Shaarei Tzedek - Orthodox Judaism in Downtown Toronto

Please join us on Sunday, August 24, 2008 at 5:00pm to hear one of our generation’s greatest Torah minds and author of over 60 books.

Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh will be speaking on “The Kabbalah of Gold and Monetary Standards.” (Download PDF)

• Are we headed towards another Great Depression?
• Worried about the future of your finances and capital?
• Would you like to understand more about Gold as a spiritual as well as financial refuge in times of monetary crisis?

• Time: 5:00pm
• Place: Congregation Shaarei Tzedek, 397 Markham St, Toronto, ON
• Date: Sunday, August 24, 2008

Books & Tapes: www.kabbalahsource.com

via Chabad.org

In the Torah portion of Vayishlach we read about Dinah’s brothers, Shimon and Levi: “each man took his sword,” in order to avenge their sister’s violation by Shechem. Shimon and Levi were at that time 13 years old.

According to some opinions, since at the age of 13 Shimon and Levi were deemed “men” — a term that denotes maturity, as the verse states: “Strengthen yourself and become a man” — we derive the law that “at the age of 13 one becomes obligated to perform the mitzvos.”

In other words, by the age of 13 one has acquired the intellectual characteristics and attitudes of an adult — maturity of intellect and discernment. It is for this reason that a person is then obligated to perform all the commandments.

Although it is possible to be intellectually acute even before the age of 13, maturity is still lacking, both with regard to the dearness and merit of performing mitzvos, as well as with regard to the severity of the sin in their non-performance. Accordingly, a pre-teen is not held responsible for his conduct and actions, and the obligation of mitzvos cannot be placed upon him.

According to another opinion, however, the source for the obligation to perform mitzvos at age 13 is a dictate handed down by G-d to Moshe at Sinai. As such, it follows along the lines of other supra-rational edicts regarding measurements and amounts. According to this opinion, the obligation to perform mitzvos at 13 has nothing to do with maturity or discernment; it is a supra-rational law.

One of the Halachic differences between these two opinions is the age at which a non-Jew becomes obligated to observe the Seven Noahide Laws.

If the obligation of mitzvos at the age of 13 is dependent on the age at which (most) people reach maturity, then it should apply to Jew and non-Jew equally. If, however, it is one of the supra-rational Laws of Measures — which do not apply to non-Jews — then the age at which non-Jews’ are obligated to perform their seven commandments depends entirely on individual maturity.

In terms of spiritual service, the difference between these two opinions relates to the manner in which a Jew is to approach the performance of Torah and mitzvos:

According to the first opinion, the approach is one of serving G-d logically; if the age at which one becomes obligated to perform mitzvos depends on one’ intellectual maturity, it is understandable that the service commences with logic and comprehension.

According to the second opinion, however, the obligation to begin performing mitzvos at 13 is supra-rational — because G-d has so commanded. It therefore follows that the approach to the performance of mitzvos involves the supra-rational acceptance of the Divine Yoke.

Nevertheless, even those who hold the first opinion — that the age for beginning one’s service is gleaned from the verse “each man took his sword” — also agree that the performance of mitzvos is bound up with mesirus nefesh, i.e., serving G-d in a self-sacrificial manner that transcends the bounds of intellect.

That this is indeed so is amply demonstrated by the fact that those who hold this opinion derive it from the verse “each man took his sword” — an action that demands self-sacrifice.

This in no way contradicts the earlier statement that this manner of service demands comprehension and intellect, for though they maintain that the action should be performed with understanding and discernment, they agree that the foundation of Divine service lies in acceptance of the Divine Yoke. Then, and only then, can a person be assured that he will not be blinded by his own logic, and that his performance of mitzvos will be done in an entirely proper manner.

by Rabbi David Lapin, iawaken.org

The Three Steps to Successful Traveling

I travel a lot, as I am sure many of you do. The geographical journeys have been the easiest ones. This applies to the transcontinental ones too, such as my current journey from California, through Europe, South Africa and Australia before returning to California. The harder journeys have been the intellectual, emotional and spiritual ones, and their destinations by far the most exciting and rewarding. On these journeys you are your own pilot; yet often you do not choose your destination. Life is your vehicle; but you cannot control its speed. Judgment is crucial; but you have no map.

