By Shira Schmidt, on February 26th, 2010 Each year we try to cut down on the number of mishloach manot/shalach manos we send, and either give more matanot l’evyonim to the needy, or find indigent Jews who really need mishloach manot . As inspiration, I reread a chapter about real mishloach manot in the historical novel by Rav Haim Sabato, Boi HaRuach, a bestseller in Israel two years ago. This month it came out in English as From the Four WInds translated by Yaacob Dweck, Toby Press (and available on amazon, bookstores,etc). The chapter about mishloach manot can be a lesson for all of us and it is on the Hadassah Magazine website’s Purim section: “Making the Rounds in Beit Mazmil” a Jerusalem immigrant neighborhood in the 1950s. I added five discussion questions which you can see if you scroll down to the bottom of the excerpt. Try the link in question 5, to the Hungarian cake for Purim described in the excerpt. The chapter and questions might enrich your seudat Purim or Shabbat Zachor table talk.
As the child Haim in the chapter says at the end,
When we were done, I hurried home to Mother. I had … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on February 11th, 2010 29bShvat 5770
Laughter broke the tense atmosphere of the Israel Supreme Court session on Thursday Feb.4 (20bShvat) when both sides, those in favor of gender-separated seating on Mehadrin buses and those against, reacted with smiles to the quip by Justice Elyakim Rubinstein. The session had started with a lengthy discussion about whether to put signs on the buses saying that anyone can sit where he or she wants, but as a courtesy on these lines men are requested to sit in the front and seats in the back are reserved for women. In Hebrew, one term for signs is “tamrurim.” After twenty minutes of arguments by the two sides about the efficacy of such “tamrurim” Justice Rubinstein remarked in Hebrew with a smile,
“I guess what we have here is “bechi tamrurim” — crying over signs,
a pun on the phrase from Jeremiah 31:14 where bechi tamrurim refers to matriarch Rachel’s crying bitterly (related to maror meaning bitter)..
I sat through the court session and, with Adar coming up, decided to record the humor and the jokes, which I will emphasize below. What occasioned the … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on September 18th, 2009 Blowing shofar – in striped prison uniform
A controversy in cross-currents.com two years ago led to a remarkable interview I was privileged to record recently. Erev Rosh Hashana, Sept.10,2007 I posted my translation of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Meisels’ description of his blowing shofar in Auschwitz. Others have also translated the Hebrew description given by R. Meisels in his Mekadshei Hashem, among them R.Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer “Rosh Hashanah in Gehinnom, Auschwitz 1944,” in Artscroll’s revised A Path Through the Ashes). You can read my translation in cross-currents
“Sounding the shofar in Auschwitz”
Quite a bit of controversy and skepticism ensued, raising questions about the shofar blowing in Auschwitz. A dozen comments appeared on Sept.18,2007 – “Spiritual or physical hunger?”
Because of the doubts I decided I would try to find and record some kli rishon testimony.
Recently, I succeeded finding an eye-witness: Rav Yeshaya Glick. I persuaded him to let us video his first-person testimony. R. Glick writes about the shofar blowing in his recently published book Mamchishkim Hoshianu (available so far only in Hebrew from the author, 49 Sorotzkin St,Jer). I went to interview him and recorded him retelling the episode. He was … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on April 28th, 2009 “That’s a premier Israeli folksong,” claimed someone from the audience when my co-translator and I showed a video of a Sanz hassidim singing a piyut sung at Seudah Shlishit on Shabbat. I ruminated on this tune today, as I recited Psalms during the “minute of silence” on Remembrance Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers. This piyut came to my attention because it is mentioned on the last page of Rav Haim Sabato’s autobiographical novel on the Yom Kippur War, Adjusting Sights. A Yom Hazikaron radio interview with Rav Sabato is in the archives of Galey Zahal (scroll to the bottom and go to p.6), Remembrance Day, “V’Chai Bahem: Faith and Memory.”
