every day's a holiday! » Israel

Passover, Part 1

sinestor — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:14:18 +0000

Begins at sunset on April 18, 2011

Tonight Jews around the world celebrate Passover. The origin and the name of Passover goes back to the Egyptian days, when the Jews were slaves in Egypt.

According to the second book of the Torah, Exodus, God unleashed ten plagues upon Pharaoh and his people in an attempt to convince Pharaoh to emancipate the Hebrews. Or as the late great Charlton Heston said, to “let my people go.”

The last and deadliest of the ten plagues was the killing of the first-born male in every household. In the book of Exodus, God commands Moses to tell Jewish families to put the blood of a sheep over their doors, so that God would know to “pass over” the house, hence the name Passover.

The first nine plagues were:

1. Turning of the River Nile to blood:

“…and all the water was changed into blood. The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water.”

Amazing as that sounds, Pharaoh was not impressed. His sorcerers/magicians could also duplicate the feat of turning water into blood. Apparently this was the three-card shuffle of ancient Egypt.

Scientists have put forth numerous theories to explain the seemingly supernatural forces of the plagues. One theory is that a then-active Ethiopian volcano poured sulfurous lava into the Nile, upstream from Egypt.

Another theory is that of the ‘Red Tide. Red tide is a common occurrence brought on by algae in salt water or in stagnant water, but rarely in free-flowing fresh rivers like the Nile.

Both theories would explain how toxic elements in the Nile altered the color of the water and killed the fish. The extermination of millions of fish that piled up on the banks of the river would have created the awful stench from the water and would have set off a domino effect that could account for several of the following plagues:

2. Frogs

God, a devout fan of P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia, smited Egypt with the plague of frogs:

“…and the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed…”

Amphibians would have left the toxic polluted waters in vast numbers to take shelter on land, where they would die of dehydration.

3. An infestation of “Kinim”

Kinim is translated as Gnats, Lice, Fleas, or Mosquitos.

The dead fish and amphibians would have caused Insect populations to explode, accounting for how the “dust throughout the land of Egypt became “kimin.”

4. Swarms of Flies

The Hebrew word arov literally means “swarms,” though it doesn’t say swarms of what. It’s generally believed to be flies or mosquitos, though also translated as wild animals, rodents, or vermin. Any of these would have been present following the fish and frog catastrophe set off by a toxic Nile.

5. Disease upon the livestock and other animals.

Swarms of vermin, rodents, and mosquitos would increase the pestilence level, diseases which may have struck the livestock first. The King James Bible mentions horses, donkeys, camels, oxen, sheep and cattle.

6. Skin disease among people, commonly thought to be boils.

And then pestilence would have infected the people, taking the physical manifestations of painful boils.

Rabbinical scholars often looked at the first nine plagues as a trilogy of trilogies, much like George Lucas’s original plan for the 9-part Star Wars…

Continued in Passover, Part 2

Tu B’Shevat – New Year for Trees

sinestor — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:03:00 +0000

February 7-8, 2012
January 25-26, 2013
15th day of the month Shevat

The evolution of this holiday is a bit unusual. In ancient times Tu B’Shevat wasn’t really a “holy day” at all, but more of a tax day. Fruit-bearing trees were taxed differently depending on their age. And fruit could not be taken until after the tree’s third year. The fifteenth day of the month of Shevat was chosen as the “birthday” for all trees in the land of Israel, regardless of when they were planted.

Lone Pine, Monterey, California

Today it is celebrated as more of an Arbor Day for the Jewish people.

The is no one way to celebrate Tu B’Shevat.

In Italy Rabbi Barbara Aiello and her congregation bring green plants to the residents of a local retirement home, to bright up the rooms.
In Modiin, Israel a kindergarten class plants trees.

Many Jewish families around globe have a special “sedar” or meal on Tu B’Shevat. Four types–or colors really–of wine are consumed during the sedar, as well as different types of fruit.

In the Kabbalah tradition the fruits symbolize different levels of the world:

1. assiyah, the level of “action,” is symbolized by fruits with an inedible shell, such as nuts. The inside represents holiness, protected by the outer shell.
2. yezirah, the level of “formation.” This level is represented by fruits with edible outsides and pits on the inside.
3. beriah, the level of “creation,” is symbolized totally edible fruits, such as apples, grapes, figs, and raspberries.
4. atzilut, the purest level is known as “emanation,” and is not symbolized by fruit or anything for that matter, as it cannot be represented by anything concrete.

