lifestyle

Welcoming by example

Shifra Sharfstein and her husband, Shlomo, run Georgia Tech Chabad House with the help of their children. (photo from Shifra Sharfstein)

My parents invited countless people into their home over the decades and fed them on Shabbat and Passover. Little did we know that their acts of kindness would inspire one of their grandchildren to bring Shabbat dinners to hundreds of Jewish students at Georgia Tech in Atlanta each year.

Shifra Sharfstein grew up in Vancouver until she was in Grade 7, going to school at the local Chabad House and also learning about Judaism with her parents, Tzvi and Nomi Freeman, and grandparents, Joyce and Bernie Freeman.

“We went every Wednesday night for a special dinner,” Shifra recalled. “Grandma would spoil us with our favourites each week. She would read us a book and chat with us. She would listen to us talk and let us help make desserts in the kitchen. It was a space that was just all love, pure unconditional love.”

Shifra also gives credit to her grandfather, who supported my mom’s efforts to bring what seemed like the entire Jewish community into our house to feed them.

My mother grew up in India and her parents were from Iraq. Shifra remembers the Sephardi tomato soup with potatoes and meatballs, which took Mom a whole day to make.

“My cousin Ariella and me would talk all night about how much we loved that soup!” she said.

When Mom passed away, Shifra compiled a recipe book for family and friends called With Love from Joyce.

She remembers Mom’s international food.

“Baked Alaska coming out of the oven with cold ice cream inside always seemed like magic,” she said. (And then there was the cherry pie, which I can still taste.)

She remembers gathering together with her cousins before every Jewish holiday, making hundreds of hamantashen.

“I do the same with our college students, today,” she said.

Shifra runs Georgia Tech Chabad House with her husband Shlomo, and with the help of their eight children.

“I could go on forever talking about how much my grandmother and grandfather inspire me,” she said. “Whenever I’m in the kitchen for awhile, especially the week before Pesach, which is grandma’s yahrzeit, I feel her there with me. Sometimes, the powerful work we do is overwhelming, especially when we’re helping students deal with tragedy, and I close my eyes and see Grandma’s smile and feel the beautiful love she had channeled through me, her granddaughter.”

Recently, the couple threw a dinner for 500 Jewish students and dedicated it to the memory of Shifra’s grandparents. It was the first time so many people had dined there.

“Thank G-d we have lots of help and an amazing community of beautiful Georgia Tech students!” she said. “But we keep it all homemade at Chabad and I always incorporate Grandma’s flavours in it.”

Shifra said she also was inspired by the way her grandparents had so many guests who were welcomed like family.

“Grandma always said that what mattered was that we all got along,” Shifra explained. “She told us stories of Jews from different backgrounds and how what was most important is that we all came together, no matter our differences, with love … she truly loved every Jew with zero judgment. I think I absorbed that from her. She looked past the outside and saw that each person has a beautiful soul. She taught me how to do the same and I truly try to make that my focus every time I meet someone new.”

Shifra considers herself a feminist, running the Chabad House they live in and taking care of her children side by side with her husband. She is an accomplished speaker, as well.

“Knowledge is power,” she said. “I grew up being taught to always ask questions. My father and mother spent time learning with me as a young girl in Vancouver and the more I learnt and [the more] I asked, the more I realized how much I could accomplish.”

She added that she is inspired by the late Lubavitcher Rebbe’s teachings about women.

“As a Chabad leader, I know my Rebbe taught me that Jewish women in leadership have a unique power as nurturers who can change the world with love,” she said. “It’s the same message [now] and I intend to take it with me and change my part of the world with that feminine loving touch.”

Chabad Georgia Tech has seven Jewish classes each week, a weekly BBQ, social events, events where they counsel students and, of course, the highlight of their week is Shabbat, with anywhere between 80 and 130 students who come and then stay, chatting late into the night after dinner.

All this activity has had an impact. For example, there have been three weddings in the last 14 years and, right now, another couple is engaged to be married.

Shifra says their success is due, as well, to their dedicated team of students, who run many of the events. There are about 1,000 Jewish students on campus.

Cassandra Freeman is a freelance journalist and improv comedy performer living in Vancouver.

Living in a personal paradise

It is raining today in our area of Vancouver. I am specifying our area because things could be very different in other areas of our metropolis, with the variety of climatic zones it presents on the shores of our western sea.

My Bride and I are enjoying the solitude of our own company. Our various familial connections are pursuing their affairs in different parts of the planet. We are in our 90s (thereabouts), tolerating various aches and pains that time has made us heir to. Nevertheless, I am suddenly aware that we have achieved our personal paradise.

I am aware that we are surrounded with an unending list of things in our world that need corrective action. Our world can report a litany of tragic stories that require happy endings, some that personally touch us deeply, many we are aware of from afar. We know there are things to be done, some that may even require concerted action on our part.