The comment, “That’s a premier Israeli folksong” was made when my co-lecturer and I analyzed how Hillel Halkin handled challenges in translating into English the final passage in Adjusting Sights. (The book was also made into a movie ) In the book’s final page the aforementioned nigun to the piyut E-l Mistater is the thread that connects Rabbi Haim Halberstam of Sanz (b.1793), with his great grandson, the late Sanz-Klausenburg … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on April 8th, 2009 I was at a study-seminar in Nahariya when I received a phone call 1 am Friday, erev Shabbat Hagadol from New York. “We have an emergency,” said one of the editors of Mishpacha Magazine. Could I help them find an expert translator to translate from English to Hebrew the cover story of the Pesah issue, which had to go to print Motzei Shabbat. It was a cover story, an interview with the current Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Aharon Teitelbaum. After a flurry of transatlantic phone calls a translator was found – the very scholar, Rav Yitzchok Frankfurter, who conducted the interview and wrote it in English. He worked for twelve hours straight, and translated it himself. I found the interview fascinating – and you can read it in English (and in Hebrew) in the Pesah issue #254 of Mishpacha:”A Glimpse of Greatness.”
My narrow view of Satmar has completely changed after reading this cover story. Especially impressive is the fact that the Rebbe wears two streimels (streimlach?), that of Rosh Yeshiva deeply involved in teaching and learning, and that of the leader of his community. In the same … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on February 9th, 2009 Tu Bishvat,eve of Israeli elections.
About seven years ago a journalist colleague confronted me during a coffee break. “Are you a Neanderthal? How could you support the Shas party?” I invited her to come to Netanya to visit kli rishon some Shas institutions. A few weeks later she took up the gauntlet and came with a photographer to write an article (about Neanderthals?) I took her to the Beit Margolit girl’s elementary school, that had grades 1 to 5; to thriving kindergartens in deprived neighborhoods that were boosting children from the entire religious and non-religious spectrum; to the hessed store of “fellafel Yael”; to Rabbi Moshe ben Moshe’s outreach to marginal youth; to an interview with R. Ovadia Yosef’s daughter Adina BarShalom who founded the Haredi College in Jerusalem. When my journalist friend submitted her article to the Jewish Exponent, they returned it to her and said it was too positive, too glowing to be true, and asked her to rewrite it! She stood her ground and it was published. She doesn’t vote for Shas, but she did change her opinion. “Seeing is not the same as hearing” – is chazal’s phrase … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on December 2nd, 2008 5 b Kislev. Today the funerals were held for the kedoshim murdered in Mumbai. I happen to be staying at the Jerusalem home of my brother who is very active in Chabad. We came from assimilated Jewish American homes. He affiliated himself with Chabad in his Austin college days, and raised his seven children to aspire to be “shluchim” and live lives of noble service, as exemplified so beautifully by R. Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, Hy”d. My brother and I listened to a derasha by R. Gavriel that is now on the internet and which R. Gavriel gave exactly 4 years ago when he spoke at the Conference of Shluchim in Brooklyn in 5765 (2004). R.Kotlarsky introduces him in Yiddish, and R.Gavriel himself speaks in Hebrew. It was around the time of parashas Toldos/Vayetze as it is now, and R. Gavriel cited the Rebbe who pointed out that at the end of Toldos Jacob is sent on “shlichus.” In the first verse of Vayetze (Gen.28:10) Jacob goes “Harona” (to Haron) and the midrash and Zohar point out that he is … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on October 16th, 2008 Ever change your mind after reading something? In the course of translating an essay I was stimulated to rethink a principle I once held dearly: suspicion and avoidance of large crowds. I believed that babies and small children had no place in crowds since they don’t understand what is going on and may disturb. And we know how mass gatherings can be used for nefarious as well as efficacious purposes.
