The Ami Magazine Article About Orthopraxy

Yes, I saw it, and I do have some things to say about it, but it may have to wait until Sunday or perhaps until after Yom Tov.  I've got a crunch of real work and school work at the moment and can't really do justice to this article on the fly.

If you haven't read it yet, you can find it here.

The Wolf

For This You Can't Sign Your Name?

There was a recent post on Matzav about having a positive attitude regarding food on Pesach. In it, the author points out how people often complain (whether rightly or wrongly) about Pesach food and that, perhaps, we can have a better attitude about it.

This is a concept that I think all of us can get behind.  It's completely non-controversial.  And yet, the author chose to sign only his initials.  He didn't choose to actually put his name on the piece.  And that makes me wonder... have we gotten to the point where people are even afraid to speak up on non-controversial subjects?

I'm well aware that, when it comes to this, I fall into the category of "those who live in glass houses...".  But at least *some* of what I write is controversial in some circles.  This gentleman's post was completely non-controversial - and yet, he couldn't sign his name to it.

The Wolf

Is Our Torah The Exact Same As Moshe's?

In a comment on my previous post, Nate pointed to an article on Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb's website concerning the accuracy of our present-day Torahs.  The article asserts that the Torah that we have today is letter-for-letter* the same as the Torah that God gave to Moshe on Mt. Sinai.  Nate then followed the link with the words "UNDISPUTED AND 100% TRUTH."   Sadly, the point is not undisputed nor is it 100% truth.

The article actually originated on Aish HaTorah's website and can be read here.  The main points of the article are as follows:

• Moshe wrote the Torah.
• This Torah (or, perhaps later on, others based on this Torah scroll) were kept in the Bais HaMikdash as a model and standard.
• New Torah scrolls that were written would be checked against this Torah.
• Sofrim (scribes) were very careful not to add/delete/change anything since any change makes a Sefer Torah invalid.
• The Torah has a built-in "security system" that prevents invalid Torahs from being used.
• The end result is that, as of today, the only variant that exists of the Torah is the Yemenite Torah, which has nine minor spelling variations  from the "standard" version.  These variations are all minor spelling differences (as British spelling differs from American spelling) and do not change the meanings of any words.  Otherwise, every Torah we use today is the same letter-for-letter that God gave to Moshe.
• This is very impressive because, compared with the Christian Bible (what is commonly called "The New Testament") the Torah is remarkably stable.  The Christian Bible has well over 200,000 variant letters.  We have nine.

Therefore, you can rely, with a high degree of confidence, that the Torah that we have today is *exactly* the same as the one that Moshe left for us at the end of his life.

The problem with all this is that most of those points are either exaggerations or just plain wrong.  Let's go through these points and examine them.

I'm going to grant the author of the article the first two points as given.  If we don't agree that Moshe wrote the Torah, then there is really no point in the rest of the article.  I am also going to assume that he did, in fact, leave a Torah as a standard.

However, it becomes clear that, at some point, that standard became corrupted.  For example, consider the event recounted in Meseches Sofrim.  In it, Reish Lakish recounts that three Sifrei Torah were found in the Bais HaMikdash:

One book was called "The Ma'on Book."  The reason it was so called was because Devraim 33:27 started out with the word "Ma'on."  In the other two, it started out with the word "M'onah."

The second book was called "The Zatutei Book."  It was so called because in it, the text of Sh'mos 24:5 says "And he sent to the  'Zatutei' (young men) of the Children of Israel..."  In the other two books, the word "Na'arei" replaced "Zatutei."

The third book was called the "Hee Book."  It was so called because it had one set of variant spellings of the word Hee in Hebrew, while the other two had a different set of spellings**.

In each case, in establishing the correct reading, the Sages followed the majority.  They rejected the reading of "Ma'on" and instituted "M'onah."  They rejected the reading of "Zatutei" and instituted "Na'arei."  The rejected the spellings in the Hee Book and accepted the spellings in the other two books.  Those readings became the standard and, indeed, are in our Sifrei Torah today.

There are several points that need to be made about this story.

• The first point to be made is that there was no single model text that could be used to check against.  Indeed, these three texts *were* the model texts that were used.  These were the Sifrei Torah that were found in the Temple Courtyard.  If there was an alternate authoritative text, the Sages could simply have consulted it to determine the correct text for each of the three cases.  The sad fact, however, is that there was no single authoritative text to compare these to -- these *were* the authoritative texts -- and now they were at variance with one another.  As a result, the Sages had to establish the correct text and, in each case, went with the majority.

