Digital Maggid
In honor of Moshe’s last week on earth (well, that is to say, this is the parsha in which Hashem tells him to go up to the mountain to take a good look at the Holy Land before he dies), I want to share with you some of the legends from our tradition concerning the death of Moshe. The four-volume collection of Agodes (legends or stories) I am working from has an entire chapter devoted to this subject. Many of these tales are pretty amazing. The longer ones I’ll post in installments. You can look for them under the Aggodos menu if you don’t happen to see them when they are posted.
September 18, 2011
Moons, Months, Portions and Years
ב”ה
Shavuah Tov.
This week we have a double parsha: Nitzavim-Vayelech. So I want to take this opportunity to explain a bit about the Jewish calendar and our system of Torah readings.
For those who may not be familiar, the Torah is divided into 54 portions, called Parshahs (English), Parshiot (Hebrew) or Parshos (Yiddish). (The singular form is usually spelled either Parsha(h) or Parasha(h).) But it isn’t simply a matter of matching up one Parsha to each week, because even in the solar year we have more Parshas than we have weeks.
The lunar year (which is reckoned by months, not days) has 12 months (normally), but the solar year has approximately 11 more days than the typical lunar year. In order to keep our festivals from drifting away from their proper seasons, as mandated by the Torah, we add in an extra month approximately every 3 years. This is done by doubling the month of Adar, so that when there are two of them, they are named Adar I and Adar II, respectively.
So, in a leap year, we have 13 months, and (usually) four more Shabbats and four additional Torah Parshas to read. BUT, because certain of our major festivals call for readings outside the regular cycle of Parsha readings, especially during non-leap years, some of the parshas during the year have to be doubled up to make sure we actually finish reading the entire Torah before the new cycle of readings begins at Simchas Torah.* Exactly how many are doubled up in a given year depends on whether it is a leap year or not, and exactly how many times Shabbos occurs between one Simchas Torah and the next.
*Simchas Torah literally means Joy of the Torah. It is a holy day celebrated just after Sukkot. During this holy day we dance with the Sefer Torah and conduct a ceremony in which very last part of the last book of the Torah (D’varim/Deuteronomy) is read aloud, immediately followed by beginning the first part of Bereshit (Genesis), so that the cycle of readings is ended and begun again in one continuous, unbroken chain throughout the generations. In this way, there is never a time when we are not engaged in the cycle of reading the Torah.
September 2, 2011
Last Minute
Sorry, folks, but I did not have time to post anything today. I was busy working on some web design for Nistar Community for High Holy Days.
If you would like to see that, you do so here:
Nistar Jewish Community High Holy Days If you are in the San Francisco area, please consider spending your High Holy Days with Nistar.
Thank you to everyone who assisted, commented and visited Nistar Oytsres Blog this week. Good shabbos to all and to all a good night. (sorry)
August 25, 2011
Worth a Thousand Words
Well, folks, I am still lagging behind on the translations due to the brazen theft of my computer last week, and consequently loosing all my book-marked resources and files. So, well, slowly by slowly rebuilding the empire, as it were. But thank Gd no one was physically injured except maybe the fool idiot jerk who ripped my computer right out of my hands as I was using it. He did a nice belly flop over a fence onto a big concrete planter splat onto the sidewalk, and, Gd willing, breaking the computer in the process. But I digress.
All I have to offer you today is this image, sent to me by my friend, Melamed Garry. Thanks Garry.
August 17, 2011
Announcement
Dear friends:
My computer was stolen today, so there is no posting. May be a while before the next one, but please stay tuned. We will be up and running again soon, Gd willing.
July 29, 2011
Thanks and Chazak!
My thanks go out this week to my helpers in translation, to our subscribers, to our contributors, our askers of questions and our givers of insight. You all make it happen.
Please print out some of these teachings for your Shabbos table discussions.
Tomorrow, Gd willing, we will reach the end of B’Midbar (Numbers) as we recap the journeys and encampments during our wanderings in the Wilderness of Sinai. And let me say: !חזק !חזק Chazak! Chazak! *
May the strength of our studies carry us through to the adventures of Dvarim next week, as surely as they have carried us through up till now.
With Hashem’s blessing for a fabulous shabbos,
מיט זײַן ברכהכ פאר א זייער פיין שבת!
July 25, 2011
More than None
I had a discussion this morning with my chevrusa (study buddy). He said, regarding a teaching I had posted,
“What does this mean?” Meaning, what is the teaching about, vs. what do the words say.
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
“You mean, you post teachings you don’t understand?”
“Sure. The purpose is not for me to understand. The purpose is to post the teachings in English so we can all think about them together. The purpose is to learn.”
I am not a rabbi and I’m not a Torah scholar. I have way more questions than I have answers. BUT, I am a maggid, and as a maggid it is my job to ask the questions for people when they can’t. It is my job to tell the stories of our people so that we can all learn from them. It’s not my job to tell people what the stories mean, for they will mean something a little different to each person. But I can lead discussions and guide explorations. Sometimes I will tell you what my own meaning of the story is, but that’s just to share one perspective.
The sages say that every word in the Torah has 70-to-the-70th-power meanings. That’s a lot of meanings, and each person who reads it or hears it holds one of those meanings. That means that no one person alone can have a full or complete understanding. We need to share our individual perspectives (whether they are insights or just questions) in order to gain a more complete understanding. And that is why I am doing this — to provide a forum for us to explore these teachings together in a language we can all understand. In Jewish, learning is seldom done alone, because we need each other to form a balanced understanding.
There have been a few pretty good discussions about these teachings in the comments. The comments link is pretty small, and you have to look for it, but it is at the bottom of each posting. It will tell you how many comments are posted if there’s more than none. More than none is a very good thing. This kind of text study we are doing here is sacred, and it’s a very big mitzvah. We can’t do every mitzvah but we can do more than none. So I would like to invite and encourage everyone who reads these postings to add something — a comment, a question, an insight, a related teaching … whatever. Not on every posting, but on more than none. Because it takes all of us together to really understand the Torah, and in Torah, more is always better. So let us strive, here and everywhere, for more than none.
— ‘Azi
July 22, 2011
A Gut Shabbos
Shabbos is upon us. Please print out some of this week’s teachings to share and discuss at your shabbos tables. Thank you to the new subscribers who joined us this week and to everyone who visited the blog and most especially to those who offered input and points of discussion on the teachings.
Let us all be safe and well and have a blessed shabbos and return in the new week for more teachings, more insights, more conversation, more Torah!
Mit zein brachah — with His blessing.
July 15, 2011
Shabbos!
Thanks everyone for tuning in and reading and commenting on this week’s teachings. There’s more where this came from so come back next week for further insights from the masters.
Candle lighting tonight will be at 8:13 pm in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Havdalah will be at 9:43 pm on Saturday.
Have a blessed shabbos.
July 5, 2011
New! Improved Navigation
Good things:
We now have an enhanced navigation system with drop down menus and additional subject tabs. You can now click on these tabs to see specific collections of articles and teachings. For example, if you only want to see entries on a specific parsha, you can go to the Parsha tab and select the parsha you want from the drop-down menu. If you only want to see stories or videos, you can do that. The home page will still host all new posts, but now you can selectively browse the content as well.
A new tab just added is Mayses (Stories). The first post in that category is pending but will published soon, so stay tuned.
And don’t forget to share the content you like with friends, family, search engines, social networks, whoever – however – why ever.
You can also rate posts with a simple mouse click to cast your vote for the type of content you like best.
