The aggadic schism between the schools of R’ Akiva and R’ Ishmael acts to distinguish between accounts of past events that may seem largely irrelevant to modern-day observance, but tends to form the underpinnings of how we are trained to relate to Judaism nonetheless. R’ Akiva, the maximalist, does not hesitate to generally promote an exceptionally marvelous version of events far exceedingly that which is supported by the biblical text, while R’ Ishmael, the minimalist, generally interprets biblical narratives as is, and more often than not, the events described in the generation of Moses are explained as having been thoroughly ordinary.  What one expects from biblical narratives is wholly dependent on how one has been trained to expect, and two individuals originating at opposite corners will be equally as surprised to hear what the other side has to offer — it just happens to be that the last few hundred years have been so saturated with Akivan mysticism that the trend is to be utterly taken aback by Ishmaelian rationalism when one first hears of it.

The past few weeks of Torah portions have afforded the Akivan with much to elaborate on.  What with Moses’ initial encounter with Pharaoh and his eventual escape from Egypt as the leader of the fleeing Israelites, not to mention the 10 plagues, splitting of the sea, the manna and the events surrounding the momentous occasion that comprised the experience of Sinai, I don’t think my 6-year-old daughter has learned any actual Torah in the last four weeks.  Before I’m jumped on, allow me to qualify: sure, one can complete entire talmudic tractates without learning too much Torah, and by Torah I refer to the written text of the Five Books of Moses, but my daughter is not in a high school level Talmud class.  One might suppose that parsha as taught in the 1st grade might consist of come actual parsha, but not in the yeshiva where mysticism rules.  It’s too bad they’re not as mystical about where their funding comes from — no, they’re quite rational about that.

This week might be the turning point, though, ladies and gentlemen.  What’s so mystical about slaves and murder and ox thieves and bribery and widows’ rights?  Alright, so there’s some witches mixed in, but it’s only three words!

And then we get to the sixth section of Mishpatim (Exodus 23:20), where we sort of fall off into a parallel universe, wondering how we seem to move so smoothly from festivals and kosher to angels that share God’s name and before whom we must comply with the laws so that God will bless us — quite the oddity.  But perhaps we’ll speak about Metatron another time.

Similar to so many other accounts in the biblical text, the divine encounter at Sinai is repeated from multiple perspectives and although we got one glimpse of it last week, Mishpatim closes with another.  Moses is described as involving the priestly first-borns (for the priestly status of the tribe of Levi had apparently not yet been established) in some form of sacrificial activity and Moses is described as halving the blood of the offerings into two parts (Exodus 24:6) and depending on who you believe, the blood was either sprinkled on the nation (Rashi) or poured on the alter (Onkelos).

In ordinary form, there’s a scramble by the commentators to explain how it was, exactly, that Moses was able to divide the blood perfectly in half.  R’ Yehuda bar Ilai, profoundly influenced by his Akivan upbringing, explained that the blood divided itself.  R’ Nosson HaBavli claimed something else no less miraculous: half of the blood turned black, making the perfect division a simpler task, although how exactly this made it easy (or even easier) for Moses remains somewhat unclear, but that’s not the point.  R’ Yitzchak asserted that a heavenly voice came to Moses, pinpointing the moment at which half of the blood had been removed.  Shimon Bar Kappara invoked a more concrete form of heavenly intervention, stating that an angel appeared in the likeness of Moses and divided it.  Why exactly that would matter raises an interesting point — does it matter than the angel appeared in Moses’ likeness rather than looking like, umm, I don’t know…Wade Boggs?  Apparently, the thrust of Bar Kappara’s statement is that although it appeared as though Moses was the one dividing the blood, Moses had actually been replaced by an angel and it was actually the angel dividing the blood, and the Torah merely reports that it was Moses because it appeared to those observing the sacrificial rites as though it was Moses, but it really wasn’t.  This is quite interesting, for in leaning so far in the direction of Akivan mysticism, Bar Kappara seems to overreach the Akivan mandate by claiming that the verse says it was Moses but that it truly wasn’t, which is decidedly not very Akivan at all, in fulfillment of the general Ishmaelian notion that one who adds will end up detracting.