But, at this very moment, I am overwhelmed by a feeling that those in my immediate circle are safe and secure, and I am grateful. I can look around me and see the place where I live. It may need tidying, but it is pleasing to my eye. We have pictures of our loved ones, past and present, and they cover almost every possible vacant space.

There are many beautiful things that we have collected over the years arrayed where they have found places to stand. The fridge is full to bursting and we doubt that we will be able to consume it all before we will have to discard some of it. We have money in the bank for the bills this month and as far out in time as we can imagine.

In our long history, we know that there have been many times, many places, where the scene before us was very different. Despite the whirling of issues in our minds, the horrors we know exist even around the corner, we have a place and time that is, for us, a paradise.

I remember when I endured a space that spoke to me only of finding the means to escape. I know that my Bride has faced conditions, physically and emotionally, that taxed the limits of her strength. Somehow, we’ve managed.

There were times when our offspring were off in unknown places beyond our capacities to intervene on their behalf as we would have liked. We have had personal relationships that have tried us beyond the limits we thought we could bear, and we survived them.

My Bride and I have been together for 20 years. Despite my solitary nature, she persisted nevertheless, until we were ultimately able to be open to each other as to our mutual vulnerabilities and forge a loving relationship. We glory in that every day.

We remember our triumphs, those accomplishments of which only we ourselves may be aware, jobs well done. Our present makes our contemplation of our past so much easier. And those past experiences make our present – the people, the place, the time – more like the paradise it is.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Birthday musings on mitzvot

It’s almost Israel’s 77th birthday! And a birthday is a good opportunity to reflect on things.

When my kids attended Chabad preschool, they celebrated their birthdays at school. The teachers encouraged them to think about a mitzvah (commandment) to take on to mark the occasion. Listening to preschoolers discuss what they’ve chosen and why is such a celebration of Jewish life! I’d invite you to try this out at the next available opportunity. You can ask any Jewish person what mitzvah they’d take on, it’s amazing to hear. Israel isn’t a person and can’t take on a mitzvah, but maybe we can help with that to celebrate its birthday.

One thread in our tradition follows certain steps: we improve the world and our behaviour, and that brings about the Messiah, or the Messianic Age, the next world and a better place. Ideas differ on how we do that and why, and even on what the Messianic Age will be like. We don’t agree on the specifics – and that’s fine. However, a recent page of Talmud that I studied in the tractate Sanhedrin, on page 98, really highlighted this concept. It’s a story, of course.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi asks Elijah the Prophet when the Messiah will come. Elijah says, “Go and ask him.” Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says, “Well, where is he?”

Elijah describes him as sitting at the entrance of Rome, far away from where they are in the Galilee, at Mount Meron. The rabbi asks how he’ll recognize the Messiah. Elijah explains that the Messiah is sitting with all the other poor, sick people, but that the Messiah doesn’t untie all his bandages at once to replace them. Instead, he unties and reties them one at a time, so he’ll always be ready to bring about the redemption.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi goes all the way to Rome, identifies the Messiah, and asks him “When will the Master come?” The Messiah says, “Today.”

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi travels all the way back to the Galilee to see Elijah. Elijah asks him what the Messiah said and the rabbi tells him, “Well, he lied. He said the Messiah was coming today, and it didn’t happen.” Elijah says no, this is what he really said: he said he will come “today, if you listen to his voice.” (Psalms 95:7)

Sue Parker Gerson, who wrote the introductory essay for this page of Talmud on My Jewish Learning, points out several things. First, that the traditional commentators inferred that we must do more mitzvot to bring about the Messiah. Additionally, she steps in with something that is a bit deeper: Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi visits all these sick people with bandages, talks to one person, and then leaves. He didn’t stay to help any of the people. Perhaps, Gerson suggests, we need to put the “do the mitzvah” message into practice, to help people in need and fix wrongs we see in the world. Elijah saw that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi failed the test, so to speak, not helping when he should have.

Then, I read a Jewish advice column online. A parent is organizing a bat mitzvah and asks, “Should I invite relatives with whom I disagree politically? They also won’t like the liberal way we practise Judaism, but, if I invite them, they’ll likely come.”

The columnist suggests that, since COVID, it has been OK to make smaller guest lists and exclude people. Also, if the kid doesn’t want to invite these relatives, you don’t have to invite them. The columnist says briefly at the end, well, families usually invite everyone, and that’s what families do, but if you don’t want your happy occasion to include these people, that’s OK, too.

My gut reaction was that this answer failed the test. The columnist fails to behave Jewishly and recommend including everyone in a lifecycle celebration. The choice to exclude could cause bad feelings for years.

