Chapter 17: Preaching to the Believers
Part 4: The Unbelievers Demand Proof

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The Unbelievers Demand Proof

2:118-119 were handed down from Allah to Muhammad in reply to one Rafi’, a “Jewish Rabbi” who annoyed Muhammad with questions (end of Sira:380):
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“If you are the apostle from Allah as you say, then ask Allah to speak to us so that we may hear his voice”.
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Allah replies (2:118-119): “And they that know not say, ‘Why does Allah not speak to us? Why does a sign not come to us?’ So spoke those before them as these men say; their hearts are much alike. Yet We have made clear the signs unto a people who are sure We have sent you with the truth, good tidings to bear, and warning. You will not be questioned regarding the inhabitants of Hell.”
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Allah’s answer is somewhat unsatisfactory: He produced signs (miracles) for people who are sure, that is, sure in their belief. But verse 118 deals with the people who are not sure, who “know not”, and who require a sign that will help them strengthen their faith.
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Allah does not care for these people. He will just send them to Hell. Remember, he has a large quota to fill. Those who ask too many difficult questions are trouble makers, who usually end up dead, or are made to disappear.
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Here, “questioned regarding the inhabitants of Hell” means be liable, or called to account on their behalf. You have carried out your duty, and you are not responsible for their disbelief. Muhammad wins similar immunity from Allah in a few other places in our surah and in the Quran.
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2:120 “The Jews and the Christians will not accept you until you follow their religions.
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Say: ‘Allah’s guidance is the true guidance.’ If you follow their caprices, after the knowledge that has come to you, you shall have in Allah neither protector nor helper.”
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It is not clear who “you” is in the first sentence: Muhammad, or his audience. Either way, it is a false allegation. In the second part, Muhammad says to his followers: my god will abandon me and I will lose my immunity if I follow these religions.
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Allah says (2:121): “Those to whom We have given the Book and who read it as it should be read, they believe in it. And those who disbelieves in it, they shall be the losers.”
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They will be lost, disappear. Reading the Book as it should be read means not as the Jews or Christians read it, but as Muslims should.

It says booty in the Torah.  I love the Torah.  And I’m not being irreverent (well not much anyway).  I always thought the Torah was out of reach and unreadable.  It’s totally readable.

This week’s story is about Dinah.  The story that Anita Diamant tells in The Red Tent (one of my favorite books of all time) is about Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter.  I’m only half way through this week’s portion as I’m still a bit behind because of last week’s craziness.  We’re still eating turkey.  I just wanted to tell you all that it says booty in the Torah.  Now I’m going to finish reading.

Love to Barbara this week….she just lost her sister in law.  May her memory be a blessing.

When a person pours out his heart like water before G-d, he becomes joyous and subdues the power of imagination.

(Rebbe Nachman of Breslov)

From: Breslev.co.il

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Courtesy of gicleegallery.us

Limud yomi

• Daf yomi: Bava Batra 104
• Yerushalmi yomi: Avodah Zarah 29
• Mishna yomit: Parah 10:5
• Halacha yomit: Orach Chaim 370:2
• Tanach yomi: Shmuel Seder 19
• Shabbat Parshiot: Vayishlach
• Torah Reading: Gen. 32.4-36.43^*
• Haftara: Obadiah 1.1-21^*
• (Optional substitution: Hosea 11.7-12.12)^*

From: Kaluach – Hebrew/civil calendars

Free Download: Kaluach3 is the latest version of Kaluach Hebrew/civil calendars, specially designed for 2000/XP/Vista.

This section covers the history of Judaism during the Dark Ages.  Judaism’s history was very rough, even brutal, during this time, especially in Christian Europe.  As early as A.D. 500, we see the practice of forcing Jews to wear armbands or other distinctive garb so that other people can identify them.  Jews were prohibited from practicing many professions, and taxation was often confiscatory.  Pogroms incited by baseless stories of child sacrifice occurred once a century or so.  The milder variety of pogrom only resulted in property destruction and weeks of fear, as well as the brutal, but selective, execution – or torture and execution – of the supposed perpetrators.  The more severe variety could result in the murder of entire communities.