R’ Elazar, another ardent Akivan disciple, explained that it was the archangel Michael who held Moses’ hand told him when to stop.  Rashi, quoting Leviticus Rabbah (6, 5) , simply states that an angel came and divided the blood, in line with comments made by the Mechilta of R’ Shimon bar Yochai, authored by the the disciple extraordinaire of R’ Akiva himself.

R’ Ishmael, however, stands nearly alone in his naturalistic explanation of the verse: Moses determined the proper quantity himself.  In similar form, a rare tradition brought from R’ Judah was that Moses brought out scales, weighed the blood to determine the half point and then proceeded to use one of the two collections.

Much like R’ Akiva’s magnification of the plagues that ultimately affected the Egyptians at the sea to way beyond anything anyone could have imagined, the Akivan penchant for extending biblical events far beyond the manner in which they appear in the text has become so accepted that reading of the opposing views sometimes strikes one as offbeat, but perhaps it is time we reclaim our children’s parsha notes from the realm of the abundantly fanciful.

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• Dvar Torah Va’eschanan: SzHaAcMhOoRr (b’dibbur echad)
• Dvar Torah Mishpatim: Chukim, Chukim and More Chukim
• Dvar Torah Ki Savo: 22/8

It usually starts like this: You run around Friday afternoon trying to fit in all the important stuff you need to do before shabbos, like buy beer, go to the library, and pick up the cleaners. You get home with an hour and a half left to 1) grab a piece of kugel, 2) check out the new simpsons, 3) take a shower, 4) shave, 5) get dressed, 6) have a last minute cigarette, and head off to shul, the time carefully approximated in your head. You’re on schedule, taking your shower, when suddenly you’re blindsided.

You hear the pipes going a split second before it happens, your brain barely has enough time to register an attack, and suddenly the water changes to freezing rain. You jump out of the way and try to make it hotter, but you go a micron too far, and now it’s a lava storm. You just slap the faucet off as fast as you can, and somewhere in the back of your mind, a deep voice goes “Ding! Shower battle engaged.”

The best way to handle this is shock and awe. You put your soap on and turn the dial to super hot without getting in. You wait two seconds for the other shower warrior to turn his all the way up, and then spin yours back to normal. Now he turns off his flamethrower water and you get to go in as long as you can. Usually this is 7.3 seconds, or the part where you’re washing a very sensitive area. Shower battle resumes and your balls bunch up into your stomach as the water hits you like some kind of Arctic waterfall.

You try to be tough and just go in, but your nerves are starting to shut down, and you know it’s just not worth it. You take a breather and enter once more for close combat. You can’t think. You must rely on instinct, reacting to each minute change in temperature. You hear the pressure getting lower, and instinctively move the faucet a bit colder. Your efforts are rewarded as you dodge the near-certain face melting blast, keeping the temperature steady.

Your right hand adjusting the dial, your left checking for soapy areas, you have this one in the bag. The pipes make more noise. Victory at last! But wait- the water just went fires of Mt. Doom again. How the-? And then, all at once, you remember the third shower, and a red light goes on in your mind, and the deep voice says, “MORTAL SHOWER COMBAT!!!”

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The natural progression of wedding planning dictates that somewhere along the way you should register with some big box store to take the fun out of gift giving. The first time I heard about wedding registries, I really didn’t believe it, what was the point of getting a gift if you knew what you were getting? It seemed to me that wedding registries took all the fun out of gift getting and giving. Had the old box shake to predict what gift was inside, lost its weight?

