Hypocrisy

I don't have time to make a thoughtful post of my own, so I'll just post an insightful link. Please ignore the hypothetical possibility that I might have had ample time to find and read that link.

Now there's an original business plan

Despite being a hoax.

On the twelfth day of Chanukah, Achira ben Enan gave to me...

On Chanukah we read what may be the most boring part of the Torah: the list of the twelve princes and the gifts they presented at the dedication of the Mishkan (Bamidbar 7). Though all twelve princes give exactly the same gift, the exact description of the gift is repeated almost verbatim for each of the twelve. Describing each gift takes more than 150 words (in my English translation) - so the overall passage comes out to 89 verses and more than 1900 words, with about 1600 of those words being exact repetitions of what was previously stated. Unless you have an an extremely good baal koreh, it's almost impossible to pay attention to the whole thing.

Hoping to explain why the repetition is necessary, I dredged my memory and came up with recollections from my college graduation, which took place 1.5 years ago. My college included about 10 different "schools" for different subjects, which wore different-colored skirt-thingies at graduation and, in some technical sense, graduated separately. As a result, the "formal" part of graduation took quite some time to finish. Here's my best recollection of what the university president said during that part of the ceremony.

"My greetings to the students of the School of Arts and Sciences. [One or two cheesy lines which I don't remember.] I hereby ordain you as graduates of the University of ************, and confer upon you all the rights and privileges which that status entails." (Cheering)

And next:
"My greetings to the students of the School of Business. [A different one or two cheesy lines which I don't remember.] I hereby ordain you as graduates of the University of ************, and confer upon you all the rights and privileges which that status entails." (Cheering)

And after that:
"My greetings to the students of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. [More cheesy lines which I don't remember.] I hereby ordain you as graduates of the University of ************, and confer upon you all the rights and privileges which that status entails." (Cheering)

And so on and so on, until the graduates of each of the ten or so schools had their status conferred upon them. (By the way, I have yet to see any rights or privileges as a result of graduation. Except for the right to receive fundraising emails and the privilege of trying to recover financially from $160000 in tuition bills. Thank God for the right and privilege of having my parents.)

Why didn't the university president simply lump all the statements together? As in: "Hey Business, Engineering, Nursing, Med School, Dentistry, and Arts and Crafts students - you guys are all graduated now. Now go home and get drunk. But pleeeaase, don't forget to finish your incomplete Jewish Studies papers, I'm begging you!" That would have saved her at least ten minutes which could have been productively spent looking for suicide bombers to take pictures with.

Well, it was important not only that we all received degrees, but that it was publicly and formally announced that we had received them, from the president specifically. And part of being a formal announcement means that you go over the details unnecessarily. One one hand, these were "magic words" which (like signatures on legal documents and the diploma itself) cause a change in status without any physical action, but only if the correct formula is recited. On the other hand, the very fact that they were said in an abnormal manner emphasized that this was not just another lecture or pep rally, but was instead an extraordinary event with extraordinary meaning.

I think both explanations apply to the dedication of the Mishkan, which like graduation was a formal ceremony to commemorate a change in status. First of all, the dedication was a very unusual event, and describing it in a different style makes clear that it was unusual. Secondly, the gifts of the princes were qualitatively different from other gifts to the Mishkan - from the "terumah" used to build it, and from the "hekdesh" and voluntary sacrifices contributed after it began functioning. Instead, I think the gifts served to connect each tribe to the Mishkan. The Mishkan was not meant to be a disembodied shrine, but rather a means by which God would dwell amongst Israel. In order for this to occur, each tribe of Israel had to individually and formally connect to the Mishkan through a gift. (This may be the deeper meaning of the midrash that each prince's gift was different from the others.) The point of the gift was not the "bottom line", the weight of gold or number of animals, which could be summarized. Rather, the important thing was the gesture that a gift was given, and summarizing the gift would impair the gesture.

A third possible reason for the repetition is to increase our tension and anticipation as we get to the climactic last verse-and-a-half of the chapter: "...This is the dedication of the altar after its anointing. And when Moshe entered the Tent of Meeting to speak with [God], he heard the voice speak to him from above the cover of the ark of testimony, between the two keruvim - and he/it spoke to it/him." Finally, after all the delay, the the Mishkan is complete and God can communicate with Israel (and/or vice versa, depending how you translate the last phrase). This is a historic moment in Jewish history, and by reading a very long "lead-up" to it, we anticipate it and hopefully realize its importance when it comes.

