The Rhetorical Equivalent of the 1915 Kazimir Malevich Oil Painting

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Mission Accomplished!

Received an email from Aish confirming that they were successful in their campaign to remove the call for a third Intifada Page from Faceboook.

No thanks to me.

Immoderate Moderation and Self-Referential Comment Mining

The Orthoprax "Rabbi " has recently reared his Qefira-dika head again. I posted a comment on his blog last Thursday which, supposedly, is still "awaiting moderation" . IMO this is an immoderately long time to moderate a comment. I have lost patience. And so I will post the pertinent passage of his Purim Torah here followed by my comment as I posted it:

His post (truncated):
It is a strange and exhilarating thing to have a secret identity. Scary, yes, but quite exciting. It is also deceitful, deceptive and, at times, duplicitous....Indeed, even the donning of costumes, our faces hidden while our actions depict our true natures, is uplifting, as we recognize the cognitive dissonance that is the backbone of our daily religious experience.

March 24, 2011 at 3:38 pm

ונהפוך הוא you’ve got it bass-ackwards. The costumes show the dissonance of an outer shell of skepticism secreting an inner core of pure faith.

Even if your p’shat were right Purim would be the exception proving the rule. The operative template for a man in your position is כל תלמיד חכם שאין תוכו כברו אינו תלמיד חכם. Hypocrisy while being the homage that vice pays to virtue, is repugnant, doubly so in a putative Talmid khokhom.

You’ve lost the whole triumph of Purim. Amalek is that force which cools us off, defeating Amalek means getting our fire and joie de vivre for Torah and Mitzvos back. Absent belief in the reality of the system this is impossible. An Orthoprax may observe Halakha scrupulously but will never do so with joy, passion and fire.

You should’ve gotten plastered on Purim and checked your hyper-rational mind with it’s attendant skepticism at the door. Growing aromatic would’ve allowed your expanded consciousness to pierce the mirage of so called “reality” and behold the reality of the dream.

Wise Words From an Impure Source

"Why are we hated"
"An exceedingly difficult question sir"
"We Jews would like, of course, to figure out how not to be hated, either changing ourselves or the haters, but maybe we just have to accept that we're hated, like they advocate in AA-that you have to accept that you're alcoholic. So we Jews just have to accept that we're hated and move on..."

from here. (page 124)

Addendum: While hardly an innate difference I think one of the main differences between Kharedim and their non-Kharedi brethren is that we don't expend any time, energy or resources trying to change either ourselves or the haters whereas they waste time, energy or resources on both. We have accepted that we're hated and moved on. When considering the authors religious affiliation (sic) this makes his succinct and profound insight a breathtaking epiphany. The only part of the Moshol that is cringe-worthy is that it seems to equate Judaism with an illness and/or moral deficiency.

Luckless

It seems that I made a whopper of a mistake in this post. In my ignorance I just presumed that if two months bore the same name then they must share the same Mazal. But according to Yidden וואס קענען ליינען די קליינע אותיות Adar II has no Mazal at all!

Rabbi Yonasan Eibeschutz explains an obscure Midrash that says that the warriors whom Moshe instructed Yehoshua to choose for the war versus Amalek should be those who were born in Adar II as, based on the month of their birth, these were people who have no Mazal at all and as such would be invulnerable to the horoscope based sorcery of the Amalekim. Rabenu Ephraim and the Khid"a are also cited by the Bnei Yissoskher ( אות י"א) as opining that those who were born in Adar II have no Mazal at all.

Humble me would like to add this thought: it is said about Jews in general that אין מזל לישראל and that part of the promise made to Avraham Aveenu was that he was "looking down" at the stars, IOW that he and his descendants would be above the stars and not be held under the sway of the stars "power" (Not חלילה a power independent of their Creator but to act as filters and conduits of Divine Providence) but whose destinies would be determined by direct, "hands-on" השגחה פרטית absent any intermediaries. So it is really fitting that the hidden miracle of Purim that manifests such direct, "hands-on" השגחה פרטית vis a vis the Jews should happen (again per Rabbi Yonasan Eibeschutz) in Adar II.

Bottom line. The Redondo Beach Fish Fiasco occurred in Adar II so there is no "Schlimazel Adar Dagim". It just happened in the month with no Mazal at all. On second thought perhaps this makes it even scarier.