I have found three success criteria to any journey, and I will share them with you: i) Truly departing; ii) Not arriving at your destination before you reach it; and  iii) Feeling the majestic future in the present moment – wherever you happen to be.  I discovered these criteria in the first verse of Parshat Vayetze, and I always try to live by them.

i) Truly Departing

Rashi asks[1] why the Parsha begins with Vayetze (“and he departed”) and does not merely tell where he traveled to: Haran. The Midrash[2] learns from this word, Vayetze, (without explaining how), that Ya’acov’s journey was without fear. Fear is the element most likely to sabotage a successful journey. Fear is what causes us to cling to the past, to nostalgically yearn for that which has been, and to remain attached to our previous assumptions, biases and viewpoints. Detachment is a precondition for movement, and fear prevents detachment. It is hard to let go of something you are holding onto if you fear the next step. Too often our bodies leave a place but our minds and sometimes our hearts remain there.

Detachment does not mean that you cease to value the past, nor that you forget it. It simply means you are not dependent on it for your sense of self and are ready to explore new vistas of human experience confident in your own capabilities and in the guiding hand of Providence. By the otherwise unnecessary use of the word vayetze, the Midrash sees an emphasis by the Torah of the fact that despite Ya’acov’s deeply spiritual and emotional attachments to his mother, father and home, he was able to depart, to let go and to start on a remarkable journey of pain, growth and joy.

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Parshat Chayei Sarah, 5768

© Rabbi David Lapin, 2007

Purchasing and Investing

This week I gave back a car I had been leasing for four years. It was the first car I have driven that I really “loved”! The experience led me to reflect on ownership.

The Hebrew word ba’al means “owner”. Ba’al also means “master”. Ownership describes a static relationship between a person and an object and is achieved through legal transaction. Mastery describes a dynamic relationship achieved through focused attention and disciplined effort. Normally one owns things but one masters skills and ideas. Ownership is a manifestation of material status; mastery manifests personal stature.

Teaching my son to drive the last few weeks taught me so much more than I taught him! He was focused on ownership: he wanted to possess a license, one day to possess a car. I was teaching him to master the art of driving, to master his car rather than to own it. Mastery is about the control of ones own power and respect for the vulnerability of others. Mastery of a car is not the thrill of racing it down a freeway; it is the skill of side parking in a space barely the length of the car itself. Mastery of driving is being able to let another person in front of one without feeling resentful. Mastery is attentiveness to every detail around you and the ability to respond to it quickly. Mastery is not only avoiding road rage but also reducing the rage of others by showing them consideration and offering them a smile even when you are in a hurry too.

One can own without mastering, and one can master without owning. In fact, masters do not need ownership for their own sense of wellbeing. A person can own a valuable musical instrument without mastering it. One can own an impressive library of sefarim (books) without having mastered any of them. Those objects reflect their owners’ status but say nothing of their stature. Artists who inspire souls with the sounds they elicit from an instrument, and scholars who illuminate the lives of others with their wisdom, do not need ownership to achieve mastery.

The Torah’s idea of ownership is not limited to transactional ownership. The transaction, or kinyan, symbolizes not only the transfer of rights from one individual to another, but more importantly the transfer of responsibility. A person’s ownership is judged not only by the technicalities of transaction, but equally by the quality of his mastery of the things he owns and his level of responsibility for them. Later in the Torah, Ya’acov is praised for putting himself in danger to retrieve small belongings that on his journey home he had left on the other side of a stream. We do not merely purchase the things we own, we invest in them. We don’t only own them; we should be masters of them too.

Ownership and Mastery: Having and Being

From the first chapter of our Parsha the Gemara[1] learns that a man can “acquire” his wife by “financial transaction”. (i.e., Giving the bride a gold ring under the chupah, signifies his willingness to invest in her wellbeing at his own cost.) A husband, like an owner, is called her ba’al. Here even more so than in other cases, although the relationship between a man and his wife is initiated with a financial transaction, that transaction is not intended to introduce a sterile and patronizing relationship of ownership, but an excitingly dynamic relationship of mastery.

Just as the musician does not need to own the instrument with which he creates music, so men who know how to master their wives do not need to own them[2]. Mastering a woman means understanding her needs and being able to anticipate them and respond to them. Mastering a woman, is knowing how to inspire her, excite her, calm her, delight her, and make her feel secure and adored; it is knowing how to make music with her. In such a relationship there is no need for control and ownership, and certainly no tolerance for emotional or physical abusiveness. A ba’al who masters does not need ownership to feel secure within himself. Ownership and its attendant status symbols are the props of people who are not yet accomplished masters of themselves and the things they own. Ownership is about having; mastery is about being.