Excepting the brutality of murder and violence, some of these impositions were not as cruel as they appear to the modern eye.  At this time, many European populations were ethnically and religiously homogeneous, and the separate ethnicity, religion, and daily practices of the Jews provided a compelling rationale for separate governmental treatment.  Not all was imposition, either.  With special taxes came special treatment: Jewish communities were allowed to create and administer their own laws, and were exempted from some strictures imposed on the rest of the local community.  For example, they were frequently permitted to lend at interest, which Christians were prohibited – secularly and religiously – from doing.  Let these remarks not diminish the sad recognition of the murder and rapine that followed the Jews of this time.

A final observation: during the pogroms, the Jews were often given the choice between exile, death, or conversion to Christianity (not mere show – reversion to Judaism was apostasy, which was punishable by death).  In the majority of specific, historically recorded instances that Durant relates – at least three or four incidents – the Jews chose death over conversion or exile.  Moreover, often, without recorded threat of torture or other brutality, the Jews chose suicide or mass mutual murder over conversion or exile.  The forces that could motivate communities of thousands of people to such behavior have not been recorded.

To the eyes of a determinedly secular historian, the cultural production of the Jews during this time was minimal.  The Torah was already written, and the Talmud, composed in the middle of the first millenium A.D. fails to match the Torah’s beauty, but exceeds its inane obsession with the minutiae of behavior.  Due to overriding theological concerns, Jewish studies in philosophy and the sciences were minimal, with medicine being a marked exception.  In the East, the Jews matched the Moslems in poetry and the arts of the time.  In the West, they matched the Christians, which is to say that they did little, if anything, of value during the first millenium.

The most notable contribution was, in my view, a negative one.  This was the work of Maimonides, a Jewish scholar who recapitulated the work of Origen, an early Christian heretic whose work had been, in Maimonides’s time, largely stamped out.  Maimonides, following Origen, argued for an allegorical interpretation of the Torah.  For instance, he suggested that the story of Adam and Eve was not about the creation of two individual people, but the mating of active form and passive matter.  In short, he superimposed a lot of Neoplatonic garbage onto what had formerly been a meaningful story.  Maimonides was also one of the earliest proponents I have noted in Durant’s history of the argument from design, the idea that some active, creative intelligence was necessary to bring the universe to its present form.  In this way, by providing the allegorical interpretation and the argument from design, Maimonides provided two of the cornerstones of modern religious apologist thought.  Without Maimonides, this intellectual cannon fodder would perhaps not be cluttering up so much discussion today – Lord knows the current thinkers aren’t original enough to ever have come up with it…

I am starting this blog at the suggestion of a friend.

The Lord leads us in interesting ways… a few months back, there was a meet-up of Southerners here in New York City, and I met a lovely woman from Texas, who friended me on Facebook.  From time to time, we exchange notes, and, when I recommended my church to her, when she was looking for a church, the conversation got kind of interesting.

I like a traditional service with traditional hymns, the Lord’s Prayer, and beautiful music.  I have problems with churches which do not include the Lord’s Prayer in their services.  I also like singing the Doxology…

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow! Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above, ye Heavenly Host! Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!

This is one of the songs that I sing when I wake up in the morning, either before, or after, I remind myself that

“This is a day the Lord has made! Rejoice, and be glad in it!

Right now, I have to work all day on Sunday, so I cannot go to the lovely traditional service at my church (Calvary Baptist Church, in New York City, in Manhattan).  I like the pastor at my church, however, so I go to the evening service after I get off work.

I don’t like the evening service at my church because it is “contemporary”, but there is one song they sing fairly often that runs in my head:

“Our God is a living God. He reigns from Heaven above. He fills us with his Love. Our God is a living God.”

(this song starts running in my head when the Muslims start acting up in my classes, telling me who is a good Muslim and who is not, and I have to tell them that, here in the U.S., we have freedom of religion, so those people can choose their own way to honor Allah.)

Recently, I have been working with a young Jewish man who is an “ex-Hasid” (his term – this  young man came up to me and explained his situation on his first day in my class.  Hasidism is a very strict, repressive Jewish sect, which operates on what most of us would consider very old-fashioned principles — the one I know of most is “arranged marriage”, but there are many other rules which most of us would consider outlandish) who is working on integrating himself into the general society… he tries new “abominations” every week.  Last week *he ate bacon*!!!, and, on the Sabbath, he went to a disco!  It might sound silly, but this fellow has been telling me about the repressive rules in the Hasidic community in which he grew up — he is being really daring!  I like him not only because he explained his situation to me, allowing me to help him better, but also because he helps me when I need the definitive word on Jewish holidays, and also when I have Russian Jewish immigrants who are confused (older Russian Jews, who grew up in the Soviet Union, were not allowed to express their faith or worship openly, and, as a result, many of them only know they are Jewish, but have no real idea what that is really all .about).

