Shaarei Tzedek – Orthodox Judaism in Downtown Toronto

by Rabbi Simon Jacobson, Meaningful Life Center.

Armies once had the custom of singing victory songs as they went to war. Why would they sing a victory song when they had not yet begun to fight? To express the conviction that they would win. This conviction lifted the soldiers’ morale and inspired them to fight more valiantly, secure in certain victory.

Sukkot is this victory song. We march with the “four kinds” armed with our spiritual weapons resolute to fight any battle, confident we will prevail.

Sukkot gives us the power to transcend our uncertainty, our fears and vulnerabilities. It helps us access a greater strength that inspires us to be joyous. (Conversely, lack of this awareness is the root of insecurity, fear, uncertainty, and the inevitable resulting despondency.)

Joy is a revealed expression of the soul’s innate celebration of life—of our indispensable purpose in life, of our connection to our Divine mission. On Sukkot we celebrate this connection. We dance and sing with unadulterated joy in expression of genuine happiness from the essence of our being.

Sukkot is “the time of our rejoicing” because we do not celebrate alone—G-d also joins the celebration and rejoices with us, His creatures.

Joy unites us with G-d and with other people. Indeed, because joy cannot be celebrated alone, we are obligated to invite guests to our sukkahs.

“It is fitting that all of Israel should dwell in a single sukkah,” says the Talmud. Though physically we might sit in separate sukkot, spiritually we all sit together in one unifying sukkah. We bind together the “four kinds” which symbolize different personalities, acknowledging that our diversity is our strength, that it feeds our unity, and that each of us has a unique contribution to make to the greater good.

Let us gather together during the remaining days of Sukkot and celebrate—celebrate our lives and the gifts that G-d gives us every day. This message of hope, joy and unity is needed now more than ever. It is the ultimate fuel to be help us forge ahead, rebuild, and come out even greater.

by Mrs. Nechama D. Kumer, AskMoses.com

According to Judaism, we are obliged to control what we do and say, and what we think and feel, too. A famous Chassidic saying is that ‘the mind controls the heart,’ which means that our intellect is capable of directing and choosing the emotions that we feel. We are not slaves to our emotions as they arise compelling us to feel angry or sad or silly.Imagine if we saw a person smiling and giggling at a funeral service. We would consider his attitude very inappropriate and ask him to control himself. Indeed, that man is capable of altering his behavior by immediately refocusing himself on the situation at hand and refusing to allow any humorous thoughts to enter his mind. By controlling his thoughts, that man is not is denial of what he feels; rather he is choosing what is a correct emotion to feel in a given situation and ignoring what is an improper emotion.

So it is with deciding to be happy. A person is annoyed at something that happened to him at work. He cannot change what already happened. What he can do is choose whether to dwell on his annoyance for the duration of the day, or avert his thoughts from those unpleasant feelings and think about other happier things. Let’s say that immediately after the annoying event, he finds out that his favorite aunt is coming in town, and he is excited about the visit. Does this mean that he suppresses or is in denial of his earlier negative feelings? No, since he erased those negative feeling from existence and replaced them with positive emotions, there is nothing to repress or deny. He is only allowing happy thoughts to occupy his mind. Even without the news about an aunt’s visit, that man could block out the negativity and permit himself only happy feelings. All he has to do is decide what to feel.

Choosing how we feel is a tremendous power that G-d has given us, but there is a technique to it. Let’s say bad feelings come knocking on our heart’s door. We open up a mental round table discussion about what to do, how to get rid of them, contemplate all the cons about allowing ourselves to feel bad, etc., then we have welcomed those negative emotions into our heart to some extent for the duration of this mental process. The correct response to negative thoughts is to ignore them entirely. Do not answer the ‘door’. Instead, immediately think about something else positive. This is a habit forming process and fewer and fewer bad feelings will come to visit. As we get in the habit of inviting over happy feelings, they will start visiting us even without an invitation.

By Simon Jacobson, Meaningful Life Center

My dearest child,

Now that you have emerged just a bit and reentered my life on Yom Kippur, I would like to share a few words with you as we begin the holiday of Sukkot.

On the holy day of Yom Kippur I realized how lonely you must have been all alone inside of me for all these years. As I blessed you, my child, I came to understand that you are the purest part of me. You are the best of me. How sad that I did not recognize this earlier. On Yom Kippur I came in touch with you – and what a delight. You are so beautiful. I just wanted to tell you that.

You are not to blame for all the problems that you endured years ago. You are not bad, even when bad things were done to you.

On Yom Kippur I appealed to you: Please forgive me. Forgive me for ignoring you. Forgive me for not nurturing you. Forgive my iniquities. Be kind to me as I try to be kind to you. Just as I forgive you for hiding yourself from me all this time, causing me great anguish, please forgive me.

