who is a jew?

during the holocaust, a teenage jewish girl was saved by a gentile young man who housed and fed her. though they never married, he also fathered a son through this woman. rabbi ephraim oshry, on his tour of the destroyed jewish communities throughout europe after the war, discovered this woman and her child. rav oshry tried to convince her to rejoin the jewish people, but she was reluctant. "how can i go back to the jews? my son is a gentile, born to a gentile father." rav oshry insisted that her son was, in fact, jewish, and he volunteered to perform the circumcision and pidyon haben for the child.

the confusion that this woman experienced is a common misnomer. we take our family names from our fathers. we take our tribal affiliation (kohen, levi, yisrael) from our fathers. we take our family customs and nusach from our fathers. the israeli government, in an attempt to affront the nuremburg laws of 1935, established the law of return, which identified persons eligble for automatic israeli citizenship based on maternal OR paternal descent.

however, when it comes to spiritual descent, whether a child is a jew or not, this is historically and halakhically passed on from mother to child. though our nation does not encourage conversion, it is acceptable. otherwise, irrelevant of religious observance, born a jew, always a jew. not born a jew, no matter how observant one is of the torah, he is still not a jew.

since this blog post began so serious, i'll lighten up the mood a little by a funny exchange from the movie "the big lebowski" that illustrates this issue:

Walter Sobchak: ......My point is, here we are, it's shabbos, the sabbath, which I'm allowed to break only if it's a matter of life or death...


The Dude: Will you come off it, Walter? You're not even *** Jewish, man.

Walter Sobchak: What *** are you talkin' about?

The Dude: Man, you're *** Polish Catholic...

Walter Sobchak: What *** are you talking about? I converted when I married Cynthia! Come on, Dude!

The Dude: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...

Walter Sobchak: And you know this!

The Dude: Yeah, and five *** years ago you were divorced.

Walter Sobchak: So what are you saying? When you get divorced you turn in your library card? You get a new license? You stop being Jewish?

The Dude: ......You're living in the *** past.

Walter Sobchak: Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax...
[shouting]
You're goddamn right I'm living in the *** past!

now, this issue has come to a fore by the recent court decision in the UK. essentially, UK jewish perochial schools are allowed to reject non-Jewish applicants. however, one family claiming to be "observant", has sued the school for discrimination against thier child born to a jewish father and mother who converted according to progressive (and not orthodox) standards.

the article mentions the court's ruling that basing school admissions on whether one's mother is jewish is by definition descrimination against ethnicity. the UK court decided to rule that a jew is one that goes to synagogue and performs acts of charity and should not be to which lineage you were born to. this, of course, will open up several pandora's boxes, such as thereby defining jews who eat on yom kippur as "not members of the tribe" due to lack of observance. we, as jews, do not believe that to be the case. 

what scares me is that the UK courts thinking that they have authority over what defines a jew. where will they draw the line? will they next determine that every synagogue mustn't discriminate against an unrelaible kosher certification because "a rabbi is a rabbi"? maybe they'll define for us how to keep shabbat too.

the jewish state on the other hand, does have an inherent hand played in all of these issues. there is a constant intermingling of "church" and state. the general population has now learned to regret that historic error of defining that law of return in those terms. israel now has several hundreds of thousands of non-jews in the country that will eventually want to marry in and will face severe challenges in doing so. israel will now have to resolve this mistake by following the necessary guidelines: when determining a civil law that is existentially a spiritual / religious issue, they must take halkha into consideration to be the overriding factor to come to such decisions.

actually, he's a boy

my boy, daniel, has long hair. he's not a hippy, he's not effeminate (despite his three sisters), he's just following a long-standing family tradition of waiting until he is three for an upsherin. ok, it's not exactly long-standing in my family, but it was the highlight of my life when i had mine at age 3!

i'm not going into the full background on the custom, but i still have some faint memories of my toddler years with long hair. i, too, am privliedged with three sisters, but believe that i did not grow up as an effiminate boy. but, when adults saw me with my long locks, they would ask, "how old is she?" or "what's her name?". this of course would offend me and i had to compensate for this misconception by being an overly rambuctious two-year old boy. hopefully daniel can grow up to be a masculine little boy but with a little more grace than i did.

