Haiti and Israel 01/23/2010
 
 
 
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Whenever we gather in prayer invariably we do recite or respond to the words of Kaddish: "May His Great Name be magnified and sanctified".  And whenever we introduce the daily Kedusho we call out: "Let us sanctify Your Name in the world".  And every so often during the course of our Tefilloh we emphasize our desire to belong to the sanctifiers of the Divine Name amongst men true to the injunction contained in Vayikro (22,33) "You shall not desecrate My Holy Name and I shall become sanctified in the midst of the children of Israel."

 

The second sentence of Sh'ma Yisroel begins with the command: "You shall love Hashem", which is interpreted by our Sages: "Let the name of Hashem become beloved through you."  In other words, we are supposed to lead the kind of exemplary life which would contribute to the universal adoration of G-d and which would, in turn, enhance the glory and lustre of the Torah, adding respect for the dignity of the Jewish people as a Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation.

 

The very opposite of the sanctification is the desecration of the Name as condemned by the Prophet with the scathing words (Yechezkel 36): "They came to the nations and desecrated my Holy Name, so that one said to them, is this the people of G-d who came from His land?"

 

Every form of Chillul Hashem lowers the awareness of the Divine Presence in the world.  But if the desecrator happens to be a professed Torah observer or, even worse, a so-called scholar of the Torah, then the Chillul Hashem not only weakens the respect for Torah on one hand, but strengthens on the other hand the defiance of the non-observer and adds fuel to the scoffers, fanning the fires of religious insurrection all around.  Chillul Hashem is responsible, directly or indirectly, for the increase frivolity, heresy and licentiousness in the world.  Therefore, we should not be surprised reading the harsh words of condemnation we find in the Talmud: "He who has committed Chillul Hashem, even Teshuvoh, Yom Kippur and suffering cannot fully atone for his sin until the day of his death (Yoma 86)."

 

"Better to commit a sin in secrecy than to commit Chillul Hashem in public (Kiddushin 40).

 

"There is no delay in the Divine punishment for Chillul Hashem, whether committed knowingly or unknowingly (ibid.)".

 

"If one steals from a non -Jew, swears falsely and dies, his death is no atonement for his sin because of Chillul Hashem" (Tosefta B. Kamma, 10).

 

"He who desecrates the name of Heaven in secrecy is punished in public" (Avoth 4).

 

"All sins are forgiven by G-d but Chillul Hashem He punishes immediately" (Sifri Haazinu).

 

This is but a small selection from the many fierce condemnations addressed by our Sages to the desecrators of the Divine Name.

 

All this comes to mind at this time since some perpetrators of Chillul Hashem are making the headlines of our daily newspapers.  Certainly we are not sitting in judgment of the persons who are publicly accused and we have to wait whether the indictments will be borne out by irrefutable evidence. However, be it as it may, the Chillul Hashem is there in the worst possible way.  "Rabbi" so and so, who sits in court with his velvet Yarmulka in full view of a television audience composed of millions of viewers, is accused of having ruthlessly enriched himself at the expense of others, flaunting the laws of G-d and man, exploiting, conniving and manipulating - in short, desecrating all the fundamentals of Torah Judaism.  And this sorry onslaught on our Jewish sensitiveness is repeated by similar allegations, proven or unproven, involving more prominent men who are stigmatized as orthodox Jews, sometimes even with so-called rabbinic diplomas.

 

While it is obvious that the vast majority of loyal and observant Torah Jews deal honestly and correctly with their fellow men, a very small minority of criminal perpetrators suffices to cast sinister aspersions on all orthodox Jews and, what is worse, on orthodox Judaism as a way of life.  The Chillul Hashem of a few individuals provides excuses for the doubter, and encourages the desecration of Torah learning, Torah education and Torah influence.  To defraud and exploit our fellowmen, Jew or gentile, to conspire, to betray the Government, to associate with underworld elements all these are hideous crimes by themselves.  Yet to the outrage committed there is added another dimension, namely the profanation of the Divine Name and that means the profanation of all that is supposed to be held sacred by us as well as - in their heart of hearts - by the perpetrators themselves.  What a sorry picture that is.