Full disclosure: Other Yidden וואס קענען ליינען די קליינע אותיות hold that both Adars share the Mazal of fish ( מהרש"א סנהדרין יב ע"א) while still others hold that ONLY Adar II has this Mazal in a leap year and that Adar I in such years has the Mazal דלי = Aquarius. (לבוש סי' תרפה ס"א)

Hat Tip עלים לתרופה

Let's Reinvent the Wheel

Among the dearly held beliefs current today is that earlier generations just didn't get it when it came to כבוד התורה and למוד התורה .

The following short and pungent post, exemplary of the above described zeitgeist, appeared on a blog that is very reluctant to publish any comment of mine that is not 100% supportive and so I take the opportunity to fisk it here:

Purim in Yeshiva

This year many yeshivos in E.Y. will have a night Seder for 3-4 hours after Megilah reading.

Outrageous! Only 3-4? They haven't moved the clock yet in Israel! There should have been time for a minimum 6 hour Seder. The wooses! South Fallsburg gives it all night and they can only give 3-4 hours! I want the names of these yeshivas so that I can alert the world not to let their daughters be redt to any of their talmidim.

In the Yeshiva of South Fallsburg there has been a long standing tradition

A bit historically myopic. The entire Yeshiva can't be more than 45-50 years old. I'd say that for us Jews traditions need to be a minimum of 2 centuries old to be considered long-standing.

that the Bochurim learn all thru the nite, Daven, read the Megilla, Mishloach Monos and Matonos L'evyonim

Do they read Mishloach Monos and Matonos L'evyonim or deliver them? Do they wait until בו ביום Purim Day to fulfill Matonos L'evyonim? Do they, personally, seek out the Evyonim amongst them?

and go to sleep until Seudas Purim.

Khoping arain the Rem"u's Shitta on עד דלא ידע

These are all capital ideas and Minhagim. All of this foolishness and Kalus HaDaas on Purim is not only drunk, Goyish and unseemly but an unnecessary ביטול תורה . Inspired, as I almost always am, by such Kavod Hatorah posts I humbly submit the following list of more "soon-to-be-long-standing-traditions" informed by the spirit of "more-is-more" when it comes to Limud HaTorah:

1. Edit the Yomim Noroim Makhzor. Piyutim? Yotzros? Feh..what an abominable waste of time. The Ibn Ezra was right all along! Sure the Paytonim were good at rhyming and may have been Baalei Ruakh HaQodesh but... did they understand Rav Borukh Ber? When our lives and future are hanging in the balance what do YOU think is the bigger z'khus? Shedding a few tears at UneSaneh Toqef or shedding buckets of sweat over a sheverreh Nesivos? So, I say, cut out all piyut and chazonus and we could have, כמעט, regular sedorim on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. Especially if we drop the time consuming simanim from the Leil Rosh Hashan Seudah.

2. Borrow (מתנה ע"מ להחזיר יום ראשון) a Lulav and Esrog. Instead of wasting hundreds of dollars and, WAY more importantly, hours upon hours of your precious time passeling arba minim, or waiting in line for your local Moreh Horoah to pasil them for you, get back to Bais Medrash! Arba minim shopping is among the most insidious of false "frumma Yetzer Horas" of the lethally flawed malignant concept of *SHUDDER* bein Hazmanim.

3. Hakofos must go! What a bizarre and disingenuous way to manifest ones joy of Torah! If Torah really brought you to such paroxysms of happiness you'd be spending the time that you wasted in sweaty, rambunctious circle dances learning more of it.

4. Light the Menorah between second and third seder. How ironic that on the Moed celebrating the triumph of Torah SheBa'al Peh we should butcher an afternoon seder and weaken a night seder. I know when Rav Moishe and Rav Ahron Kotler held the optimum z'man Hadloqa was but... who cares? They just didn't get it. After all the choice is yours: be makhmir on z'man Hadloqa but meykil in Limud HaTorah or be meykil on z'man Hadloqa and makhmir in Limud HaTorah. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

5. Tu BiShevat is a day already blissfully ignored. No improvements needed here.

6. No khaburos baking Matzos- So what if your wafers are not from the first or even third oven or not sufficiently blackened to go well with Cajun cuisine? Just think how blackened your face will be in the world of truth for all of that Bitul Torah.

