My drasha last night at EVS

Last night, at the request of our rabbi, I delivered the drasha (sermon) of the week during the Kabbalat Shabbat prayers at our synagogue, Emet V'Shalom. It's on this week's Torah portion, בהעלותך B'ha'alotkha. If you'd like to read the original Hebrew (which is what I actually delivered), click here to read about it on my Hebrew blog. Here's the English translation (which was handed out in printed form to the English speakers in the audience):

Shabbat Shalom!

The Torah portion for this week is B'Ha'alotkha. As with many portions, there are several stories in it, but I would like to focus on one of them, which tells us about one of the complaints of the Children of Israel in the desert. Here is my version, a somewhat updated one.

The Children of Israel and all the other people with them developed a craving and they all began to cry together, "Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish and the squash and the watermelons and the onions and the garlic that we ate in Egypt." Apparently, they did NOT remember the hard slavery!

They continued: "And now, all we see is the manna." It should be pointed out here that the manna was a perfect food and was itself a big miracle that G-d gave them every day they were in the desert.

At this point, both Moses AND G-d got angry. Moses began to complain to G-d about the difficult people and this heavy burden. He really wanted to just die!

G-d told Moses to gather 70 of the elders of Israel and promised that they would help Moses with this matter. G-d also instructed Moses to say, in rather dramatic fashion, to the people, "G-d will certainly give you meat, and you will eat it, not one day, not 2 days, not 5 days, not 10 days, not 20 days, but a WHOLE month, until it comes out of your noses!"

Moses simply could not believe this, and he began to argue with G-d. But G-d told him, "You'll see if this happens or not."

And so Moses told the people about all this and gathered the elders, and they began to prophesy. It's not clear to me how this helped Moses, but he seemed satisfied.

And then a strong wind came that brought thousands of quail from the sea. For a whole day and night and the day after, the people gathered the quail and ate them. But while the meat was still in their teeth, a terrible plague occurred which killed many of them. It's written that they called the name of that place Kivrot Ta'avah ("Graves of Craving").

So, what can we learn from this story?

First, let's talk about cravings. Do we not have many cravings that we know are not good for us and not healthy? It's also hard for us to control them, isn't it? My mother of blessed memory used to say that we are creatures of habit. In general, this is good, in that we don't have to think about everything we do. But when we have a bad habit, it is hard for us to change it.

There's another lesson from this story, I think. Only a short time before this story takes place, the Children of Israel had come out of hard slavery in the Land of Egypt. According to our tradition, this was the greatest miracle in history! Besides that, every day they had the manna, which was a perfect food for their needs. It was also a big miracle. Nevertheless, they continue to complain many times against Moses and against G-d.

I'm afraid we are not all that different from them. We live in the Land! Is not this the greatest miracle of the modern world? Every day, we see the flowers, the butterflies, and all the good things that are in this country. We have comfortable homes, beautiful clothes, and all manner of healthy (and even not so healthy!) foods. But how many times do we complain, even about small matters that are not all that important.

I would like to encourage all of us to think about the good things in our lives and not to complain!

Shabbat Shalom!

Kittens, a cow, and horses

Today, I'm sharing several animal pics.

There's a sad story behind the first two pictures. A few weeks ago, one of our neighbors found 4 tiny baby kittens trying to nurse on their dead mother! Shimon, our next-door neighbor brought them to his house, put them behind his gas tanks (where they were fairly well protected), and began giving them diluted milk. He informed us, and we began feeding them cat food, as well. He also bought some dried milk especially for baby cats, and we tried giving that to them, as well. One of the kittens was very weak, and so we brought him/her into the house to try to save him/her. Unfortunately, we did not succeed.

The remaining 3 kittens are doing well, though, and are eating regular cat food with no problems. A little later, the kittens moved from behind Shimon's gas tanks to our yard, where they hide in the pipe that drains water from our roof (when it rains). This is a perfect place for them -- they're well protected, they're further from the road, and the pipe opens out right under our etrog tree, which provides some shade for them, as well.

One of the kittens has really taken a liking to me and is not shy at all. He (or maybe it's "she", since we really can't quite tell the gender yet) comes running to me and LOVES to be held and petted. I decided to name him "Moti", which is a Hebrew word that used somewhat like "sweetie" in English. Here's a picture of Moti sitting on my lap on the steps right above their pipe:

Here's a picture of the other 2 kittens. The one on the left is slightly lighter in color than the other 2, so I call him/her "Bahiri" (from the Hebrew word בהיר Bahir, which means "clear", but it also used to describe lighter colors). The one of the right, who is basically indistinguishable from Moti except by his/her behavior, is "Shai", a popular Hebrew name but, of course, also a play on words, in this case, on the English word "shy", which is pronounced the same.

Yesterday morning, we heard a cow bellowing. When we looked out, we saw this cow near our yard. Although you can't see it in this picture, she looked a bit pregnant. Maybe she was getting near delivery, but she later wandered away, so we really don't know.

In recent weeks, David and I have been trying to walk more. Just on the outskirts of town, there is a great paved path (called a טיילת tayelet in Hebrew). It's about a mile long. We usually park at the far end, and then walked both directions, since this puts the more uphill direction first. Along the tayelet, there is a large fenced area and a group of horses is somewhere in it. Sometimes, we can't see them at all because there are many trees, but very often we do see them, in different areas along our walk. Here's a picture of them that I took yesterday. You can see the horses in the foreground, including a brown baby next to his brown mother in the lower right. In the background, on the right, is the edge of the Ibikor neighborhood of Tsfat. And the picture also gives you a little idea of this beautiful area we have to walk in!