Rolling the Dog

 I was struck today by how things that, at one time, seemed new, different or unusual, have become commonplace. I was also able to see things through the eyes of others, to whom what I have now come to accept is still strange.

Some background. Sparky the angry, blind dog is, indeed blind. He has been less angry recently but, alas, still cannot see. People come over to me and ask if my dog is really blind, so I hold two fingers up in front of his face and ask "Sparky, how many fingers?" When he doesn't respond, I say, "He can't see my fingers at all so he can't tell me how many I am holding up. He's blind!"

This usually buys me enough time to walk away.

Occasionally, people persist and want to talk about it. After I get them softened up by waxing poetic about perseverance and the can-dog spirit, I sigh and say "It's sad that we wasted all that time teaching him ASL."

Sparky, along with being blind and sometimes angry, is also lazy when it comes to me. Others can get him to walk, but he knows that I'm an old softie (and I'm emotionally weak, which goes along with my age and texture) so he can manipulate me into carrying him or pushing him in a stroller when we take in the airs. So there we go, dog sitting in a place where one would usually see a baby (or a midget smoking a cigar, pretending to be a baby in a cartoon), and the two of us sauntering down the street.

Originally, this seemed to me to be weird and, as the young people say it, awkward. I mean, he is in a stroller and he is a full grown adult! Cray, cray. But as the months and strollers have rolled on, I have become so accustomed to this that it seems strange to see other people NOT pushing their dogs in strollers.

Today, on one of our outings, we were passed by a car (we don't walk quickly). As the car passed, it slowed down and the driver gawked. Full on, complete gawk mode. A twisted smile, eyes bugging out and even a little point of the ol' finger. Now Sparky is blind, but he knows. He knows.

What struck me, though, was that I thought of the driver as the one acting strange. All I'm doing is wandering down the street with a dog in a-

oh

I flipped the scenario on its head and realized that, while from my perspective this is all fine, dandy and skippy I have to remember that to the majority of the rest of the known world, a dog in a stroller is probably unexpected and, yes, a tad eccentric looking.

When did I stop seeing it as the exception, but as the rule? How long does it take for any new behavior to be the only way to be? When does "new" stop being "new?"

Don't ask Sparky -- he's blind, so he cannot answer. 

Why Matzah?

I'm working on a Torah idea so I'm just going to float this out there:

 

There is a bit of a confusing mixed message in the Hagaddah -- the matzah is listed in one place as commemorating the bread we ate on the way out of Egypt when we had no time to wait and let the dough rise, and yet, earlier on, it is spoken of as being the bread that our forefathers ate while still IN Egypt.

So which is it? Is something special about the lack of rising time? Wouldn't be something they had gotten used to eating while slaves?

The way I see it, they ate it in Egypt because they had to. They had little and were not given time to enjoy eating food, so, as poor people with a paucity of ingredients, they ate matzah. It was a bread of poverty and affliction, and someone else's control over their time.

One would think that the Exodus would solve that! God says, "I'm getting you out, so relax and have a real slice of bread..." but the people, carrying that mentality of servitude run for the hill and now make matzah because they didn't know HOW to wait. They were conditioned. Unlike their dough.

Fast forward to the desert and the construction of the tabernacle. God commands that 12 loaves of showbread (lechem hapanim) are in the tabernacle each week. They are matzot (chabad.org has a nice article on them) but now they signify time and servitude to God, not man.

So at the seder, we eat them to bridge this gap. We WERE slaves to Pharaoh and eat the matzah that he forced us to eat, but then we left to serve God and channeled that sense of rushing not away, but towards, using the weekly Shabbat as a way to turn the bread of affliction to a demonstration of loyalty to Hashem.

We can take even a mark of our lowest descent and use it to signify our wish to rise to the highest heights.

Purim Sheini

 I'm working on an idea but I haven't fully fleshed it out so I'll use this space as a sketch book, only instead of a sketch, I'll put in words that I type as they spill out of my brain and such.

Some holidays have a "second" -- that is, a version of themselves or an echo, a month afterwards, or at some other time of the year. There are Yom Kippur Katans sprinkled throughout the calendar. There is a Pesach Sheini one month after Passover. There is even a Purim Katan a month BEFORE the actual Purim in a leap year. I'd like to posit that Pesach serves as a Purim Sheini.

It seems like many of the themes of Purim reappear on Pesach. In fact, the Talmud rules that in a leap year, the celebration of Purim is in the second Adar so that it has proximity to Pesach and the redemptions commemorated in each are close together. Each one has an obligation of telling the story of that holiday's historic redemption and a text has emerged which allows one to fulfill that obligation: the haggadah and the megillah.