7. Flush khometz down the toilet- I say: what's good enough for Shabbos is, קל וחומר, good enough for a weekday. More often than not שריפת חמץ become unseemly public spectacles that are clinics in time-mismanagement.

8. Streamline the Haggadah: Sorry Charlie but sitting around a table of half drunk diners with over-eager younger siblings/ children trying to unload what their Rebbeim and Morahs taught them or asking their immature curious questions is NOT the proper setting for learning Brisker Torah even if your holding a Brisker haggadah. Take no questions, allow no comments and you could be singing Khasal Siddur Pesakh by 9:15. Not only won't you have to worry about Afiqoimen before Khatzois, but you'll gain the added advantage of being able to run back to Beis Medrash for a solid 2-3 hours. Now that's what I call a Seder!

9. No trips to Meron or Public Maduros on Lag B'Omer: I'm actually pretty serious about this one. At least for Bokhrim and yingeleit.

10. Be Mevatel the Silly Shavuos all night Seder. Those so-called "Sedorim" are all sizzle and no steak. Fools-Gold Hasmoda. A custom started, no doubt, by a refugee from Fallsburg who confused the Yom Tov of קיימו מה שקבלו כבר with actual Mattan Torah! Everyone knows the price paid for this "Mystical" heavens-opening up seder. By the time you get back from your seudah it's late, then, in order to make the hashkoma minyan you have to break your learning off early. And for this measly 2-3 hour seder you pay for it with indigestion and insomnia for days to come napping away, with no afternoon sedorim either day of זמן מתן תורתנו . Outrageous! It's a real הימעל גישריי

11. Modifying Tisha B'Av. Cut out all kinnos (see # 1 above) and find a heter for in-depth learning on Tisha B'Av. Why mourn the חרבן בית המקדש when the denizens of the ד' אמות של הלכה inhabit a space where the Shekhina never left?!? Where there's a Yeshivisha will there's a quasi-halakhic way.

One last fisk before I go:

The recognition that Torah is the only refuge from the anti-semitism that we are surrounded by is the catalyst for this new initiative.

Who told you? Is this insider info? Or are you just hazarding a homiletic guess? I have a better new initiative: Let's abolish all those pesky little מצוות מעשיות altogether. After all, Torah is the only refuge from the anti-Semitism. We'll start with the four Mitzvos haYom of Purim , Evyonim be dam*ed, but ultimately we hope to abolish EVERYTHING that would rip us away from our shtenders.

A Scam or and Outrage? Pick your Poison

Before Purim I noticed signs up that I found very disturbing.

It seems as though קנאת ארגוני צדקה ירבה מקומות הקדושים and so, in ratcheting up the apparent ever-escalating battle of more numerous and more exotic tombs of departed Tzadikim at which to offer up prayers on behalf of the donors, the sign proclaimed that Vaad haRabonim promised to dispatch a clandestine mission to Hamadan, Iran to daven for their donors @ the kevorim of Mordechai and Esther on Purim!

[I don't believe for a moment that the true TKs and Gedolei Yisroel that endorse this Tzedaka are behind these campaigns. Why such campaigns are even necessary when the product ought to sell itself (Tzedaka going to deserving needy individuals and TKs attesting to same ) is beyond me. The decision to create and market these ad campaigns must be coming from administrators lower down i the hierarchical structure.]

Why disturbing? because there are only three possibilities about the claim made in these ads:

1. That it is an outright lie and that no one traveled to, much less davened for donors at, the kevorim of Mordechai and Esther. IOW, and out and out scam.

2. That the mission went and that the prayers were offered but at no danger to those who made the trip. This means the use of diplomatic back channels strongly hinting at (as suggested by Yerachmiel Lopin) an unsavory alliance between the charity and the Ahmadinejad hugging lunatic fringe of Neturei Karta. Even if no such alliance exists it exposes the organizers of this mission as more tools and useful idiots of the Khomenist Propaganda machinery and reflects very poorly on the judgment of the organizations decision makers who would trade propaganda points earned by our bitterest enemies for a few extra dollars raised.

