The Destiny of the Firstborn

                                               For all the firstborn of the children of Israel 

                                               are mine, both man and beast,on the day I 

                                               smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt I 

                                               sanctified them unto me.

                                               And I have taken the Levites in the place of 

                                               all the firstborn of the children of  Israel.

                                                                      Bamidbar 8:20        

     The Torah calls the firstborn (bechor) "petter rechem"- he who opens the womb. He is the first expression of life of the new generation. The next link in the chain of generations of the Jewish People and as such is sanctified to the service of  Hashem.. This primogeniture  has its expression in all of the living world. The first fruits of the new season, the bikkurim , were brought to the temple on the festival of Shavuot. The firstborn  calves and lambs were sanctified and offered to the cohanim.

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   It is very interesting that the Torah has a very ambivalent attitude towards the firstborn. Cain is the firstborn but Abel is preferred by Hashem. Yaakov has to buy the bechora from Esau. Yaakov's firstborn was Reuven, but Yehudah becomes the leader of the tribes. Ephraim recieves Yaakov's blessing instead of his firstborn brother Menashe in spite of the protests of Yosef..David was chosen as the annointed king even though he was the youngest of his brothers.It seems as if the Torah is telling us that biological primacy is not enough. Leadership must be earned and if  the firstborn is not worthy he will not be chosen.

  The most telling example is the displacement of the firstborn of the Exodus by the levites. When Hashem smote the firstborn of Egypt and passed over the firstborn of Israel they were sanctified to the service of Hashem. However when the firstborn of Israel worshipped the golden calf  they forfeited their exalted status. In their place the Levites, the tribe of Moshe and Aharon who did not sin at the golden calf were chosen. In spite of this some primal holiness was retained by the firstborn of future generations.That is why we perform the ceremony of  pidyon ha-ben ( redeeming of the firstborn) when a firstborn baby is one month old.

  My grandfather and father were the firstborn in their families. I am a firstborn myself, I have a firstborn son and he also has a firstborn son. We are five generations of bechorim. Each of us in his time has expressed the special character of the bechor "he who opens the womb" by breaking out of the mold, not being satisfied with living within the circumstances into which he was born. My grandfather David Fenster was born in Eastern Europe where very likely our ancestors had lived for the past thousand years.He was the first in his family who realized that there was no future for the Jews in Europe. He emigrated to America at the beginning of the last century. My father, Henry Fenster grew up the son of immigrants in Philadelphia. He was the first in his family to join the U.S Army to fight the Nazis and was probably the first Jewish soldier in our family since the Exile. He was seriously wounded in France but baruch Hashem survived the war and came home married and started a family. I grew up in a typical suburban, middle class Jewish home, but for some reason at a very early age the fact of being Jewish became the most important, driving force in my life. I heard the same call as the patriarch Abraham "Go out of your land, the place of your birth, out of your fathers house to the land which I will show you" As soon as I finished high school and turned eighteen I emigrated to Israel.My son Efi was the first in our family to go to Yeshiva and dedicate himself to the study of Torah.

  I don't know yet what challenges my first grandson, Oz, will face. I pray that he will be the first to greet the Mashiach, may Hashem send him speedily and in our days.

Shabbos Gedempte Hin (boiled shabbat meal)

Here is a recipe for the shabbat brunch meal (seudah shniya)

Ingredients
One whole plump chicken
3 Tblsp olive oil
3 tblsp canola oil
5 medium onions
5 medium potatoes
1 cup kasha
1cup hummus beans (soaked overnight)
4 cloves garlic
black pepper , paprika, cumin

photo by Isramom

Preparation
1-heat oil in  a large pot

2-cut up 2 onions and fry them until golden, add the garlic chopped

3- brown the chicken in the same pot on all sides- remove the chicken

4-stir in and lightly fry the the kasha

5- stuff the kasha and onion mixture in the cavity of the chicken and sew it closed

6-place excess kasha in the pot and put the chicken in

7-place the hummus beans, potatoes and onions around the chicken

8- add water to cover 2/3 of the chicken

9- bring to a boil then place on a shabbat hotplate to cook slowly overnight

            Feeds six  ( or four kineinhurra good eaters!)

Post-Pesach HH

Go visit Frume Sarah's World where she posted the Haveil Havalim Blog Carnival and see what's going on in the Israeli/Jewish blogsphere.