But while translating an essay on Hakhel by Rabbi Haim Sabato from Hebrew to English, I reevaluated my opposition to crowds. (BTW two ceremonies in remembrance of the Hakhel took place during Hol Hamoed Sukkot). I changed my mind on the issue of crowds due to an insight of the Malbim that R. Sabato cites in his essay on Hakhel…
By Shira Schmidt, on September 29th, 2008 The place:Liberated Theresienstadt. Date: May 1945. Hanna, a survivor, recalls:
“I thought to myself: ‘I am now free. I am actually free to do whatever I want.’ But I had nowhere to go. I had no one. Where could I go? There was no one to guide me. I was completely detached. I belonged to no one. I had just turned 13. At that moment I decided to come to Eretz Israel. I wrote to the uncle, Yitzhak Rosner, who had come on aliya before the War, asking if he would take me in, as my family no longer existed. I wanted to belong to someone. I wanted to belong to my nation.”
These words were narrated by Hanna Rosner Bar-Yesha in a new film that can be purchased online in Hebrew or English from Yad Vashem (by contacting Naama Shik naama.shik@yadvashem.org.il tel.011-972-2-6443654).
I saw a preview of “She Was There and She Told Me:the Story of Hanna Bar-Yesha” at a summer study session initiated by the Zachor Holocaust Education Center of the Michlala, … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on June 3rd, 2008 29 b Iyyar
For several years I was a part-time, self-appointed, undercover agent, infiltrating the Shinui party organization in Netanya. I thought about this on Sunday, 27 bIyyar, when during a two-hour drive south I listened to several radio programs devoted to the Shinui party head, Yosef Tommy Lapid, who had passed away that morning and whose funeral was to be the following day. There were interviews with those who knew the late Tommy Lapid including R.Arye Deri, R. Israel Eichler, and Ruth Sirkis (who collaborated with him on Paprika, a [kosher!] cook book of Hungarian dishes.)
Back in the 2003 election, when Lapid’s Shinui party garnered 15 Knesset seats on an anti-clerical platform, I had become curious, and wanted to understand what were the main beefs that Shinui voters had against religious Jews. So I began attending the local party meetings, incognito. I discovered that …..
By Shira Schmidt, on April 15th, 2008 11 bNissan
I have been searching the internet for the prayer to say upon eating bread on Pessah, and I found it by Googling “zachor Michlalah movies.” There you can see/hear the late Reb Yonah Emanuel who was a teenage inmate in Bergen-Belsen during the Passover of 1944 when the prayer over bread was recited. He reads the entire prayer (it is not a bracha) over bread and describes Pessah in that death camp in this 3 minute segment of a longer DVD. The reason for my search: The recent controversy over selling hametz in the public square during Passover in Israel.
I translated the prayer for bread during Passover into English at the end of this posting.
The controversy and court decision (by a national religious judge!) that permits selling bread in Israel during Passover reminded me of two Seder meals sixty-something years ago.
Passover 1943, Konin Concentration Camp
Before describing Pessah of 1943 in the Konin concentration camp in Poland, Rabbi Yehoshua Aronson gives us, in his memoirs, this … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on March 23rd, 2008 He entered the lioness’s den and came out unscathed.
Rabbi Yerachmiel Weiss of Merkaz HaRav Kook, Rosh Yeshiva L’Tzeirim was interviewed by Ilana Dayan three days after the terror attack, on her regular Sunday TV program. Secular Ilana Dayan usually plays hardball so it was surprising that Rav Weiss agreed. He displayed the sterling qualities that make him a leader: sensitivity, deep faith despite grief, patience and complexity. Parts of the interview were broadcast the next day on a haredi radio station. R. Hillel Fendel translated the interview into English “Faith Through Tears.” It is a good idea to skim the English translation first, the better to understand the Hebrew of Rav Weiss.
The interview, in Hebrew, can be seen and heard.. If you read some of the 150 comments posted beside the interview, you will see what a Kiddush Hashem this was.
“What makes Merkaz Harav unique?” was the question posed to me by several American Beis Yaakov seminary girls here for their gap year as we stood on the sidewalk outside of Merkaz HaRav. On the seventh day of the shiva … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on December 18th, 2007 10th of Tevet
“Those who say that suffering such as this has never befallen the Jewish people are mistaken. There was torture comparable to ours at the destruction of the Temple and at Beitar….”
