SHMINI: Part of an All-American Breakfast?

Pork, Ham, Spam, and Other Seemingly Innocuous Pig Products

It's interesting -- there are certain mitzvahs that somehow have become more popular than others.  Although pork is no less kosher than any other non-kosher animal, it has a special taboo associated with it... 
              ...Pesach is one of three Jewish festivals (together with Shavuot and Sukkot, which are lesser-known than Kwanza), but for some reason, it is observed in much greater numbers by Jews around the world...
                       ...There are prohibitions that are seemingly more severe than intermarriage in the Torah, yet even amongst Jewish families with very tenuous connections to Torah and mitzvot per se, the prospect of "intermarriage" is considered to carry a perilously dark storm cloud over it...     

There is a concept in the Talmud (Pesachim 66a) אם אין נביאים הן בני נביאים הן "if [Jews] are not prophets themselves; they are the children of prophets" and therefore, unconsiously, when we are involved in mitzvot as a people, we tend to reflect hidden truths in those mitzvot albeit unconsciously.  This is a bit of an extension of this concept from the norm, given that we are applying it to the observance of mitzvot on the backdrop of their lack of observance, but it seems to hold true*.

Pig, according to the letter of the law, is as non-kosher as a cat.  How so?  For a land animal to be kosher, it must satisfy two well-known requirements: 

1) It must have completely separated split hooves, and  

2) It must chew its cud, i.e. it must process its food in multiple stomaches (Vayikra 11:3).  

A cat has two strikes against it (sorry, China), and a pig, one, in that it doesn't chew its cud.  But since in the case of kashrut it's "one strike and you're out," neither pigs nor cats will ever receive the OU stamp of approval.


How, then, can we explain why pigs, boars and hogs get such an especially bad rep?  Either we should fund a negative PR campaign against cat-eating, or a Pro-Pig Ad campaign (e.g. "Pork -- it's still not kosher, but hey, it's no worse than cat!")!


The National Diet


In a seemingly unnecessary act of ink-spilling, the Torah proceeds to list the only four land animals that have only one of the two signs in order to be kosher: the camel, the hyrax, the hare, and the pig.  This is really beating a dead horse (pun intended -- sorry).  Why is G!d insulting our intelligence?  Maybe He thinks we're lazy...that maybe we would have found a camel chewing its cud, and with great complacency sent it off straight away to make camel pastrami...or corned hyrax-beef...  C'mon!  He gave us two separate rules that have to both be fulfilled!  Of course these 4 that only check off on one are not kosher!!!

~~~~~

If we take a closer look at the psukim, we'll notice something unusual about how the Torah phrases the prohibition against eating these 4 animals:

אַךְ אֶת-זֶה לֹא תֹאכְלוּ מִמַּעֲלֵי הַגֵּרָה וּמִמַּפְרִסֵי הַפַּרְסָה:  אֶת-הַגָּמָל כִּי-מַעֲלֵה גֵרָה הוּא, וּפַרְסָה אֵינֶנּוּ מַפְרִיס--טָמֵא הוּא לָכֶם.  וְאֶת-הַשָּׁפָן כִּי-מַעֲלֵה גֵרָה הוּא, וּפַרְסָה לֹא יַפְרִיס; טָמֵא הוּא לָכֶם.  וְאֶת-הָאַרְנֶבֶת כִּי-מַעֲלַת גֵּרָה הִוא, וּפַרְסָה לֹא הִפְרִיסָה; טְמֵאָה הִוא לָכֶם.  וְאֶת-הַחֲזִיר כִּי-מַפְרִיס פַּרְסָה הוּא, וְשֹׁסַע שֶׁסַע פַּרְסָה, וְהוּא גֵּרָה לֹא-יִגָּר; טָמֵא הוּא לָכֶם

Only don't eat from these that bring up their cud and have split hooves: the camel, because it brings up its cud, but its hoof is not split -- it is tammei [spiritually blocking] for you; and the hyrax, because it brings up its cud, but its hoof is not split -- it is tammei for you;  and the hare, because it brings up its cud, but its hoof is not split -- it is tammei for you; and the pig, because its hoof is split and completely separated, but it does not chew its cud -- it is tammei for you 

(Vayikra 11:4-7).  

The Torah seems to include the lone sign of kashrut that they do have as part of the reason that they are not kosher.  It would have been enough, and certainly more clear, to tell me what makes them not kosher: "don't eat camel because its hoof is not split!"  Don't tell me why it was almost kosher! 