This young man is a rabbi (he was educated as a rabbi) who has chosen not to be a rabbi and, further, has chosen not to be a part of the community into which he was born. (Imagine how it would be for you, if you had grown up in a closed community, and felt driven to renounce that – such a renouncement generally brings ostracism from family and friends).

Last week, I suggested that he try going to a Reformed Jewish congregation service, because I think it would be good for him to at least go to services, and maybe Reformed will help him see how American Judaism can work (I imagine it will be very very different from what he grew up with — I’m thinking maybe similar to the distance between fundamentalist Baptist and Unitarian).

This missionary stuff sure turns out weird sometimes.

My God is a wondrous God.  He works in mysterious ways.  It is always interesting if you stop to look at it.

During British rule in Jerusalem the Hurva Synagogue was the most important in Israel. In 1948, the invading Jordanian army blew it up.

Islam tried to destroy the Hurva Synagogue in East Jerusalem. Now its been restored

The Hurva, whose name means «ruin» was initially built by disciples of Rabbi Judah Hahasid in the early 18th century. It was destroyed shortly thereafter by Muslims demanding the return of loans given to build the synagogue.

After it was rebuilt in the mid-19th century, it became the most important synagogue in the country, but it was blown up in 1948 by the Jordan Legion a few days before the fall of the Jewish Quarter in the War of Independence.

In 2001, after years of debate, the government decided to restore the building.

Now Orthodox Jews and Ultra-Orthodox Jews have a debate on what kind of services should be offered in the restored synagogue. Should it be come a closes place of worship, or should it also be open to women and tourists.

Those who wants an open house of prayers, say the reconstructed synagogue should present the historical saga of the Jewish Quarter, display archaeological finds unearthed there, and be fully accessible to tourists, men and women together. The group wants to prevent a round-the-clock kollel (yeshiva for married men) from opening there, which would preclude any other activity.

However, for the ultra-Orthodox, the matter is unequivocal: “The question is whether this will be a synagogue and a house of study, or a display of all sorts of foolishness,” the Jewish Quarter’s rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl said on an ultra-Orthodox Web site.

Source: Israeli Daily Haaretz.

My comment:

The Jordanian Kingdom of Islam showed its true colors in 1948. In a bid to delete the Jewish heritage in East Jerusalem, the invaders from the East blew up and destroyed several Synagogues.

During the seize and Islamic occupation from 1948 to 1967, the Jewish people was not given access to this Apartheid state in East Jerusalem, and the so-called West Bank. It had become a closed Muslim zone, and a model for the racist state a new promoted Arab Palestinian statehood would look like.

In 1967 East Jerusalem was liberated by the Zionist state, and the city was again open to people of all faiths.

The Hurva Synagogue must be kept open to all lovers of israel and the Jewish people, tourists like me. The Government of Israel must display the evil of the Jordanian army. Let this place of worship forever be a testimony of how Islam tried and still tries to delete the Jewish heritage of East Jerusalem.

Cue the dream sequence music:

A collective gasp from the crowd. Chaos ensued. And then…

Frume Sarah…the baby’s awake.

My relationship with religious garb is a complicated one. I wear a tallit when I am leading services because it is traditional for the shaliach tzibur to do so. If I am not leading the services, I wear my tallis if I am in a place where it is customary for a woman to do so. A woman is not obligated to fulfill the mitzvah of wearing tzitzit, but, according to a number of authorities including Rav Moshe Feinstein, z”l, is not forbidden to do so. However, not all liberal synagogues have adopted this custom. And although I love my tallitot (MomGiraffe created both of mine) and have been wearing one for nearly 26 years, I must admit that I am still not altogether comfortable with women wearing them.

As for a head covering, I have gone back and forth on this one. When I was in my first year of rabbinical school, I commissioned a couple of crocheted kippot to match the design that MomGiraffe has needlepointed on my atarah. Though I had never worn a head-covering before, I felt very strongly that a rabbi ought to wear one. I wore it when I prayed and I wore it during learning. But I never really felt comfortable. During the High Holy Days of my second year at HUC, the kippot went missing. Poof! Just like that, they disappeared. I figured it was a sign.

