by some Chasidic men. My husband (who does not identify as Chasidic) wanted one partly because a bekishe is machine-washable and a suit isn't: a bekishe is good if your toddler likes to pour soup in your lap.

As Rabbi Triebitz once said (in an entirely different context), there are no non-Chasidim in a foxhole.

Some bekishes are tailored; some aren't. I used a bathrobe pattern, Simplicity 5931, and relied on the fabric to make it look like something you could actually wear to dinner.

The pattern is good for beginners, but runs large. My husband's rav and our neighbor (thanks) graciously smuggled me their bekishes (this was a surprise) so I could study the construction.

There is some kabbalistic significance to not making such a garment all-black, but mostly I figured a man who wears a black suit and a black hat every day has enough black in his life already.
I wanted a fabric that would look black (like most other bekishes) until you turned your back on it and made it think you weren't looking. What I found in the right color is pretty stiff; next time I'll use something floppier. And a pattern that will allow for frogs (those Asian knot fastenings), because I. Love. Frogs.

I'm not sure why it looks ripply and uneven here. It looks ok in real life.

I put on a remnant of silvery leaf-like trim because every tish bekishe should look Elvish.

Thank You Note

This is a thank-you note to Ms. Tibbi Singer for her kind attention to this blog in her "Jblogs" series, for all the nice things she has been saying about it, and for describing the title of one of its posts as "Darth Vader meets Winnie-the-Pooh," which is such a fun meeting to imagine.
Love it.
Thank you.

Portland event TONIGHT

TONIGHT!!!
Special Guest Lecturer: Aliza Bulow

"Shavuos: Four Steps to Perfecting the World"
Sunday, May 20
7 pm @ the Kollel
Directions

Aliza Bulow is the national coordinator of Ner LeElef’s North American Women’s Program, and the Senior Educator for The Jewish Experience in Denver, Colorado. She teaches ongoing classes in Jewish philosophy, basic Judaism and textual learning skills, as well as lecturing on a broad range of topics in venues across the country and around the world. A 13th generation American born to Protestant parents in the 1960’s, her upbringing was intensely impacted by her parents’ deep commitment to the civil rights movement. After a spiritual search that began in early adolescence, Aliza converted to Judaism at the age of 16. She went to Israel shortly thereafter and lived there for four years while she studied at Michlelet Bruria and the Hebrew University, and served in the Nachal division of the Israeli Defense Forces. In 1985, while completing her BA in Hebrew and Jewish Social Studies at Hunter College, she married and moved to Long Beach, NY. Aliza has been a Jewish Educator for over twenty five years and she now mentors women who work in Jewish Adult Education and Outreach, and provides consulting for Jewish Outreach organizations across the country. Aliza works to strengthen Jews and their connections to their heritage, to their mission and to each other. More information is available on her website: ABiteOfTorah.com.

Siyyum

When you finish reading a really good novel, you sort of sigh and look out the window and a few hours later are still trying to re-orient into the world.
When you finish studying a textbook, you either throw it out the window or shelve it - depending on what sort of student you are.
But when you finish learning a volume of Talmud, you have a
PARTY!
--at the last siyyum I attended, with about 150 of your closest friends, with a sit-down meal (and 200 cream puffs), and people speak, and sing, and then everyone stands up and dances in circles, as if it were a wedding.

My favorite part of a siyyum is what you tell the text you have just finished learning:
We will return to you, and you will return to us. Our mind is on you, and your mind is on us.

The connection between the student and his or her text is so personal that the Midrash (I think - can't find it) tells a story about one of the Talmud's volumes assuming human form to attend the funeral of a man who had learnt it.

And then you start the next volume.

Addendum: check out http://www.mysiyum.com/

Encounter at Sinai

By Rabbi Rafi Mollot
Thanks!

The Twilight Zone

I went to replace a light bulb.
"There are no light bulbs," said the clerk.
"Do you usually carry them?"
"Maybe you can find someone who still does. I doubt it. Everyone now uses these spirals instead."

I bought a spiral. I tried it. It's so efficiently small, it doesn't screw into our socket.

