Most communal rabbis find that Pesach is the time of year that generates more questions from congregants than any other. This year, amid the usual (important, but easily answered) ‘how do I kasher my oven?’, ‘may I take my regular medication?’ and ‘is product x reliable?’, three questions stood out in my mind, each for different reasons. For light Chol HaMoed reading, I thought that I would share them with the readers of Cross-Currents.

1) The Pesach Shabbos kettle (amusement value)

Two days before Pesach, someone approached me to say that she had decided to boil out her Pesach Shabbos kettle to check that it was working and to clean it ahead of Yom Tov. Having done this, she opened the lid to empty the water and discovered a piece of bread inside it. Yes, you are reading this correctly, she had actually boiled bread in her Pesach kettle.

2) The Pesach utensils (disorganisation award)

The very word הגדה (Haggadah) conjures up wonderful memories of Sedarim past, reliving the story of the Exodus with family, friends and students. It’s used to refer colloquially to the booklet — a compilation of texts and commentaries — read at the Seder, but the word itself actually contains a wealth of information about the way in which a truly memorable and effective Seder should be conducted. Allow me to share some ideas:

According to Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen, the way to discover the core meaning of a Biblical word is to look at the first time it appears in the Torah. In the case of הגדה, the root word first occurs in the story of Adam and Eve. When God addressed Adam after the Sin, we find the following dialogue:

The Lord God called to Adam and said to Him, ‘Where are you?’ He said, ‘I heard your voice in the Garden and I was afraid because I am naked, so I hid.’ [God] said, ‘Who told (הגיד) you that you are naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?’ (BeReishis 3:9-11)

Rashi explains that God’s question is to be understood in the following way:

In one of my first posts to Cross-Currents I discussed the pros and cons of attending singles events on Shabbos and Yom Tov. I suggested that Shabbos and Yom Tov need to be ends in themselves and not just means to some other end, even the laudable objective of finding a life-partner. Those who use most Shabbosos as dating opportunities risk depleting their spiritual reserves and robbing their religious lives of transformative power. Interested readers will find the original post here.

In that post, I offered a specific (true) example:

A woman approached me recently for advice about attending a Purim party. She knew that there was only a slim chance of meeting someone suitable there, yet she felt that not going would leave her wracked with guilt. She took my advice and didn’t attend, instead devoting the evening to Purim pursuits: she later mentioned that focusing on the day alone enabled her to experience her most meaningful Purim for years.

Well, I am delighted to report that last Purim turned out to be more remarkable for the woman concerned than any of us could possibly have hoped (I am writing this at her request). Very late that Purim evening, she visited my home to help prepare for the Se’udah (Purim banquet) the next day. While I was reading the Megillah for my wife in another room, she got chatting over the kitchen sink to a fellow who was also planning to celebrate with us the next day.

Some pupils at the Yesodey Hatorah girls’ high school not too far from where I live have attracted UK and international news coverage (see, for example, here, here, here and here) over their refusal to answer examination questions about Shakespeare. Apparently, the pupils declined even to write their names on the papers, in protest at Shakespeare’s ‘anti-Semitism’, despite the fact that they had not even been studying ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and that by doing so they would forfeit the entire examination. As a result, the school has fallen drastically in the performance tables (it was, quite remarkably, first in the entire country last year and is now 274th albeit out of over 3000).

I should interject a word here about the school system in the UK. Many Jewish schools here have what is known as voluntary aided status, which entitles them to state funding for buildings, general studies teaching and a host of other things, leaving the parents to pick up the tab for the Torah curriculum. Of course, this requires the school to meet government educational standards in all relevant areas. The examination in question was a standard government test on material for which the Shakespeare section is a mandatory part of the syllabus.