On each holiday, there is a tradition of dressing in a non-standard way -- some wear costumes on Purim and many men wear a kitel at the seder. Each one has an obligation to give charity specifically earmarked for the poor to buy food for this holiday (Ma'ot Chitim and Matanot L'Evyonim).

Each one in, a sense, begins at the beginning of its month even though it doesn't actually begin until 2 weeks later. Mi shenichnas Adar, the joy begins as soon as one enters the month of Adar, and the beginning of Nisan marks our new year and we begin certain practices (and make liturgical changes) as of then.

The central and defining feature of Purim is the notion of reversal -- v'nahafoch hu; the salvation and victory were snatched from the jaws of imminent death and defeat. Passover is marked by the similar, miraculous inversion. We went m'avdut, from slavery, to cheirut, freedom, m'yagon l'simcha, from sadness to hapiness. Haman of Purim reappears later as Ha Mann in the desert (and the Amalek confrontation of Purim is closely tied to the initial encounter with the nation of Amalek in the desert shortly after the exodus).

What does this mean? Mostly that Pesach needs to be a vibrant celebration of all the specific miracles like Purim to balance its myriad rules, and Purim needs to have in mind the complexity and gravitas of Pesach to temper its gaity.

While many sources might show connections between the two, I haven't seen anything which makes a direct connection in the context of a "sheini" a second celebration. Any suggestions welcome.

Ed questions

 Some thoughts and questions regarding education

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Is it more important that we let younger people make mistakes – go through a constructive learning process using trial and error so that they can move forward with confidence that through mistakes they can succeed?

 

Or is it more important that we help them avoid the errors and instruct them directly about the “right” way to build the answer so that they can move forward into other areas armed with knowledge so that they can go further?

 

Is it more important that we model the process of learning, or model the process of knowing? The process of learning leads to independent learning without confirmation of rectitude but allows for autonomy. The model of knowing builds utility into the end result as a foundation for future exploration and valuing expertise.

 

Do we prioritize learning or content knowledge. If the former, then does the choice of content matter? If the latter, then all delivery is primarily to serve acquisition and only secondarily discovery.

Unbearable lighters

 

When I was a freshman in college I lived on a dorm hallway populated with the expected wide variety of personalities. There was the exchange student, the republican, the southerner, the stoner and I was the religious Jew. There was also the wheeler-dealer. He always had an angle and was always working on something.

One day he was wandering the hall holding a briefcase. I asked him about it and he opened it, showing off a selection of fancy lighters that he was selling. No bics, these – you had to open the top and twirl the cylinder thingie. They were fancy! And one of them was a gleaming gold.

Here I am, miles from home, finally in charge of my own expenses and interested in helping out a hall-mate, so, of course, I bought one. I don’t smoke and living in a college dorm meant that I rarely had to start a fire to keep warm, microwave popcorn or drink a beer.

I told myself I would gift it to my dad – some sort of culturally ordained retirement gift, like a gold watch, except this was a lighter because he had a watch. And didn’t smoke. And wasn’t retiring. So, knowing that he might not want or appreciate this gift, I held on to it, you know, just for safe keeping. And once every while and a half, I took it out, flicked it open and lit it, you know, just to make sure that when I gave it to him, or anyone, it would be ready for use. Also, it was shiny and I liked looking at it. It made me feel independent and grown up. I bought this. I used my money and made a decision, and this is mine. So, back into the decorative box with you, I am going to own you some more.

Growing up, all purchases had to be approved of by the parents. Well, not all – heaven knows how much money (of theirs) I spent on my ever growing music collection. College was a chance to buy things that I wanted and not feel like anyone was going to check up on me. Yes, yes, when I bought food and Calvin+Hobbes books from the bookstore, I often asked the cashier to write “texts” on the charge slip, so I’m guilty of that, and when I took cash out of the Shawmut machine (I wasn’t a Bay Bank guy) it was money my parents gave to me for the school year, but this was still a step in the direction of autonomy. For my high school years, I was on a strict, weekly allowance of $10 (to buy lunch each day, unless I wanted to make my own lunch and take it to school. Yuck.) If I couldn’t liberate another couple of bucks from my mom’s wallet, I was stuck with that $10, and when you are addicted to playing pinball, and eating lots of fresh-baked bakery cookies each day, ten dollars doesn’t last very long.

Then I get to college, already on a meal plan and with no particular need for oodles of cash, and there it is. I had gone to the ATM and made sure I always had cash on hand for splurges and whims. When I saw the lighter, and knew I had a $20 in my pocket incapable of burning a hole the way a lighter could; the course of action seemed simple and obvious. I wanted something and I had the ability to buy it so I was going to be my own man and get it. Consequences, shmonsequences. Heck, maybe I’d take up smoking, or go wander into the woods and need to make a forest fire or something.