anyway, what made me think of this anecdote/memory? this cute video (see embedded on the blog):


How To Find A Masculine Halloween Costume For Your Effeminate Son

yahrtzeit of the rebbe

today is the yahrtzeit of one of the most influential people in my life. reb shlomo carlebach passed away fifteen years ago today.

no need to give a eulogy for the man, since his reputation preceeds him. you can see the wiki link above for more sources of information. rather, ill just write from my own perspective. growing up, i never had too much exposure to the songs, stories and torah that reb shlomo spread around the world. i never had the priviledge of meeting the man and for that, i feel like something is missing in my life. finally, i began to experience the elevation that he has introduced to judaism and to a way of life shortly after his death.

since then, my jewish music tastes are wholly based on his style and genre. when choosing music for our wedding, i emailed mp3 files of carlebach songs to the band to make sure that this type of song was the focal setting of our dance floor. even when reading rumplestilskin to the kids (don't ask me why i bother with that story), i begin all stories with "one day, one day, one day" (sung to the carlebach tune). and his divrei torah and even simple ideas are often mind-blowing.

as his personality and influence continue to increase posthumously every day, i just read an incredible story by him called "moishele good shabbos". if you click on this link and scroll about half way down, you'll read shlomo katz's version and i can guarantee goose bumps. shlomo katz , a young perfomer / artist who recently moved to efrat,  posted this story on facebook with his own twist at the end.

this past shabbat, i was asked to lead kabbalat shabbat services. though i haven't been chazzan in a while, how could i not use carlebach niggunim on the week of his yahrtzeit? we miss you, rebbe, the deepest of the deep and the sweetest of the sweet.

geocities RIP (z"l)

i was notified by yahoo that geocities, their build-you-own-web-page hosting site, is being closed next week on october 26. for those long-time fans, you may remember the hubscubs website, which was never a predecessor to this blog, but rather a fun site with pictures and a short history of everyone in my immediate family.

back in 2005, i invested a lot of time and effort into building that blog, especially considering i don't know the first thing about web creation or html or anything like that. it was a lot of fun just having, but the truth is that yahoo wasn't willing to allocate enough bandwidth to keep the site afloat even for basic download facility. i.e. i never posted any videos or high levels of graphics, just some pictures and text and every time the site had more than 5 or 10 clicks within a short span of time, it would crash.

so it was only a matter of time anyway. well, now it's closing in less than a week, so if anyone wants to see the site while it's still up, here's the link: http://www.geocities.com/hubscubs/

for everyone else and for posterity, i have another solution. while i was in the process of developing and updating this site in 2005, i opened up a 2nd blog called the hubscubs website blog and posted a few screenshots back then. i just added 18 posts to that blog. the first post is a screenshot of all the current pages on the site. then i added a post each copying the text and some of the pictures from each page. finally, i added a concluding post with a collage that i made of the site. i'm also going to put the collage here to remember the site by but i strongly encourage you to check out the other site too:

http://snurl.com/smyx0

i haven't done much updating of the site over the past several years. after maayan was born, 3 and a half years ago, i updated all the kids and the even the nieces and nephews. when daniel was born over a year ago, i added a page for him, but that's about it. so, since some of our family never made it to the hubscubs website, soon to be z"l, i'll make a shout-out for shana popel, yisrael tzvi galster, ithamar nisenbaum, elimelech may and yocheved horwitz.

i'll miss you geocities. on to bigger and better projects.

my first iblog

well, i've itweeted, ifacebooked and now thanks to google's release of the free blogpress light app in honor of blogger's 10th year, i can now iblog.

no promises of higher levels of output, but this is exciting. possibilities are endless!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

the state of israel = sukkah

well, it's chol hamoed and should i really be blogging? it's actually become a big topic lately and publicized on popular blogs based on a psak from rav sherlo.

these blogs discussing this issue seem to ignore the fact that i have already delved into this issue at length way back in 2007 with my post: "Is Blogging Maase Uman or Maase Hedyot?" granted, my post was without any consultation with rabbinic authorities, but MAN, i get no respect around this here jblogosphere.

alas, i digress. now that it's permissible for me to blog, i wanted to share a quick thought that our rabbi, harav boruch efrati, said on friday night in shul.