Click here.

Remembering Chaim-Memorial Day 5770

I wonder how he would have looked today. Would he be like me, hair grey and thinning, on the heavy side, looking all of his 59 years? Would he have turned out to be a Torah  scholar? A professor? Maybe a doctor?

I'll never know, because 40 years ago Chaim Rosenblum HY"D was killed on the bank of the Suez Canal.

I wish I had a picture of him, but It doesn't matter. I remember him as if we had just seen each other this morning. He was a fresh faced kid just a year out of  yeshiva high school. We had just finished basic training. Since we were in the N. A. CH. AL (Fighting Pioneering Youth) brigade, we were sent to a new settlement in the lower Jordan Valley. Our job was to patrol the border with Jordan and prevent Al Fatah terrorists from infiltrating.  We did a pretty good job along with reserve forces in our sector killing 13 in the first two months, mostly in night ambushes. But this was spring '70 and the real action was in the "war of attrition" with the Egyptians. This was a static war, the two armies dug in on either side of the Suez  Canal. Over 30 soldiers were killed there since the beginning of the year. From June our unit had to send a certain number of men to the Canal to reinforce the reservists who were stationed there. Who would go was determined by lot. When the name  of one of the guys who wasn't in training with us came up, he said that he had a personal problem, that his only sister was getting married the next week and his leave had already been approved. Everyone knew that this didn't matter, all leaves were cancelled for those who were picked to go to the Canal. Then Chaim stood up and said that he would go in his place. Our commanding officer looked at him and asked if he was sure that he wanted to do this. Chaim said that sure, if he could help this guy, why not? Some of us tried to talk him out of it. Why should he put himself in such danger for someone he hardly knew? It wasn't as if we weren't doing our part where we were. I should explain that Chaim was no gung-ho macho type always looking for action, Just the opposite. He was quiet and spent most of his free time learning Torah.  In the end his request was approved and Chaim left the settlement for the Canal.

Our guys were assigned to a lookout built on a bluff above the canal. Their job was to spot the muzzle flashes of the Egyptian artillery and report back so that air strikes could be called in. They were told that if the shells fell within the perimeter of their position they should get down into a fortified dugout called the "rabbit hole" One night soon after he arrived Chaim was in the lookout, manning the telescope when the barrage began. The shells started falling closer but Chaim couldn't see where they were coming from. When the the shells started coming closer the others in the position yelled at Chaim that he should get into the dugout but he said that now he could see the flashes, he had to call them in ! Two minutes later the ground shook as a shell exploded 20 meters from the lookout. When Chaim didn't come into the dugout the others went to the lookout to see what happened to him. They found him unconscious on the floor.a shard of shrapnel had hit him behind the ear and penetrated his brain. He died before he could be evacuated to a hospital.

  I have asked myself many times, why him? Although it might sound like a cliché, he was the best of us. I can only say that his death in defense of Israel makes me look at myself and think: have I, in my life, lived for the things he and all the others died for? We all have a lot to live up to.

So  along with the people of Israel who remember all the thousands who have fallen, I will remember Chaim.

Passover of the generations

There are two different Passovers. One is Pesach Mitzraim, the historical Pesach as described in the torah. The other is Pesach dorot, the Passover of the generations, as celebrated by the Jews to remember that first Passover in Egypt.Until the destruction of the temple the central feature of Passover was the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb and the family feast. Today we have the Seder where we fulfill the mitzvah "And you will tell (vehigaditta) your son on that day saying" and the sages of the Talmud explained, when should you tell him? When the matza and maror are before him.. It is at this time and with these symbols that one generation passes on to the next the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

. Some of the fondest memories of my childhood are of  our family's sedarim. These were family gatherings where all the aunts and uncles and cousins got together for a big feast. The theme was - Pharaoh tried to destroy us, God saved us - LETS EAT! The kids would compete to see who could eat a spoonful of chrain without smoke coming out of his ears, there would be once a year foods like charoset, hard boiled eggs in salt water and knaidlach, and of course "hide the afikoman. Not an uplifting religious experience, more an ethnic festival. Actually one of the things that sticks in my mind is my uncle Max, a staunch Socialist (maybe even a COMMIE, although no one would say it out loud) .He explained to me how the Passover story was really a saga of the struggle of the workers who had been enslaved by the ruling classes. He might have said something about Moses and Lenin but I cant really remember, I was only 8 or 9 at the time.