• The second point to be made from this story is that the so-called "built-in security system" failed... and failed miserably.  It's one thing if an error creeps into a text in a backwater shul somewhere where perhaps only a few people were even capable of reading the sefer and where, if an error is found in the book, it could be isolated.  This, however, was an entirely different matter.  Here, textual variants are showing up in the model texts themselves.  And, I'd bet dollars to donuts, that these variants didn't just show up in only these three books.  I highly doubt the Sages woke up one morning and decided to check the Temple scrolls against each other just for the heck of it.  I'd be willing to bet that they were getting numerous reports of variant readings and needed to investigate.  And, furthermore, I'd be willing to bet that after an informal survey of the scrolls in their own personal libraries and in the shuls and study halls in Jerusalem (which were probably used on a daily basis), they found variant readings too -- otherwise, why start comparing the Temple scrolls against each other?  So, they went to the Temple to get the authoritative reading, and found that even there, there was no single text.  Clearly, when the authoritative texts have variants, the "security system" has failed.

• The third, and perhaps most startling point to be made is this -- at the end of the story, we find that *none* of the three authoritative model texts was kosher!  Every single one of them was invalid.  One had a variant reading in Devarim, one had a variant in Sh'mos and one had variants in the spelling of Hu/Hee.  But *none* of the three had the text that we have today!  In other words, in the end, the standard text that we have today was based on a combination of these three texts.

You might think that this settled the matter and that, at least, from this point onward, we would have a unified standard text.  Alas, such was not the case.  There are several places in the Talmud where the Gemara quotes a different text than the one we have.  One of the more famous examples is the Gemara in Sanhedrin where one of the three reading of the word "Totafos" has an extra vav -- and that extra vav is used to help determine that there are four compartments in the Tefillin Shel Rosh.  However, in the end, even the Gemara attests to the fact that we don't necessarily have accurate spellings for all the words in the Torah.  The Gemara states that we are not expert in chasser and malei (i.e. words that have "extra" letters to represent vowels).

The Rambam, in the 12th century, famously went to view the bible today knows as the Aleppo Codex (also known as the Kesser Aram Tzovah), to determine the standard text and spacings in the Torah scrolls.  It should be noted that, obviously, the Rambam did not have a scroll at his disposal which he considered authoritative enough.

Likewise, the Rav Mair HeLeivi Abulafia (13th century) writes in the preface to his work Mesores Siyug L'Torah  that in his day there were doubts as to the correct reading.  He, like the Sages in the Temple, relied on a "majority rules" principle to establish the text which he published in his sefer.  Likewise, Yaakov ben Chayim (early 16th century), who published the first edition of the Mikraos Gedolos, noted that there were variant readings in his day.  Nonetheless, with the adoption of the Mikraos Gedolos and the invention of the printing press, a standard text was finally adopted.

But even that's not the end of the matter.  As noted above, the Yemenites have a slightly different Torah than we do.  Although the author claims that the differences are only spelling there is at least one case where the spelling does change the meaning of a word (from a singular to a plural).  Furthermore, even setting aside the Yemenite Torahs, there is still at least one textual variant extant today -- the final letter of the word "Dakah" in Devarim 23:2 is spelled in some Sifrei Torah with an aleph and in others with a Heh.  But aside from these few cases, the text that we (finally) have today has been standardized.

The article tries to make the case that we can authoritatively state that our Torahs are accurate (vis a vis the Torah gave to Moshe) because of the traditions of the scribes.  For example, the article makes the point that there was a Torah in Jerusalem that was used as the model against which others were judged.  We've already seen that the model wasn't always accurate either, but let's put that point aside for the moment and assume, for the sake of argument, that the model is 100% accurate.  There are still several assumptions that are being made by the author of the article that are not, in fact, in evidence:

The first point to be made is that a model text is only good if it's actually used.  There is no indication anywhere that in the centuries after Moshe that scribes and other people *routinely* brought their Torah scrolls to Jerusalem to check them against the model.  It's not very difficult to see how an error can creep into a sefer and stay there.  Likewise, it's not too difficult to see how an inaccurate version can be copied to other texts.  In a place where there aren't very many Sifrei Torah circulating about (as you can imagine would be the situation in Israel between the time of Joshua and the Exile), it's very easy for an inaccurate text to be copied to another one.