But, instead of a “failure” lesson, I have been considering what I might embrace about taking on mitzvot instead. I think a lot about turning negatives into positives lately. I’m the mom-chauffeur of junior high-age twins. I hear lots of negativity from the backseat!

To begin: be the energy you want to see. If Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi wanted the Messiah to come today, he had to do more to fix the world, including caring for the sick. Visiting the sick is a positive commandment. We should take care of one another, and it’s often not enough to just visit.

Also, don’t leave people out. If we want our lives, including our Jewish lives, to be inclusive, we can’t just ditch people. Even if a Jewish person, aka a family member, has different viewpoints, votes or behaves differently, within reason, we should invite them in, rather than leave them out. Offering unity and a “big tent” approach is the kind thing to do.

I just read Amir Tibon’s The Gates of Gaza, and its anecdotes echoed this. When Tibon’s family was trapped in their safe room in Kibbutz Nahal Oz on Oct. 7, 2023, his parents raced south with only a pistol to save them. His father, a retired, secular Israeli general, spent a harrowing day attempting to save Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, on the way to Nahal Oz. After exchanging deadly fire with the enemy, he ends up with a soldier’s weapon and his helmet, but he still wore civilian clothing, which confused soldiers under pressure. A religious soldier nearby helped. The soldier took off his army issue tallit katan (an undershirt with tzitzit, ritual fringes, on it) and handed it to him. Tibon, clothed in borrowed tzitzit and a helmet, weapon in hand, was ready for battle. The soldier’s inclusivity and flexibility saved lives. Saving a life, a huge mitzvah in Jewish tradition, outweighs everything else.

Helping each other and skipping negativity contribute to our people’s unity. We may disagree with one another and vote differently. Just this week, I’ve signed two petitions and written several letters to voice disagreement; in Israel, protests are part of life. Also, this week, a cousin of ours was inducted into the Israel Defence Forces. When it counts, we’re there for one another. Regarding issues of life and death, we protect one another.

Finally, sometimes restraint is the better part of valour. Occasionally, the first word out of our mouths is no, or a defensive or harsh response. Holding back, listening and considering the situation may help us make thoughtful choices that better reflect the people we wish to be. Israel’s birthday is a chance for all of us to celebrate, listen and include. Like everyone and every nation, Israel has flaws, but embracing positive steps may change lives, or even save them, in the years to come.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

What your tchotchkes think

Ever wondered what your leather-bound journal thinks about you? Your menorah? The bowl you made in a pottery class? What astrological sign your keepsakes might be? How they’d like to be handled, cared for? Where they’d like to be in your home?

For most of us, the answer is probably no … to all of the above. But Elisabeth Saake has thought of all these things. And, after reading her latest book, Tchotchkes and their F*cked-Up Thoughts: The Messed-Up Minds of Your Trinkets and Treasures (Collective Book Studio), you will too. It’s a follow-up to her 2023 Houseplants and Their F*cked-Up Thoughts: PS, They Hate You, which she wrote with Carlyle Christoff.

Divided into five sections, no knickknack is spared. Saake covers the whimsical (lava lamp, rubber chicken, etc.), vintage and collectibles (antique compass, souvenir spoon, etc.), cultural and artisanal (woven tapestry, ceramic urn, etc.), spiritual and mystical (worry stone, crystal ball, etc.) and functional and decorative (novelty salt and pepper shakers, participation trophy, etc.).

About your journal, don’t worry, it thinks “your poetry is profound” and is “totally listening and deeply moved”; it only appears to be setting itself on fire.

But your menorah would like to be treated as more than a “fancy candleholder”: “Fill my branches with holy oil from trees grown on the Mount of Olives, just a day’s worth, and watch me burn for eight! Or cram in cheap candles from your big box store’s Hanukkah display. That works, too. Way to honour your ancestors, nudnik.”

And your handmade pottery is a “real bowl,” even if it “was made in a beginner’s night class at the community college”: “I’m round enough, I’m stable enough and, doggone it, people like me!” Though, it’s “a bit wobbly,” so perhaps no soup … maybe just display it on a kitchen shelf, as the “mantel is for the perfect porcelain.”

Tchotchkes and their F*cked-Up Thoughts would make a great gift to any friend (with a sense of humour) who’s a collector of things, or to any friend who has judged others’ collections of things. It’s snarky, a little dark at times, but will bring many chuckles and laughs, even if every joke doesn’t land. It’s colourful and beautifully put together. Hopefully, it will think as highly of you, its place in your home and how you care for it – and have an astrological sign that’s compatible with yours.

Home & Garden thoughts

Growth and change is Torah

In middle school, we studied the 1920s in English and social studies. It was a period ripe with new slang. I remember the long list of phrases we had to learn and interpret. The surprise was that I knew some of the expressions because my family still used them! Phrases like, “Aren’t you just the bee’s knees?” or “He thinks he’s the cat’s pajamas!” This weird phenomenon came to mind when I happened upon an ancient rabbinic discussion in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 62a.

