Hertz p.155
Soncino p.252
Second Shabbat Chanukah
Shabbat ends in London at 4.52pm
| Sidra Lite | |
| Sidra Insights | Rabbi Reuben Livingstone |
| Friday night - Returning home from shul | Rabbi Daniel Roselaar |
| Rabbi Yehuda Halevi | Rabbi Dr Michael Harris |
| 2nd of Teveth | Rabbi Yisroel Fine |
| 'Miriam Vered' | Simon Goulden |
| Riddle of the Week | Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis & Ian Abrahams |
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"And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh Dreamed" (Bereishit 41:1)
The Sidra continues narrating the story of Joseph's experience in prison and afterwards. On the one hand, he went through extraordinary suffering once his brothers sold him off as a slave and throughout his imprisonment.
On the other hand, he appears to have maintained an equally extraordinary faith and ends up being saved from every evil that he encounters - eventually flourishing beyond all expectations as Viceroy of Egypt. This teaches us the object lesson that the man of faith will always maintain hope - no matter how far his situation aggravates; "The righteous man falls seven times and rises up again" (Proverbs 24:16). And this hope is often profoundly rewarded.
The Tanach is full of examples of this type of fortitude and attendant change of fortune. In the case of Mordechai, Haman had ordered his execution and the extermination of all Jews young and old. But, remarkably, he maintained an extraordinary spiritual focus - calling Jews to prayer and penance by his own example. Not only were they saved but soon after we read that "Mordechai went out from the presence of the king in royal apparel of blue and white, and with a great crown of gold" (Esther 8:15).
A further example is Daniel. The Persians conspired against him and the Jewish people. Eventually a decree was issued by King Darius prohibiting the worship of any god other than the king himself (Daniel 6:7). Daniel openly defied this decree and refused to recognise Darius as the deity that his people considered him to be. "Then the king commanded and they brought Daniel and cast him into the den of lions" (6:16). Not only was he saved from this fate but, incredibly, ended up being appointed chief counsellor to the king!
Finally, the story of Chanukah and the Hasmoneans is itself an object study of an equally miraculous reversal of fortune.
This phenomenon is beautifully summed up in the prayer of Hannah. "He raises the poor out of the dust, and lifts up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes and cause them to inherit the throne of glory" (Samuel 1, 2:8). But Hannah wasn't just referring to an abstract possibility - she was asking for just such a miracle in her own life and expressing her profound faith in that possibility.
According to Talmudic tradition (Shabbat 119b), two angels accompany a person home from Shul on Friday evening. In most homes the Friday evening rituals are commenced with the singing of Shalom Aleichem, which formally welcomes the angels. The Kabbalists composed these verses in the seventeenth century, and whilst they have now gained widespread acceptance, various halachic authorities have expressed reservations about them. The Chatam Sofer was apparently opposed to reciting them whatsoever, as he regarded it as presumptuous to assume that he was worthy of welcoming the angels into his home; R' Chaim of Volozhin maintained that the verse beginning Barachuni was unhalachic since it is wrong to ask the angels to bestow a blessing on us (only the Almighty can bestow blessings); and other authorities were perplexed by the inclusion of the verse Tzeitchem which sends the angels on their way - how can they be dismissed so soon after they have been welcomed? (According to the Chida, the text should be corrected to read B'tzeitchem - when you leave.)
Another widespread custom is that children are blessed by their parents on Friday evening. The authorities discuss the propriety of non-Cohanim reciting the Priestly Blessing. According to the Bach this would only present a problem if the blessing were to be delivered in exactly the same way that the Cohanim deliver it in Shul, but the Vilna Gaon recommends that only one hand be placed on the child's head. Though the Shulchan Aruch omits any mention of blessing the children, the Magen Avraham writes that it is commendable for a person to kiss his mother's hands on Friday night!
Rabbi Yehuda Halevi
Rabbi Yehuda Halevi was born in Spain in c.1080 and died in about 1145. His greatest and best-known contribution to Jewish literature, often quoted in sermons, shiurim and divrei Torah to this day, was the Kuzari, one of the central texts of medieval Jewish philosophy. The Kuzari - originally written in Arabic - relates that the King of the Khazar tribe, in his quest to discover the true religion, entered into dialogue with a Christian, a Muslim and a Jewish scholar. The Kuzari sets out the conversation between the Jew and the king in question-and-answer format, covering many central issues in Jewish thought along the way. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, given its Rabbinic authorship, by the end of the Kuzari the Khazar king has become convinced of the truth of Judaism and converted, along with all his people!