The principal of Yesodey Hatorah, Rabbi Avrohom Pinter, has been interviewed several times about this curious episode, including on the prestigious BBC Radio 4 ‘Sunday’ religious affairs programme. (You can listen to the interview here: click on the link for ‘Shakespeare and anti-Semitism’). He walks a fine line between supporting the girls in their principled stand, while indicating that he doesn’t really agree with them. It is clearly not the school policy to eschew Shakespeare, since it has bought into a system that requires his works to be taught; at the very least it tolerates its inclusion in the English syllabus and assumes that its students will do likewise.

I think that the issue as to whether Shakespeare was an anti-Semite is irrelevant – it has been debated for centuries. My own opinion (to the extent that I know enough about the subject to have an informed one) coincides with Rabbi Pinter’s. While the portrayal of Shylock has anti-Semitic overtones, there are also very humane, sensitive (dare one say philo-Semitic?) aspects of his character. The bard lived in an age when anti-Semitic sentiments were common; actually it is likely that he was writing with little first-hand knowledge of Jews, as he lived at the end of the 16th century, long after the expulsion in 1290 and some while before the resettlement in the mid-17th century. As such, I am not inordinately troubled by Shakespeare’s alleged anti-Semitism.

In many circles, it is common to daven on Tu BiShevat for a beautiful esrog to use during the coming Sukkos. There is even a special tefillah composed just for this purpose.

The New Year for trees first appears in the Mishnah in the context of agricultural Mitzvos that are observed in Eretz Yisroel. One needs to know the dividing line between one growing season and the next, so ensure that the correct tithes are taken in any particular year. The New Year for trees is this dividing line. The Mishnah tells us:

The first of Shevat is the New Year for the tree, according to Beis Sham’ai. Beis Hillel say that it is on the fifteenth of Shevat. (Mishnah Rosh HaShanah 1:1)

Although much of the winter is still to come, since the majority of the rain has already fallen by this time (Rosh HaShanah 14b), the fifteenth of Shevat (the halachah is decided accorded to Beis Hillel) is chosen as the New Year for trees. At this time, at least in Israel, the sap begins to rise in the trees and the first formation of the buds commences (Rashi to Rosh HaShanah 14b).

Last week, I was asked to make a shidduch (dating) enquiry, something that occurs on a very regular basis. For the uninitiated, a shidduch enquiry happens after someone I advise has been proposed a date by a friend or matchmaker. Before helping the person to decide whether to proceed, I contact the ‘suggestee’s’ references to check that he or she is stable, pleasant, solvent, etc.

The particular man under consideration (who had been suggested for a woman I know well) had declared his outlook as ‘Modern Orthodox’ on a dating website for religious singles. In the course of my phone conversation with a very helpful rabbi, I asked him to describe the fellow’s religious outlook. Without hesitating, he said ‘Chassidic’. Assuming that I’d misheard, I asked him again; this time he said, ‘well quite open and engaged in the modern world, but definitely ultra-Orthodox’. I continued the enquiries for a while and then steered the conversation back to his outlook. I asked him again, ‘when you say that he is Chassidic, is he affiliated with group X?’ to which he responded in the affirmative, noting that he had also studied in their educational institutions.

As an aside, the entire system works on trust: it is reasonable to assume that the information supplied is accurate. It would be frustrating, to say the least, to discover that a man who describes himself as 26, six four and athletic, is actually 43, five three and heavy-set. While of course, this is an extreme and unrealistic example, ‘massaging’ the truth in these matters is not unknown!

Returning to my phone conversation, I then asked the rabbi to explain why, if the fellow is ‘Chassidic’, he might choose to describe himself as ‘Modern Orthodox’. His answer is what I want to share with the readership of Cross-Currents: ‘well, he needs to give himself a broad range of options to ensure he actually gets to meet someone’. What do you think of this? Please tell me in the comments to this article.