~~~~~

The Kli Yakar, Rav Shlomo Ephraim Lunschitz (16th C. Prague) opens up this mystery for us...


You see, cats are not fooling anyone -- they don't have split hooves and they don't chew their cud.  At least they're honest.  Camels, hares and hyraxes, however, do chew their cud, but they don't have split hooves -- and as the astute eye on the Torah reveals, this deception actually embellishes their non-kosher-ness.  They are misleading creatures, so to speak.  


As for the pig, who rolls around in the hay, literally showing off its oh-so-kosher split hooves, but concealed in its innards, digests without chewing its cud, is considered by the spirit of the law to be the most spiritually pernicious of all.  These animals, and the pig especially, are the epitome of hypocrisy -- of giving off the impression to the outside that one is "kosher," when really he is not.  The Kli Yakar writes that "without a doubt, [the Hypocrite] is worse than the complete Rasha (wicked person), whose insides and outsides are equally evil."  


There is nothing worse than the proverbial "nice guy" who is cordial and friendly to all, yet cheats in business or in his family life.  And certainly, the absolute worst is a person who is externally "religious" with all the fix-ins (e.g. hat, suit, beard, peyot, etc.), checking off all of the relevant "Orthodox" prerequisites, but is rotten on the inside.  There is obviously no bigger Chillul Hashem (Desecration of G!d's Name) than this.  Indeed, the word חלול "chillul" is connected to חלל "challal," meaning "hollow," for he is turning Hashem's Name into an empty, superficial shell..."just a word" that lands on deaf ears.      


It might be hard for most of us to relate to the spiritual damage that comes from eating non-kosher meat and literally internalizing the negative character traits that they embody, what our Sages call טמטום הלב "Clogging-up of the Heart" (see Shulchan Aruch Y"D 81:7), but we can begin to understand it philosophically.


The midrash in Vayikra Rabba 13:5, written 1,000 years before the Kli Yakar, would have remained a locked box had he not given us the key.  The midrash there draws a parallel between these 4 animals and the host cultures of the 4 exiles of the Jewish people: Babylon (Camel), Persia (Hyrax), Greece (Hare), and Rome (Pig).  We can understand simply, "oh, there are four exiles, and four of these weird kosher-exceptions -- a perfect match!"  


...but, if we contemplate it deeper, we see the precision of the comparison.  


We know that the Torah does not have a xenophobic stance on other cultures.  The Talmud itself says we went into exile all over the world in order for converts to be attracted to Torah and to enrich the Jewish people with their otherwise lost sparks of holiness (Pesachim 87b).  Certainly, the Sages also consider that there exists true, valuable, non-ethical wisdom to be found outside of the Torah as well (Eicha Rabba 2:13).  So, then, why the unflattering comparison to these non-kosher animals?  


Precisely, because they have signs of being kosher.


The entire television industry is predicated on a concept called "the suspension of disbelief."  The TV viewer knows during the first few moments of flipping to a sitcom, let's say, that what he's watching is not real.  However, if he remains hung up on the fact that these people are actors, and they're not actually this witty, and that he's always looking at the same 3 walls of Jerry Seinfeld's apartment, he will never be able to enjoy it.  So what almost every viewer does quite quickly is willingly suspend his disbelief -- he throws out his concern with it not being "real."  Consequently, commercials are strategically placed after 12 minutes of this couch potato eating up everything he's watching with his intellectual filter on "OFF."  They use this as an opportunity to convince you to buy things you wouldn't otherwise buy.  If it were not an opportune time to do so, why would companies pay half a million dollars for a 30 second ad during prime time TV?