Rabbi Yehuda Halevi was also a great liturgical poet or paytan, composing, inter alia, the popular Shabbat zemer "Yom Shabbaton" and the well-known kinna for Tisha B'Av, "Tzion Halo Tishali". In addition to being a master of Hebrew and Arabic, Rabbi Yehudah studied science and medicine, and (like Maimonides and Nachmanides) earned his living as a physician.
At a certain point in his life, Rabbi Yehuda fled persecution in Muslim southern Spain and migrated to the Christian north. Towards the end of his life, he decided to settle in Eretz Yisrael. Legend has it that, arriving in Jerusalem and falling to the ground in joy and thanksgiving, he was trampled to death by an Arab horseman.
2nd of Teveth
On this day, which coincided with 12 December 1882, Rosh Pina, the first Jewish settlement in the Galilee was established.
Rosh Pina was first settled in 1878 by a group of Yeshiva students from Tzefat, but they left after three years of hunger and famine.
In 1882 a group of Romanian Jews succeeded in building a lasting Jewish settlement in the Galilee. They chose its name as Rosh Pina (cornerstone) from the phrase in Psalms 118 : 22 "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone".
A year later Rosh Pina was adopted by Baron Edmund de Rothschild. He strengthened the agriculture and developed the silk industry. During the period of the British mandate it suffered from repeated Arab attacks. In 1938, when three of its members attacked an Arab bus in retaliation for terrorist attacks one of them, Shlomo Ben-Yosef, following conviction by a British court was hanged in Acre prison and buried in Rosh Pina.
Mer House, built by Baron Rothschild in Rosh Pina in 1887 and bought by Professor Gidon Mer in 1929, became world-renowned as a centre for research into malaria.
Rosh Pina today is a special combination of old and new, interweaving fifth generation founding families with new settlers. Overlooking the Golan Heights, Mount Hermon and the Hula Valley, with easy access to all major locations in the Galilee, Rosh Pina is a much sought after site for residents and tourists alike. In the year 2000 its residents numbered 1860.
Visit the 'Miriam Vered' - the Ancient Galilee boat at Ginosar
The severe drought of the mid 1980s had at least one positive aspect. In 1986, two brothers from Kibbutz Ginosar found the remains of an ancient boat which had been buried - and preserved - in the Kinneret's muddy sediments for some two thousand years. The Israel Antiquities Authority mounted their own version of the Mary Rose rescue, using similar chemical preservatives. It took fourteen years to complete the conservation process and to house it in a very special, atmospherically controlled, environment in a purpose built museum on the kibbutz. The preservation methods may have been identical to the Mary Rose, but the difference was just one of scale. The Galilee boat is merely 8.2 metres (27 feet) long, built to the typical Mediterranean edge to edge 'shell' system, rather than the northern European overlapping method with which we are familiar from Viking longboats to rowing boats on the park lake. Our boat had a single sail and oars and looked very similar to boats in ancient illustrations.
Archaeologists have dated the wood and some of the artefacts found in and near the boat to the first centuries BCE - CE. Was the vessel a simple fishing boat, or could it have been used by the Judaean resistance fighters in their disastrous naval battle against the might of Rome in 67 CE, as described by Josephus?
The boat, together with an excellent audio-visual explanation, can be found in a new wing of the Yigal Allon Centre on Kibbutz Ginosar, on Route 90, just north of Tiberias. You will not be disappointed that you made the trip.
Last week's questions:
1) Who had a date with a date? (The answer is in today's Sidra of Vayeshev).
Answer:
Judah with Tamar (means "date"). See Bereishit 38:14-18.
2) EXTRA CHALLENGE
"Lot was taken with Joseph down to Egypt".
Prove this statement to be correct from the Sidra of Vayeshev
Answer:
The Ishmaelites who took Joseph to Egypt were carrying with them spices and gum, including "lot" = laudanum (Bereishit 37:25)
This week's question:
1) Greece is in which month?
(The answer has no connection with Chanukah).
2) EXTRA CHALLENGE set by Ian Abrahams of Pinner.
What happened this month which last occurred in December 1975 and will next occur in December 2031?
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