3. That their really was some kind of cloak-and-dagger mission that smuggled Jews into Iran against the will of the regime and that exposed those Jews offering prayers to great danger of life and limb and incarceration.

While this last is the most unlikely scenario on the minuscule chance that it is the actual one it is the most disturbing of all. Who made this call? Who has the braiteh plaitzes to expose other Jews to danger for the sake of a Segulah? What is the provenance of the segulah and what about it makes it trump Pikuakh Nefesh?

Thieves, useful idiots or callous and reckless manipulators. Like I said, pick your poison.

Hat Tip Rafi G.

Boikh Sevoras for a Boikh Maykhil

Why do HomonTaschen have three corners? Some Boikh Sevoras... err theories:

To honor the three Patriarchs whose progeny Homon sought to eliminate.

To be meramez to the עמא תליתאי whom he sought to destroy.

To show that , as a triangle is unstable and cannot stand on any of its points, so too as represented by Amalek .שקר אין לו רגלים

To represent Mordechai, Esther and Kharvona.

To show that the four letter name of HaShem is incomplete (only three) until Amalek is wiped out.

After we bite into one to show our closeness to HaShem inasmuch as כל פחות מג' כלבוד דמי .

To mock X-tian trinity theology/ Avodah Zarah.

To honor Khananya, Mishoel V'Azaryah who were NOT משתחוה לצלם in the times of Nebukhadnezzar (I actually saw this one printed in a Khasidisha Blatt).

To be meramez to the three Nuclear Reactors about to melt-down in Japan. Hey... to me this is at least as "poshut" as saying that it was because of the THREE bukhrim incarcerated there.

Of course the truth probably lies closer to the fact that when making Muhn=Poppy pastry pouches it is easiest for the baker to fill a circular slab of cookie dough with Poppy seeds and then make three folds to enclose the "pouch" resulting in a three cornered pastry. But this explanation sounds suspiciously close to what one might read over by the blog that banned me. OTOH maybe this is in the spirit of "Until one cannot distinguish between the mega-popularity and inspired snark of DovBear and the pariah-like isolation and tin-eared attempts of humor of the Bray of Fundie"

Schlimazel Adar Dagim

File this one under "All the News that's Unfit to Wrap week-Old Fish in"

It's a good thing this isn't Rosh HaShanah during which סימנא מילתא otherwise I might take this as a bad omen.

We have all sorts of good associations with fish; the beings impervious to the great deluge, the beings invulnerable to ayin horas, the metphor for the blessings of Ephraim and Menashe and for fecundity and leadership on Rosh HaShana, beurtiful dazzling denizens of tide pools and coral reefs and providers of great tasting Gefilte Fish, Sushi and Fish N' Chips. Generally we don't associate fish with anything negative at all, least of all with holocausts of sudden mass death. Ceratinly not in "their" month the month of Adar when when the constellation of Pisces holds sway.

But the greatest tragedy to befall fishdom since the infestation of the Anisakis worm occurred in Redondo Beach, California on this past second day of Adar II! As reported in the Los Angeles Times:

Redondo Beach awoke Tuesday to find a carpet of death laid atop the water, as if Davy Jones himself had burped up a couple hundred years worth of lunches. Thousands of silvery sardines floated atop the King Harbor marina fin-to-fin, with hundreds of thousands more, perhaps millions, piled on the coppery bottom, 18 inches deep in some spots.



Aquatic Coroners debated the cause of this mass death. Some opine that a storm and ravenous whales forced the schools into too small a safe harbor to allow for sufficient oxygenation and that they suffocated. Others say that they were poisoned by the neuortoxin domoic acid. But whatever the cause it is Makas-Mitzrayim -like and unnerving to see millions of fish die as one and aggregated in so confined an area.

Something stinks in the state of California.

Errata Update 3.28.11. See here as this post, standing alone, may be making an erroneous assumption.

A נהפוך הוא That's Been Bad for the Jews

When the founder of our Nation was first mavdil himself from the balance of Humanity, and his Creator chose him and his progeny to rebuild Humankind... he was blessed. Not only was he blessed he was declared the archetype of blessing: והיה ברכה. The Ramban, ad locum, explains this to mean that when anyone anywhere wants to bless another they will formulate their benediction thus: " May Elokim make you as Avraham!" In a perfect world Avraham and his progeny are those that everyone else wants to be or, failing that, at least be with.

