Parshat Beshalach

 :: Posted by jeff on 01-28-2013
Parshat Beshalach-Miriam at the Red Sea

Parshat Beshalach-Miriam at the Red Sea

(Exodus 13:17-17:16)

(Haftara: Shoftim 4:4-5:31)

)Shabbat Shira)

(Tu B’shvat)

1. [14:12-14] The Israelites are brought to a situation of great fear and stress before God saves them. God could have just done a miracle and saved them. What is gained by bringing the Israelites to such a crisis?

2. [14:28] The midrash tells us that when the Egyptian soldiers were drowning, the angels were singing joyfully. God told them to stop because “my creations are drowning”. Why did God allow the Israelites to sing joyfully?

3. [15:1] “Then Moshe and the Israelites sang this song to God…” It seems that they sang spontaneously. If we hadn’t been exposed to music from early childhood, would music come naturally to us? Why is it that music has the power to express our emotions better than words?

4. [15:2] “…this is my God and I will make him beautiful (ve’anvayhu)…” “Neve” in Hebrew also means home. Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch understands the word “ve’anvayhu” as the idea that my body should be a suitable place for God–God should have a home in one’s life and one’s body. How can one make one’s body and one’s life a suitable place for God?

5. [Tu B'Shvat] When we make blessings before eating fruit and other foods, we make the blessing which is specific to that family of food. There is one blessing, however, that could apply to every food—”Blessed are You..that everything exists through His word. If one blessing is acceptable for every food, why do we try so hard to make the specific blessing?

Commentary

This is the mystery of the oneness of God. Wherever I take hold of a little bit of it, I take hold of all of it. And since the Torah and all the commandments are radiations of His Being, so whoever does a commandment with sincerity and love, and takes hold of a tiny bit of the oneness of God, has really taken hold of all of it.

–The Ba’al Shem Tov, 1698-1760, Ukraine.

This study page is dedicated to the memory of Sarah Bella bat Yitzchak Kummer, Chaim Yosef Yechiel ben Eliyahu Kummer and Eliyahu and Margaret Kummer

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Inner Bumps

 :: Posted by carol on 01-28-2013

RESILIENCE TIP

Resilience is the ability to cope well with difficulties and to bounce back from setbacks.

While some people are naturally more resilient than others, resiliency can also be intentionally developed.

Inner Bumps

An important resilient expectation is Realistic Optimism. We are realistic in that we expect the road of life to have bumps, and we are optimistic in that we believe we can or will be able to manage the bumps. Sometimes these bumps are external, a challenge at our work, a health issue, children that do not admire and agree with every utterance from our mouths. And sometimes these bumps are internal, we lose our temper easily, we tend to procrastinate, we react before we think.

I have wondered if we spend too much time and energy attempting to change who we are. I am absolutely in favor of change; my professional life is all about facilitating change. And, would a more productive focus be on changing how we are instead of who we are? For example, if we tend to procrastinate, frequently with an undesired effect on our lives, we might try to not be a procrastinator. Problem is, procrastinator can be a tough characteristic to “disappear”. And this can lead to a tough, usually unsuccessful, and so often guilt-ridden inner battle to change who we are. A shift in our thinking can lead to a kinder and more effective approach.

Suppose instead that we stop trying to stop being a procrastinator; that we accept that we have a tendency to procrastinate, accept that we will likely always have a tendency to procrastinate, and stop beating ourselves up for being a procrastinator. What if, instead, we see our procrastination as an inevitable bump on our road, an inner bump; what if we accept that we will not be perfect human specimens. We know external stuff happens. While we may fantasize otherwise, we know that we will have desirable and undesirable events in our lives. How we relate to all these events is critical to our resilience. And, we all have desirable and undesirable traits; at least every human that I know. How we relate to all these inner traits of ours is also critical to our resilience. A resilient way to relate to undesirable traits, to inner bumps on our road, is to focus on managing these traits. For example, how can we manage our tendency to procrastinate, so that our procrastinator tendency manifests less frequently, or manifests for a shorter period of time?

I love the eyeglass example. Some of us were born with less than perfect vision. Yet, most people do not beat themselves up for not having perfect vision. We deal with it, manage it, and generally do not consider it a flaw. We manage by wearing glasses, or contacts, or avoid driving at night. Similarly, there are a number of ways to manage our being a procrastinator. We can create a structure to help contain us, hang motivating reminders, utilize friends and/or professionals to help keep us on track (outside commitments are good for procrastinators), or allow extra time for projects – knowing that we will require time for our procrastination.

When we want to influence others we want to avoid attacking the other (leads to defensiveness, and shifts focus to the attack), and we want to accept them as the human they are (does not necessarily mean we like everything about them, nor that we wish all to remain exactly as is). Similarly, when we want to influence ourselves, we want to avoid self-attacks and to be more accepting of ourselves, to consider changing how we are being, rather than who we are.