Just consider the three variant scrolls that were eventually found in the Temple.  Do you think that they were first scrolls to have those variations?  Or is it more likely that they were copied from other variant scrolls?  I would argue the latter -- especially if you're also going to posit that scribes were generally very careful with their work.

Another assumption that is being made by the author is that the laws regarding the writing of a Sefer Torah (i.e. pronouncing each word out loud before writing, not writing by heart, etc.) were always the same as they are today AND that those laws were universally observed.  Neither of those (and certainly not in latter) can be said to be true 100% of the time.  It's certainly not inconceivable that there might have been scribes who were less than scrupulous with their work and did, indeed, introduce errors into their work.

Lastly, the author tries to make the comparison between the accuracy of our Torahs and the Christian Bible.  He states that there are only nine spelling variants extant today, while showing that there are thousands of variants of the Christian Bible.

I'm not an expert in the Christian Bible, so I can't speak to that point directly.  But what I do know is that the author is making a false comparison.  The author, in making his point, is outright dismissing any known variant text to our Bible (Yemenite Torahs excepted).  He's conveniently forgetting that there are variations of our text that do exist -- and they're still around today.  The Samaritan Bible, the Septiguant, the Dead Sea Scrolls, et al are all still extant and can be read to this very day.  By forgetting them (or, more likely dismissing them), the author is engaging in a form of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.  In short, he's claiming the to reject any variants he doesn't like as non-authoritative while, at the same time, holding Christians to task for all their variants.

Of course, Nate makes the very same error when he says "UNDISPUTED" regarding the article.  What he means is "undisputed by anyone who agrees with it," which, again, is a form of the No True Scotsman fallacy. But it's pretty clear that it can, indeed be disputed whether or not the Torah text we have today is a letter-for-letter copy of Moshe's.

The Wolf



* The author of the article does acknowledge that the Yemenite Torahs are different than ours in nine places.

** In later writings, the word "Hee" is written Hey-Yud-Aleph.  However, in the Torah, it is often spelled Hey-Vuv-Aleph, the same as the word "Hu."  However, there are a number of places where the Torah uses the first spelling.  The differences between the scrolls was in where the exceptional spelling was used.

Expunging the Kool Aid

"Drinking the Kool Aid" is a popular metaphor for someone who simply accepts something wholeheartedly without thinking critically about it.  The origin of the metaphor comes from the People's Temple incident in Guyana, where over 900 people committed suicide by drinking Flavor-Aid mixed with cyanide at the behest of Jim Jones, the cult's leader.

Interestingly, at one time I was a Kool-Aid drinker as well.  In my late teens, I went through a period of about a year where I started accepting everything without question.  Young earth creationism?  Check.  The absolute historicity of every midrash?  check.  The notion that Jewish philosophy, culture and practice (with the exception of things like sacrifices and the like) have been unchanged since Sinai?  Check.  The notion that everything in the Gemara is Torah MiSinai?  Check.  Belief in an unbroken and completely intact and unchanged oral tradition passed down from generation to generation to generation?  Check.  And on and on.

Most people who go from Kool-Aid drinker to critical thinker (note that I did NOT say skeptic) arrive at the Kool-Aid stage in one of two ways:  a) they're born into it or b) they become ba'alei teshuva and just want to believe everything about their new-found spirituality.  I didn't take either of those paths.   I was not born frum -- I became frum (with my mother) at about age ten.  During high school, I was a skeptic (even if I wasn't a critical thinker).  Yet, about the time I turned eighteen, I began to drink the Kool-Aid.  A Rav Avigdor Miller book could often be found in my hands.  I could be found discussing and defending Judaism's objections to evolution, natural history, cosmology and the like.  I studied and regurgitated all the fallacious arguments, bad facts and mistaken notions.  I was never much of an evangelist, but if anyone wanted to discuss it, I was there to discuss and defend.

To this day, I can't tell you why I began drinking the Kool Aid.  While I tried to (and to some extent, succeeded) in internalizing it on an intellectual level, I did not "frum out," as the saying goes.  While I sometimes wore a hat/jacket, I by no means made it a requirement.  I sometimes missed davening.  I wasn't found learning every minute of the day that wasn't otherwise occupied, and so on.  But I did accept, without much critical thought, much of the anti-scientific dogma of the subculture that I was immersed in.

