The Secret of Thanksgiving

I will let you in on a secret. I celebrate thanksgiving. That’s right. I do it every day. That’s how a Jew spends his entire life, thanking G-d for all of His constant goodness and blessings.
Just as Xmas celebrates the birth of a Jew, and Easter celebrates his death, Thanksgiving has Jewish origins too.

When it comes to celebrating the American holiday of Thanksgiving, there are halachic opinions that it is OK for a Jew to participate in the festivities and football games since the holiday is not associated today with any religious observances of the gentiles.

"Please bless President Bush and Condolisa Rice, and make the Annapolis Peace Parley a big success!"

Ostensibly, Thanksgiving is a time, dating back to the Pilgrims, to thank G-d for providing disgruntled Englishman with a new place to observe their religion. This being the case, it is difficult for me to understand why a Jew would want to participate in this holiday. As my Grandmother used to say, “A curse on Columbus!” for having discovered America in the first place.

In a previous blog this week, we mentioned the many carving knives that bear-hugging America has wedged into the backs of the Jewish People while pretending to love us. In addition to the upcoming trap of Annapolis, we shouldn’t forget that this sinister, pseudo-love is insidiously decimating our ranks through the holocaust of assimilation.

Nonetheless, for all of our schizophrenic brothers and sisters who celebrate Thanksgiving, they can at least claim that it has Jewish sources. After all, we are the people who taught mankind about the obligation to thank G-d for all of His infinite kindness. In Hebrew, the word “Hodo” means “expressing thanks” or “thanksgiving.” This is how we begin our daily prayers, “Hodo l’Hashem…” – “Give thanks to Hashem, call out in His Name, make known His doings amongst the nations.” In effect, a Jew celebrates thanksgiving every day. Interestingly, “Hodo” is also the Hebrew word for “turkey.” So it is no coincidence that people celebrate Thanksgiving by stuffing their mouths with turkey. Just as Xmas celebrates the birth of a Jew, and Easter celebrates his death, Thanksgiving has Jewish origins too.

In fact, Columbus himself was a closet Jew. He received the money for his expedition from the great Rabbi, the Abarbanel, who was the acting Finance Minister of Spain. Doesn’t 1492 ring a bell? It was also the year of the Spanish Inquisition, when all the Jews were expelled from Spain. It turns out that Columbus, who wrote on his epistles, the Hebrew letters, á"ä, meaning “Bezrat Hashem,” or “With the help of G-d,” was looking for a safe haven for the Jews.

Columbus leads a minyan

Too bad he didn’t sail south a few days across the Mediterranean to Israel. That way he would have saved us from 500 years of wandering amongst the goyim, along with the wholesale slaughter and psychological trauma that has accompanied us throughout all of our exiles.

And it would have spared us the question of whether Jews should celebrate Thanksgiving once a year like the Americans, or be content with our daily thanksgivings to G-d in our prayers.

One way or the other, “Hodo l’Hashem ki tov, ki l’olam chasdo!”   

Millions of turkeys take to the streets to demonstrate against Fishman

Dear Shimshon and Shmuelik

This is an open letter to my procrastinating Haredi brothers who refuse to come to live in the Holy Land, preferring to live out their lives of delusion in the spiritual swamp of the exile, immersed in gentile cultures, in gentile lands, under gentile rulers.

I LOVE NEW YORK!

We who are blessed and privileged to live in the Land of Israel realize that you are prisoners of fear and empty excuses. We who have been blessed to realize that Judaism is more than eating gefilta fish and getting smashed at Saturday morning Kiddush to get through another hollow American or French or English or Belgium Shabbat, reach out to you to take a deep breath, be brave, and step up to the real Judaism.

Can anything be sicker than this?

We who have been blessed to understand that Judaism is not merely the practice of individual mitzvot, but rather the national constitution and holy life of the Nation of Israel in the Land of Israel, a mitzvah that encompasses all of the other mitzvot combined (Sifre, Reah, 13), we appeal to you to step up to a higher vision. The goal of Judaism is not merely to acquire a beautiful etrog and light Hanukah candles in Monsey, but rather to teach the world that G-d rules over all the nations, and this can only be done through the life of the Nation of Israel in the Land of Israel – “For from Zion the Torah shall go forth, and the word of the L-rd from Jerusalem.”