A few years later, I revisited the kippah issue but this time opted for a wire kippah. It felt more feminine. More me. Except…that it wasn’t really me. I still felt as though I was forcing myself to grow comfortable wearing something that was really male garb. And so, with no ceremony, just stopped wearing them a couple of years ago. On those occasions when I have found myself in a Conservative shul, I fish one out of my armoire because I just can’t put a doily on my head.

I find it interesting that I admitted, in the dream sequence, to a desire to wear a tichel. Not a sheitel, but a tichel. I have written before about my feelings about covering my hair with a scarf. To me, wearing a beautiful wig defeats the spirit of the law, though upholding the letter of it. (And I’m not the only one who feels this way.) Yes, a woman’s hair is technically covered by the wig which fulfills the problem of ervah (nakedness). However, today’s wigs look so real that one might not be able to tell that the woman’s head is covered. And that defeats the whole purpose. For most liberal Jews, this is not only not a big deal, but it is completely archaic and has no “relevance” to their lives. But I wonder what might happen if those of us in the liberal community started dressing more modestly? How would it affect our behaviour? Would our young people have a healthier relationship with their bodies? Would it positively influence marital relationships?

Thoughts???

Show opens 12/6.  If you haven’t seen it, check out guest post I did on MyJewishLearing.com about my father’s and my piece in the show.

“Sex is meant to make two people become one.

This belief finds a perfect expression in a Dutch slang word for sex, naaien, which is also the word for sewing. Two garments are put together side by side so that they touch, and a strong thread is pulled and passed between them by a needle that will keep them secure and fastened to each other long after the sewing is over and the weaver is gone. It is not the fact of the sewing itself that later ensures that they do not come apart, but, rather the afteraffects of the sewing, namely the stitched thread that remains taut between them that has made them both into one garment. And the same is true of sex.

Repeated acts of lovemaking ensure that the threads are tightened, secured, and strengthened.

I had a rather interesting discussion with a colleague of mine yesterday at work so I was marinating on it and decided to share it with you, along with my perspectives.  You need a bit of background first, though.  My husband decided a couple of weeks ago that he wanted to wear a kippah every day because it reminds him that Hashem is watching him at all times.  He actually says that he feels he’s been a better person since he started wearing it.  It makes me very proud to see him wearing it and I believe I see a difference in him.

Anyway, I was saying that to a colleague the other day (I don’t remember how the discussion started) who just happens to be Jewish as well and she had quite a vehement response.  She told me that she was offended by people like Chassidics, who separate themselves and go to great lengths to make themselves different from everyone else.  I asked why and she said that she believed that people who don’t come to terms with society as it is now and who go to such a length to separate themselves are basically living with their heads in their…well you get the point.  I probed some more and she said that Jews have been separated and marginalized and hated for so long that we don’t need to be doing it to ourselves.  I don’t disagree with her on that, but I think religion is a very personal thing and if that’s the way that you believe your religion is observed, then so be it. (To which her response was, “and I am personally offended by them”, which I thought was a pretty funny response.)

Now, I have been covering my hair most of the time since I got married, but I don’t keep Kosher (I plan to discuss my rationale on this later) and I’m usually busy on Saturdays, so Shabbos usually falls by the wayside; I don’t look very different from anyone else…I don’t wear all black, I don’t wear skirts all the time, I don’t cover everything all the time…I do the best I can, but hey…I do the things that make sense to me but I keep up with culture as much as I can.  I will be honest, I think the super-religious do take things a bit too far.  Shabbos came about as a result of the fact that people used to have to work very, very, very hard, even to do the simplest things.  Building a fire to heat food alone was a major chore and getting the food was a mission and a half.  Now, life is much easier.  Heating food doesn’t involve much more than pushing a button, flushing a toilet is easy and most of us push buttons to get on elevators without a second thought.  I have never understood why pushing a button is considered work…the Tanakh says that on the 7th day, Hashem rested.  Rested…not didn’t do a darn thing.  I don’t disagree with resting, we all need that every so often, but the super observant I just don’t understand, especially not with the way modern life is.

However, I’m a big believer in individuality, and I don’t believe that we should do things just because that’s what everyone else does.  If that were true, I would have been drunk a lot more in college and probably have done some drugs by now.  As a note – I can count the number of times I’ve been drunk on one hand and I have never put drugs into my body.  The Modern Orthodox frankly make more sense to me (except for a few things, which I will discuss later) but someone who is looking will still notice that they’re different from everyone else.  Then again, so do goth kids and they are much more noticeable than the Modern Orthodox.  I don’t see much difference between them dressing differently due to religious reasons versus people who dress differently for much more superficial reasons.  What this comes down to is that while I don’t understand the Ultra-Orthodox and I usually roll my eyes at the extent to which they take things, I don’t take the time to get particularly offended at the way they live.  If they want to live separately from everyone else, dress all in black, wear big black hats and peyos all the time, so be it.  I wish they would get with the times a little bit, but hey, if it works for them, it works for them.