Rabbi Zakkai taught a Baraita (an early teaching that was left out of the Mishnah, codified around 200 CE) in Rabbi Yohanan’s presence. It said that, when one did, in a lapse of awareness, a whole series of inappropriate things deemed idol worship, one was only obligated to bring one sin-offering sacrifice to wipe the slate clean.

Rabbi Yohanan responded with “Go out and teach outside.” It was the ancient equivalent of “Get out of town!” or “Get out!” This is the laughing or indignant response somebody makes when you say something unbelievable or surprising.

One can read this text in many ways. It’s possible that Yohanan earnestly thought Zakkai was teaching nonsense and that he shouldn’t teach that inside the house of study, because every action deserved its own separate offering to repent for these mistakes.

However, as the page continues, the importance of context reveals itself. Imagine a time when idol worship was everywhere. A person could inadvertently look like they were worshipping an idol or a person when they were just bowing respectfully as a custom or doing what they had to do to get along. If surrounded by idol worship, a person may do things that everyone else does, automatically and without reflection.

We still do this. Think about the phrases “knock on wood” or “crossing one’s fingers and toes.” These aren’t Jewish concepts, but many say them anyhow, just as we might use phrases from other religions in conversation. They’re part of the culture around us.

I was thinking about these cultural shifts recently because we had our own big moment a few weeks ago. We were driving home after middle school. I remarked that I’d taken the dog on the river trail for an amazing walk at lunch time. (In Winnipeg, our rivers freeze, allowing several kilometres of walking, skiing and skating trails, along with art installations and events on the ice. It’s like a pop-up provincial park in winter.) One of my kids complained that he hadn’t gotten enough skating in yet. The weather that day was perfect but a cold snap was coming. I suggested that they head out right away onto the ice on their own.

My kids seemed astounded by the offer, but they took me up on it. We live a block from the river and there’s a convenient ramp down the riverbank. Before we could reconsider, they were off with skates, helmets, snowpants and the loan of my cellphone so they could reach me. I told them to be back in an hour. This bought me more time to make Shabbat dinner, too.

Just before 5:30 p.m., the phone rang. My responsible kids called from the ice, saying, “We got a little too far away, we’re getting tired, but we’re coming back now. We’ll be a little late.” When they got inside, both kids were wobbly, legs rubbery from exhaustion. I had to help them get off their parkas and snowpants, but they were full of triumph. They had taken off on their own and had an adventure. At dinner, they described bumping into a classmate who was out with his mom and younger siblings. While the classmate was a better skater than them, my 13-year-olds seemed puffed up with pride that they were allowed out by themselves.

Times change. As a Gen Xer, when I was 13, I babysat for two siblings on my own. I took the Washington, DC, metro by myself. I was a latchkey kid of longstanding. As the oldest child in my family and “mature,” I had a lot of leeway, as well as responsibility. Was it always good for me? I don’t think so, but it’s just the way things were.

My kids have had a longer stretch of childhood, with more supervision. While they have always had household chores and other responsibilities, these maiden voyages of independence now happen one after the next. Since the skating experience, they’ve been on their own for a Saturday night while we went out to a neighbour’s house. They take the dog walk on their own. This week, they’re headed off to a winter camp sleepaway experience with their school.

Generational shifts often lead us to believe that things are altogether different than they used to be. Yet, when I realized that I used 1920s slang as a kid, it reminded me that, while things change, some things stay the same. We no longer do sin offerings when we’ve made a mistake as part of Jewish practice. We don’t live in a culture surrounded by physical idols and their worship. However, we still make mistakes and seek absolution. Our kids still learn and grow through graduated steps towards independence, complete with worry and insecurity. One rabbi’s “Go and teach outside” becomes “Get out of town!” – after 2,000 years, the inference isn’t that different.

For each generation, something old becomes new again, or seems new, at least. For every parent, those amazing first moments of change in their kids are important. I burst with pride, telling others about the skating adventure. I revel in being able to go out socially (down the street), while my kids put themselves to bed. These ages and stages happen for everyone, but, each time, we’re still ecstatic with the individual circumstance.

My kids told me later that they had read until 8:40 or 9 o’clock when we were out, but, when we got back, their room was silent, lights were off, with the dog on guard. It was a moment of success. I nodded, feeling impressed. Inside, I was thinking, “Get out of town! Look what we accomplished here!” “Rabbi,” I wanted to say, “check these big bar mitzvah boys out! Look at this growth! That, too, is Torah.”

Moving into our new condo

Living in a condominium steps away from the Seawall and the marina is surreal. (photo from flickr.com/photos/nuntz)

Nobody would deny that the concept of a new home is exhilarating. It’s the packing up a lifetime of belongings, and having to sell and give away a plethora of things that plunges you into ice-cold reality. And let’s not forget the joys of the actual move.