Last week was the yahrtzeit of the Torah giant, Rabbi Eliezer Valdenberg, who died last year at the age of 91. Rabbi Valdenberg was one of the foremost authorities of Jewish Law in our time. In his voluminous compendium of Jewish Law, “Tzitz Eliezer,” he wrote thousands of articles on every aspect of halacha, including the most modern advances in medicine, which were accepted as the definitive opinion by all factions of Orthodox Jewry, including the Haredim.

Rabbi Valdenberg emphasized beyond any question of a doubt that every individual Jew, and the Jewish People in its entirety, are beholden to live in the Land of Israel. Regarding the Jewish People as a whole, he wrote: “There is an encompassing mitzvah which is an obligation on the entire Nation of Israel to come and settle in the Land of Israel and to live there as a holy nation.” Regarding the individual Jew, he wrote: “There is an individual mitzvah on every Jew, which is an obligation to make aliyah to Israel and to dwell there.”

In his halachic discussion on the subject, he writes that the general mitzvah of the nation to live in Israel was interrupted with the destruction of the Temple, but that “Ever since Hashem has remembered us for good, and has given us a renewed possession in the Holy Land, to be sovereign there, in a portion of our Land, and the gates of the Land have been spaciously opened, the obligation on the entire House of Israel to live there has been renewed, and it is the obligation of every community of Jews in the Diaspora, wherever they may be, to rise up en masse, and to come and settle in our cherished Land.”

Rabbi Valdenberg emphasizes “There is absolutely no room to refuse to come on aliyah to the Land of Israel because the country’s leadership is mainly in the hands of Jews who have cast off the yoke of the Torah, because of our many sins. Also invalid is the claim that the Divine salvation cannot come forth through the agency of Jews who don’t have the reverence of G-d in their hearts.”

Rabbi Valdenberg explains that if there were more G-d fearing Jews in the Land, the Level of Torah observance would be much greater than at present. Regarding the Redemption sprouting from the efforts of secular Jews, he writes that the mysteries of G-d are beyond our grasp, and that such salvations occurred in our Biblical past, when non-religious, Jewish leaders and kings saved the people of Israel from their enemies and expanded the borders of the Land.

So Shimshon and Shmuelik, and my Haredi brothers wherever you may be, if you’ve been waiting for halachic permission, here it is. Just as you surely perform the commandments of Succot and Shabbat with all of their details and stringencies, why not perform the commandment that is equal in weight to all of the commandments of the Torah put together – the supremely exalted commandment of living in Eretz Yisrael?

Diligent with all the mitzvot except the biggest mitzvah of all.

Everything is waiting for you – heders for your children, yeshivot for your youth, shuls of every persuasion, mikvahs in every neighborhood, frum communities, glatt kosher markets, Haredi newspapers, new apartments, Haredi bus trips to Hevron and Safed, Jerusalem the whole year round, tons of gefilta fish and even scotch whiskey.

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? 

I Wonder What Will Be With Ehud Olmert?

The Israeli Prime Minister and his government officials have announced an official freeze on all building in settlements. Isn't it the job of the Prime Minister and his government to build and expand settlements in Israel and not to freeze them?
Does Ehud Olmert really believe that he can stop the rushing tide of Jewish Redemption?

Have we returned to the Land of Israel after 2000 years in foreign lands to prevent further Jewish settlement in Israel? Does Ehud Olmert really believe that he can stop the rushing tide of Jewish Redemption? Does he really believe he can defy the Prophets of Israel and the promise of the Almighty that the Jewish People will return to all of the far and wide borders of our Land? As if his share in the Disengagement from Gush Katif, and his order to smash young Jewish skulls at Amona weren't sufficient, now he has ordered a stop to all settlement and he is scheming to divide Jerusalem and surrender all of the heartland of Biblical Israel to murders, liars, and thieves. With this, he has insured his place in history with the rest of his cronies.

Why can't these arrogant ones learn from the past?

The one who laughs last laughs loudest.

After Menachem Begin razed the Jewish settlement of Yamit and surrendered Sinai to the Egyptians, his beloved wife passed away and he ended his days a broken man, in a deep and terrible depression.

"Keep applauding, Yasir, and he'll start to dance for us."