Eliezer: Mastery without Ownership:

There is a specific word in Hebrew for one who has mastery but not ownership. The word is mosheil (ruler). A ruler can provide for the wellbeing of his people, but he does not own them. He can attend to their needs, develop their potential and serve them as their leader, but he doesn’t own them. Rulers (or CEO’s) who confuse the responsibility of ruling, with the rights of ownership, cross the ethical boundary of sound governance and begin a quick descent down the slippery slope of ethical decline.

Ekiezer, Avraham’s faithful servant, is referred to as a mosheil: Avraham demonstrates infinite trust in his servant Eliezer, by giving him the power of attorney to marry a wife to Yitzchak. He does so because Eliezer is already “zekan beito, hamosheil bechol asher lo” (the sage of his household; ruler of all that is his)[3]. Had Eliezer wished to abuse his privileged position in Avraham’s household he had ample opportunity to do so before. Eliezer has proved his trustworthiness. He is master of Avraham’s household, but owns no part in it. Eliezer the paradox: at once both slave and master.
The Klei Yakar adds a glorious dimension to the Torah’s description of Eliezer as mosheil bechol asher lo. It means, he says, not that Eliezer ruled over everything that Avraham possessed, but rather that he ruled over everything he himself possessed. You see, not all owners are masters! Some people own their wealth but have not mastered it. In fact in many cases, people are themselves mastered by the wealth they own! Their wealth drives their values, chooses their friends and communities, and dictates the usage of their time. So, the spectrum extends from those who master but do not need to own, to those who own and master, through to those who own but do not master - finally to those who are mastered by what they own. Not Eliezer, he mastered everything he owned: mosheil bekol asher lo. That is why Avraham trusted him boundlessly. Trustworthiness vests with people who are owned by no one and by nothing, people who are masters of what they own.

There is much to be learnt from the paradox of Eliezer being both slave and master. In essence, his relationship to the things he owned is the model for ours. We do not have true ownership of anything. LeHashem Ha’aretz Umelo’oh (Earth and all that is in it, belongs to Hashem). So when we use the term “owner”, ba’al, we intend it as Eliezer did. We own nothing as he owned nothing. We are servants as he was a servant. But, just as he mastered all of which he was a steward, so we master all that is in our possession and are mastered by none, for LeHashem Ha’aretz Umelo’oh.

Notes:

[1] Kidushin 2a
[2] Because the word ba’al refers specifically to the husband and not the wife, we are focused in this essay on his mastery of her and not on her mastery of him. Of course her mastery of him is equally important and will be dealt with elsewhere.
[3] 24:2

There’s no such thing as defeat.

There’s always another chance. To believe in defeat is to believe that there is something, a certain point in time that did not come from Above.

Know that G-d doesn’t have failures. If things appear to worsen, it is only as part of them getting better. We only fall down in order to bounce back even higher.

A Daily Dose of Wisdom from the Rebbe
-words and condensation by Tzvi Freeman

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

Thursday, September 6
Elul 23
by Rabbi Simon Jacobson, The Meaningful Life Center

In our prayers before and during the High Holiday we repeatedly ask G-d to forgive us in three different ways:

• selach lanu
• mechal lanu
• kapper lanu

While these Hebrew words are virtually synonymous—all meaning “forgive us”—they have different implications which shed light on the process of seeking forgiveness from G-d as well as from other human beings.

Selach lanu comes from selichah meaning “pardon.” To ask for pardon is to say to the one we have injured: “I am sorry for what I did; I sincerely regret having done it, and I will never do it again.” According to Jewish law, the appropriate response to this request is for the one we’ve injured to believe we are sincere and to respond positively. One who refuses to do this is considered a cruel person.

Melach lanu comes from mechilah, meaning “wiping away.” Here, we are asking the one we’ve injured to wipe away the transgression as if it never happened, and restore the relationship to the former level of warmth and intimacy. For the one who has been injured a positive response to this is naturally difficult. But it is within each person’s G-d-given powers to forgive to this extent. Hence, one must, according to Jewish law.