My Aunt said something to me while she was here visiting. She doesn’t and likely will never really know how those few words impacted on me, in such a powerful and wonderful way.

Her words: “you are just like your mother, there is no “quit” in you.”

My mother passed over in 1992. I loved (love) her very much. I also had a huge amount of respect for her as my mother but also as the person she was. My mother most certainly did not have an easy life.  Many can relate to her life, essentially she was a single parent raising 3 sons on what was I am sure was a minimun wage job.

Geesh, right now I can’t remember, it was either 1981 or 1982 that she had open heart surgery. At that time I had been long gone from home, raising my own family in an entirely different town. My mother had a very strong work ethic. “They hired me to do a job, they hired me to be there 40 hours a week doing that job and not just when I feel like it.”

There may have been a few things that slowed her down or knocked her off her stride but nothing could make her quit. There just wasn’t any quit in her.

I received in this wonderful news story from our dear blogging friend Cat. It is just too good not to share.

Virginia Saenz could hear the desperation in the voice of the telephone message. It was 5 a.m. on the day before Thanksgiving, and the caller, Lucy Crutchfield, was trying to tell her daughter that she’d send money for groceries — but she’d have to miss a mortgage payment to do it.

But Crutchfield dialed the wrong number. Instead of getting her daughter, she got Saenz, a real estate agent from the San Diego suburb of Tierrasanta.

“I know right now we are all struggling,” Saenz said. “Lisa on the phone, she sounded so desperate for her daughter, it broke my heart.”

Saenz did the only thing she could think of — she called Crutchfield back and said not to worry. Crutchfield would pay the mortgage, and Saenz would handle the groceries.

“She said, ‘You have the wrong number … don’t worry any more,’ ” Crutchfield recalled.

For Crutchfield, it was a holiday miracle. Her house is already in foreclosure. Her mother recently passed away, and Crutchfield is now trying to pay off her house. She had a money order prepared to make a mortgage payment on that house — but was going to cash it in when her daughter called asking for money.

“I thought I was going to lose that house, too,” Crutchfield said.

Saenz told Crutchfield to keep her money and promised to take care of her daughter. The real estate agent then called Crutchfield’s daughter.

“I asked her what she would like, what her kids like, and then I felt really bad because she said she only wanted eggs and milk,” Saenz said. “When somebody only asks you for eggs and milk, they are in a really bad situation.”

So Saenz went grocery shopping on Thanksgiving morning with her 14-year-old son in tow to tell her what kids liked to eat. They bought food for a Thanksgiving dinner and enough groceries to get Crutchfield’s daughter through the end of the month — her next payday.

She said the act of giving made “the day special for me.”

“I helped somebody,” Saenz said Friday. “I think it’s what anybody would have done.”

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/weird/Wrong-Number-Miracle-76368647.html?yhp=1

This is a story as told by our beloved friend and mentor, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach – in his own words and own unique way.

“I would like to share with you a story about a holy soldier in Israel.

In 1966, a ‘sweet little Yiddele’ (a simple Jew) from Tel Aviv came to visit me and said:

“Please, could you get through to my son, he is a high officer in the army.  He just hates, really hates Yiddishkeit.  But now he has a new kind of craziness.  In my house, in my dining room there is a big picture of my grandfather, a Yid (a Jew) with a long beard and a shtreimel.  My son said that unless I take down that picture he refuses to come to my house.  He said it is nauseating to him to think he is the grandson of such an idiot!

What should I do with him?”

I was trying to get through to this officer.  He was a very cute person, sweet like sugar.  But I didn’t know, he had some kind of block against religion.  What could I do?