After giving away guns and chunks of the Holy Land to Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin was assasinated.

What white teeth she has!

After destroying Gush Katif and settlements in the Shomron, Ariel Sharon's brain was destroyed.

Why is this man smiling?

I wonder what will be with Ehud Olmert? 

The White House Ain't White, Brother

The White House isn’t white either, even though it is called "HaBayit HaLavan". Like Lavan, its occupants are black inside. Wolves dressed up as smiling grandmothers. The bayit of Lavan.

Grandma Bush

Time and time again, the White House and its Presidents have deceived the Jewish People and stabbed us in the back. The White House knew about the concentration camps long before the end of the WWII, yet didn’t do anything to stop the transport of millions of Jews to their deaths.

Why didn't America bomb the tracks?

The White House was a part of the Partition Plan that stripped Israel of enormous tracts of land that were bequeathed to it by the League of Nations, including parts of Saudi Arabia, and all of Transjordan. Our friends in the White House sat by as half of Jerusalem was handed over to the Arabs, along with the Biblical Israel that comprised Judea and Samaria and the Golan. The White House betrayed us during the Yom Kippur War, had spy ships gathering intelligence off the Israeli coastline, not to mention withholding from Israel knowledge about the Iraq atomic reactor that caused Jonathan Pollard to jeopardize himself to save the country he loved. The White House has always demanded a freeze on Jewish settlements in Yesha, and our loving brothers in the White House worked overtime to bring us Arafat and Oslo, the evacuation from Gush Katif, and the birth of a Hamas/Iranian state in Gaza.

Yaacov, Ishmael, and Esav

Now the White House’s “Road Map” and Annapolis Peace Parley are craftily designed to strip Israel once again from its control over Jerusalem and Biblical Israel, the very places we are reading about in the Torah today.

If this isn’t Lavan reincarnated, what is it? In the same gesture of clapping us warmly on the back, and spouting their belief in the Bible, they force us into signing documents that threaten our existence, strengthen our enemies, and ridicule G-d’s promise to the Jewish People that all of the Land of Israel is ours. They don’t believe in G-d or the Bible – they believe in themselves.

Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai taught us this lesson long ago. When a fellow rabbi praised the occupying Roman legions for building markets, and bridges, and bath houses in Israel, Rabbi Shimon answered, “Everything they built, they built for themselves. The opened markets to place their prostitutes there; they built bath houses to luxuriate in their own comfort; and they built bridges in order to collect taxes from the Jews” (Shabbat 33B).

Esav hates Yaacov. It is a fact of nature, learned from the Torah and all of Jewish history.

Make no mistake. The White House is no friend of the Jews. Whatever they do, they do for themselves, whether to win Jewish votes for themselves, or to prevent a total Arab takeover in the strategic Middle East.

While there are a lot of gentiles all over the world who are true friends to the Jews, in their national formats, the gentile nations of the world hate the Jews. That’s what the Halacha teaches. Esav hates Yaacov. It is a fact of nature, learned from the Torah and all of Jewish history.

America looks out for America. Come Annapolis, the Jewish People have to remember the lesson of our forefather, Yaacov. We have to look out for ourselves.    

The Secret of Shabbat

I know there are readers who dislike my writing about issues of Jewish sexuality. They can by-pass this blog and rejoin us after Shabbat. For everyone else, I hope you will enjoy and benefit from this important and holy essay by the revered Kabbalist, Rabbi Eliahu Leon Levi.

Secret of Shabbat

THE SECRET OF SHABBAT
By HaRav Eliahu Leon Levi

My brothers and friends, I have many things to say to you to help you reach a greater love of G-d, and foremost is the need to achieve a true reverence of Heaven. The matters discussed in this essay will bring you great blessings from G-d’s treasure of love. First, my dear son, you should strive to do everything you can to properly keep the Shabbat. In order to do this, you must know with a clear and utter certainty that a great deal of work is demanded on Friday to prepare for the Shabbat. It is my upmost advice to finish all of this holy work some three hours before Shabbat begins. Therefore, give your thought and energy to helping your wife as much as you can, for your wife is termed by the holy Zohar, “the lower Shechinah.” By preparing for the Shabbat in a united spirit together, you will draw down an exalted Divine Assistance which will enable you to finish all of the preparatory work with great joy, and after you have finished, you will have time to thank and praise Hashem in song, and to invite the Sabbath Queen, “Come my Bride, Come my Bride, the Queen of Shabbat.”