This year my son Efi decided that it was about time for him to make a Seder of his own. My parents also made the trip from Philadelphia and we all made the trip south to Mitzpeh Ramon. Later as I looked around the table it struck me. Here we were four generations; my father myself, Efi and his son Oz. It also struck me that we were all bechorim, first born sons. Had we been in Egypt the angel of death would have passed over us as he struck down the first born of Egypt. I had the almost palpable feeling that besides the four generations at the table there were other former generations with us.My father in law Abe alav hashalom who passed away ten years ago on the eve of  Pesach had the nachas of his namesake Oz-Avraham asking questions about the Haggadah. And maybe the spirit of David Fenster who I am named after. He was a frimmer Yid and I wonder if in his lifetime he dreamed that his progeny would be sitting around the seder table in the Negev mountains in the Yiddishe medinah singing the same "chad gadya" that he brought over from Europe to America. And over their shoulders all the genereations from a thousand years in Europe and before, back to the second temple and the first exile , and the first temple all the way back to that first Pesach in Egypt.

The cycle of exile and redemption has in this unbroken chain of generations come full circle.On the seventh day of Pesach we had seudat mashiach. He hasn't come yet, but I believe that at the seder we could hear him knocking at the door

Litvishe Purim, Chasidishe Purim

I am of mixed Ashkenazi descent. My maternal grandparents hailed from Poland-Ukraine where the gefilte fish is  sweet, a noodle pudding is called "kigel" and most of the people were followers of the chassidic Rebbes. My father's side were Litvaks, that is they came from the land of Lithuania-Latvia north of Poland on the Baltic sea.They like their fish spicy, they say "kugel" and they were Misnagdim (opponents of the chassidim). The Litvaks were known to be serious, studious and sceptical while the chassidim were pictured as being lighthearted and carefree and somewhat naive in their adoration of their Rebbes. 

This year on Purim I was able to get in touch with both sides of my spiritual and cultural heritage.On the Fast of Esther we had a guest speaker at the kollel where I learn. He was the mashgiach ruchani (spiritual mentor) of one of the leading Litvishe yeshivas near us. He gave a mussar schmues (ethical discourse) whose central theme was that Purim is a special time for spiritual reflection and repentance. He used a play on words-Purim Kippurim. Just as the gates of repentance are open on Yom Kippur so they are open on Purim. 

The salvation of the Jewish people in the time of Mordecai and Esther and the punishment of Haman and our enemies comes to emphasize how much we are dependent on the grace of God in order to survive in a hostile world. He said that we must reflect on the question of why the Jews of Persia were threatened by a holocaust. How did they incur the wrath of God? 

The Megilla tells us that the Jews of Shushan despaired of salvation and did not believe that God would bring them out of the exile.This even though the return to Zion with Ezra had already begun with the proclamation of  Cyrus.The Temple had yet to be rebuilt and the new king Achashverosh was hostile to the Jews. When the Jews were invited to the kings inaugural feast they did not even protest when the holy Temple vessels were displayed and desecrated. It was only because of the great sacrifice of Mordecai and Esther and the fact that they gathered the Jewish people together in a moment of unity to plead for Gods mercy, that the decree was annulled."And the Jews had light and joy and gladness and honor". 

He continued by explaining the mitzva of drinking on Purim "until one can't tell the diffeerence between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordecai." This is to be taken as an allegory. All year we must act with reason and control our feelings and imagination.On Purim with the help of wine we can let our imagination reign. Reason alone cannot explain the Purim story.We must use the power of imagination to see how God who is not mentioned explicitly in the Megillah worked behind the veil of seemingly natural events to save his people. 