This week’s Torah reading sees Yaakov at the end of his life dispensing blessings to each of his sons. There is a comparable passage right at the end of the Torah, in which Moshe blesses the tribes soon before he dies. While these two poetic sections are quite similar, I want to focus on a difference:

A lion’s whelp is Yehudah… (BeReishis 49:9)

…Dan is a lion’s whelp… (Devorim 33:22)

Here the lion, as in other forms of literature, refers to the leader. While we would expect Yehudah, the ancestor of the kings of Israel, to be portrayed as a lion, why is Dan described in the same way?

Many of us will have come across presentations of Hanukah that portray it as the anniversary of the ultimate victory of Jewish history – that of Judaism over the secular culture of the time. In this depiction, a pure, unadulterated Judaism, untainted by any non-Jewish influence, prevailed over an engagement with the surrounding society, its aspirations and intellectual activity.

This portrayal may be at odds with a number of ancient Jewish sources. In an allegorical reading of the laws governing the parah adumah (red cow, the ashes of which were used for spiritual purification), the holy Zohar learns:

‘Unblemished’ – this refers to the Greek kingdom, for they are close to the path of truth. (Zohar HaKodosh 2:237a)

In the same vein (although in reality, this has no modern application), one may write certain holy texts in Greek as the sole alternative to Hebrew. The Sages find a source for this ruling in the post-diluvian blessings given by Noah to his sons: Shem, the progenitor of the Jewish people and Yefes, the ancestor of Greece. The usual translation of the verse is:

‘Yippee: a Journey to Jewish Joy’ premiered at a special showing in London last week.

At the end of the film, the middle-aged Jewish woman sitting a few seats away turned to me and asked, ‘What did you think of it, then?’ When I suggested that I needed a while to digest my experience (code for: I don’t want to tell you), she launched into her disapproval of the Breslovers (‘They’re nothing like any Hassidim I’ve ever come across’), the fact that there was filming on Rosh HaShanah (untrue: the cameras stopped at sunset and resumed after Yom Tov, although there did seem to be footage from the previous Shabbos), and, finally, of me, for failing to express an opinion of the film (I would have thought that someone like you – i.e. bearded – would know much more about it). Going to see Yippee: a Journey to Jewish Joy’, was, like the film itself, an extremely Jewish experience!

The film, a trailer for which can be viewed here, records the participation of Hollywood director Paul Mazursky in the Rosh HaShanah 2005 pilgrimage of Breslover Hassidim and ‘fellow-travellers’ to the grave-site of Rebbe Nahman (founder of the Breslov movement) in the Ukrainian town of Uman. Rebbe Nahman encouraged his followers to celebrate Rosh HaShanah at his burial place and in the post-Communist era, this has grown to attract tens of thousands of pilgrims. Mazursky, who describes himself as a secular Jew, was encouraged to make the trip by David Miretsky, his orthodox optometrist in LA, himself a regular visitor to Uman.

The film is light on detail about Breslov: one gleans little sense of the radical nature of Rebbe Nahman’s teachings or what distinguishes Breslov from other Hassidic groups. Yet it highlights one area (mentioned in the film’s subtitle – ‘a journey to Jewish joy’) for which Hassidey Breslov are famed: ecstatic joyfulness at all times. The teachings of Rebbe Nahman are replete with this theme; the lifestyle, aspirations and music of the Hassidim express it in practice. It is this constant happiness that intrigued Mazursky and motivated him to explore a world so distant from that of his comfort zone in Beverley Hills.

My wife and I have just spent a magnificent week in Jerusalem. It was, as always, spiritually uplifting to visit the Old City, daven at the Kotel, absorb the incredible atmosphere of the eternal locus of Jewish physical and spiritual life, all the while sampling a degree of religious intensity that one can easily forget exists.

This time, we were also inspired by the growth of the new city: it was tremendous to see the huge number of building projects, the expansion of residential areas, the streets filled with young people. We were overwhelmed with a sense that without any question, the Jewish future lies in Israel, not elsewhere.