If you thought the Marlboro Man was problematic, and you think calling terrorists "militants" may be even more, you must begin to suspect that there is more unwanted "nuance" crossing into our minds through osmosis.


The midrash, and the big idea of kashrut in general is meant to make us aware of what we consume, because we consume a whole lot.  Now, more than ever, that media consumption is at all-time high and rising with no signs of slowing, we must not be naive as to what we are putting into our systems.  Even if part of that content is totally G and PG, "kosher" Discovery Channel and History Channel, and "highly educational" and "enriching" we have to actively realize that the bad is dragged in after the good.  In the process, we may be swallowing whole ethical, metaphysical and theological premises that are anaethema to what we would say is "True," "Correct," and "Moral" on any other day.  Without question, over time, we can be led to believe things that are worlds away from what we would have intellectually and methodically have come to conclude.  In the exile of the "pig," the true danger to us is what's been eroded from our insides, even if we look down and see kosher hooves on our outside. 


* (e-mail me about Pesach and intermarriage if you're interested.)

PURIM: ...And It All Flipped Around...

Netzach Yisrael - The Eternality of Israel


We hear it so often, yet we are deaf to it's power...  


Despite the risk of this post looking like a cheap chain e-mail, I've included three quotes from three of the most prominent writers from the last 200 years:

"The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

 -Mark Twain

(“Concerning The Jews,” Harper’s Magazine, 1899)

 "[The Jews are] the most perpetual people of the earth…”

-Goethe 

“What is the Jew?...What kind of unique creature is this whom all the rulers of all the nations of the world have disgraced and crushed and expelled and destroyed; persecuted, burned and drowned, and who, despite their anger and their fury, continues to live and to flourish. What is this Jew whom they have never succeeded in enticing with all the enticements in the world, whose oppressors and persecutors only suggested that he deny (and disown) his religion and cast aside the faithfulness of his ancestors?! 

The Jew - is the symbol of eternity. ... He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. 

The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity.”

- Leo Tolstoy

(What is the Jew? 

quoted in The Final Resolution 1908)

We must remind ourselves that Twain, Goethe and Tolstoy were not AISH haTorah rabbis giving discovery seminars, nor were they paid spokespeople for the ADL, or the Jewish Federation, or the State of Israel. They were non-Jewish authors writing for a vastly non-Jewish public. This being said, it is incumbent on us as Jews to meditate on their words. Often, it takes people who are not Jewish for us to realize who we are. Not to become pompous and chauvinist because that would be foolish -- anyone who is arrogant for something that he received as a gift is certainly a fool. We must understand the eternality of our people because it is quite likely the most extraordinary and enduring miracle the world has ever seen, and every breath of every one of our lives is a part of it.



A Turn of Events


One of the distinguishing features of the story of the megillah is the precise reversal of storylines -- storylines that were "bad news for the Jews" were flipped on their heads.  The tragedy of a Jewish woman torn apart from her husband, forced to marry a non-Jewish tyrant, became the key to saving the nation.  The elaborate parade of honor that Haman had planned for himself, was in the end, for Mordechai, with Haman escorting his steed through the city, hanging his head in shame.  The 25 meter gallows that Haman had built on which to hang Mordechai, for everyone to see, was adorned a day later by Haman himself.  And the edict that had been signed and sealed to annihilate the entire Jewish population under the control of the Persian empire was reversed.

בַּיּוֹם אֲשֶׁר שִׂבְּרוּ אֹיְבֵי הַיְּהוּדִים לִשְׁלוֹט בָּהֶם, וְנַהֲפוֹךְ הוּא, אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁלְטוּ הַיְּהוּדִים הֵמָּה בְּשֹׂנְאֵיהֶם

"...on that day that the enemies of the Jews had announced to rule over them, it was overturned, and the Jews dominated [and defended themselves], they over those who hated them" (Esther 9:1).