Sadly we live in a far from perfect world, one that seems a lot closer to the purgatory of the תוכחה than the paradise of plan "A". We Jews have done a perfectly wonderful job of turning the sweet to bitter, the fame to infamy and the blessing into a curse. This is a fulfillment of where the תוכחה declares:
וְהָיִיתָ לְשַׁמָּה, לְמָשָׁל וְלִשְׁנִינָה--בְּכֹל, הָעַמִּים, אֲשֶׁר-יְנַהֶגְךָ יְהוָה, שָׁמָּה
as Rashi explains "everyone will continually talk about you as THE example of a "מכה רעה" .

Case in point: I recently heard a discussion on NPR about shutting down the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant based on the strong likelihood of meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in the wake of the recent Earthquake and Tsunami. In an audio clip one protester (or was it a pundit) said that (I paraphrase) "at this point, after seeing the devastation in Japan investing more in Nuclear energy would be like sending more money to Bernie Madoff."

I'm not calling him anti-Semitic. The protester/pundit may be totally unaware of Madoffs ethnic/religious identity. But it's a sad day for the seed of Abraham when a Jew is SO identified with a massive disaster that he has now become the go-to simile for a" מכה רעה" that adversely affects thousands if not millions.

ויש שממונם חביבים עליהם מגופם ...של אחרים

My main source of news are the two all-news radio stations broadcasting through the tri-state listening area. It may be purely anecdotal but it seems to me that both on 1010WINS and WCBS880 there has been at least as much coverage about the economic impact of the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan; the Nikkei Index, microchip exports, Japanese oil consumption, reopening Toyota plans et al as about the human tragedy.

I'm not saying that reportage of the economic fallout of the natural disaster is NOT newsworthy, it is. But there is something very revealing about our values system inasmuch as it has gained parity with, or precedence over, news about the loss of life, limb, shelter property and health. I wonder if 80,000 New Yorkers had been swept out to sea, hundreds of thousands left homeless and millions with possible exposure to radiation poisoning if the lead stories would concern how the AMEX and NASDAQ were doing. I suppose that as long as it's other people living half a world away doing all the suffering and dying, the health of our own portfolios is of greater interest to us than the health of their bone marrow.

Masculinity is Overrated

Last week I bemoaned not only the immaturity of the contemporary male but his lack of, well, maleness.

Now I read where a group of kind-hearted but, IMHuO, wrongheaded rabbis are arranging marriages between Gay males and Lesbian females. Presumably these people are otherwise Torah Observant and these compassionate Rabbis are forwarding a creative solution to afford them all the other benefits of Jewish family life and societal acceptance while , in essence, butting staying out of how they deal with their same-sex drives. Masculinity is overrated. Who needs a macho attraction to the opposite gender, what with all the downside this surplus of testosterone brings, when one can make babies and maintain families בקדושה ובטהרה without it?

While I am moved by the Rabbis compassion, their dedication to creative Halakhic solutions and to good 'ol כח דהתירא עדיף as the newspaperman said to the cub reporter: "Your work is good and original. Problem is that the good parts aren't original and the original parts aren't good!" I also see a gaping slippery slope wherein they play right into the hands of the Blu Greenbergs of the world who've always claimed that "Where there's a Rabbinic will there's a Halakhic way" who will continue to make new demands for creative heterim especially those that further erode Havdolos between the genders.

Here are some questions-comments that I posted elsewhere with no response:

A. כולם יודעים כלה למה נכנסה לחופה but I guess in these cases these couples will leave all the wedding guests guessing. What I mean to say is that , to put it mildly, such farcical "marriages" are בבחינת עיקר חסר מן הספר

B. seeing as the children are all conceived through artificial insemination is the Kesuva of such couples modified to delete the line ומיעל לוותייכי כאורח כל ארעא ?

C. I would imagine that making the kinyanim of erusin and nesuin sans physical intimacy probably involve some issues of מתנה על מה שכתוב בתורה and would be curious to know whether or not these issues have been addressed by the Rabbis. If the kinyanim are indeed null and void may such a couple, considering their orientation, have yikhud together?