And, we have decided that Israel is the best place in the world for kosher restaurants. While we assiduously avoided mehadrin buses, we had the pleasure of dining at some really great mehadrin restaurants. They offer superb cuisine from across the globe at reasonable prices (by London standards, anyway) and despite what everyone says about Israelis, excellent service. (Click here for a version of this article that includes a list.)

With all this to recommend, my wife and I asked ourselves several times during our trip: why exactly do we still live in the UK?

Last week, I fulfilled a long-held desire – to visit the ruins of the Jewish cemetery in Sochaczew, a town some 40 miles west of Warsaw. With a Jewish population of over 3000 prior to its destruction by the Nazis during the Holocaust, Sochaczew was known as a centre of Hassidic thought in the 19th and early 20th centuries (as well as being very close to the birth-place of the composer Frederic Chopin).

The Rebbes of Sochaczew were world-renowned thinkers: the first was the son-in-law of the Kotzker Rebbe, Rabbi Avraham Bornstein (d. 1910), known as the ‘Avney Nezer’ after his monumental collection of halachic responsa; he was succeeded by his son, Rabbi Shmuel (d. 1926), known as the ‘Shem MiShmuel’ after his nine-volume collection of discourses on the Torah and festivals. Representing a rare blend of intellectual, psychological, esoteric and inspirational material, the Shem MiShmuel rigorously analyses Midrashic sources, which are used to offer a creative approach to understanding Biblical narratives.

Around fifteen years ago, I was introduced to the writings of the Shem MiShmuel by a friend in Gateshead, and I have been a devotee ever since: his ideas have heavily influenced my own thoughts. My younger son is named for him, and as I am about to embark on a major research project into his writings, it was a privilege to be able to visit Sochaczew to daven at his grave and that of his illustrious father.

On my first visit to Poland some years ago, it struck me that the Holocaust happened very close to the UK – it took just two hours by plane to get to Warsaw from my home on London. This visit brought home again how easily the Nazis might have been more successful in their attempts to invade England, in which case my grandparents could have been victims of the Nazi’s death camps. Yet for reasons we can never know, it was European, rather than British Jewry who fell victim to the horrors of the bestial murder-machine.

A little-known rabbinical source explores the relationship between Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkos:

Said Rebbi El’ozor ben Meriom: why do we make a sukkah after Yom Kippur? To teach that since on Rosh HaShanah, God sits in judgement upon everyone alive and on Yom Kippur, He seals the judgement, it is possible that the Jewish people are deserving of exile. As such, they make the sukkah and exile themselves from their homes to the sukkah and God considers it as though they have been exiled to Babylon…. (Pesikta DeRav Kehana 2:7)

This thought is expressed in a prayer that some people say when entering the Sukkah:

And in the merit of my exit from my house to go outside…. may it be considered as though I had been sent far away as a wanderer….

Since Rosh HaShanah, we have said the beautiful prayer Avinu Malkenu – our Father, our King – numerous times. Painfully aware of our inadequacies, we approach God, our benevolent father and ruler, and beg Him to bless us in every possible material and spiritual way. Its first and last lines read:

Our Father, our King, we have sinned before You….

Our Father, Our King, show us grace and answer us, for we have no [good] deeds. Perform acts of benevolence and kindness for us and save us.

The text is familiar, yet the opening phrase of each line expresses a surprising reality about our perception of God, touching on what is sometimes called the ‘immanence-transcendence paradox’. It is axiomatic that God is distinct from everything in creation, perfect and unbounded in every way – as the ruler of the universe, He transcends it. Yet we also perceive Him as our Father, concerned and intimately involved with the affairs of each of us, our constant support and rock. Struggling with this contradiction is a feature of any meaningful religious life.

I have been involved with formal and informal outreach for more than 15 years but have only recently started to ask myself a few pointed questions, which I share, anticipating that they will be of value to others.