It is clear to the discerning ear that the dominant chord of this verse is not the fact that the Jews were able to kill those who sought to kill them, but the turn of events itself (Pachad Yitzhak Purim 25).


The Maharal explains this elusive reversal by way of metaphor to a mitzvah that is similarly mysterious in and of itself (see Ohr Chadash 6:4).  


There is a halacha of Eidim Zomimim (you may have to read it twice): 

Pair A of witnesses testified that person X committed some crime, and another pair of kosher witnesses Pair B came to court before the punishment was enacted on X, and testified that A could not possibly possess such knowledge of X because the two of them were elsewhere.  Pair A become "Eidim Zomimim" -- the punishment that X was meant to receive is inflicted on Pair A (see Devarim 19:19, beginning of Tractate Makkot).

What's the connection?!?  The metaphor made it worse!  


Just as a stone thrown at a wall bounces back with equal but opposite force when it becomes impossible for it to continue to move in the direction it was thrown (see Newton's 3rd law of motion), so too here.


The 2nd pair of witnesses proved that it was impossible for the 1st pair to say what they said in their testimony.  And so, the punishment that those witnesses hurled against person X, ricochets off the wall of impossibility and comes back on them -- equal but opposite -- the exact same punishment.


More than Hitler in the Holocaust, Haman ostensibly had the capacity to obliterate the entire Jewish nation (see the above map).  The megillah chronicles the ricocheting of Haman's plans off of the wall of impossibility to destroy us.  Every negative consequence came back to Haman and his cohorts, and every drop of glory that they had planned for themselves came back to crown Mordechai and the Jews, ultimately letting the true King's Light to shine through.  


This was not because we deserved it, or because we earned it, but because it is a fundamental, unbreakable reality in G!d's universe.  The Jewish people will never be destroyed.  Plans to eradicate the Jewish people are therefore equivalent to a false testimony.  Primordial to the creation of the world, the Alm!ghty created the concept of a people who would keep his Torah through all the storms and tempests of world history (see the 2nd Rashi on the Torah).  For anyone to claim that the Jewish people can or will be destroyed to bear false witness -- he cannot possibly testify to an entity that conceptually existed before the world itself, if the only One else Who was there to "witness it" was G!d.


The Kaleidoscopic Miracle        


We've addressed this next concept many times, but we must emphasize it again.  The miracle of our existence is not merely "a group survival challenge" on some deserted island to see if we make it out on the other side.  We're so used to a Guilt-Based Judaism that hangs on Jewish Mother's Guilt if we assimilate or intermarry that we can tend to think that the goal is just to not assimilate and not intermarry...  


Of course, we have to start from somewhere, but the goal we're going for as a people is the glowing expression of every Jewish soul in all its individuality as one of millions of pixels that come together to reveal Hashem's Infinite Love, just as the 12 tribes around the Mishkan with their different colored flags, and different colored paths of Torah expression.  


On Purim, we all get drunk.  That's right.  It's a mitzvah (see your local Orthodox rabbi for specifications).  We let go of the steering wheel.  All the rabbis and lay-leaders will be out of commission in terms of decision-making abilities.  We do so one day a year to demonstrate that we realize that Hashem is ultimately at the helm of our existence from beginning to end.  Simultaneously, as the gemara says, נכנס יין יוצא סוד, "wine goes in, and essence comes out" (Eiruvin 65a).  Everyone knows that wine oils the pipes of our expression (unfortunately, not always to our advantage).  It brings expression to what's normally kept inside.  Ideally, if throughout the year we've worked on our insides through self-awareness, Torah and mitzvot, on Purim, we should be able to see every individual around the table with his neshama-soul shining through.  