At some point, however, I began thinking critically.  I began to look at and evaluate arguments.  I learned to evaluate and weigh evidence.  I began to learn to spot things such as logical fallacies, poor reasoning and just plain silliness.  I began to consider not only the dogma of Orthodox Judaism, but the context in which that dogma was created.  I began to question and probe into the things I was taught, and discover whether the knowledge I had accumulated over the years (and the observations that I made with my own senses) affirmed, contradicted or were silent about those teachings.  

Over the years, as I began thinking more and more, I began adjusting my beliefs.  I reasoned out a version of old earth creationism that was consistent with both B'raishis (IMHO) and with contemporary scientific thought (again, IMHO).  I began exploring history not solely through writings that were made hundreds (or thousands) of years after the fact, but began to consider history through both historical and contemporaneous accounts.  I began to understand that not everything that is purported to be sacred writ *must* be viewed in the absolute, but also has to be put into its proper historical and cultural context.  I began to view our Sages not as simply great figures who grew up in a societal, political and emotional vacuum who were immune to the outside world, but as people who, as great as they were, were at least partly a product of the times, places and cultures in which they lived.  

It’s been a long journey -- one that is still ongoing and, with God’s help, will go on as long as I live.  I’ve slowly begun to make a change to my learning habits -- I’m still learning Torah, but I’ve also begun learning *about* the Torah -- something that was lacking in my previous education and, I would not be surprised to find, is missing in a lot of people’s education.  I’ve begun to pay more attention to not only Tanach, Mishna, Gemara and the like, but also the historical and cultural background upon which they were created.  I’ve come to look at not only learning the halacha, but viewing that halacha as a product of a halachic process that caused it to come into being.  I believe that the Torah has to be more than what is simply printed on the page -- it also has to include how the page came to be -- and in the vast, vast majority of cases, the story of how that page came to be is far, far more complicated than “God said it to Moshe on Sinai.”


I know that there are some who are reading this who would say that what I am engaging in is dangerous and forbidden.  They would like to tell me that such things may lead one away from whatever “pure” hashkafah that they are espousing.  They may try to tell me that context and background are unimportant or, worse, irrelevant.  They may believe that our great leaders and sages grew up in a “social vacuum,” unaffected by their time, place and culture and that their halachic, philosophic and other opinions are absolutely true across all times, places and cultures.  They may believe that if Chazal, Rashi, the Rambam, Rabbeinu Asher, the Vilna Gaon or any other “sage of the canon” says something that it must be true and that any critical thought about their statements is tantamount to a slap in the face of those great sages.  They equate critical argument with impertinence, respectful disagreement with insolence and a contrary opinion with disrespect.

I disagree.  I believe one can have the utmost respect for someone and yet disagree with them.  I believe that it’s possible that things that have been said and accepted in the past may no longer be applicable to our current times, places and cultures.  I’m not saying that halacha has to change because of that, mind you, but it should be recognized that such changes and obsolescence* has taken place.  A necessary corollary of this is that I’ve come to believe that not everything that a sage says is necessarily sacrosanct.  Like anything else, it has to be evaluated in terms of its message, historical context and the like.  In short, I no longer take anything as irrefutable dogma simply on someone’s say so.  That’s is not all to say that there are no irrefutable dogmas, universal truths or articles of faith -- but it is important to be able to make a distinction between a true article of faith, a halachic ruling that may or may not apply to our current situation, a midrash which may or may not be historically true, or a simple, personal observation of a sage.  Lumping them all together as inviolate “Torah” does a great disservice to both the Torah and to those sages.  But to be able to do make these distinctions, you need to begin to think critically about what you’re learning.  You need to learn not to blindly accept everything within the canon as absolute truth.  In short, to do this, you need to stop drinking the Kool Aid -- and that's what I've been doing.  I've spent a long time expunging the Kool Aid that I built up in my system over the years -- and I believe that I am, today, a healthier person and a better Jew for it.

The Wolf

* I don’t mean “obsolescence” in terms of “should be discarded” but in terms of not currently applicable.  In this context, the halacha of egla arufa, for example, would be termed as “obsolete,” but I am not, God forbid, suggesting that it be excised from the Torah or no longer studied.  Likewise, it should be (and widely is) recognized that the reasons behind the institution of the second day of Yom Tov are obsolete... but again, I am not advocating changing the halacha to eliminate that second day.