How do we ensure that those we help to become involved in Jewish observance stay tolerant of others who have not taken the same bold steps as they? Surely we don’t want Ba’aley Teshuvah (the newly observant) to regard their family members as sinful failures. It is likely that their childhood homes were the incubators within which they learned a sense of social justice, the pursuit of truth and the dedication to family values and were therefore indispensable to their ultimate discovery of a Torah lifestyle. Do we, as the facilitators of religious seekers’ spiritual growth constantly emphasise this, or do we see their families as opponents to be defeated?

Perhaps worse, it seems that the newly-religious sometimes maintain their relationships with non-observant friends simply to try to make them religious. It seems improbable, but is it just possible that we encourage it? Picture, if you will, Bob and Jenny, old friends of John (now Yochanan) and Sheila (now Sheindy). Bob and Jenny are unlikely to feel kindly disposed to their newly-religious friends (or indeed Judaism at all) if they discover that Yochanan and Sheindy have only remained in contact with them in the hope of making them frum.

While it is beneficial to develop a confident and firm attitude to one’s own Jewish life, will the products of outreach also remain open-minded towards those who have adopted a different style of Orthodoxy from their own? This can be very painful: I recently heard of a case where two scarcely-observant friends from a traditional community became religious and went off to Yeshivos in Israel: one to a modern-style establishment, the other to a Charedi institution. The acrimony between them over religious issues is now so ingrained that when they come home for vacation, the local rabbi struggles to contain their feuding.

Certain key occasions in the Jewish calendar invoke strong memories of my seven years in Gateshead Yeshivah. One of my teachers assured me that by spending Yomim Tovim and other special moments in the Yeshivah, I would have a store of powerful experiences on which to draw in later years: I am truly grateful for that advice. I constantly try to recreate those powerful moments in my community, something from which I know my congregants have benefited, perhaps without realising. And even when that isn’t possible, I can retreat into the realm of inspirational memory and lift almost any occasion for myself and my family.

Tisha B’Av is one such day: each year, from Rosh Chodesh Av, two memories are especially vivid, each associated with Kinnos (dirges read on Tisha B’Av lamenting the destruction of the Temples and other Jewish calamities). The Kinnos are perhaps the most demanding texts of our entire liturgy: many of them are written in difficult Hebrew, and are replete with obscure scholarly references that require considerable Talmudic and Midrashic background to appreciate fully. Indeed, rather than plough through all of them, many Shuls (including my own) elect to read only a selection of the Kinnos, accompanied by explanation and elucidation (a job that the ArtScroll edition of the Kinnos has made much easier). The Kinnos are potent, elegant, yet very challenging.

My first recollection is of sitting on the floor as a sign of mourning beneath the desk at which I normally davened (prayed) in Gateshead Yeshivah at about 11am on Tisha B’Av. The Kinnos were well underway, and I admit that I was struggling to maintain my interest in the reading. By this time the sun had risen sufficiently to shine in my eyes through the very large front-windows of the Yeshivah. Remarkably, this coincided with the recital of the famous Kinnah, ‘Tsion’, by Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi (author of the Kuzari), a few translated excerpts of which follow. For a full text, see here.

Zion, will you not enquire about the welfare of your captives? Those who seek your welfare – they are the remnants of your flock….

A while ago, a feature article published on the website of the UK Telegraph newspaper asked, ‘what is the most annoying phrase in the English language?’ Suggestions included ‘chill out’ and the replacement of ‘now’ with ‘at this moment in time’. The posting, before it disappeared, elicited over 2000 comments from readers, each of whom mentioned a pet hate. A random glance at them yielded such expressions as ‘all intensive purposes’, ‘fell pregnant’, ‘blue-sky thinking’ tautologies such as ‘potential risk’ and the use of the soccer-player’s favourite phrase ‘at the end of the day’, which, it was claimed, actually means nothing at all.

The observant world is blessed with a number of eloquent speakers and writers who are outstanding advocates for Judaism. Their sensitive and lucid writings have drawn many hearts towards authentic Judaism and, when necessary, they articulately defend the Torah from outside attack: we would be a poorer community without them.