In modern times Tu B’Shevat has been adopted by the environmental movement, and a sort of Earth Day culture has developed around it. The modern tradition of planting trees goes back to 1884 when settlers in Galilee planted 1500 trees. Today it is common for schoolchildren in Israel to do the same.
Another reason Judaica may have latched onto the holiday tighter in diaspora than originally in Israel, was the representation of the tree and tree’s roots as symbols for the roots of the Jewish people back in the Holy Land, and fruit symbolic of the Jewish family and future yet to be realized. The theme of genealogy and family grew to be of fundamental importance during the eras of exile. Tu B’Shevat’s imagery of trees and land tapped into the scattered people’s longing for a faraway homeland.

The blessing for the fruit is:

Baruch Atah Adonai, Elohaynu Melech Haolam, borei pri ha’eitz.

“Blessed are You Adonai, our God, ruler of the universe, who brings forth the fruit of the tree.”

Tu B’Shevat begins, as all Jewish holidays, at sun-down and continues the next day.

10th of Tevet – the Siege of Jerusalem

sinestor — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:02:19 +0000

January 5, 2012

December 17, 2010

Wailing Wall, Jerusalem, early 20th century

The Big Guy of the three consecutive Jewish holy days is the last, the Tenth of Tevet. It is a day of fasting.

The Tenth of Tevet marks the first day of the siege of Jerusalem in 589 BC by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (630-562 BC). The city would fall thirty months later in 587. It was actually the third time in as many decades that Jerusalem had faced the Babylonians.

The first was in 606 BC by King Nabopolassar; the second around 597 BC by his son, the new king, Nebuchadnezzar, and finally eight years later by Nebuchadnezzar again. This time Nebuchadnezzar was feeling less charitable toward the city’s residents. After the city’s walls were breached, Solomon’s Temple was destroyed, Jerusalem was razed to the ground, and its remaining inhabitants were exiled.

This date is among the most tragic in all of Jewish history and yet, as Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair points out, “on the tenth of Tevet itself, ostensibly, nothing really tragic happened. No wall was breached. No one died. Not a shot was fired. Only the siege was begun.” However the day marked the beginning of the end. The diaspora that would define the shape of Judaism for millennia.

The 10th of Tevet has also been chosen by some as a symbolic anniversary date of the millions who died in the Holocaust, whose dates of death may not be known.

In March of 2003, as the U.S. prepared for war, stories circulated about Saddam Hussein comparing himself to the ancient biblical king Nebuchadnezzar. And an evangelical minister stated in his sermon that Nebuchadnezzar was one of “the world’s greatest terrorists, maybe even higher than Bin Laden or Hitler…” Yet in Iraq he is considered a national hero. How is this dichotomy possible?

Nebuchadnezzar’s reign lasted 45 years, during which time Babylonia was at the peak of its power. He wrested his father’s territory from the Assyrians, halted Egyptian dominance, and defended the empire from Persian invaders. Under his rule Babylon grew to be the largest and most glorified city in the world with a defensive wall that stretched 56 miles. The metropolis boasted hundreds of towers, including the massive ziggurat we know as the “Tower of Babel” and the Great Temple of Marduk which held a 25 ton golden statue of Baal. His most innovative creation may have been the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Gardens were irrigated by a series of hydraulic pumps. According to legend the Gardens were built to cheer up Amytis, Nebuchadnezzar’s wife, who was homesick for her native land of Midea.

It would be like a single President ruling America from FDR through the Reagan years, taking the country from depression to superpower and defeating both Germany and the USSR in the process–not to mention overthrowing a few Central American republics along the way. So it is not difficult to see how he could be regarded as a national hero to one people, even though he brought about the near annihilation of his enemies.

The strange truth is, though Baghdad sits near what was once Babylon, the ancient civilization bears little resemblance to Iraq. To the Judeans Babylonia symbolized the boundless superpower. An ostentatious empire governed by decadence, arrogance and amorality.

Its leader was the son of the former leader Nabopolassar. Both father and son waged large military campaigns in the Middle East. And during their reign Babylonia won out over its enemies as the world’s single superpower.

So how can two societies with such conflicting memories of the same events ever find a common ground?

The answer may come in the shape of a figure who arrived on the scene an estimated 1500 years before Nebuchadnezzar: Abraham. Abraham (Ibrahim in Islam) is the father from which all three religions derive. He is the first monotheist. But his story is for another day…

Mother of All Sermons

Tenth of Tevet