D. What would such a wife have to do to be deemed a moredes?

E. If (husband??? or) wife slip(s) up and have same-gender-sex with others is divorce imperative? Is this a breach of Das Yehudis?

F. Would polygamy by the (Ashkenazi) husband be considered a Kherem D'rabenu Gershom- worthy transgression?

Jus' wonderin'

Hat-Tip Reb Harry

Manning Down; Losing our Maturity AND Masculinity

or.. On the Immutability of Havdalos

While many might take issue with my URL and challenge the entire notion of innate differences, a new controversial book seems to point to the fact that having differences, in this case between the genders, IS innate. True egalitarian equality is a pipe dream. If one gender is up then the other, perforce, is down.

Kay Hymowitz advances an argument, encapsulated in her books title, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys , that the strides made over the last several decades by the Feminist / Womens Rights movement have been the cause of a concurrent unmanning of men. Compared to men a quarter of a century ago todays males have protracted adolescences, flights from responsibility and an aversion to commitment. Not surprisingly (for anyone with even a scintilla of Havdala Consciousness) todays accomplished, precociously adult women find such males unattractive if not downright repellent and completely unsuitable as husband, ahem, life partner, material.

If Ms. Hymowitz' theory is correct it would seem that, taking a page out of Korakhs playbook, while purporting to want nothing more than an even-ing of the playing field, parity and equality, what the feminist movement really strove for was role reversal, assuming the preeminent position of power and responsibility formerly occupied by males and pushing men into the inferior and subservient role that they had traditionally filled. And while I am a certifiably paranoid insecure male for the time being I am satisfied that this was an unforeseen consequence of Feminism rather than it's goal or objective. At most if this was the motivation underpinning the movement it was a subconscious one. I leave it to conspiracy theorists and/ or historians of Womans Suffrage and Feminism to say otherwise. There is more than a little bit of irony to the fact that while feminism has brought about concrete gains for women it seems to have cost them things that they traditionally had.

I would take Ms. Hymowitz' argument a step further: In days of yore when someone was described as "A Man" it implied that he was neither childish nor effeminate. IMO the Feminist movement has not only made boys out of men but girls out of boys. I don't believe that it is purely coincidental that the same decades that gave us overgrown boys also gave us a huge spike in the percentage of homosexuals, especially of the overtly effeminate type, transvestites, transsexuals and a veritable משלחת מלאכי רעים of gender confusion. Nor do I belive that the percentages have not really grown but that the closet was merely emptied.

The Creator informed His creation with an innate Havdala בין זכר לנקיבה and this thirst for Havdala demands satisfaction. If the female gender will not provide creation with women then, by Golly, the male gender will. And while I lack Ms. Heimowitz scholarship and can't back up this assertion with hard statistics, pie charts or flow charts to prove empirically that Feminism has made girls out of boys, I do have a gut-feeling, call it the בינה יתירה= feminine intuition granted to emasculated males, that this is indeed the case.

I find it mighty interesting that the brouhaha over a book exploding the myth of gender equality and arguing that the best we have engineered as a society is gender-role-reversal should break out on the scene in the weeks leading up to Purim, the Festival of ונהפוך הוא turnabouts that celebrates the Jewish peoples triumph over Amalek, the quintessence of Esav with whom our Nations shares a see-saw relationship wherein whenever one is up the other is down:
קסרי וירושלים אם יאמר לך אדם חרבו שתיהן אל תאמן ישבו שתיהן אל תאמן חרבה קסרי וישבה ירושלים חרבה ירושלים וישבה קסרי תאמן שנאמר (יחזקאל כו) אמלאה החרבה ... Of equal interest (and mildly corroborative of my own theory) is that the original Amalekim were infamous for being hellbent on unmanning their Jewish victims by both defiling/im-purifying them with משכב זכר, and in a perverse twist of Apache style scalping, excising their Jewish victims male genitalia and throwing them mockingly heavenward, shouting הא לך מה שבחרת.

Coincidence??? I don't think so, because if Purim teaches us one thing it's that there are NO coincidences.

Finally, I think all this has a cultural osmosis effect on Jewry, because ultimately as that old piece of Yiddish Folk-wisdom teaches ווי עס קריסטעלט זיך אזוי אידעלט זיך. I've alluded to this mildly Hymowitz -like phenomenon in frum society here.