Yet the standard of their written and spoken English is scarcely reflective of the majority within the observant community; even in English-speaking countries, low standards abound. À la Telegraph, one could prepare a list of the most annoying phrases used by members of the religious community. My bête-noir is the common misuse of the word ‘by’, as in ‘I’m eating by the Cohens this Shabbos’ and ‘we daven (pray) by the Oshplotzer Rebbe’. This may be correct syntax in Yiddish, but is it English? Some even seem to be unaware that the words ‘takke’, ‘mamash’ and ‘ziche’ may be unfamiliar to the plumber.

In some parts of the religious community there is little appreciation of the value of using clear and accurate English and examples of frum-speak are common. Numerous English-language books and journals are filled with basic spelling errors (don’t the authors use ‘spell-check’?), inaccurate usages, and scant attention to English syntax, quite apart from the limited and simplistic vocabulary. How should one respond when one’s children notice simple spelling and grammatical errors in the school-worksheets prepared by their teachers? In a masterful exposition of this problem (aptly named: ‘Tefillin in a brown paper bag’), Rabbi Emanuel Feldman wrote in reference to the contents of an Orthodox periodical:

Encouraged by a number of my congregants, my wife and I recently visited the impressive ‘Sacred’ exhibition at London’s British Library. Billed as ‘the rarest and most exquisite sacred books and manuscripts presented and explored, side by side, in a major UK exhibition for the first time’, it didn’t disappoint. Balanced between Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy books, the 202 exhibits are absolutely magnificent (get a taste of them here) and left me wanting to return to see them again soon. As the exhibition doesn’t end until 23rd September, if you live in the UK or are planning to visit, do make it a priority. I hope to get there at least once more.

I was especially taken with the calligraphy, the accuracy and beauty of which defy description. I am not particularly skilled with my hands: I actually struggle to read my own handwriting. In comparison, the control, artistic flair and accuracy required to produce an illuminated manuscript are quite breathtaking. I am, of course, familiar with beautiful safrus (Hebrew sacred calligraphy), but I have never been exposed to exquisite scripts from other religions written in other alphabets; I found learning about their manufacture fascinating (see here) and consider the final products a remarkable testimony to human ingenuity.

The layout of ‘Sacred’ is also most attractive: the manuscripts are interspersed with religious artefacts, all of great beauty and some of major significance (for example, an original entrance-curtain from the Kaaba in Mecca). There is also tasteful background music, as well as carefully arranged lighting and projections; it’s clear that a huge amount of thought and effort has gone into arranging the exhibition.

While, understandably, great care was taken to avoid mentioning areas of violent religious conflict, the curator was bold enough to address an obvious question: why there are so few very early Jewish manuscripts. In at least one place, the display informs the reader that the extreme rarity of early Jewish manuscripts is explained by the practice of mediaeval Christian authorities of collecting them up and burning them.

Much dating takes place out of context. The courting pair visits restaurants, hotel lobbies, theatres, parks and museums in their efforts to decide whether they are suited. This is vital: quality time spent together discussing serious issues and simply ‘hanging out’ in each other’s company are key ways of assessing long-term suitability and compatibility of aims. Yet this is all insufficient unless what we might term ‘context’ is added to the equation. If two people don’t see each other in the context of their existing lives, do they really have any chance of properly assessing the other? This concern seems especially germane in younger, very religious circles, where the prevalent mode of dating allows hardly any time for getting to know one another, let alone seeing each other in context. It also features as a key issue with ‘international dating’, in which one party pays the other a short and very intense visit, making it difficult to gain any real insight into each other’s lives.

The Mishnah in Avos says:

Al tadin es haverkha ad tagi’a limkomo – don’t judge your fellow until you reach his place. (Avos 2:4)

The usual understanding of this is that one shouldn’t judge another until one has experienced the same set of circumstances in which a particular event occurred. One simply cannot understand another person’s behaviour and motivation unless one has been in the same ‘place’.