I feel like Rip Van Winkle. My light sockets and I went to sleep in a 60-watt age. We have awakened to find ourselves in a new and better age, an age of efficient, eco-friendly, 13-watt spirals.

How bizarre. How inspiring.

In Which I Cross Over to the Dark Side

This month, I became one of those parents.
Those square, unenlightened, irresponsible parents... the ones who outsource their children's education, even before the child is old enough to string together a complete sentence.

Horrors!

It happened like this:
My daughter woke up one day and I realized that she had just stopped being a baby, and turned into a proper Child.
She has always been incredibly independent but suddenly she wanted all my attention, all the time.
My neighbor, whose son was born the same day, reported the identical transformation in the same week.

This is adorable, and it would be swell except that I work from home and charge by the hour, and there is just no way to compile an honest time-sheet for work done with one hand while the other tries to prevent the Child from pouring from her sippy-cup into the keyboard dsothattyingtotyeedsultdsinthids.

I gave up. She now spends about 10 hours a week in my neighbor's living-room kindergarten.
This is a neighbor whose child-rearing I have long admired. For about seven years I have said that if I lived here and if I had a child and if I needed a kindergarten, I'd choose hers: she is warm and cheery and inspired and uplifting and nudges everything into place without ever raising her voice. And she loves my daughter. And my daughter is always excited to go, and not interested in coming home. And she gets to be with other kids.
Hrrumph, hrroomph. As I get older I keep turning into those people I said I would never be. I even have opinions on strollers.

I am still learning how to work in an empty house. But now, instead of spending the day in the house trying to get some work done, we can spend the whole afternoon in the yaarrrrrr! (the Hebrew word for the woods) without feeling guilty. Thank G-d.

I told this neighbor that she can tell my daughter "Don't whine" and be understood.
She laughed. "I'd forgotten that word," she said. "The other kinderlach all understand 'Don't kvetch.'"

Portland event TODAY

Kesser's Lag B'Omer celebration

THIS SUNDAY, MAY 13, 5:00-7:00 pm

at Gabriel Park on SW Vermont St.!

Join us for hot dogs (vegetarian options, of course!),

salads and sports and a fun time!

Cost per plate: $5/kid, $7/adult, $25 family

Mussar Truffles

There are shiurim which are good, there are shiurim which are thrilling, and once in awhile you come upon a shiur that hits you from just the right angle that no one ever tried before, and your soul smacks its lips like a Parisian.

http://ravleuchter.com/ is delicious.


English is not the rav's first language. The lectures given in South Africa are easier to follow for those of us accustomed to thinking left-to-right.

Giraffe

by Sam Perrin

sperrin at uoregon.edu

Thanks!

How to Remember to Count the Omer

Get a brick.
Put it in your bed.
Each night when you count, take it out. Replace it in the morning.

If this were a different kind of blog, there would be a picture of a brick here.
And a fourteen-step DIY for decorating your snazzy Omer Brick.
I'm sure you can come up with something pretty.

A True Story

Presented by Rabbi Rafi Mollot, of the Manhattan Beach Kollel.

The Lyre Bird

Amazing clip from a nature film:
David Attenborough introduces the Lyre Bird

I saw this years ago and never forgot it.
Thanks to JP for the link.

Iyar is such a weird month

So far as I can make out, the underlying sense of Adar (the month which contains Purim) is something like:
I am not in control of my life; haha, Hashem is.
And that of Nisan (the following month, which contains Pesach) is something like:
I am not in control of my life; Hashem is, and I will run after Him.


I phrased these in the singular but they could also be plural: we, as a nation.


I could be right or wrong about Adar and Nisan, but here Iyar is halfway over (extra points if you saw the Supermoon on Saturday night) and I still have not a clue what this month is about.

Iyar does not have a major holiday, so there are no shortcuts to figuring it out.
It does have the minor holiday of Lag ba'Omer. But it also has a period of mourning which shifts around depending on your custom, and can even end up spilling over into Nisan, a month that is halachically happy. Totally wacky.