Of course, in my old age, I’ve begun to appreciate and understand the chochma behind wedding registries, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to play the game. My buddy tells me that there’s a reason everyone registers at Bed Bath and Beyond and that’s because they give you cash for returns. This of course boggles my mind, because if I’m registering for something I need and want, why on earth would I want to return it? But when I responded like this to my friend he gave me a speech that sounded more like a well thought out Marine landing strategy for Normandy.

He says that you have to register for more things than you need because many people want to see a choice. He also says to register for both big ticket and small items alike to give more of a choice. Then you can return unwanted items for cash, he tells me that prior to the wedding men don’t see the point in gifts and women are all about receiving items and holding onto them. Then my friend in all of his 1 year of marriage grand wisdom tells me that after marriage the roles change and it switches. I’m not sure I agree, or can agree, since I’ve never been married before, but I’d like to think that I’m better than just using complex strategy and comparative shopping to get the best deals on gifts. He said that almost everything any store has can be bought at Wal Mart, but since Wal Mart was ghetto most people don’t register there. He forgot that little tiny factor of mistreatment of workers and that whole thing of shutting down independent stores and farmers for the sake of enormous stores.

Maybe I’m being too moral? Maybe I should just use the cash cow strategy and garner the most points and get the cheapest stuff. While I’m at it, maybe I should listen to the few people who keep saying that the more you spend the more you make back in gifts on your wedding. Since when did a wedding become an investment, I always thought of it as the most important simcha of your life that you can share with family, friends and community – cheapening it to a cash cow seems a little low in my opinion.

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It seems that everyone (most of the frum community) was pretty pissed off at Deborah Feldman, but i guess those people never really wandered around the hundreds ex-chassidic blogs before. I also guess that every time one of our own finds a new life and talks frankly and negatively about the one “we” choose to pursue many frum folks go pretty crazy. Now to put it into an even stranger place, people are saying that the media whores featured on Oprah are the true Chassidim and Deborah Feldman is just representing a small minority and should not be listened to.

I say they have nothing to do with each other, Oprah is not seeking out former Chassidim, she is trying to sell the feel good story of Americas hidden religious people. She is trying ti garner positive attention and that is a very good thing for the Jews. Sure, the clip where she asks the Chassidic women what they would do if they had a gay child – makes them look like idiots, but most of the videos are a nice old kiddush Hashem which is always nice to see coming out of a community which rarely brings us this. The Oprah show is good for the Jews and it helps non-Jews understand out strange ways a bit more.

In my opinion, articles like the interview of Deborah Feldman (I was a Chassidic Jew – but I broke free) in the NY Post are also good for the Jews. I know that a lot of frummies are pissed off, the general reaction is one of disbelief, the reaction seems to be kind of like when you find out someone you know is refusing to give his wife a get or abused some little boys. Frummies really don’t want to believe that any of their faith and tradition is weird, but ladies and gents, no matter which way you put it, the practice of niddah is about impurity and purity – regardless of if it’s ritual or not – people generally view it as such. I sincerely think that most frum Jews don’t want to read anything thought provoking or that sheds some sort of negative light on their rituals and practices. This is because, most frum Jews don’t want to invite questioning into their lives and would rather live with the ignorance is bliss concept.

Was it negative, hell yeh it was, but she was abused and raised in a cult. Oh don’t be silly Hesh, those Chassidim aren’t a cult…though according to the wikipedia definition, it seems pretty accurate to call Satmar and other extremely right wing Chassidic sects a cult. Of course you can start raining down your hatred upon me, that’s cool, I myself gravitate towards the Chassidus of yesteryear, the type that had me smoking a bowl in the woods while conversing with God Baal Shem Tov style, but modern day cult Chassidus bodes no interest to me.

Of course you may add rightfully so that the Chassidic community really takes care of its own (as long as the women don’t leave the kitchen) with many social service programs and is generally very tight knit and loving. I don’t doubt any of this, as seen on Oprah and by my own eyes, but comparing Deborah Feldman’s plight to a bunch of Chassidim showing off on Oprah (they look like chabadnicks, which is probably farther from Satmar than modern orthodoxy)

Below is the Simon and Schuster video of Deborah Feldman talking about her upcoming book.