Carolyn S. Tal, PhD

Psychologist and Consultant – working with individuals, couples, and business partners

Creator of “Resilience Frame”; 052-825-8585, carolyn@talconsulting.com

(Please contact me if you would like to have these tips sent directly to your e-mail.)

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רחוב סומסום – מטריה בשניים Sesame Street: Umbrella for two

 :: Posted by elisheva on 01-17-2013



1984 was also a very rainy and stormy winter in Israel. Elisheva commemorates the event with this cute, child-friendly video clip taken from the Israeli version of Sesame street.  Please Enjoy!!!

Beginning of Winter in the Western Gallilee

It’s raining today, as it was yesterday, and probably will tomorrow. Grayish purple clouds and drops of rain keep on coming. Funny to think that just two days ago we were walking around in t-shirts wondering if we will ever light the fire in our wood burning stove this winter.

What I love about the winter from where I’m sitting now, in the village of Klil in the Western Galilee, is that you can look to the horizon in the west and actually anticipate when another rain cloud will arrive. Looking towards the Mediterranean Sea, you can really become a weather forecaster.  When the clouds are lighter, it means that there will be a break in the storm in a matter of minutes, while a lightning bolt above Nahariya means new storms on the way. What’s amazing, is how exact the wind directions are. If I were to look southwest toward Haifa and Mt. Carmel and see a thunderstorm going on up there, I would know for sure that it’s not heading my way. The rain in the Galilee always comes from the West – from the Mediterranean Sea.

This day reminds me of  when I was working in a kindergarten in a  nearby moshav. On rainy days we would always sing to the children a song called (roughly translated) “Two of us Together, under One Umbrella.”

Here are some of the lyrics:

“What luck! It’s started to rain

What luck, that you forgot your umbrella!

Two of us together under one umbrella,

We’re both jumping in all of the puddles

A city in the rain tells us this:

“Life is beautiful and worth living!”

Very optimistic!!

And here again is a link to the Israeli Sesame Street version of the song from 1984:

Have a great winter!!

Elisheva

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From Hand-Picked Olives to Hanukah Lights

 :: Posted by elisheva on 12-28-2012

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The olive harvest–“masik” in Hebrew–is a very special season in Israel. The olives are ready for harvesting during the period between Succot and Hannuka. Historically, this is probably why Hannuka is the holiday of oil. It is celebrated at the end of the olive harvesting season in Israel–the time of year when olive oil is flowing everywhere.

I was fortunate to be able to participate in the olive harvest this year in the western Galilee, close to the city of Naharya which is the northernmost coastal city in Israel. At dawn each morning, we went out to the olive groves. We spread big sheets under the trees and then began picking either with our hands, or with special rakes. For those bigger trees, which also had riper olives, we used bamboo sticks. We worked in pairs, each group in its own tree. Trying to leave the trees completely clean, we moved along the rows of light green-leafed trees with ripe purple-colored olives. All of the olives were placed in sacks. The green- shaded olives from other trees were set aside for pickling– one week in salt water–and then placed into spices and ready to eat.

We worked daily until the sun became quite strong, and then, in the shade one of the bigger trees, we ate our lunch together. We then worked until sunset. Every other day we took the sacks of olives to the oil press to claim our gold.

The olive groves we worked in had been planted thirteen years earlier by Jewish families living in the Galilee. It took twelve years for the groves to produce fruit worth picking. This year was a year of abundance for the family – approximately 1000 liters of olive oil! Half of the oil was used to pay the workers, and that still left the family with enough oil to sell for the whole year. There was special satisfaction in the fact that their pure olive oil was made from hand-picked olives.

This year I lit my Hannukah menorah with oil pressed from the olives I had hand-picked myself in Eretz Yisrael. What a beautiful and memorable experience!!

–Elisheva Kornberg

Klil, West Galil.

* In Hebrew, there are specific words for the picking and harvesting of some of the seven species (the seven indigenous grains and fruits of the land of Israel). Olives – “masik”, grapes – “batzir”, dates – “gadid.”

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Jewish Elder Care in Israel

 :: Posted by jeff on 10-21-2012

Rabbi Shipkowitz as a 3-year old, lower-right.  Gurs Concentration Camp. 1943.

I am a care giver for the elderly in Israel and work for private agencies which provide face-to-face support for older people with disabilities.   There are few locals in this field;  most are foreign workers.   I have worked at this for a year and a half.   It is my calling, though it doesn’t pay well.    The agencies that I work for have contracts with Bituach Leumi, Israel’s National Insurance Institute.  They support a wide array of para-medical and social services for the elderly.  Some need  help bathing and grooming;   others need some company, someone to spend time with.