So here we are counting up to receiving the Torah. (These are the intermediate days between Pesach and Shavuos; but, unlike the intermediate days of Sukkos, they're not a holiday.) And meanwhile all the grass is dying for the summer and we're mourning. That's weird enough.
Then, Lag ba'Omer celebrates a cessation of the period of mourning - an odd occasion for rejoicing; and, it commemorates the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: why, in this religion full of symmetry, is he the only person with his own holiday?
And if Iyar and Lag ba'Omer are not confusing enough, you can throw Yom HaAtzmaut into the mix. Why not, go ahead and add it, as it is I'll be here till next Iyar trying to figure out what the month is about.

I'll let you know if I get it. Please leave a comment if you do.

(Should've learnt about it on Shabbos, but I learnt something from the Piaseczner Rebbe instead. Yum.  Too many pies to choose from.)

The Third-Generation Dentist

Once or twice a year I travel 3000 miles to visit my family and my dentist, Dr. M.

Dr. M is a third-generation dentist who operates out of the same residential office his father and grandfather kept.
It remains furnished as it was in 1920 and in 1970 and with every magazine Dr. M ever received and with flourishing houseplants.

Our local dentists are quick to adopt new technology and to hurry to show you your oral bacteria much enlarged so you are appropriately intimidated.
schiamachy:  an act or instance of fighting an imaginary enemy.

I figured out that in addition to his eccentricities and low overhead, I like Dr. M because he is The Good News Dentist.

Other dentists look in my mouth and say, "Hmm. Looks like there's been a lot of work around Number 24; and I think we'd better watch Number 18 - there's additional damage to the enamel. Now I need to this this and zich, and here are headphones programmed with your choice [of Bruce Springsteen or an ear-splitting Beethoven symphony] to calm you while I drill."

Dr. M looks in and says, "You have no idea how nice it is to look at a healthy mouth!  Well, I know you take good care of things, including your teeth.  I'll just do a little cleaning and you're good to go." We listen to the local radio station together and he tells me about his trip to Europe while he uses the electric buffer.
"You can rinse now," he offers frequently  - as there is no electronic gurgler dangling from my lip.

I leave feeling virtuous and clean, free of ominous threats.
I do believe this assists in dental health   -  mind over matter.

Invisible Judaism

I was looking for a particular picture in the photo section of National Geographic (not a recommended hangout for sensitive young ladies) and meanwhile enjoying the colorful thumbnail images of exotic cultures, when there, between the swirling skirts of dervishes and the rainbow silks of India, this exotic culture caught my attention:

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/standing-prayer-montreal/
(go ahead and click on this one)

I love it...because this photo, especially in that context, really brings out how much of the color in Judaism is internal.
The men (except for the two who finished early) are obviously focusing intently on something you... can't see.

They are not making expressive gestures.
They are not even wearing expressive, uniquely Jewish clothing: as Rav Bulman zt"l said, 'the traditional dress of the Jewish people is the dress of the nobility of the previous generation'.

There are the aspects of Judaism that bubble up to the surface... and there is so, so much more below it.

Blessed Is He Who Revives the Dead!

...is the blessing recited upon seeing a dear friend you haven't seen in ages, if you had no way of ascertaining whether s/he was still among the living.
I wonder if this is because the overwhelming joy of seeing that friend again gives you some hint to what the revival of the dead will be like.

Can I just say that Feldheim totally made my day year decade life something, two weeks before Pesach, by releasing -
are you sitting? -
Volume IX.
Of Rav Hirsch's Collected Writings.

I couldn't believe it when they told me. I honestly thought they were kidding.
Volume VIII came out 17 years ago.

Get Out

"I almost believe that all you homebodies would one day have to atone for your staying indoors, and when you would desire entrance to see the marvels of heaven, they would ask you, 'Did you see the marvels of God on earth?' Then, ashamed, you would mumble, 'We missed that opportunity.'"

Vol. VIII of Rav Hirsch's Collected Writings, p. 259, in 'From the Notebook of a Wandering Jew'. Cited with the kind permission of Feldheim Publishers.