Useful references sites

Want to translate a technical term which does not appear in your dictionary? Go to Wikipedia, find the term, and click on the side bar to get the equivalent page in a different language. And if you need a good dictionary, look here.

Need the Israeli equivalent of Google-Maps? Try Mapa. (No Google Maps API though, I asked them, although if you pay for a subscription you can get a partial equivalent.)
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Return? Right...

It's time to replace the phrase "right of return". By using the phrase (which is likely to become much more common the next few years), you implicitly accept two weighty but false Palestinian claims. The "right of return" is in fact not a "right", because international law does not guarantee refugees the right to return home, but only the right to humanitarian accommodations which do not cause political instability. Nor for the vast majority of Palestinian "refugees" would it be "return", because not they, but rather their uncles or second cousins or grandparents, left Israel in 1948. And nowhere in international law is there the idea that the descendants of refugees have the same status as refugees themselves. There needs to be a phrase which will allow discussion of Palestinian "refugees", without immediately prejudging the issue in the most extreme and destructive direction.

How about "demand of displacement"? "Demand" is a much more accurate description than "right", and "displacement" correctly focuses attention on what both Israelis and Palestinians know is the real point at issue - whether or not the Jewish state will be demographically overwhelmed by Arabs. You wouldn't even have to give up the alliteration.

Imagine you're Bashar Assad

Goal: You want to start a war and defeat Israel.

Complication: Israel's army is way, way stronger than yours and would quickly destroy your army without expending too much effort.

Solution: Build civilian villages along the border, in the middle of the projected battlefield. When war comes you'll be able to hide behind the newly settled civilians. Israel will have moral qualms about attacking with so many civilians around, but you won't, so you'll gain the advantage.

But of course, only Israel commits war crimes in the Middle East.

You want to inspect what?

If you go here you can see the Google Maps aerial photograph of the Dimona umm.. textile facility. It's the darkish gridlike thing right in the middle with a road around it. If you want, zoom out to verify that the location is more or less correct (Google Maps doesn't have actual maps for Israel yet so you'll have to trust me at some level). And notice the very oddly-shaped lake to the lower right.

Next, check out the Israeli equivalent map site. The same oddly shaped lake is there, now much clearer because of the higher image quality. But where on earth has the textile factile gone?

New Chanukah song

With apologies to Chad Gadya

Soof-ganya, soof-ganya
Soof-ganya, soof-ganya
Soof-ganya, soof-ganya
Soof-ganya, soof-ganya

Soo-oo-oof-ganya, soo-oo-oo-oo-oof-ganya
Dezavin abba bitrei zuzei, soofganya, soofganya,
Soofganya soofganya...
Dezavin abba bitrei zuzei, soofganya, soofganya,
Soofganya soofgan-

Soof-ganya, soof-ganya
Soof-ganya, soof-ganya
Soof-ganya, soof-ganya
Soof-ganya, soof-ganya

Veata hutra, vehika lekalva
Denashach leshunra, deachal lesoofganya
Dezavin abba bitrei zuzei, soofganya, soofganya,
Soofganya soofganya.

and so on.

Dreidels are Chukat Hagoyim

Or so it would seem from here.

I don't know how reliable that is, but at the very least it's quite interesting.

REALLY only in Israel

can you find a spring-semester freshman physics textbook with an appendix, written by the campus rabbi, on "How to clean your dorm room in preparation for Pesach".

Or do the two secular-looking guys sitting behind you in the computer lab argue with each other over whether to light Shabbat or Chanukah candles first, and come to the correct conclusion for the correct reason - a conclusion which your yeshiva-educated self didn't know off the top of his head and had to go read up on afterwards.

Best vending machine ever

You know those vending machines that sell hot coffee? Yesterday I ran in the coolest such machine in the world. It sold a number of varieties of coffee, of course. It also offered various other drinks, such as carbonated apple cider. But, best of all, you could buy CHICKEN SOUP. Only in Israel. Only in Hadar.