The Yeshiva's Minhag Over Your Family's?

A Jewish wedding ceremony, like many other religious rites and ceremonies, is governed by many laws and customs.  One such instance is the period of yichud -- seclusion -- that the bride and groom spend together right after the chuppah. 

It should be pointed out, however, that this is *only* the case for Ashkenazim.  When a Sefardi couple gets married, they do not go to the yichud room.  For them, yichud is performed when the couple goes home after the ceremony.  In fact, Rav Yitzchock Yosef considers the idea of a yichud room during the wedding so repugnant that he called it "ugly" and "vulgar."  I don't think it's proper for a Rav to call a mainstream Ashkenazi minhag "ugly" and "vulgar" I made my point on that in the linked post)-- but that's really beside the point.  The main point for our purposes is that there are strong opposition in at least some Sephardi circles against the practice of going into the yichud room.

With this background information, we can look at a recent event.  Rafi, over at Life In Israel, reports on a recent wedding where a Sephardi couple was married.  The chosson attended an Ashkenazi yeshiva and his Rosh Yeshiva and friends from the Yeshiva were in attendance.  The Rosh Yeshiva directed that the chosson and kallah should go immediately after chuppah to the yichud room, in accordance with the Ashkenazic custom.  The chosson refused, intending to follow the custom of his family and the new bride's family.  When the chosson refused, the Rosh Yeshiva announced that he was leaving and ordered all the bochrim from the yeshiva to leave with him.  Fortunately, Rav Raphael Cohen, a guest at the wedding knew someone at a local Sephardi yeshiva, where they had the boys stop learning and go be mesameach (make merry with dancing) the chosson and kallah.

To me, there are some very troubling aspects to this story:

1.  Since when does the minhag of the yeshiva overrule the family minhag of the bride and groom?  Do they also expect their Sephardi students to refrain from eating kitniyos on Pesach in their homes?  Would they say that it's all right for an Ashkenzi student attending a Sephardi yeshiva to skip the yichud room?  I don't think so.  Minhagim have long been observed on the basis of inheriting them from your family, not on the basis of what yeshiva you attend.  Perhaps there is some basis after all to the fear that some Sephardim in Israel have that their minhagim and other cultural attributes are being slowly eroded by the Ashkenazim.

2.  Ultimately, a wedding is valid, even according to Ashkenazim, if the chosson and kallah never go into the yichud room during the wedding.  As long as there are witnesses that they went home together (and were alone together) after the wedding, the wedding would be 100% valid.  On the other hand, embarrassing the bride, groom and their families is a transgression of a Torah prohibition.  How could the Rosh Yeshiva possibly think that his custom (or the custom of his yeshiva, if you will) possibly overrides that?

The Wolf

UPDATE (3/17/11):  A commentator has offered an alternate version of the events.  I have no way of knowing which is true or not, so take your pick.

Against Ban Harassment & Threats

This is a joint statement by many bloggers about the recent ban on VIN and the actions taken against VIN and the companies that advertise on the site.  Kudos to R. Gil Student for drafting this statement and to the other bloggers who were primarily responsible for pushing the effort forward.


A little over a month ago, a number of rabbis signed onto a ban that forbade advertising on or otherwise working with the website VosIzNeias. This ban singled out one website without addressing other websites or public forums like newspapers or magazines. The singling out of a solitary website raises many questions, particularly when newspapers in the same community regularly publish arguably libelous stories and online discussion forums for the community are essentially unbounded by civility. Additionally, VosIzNeias has publicly stated that it has already raised its standards and is willing to do even more with rabbinic guidance, provided the same guidelines are applied to its competitors.

Bans of this nature are generally brought into fruition by activists and this one is attributed to a specific activist who seems to have business and political interests in this ban. He ignored VosIzNeias’ request to meet with the rabbis in order to explore ways to satisfy their concerns. With this ban, the activist is threatening the commercial viability of the VosIzNeias business.

We have now received reports of continued harassment by this activist, who is threatening to publicly denounce people, companies and charitable organizations who continue to cooperate with the website. He has also reportedly threatened to remove the kosher certification of companies that fail to adhere to the ban. However, on being contacted, the activist behind the ban denied all knowledge of this harassment and attributed it to someone acting without authorization. We are, therefore, making no formal accusation as to who is conducting this campaign of harassment.