Rabbi Eliahu Leon Levi

YOUR WIFE, YOUR QUEEN
Occasionally it happens that your wife feels that something is lacking in the house, or she can’t find something she needs, or some work hasn’t been finished, which brings her to get angry and to start making excessive demands. For instance, this can happen if she lacks some spice for her cooking, or something similar which she needs in the house. This can cause her great sorrow and panic, believing that the Shabbat won’t be as honored as she would like. Please know that these afternoon hours on Friday are packed with pressure for her, with feelings of self-criticism that can explode into bitter criticisms of the husband and flare into a quarrel of joint incrimination. If this occurs, you both are the losers, for the anger and criticisms will open the gateway for impure spiritual forces and impure spiritual husks called “klipot” to enter your house, and they will take their place at the Shabbat table which you so industriously prepared in honor of the holy Shabbat. They will cause your honored Sabbath guest, the Shechinah,  the Sabbath Queen, great sorrow, for these impure and damaging spiritual agents will greedily nurture from her holiness. Can there be a greater desecration of Shabbat than this? 

Therefore, if you see that you wife is on the verge of getting angry because something is missing in her eyes, you should keep silent and understand that very often a woman’s reasoning is short-circuited by her emotions, so that if she feels that she is missing something she needs, it seems to her that there is nothing at all in the house, for her emotions tell her that without the needed item, it is impossible to properly welcome the Sabbath Queen on time. Because of this feeling, she becomes terribly pressured. Therefore, my dear son, you must pay special attention to your wife and home on Friday, with added understanding, for this is an important and holy time, more than the other weekdays since the sixth day of the week is the “Yesod” which leads the way to Shabbat . By hallowing Friday, you sanctify the “lower Shechinah” which is your wife. Therefore, you are called upon to speak with your wife in a calm and pleasing manner, and be especially tolerant with her on Friday, with great understanding, and you must strive to win her affection with loving words so that she will feel appreciated and truly feel that all of her labor is sincerely valued by you. By relating to her in this manner your house will be filled with contentment and joy, and this will draw down a wealth of Divine blessings on your home and family.

Stemming from this, when you engage in the marital union on the night of Shabbat , it will be crowned with all of the blessings that are written in our holy Torah. Love and true friendship with grace your coupling, and this will bring great contentment to our Father in Heaven, just as a father is pleased with the happiness of his children.   And this will hasten the day when love and peace will grace all of the holy Jewish Nation with the coming of our Mashiach, may it be soon.

HOLINESS OF SHABBAT
You should also know that on Friday, beginning five hours after sunrise, there is an elevation of spiritual worlds, and a great and holy flame shoots forth which causes all forces of spiritual impurity to flee and to descend to an underworld cave where all of the impure and damaging spiritual agents are imprisoned until the end of Shabbat. For this reason, Shabbat  is free of all impurity and spiritual pollution, such as klipot, destructive spiritual agents and accusers that always try to cling to a holy Jew, the pinnacle of Creation. The opposite is the situation during the weekdays when the klipot zealously attack, accuse, and draw curses upon a Jew in their jealousy, seducing him into transgression with all of their many strategies, especially getting him to gaze at forbidden images, so that he will emit semen in vain and thus pollute all of his body. 

"REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY"
My brothers and friends, know that HaKodesh Baruch Hu commanded us in his holy Torah, “Remember the Sabbath day to make it holy.” The meaning of this verse according to the secrets of Torah is that the faculties of spiritual intelligence (mochin) in a man are called “holy,” and that Hashem, may He be blessed, commanded us that on the night of Shabbat, we are to sanctify the “Yesod,” which is the “Brit,” through the sanctity of the marital union. This causes “mochin” which are called “holy” to descend on the “Yesod” of the husband, and then when he unites with his wife, this brings holiness to the “lower Shechinah,” which is your wife.  Therefore, it is necessary to engage in the holy marital union of the holy Shabbat night, which is a much more important time than other nights of the week, and we are especially enjoined in this matter.