In 1967, after the Six-Day War, one day the door opens.  The yid from Tel Aviv walks in, with his son, the officer who was now wearing a little beard, side curls and tsitsit.  He looked like a new person.  I said: “What happened to you?”  And this is what he said:

“I mentioned to you I am a tankist.  During the Six-Day War I was driving a tank in Sinai.  Suddenly I see an Egyptian tank is on my tail followed by others, and I have to get as close to the other Israeli tanks as possible because I cannot fight Egyptian tanks all by myself.  And the closest to the other Israeli tanks is a straight line.  I am driving as fast as I can.  Suddenly in the middle of the road, I see a Yid with a tallis and teffilin, praying!  And you know what I think about religious people, they are crazy!  I knew they are crazy, but that crazy, in the middle of a war?  And here in the desert, standing there, PRAYING?!!

My first reaction was:  I should really run him over.  But how can you run over another Jew?  So I made a detour.  The Egyptian tank didn’t make the detour and then drove right over the place where the Jew was standing.  It was blown up by a mine.

When I came back to my father’s house, I looked up at the picture of my grandfather.  It was him, my holy grandfather…who had come down from Heaven to protect me!

What an honor to have such a grandfather!”

Chapter 17: Preaching to the Believers
Part 3: Muslims Banned from Allah’s Sanctuary in Mecca

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Muslims Banned from Allah’s Sanctuary in Mecca

In 2:114 Muhammad expresses his anger at the Meccans who did not let him enter the Allah’s houses of worship in Mecca to pray:
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“And who is more unjust than he who prevents from the mosques of Allah, so that His name should be remembered in them, and strives to ruin them? These, it was not proper for them that they should have entered them except in fear. They shall meet with disgrace in this world, and they shall have great chastisement in the hereafter.”
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Allah assures us that the Meccan pagans will pay for it. And pay they did.
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This was during Muhammad’s 6th year in Medina, when the treaty of Hudaybiya was struck, after Muhammad failed attempt to enter Mecca on a pilgrimage to Allah’s house of worship, to perform the pagan rites practiced for centuries in the region, and later introduced into Islam by Muhammad.
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At that time, Allah still was to the Quraysh of Mecca the top god in their pantheon, the Ka’bah, and they wouldn’t let Muhammad near him. The Hudaybiya truce, although made for 10 years, was breached in its second year by Muhammad, when the opportunity arose to attack Mecca again.
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Since then, Hudaybiya is a model for Islamic military strategy: sign a peace treaty when you cannot possibly defeat your enemy, then break it as soon as you think that prospects for achieving military success have improved.
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Getting on with instructions to the Believers in the principles of the faith, in 2:115-117 Muhammad reiterates some biblical doctrines: East and west (that is, the whole world), belongs to Allah, Allah did not have a son (contrary to what the Unbelievers claim), and Allah created all things “by decree”, that is, saying: “Be”.

ON LOVING THE EVIL-DOER

R’ Raphael said: “Love the man of wickedness. Why? Because he will then love you, and love will unite his soul and yours. As a consequence, inasmuch as you hate wickedness, you will transfer your hate to him, thereby causing him to repent and turn from evil to good”.^*

Source: Two Tzaddiks

Two teams are competing at rowing in London – one is the Oxford team and the other is a Jewish team. Not surprisingly, the Oxford team wins the race by a long shot.The leader of the Jewish team is puzzled and he can’t figure out why they lost so he asks the leader of the Oxford team to explain how come they won. The Oxford team leader replies with a smile on his face: “You know, with us it is simple. I’m the only one that talks. The rest of the crew keeps rowing the boat.”

From: Breslev.co.il

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Courtesy of gicleegallery.us

Limud yomi

• Daf yomi: Bava Batra 103
• Yerushalmi yomi: Avodah Zarah 28
• Mishna yomit: Parah 10:3
• Halacha yomit: Orach Chaim 368:5
• Tanach yomi: Shmuel Seder 18
• Shabbat Parshiot: Vayishlach
• Torah Reading: Gen. 32.4-36.43^*
• Haftara: Obadiah 1.1-21^*
• (Optional substitution: Hosea 11.7-12.12)^*

From: Kaluach – Hebrew/civil calendars

Free Download: Kaluach3 is the latest version of Kaluach Hebrew/civil calendars, specially designed for 2000/XP/Vista.

“Turn from evil and do good” (Tehillim 34:15). That is, transform evil into goodness.
(Kesser Shem Tov 69)

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Rebbe Shimon bar Yochai teaches us of the responsibility each Jew has for the entire Jewish people with the following illustration: On a small boat full of people, one man took out a drill and began boring under his seat. His fellow passengers asked, “What are you doing? We’ll are be in danger!” He responded, “Why is it any of your business? I’m drilling under my own seat!”

From: Breslev.co.il

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