Israelis hold their Elder Care system in high regard.  One taxi cab driver told me,  ” I feel fortunate to live here.  If I become disabled, Betuach Leumi will give me 3,000 shekels a month to hire someone,  or  they will hire a helper at no cost to me.”

Following are stories of some of my patients (not their real names).

Rabbi Shipkowitz is a 72-year-old Rabbi from one of Jerusalem’s oldest, Yiddish-speaking Hasidic dynasties.  He comes from a  meuhedet (especially prestigious) Haredi family, well known in Israel and abroad.    He is holocaust survivor, who came from France at the age of  five with his parents and  nine brothers and sisters. They barely escaped deportation to Auschwitz from the notorious Gurs concentration camp in South-Western France.

A year ago, the Rabbi had a heart attack, followed by an angioplasty and a stent.    He requested a male, religious, English-speaking caregiver.    He wanted me to help him translate the Parsha  into English to keep his mind alert and to supervise his daily, doctor-approved,  Hatha Yoga head stand.  The Rabbi has done this from the age of 30.

Rabbi Reichman, who just passed away,  was a 77-year-old Hasidic rabbi from another dynasty, a 6th generation Jerusalemite, living in  Sahandriya Meurhevet.    He had high blood pressure and acute problems with his kidneys.  I bathed him and walked with him.     When the rabbi was hospitalized,  I was on mishmeret laylah, late night and early morning observation.  Though he was very ill, he insisted on putting tefillin on every day.  I admired that.

Last year I worked with Shmuel Levinson, an 86-year-old retired architect from the former Soviet Union.  I was chosen,  because I speak Russian.   I spent 5 hours each day with him, accompanied him by bus three times a week to dialysis,  and took him home by cab at night.  Mr. Levinson did not want me with him during dialysis, so I sat at the local Aroma coffee shop, and worked on my computer, doing  SEO (search engine optimization) for a local business.

Directly or indirectly, Bituach Leumi paid for all of this.   There are forms to fill out and tests to pass in order to qualify for the money or the services.  Like many bureaucracies, they are slow and cumbersome, even after a person proves his eligibility.   It is imperative to start paperwork early and have an advocate, someone to represent your interests in a strongly  and consistently.     The system does work, though it requires you educate yourself about your rights and invest significant and prolonged effort.  Vitamin P (protectzia, knowing the right people) also helps!

Universal care is a worthy goal, though it’s not carried out with anything close to the care and efficiency it deserves.

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Learning Group–Parshat Shmot (Exodus 1:1 – 5:23) (Haftara: Isaiah 27:6- 28:13, 29:22,23)

 :: Posted by jeff on 09-02-2012

1. [1:10] “…and make war with us and leave the land.” It seems that Pharoah did not want the Israelites in Egypt, but also didn’t want them to leave. What did he want? How do you understand this pasuk?

2. [2:10] “…because I pulled him out of the water.” What quality did Pharoah’s daughter show by pulling him out of the water, and how might this choice of name have affected the development of Moshe’s personality?

3. [2:23] When the Israelites screamed, God heard them and the redemption started. The Torah does not say that they screamed to God, but only that they screamed. The Torah speaks both on the physical and the spiritual level. On an individual spiritual level, when a person screams out of his or her pain, why is that the beginning of their redemption?

4. [4:10] Moshe says that he is not fit for the mission of taking the Israelites out of Egypt because he has some kind of speech impediment. Later his speech seems to be fine and we are never told how he improved. What might have caused the improvement in Moshe’s speech?

5. (Haftara: Isaiah 27:12) When Isaiah speaks of the final redemption, he says that we will be “gathered one by one”. Why not in groups? What does this phrase tell us about the final redemption?

Commentary

[2:10] “…and she called his name Moshe, and she said, “Because I pulled him out of the water”.

From here you can understand how great is the reward for those who do acts of kindness. Although Moshe had many names, the name by which he is known throughout the Torah is the one which Batyah, the daughter of Pharaoh, called him, and even God called him by the same name.

–Midrash Rabbah

This study page is dedicated to the memory of Sarah Bella bat Yitzchak Kummer, Chaim Yosef Yechiel ben Eliyahu Kummer and Eliyahu and Margaret Kummer

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Strike at all the Israeli ports

 :: Posted by admin on 01-05-2011

An open ended strike began this week at all the Israeli ports. Containers are not being loaded, unloaded, or transferred. Carmel Agrexco, the exporter of produce, is the only one being served. The strike is about a 5% pay raise the Histadrut has been demanding for most of last year.

During such strikes, the country can lose billions of dollars. Ships, since they can’t unload in Israel, are diverted to Europe or Egypt. If the steamship company declares, “end of voyage”, customers ahve to pay to get their containers delivered from those countries. Those whose shipments are already at the port pay the usual very high storage rates, though they have no way of getting their goods out. Not good for aliya. Not good for business.

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