It was with this somewhat somber, Mussardik messaage that I started the Purim holiday. The next day I went to the tisch (holiday table) of Rav Avraham Rubin, a Slonim chassid and spiritual leader of our neighborhood shul. He sat at the head of a long table, decked out in a large fur shtreimel and a long brocaded caftan. People told stories of how the rebbe's blessing on Purim worked wonders. By virtue of being a neighbor I was honored with a seat at the table close to Rav Rubin. A large beaker of wine was poured for the Rav. He blessed it  drank from it and passed it around the table. A giganic baked salmon was set before him he ate a piece and the rest was passed around. Fat baked chickens were brought to the table which the Rav tore apart and handed out to those sitting at the table.Others crowded around him trying to get a portion that he blessed. The atmosphere was joyful and even boisterus. Every few minutes someone raised a glass lechaim and the Rav said" a freilichen Purim". There was wine, brandy and 100 proof slivovitz..Here the drinking wasn't allegorical and sining took the place of spiritual reflection.

Which is the right path? Litvishe Mussar or Chassidishe celebration? Our great teacher Harav Kook ZTZL believed that there was a synthesis of the two paths. He said that now is the time for the disciples of the Vilna Gaon to join hands with the disciples of the Ba'al Shem Tov to bind the wounds of past struggles and  come together to take part in the redemption of Israel.

Fringes Of Royal Blue

In Parashat Teruma it is written" Make a sanctuary for me and I will swell within you" This is usually interpreted as meaning not that I will dwell within IT but I will dwell within you,  in your hearts. Rashi however interprets more literally Make a sanctuary for me:Make me a holy house and I will dwell therein.

But we must ask the question:How can G-d's presence be limited to one place? Does not G-d's presence imbue the whole world? The tabernacle was a microcosm symbolizing the whole world of creation. It was constructed from all the basic components of creation: 

Mineral-gold silver and copper

Vegetable-acacia wood and linen

Animal-wool and skins

Every component comes together in perfect harmony as in G-d's universe.

The great nineteenth century commentator MALBIM  explained that every detail of the tabernacle reflects a detail of the six days of creation. But it seems we have left something out, the most important component: Man the pinnacle of creation. This is the inner meaning of  “make me a sanctuary and I will dwell within you”  make me a place for my presence to dwell and you will be able to get in touch with the divine spirit within you.

Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch explained that the colors of the tabernacle were also illustrative of the building blocks of creation 

white linen-vegetable

scarlet thread- animal (a dye extracted from worms)

purple- human the color of flushed skin

and last techelet (sky blue) representing that which is above the comprehension of our senses - the Divine. The techelet dyed in the wool of the priestly garments and coverings represents the divine element which can be seen by our eyes. It is the divine which connects with the pure human spirit which looks upward to the blue of the heavens.

Techelet is also the royal blue as is described in Megillat Esther.  “And Mordecai was led out in royal attire of techelet...”

Of course there is the techelet of Tzitzit. We say in the kriat shema and you shall make fringes on the corner of your garments and you shall put on the fringe of the corner a thread of techelet you will see it and remember my commandments.

About twenty years ago a group of researchers and rabbis announced that they had discovered the source of the biblical techelet extracted  from the Murex snail found on the Mediterranean sea shore. 

There is much dispute among halachic authorities  on the matter of the newly discovered techelet. Some were against others said it is a mitzva to put a string of techelet in the tzitzit. There are two arguments against techelet one expressed by Rav J.B.Soloveitchik ZTZL who said it is impossible to renew a mitzvah which had been lost for over a thousand years since there is no chain of tradition. Rav Avraham Kahana Shapira ZTZL said that we can use science and technology to reconstruct the lost art of dying with techelet.  Another argument against using techelet was expressed by Rav Shlomo Aviner who said it is arrogant to wear techelet when so many torah luminaries have not accepted it. Rav Dov Lior answered Rav Aviner saying that Arrogance (yuhara) is a subjective concept determined by the the mindset of the wearer and the beholder and therefore should not be taken into account. Today important Rabbis such as R' Lior,  Drori, Simcha Hacohen Kook, Re'em Hacohen And Rabbi Herschel Shachter  all wear techelet.

Rav Kook ZTZL said that techelet is the color which intensifies and focuses our sense of sight. A few years ago scientists did a study on the nature of colors. They measured the frequency of light waves that were refracted through different colors and put them on a scale from 1 to 1000. The number of the color techelet was...613 corresponding to the number of commandments in the torah.

The Rebbe of Ruzhin who thought that he had discovered techelet at the end of the nineteenth century said that when the mitzvah of techelet is renewed  it is a sure sign that the mashiach is on his way. May Hasshem bring him speedily in our days!!!