the background is a well-known discussion in the talmud of why we sit in sukkot, booths, during the holiday. one opinion is that it commemorates the spiritual protection that G-d provided us with the "Clouds of Glory" as we left Egypt, or the actual booths that we dwelled in during that period.

without getting into too many details as to the methodology of arriving at this conclusion, the talmud's resolution is that today's sukkot represent the "Clouds of Glory". Rav Efrati added an interesting note. when the State of Israel was established in 1948 for Jews to come home, it must be recognized that this is not simply a "booth for shelter". this is not a place to run to since no where else wants us and we need physical protection. rather, we must look to the sukkah to remind us that the State of Israel serves as a vehicle for the Presence of the Almighty, similar to the way the Clouds of Glory did as we were redeemed from Egypt.

i found that idea to be extremely powerful and wanted to share it.

on a lighter note, i found a nice google doodle in honor of the holiday, for your eye candy

pleasure:

moadim l'simcha....

i finished my MBA!

wow. almost 17 months of endurance, patience, hard work and, of course, learning at the university of haifa's international executive mba.

so overwhelmed with excitement am i, that i couldn't think of a more wittier or poignant blog title that would sufficiently reflect my joyous exuberance.

just thought i'd share a few of my on-field and off-field experiences over the past several months, in no particular order:

1. in a 'negotiations' class, we simulated the fact that each position had to give a little by arm wrestling.

2. our mba had a focus in commerce in the far east with classes on china, japan and india. these classes were the least interesting to me and didn't live up to others' expectations either.

3. we had a professor from behavioral science that scared the hell out of us with his sinister stares.

4. this dutch guy, hofstede, got a lot of attention. seemed like every class ended up somehow dealing with the cultural dimensions in business (after all, it is an 'international' executive mba).

5. while sleeping in the dorms one night in the summer when it was meant to be empty, i locked the door from the inside. this apparently bothered the guy who was pubbing all night and showed up at 2 am to find a locked door. he didn't take it too well.

6. speaking of pubs, i had to go a few times myself. found myself in some awkward positions when the menu says "ham & cheese" - לא בדיוק לשומרי כשרות - not 'exactly' for those who keep kosher. (i'll have to admit, it was pretty sad to see that.)

7. my little boy daniel was born during the first semester, the first of seven children born to our class this year. i invited the whole class from haifa to come down to hebron. shockingly, not a single one came. it must have been because of the financial accounting class that was taking place at the same time. so what was the excuse for my colleages at deloitte? :)

8. thanks to the birth of daniel during the summer of 08 and my sister sarah's wedding in the summer of 09, i was afforded two 3-week vacations for the occasions. that doesn't mean the professors let me off the hook though.

9. in our final semester, our five-person team in the business simulation game led a bike shop with a starting shareholder value of $10 down to a few cents within a very short time. our team apparently did the worst, but our final presentation was done with a smile anyway.

10. i'd say the most interesting classes for me were project management and business strategy, which both gave some actual insight into leading companies and addressing several facets of operations at once. though this did not manifest itself in a successful business simulation game (above), it was nonetheless fascinating and intriguing.

boruch Hashem, this period is behind me and i am pleased with my decision to pursue it. it certainly gave my perspective and deepened my understanding and capabilities beyond my day-to-day work in transfer pricing. and since i wasn't called up there as valedictorian (no one was; in israel we don't get our diplomas until next may), i'll have to say my oscar thank yous through the blog:

thanks to the classmates for making the environment serious enough to learn, but fun enough to want to see you guys again the following week.

thanks especially to the classmates who let me crash in their homes (uri, stephanie, amit, and danny). also thanks to the pinsky family for opening their home while they were on sabbatical.

thanks to YUTorah.org for keeping me company on my long drives back and forth to haifa with mp3 files of shiurim on the parsha, theology, holidays, etc.

thanks to the professors and administration for doing what it is that they do.

and finally, thanks to G-d for giving me the ability to cope with a family, job, and school and thanks to malka for basically single-handedly managing the family and home in my absence. i couldn't have done it without her (or without her permission :) behind every MBA graduate is an even stronger woman supporting us.