And you think I'm joking

I wonder if this article sheds light on the Jewish-articulated idea of women's "bina yeterah".

Hadran alach, masechet dark-field fotolitografia

You know you're taking your engineering classes too seriously when you look at a street sign and think, "Oh look, a schematic of polysilicon channels on an implanted diffusion substrate!"

Or when you read the words "kibul hadam" in shacharit (korbanot) and think, "Capacitance of the blood? How many picofarads would that be?"

Seriously though, it feels like the first few weeks of yeshiva all over again: meeting a gigantic, diverse yet coherent body of knowledge with which you're barely familiar at first; struggling to reach levels of background and language proficiency which are second nature for everyone else; and finding long textbooks which you know are interesting and useful but which you can't get to because you're so busy with other textbooks. Now, if only I had a good "chavruta" to study with. And a hot mehadrin kosher lunch every day.

Only in northern Israel

On a clear day recently, I was looking at the view towards the east, and saw a small, white, cumulus cloud on the horizon.

But soon, I noticed that this cloud was more than a little strange. For one thing, it was the only cloud in the sky. And when I looked back a little later, its position and shape were exactly the same as before. Furthermore, it had a weird shape for a cloud. Its upper edge was jagged and well-defined. But its lower edge was perfect straight, but fuzzy, as if the cloud were gradually thinning out of existence instead of ending at a certain point in space.

Suddenly, I realized that this was no cloud. I was looking at the snowy peak of the Hermon mountain, 100 kilometers away, rising above and through the haze on the horizon.

Fulfillment

"From the perspective of his two wives, Yaacov’s burial has an ironic twist. During their lives, Rachel and Leah each longed for what the other had. Rachel longed for children, and Leah longed for the attention of her husband.

In their deaths and burial, they each received what they lacked in their lives. Leah lies side by side with her husband, while “our mother” Rachel lies on the road waiting to welcome her children, the exiled of Israel, when they return to their land."

(Source)

I've impressed myself

The total length of my blog posts in November is over 10,000 words. (Admittedly part of that was written months beforehand and only posted after I got around to finishing and editing it.)

Note to self: GET BACK TO WORK.

Thoughts on Vayetze

When Yaakov saw Rachel daughter of Lavan his mother's brother, and the flock of Lavan his mother's brother, he rolled the stone off the mouth of the well, and watered the flock of Lavan his mother's brother. (29:10)

Yaakov's amazing feat (rolling the stone and watering all the animals - which normally would have taken several people working together) is quite surprising. It's romantic to say that he fell so strongly in love with Rachel at first sight that he was able to perform superhuman feats in order to impress her. But there is a better explanation, which in any case might be considered romantic too.

When growing up, Yaakov undoubtedly heard the story of how his parents met. Eliezer had gone to the well looking for God to deliver a girl with the degree of hospitality which would be appropriate for a future member of Avraham's family. All of a sudden Rivkah showed up. She was not only as hospitable as Eliezer could have imagined, but also beautiful and from Avraham's own family. Everything worked out perfectly, Rivkah agreed to the marriage, and she and Yitzchak lived happily ever after. It's the kind of story your kids would be embarrassed about, but it was such a good story that it merited a very long chapter in Tanach.

Note that Lavan is identified as "his mother's brother" three times in the one verse describing Yaakov's actions. The focus is not on Rachel, or even on Lavan, but rather on Yaakov's mother Rivkah. Just one thing is on Yaakov's mind, and that is his mother and the story of her marriage. Like Yaakov, Eliezer had once gone to Haran and stood by the well until a girl from Lavan's family showed up. That girl had shown extraordinary kindness to Eliezer, and now Yaakov plans to repay the favor. He draws water and waters Rachel's animals just as Rivkah had done for Eliezer so many years earlier. Later, Yaakov will fall in love with Rachel and marry her (it is touching that their relationship begins with this act of gratitude and generosity). But for the first few minutes, it really does not matter whether Rachel, or Leah, or a man had arrived at the well. Yaakov just wanted to do for Lavan's family what Lavan's family did for Eliezer, and Rachel was simply the first family member Yaakov met.

After Rachel gave birth to Yosef, Yaakov said to Lavan, "Release me and I will go to my place and land". (30:25)

Why does Yaakov choose this particular moment to ask Lavan for permission to leave?