 

Suppose I have cheated my neighbor or my Government and then I stand in the midst of a congregation of honest and decent men and women to recite the Kaddish which is the prayer for Kiddush Hashem in the world.  What audacity!  What a shame!  Can there be a worse contradiction than the strict Sabbath observer who may also be a stickler for Kashrus, and who at the same time violates the spirit of Shabbos and Kashrus during the week with non-kosher money manipulations?

 

Let us repeat.  The profaners and the desecrators are only a handful of unscrupulous people and we even hope that some of them will be proved innocent. But it needs only very few violators to give us all a rotten name, aiding and abetting our many adversaries and antagonizing our few friends.

 

Therefore, no white-washing, no condoning, no apologizing on behalf of the desecrators.  Let us make it clear that anyone who besmirches the sacred Name ceases to be our friend.  He has unwittingly defected from our ranks and has joined our antagonists, to make us all suffer in his wake.  And - noblesse oblige - the more prominent a man has become in orthodox Jewish circles the more obligated he must feel to observe the most painstaking scrupulousness in his dealings with the outside world.

 

Our observance of Torah and Mitzvos is regulated by the Choshen Mishpot, the code of social justice no less than by the other codes of the Shulchan Aruch. Whoever betrays his loyalty to one portion of the Torah uproots all others.  For, at the roots of Chillul Hashem are gross materialism, blatant selfishness, insatiable love of wealth and brazen disregard for common decency. Even if, strangely enough, as it sometimes happens - those ugly traits go together with excessive charity and benevolence.  We call this type of twisted ethics "Mitzvah Ha'Boah B'Averah" - i.e. virtue acquired by sin, which is worthless - less than worthless.  It is a travesty and a farce.  It means playing jokes with the Torah. It is blasphemy and therefore unforgivable.  Let us proclaim, loud and clear, that we shall have no part of such sickly "Yiddishkeit".  Our aim is to strive for Kiddush Hashem. And in order to reach this goal we shall band together and march together, we and our children "Nikiyei Kappayim U'Vorei Leivov" with clean hands and pure hearts towards the dawn of Geuloh, speedily in our days.

 

{Written by Rav Shimon Schwab z'tl in 1975, printed by C.I.S. publishers in 1998 - Selected Writings #46}

 
 
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir, Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem
Q. A lot of copyrighted material is available on YouTube and other free sites. Is it permissible to download these clips?

A. YouTube was conceived primarily as a site where ordinary people could upload personal creations for public viewing. However, from the very beginning commercial content also made its way onto the site. This content is of a few varieties:

1. Some content is intentionally or willingly placed by content owners as a promotion. For example, CBS has a partnership program with YouTube through which some of their material appears on the site. It is obvious that there is no ethical obstacle to enjoying this material.

2. Some content is surreptitiously put up in order to circumvent copyright owners. Copyright owners have the right to protest at any time if they find their material on the site and it is promptly taken down. But realistically, there are hundreds of millions of clips and it may take time to detect and remove them. In the meantime, a viewer may find clips which he can be sure are copyright material. Here also the answer is obvious: a person shouldn't download stolen content just because he managed to squeeze in between the time it was illegally uploaded and when it was removed.

3. Some content the copyright owners have just given up on. Because of the effort involved in flagging pirated content, and the additional effort involved in removing it if the poster claims that it is legal (for example, under fair use laws), content owners are compelled to choose their battles and concentrate on their efforts on the most serious breaches. Here we have an interesting ethical question.