To the best of our understanding, this activity is illegal. One individual told us he reported that harassment to the police.

Harassing good people with threats is illegal and inexcusable. We call on rabbis and people of good faith to denounce this behavior, and we encourage victims to respond to this activist as follows:

If he calls or e-mails you or your organization, thank him for bringing the ban to your attention and say that you will decide how to proceed after consulting with your rabbi or other advisor. And because of rumors that there is harassment involved in this matter, you regret having to tell him that if he contacts you or anyone else in your organization again, you will have to report him to the police.

We have a copy of an e-mail forwarded to us by people involved, which includes a pseudonym and phone number, and we have been told of intimidating phone calls. Note that at this time we are withholding this activist's identity. If he continues harassing people, we will have to be less discrete.

Signed,

The Wolf (along with many other Jewish bloggers)

If you agree, please feel free to sign in the comment section and post this on your blog as well.

No, Rabbi, They Don't Need A Guilt Trip.

An interesting article appeared in the Palm Beach Post about a Florida Chabad House that has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  According to Rabbi Shlomo Ezagui, the wealthy patrons who used to fund the Chabad House stopped contributing when the market crashed in 2008.  Now that the market is up, however, the contributions have not resumed. 

Part of the problem is that the business model of the Chabad House makes it dependent on contributions.  According to Robert Furr, the bankruptcy attorney for the Chabad House, Chabad Houses do not charge regular membership dues like many other shuls do. This leaves voluntary member donations as the main source of funding for the Chabad House.  Anyone who runs an organization financed primarily by donations from the wealthy must be aware that when an economic downturn happens (and it always *will* happen -- markets tend are cyclical), that voluntary donations will drop off as well.  I don't know if Rabbi Ezagui curtailed his operations when the recession hit (so as to slow down his burn-rate) or salted away some of the donations from the good years for the lean years (a lesson learned from Joseph), but at this point, he has run out of money and has loans that are due. 

What struck me most about the article was Rabbi Ezagui's sense of entitlement to the charity dollars of others.  Here's the money quote (pun intended):

Ezagui said wealthy people are making excuses not to give.

"The Jewish people who have the money should feel a guilt trip.  They have plenty of money," he said. "I see them in their Rolls Royces, I go to their million-dollar houses and they say, 'I don't have the money, Rabbi.' "

 Apparently, Rabbi Ezagui does not understand that sometimes one can be what is colloquially referred to as "house-poor."  A person can have a lot of their wealth tied up in non-liquid assets that are not easy to dispose of or leverage for additional cash.  In addition, even if someone has a million-dollar home that is completely paid for, you have to take into account that they are actually living there.  So, what is Rabbi Ezagui asking them to do?  Sell the home and move to fund a Chabad House?  Borrow against it to fund a Chabad House?  Do either of those sound realistic or fiscally responsible?

But hey, let's even say (for the sake of argument) that they have cash sitting around.  Even so, Rabbi Ezagui is *still* wrong.  No one *owes* a contribution to the Chabad House.  The last time I checked, people are free to give their tzedaka money to any charity that they wish.  They certainly don't have to give to the Chabad House, nor do they need to be made to feel guilty about where they choose to contribute. 

I known nothing about this particular Chabad House.  For all I know, they are a very worthy institution where wonderous work is done in Jewish outreach.  For all I know, Rabbi Ezagui may be a tireless worker working to bring Yiddishkeit to the masses of Palm Beach.  But he has to learn two things: 

1.  He has to find a new business model that does not rely so heavily on donations from wealthy patrons and is not as susceptable to economic downturns.

2.  His organization is not automatically entitled to other people's money.  He has to learn that there are other competitors for people's money, which include discretionary spending, other charitable options or even basic necessities.  No one needs to feel guilty because they don't contribute to *his* cause.

The Wolf

Photos: Yellow Tulip

Here's a shot that I took a short while ago.

Canon XSi, 100mm macro lens, f/16, 4 seconds.

Believe it or not, this shot was much easier to capture than you might otherwise imagine.  If anyone's interested in how it's done, feel free to drop me an email.

