Queens Jewish Link
Connecting the Queens Jewish Community I caught up with Leah, who had just spent the last few hours running from fridge to oven, and sink to...
A number of years ago, my father zt”l was looking for a speaker for the shul’s Yom HaShoah program. He contacted the agent of a famous Holocaust survivor and author to see if he could get him to address the audience for the event.
The story goes of a man walking down the street when an old Jewish beggar comes to him asking for a dime. The man looks at him in astonishment and says, “Why, you’ve come to me not more than five minutes ago and I gave you a dime then!” The Jew then responds, “Mister, stop living in the past. That was then. Now is now!”
One of the more intriguing phenomena in Jewish history was the bamah. A bamah was an altar built for sacrificial purposes. An official bamah was constructed as part of the Mishkan, which functioned as the Jews wandered in the desert and was known as the Mizbei’ach. It had the status of a bamah g’dolah, a major altar. The same is true of the bamah g’dolah in the sanctuary of the Beis HaMikdash.
What do Mr. Potato Head, Dr. Seuss, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Cleveland Indians, the Washington Redskins, the State of Georgia, and separate gender bathrooms all have in common? The answer is obvious: They have all fallen victim in one form or another to Cancel Culture. Society now imposes its current politically correct set of values on institutions that have been with us for decades – and even centuries. If those values don’t match the current ones, then out they go. Out go toys, books, political heroes, ball clubs, and even entire states. We don’t approve of you, so you are now canceled out of our culture.
The Yated Ne’eman, the chareidi weekly newspaper published in English in America, has a very worthwhile weekly feature called “The Chinuch Roundtable.” The “Roundtable” consists of a panel of seven to nine prominent educators who respond to questions posted by parents on chinuch, or educational matters. Very often, the questions hit upon vital child-rearing principles.
Rashi (B’reishis 34:25) explains the reason why Shimon and Levi acted in an unacceptably rash manner when they avenged the defilement of their sister Dinah at the hands of Shechem: because they did not consult beforehand with their father Yaakov. Yaakov would likely have counseled them to take pause before reacting in the violent fashion that they did. The Midrash on this pasuk goes a step further: They should have at least consulted with each other, states the Midrash.