While on Pesach we celebrate the hundreds of miracles in Egypt and at the sea, on Sukkot, the Clouds of Glory, and on Channukah the miraculous victory over the Greeks and the oil that lasted 8 days, on Purim we must realize that the greatest miracle in the world is you and all the Jews you know.      

PURIM: The Second Time Around

De ja vu all over again


Even though we still have over a week until Purim, we should try to get a head start on thinking about it, otherwise, all of its depth will be lost upon us, drowned in its apparent superficiality.  Between the costumes, the heavy drinking and gift-giving, Purim can look to the untrained eye like a tacky, platonic fraternity party.  

It may be that Purim, as the most ostensibly simplistic of the holidays, requires the most profound inner preparation in order to penetrate its depths.

~~~~~

The Sfas Emes (Rav Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, late 1800's) asks a very basic but important question: why do we have to hear the megillah twice, once at night and once during the day?  

If it's a question of remembering the story, maybe they can just pass out a little book report in shul the first time they read it and save us the trouble the next day...
       ...it's really not such a difficult plot to catch on to: 

Achashveirosh throws a party, kills his wife, throws another party to find a new wife, marries Esther, Mordechai refuses to bow to Haman, Haman passes a decree to kill all the Jews, etc. etc... Mordechai and Esther save the day and Haman ends up getting hanged.   

Right?   

Any school child could tell it over to you!

Really, it's almost unprecedented in other mitzvot.  Especially, when we look at the other holidays:  Matzah, Maror, the 4 cups, and telling over the story of leaving Egypt -- we only have these mitzvot on the first night of Pesach.  
On Sukkot, the mitzvah from the Torah is to take lulav and etrog once on the first day.  
On Channukah, we light one candle a night, but only at night.  


Why do we have to neurotically hear the whole megillah again within 24 hours!?!

Back to our concepts of Time

We spoke a couple of weeks ago about the Torah concept of time, that we have to see how the flow of time isn't just flowing endlessly in circles, but has a direction and an endpoint, and that we can tap into that "goal"-reality on Shabbat.  Purim, in a certain sense, functions as a counterpoint to this concept -- opening our eyes not to the goal per se, but to the symphonic confluence of moments in the process towards that goal.    

It is human nature to have a short memory span.  Both a blessing and a curse.  When we are suffering from a headache, our whole world becomes the headache.  Our lives before the headache fade into the distant past, and the prospects for living without this pain becomes an almost impossible future.  We forget that hours before, we had been comfortably enjoying a healthy life for weeks at a time.  

Similarly, we often work so hard in order to achieve some goal: get into a certain school, land a job we really want, plan and earn for a family vacation -- and when we get there, all of the trials and tribulations -- all of the day-to-day grind -- all the sweat and tears to arrive at that point, melt away, leaving just the now of pleasure.

A few moments of reflection will reveal that it is inherent to the physical body that it only understands the pleasure and pain of the now.  The body does not naturally remember last year's toothache or even yesterday's ice cream sundae.  


The same is true for the emotions.  The heart, on its own, feels and magnifies an emotional emotional experience in the here, now and "me."  On its own, the heart is very bad at considering the future, the past, other places, and other people.  By way of metaphor, an adult body is comparable to an infant, and an adult heart is like a 13 year-old -- both are relatively self-centered and focused on what's in front of them.


When we left Egypt as a nation of slaves, we needed special effects and fireworks to be able to confidently follow Hashem into the barren desert.  The shackles and whips of slavery turned off our minds from free-thinking, and bound us to "my pain," the "futility of my labor," "why me?"  We were a nation in its infancy, and the Alm!ghty educated us according to where we stood.


A thousand years later, we were considerably more mature as a people (Shabbat 88a).  Hashem educated us in such a way that we would be able to see Him not only when He revealed Himself to our senses and emotions in hail stones filled with fire, or a splitting sea, or a billowing mountain, but in the subtleties of our mind's eye.  If your body is you as a newborn, and your heart you as a hormonal teenager, your mind is you as an elderly, experienced wo/man capable of seeing past the here and now, remembering the past, and projecting the future, and sensitive to the nuances in between.  