Kapper lanu comes from kapparah, meaning “atonement” (as in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement). When we request from the one we’ve injured to grant us atonement, we are saying, in effect, “My conscience will not let me live with myself, because of what I did to you and to our relationship. Please forgive me and take away the guilt and hurt that I feel.” To respond positively to this is beyond human capacity. It is only G-d who can reach inside our hearts and say, “Be consoled.”

Ask yourself: How have you responded when someone has come to you asking forgiveness? Have you forgiven others as completely as you want to be forgiven by G-d?

Exercise for the day:

• Make a list of people you have hurt in some way
• Describe what you must do to ask their forgiveness
• Begin

By: Rabbi David Lapin, iawaken.org

Travel is stressful. Journeys are full of surprises. They have beginnings and ends, they start with goodbyes and end with hellos. They entail waiting in lines, making new connections, crossing boundaries and encountering different cultures. We have to pack and unpack, live in strange surroundings, hear strange sounds and smell strange odors. Journeys include adventure and exploration, risk and reward, loss and gain. By their very nature they create memories, they inspire, they excite, they exhaust. That is what journeys are. Through all this the greatest art is to retain a degree of centered, no matter what.

Even at the speed at which we travel, we can experience quiet tranquility. If one is fortunate, one can relax, enjoy music, a good book or a movie, engage in conversation, or just sit quietly and think or learn. This is the art of movement: retaining a tranquil balance even during times of rapid and sometimes turbulent motion.

Life itself is a journey: it contains all the elements of the shorter journeys we take throughout our lives. And in life, just as in travel, equanimity is key to our surviving or even thriving through rough times. When we are centered and balanced, we can connect to our source no matter what is occurring around us. Connected to our source, we remain anchored and fulfilled and we can experience wellbeing on spiritual, emotional and physical levels.

This idea is core to a statement many of us too routinely skim over twice a day during the month of Elul: “One thing have I asked of Hashem” says King David, “and that I shall quest after, all the days of my life: that I may stay in the house of Hashem all the days of my life”[1]. On the surface David is wishing to be relieved of his royal duties so that he may spend his time in the Beit Hamedrash (house of study), studying the Torah and reflecting on the Divine. Yet at no time in Tanach does King David express a desire to retire. On the contrary he suffers terribly when he is temporarily deposed. This cannot be his meaning.

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© Rabbi David Lapin, 2006

Fear is an intuition; it is a feeling, an emotion. Fear is not the product of data or intellectual process. So, when someone feels afraid, it is not helpful to tell them not to worry, that there is nothing to fear. The way to counter fear is with Faith. Faith is also an intuition, it is also an emotion [1]: faith in yourself, faith in your G-d. Like Fear, you will not experience Faith through the mastery of data or of intellectual process. You access faith through intuitive feeling, not through rational proof.

The feeling of fear in the pits of our stomachs (or wherever else we feel it) is a warning-light. It indicates one of two things: it is either a) a warning that there is real danger in what we are thinking of doing; b) the “danger” is in our own heads and results from inadequate faith in ourselves and in G-d.

When we experience a feeling of fear in any particular area of our lives we need to do a check. Is there any data that suggests real danger in what we are planning? If there is, then we should act to alleviate that danger or abandon or modify the plan. If we can find no signs of real danger, then we should look inward rather than outward. We should question our Faith in ourselves and our Faith in Hashem.

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by Yosef Y. Jacobson

Death of a Tyrant

The small, often helpless nation, whose obituary many an empire and tyrant craved to write for millennia, has instead emerged as the exclusive obituary writer of history. From the dawn of civilization till today, the Jewish people have observed firsthand the rise and fall of countless brutal empires and evil dictators who held the world in a grip of terror and then vanished.

Last Saturday morning, December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was executed. Our tiny nation takes up its pen once more to write the obituary of a man who inflicted untold measures of suffering on millions of innocents, a person who chopped off the ears and noses of dissidents, tortured children in front of their parents, gassed thousands to death and craved the extermination of the Land of Israel.

If there was any doubt as to Saddam Hussein’s diehard hatred of Israel, it was dispelled by his declaration on the gallows: “Long live Iraq, Palestine is Arab!” For decades he had sown terror among Israelis — whether through his Scud missile salvoes of the 1991 Gulf War or by bankrolling Palestinian suicide bombers.

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