On Yom Kippur we were reintroduced to each other. Now, on Sukkot, I want to celebrate with you. It’s been so long. So, so long. For years I have been running, trying to hide, attempting to soothe myself. And all along you were there – waiting to be soothed, waiting to be loved and embraced unconditionally. Had I only known that and responded to your cries you would have soothed me more than anyone or anything could ever.

But now, let us make up for lost time and let us celebrate together. And when better to do so than on Sukkot?

For years I thought that the best way to create security is by building us an expensive house. I accumulated furnishings and other material delights. I build up equity and threw fancy parties. We went on exotic trips and visited the most beautiful islands. I felt that this was the path to success; the only way to keep us safe. How wrong I was.

Continue Reading »

Sukkot 5768

© Rabbi David Lapin, 2007 (iawaken.org)

Space and Time change things

Sukkot is a time when we are invited as guests into a space that is not our own. The Sukkah is a space that belongs to Hashem, and into which we are invited as royal guests.

If you place something ordinary in an extraordinary space, it acquires some of the extraordinariness of that new space. Imagine taking a rather ordinary painting out of the back room of a pawnshop, framing it majestically and placing it in one of the prime halls of an art gallery. Clearly the painting’s new lofty surroundings will uplift its glamour and immediately enhance its value. We actually change objects by changing their context. It is for this reason (partly,) that moving an object from a public domain to a private one (or vice versa) on Shabbat is a Melachah (a forbidden act of technological engineering). Changing an object’s position in a profound way, changes the quality of the object itself in some discernable way too.

The same applies when you change an object from one time period to another. The same object in two different chronological contexts can actually be two different objects – certainly in Halachah and Kabbalah. A lulav is nothing more than a palm branch after Sukkot and matzo is nothing more than a cracker after Pesach.

Space and Time change people too

Just as objects change their qualities depending on their spatial and chronological contexts, so do people. People may have the same dimensions and even value system when they are at work as they do when they are in Shul, but there is still a qualitative difference in them. A person in Chutz La’aretz (outside of Israel) is not the same person qualitatively as he or she is when in Israel – and many people feel this and know it intuitively. Certainly a person in the Beit Hamikdash (Holy Temple) took on a different quality.

Continue Reading »

by Rabbi David Lapin, iawaken.org

Halacha: A Multi-Dimensional Reality

Imagine how the world would appear to you if you were able to see it only with two dimensions, and had never ever used three. A cylinder seen from its top would look like a circle, and seen from its side would look like a rectangle. How tumultuous life would be if some of us could only see with two dimensions, and others with three! Imagine how the world would look if we had access to an extra dimension or two? Just as the two-dimensional person looking at the rectangle would be incapable of imagining how you or I saw a cylinder, so we are incapable of imagining how the world would look to a four- or five-dimensional person! So, perceptions of reality are governed not only by what is out there, but equally, by what tools we have at our disposal with which to view reality.

It is conceivable then, that reality is not what we perceive it to be at all. We can simply see that reality that G-d wants us to see using the three-dimensional perspective he gave us.

When we enter the world of Halacha [1] we transition from a three dimensional world into a four, sometimes five and occasionally even a six or seven dimensional world. That is one of the adjustments in perspective needed to master Halacha. Halacha does not merely deal with rules that govern a person’s behavior. Halacha deals with the interface between people and their objective universes, from a multi-dimensional perspective.

Consider some examples: Two pieces of meat, chemically and physically identical, possibly even cut from the same animal. One could be kosher (mutar) and one treif (assur). That difference does not result from a rule governing the subject who wishes to eat the meat. There is in fact a dimensional difference between those two objects that would be totally discernible if we could see the world through the additional dimension of issur ve’hetter. The rule that forbids us to eat the one piece of meat, is the outcome of that objective difference between the two.

Continue Reading »

By Dov Greenberg

Of more than one thousand Rabbis cited in the Talmud, only one became a heretic. His name? Elisha ben Abuya.

Elisha was, by all accounts, one of the outstanding Jewish sages of the Second Century, a contemporary of the great Rabbi Akiva and the teacher of Rabbi Meir, who became one of the leading scholars of his generation.

There are differing opinions as to the cause of Elisha ben Abuya’s apostasy (1). Some say he was attracted by Greek culture, others that he was tormented by the problem of theodicy, how to reconcile G-d’s essential goodness with a world in which the righteous suffer.

Elisha moved so far from Jewish tradition that his colleagues stopped referring to him by his name, but called him Acher, “the other”, the outcast, the renegade. Only his student Rabbi Meir remained loyal to the man who had once been his master, sought out his company and still believed that he might one day repent.

Against this backdrop we find one of the most moving scenes in rabbinic literature.