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Don’t get me wrong, I love Israel, the first thing I do when I get off the plane is take a bus to Jerusalem and stuff my face with some shawarma and rugalech from the shuk. Then I hit up the kotel for some God talk and then I roam around the Charedi neighborhoods to see if there are some riots or beat downs I can take part in. However, there are those first time to Israel peeps who come back to America and can’t stop talking about it for months…

Apperently the video touched a raw nerve, because when I posted it on Facebook there was a nice Jewish argument about being frum and not being eligible for birthright, false because I went on brithright and was the only frum kid on that trip. One of my roommates even thought my tefillin was a device I was using to shoot heroine with.

You heard that right, I still have goals. First of all, having an addiction gives you something to do with your time. Plus, it gives you a solid excuse that everyone you know can blame things on. Nobody asks you any more loaded questions like “So, are you dating anyone now?” Or, “You’re still working there?” Because one, they feel bad for you, what with your life savagely hijacked by “the drugs” or “the booze”. Anything productive you still do is “good for you”. And two, they really don’t want a window into your hellish life.

Well, here’s a window: You get to drink your balls off and have an awesome time until you hit “rock bottom”, a supposedly horrible place where you steal money, alienate friends, blow a goat for cash (admittedly, not as pleasant as the first two), what have you. None of which matters after you then go a treatment facility in Florida for a month (there’s even a kosher one) and follow up with AA meetings to work off your terrible disease. Where you make life-long non-judgmental friends, and have a whole network of AA’s to go to across the country with free coffee and meetings. Thus providing you with more fun stuff to do with your time for as long as you want. Forever, if you decide to.

I must be missing a step here, right?

I’d even just take the last part. Just show up, “Hey, I’m Offthedwannab, and I’m *cough* not *cough* an alcoholic. Now support me more than real-life friends ever would. Oh, I blew a goat, and accept a higher power now. And pass the cookies.

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Someone, I forgot who, sent me this picture he saw on the Wall Street Journal website.

My ideas:

Don’t worry you’ll find me.

I’m the one without a hat.

Jeez these guys smell real bad.

You’d think I had tzaras with all the space their giving me.

I feel so modern!

I received this in one of the many spam emails I get from any number of friends of mine who run shuls and chabad houses, once in a very rare while do I open them. I liked this one and even though I do tend to shake hands with the opposite sex, I think that anyone who can give over the practice not to shake hands while teaching a valuable lesson ought to be listened to.

I won’t shake your hand, ask me why?

By Rabbi Yossi Grossbaum

I have many practices that, as an observant Jew living in Folsom, raise eyebrows. But the one that takes the cake is the standard of avoiding any type of physical contact with women. Many times when I meet women I put them in an uncomfortable position by declining to shake their outstretched hand (and you should see the expression on some men’s faces when my wife does the same thing to them!). I explain that observant Jews reserve physical contact between genders for husband and wife.

Although occasionally there are women who take offense, most people are respectful and some even appreciate the custom. One woman told me that she would sleep much better at night if she knew that her husband held himself to such a standard…

But, why?! is the real question. Isn’t that a little extreme? Well, perhaps. I can see why you could think so. And we can discuss the pros and the cons. But one important point is this: It creates a real exclusivity to the husband-wife relationship.

Judaism’s idea on the relationship between men and women is diametrically different than the prevailing attitude that basically anything goes. Judaism views the relationship as something spiritual and holy, even G-dly. It is for this reason that the Torah places such an emphasis on the parameters of the relationship.

Another important difference in perspective can be gleaned from the Hebrew word for love, Ahava. Today the attitude is what can I get from this relationship? What’s in it for me? Ahava – love is connected to the word hav – give. It’s not about what I can get from this relationship, it’s what can I give.

Read Rabbi Grossbaums Jewish Folsom blog

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