A therapist once advised me to “get comfortable with uncertainty.” Hmmm. That’s like saying, “Learn to enjoy having hot oil poured down your back.” I think not. Much as I strive to embrace that pithy advice (and, on occasion, even succeed), I am just not cut out for it. You can only imagine how well I did with our recent move to a new condo.

It’s been almost a month and I still can’t find my passport or oven mitts. Not that I’m planning to travel anytime soon. But I would like to cook.

Without exaggeration, I packed at least 75 boxes and countless bags of belongings to shlep from our two-bedroom apartment to our new place. And lest you assume that we did what most retirees do and downsized – our collective wisdom ushered us into a bigger space. It is a condo with a kitchen large enough to land an aircraft carrier – which has always been a dream of mine (the size, not the aircraft carrier part). But the dream turned into a miniature nightmare when we moved in and I realized that I had next to no general storage space. Hall closet? Big enough to house a miniature turtle. Bathroom cupboards? Spacious enough for an extra roll of toilet paper and some air freshener. But I do have my humongous kitchen, and you can bet that I plan to cook and bake till the cows come home.

If I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned that you can’t have it all. You prioritize and maybe get 80% of what you originally wanted. Then, you just have to swallow the 20% and move forward. And get creative. Despite my apparent whining, I am truly feeling blessed and in awe of where we live now. We are mere steps from the Seawall and the marina, flanked by gorgeous condos. We are forced to peer daily at the spectacular mountains and sparkling lights of downtown. I keep asking myself, “Is this really my new neighbourhood?” When I come home and walk down the hall to our place, I feel like I’m in a hotel. Surreal, to say the least.

I had always been fiercely protective of our rental apartment and South Granville – we had great neighbours, little coffee shops where I was a regular, we were walking distance to grocery stores, drugstores, restaurants and the beach. Having lived in that apartment building for 37 years, I was their longest tenant. It was really all I knew. I had not lived in a house since I left home in 1974 to go away to university. Owning a home was always something I aspired to do. Until it became an unreachable reality. Being a single librarian until I was 53, owning a home was a pipe dream.

Then, I married, and we enjoyed our little love nest until October 2023, when we learned that our building (along with half the neighbourhood) was going to be torn down so high-rises could be built. Thank you, Broadway Plan! At first, I freaked out. And then, I started packing. I knew not where we would end up, but the writing was on the wall. Actually, the first indicator was in the summer of 2023, when men started hammering little metal plaques on the trees in our area and spray-painting the sidewalks. It was cryptic, for sure, but the mystery didn’t last long.

In February 2024, the company hired to “transition” renters into new homes held a Zoom meeting with all the tenants in our building. No promises were made, but the starkness of the facts hit us like ice water in the face. Right of first refusal. Financial compensation. Rent top-up. Blah, blah, blah. The one phrase that stuck with me though was TRPP – Tenant Relocation and Protection Policy. Luckily, tenants do have some protection, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental issue of unaffordable housing that plagues this city.

Time passed, we considered our options, I fretted over everything. It was a maelstrom of emotions. It took me awhile to wrap my head around the possibility that buying something could actually be within reach. But, events collaborated, luck joined the party, I took my head out of my nether regions, and, voilà, the unimaginable happened! We bought a condo!

Now, I am trying to “get comfortable with uncertainty” and change (as though change is a dirty word). I got my first test when I figured out that my lovely oak desk, which my beloved father, alav ha-shalom, bought me, wouldn’t fit in our condo. Our second bedroom has a Murphy bed and, well, let’s just say that my oak desk is the size of a blue whale. Living in that big river in Egypt (denial), I hoped against hope that something would happen and either the desk or the bed would miraculously shrink overnight. Not a chance. So, I paid movers to move the desk into the condo and, two weeks later, I paid them to move it to the SPCA Thrift Store. And, while I tried to heed my late father’s advice to “cry over people, not things,” I failed miserably. I had a full-on, deep-dish cry-fest after dropping off the desk. All I could do on my drive home was to talk to my father’s spirit and tell him I love him, and tell him how much I miss him, and how much it meant to me that he got that desk for me specially.

I had to do something to honour my father. So, I decided to toast him. Knowing he liked Cutty Sark Scotch, I spent the next hour driving to three different liquor stores to find it, and was finally successful. It was only then that a sense of calm came over me. Maybe it was the Scotch. Maybe it was my dad telling me it was OK to cry over him. Whatever it was, the desk is now in its new home. And so am I. And both of us are very happy.

And I finally have a big kitchen, in-suite laundry, hardwood floors and I don’t face south.