It is Shabbat, and Elisha ben Abuya is publicly desecrating the holy day by riding a horse (2). Walking alongside him is Rabbi Meir. Heretic teacher and faithful disciple travel together along the road arguing and debating Jewish law.

Continue Reading »

There are things that are important for us, so we speak about them. There are things very important to us — and so words flow out from us, bursting with emotion, meaning and depth.

And then there are things that shake us to the core. The core of our being does not wait for the mind’s permission or for the right words — there are no words that can contain it. It breaks out in a cry, in a scream and in silence.

This is the sound of the shofar: A crying voice, not even of a human being, but of an animal’s horn. We need the animal — not for its coarseness, but on the contrary, because we need to express something so sublime, it cannot find words; so essential and unbounded, the mind can neither fathom it nor hold it back.

The very core of our souls needs to cry, “Father! Father!”

A Daily Dose of Wisdom from the Rebbe
-words and condensation by Tzvi Freeman
Elul 29, 5767 * September 12, 2007

By Shifra Hendrie

At sunset on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, Hashem will remove some of his light from the world. He will still remain present in a basic way, of course, or the world could not exist. But that presence will be remote, withdrawn.

Then He will wait. The next move is ours.

At around midday of the holy day, when Jews in every corner of the world acknowledge His sovereignty with prayers and the blowing of the shofar, Hashem will once again agree to be our King. He will recommit to His relationship with our world. And when He does so, it will be with an entirely new level of light and power. Entirely new possibilities – possibilities that never existed before – will enter the world. We will advance one giant step closer to our ultimate destiny.

But the first move has to come from us. We must renew our contract with our Creator if the world is to continue to exist.

Each year, the world must choose G‑d.

From Tears to Transformation

Why the shofar? What power does this primitive instrument have to bring down such an intense and essential light?

More than a simple horn, the shofar is an instrument of transformation. Its sound is like a heartbroken cry, and its power is the power of tears.

Continue Reading »

by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, Gan Einai Institute.

The Torah portion of Ha’azinu is the song of Moses at the conclusion of his mission on earth. It is one of the two great songs of the Torah, and relates all the history of the Jewish People, past, present and future. Nachmanides writes that every Jewish soul can find his entire biography concealed in the letters of this song. The Magid of Mezritch, the disciple and successor of the Ba’al Shem Tov, taught that it is important to learn this song by heart, as one’s whole life unfolds within it. Ha’azinu is one great song to God, just as one’s life is a song to Him.

The Messianic Wings

One of the most potent images in the song of Ha’azinu is the image of the eagle hovering over his nest of fledglings (Deuteronomy 32:11). In this metaphor, God, the eagle, comes to awaken the fledglings in his nest, hovers over them, spreads his wings over them and finally lifts them on his wings in redemptive flight through the sky. There are two synonyms for “wings” in this verse: kanaf, whose numerical value is 150, and evrah, whose numerical value is 208. Together, these two words equal 358, the numerical value of Mashiach. The eagle carrying the Jewish People on his wings is the Mashiach, carrying out his Divine Messianic mission. In the Torah portion of Yitro (Exodus 19:4) God also refers to the redemption from Egypt as redemption “on the wings of eagles.” Clearly, the eagle and his wings have messianic implications.

Continue Reading »

by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, Gal Einai Institute

B”H
Elul, the month of mercy, 5767

The upcoming year, the year 5768, is a Shemitah year. As the seventh year of a seven year cycle, the Shemitah year is observed as the Sabbatical year for the Land of Israel during which we are commanded to halt our agricultural use of the land.

Every week we observe the Shabbat, the seventh day of the seven day weekly cycle, during which we halt from the chores of the mundane and seek to elevate our lives with holiness, with prayer, and with the study of the Torah. Thus, when the Shabbat departs, we are able to imbue the coming days of the week with its sanctity and blessings.

Likewise, the Sabbatical Shemitah year can be seen, even by those individuals who are not farmers in the Land of Israel, as a chance to dedicate a year to spiritual elevation through the study of the Torah. At the end of the year, with our heightened sensitivity to the spiritual, we can all expect to return to our focus on the mundane with the intent of filling it with holiness.

Where should our spiritual endeavors and elevation for this upcoming year be focused?

To answer this question, let us turn to the haftarah—the reading in the Prophets—for the first day of Rosh Hashanah.[1] The reading describes the birth of the prophet Shmu’el (Samuel, in English pronunciation). Indeed the link between Shmu’el and Rosh Hashanah lies in the numerical equivalence between Shmu’el and the customary blessing we impart on one another on this day: shanah tovah, “a good year” (שְׁמוּאֵל = שָׁנָה טוֹבָה ). The reading ends with the song of Channah, Shmu’el’s mother, as she fulfills her vow and brings her son to be inaugurated into the work of the Temple, under Eli, the High Priest.

Continue Reading »