As we approached the fast of the Tenth of Tevet, I reread some of the writings of Rabbi Kalonymos Kalmish Shapira, the Piaseczner Rebbe (pronounced Pia-sech-ner) who made the above observation in 1942 in Warsaw.
How many of us are able to rethink and reevaluate our positions? The Piaseczer did. The historian Esther Farbstein devotes a full chapter to the Rebbe in her comprehensive book Hidden in Thunder: Perspectives on Faith, Halachah, and Leadership During the Holocaust.
She details “a gradual change” in the Rebbe’s views by examining the collection of sermons he left behind. “The Rebbe stopped seeing the events as merely another chapter in the saga of suffering, but as something comparable to the worst catastrophe in Jewish history: the destruction of the Temple.”
In November 1942, “witnessing the brutal deportations and the emptying ghetto, he added a note … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on November 13th, 2007 Would you like to be a fly on the wall while a battery of secular and modern Orthodox academic experts are discussing the dynamics of change in the haredi world?
If so, then today Tuesday 3 bKislev you can view and listen to the conference (live in Hebrew) taking place at this link for the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem at their website
Here are some highlights for Tuesday, Israel-time. 9-11 am Changes in the public sphere; Consumerism as a political strategy;Limits to consumerism:the case of wigs; The eruv in a multi-cultural society;Chareidim from the ghetto to the Israeli suburbs
11:30am to 1:30pm Volunterrism and medical help (Zaka, genetic testing, philanthropy)
2:30 to 4 pm Education and communication; “An orphaned generation seeks a mother: The mesoret of Sarah Schenirer as a means of post-Holocaust rehabilitation”;
Children’s heroes; Forbidden and permitted media among haredi women/
Final session 4:30 to 6:30pm Halacha, Theology and Education; lectures on Rav Eliashiv shlita, R Shlomo Volbe ztzl; haredi girls’ educaiton between opennessa nd conservation;
theological discussion in popular literature.
Even if you don’t get to view the conference, just reading the list of topics (there is another … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on September 18th, 2007 I was terribly saddened by the memoir of R.Tzvi Meisels, ztz”l describing his blowing shofar in Auschwitz in 1944. I have, however, questions which really bother me.
So began a challenge from Dr.Tzvia Greenfield, who lives in the HarNof haredi neighborhood of Jerusalem (and ran on the Meretz ticket in the last election). I translated the episode into English (it turns out there are other translations) from the hundred Rabbinic Memoirs edited by Esther Farbstein.
Tzvia Greenfield continues her questioning:
The description of the Shofar blowing of Rabbi Meisels is undoubtedly heartbreaking. But why do you, Esther Farbstein or even (if I may say so) Rabbi Meisels himself assume that the weeping, shouts and begging of the young prisoners on the block awaiting their imminent execution had anything to do at all with his shofar blowing or with Rosh-Hashana in general?
Don’t you think that their heartbreaking crying and yelling was the natural result of their horrible fear from their imminent demise rather than from the sound of the shofar? Did they even HEAR the shofar?? Why attribute their behavior to the shofar blowing rather than simply to their incredible anxiety … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on September 10th, 2007 From the memoirs of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Meisels, ztz”l describing Rosh Hashanah 1944:
“The experience of one transport that left Auschwitz is seared in my memory. With the grace of HASHEM I was miraculously able to bring a shofar into the camp. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah I went from block to block, shofar in hand, to sound the tekiyot. This put my life in danger and I had to avoid the Nazis and malevolent Kapos. I thank HASHEM that due to His mercy and compassion I was privileged to sound the shofar that Rosh Hashanah some twenty times, coming to a hundred blasts en toto. This revived the spirits of the shattered camp inmates and gave them some peace of mind knowing that at least they could observe one mitzvah in Auschwitz – that of shofar on Rosh Hashanah.”