The Talmud discusses an interesting parallel case:

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanania said: In all my days, no one ever get the best of me besides one woman, one boy, and one girl. . . . What of the girl? Once I was traveling on the way and there was a path through a field, and I was walking on it. A little girl said to me: Rabbi, isn't that a field? I said to her, "No, it is a cleared path." She said to me, "Bandits like you cleared it." (1)

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanania was correct. At the time he traversed the field, the way was already a cleared path and did no damage to the crops. However, the girl was also correct. There was a first person who went through the field. That first person did only slight damage to the crops. He probably didn't think of himself as a "bandit". But the next time a person wanted to take a shortcut, that person noticed that someone has already cut through this field, and there was a way that was a bit easier, and a bit less destructive, than cutting straight through the crops. The second person would probably never have dreamed of just stomping through someone's field, but after all, now there was already a passage and besides, someone else had already been through..

By the time Rabbi Yehoshua went through, there was really no benefit from refraining, yet formally speaking he was the latest in a series of trespassers who effectively stole that piece of land from the field's owner (presumably the girl's family).

I don't think that the passage is suggesting that Rabbi Yehoshua did something actually forbidden. In the other stories (the woman and the boy) he does things which are insensitive but not quite improper. But it reminds us how often we may be beneficiaries of wrongdoing, and in particular reminds us how serious the first, seemingly innocent breach is.

Once a video clip is firmly ensconced on YouTube, it is fair to assume that it is legal, and you can view and download it (if there are no notices to the contrary). However, the Talmudic sages alert us to the particular seriousness of leading the charge by pushing out the envelope of infringement, for example uploading material which previously was taken down but right now finds the owners too busy or burdened to respond.

SOURCES: (1) Babylonian Talmud Eiruvin 53b



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Question:

Joseph married Osnat and had two children in Egypt before his family came down to join him. Was she Egyptian?

Response:

We read in Genesis 41:45 that Pharaoh gave Joseph Osnat daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, to be his wife. From the various midrashim, a wondrous story emerges:

You see, when Shechem abducted Dinah, she became pregnant with his child. Her father, Jacob, saw that his family was deeply ashamed of his new granddaughter. The little girl was banished from the camp and placed under a thorn bush. They called her Osnat, a derivative of sneh, the Hebrew word for thorn bush.

Jacob brought a golden plate with a holy name inscribed upon it and hung it on her neck. In other accounts, it is stated that he wrote, "Whoever meets you, meets the seed of Jacob." And he sent her away.

As all is revealed before the Holy One blessed be He, Archangel Michael descended and took her down to Egypt, the home of Potiphera, for Osnat was fitting to be Joseph's wife. Potiphera's wife was barren, and she reared Osnat like a daughter.

When Joseph took charge of Egypt, all the maidens were taken by his extraordinary beauty and threw jewelry and other objects at him in, trying to gain his favor. Osnat had nothing to throw, except the golden plate bearing the inscription that her grandfather had made her. When Joseph saw what was written on it, he knew that she was his kin, and immediately married her.

Other midrashim, however, describe her as a righteous convert, on par with Hagar, Ruth and Rahab.

from Chabad.org
by Rabbi Menachem Posner

 
Avatar 01/02/2010
 
by Gideon Silverstone


Surprisingly, James Cameron’s new blockbuster taught me a lot about myself.



They say that film is a powerful medium. But when was the last time you continued to think about a movie days after you saw it? Well it just happened to me after having seen James Cameron’s new film Avatar.

I’ve been thinking about Avatar for days. Avatar tells the story of Pandora, a distant planet in the year 2154 where there is a conflict between human colonialists who are mining Pandora’s resources because they have exhausted earth’s, and the indigenous inhabitants called the Na’vi who are trying to expel the foreigners.

The film follows Jake Sully, a former marine who is paralyzed during combat on Earth. His twin brother was working for the Avatar Program on Pandora which constructed genetically engineered human-Na’vi hybrids that allow the humans to control these “avatars” with their minds while their own bodies sleep. An avatar can only be controlled by a person who shares its unique genetic material and when Sully’s twin brother dies, he is asked to join the squad as he is the only one who has the genes to control that particular avatar.