You'll notice that I used an aperture of f/16.  I did this because I wanted to make sure that the picture was going to be in focus from front to back.  Of course, because I used a narrow aperture, I had to use a longer shutter speed -- in this case, I left the shutter open for four seconds. And yes, I used a tripod.  :)

As always, comments, critiques and criticisms are welcome, encouraged and appreciated.

The Wolf


To see all my photo posts, click HERE

Ask Yourself This Before Reciting Parshas HaMon Today...

Before you go reciting Parshas HaMon today to get a segulah for a good parnassah, I want you to stop and ask yourself this question:

If you've decided to take five minutes from your day to do what you feel is necessary for a good parnassah, which do you think is a better use of your time -- reciting Parshas HaMon, or opening your heart to your Father in Heaven and asking His help in providing for your needs and your family's needs?

I have no objection to prayer -- on the contrary, I think prayer is a wonderful thing.  With prayer, a person has the ability to beseech God for anything and everything.  It gives you the opportunity to open your heart and become closer to HaShem.  With prayer, you have the opportunity to express true emotion.  Do you need a refuah from a sickness?  You can pray for that.  Do  you need help supporting your family?  You can pray for that.  Do you need comfort in times of crisis and anguish?  You can pray for that.  Do you really need to convert the 7-10 split?  You can even pray for that too.  For anything from the most important to the most trivial, He is never too busy to receive your prayers.  You may not always get what you ask for, but nonetheless, He is there.

But why is prayer so important?  After all, God has no need our prayers.  Our praying to Him doesn't change Him in any way whatsoever.  So, why does He ask it of us?  Why do we engage in it? 

One answer that I've often seen given is that prayer is not for God's benefit, but for ours.  The word "to pray," in Hebrew is l'hispallel.  This word is reflexive in nature, connoting something that one does to (or for) oneself.  In other words, we don't pray to God for His benefit, we pray for *our* benefit.  We are meant to be moved and changed by our prayers, hopefully for the better.  We are meant to come to the understanding that God is the source of all of our blessings.  We are meant to better understant that He is the one who provides us with life, health, parnassah and the ability to convert the 7-10 split.  So, when I pour my heart out to God for whatever it is that's important to me at the moment, I'm not just asking him for something.... I'm (hopefully) acknowledging and understand that He is the source of the good in the world.  By praying to Him for parnassah, I hope to become closer to Him.

A while ago, a blogger (who has long since disappeared, but thoughtfully left his blog up) came up with the term Vending Machine Judaism to descirbe the way segulos are "sold" and done by the public today.  In his words:

My main beef with the segulah explosion we're witnessing, is that it cheapens Judaism. I've used the term Vending Machine Judaism before, and I think it's the perfect description of the new religion we're creating. Basically, God is a giant vending machine. We stand in front of it, see what we want, press a button, and we expect to get it. Need a shidduch? Say Shir haShirm. Parnasah? Say Parshas Ha'mon. Can't find your keyes? Give money to R' Meir Baal Ha'Ness.

This is turning religion into nothing more than a means to an end. It's a selfish version of Judaism, as in "How can I use God to get exactly what I want"?

This is, to my understanding, the antithesis of prayer.  By *expecting* that God will grant you favor because you do X (especially where there is no commandment to do X), you do the exact opposite of prayer.  Instead of drawing you closer to God and making you appreciate Him, it causes you to think of Him as some cosmic vending machine.  Instead of beseeching, you come to expect and demand.  Instead of being forced to engage in internal contemplation and soul-searching, you simply expect to recite a paragraph by rote and receive what you deserve.

So, think about this before you invest five minutes in the recitation of Parshas HaMon today, and ask yourself this question:  if you're going to invest five minutes of the day in pursuit of turning to Him for help in parnassah, how do you think He would rather you spend those five minutes -- in rote recitation of a paragraph, or in emotional prayer from the heart?

The Wolf

Photos: What Is It? The Answer!

Earlier this week, I posted a photo and asked people to guess what was the subject of the photo.  Here again is the photo:

Canon XSi, 65mm macro lens (5x magnification), f/11, 20 seconds.

The answer is that the photo is the middle of this flower:



The first Anonymous poster said "a plant." While that's technically true, it is very vague. "Fort," however, was the first person to come up with the correct, specific answer -- the inner part of a flower. So, he wins the 20 Wolfish Points. :)

The Wolf