Shelley Civkin, aka the Accidental Balabusta, is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review. She’s currently a freelance writer and volunteer.

Leadership keeps us afloat

There are so many huge transitions lately when it comes to world leaders in the news. From impeaching the South Korean president to the fleeing of Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad, or the issues around Netanyahu, Trump or Trudeau, there’s political change afoot.

It’s natural to feel worried about uncertainty. A friend from university days tells her teen daughters in Jerusalem that we should “think globally but act locally.” This was our popular slogan as undergrads in the 1990s. I repeat this in my household as well. While we can get absorbed in political drama, there’s also a lot to do close to home.

A story I read recently reminded me of what solid leadership can mean. This story (aggadah) was in Tractate Sanhedrin, page 14, in the Babylonian Talmud. Jan. 5 marked five years since I’ve been studying Daf Yomi, a page a day of Talmud. This commitment has been both deep and superficial. Deep, because finding time to commit to this for any mom of school-aged twins is a big ask. It’s superficial because I’m only doing it for 20 minutes a day and I’m mostly reading in translation. My goal to improve my talmudic Aramaic/Hebrew reading skills fell by the wayside long ago. What has remained is a habit. I learn the page every day whether I find it interesting or not.

Sanhedrin hasn’t been the most interesting bedtime reading so far: understanding the law and administering it, and how many judges it takes to rule on different cases. Then, I read this story. The summary, with background information from Rabbi Lexie Botzum, an author at My Jewish Learning, helped me learn more. Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava was an elder during the early second century, facing a period of Roman repression. It recalls the rabbi with great respect, because there was concern that Jewish law and the enforcement of those laws would be lost due to persecution.

The rabbis recount: “… because at one time the wicked kingdom [of Rome] issued decrees of religious persecution against the Jewish people. The sages therefore said that anyone who ordains [judges] will be killed, and anyone who is ordained will be killed, and the city in which they ordain will be destroyed, and the boundaries in which they ordain judges will be uprooted.”

Rav recounts that Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava enabled the judging and enforcing of laws around fines to continue, by doing the following: “What did Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava do? He went and sat between two large mountains, between two large cities, and between two Shabbat boundaries, between Usha and Shefaram, and there he ordained five elders. And they were: Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yosei and Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua. Rav Avya adds Rabbi Nehemya also.”

When the Romans discovered them, the Gemara explains that Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava told his young students (now his colleagues) to run. He was old and couldn’t run, but used his body to distract the soldiers, and was killed. The Roman soldiers “pierced his body like a sieve” with 300 iron spears. We remember Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava’s heroism during the story of the Ten Martyrs, which we recite on Yom Kippur.

Sanhedrin concerned itself with how many people it takes to ordain a judge or rabbi. The rabbis conclude that there were other rabbis with Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava, but this story keeps Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava’s name alive and recognizes his bravery.

There’s a lot to unpack here. After all, does it matter if the Jewish laws concerning fines were taught or enforced today? Maybe not, but this is how law-making and, by extension, politics, work even now. Legislators spend lots of time on minutiae, but it’s those details that make societies function. Today, we still need laws to enforce payments of fines, otherwise governments might not have enough income to pay for infrastructure like roads or police or courts.

Beyond administrative details, without Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava’s foresight and leadership, Jewish people might not have gathered the courage to ordain (appoint) more judges. Without those rabbi/judges, Jewish tradition might have foundered and, perhaps, died out. The Romans’ goal was to force assimilation. This approach to eradicating Jewish culture and learning has occurred multiple times throughout history. For examples, consider the Soviet Union’s repression of Jewish observance and learning, the Nazis during the Second World War, or the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. When Jews are forced to hide, some brave souls go underground and continue to teach, learn and lead, despite great challenges. Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava’s story helps us remember this is important for survival.

I’m not worried that we’ll have to go underground to keep Jewish identity alive. At least, I hope not. In an upside-down world, this is what Jews in Israel have done – using shelters (underground bomb shelters, for instance) to stay safe. What I concluded from the Talmud story is different. It’s so important to have leaders who keep us afloat, via brave and innovative plans, during difficult times. We can’t stake our future on just one person, either. The tractate indicates that Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava was not the only one there, but he stands for all the brave leadership that followed.

In Canada, local Jewish leaders are stepping up on behalf of our communities. This leadership isn’t limited to those in paid positions but extends to courageous volunteers speaking out, too. There are social media warriors, fighting against hate online, and heads of various Jewish organizations on the radio and in the news media. Right now, we need all these advocates plus Jewish lawmakers and their allies, too, working to combat hate. Sometimes, the solutions are in the details – not in how we enforce fines, but in how we legislate bubble zones around places of worship and schools, or how to decide what’s free speech and what’s hate speech.