On his first assignment, Jake’s avatar gets lost and is attacked by a gang of dangerous creatures. It looks like he might not make it until he is saved by a female Na'vi named Neytiri. While her people fear outsiders, Neytiri feels like there is something different about Jake – something special. So she takes him to the Na'vi Hometree, the spiritual and geographical home of her clan. The Na'vi then decide to teach Jake about their culture.

But back at his base, Jake is ordered by Colonel Miles Quaritch to initiate a diplomatic mission of sorts to obtain the trust of the Na'vi tribe and is given three months to convince them to abandon their Hometree, which sits above a large deposit of unobtainium – the valuable substance that the humans are mining. As Jake learns the way of the Na'vi, he gradually finds himself caught between the military-industrial forces of Earth and a new found love for his adopted home and people. In fact, Jake is successfully initiated into the tribe after passing the Omaticaya rites of passage to become a man.

(Spoiler alert!) But unfortunately, Jake’s three months are up and he has not convinced the Na’vi to abandon Hometree. Colonel Quaritch leads a military campaign and destroys the Na’vi’s beloved home. The Na’vi are devastated and when they find out that Jake is really a human who knew of the plan, they are furious and abandon him. Faced with a decision of fighting with his race, the people who are destroying Pandora and wiping out the Na’vi or his newfound tribe whom he has come to love, he chooses the Na’vi and leads them in a revolt against Colonel Quaritch. With the help of the Na’vi, the other tribes on Pandora, and even all of the Pandorian wildlife, Jake is successful in fending off the attack and sending the human mission home.

Finally, Jake decides that he has become more Na’vi than human so he agrees to have his soul transplanted from his human body into his Na'vi avatar at the “holy” Tree of Souls. As in all good Hollywood films, Jake ends up marrying Neytiri, the Na’vi princess who discovered him three months prior.

 

Avatar and My Jewish Connection

So why did this movie get me thinking so much? Of course there are some not so subtle social messages in the film: we human beings are not taking enough care of our planet; our insatiable capitalist drive is going to get us in trouble; first world countries are harming third world countries by taking their natural resources; there are spiritual forces in the world that are powerful and being overlooked by our materialistic society. We get it. But that’s not what’s keeping me up at night.

I feel that in some small way this film is about me.

I grew up in Jewish family that didn’t have a whole lot to do with Judaism. Sure we made the pilgrimage to synagogue on the High Holidays and ate matzah on Passover but that was about it. And I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that, until I spent a year studying in Israel.

Like Jake Sully, what I saw made me reconsider the way I had been living my life up. It was in Israel that I was introduced to a Judaism that I had never seen before, one that was spiritually fulfilling and intelligent. Like Jake Sully, even though I was in Israel for a year to objectively study the people of Israel and their “ways,” what I saw made me reconsider the way I had been living my life up until that point. Did I want to continue leading a life focused heavily on the material with little regard for the spiritual? Did I want to continue leading a life which relegated a tradition of thousands of years to a three times per year chore? Or did I want to make a significant change in my life?

As Jake Sully demonstrated in Avatar, change is hard. Rethinking your life’s goals is hard. And telling the people that have been with you for years that you want to be a different person may be the hardest of all. But if you believe in what you are doing, it becomes something you simply have to do.

That’s what happened to me. I adopted some new ways and beliefs. Becoming a “new person” was difficult for some of my friends and family, but as the years have gone by, I realize that it has been worth it. My life is focused on both spiritual and material things, but I have a clear sense of priorities. But perhaps more importantly, I am now a member of a new “tribe”--- one that is deeply connected to the hundreds of generations of Jews before me by virtue of the daily practice of Jewish study and ritual. And as I begin to raise my children, I know that they too will be another link in that chain, a chain that will connect to countless generations for years to come.



This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/j/as/80051982.html