It is a well-known fact that Megilat Esther is the only book of Tanakh in which Hashem's Name is entirely absent.  We should now be more equipped to understand His hidden-ness.  


Hashem's Ineffable Name, which is spelled י-ה-ו-ה, is understood by our Sages as an allusion to the fact that in the past היה, so much as the present הווה, and the future יהיה, Hashem is there conducting the timeless orchestra.  


A slightly deeper understanding of this (and perhaps more precise in terms of the spelling of His Name) is that to "see" Hashem in the world one has to be able to comprehend how the הווה present is unfolding into the future (a "yud" in front of a verb conjugates it in the future tense) [Leshem].  


Our mental CPU has to be running on full blast to be able to envision at once, the BIG PICTURE of where the Alm!ghty wants to lead us, and simultaneously see this unique moment, this Torah idea you're struggling to understand, this seemingly insignificant act of kindness to another -- how every freeze-frame of life is leading you to become the individual, and us to become the nation we are meant to become.  This is, of course, a much more delicate task than the more coarse "Hollywood" revelation that a nation of slaves needed to jolt them out of their slavery, but we can understand how it is this challenge which raises us into spiritual adulthood.  


The chessmaster can move the amateur into any position on the chess board that he desires.  So too, the chessmaster playing another chessmaster can project at every move the possible directions that the other player is aiming towards.  For us to be able to appreciate the greatness of the way Hashem moves His pieces on His board, we have to become, to the best of our abilities, "chessmasters" ourselves.  This is not just in order to become a "chess expert" or "afficionado" for the sake of it.  The Alm!ghty is not trying to put us in check mate; He wants us to be check chai.  He does not want to keep a "secret agenda" from us; He wants to share His plans with us, and for us to join Him.  He wants us to become the people we are destined to become -- if we choose to accept our destiny.


Hashem's Name is missing from the megillah because it is our job to see it written in.  In this way, the megillah of Purim is the most accurate simulation of modern life -- a life in which Hashem's Presence is not always so obvious -- and sometimes, it seems, terrifyingly absent.   


The reason, the Sfas Emes explains, that we must read the megillah twice is because the first time, we our flown over the panorama, from beginning to end -- as if with horse-blinders on -- following along scene by scene -- each detached from the next.  Only once we've seen the big picture, how we were saved from a certain destruction, one more thorough than the Holocaust, can we appreciate that Hashem was there from the beginning.  

   That if Achashveirosh had not demagogically moved the capital to Shushan, Mordechai and Esther would not have been in proximity to influence the king...   

       That if Vashti had not refused to come out of her quarters, Esther would  never have made it within the king's palace...  

                 That if Haman had not pushed for the plan to oust Vashti, he would not have been in a position of sufficient power...

                       That if Mordechai had not been serendipitously elected to guard the palace gates, he would have never been privy to the conspiracy against the king.........

...and all the plot threads intersect. 

Hashem was there at every step, as the prospects for salvation grew bleak and even impossible.


In a era in which the word "random" is trendy -- in a time in which science itself is predicated on "essential uncertainty" -- when art is post-modern and meaning is everything but objective, the megillah remains extraordinarily contemporary for a 2,500 year old document.  We must look deeper in this computer age to understand that just as all the semiconducters and transistors must be in place for the microchip to process, and just as chaos theory teaches us the delicate dependency of even a butterflies flapping wings, this world is not random at all, but rather, every detail is dependent on every other one.  All too often, so pulled by the increasingly rapid flow of time, we fail to connect the dots in the world at large, and perhaps more importantly, in our own lives.  This is the arena of our free choice: are we aware that the delicate balance of the entire world can very well depend on us (Rambam Hilchot Tshuva 3:4)?