In the event that your righteous wife is tired, angry at you, or feeling ill, or upset by other things that have created friction between you, then you must immediately make peace and placate her, and do whatever is needed to rectify the bad feelings and the mistakes that were made unintentionally, and to forgive one another with a full heart, since the Holy One Blessed Be He is not happy when in the holy houses of the Jewish People, whom He has selected from all of the nations, the husband and wife are at odds, whether because of anger, either big or small, or because one is too stringent with the other, especially on the holy Shabbat night when Celestial Angels accompany a man home from the synagogue and are present in the house. For due to even the slightest feelings of resentment or anger between the husband and wife, the holy angels become greatly offended, and this is certainly not becoming behavior for the Jewish People, the sons of kings. Therefore, if there be contention between husband and wife, or grudges and complaints, this will cause great sorrow and distress to the exalted guest, who is called the “Sabbath Queen.”

Therefore, husband and wife must immediately mend their character traits, for anger and other negative feelings prevent them from uniting in the holy marital act, Heaven forbid, which is a most essential thing, and the Torah cautions us about this by saying, “And the Children of Israel shall keep the Shabbat.” According to the Kabbalah, this verse means that the Torah is exhorting us to know that a husband and wife should conduct marital relations on the night of Shabbat . This is indicated by the initial letters contained in the verse, “ "åùîøå áðé éùøàì àú äùáú  which spell áéàä, the marital union. This means that the Torah wants us to keep the Shabbat, specifically by engaging in marital relations on Shabbat night. It is all for naught should the husband or wife offer all kinds of excuses why they refrained from sanctifying the Sabbath night in this manner, even if should they bring different explanations of this verse from assorted holy books – it is all a waste of time and effort. For our holy Torah has already determined  that you are commanded  and obligated to conduct marital relations of Sabbath nights. One should not take lightly something that our holy Torah commands us clearly in saying,  “And the Children of Israel shall keep the Shabbat,” and the verse, “Remember the Sabbath day…” and many other verses of the Torah.
Please note: if, and only if, your wife is in the time of her menstrual Niddah period, then certainly the marital union is forbidden until after her ritual immersion.

Furthermore, if there be a truly genuine reason for not engaging in the marital union of Shabbat night, then it is proper to postpone it to the following Shabbat night, for engaging in the marital union when a mutual desire and holy intention is lacking, this causes great loss to both partners, which takes much effort to redress. 

It is most unfortunate that a large portion of our holy Jewish People do not know the exalted honor and level of holy relations on Shabbat night. This is due to the exile of our souls, and all of the sorrows and tribulations that surround us, which prevent our minds from having the proper exalted thoughts and intentions regarding these holy marital unions. Because of this, the Shechinah is denied the great influx of spiritual blessing contained in these unions, and the Shechinah is tragically left without joy. How sad it is that we lack the understanding of the secrets of Torah, and thus do not know or appreciate the exalted influences in the upper spiritual worlds brought about by the marital union on the nights of Shabbat.  Because of this lack of holy knowledge, these unions are looked upon in a trivial, inconsequential light, G-d forbid.

My holy bothers and friends, please know in good faith, and please be cautioned, that anything that a husband or wife does to interfere with and prevent marital relations on the holy night of Shabbat, or if they mutually agree to refrain without a genuine reason that can convince the Heavenly Court of the justification for their refraining, this is a great sin, which, G-d forbid, causes themselves, and their children, exile. This exile, may G-d have mercy, can manifest itself in a wide assortment ways, including problems in the home, financial difficulties, fighting between husband and wife, even leading to their separation, G-d forbid, or other harsh punishments that I can’t bring myself to relate. May these tribulations fall only upon our enemies, the haters of Israel, and not on the husband or wife who unjustifiably caused the Shabbat night to pass without engaging in the holy marital union.

Notwithstanding the supreme importance of this, when there is a true and justifiable reason for refraining, such as sickness, excessive tiredness and weakness, or if the couple are guests and they don’t have private quarters, then their refraining is considered something forced upon them against their will, and marital relations should be postponed to the following Shabbat without further ado. In such cases, certainly the Heavenly Court will pardon them, as it says, “I have pardoned you as you have requested.”

I wish you and all of Am Yisrael that you be fruitful and multiply like mighty warriors assisted by Hashem, and that your marriage be blessed with love and intimacy between you, shalom and joyous friendship. Amen, may it be the will of G-d.