Cross posted HERE.

Qedusha-Havdala...Ms. Hymowitz has had hers, have you had YOURS today??? Hmmm???

A שאלה on a Segulah

Among the most popular, innocuous and, in my own experience, effective of Segulos is the one to aid in the retrieval of lost items. One drops a dollar or two, or even a few coins, into the nearest Rav Meir Ba'al HaNess Puskha, says:

אמר רבי בנימין, הכל בחזקת סומין, עד שהקדוש ברוך הוא מאיר את עיניהם. מן הכא, ויפקח אלוקים את עיניה ותרא באר מים, ותלך ותמלא את החמת. אלהא דמאיר ענני, אלהא דמאיר ענני, אלהא דמאיר ענני. בזכות הצדקה שאני נודב לעילוי נשמת רבי מאיר בעל הנס, זכותו יגן עלינו, למצוא את האבידה שאיבדתי

and, voila, (OK...not always so voila) the lost item is found (sometimes).

So, pursuant to my recently discovered Segulah for mastering something in Torah that ones mind has reached for but is eluding ones grasp, here is my שאלה : Considering that we learned the Torah whole in utero and that our lifetimes of Torah study on Terra firma is really nothing more than a lifelong exercise in retrieving that which we have lost would the synergy of charity and prayer that helps for misplaced car keys be effective in grasping that tough Ketzos?

Click and check out the Pirush HaGR"A on posuk 17:26

Can this Segulah be Saved?!?

I think that even the Marketing Department at Kupat HaIr would find it challenging to popularize this one.

We all have our pekkeleh tzuris and unfulfilled needs and wants. When a vital unmet need collides with a lack of efficacy of the natural or even supernatural conventional means (i.e. תשובה תפילה צדקה לימוד התורה ושמירת המצוות) to fill the vital need, many folks will turn to segulos.

For some the overwhelming sense of drowning compelling them to clutch at segulah straws will be the apparent inability to do a shidduch, for others it will be business reversals while for some, nebikh, it will be a lingering or intractable illness. But if there are people out there who, when stumped by a s'teera in Rambam, a posuk with a dearth of meforshim, a shverer RebKivaEiger, a conundrum in מחשבת ישראל, or an inscrutably profound and subtle Reb Borukh Ber, turn to segulos for enlightenment, I have yet to hear of them.

I am speaking about the Segulah found in the Heiligeh Bnei Yissoskhor's אגרא דפרקא אות קע"ב instructing those confounded by a Torah topic to read פרשת המנורה. Full disclosure: This segulah was completely unknown to me until last Freitig tzu nakhts.

IMO this segulah is doomed to oblivion. After all how many of us:
A. Are so unsettled and tortured by this unfulfilled need to need a segulah to fix it?
B. If, indeed, so bothered will do anything other than invest more time and effort in study, research and picking the brains of those more learned than ourselves?
C. Can actually believe in the efficacy of a Segulah that does not involve a cash layout, (especially shmearing a Gabbai) an investment of tremendous amounts of time or traveling to some G-d forsaken and hard to get to locale?

Moreover, the market niche most in need of such a segulah, Yungeh Bnei Torah, are also the demographic least susceptible to "buy into" it. Having been taught from their earliest youth that עמלות בתורה is THE cure-all, be-all and end-all, what self respecting bokhur or yungermahn would be caught dead reading Parshas HaMenorah rather than tummeling with his khavrusa, tugging at his beard or peyos, furrowing his brow, squeezing his eyelids till they seem hermetically sealed, learning more meforshim, sing-songing the difficult passage incessantly like some old time practitioner of Mussar B'Hispa'alus and /or asking his Rosh Khabura?

And so while Chai Rotel mashkeh, Nishmas at the Koisel, and excursions to Lizhensk and Uman will continue to ride high-gaining cache, traction and ever-wider popularity, poor 'ol Parshas HaMenorah will, no doubt, remain lonely and un(der)-utilized מונח בקרן זווית. Being featured on this moribund and Red-Tent blog will certainly do nothing to increase it's popularity.

Perhaps if we revised the Segulah to say that it only works if it is read off a Q'laf in K'sav Ashuris bound in hand tooled Corinthian Leather???

Hat-Tip עלים לתרופה