This can be understood by looking at one aspect of the Torah's (or ancient society's?) understanding of family structure. A Jewish woman who marries a kohen is allowed to eat trumah (priestly tithe food), since she is considered part of his priestly family. After they get divorced or the kohen dies, she is no longer allowed to eat trumah, since she is no longer part of a priestly family. BUT, if this Jewish woman has a child from her marriage with the kohen, the woman is still considered to be part of the family along with her child, and can still eat trumah. (See mishnah Yevamot 9:5-6.) The upshot is that that women are considered potentially connected to their parents' households until they have children, at which point they becomes more permanently connected to their husbands' families.

Yaakov knew this when he made his request to Lavan. Rachel was the wife he loved and the most valuable person to him in the family. But as long as she had no kids, she was still considered connected to Lavan, and Lavan might find an excuse to take her away from him. Once Rachel had a son, this was not an option. She was now fundamentally part of Yaakov's family, and there was no conceivable excuse Lavan could use to prevent her from leaving with Yaakov.

"Your father swindled me and changed my wages ten times, but God would not let him harm me." (31:7)

Whether the phrase "aseret monim" should be translated as "ten times", or "tenfold", or "many times", or simply "exceedingly" is not my concern here. What matters for now is that Chazal understood it to mean "ten times".

The suggestion that Yaakov was cheated ten times parallels the midrash that Avraham underwent ten trials. What in fact is the source for the number ten in relation to Avraham? I suspect that it was derived by comparison with Yaakov. Each of the ten times that Lavan cheated him, Yaakov would have been tempted to do a little cheating of his own, to "even things out" and to recover the money which "really belonged to him anyway". But not once did Yaakov succumb to this urge. The ten times Yaakov was cheated were in effect ten tests, and each time Yaakov passed the test. Avraham, too, had been put in a number of difficult situations and each time had "passed the test" successfully. Noticing the parallel, Chazal fixed the number of Avraham's tests to be exactly ten, just like Yaakov.

The parallel between Chazal's conceptions of Avraham and Yaakov is clear, but there is also a big difference. Yaakov was involved in a number of complicated and morally confusing situations - with Esav, with his parents, and of course with Lavan - in which the right choice was neither obvious nor easy to make. In contrast, Avraham's tests were easy to understand, though painful to carry out. This difference is reflected in the roles Avraham and Yaakov play in Jewish history. Avraham's descendants include Yishmael, Esav, Ammon, Moav - nations which in light of Divine promises became numerous and powerful, but are not part of the Jewish people or God's plan for history. In contrast, Yaakov had many fewer descendants, but all of them became part of the Jewish people. The Jewish mission is not to be overpowering, heroic, and all-conquering, but rather to set a moral example for the world through observance of the Torah. Only Yaakov's trials, in which he was placed in confusing and seemingly minor situations which nevertheless had crucial moral significance, are sufficient qualification for this historical role.

(Perhaps related: God's revelations to Yaakov are not very revelatory; for example in 30:16-17 and 31:2-3 Divine intervention and revelation just confirm the natural order; whereas with Avraham, Divine commands repeatedly lead to unusual and unnatural outcomes.)

Days of our lives

According to Breishit 5, various antediluvian figures lived for up to 969 years. Whether these are historical facts, or else just details of an allegorical story, we are in any case challenged to picture these incredibly long lifespans. There is one other important detail: these people had kids for the first time at ages 130, 105, 70, 162, 65, 187, 182, and 500. It seems clear that they did not age at the same rate we age. This would be medically impossible considering their times of death and the ages at which they had kids. Rather, their aging processes were spread out across their lifetime, with everything slowed down by a factor of 5 to 10.

A few chapters later (and now this is indisputably history not allegory), nobody lives to be 900 years old. But the Avot do live significantly longer than anyone today - up to age 180. And many events in their lives take place when they are much older than would seem normal. But imagine that the aging process of the Avot was slowed down by a factor of two, just as the aging process of their ancestors had been slowed down by a larger factor. Let's recalculate various events in "avot years", these being equal to exactly two normal years, and see how much of the chronology suddenly makes sense.