This begins the four chapters describing Rosh Hashanah in Auschwitz that I just translated into English from the preface to R. Meisels’ book, Mekadshey Hashem. The preface is included in the Hebrew CD-ROM Rabbinic Prefaces put out this year by the Michlalah-Jerusalem containing memoirs collected by the … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on September 4th, 2007 21bEllul “Tsunami of porn” is the colorful phrase the Shmuley Boteach coined to describe the skimpy clothing and other phenomena that characterize much of modern behavior.
See his Jerusalem Post Sept.2 oped “Why women dress skimpily in the cold,” After exposing the problem of attire, or lack thereof, he writes:
And the most astonishing thing as all this takes place is the deafening silence. I do not know of a single important female voice decrying the tsunami of porn and the denigration of women in our time.
Well, there has been a voice, and that voice is speaking again.
Author Wendy Shalit has recently published another bestseller on modesty. The new one, titled Girls Gone Mild (a play on the sad phenomenon of “girls gone wild”) not only decries the degeneration of social norms today but offers alternative role models of young women who, as described in the book’s subtitle, “Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad to be Good.” Although she herself is a young, haredi mother, she promotes modesty as a virtue that need not necessarily be religiously based. As a non-religious co-ed many years … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on July 26th, 2007 11 b Menahem-Av
Formerly Orthodox Professor Noah Feldman, writing in the New York Times Magazine , “Orthodox Paradox,” July 22 two days before Tisha B’Av, complains that the Jewish Day School he attended (Maimonides of Boston) does not accept with equanimity his marriage to a non-Jew.
R Shmuley Boteah defends his friend, Noah Feldman, in his Jerusalem Post oped “Stop Ostracizing the Intermarried” .(There are 224 talkbacks so far!)
An astute comment was made on Feldman’s NYTimes piece by a friend of ours who is an Orthodox rabbi, a Harvard graduate who lives deep in the haredi city of Bene Brak, is a professor of Greek and Classics at Bar Ilan, teaches daf yomi, and keeps abreast of current issues. Our friend himself is a person who embodies and personifies the ability to live in several worlds that Feldman describes as the goal of his Maimonides’ education. Apropos Tisha B’Av and commenting on Feldman’s piece, he quoted Midrash Rabba on Eicha, Ptichta 22.
At first they used to worship idols in secret places, as it is stated, ‘Then said He to them, … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on July 19th, 2007 See my comment at the end of this posting for an update on the actual fining of stores that opened on Shabbat.
3 bMenahemAv
Only in Israel would the hourly news report a storm brewing over whether book stores will indeed violate the Shabbat closing laws and open for sale late Friday night. The cause celebre is the world launching of the final Harry Potter book at 12:01 am July 21 British time, which comes out in Israel on the morning of Shabbat Hazon, at 02:01 am. Eli Yishai, the haredi Shas minister for the Ministry of Industry and Labor, “warns stores over Harry Potter book launch.”
It is within Yishai’s purview to send out non-Jewish (usually Druze) inspectors to fine, indict, and possibly imprison Jewish store owners who open on Shabbat in contravention of the law. (There is a dual prohibition: against opening stores, and against employing Jews on Shabbat).
This led me to ruminate on the subject of religious coercion, a topic treated soberly this week in the Jerusalem Post by YU mashgiach (spiritual guidance counselor) Rabbi Yosef Blau in his op ed … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on July 18th, 2007 3 b Menahem Av
Remember the party-crashing in the Kamtza and Bar-Kamtza episode? Well, I had my own experience last week.
Jonathan Rosenblum describes below what he would have told the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI).
In a quixotic gesture to share some insights from the haredi sector, I actually went there. I traveled from the hassidic neighborhood where I live in Netanya to the conference in Jerusalem. I sat quietly through two workshops, and then asked the organizers formally to participate in the conference. I was politely and firmly asked to leave -they claimed that this was only for professional planners. Even my informing them that I had a Master’s degree in Planning from the Technion did not sway them and I understood that they were not interested in hearing from that sector (the haredim) that arguably has had the most success in fighting assimilation.
If I could have stayed, I would have made four points. 1) Practice what you preach. If Jewish tradition is so precious, begin every session at such a conference with some relevant text from Jewish tradition. I brought with me the text of … Read More >>
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