We shouldn’t have to risk death. Nobody wants to be skewered to death, as the Romans killed Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava, but the other rabbis are also part of the story. We must thank these unnamed people, and their named students. The defence of our identity, learning and tradition is all of our responsibility, and not just for brave leaders. Some run to safety and fight another day; others are allies; and some keep Jewish tradition alive amid changing times. We can all make an effort, and be thankful, for the chance to protect our Jewish identities in Canada, and worldwide.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Thinking the best of others

Imagine teenagers, hanging out and sharing the usual in-group slang, but they’re saying “Lashon hara? Lamed hay! Tell it to me anyway!” This sarcastic chant was new to me, when Miriam Anzovin, the famous Jewish Talmud influencer, mentioned it on Instagram, along with her thoughts on a page of Talmud about lashon hara. Lashon hara, literally “bad speech or language,” refers to gossip, speech that is hurtful. We’ve all experienced it: at summer camp, synagogue, school, work or online. It’s real. It’s painful.

I’m not any kind of expert on this, or even especially good at avoiding harmful speech. The rabbis suggest that there are three bad things that most people can’t avoid daily: sinful thoughts, lack of intention while praying, and lashon hara. In the last week, I’ve thought of this too often.

First, I had the honour of being consulted by two different elders in my Jewish community. In one case, I had to gently lead the conversation away from this kind of talk, by suggesting that it wasn’t my place to comment on something. When it continued, I paused and said that, since Oct. 7, 2023, I had decided to work on achdut (unity) and avoided these kinds of conversations. I try to focus on good things instead. Later, the person I had chatted with apologized. For many of us, we don’t even see how often we’re veering down that road towards negative comments about others.

The second time, I had to tell a person who was “talking trash” that it was lashon hara and I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t believe it when this came out of my mouth. The person was probably 30 years my senior. I wondered, a second later, when had I become this brash or disrespectful? Well, I guess it happens when the elder in question is also treading on thin ice.

This all came up again when I studied Bava Batra 164b. This page of Talmud looks at what makes a document or contract legal, and how we behave to one another when dealing with these documents. Judah HaNasi picks up a document, finds it doesn’t have a date on it, and announces it isn’t valid, it can be discarded. His son, Rabbi Shimon, stops him, saying, “Wait! Perhaps it’s a tied document!” In some regions, people folded a document, then signed and dated it on the outside. It’s a legal document, but with dates or signatures in different places. Why create a “tied” document? It was just a different custom.

When Judah HaNasi disapproves of the tied document custom, his son says, “I didn’t write it! Rabbi Yehuda Chayatta wrote it!” Judah HaNasi then chastises his son for his “malicious speech,” or lashon hara. He tells his son not to blame someone else for making this document or, as Miriam Anzovin says it, Rabbi Shimon rushes to throw Rabbi Yehuda Chayatta “under a bus.”

Then, a scene change: Rabbi Shimon is reading psalms to his father. The book he is using (handwritten, of course, since this was before the printing press existed) is remarkable; the writing straight and neat. Judah HaNasi comments on it. Again, Rabbi Shimon rushes to say, “I didn’t write it, Rabbi Yehuda Chayatta did!” His father responds again by asking him not to do lashon hara.

In this second instance, you’d think, what just happened? Why would the dad say this? Rabbi Shimon is complimenting this amazing scribe. However, Rav Dimi teaches that one shouldn’t go out of their way to praise someone, as that too can attract negative attention.

This point seems strange until it happens in real life. Imagine a teacher points out that a student has done a marvelous job on an assignment, and this results in other kids making fun of the student later, at recess. Drawing too much positive or negative attention to another person can cause problems, according to the rabbis.

I thought about these issues when I encountered another relevant educational incident. A professor creates an assignment for their students and suspects them of using ChatGPT (Open AI) to do the work. The professor thinks they are all cheating and, straight away, files paperwork to have the issue adjudicated by department heads and deans. All these students are now in big trouble.

Since the professor suspects cheating, his colleagues evaluate the work. They run all the students’ work through another AI program to “check” it. This app accuses students of cheating – but it’s sometimes wrong. The AI checking program reportedly has at least a 4% failure rate.

This seems like another complicated case of lashon hara. Is it possible that some students cheated? Yes, it is. At the same time, why did this professor immediately think the worst? Slander against students and student mistakes are both real, but neither is helpful in a learning environment. Most students don’t want to waste their time or tuition money, so they don’t cheat. We can’t always identify malicious intention correctly.

We all complain about others. It’s common to point fingers when something isn’t going our way. There’s always enough blame to go around. Yet, perhaps by drawing attention to others, malicious or complimentary, we also draw attention away from ourselves. The lesson about lashon hara is that getting along with others, being a part of a community, is fraught with pitfalls. We fail ourselves, and others, by saying unkind, unnecessary things. At the same time, we fail others by complimenting them in ways that draw “the evil eye,” or negative attention.