• Avraham was 37 (75) when he made aliyah, young enough to walk several hundred miles.
  
• Sarah was between 32 (65) and 45 (90) when Pharoah and Avimelech found her extremely beautiful.
  
• Avraham was 50 (100) when Yitzchak was born. More importantly, Sarah was 45 (90), just past menopause, as she hints in her comments. If you object that birth at this age is not miraculous enough, remember that to outsiders the couple would simply have appeared as very healthy nonagenarians.
  
• Yishmael was 6 (13) when he was kicked out of the house (Breishit 21) in a story which makes him seem dependent on his mother.
  
• Avraham died at 87 (175), Sarah at 63 (127), Yishmael at 68 (137), Yitzchak at 90 (180), Yaakov at 73 (147).
  
• Yitzchak married at age 20 (40) and had kids at age 30 (60). Esav married at 20 (40) too.
  
• Yaakov and Esav were 31 (63) years old when Yaakov took the blessing and started the feud between them.
  

In the next generation, Yosef led his brothers at age 17 and died at age 110. The ages of his siblings are not clear, but there is already a problem of them being too young in the Dinah story (see here) and so it is hard to argue that they were physically even younger than their ages. I would therefore argue that Yaakov was the last to have an extended lifetime. Starting with Yaakov's kids, everyone aged at the rate we expect today.

City on a hill I

I recently had the sudden thought that Haifa is a holy city. This is not a common conclusion regarding Haifa - at least if you ignore the Bahai aspect, which I did. In fact my rabbi in yeshiva had called Haifa "Sin City" and with good reason. I'm sure Haifans are nice people, but not too many of them have any religious identification, and to my knowledge they are no more honest or altruistic than people elsewhere. So what could possibly lead me to call Haifa holy?

After reflecting, I reached the conclusion that I would consider any city in Israel with hundreds of thousands of Jewish inhabitants to be holy. But this conclusion is perhaps even harder to explain.

One possibility immediately suggested itself. In the last couple years I have been exposed to Rav Kook's idea that every Jew, no matter how anti-religious he thinks he is, makes a positive contribution to God's plan. Thus, everyone in Haifa (and elsewhere) is fundamentally a holy person. I have trouble accepting this idea. If you rebel against and try to undermine Judaism, I can't believe that your actions are Jewishly valid. I can only understand Rav Kook as talking about a limmud zechut, an attempt to judge favorably someone who appears to be acting unconscionably. And a limmud zechut does not exactly get you to the level of holiness.

After a while I came up with a better answer. Haifa's holiness does not depend on the behavior of its residents, which is apparently not exceptional. Rather, the fact that Haifa exists is what creates holiness. What is holiness, after all? According to my computer's dictionary, "Something that is holy is regarded with the highest reverence because of its connection with God or a god." And I think that Haifa's existence indicate a clear connection with God. The very fact that hundreds of thousands of Jews are living in a city in Israel - so unimaginable a century or two ago - is the realization of Biblical promises made thousands of years ago. Walking around Haifa, you are made vividly aware that God has fulfilled these promises. The fact of Haifa's existence connects you to God. On an emotional as well as a logical level, Haifa is therefore holy.

Bugs

If you really need to check various kinds of vegetables for bugs, why is it that nobody ever heard of this requirement until recently?

I'll divide my answer chronologically and geographically.

1) In the Old World (Poland, Ukraine, Morocco) - Everyone spent lots of time checking for bugs. But they also spent lots of time grinding flour, plucking chickens, and a thousand other things which are now avoided thanks to modern economics and technology. So the bug-checking didn't stand out and you didn't hear about it too often. Also, salad-type vegetables were much rarer (nobody had refrigerators) and so it was less common to need to check.

2) USA before 1940s - Almost nobody kept kosher.

3) USA, 1940s-1970s - Pesticides removed the vast majority of bugs and there was no need to check.

4) USA, 1970s-present - DDT and other pesticides were banned. Also, international food importing allowed bug species from different parts of the world to spread to new habitats. The frequency of bugs increased from "almost never" to "as often as consumers are willing to tolerate". Suddenly, halachic issues emerged which had long been irrelevant and never before been the center of attention.

(Disclaimer: I have no special sources for any of this, but it all seems likely.)