4 Days and 4 Fonts

Day 91: Shabbat

It was a stressful and rushed week but it was so nice to be home for both Seders with my family. 

• "Do Not Stand by While Your Neighbor's Blood Is Shed": The Requirement to Intervene: N/A

• When You Suspect Child Abuse: N/A

• Untamed Anger and the Death of Love: I found it really interesting to tie this value into the values we read earlier this year about how to argue with someone (e.g. keep your arguments relevant).

• Be Fair To Your Enemy: N/A

• Don't Make People Tell You Lies: This is going to take a lot of practice but I'm already getting better at it.

• "He Who Saves a Single Life It Is as If He Saved an Entire World": N/A

Day 92: Spend a Week Following Your Heart

Disney's been really good at telling us to follow our hearts and pursue our dreams. It's cute, romanticized, Hollywood. But I'll bet you never considered the ways in which being true to your heart was actually Jewish.

Go to Psalms 15:2 for a moment (thanks to Mechon Mamre for both text and interpretation): 

א  מִזְמוֹר, לְדָוִד:    יְהוָה, מִי-יָגוּר בְּאָהֳלֶךָ; מִי-יִשְׁכֹּן, בְּהַר קָדְשֶׁךָ.	1 A Psalm of David. LORD, who shall sojourn in Thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell upon Thy holy mountain?
ב  הוֹלֵךְ תָּמִים, וּפֹעֵל צֶדֶק;    וְדֹבֵר אֱמֶת, בִּלְבָבוֹ.	2 He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh truth in his heart;
ג  לֹא-רָגַל, עַל-לְשֹׁנוֹ--לֹא-עָשָׂה לְרֵעֵהוּ רָעָה;    וְחֶרְפָּה, לֹא-נָשָׂא עַל-קְרֹבוֹ.	3 That hath no slander upon his tongue, nor doeth evil to his fellow, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour;
ד  נִבְזֶה, בְּעֵינָיו נִמְאָס--    וְאֶת-יִרְאֵי יְהוָה יְכַבֵּד; נִשְׁבַּע לְהָרַע,    וְלֹא יָמִר.	4 In whose eyes a vile person is despised, but he honoureth them that fear the LORD;{N} he that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not;
ה  כַּסְפּוֹ, לֹא-נָתַן בְּנֶשֶׁךְ--    וְשֹׁחַד עַל-נָקִי, לֹא לָקָח: עֹשֵׂה-אֵלֶּה--    לֹא יִמּוֹט לְעוֹלָם.	5 He that putteth not out his money on interest, nor taketh a bribe against the innocent.{N} He that doeth these things shall never be moved. {P}

So in short, who is worthy of living on God's holy mountain? Someone who doesn't charge interest, take bribes, doesn't slander and someone who follows their heart. Rashi explains that this means that a person who follows his heart is someone who is not a hypocrite. He doesn't think one thing and say another.

Day 93: Don't Make Unrealistic Demands of People

So there's a rather popular expression in our world: if you want something done right, do it yourself. Sure you might do it best, that could be because you were expecting the other person to do it exactly the way you do it (the right way) and were, therefore disappointed when they didn't. You can't expect someone to do something the way you do without them being you. If that didn't make sense it's because I've been traveling all day...

Day 94: A Jewish View of Hunting

Within my first few months at college, I made many non-Jewish friends. One of these friends grew up in a country household where his father-son bonding activity is hunting. He described to me how he and his father would sometimes shoot deer but would mostly shoot squirrels, and sometimes they'd cook the meat and eat the squirrels as a meal. 

This, in its lack of Kashrut and appeal, is foreign to me. Beyond foreign actually. I have no other friends who hunt. I have many friends who fish but they fish for kosher fish and then eat the fish for dinner, or they catch what they catch but they don't keep their fish. I'd like to refer back to what I read of Rabbi Ezekial Landau's responsa:

How can a Jew kill a living thing without any benefit to anyone and engage in hunting merely to satisfy ‘the enjoyable use of his time’? For according to the Talmud, it is permitted to slay wild animals only when they invade human settlements, but to pursue them in the woods, their own dwelling place, when they are not invading human habitations, is prohibited. Such pursuit simply means following the desires of one's heart.

In the case of one who needs to do this and who derives his livelihood from hunting (e.g., one who deals with furs and skins), we would not say that hunting is necessarily cruel, as we slaughter cattle and birds and fish for the needs of man....But for one whose hunting has nothing to do with earning his livelihood, this is sheer cruelty.

"My ancestors did not belong to the hunters as much as to the hunted, and the idea of attacking the descendants of those ho were our comrades in misery goes against my grain."-Heinrich Heine