Giving compliments is still important. Just like giving corrections, it must be done with care. In retrospect, I’m embarrassed that I mentioned this to my elders, but I’m also embarrassed by their words. We want to accuse someone else of being “the problem.” In the end, sometimes we are the problem, and that’s hard. A common outcome is when there’s a problem and it’s nobody’s – or everybody’s – fault. Then, we all must bring solutions, show we care about one another, and make amends. We Jews live in community. Achdut, unity, is about more than politics. It’s about caring for one another.

Approaching final judgment

I know I have sinned. Haven’t we all? How then to achieve redemption when I have this whole mountain of transgressions looming over me? I can see it clearly every time I look in the mirror. Was it Yogi Berra who said, “Don’t look back, they may be gaining on ya”? Well, I do look back, and I do see the mountain of my failings.

My problem is that I don’t really, really believe that all those things on the pile are so bad. But then I think about “the Judge,” and hope that He is a reasonable entity. Haven’t I all sorts of mitigating circumstances that I could raise to alleviate any judgment? (I know the record in history shouldn’t lead me to be so confident.)

I have read that, in ancient times, He was pretty harsh because He had to be to prove a point. Rules were immutable. Those who erred against His rules were just erased. The earth opened up and swallowed them up. Some were turned to pillars of salt, some swept away by raging waters, impaled on the swords of the righteous who were rewarded, ravaged by plagues or the Angel of Death. All manner of things of a nasty kind were visited upon those who crossed Him. He sure hated to be contradicted.

But Abraham was able to negotiate some matters with Him, and Jacob wrestled with the angel and survived. Job was restored to his honoured state, and Jonah survived his defiance of the Almighty. David was even able to mollify Him in spite of his own heinous crimes, and he retained the honour of having a descendant who would usher in the End of Days.

Surely these are good signs. Why couldn’t I negotiate a soft landing? I have written some poems, like David, and I can’t imagine that my sins approach the gravity of his biggie. What about all my good will, my good intentions, the milk of human kindness that pours from my being – they have to count for something.

OK, obviously I will not be given the right to build the Third Temple in Jerusalem – and I’m not sure that’s a very good idea right about now, anyway. I also will not likely be recognized as a light upon my nation, or any nation. Even though I think some of my doings are worthy and my writings are prophetic and of divine origin. I have tried with all my might to be a hero. (Well, most of the time!)

I will be happy and satisfied if my grandchildren continue to speak to me, or at least say hello. I accept that mine will be a small life. It took me quite a few years to accept that the best things I ever produced were my children. And a great-grandchild! And I can’t even take all the credit for that.

I was hoping I would accomplish more, but I guess my spirit was too weak and small in size. I was hoping I would make some small mark on the wall of time. Now I would be satisfied if I could point to an unsigned abrasion. That’s how it is when reality sets in and we look around us at all the time that has flown. I ask myself, when is it that I will actually begin to do those world-shaking things that I had inwardly resolved, or foolishly promised, to do?

I will have to be content with the derring-do of my children and grandchildren. And my great-grandchild, the beautiful Shaked! Mayhap they will be blessed with those better elements of DNA that did not find their fruition in what I was able to offer.

I look forward to seeing it all when I have passed the final muster. I know I will have a real negotiating job to do. That may be my finest hour. After all, none of us knows the final outcome. Those with the strongest faith and belief carry forward what is essentially a fervent hope. I can join that congregation. I can look forward to the trial that defines my redemption. I can look forward to viewing the future that will become my children’s past. That is worth fighting for with all the heroic energy I can gather.

Whether or not the energy I consist of returns to the vast storehouse from which new lives are dispatched, I know that the DNA I leave behind will not be relegated to dead storage. I retain the hope, as do all who came before me, and follow after, that there are redeeming qualities in what I leave behind, whatever my personal fate.

I know that whatever the outcome for me regarding redemption, there will be some part of me that is reincarnated. We are all blessed by that potentiality. What a glorious vision that presents! I shall hope it is not watered down by my sins. I shall hope that my potentials will not suffer from my bull-headed insistence on attempting to negotiate a private treaty of redemption, that they will not be diluted as a punishment.

Yet, I do still hope to strike a better deal than I deserve for my delays, my prevarications, my impatience with the disciplines of orthodoxy, my confidence that time has tempered the rigidity of Mosaic law. No votes, please – there are so many who would speak out against me and so few to argue in my favour. I confess I have been seduced by the convenience of laxity in the face of strict religious practice.

Perhaps I can find a good lawyer. It is always a great idea to present a good case. I intend to be an active participant in my defence and to energetically press my case. I wonder what the rules are in that court of last resort. I intend to call my children and grandchildren as character witnesses.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.