It is weird how we assert our independence and how we rebel. Little things become symbols of who we are and how we were thinking. That lighter was an impulse purchase, a secret that I both wanted to reveal and needed to hide. It was a lie I told myself and a deeper truth that, even at the moment, I knew.

Thirty plus years later and that lighter is somewhere, I’m sure. A drawer or a box. Maybe the attic. Still in the decorative box. Still waiting for me to develop the right wrong habits. Still waiting to be a gift to my dad.

Parents and Teachers

 

So there I was, in shul, quietly listening to the Torah portion’s being read. Jesse called me over.

“Dan, I know this is about last week’s parsha, but can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” I said, “you can always ask.”

Jesse pointed out Sh’mot, 35:34 which reads “וּלְהוֹרֹ֖ת נָתַ֣ן בְּלִבּ֑וֹ” (ul’horot, natan b’lebo). The Artscroll translation has “He gave him the ability to teach.” Jesse saw that “natan b’leebo” means “gave in his heart” which would indicate the ability, and wanted to confirm the “l’horot” is the word for “teach.”

I agreed.

“Why?” He asked.

The easiest answer would be to say “the Chizkuni explains that it means ‘to give instructions to others’ so that’s what it means” but I doubt Jesse would have been satisfied with that. He asked me, not the Chizkuni. He might have previously asked the Chizkuni, I don’t know. He has a life outside shul so anything could have happened. At that moment, though, he was asking me.

I pointed out that l’horot is the same root as the word for teacher in Hebrew, morah/moreh. He seemed satisfied. But, nooooooo, I couldn’t stop there, so in the grand tradition, I made something else up.

“Seems to me,” I started, “that the word for teaching, like a moreh, a teacher, is connected to the word for parents, horim, because a teacher is exegetically considered a parent figure.” I was actually on solid ground with this one, at least the latter part about a teacher as parent. See here https://rosends.blogspot.com/2022/02/honoring-parents-under-law.html for more. But the etymological connection? I had no idea – which is fine, if Jesse hadn’t been the inquisitive type.

“Did you already study that?” He asked.

“No,” I explained, “I just made it up.”

He smiled and said “Well, there’s a dvar Torah for you to write.” So here I am.

So I did some digging trying to establish some sort of connection between the words for teach and for parent and I’m here to report my findings.

My first step was to look in the Aramaic and see if similar words are used by Onkelos. It turns out that the word used for “and she conceived” (Bereisheet 4:1) is vatahar and in Aramaic, ועדיאת v’adee’at, while the word for l’horot is ולאלפא u’l’alafa. Now, already I was intrigued because the act of physical union is based on the y-d-ayin root which also refers to “knowing” and the word for “becoming pregnant” is “conceive” so there is an intellectual aspect to that event. Teaching seems to work well with that.

Next up, I started looking to see if the roots overlap.

For l’horot, the Sefaria website starts with the Open Bible (via Github) which traces the root to y-r-h, meaning to throw or cast, to point, show or teach. The teacher is putting the curricular material out there, as it were. The same reference source on Sefaria has vatahar starting with the root h-r-h meaning to become pregnant, contrive or devise. So that is about keeping the intellectual property internal or at least, just conceptual.

I ran home. OK, ambled. And pulled out a couple of etymological dictionaries. Ernest Klein’s A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language has the h-r-h root (conceive, become pregnant) from the Akkadian eru (to conceive), and the Ugaritic hry (conceive) but also hr – conception. The derivatives include herayon (pregnancy) and horim, parents. https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.4.1?ven=The_Contemporary_Torah,_Jewish_Publication_Society,_2006&vhe=Miqra_according_to_the_Masorah&lang=bi&lookup=%D7%95%D6%B7%D7%AA%D6%BC%D6%B7%D6%99%D7%94%D6%B7%D7%A8%D6%99&with=Radak&lang2=en&p3=Klein_Dictionary%2C_%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%94.1&ven3=Carta_Jerusalem%3B_1st_edition,_1987&lang3=en

For the y-r-h root he has what you would expect, all sorts of “throw, cast, shoot” words and then a secondary possibility of a connection to the Arabic “rawa(y) he handed down” which would lead to teaching. Interesting but not conclusive.

Over to Matityahu Clark’s Etymological Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew https://books.google.com/books?id=eVAAfn6Itb4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false . For h-r-h he has “implant and absorb seed” so that accounts for definition 1, “becoming pregnant.” But definition two is “teaching: implanting seeds of knowledge.” EXCLAMATION POINT. A direct connection between parenting and teaching, right there. I might have made it up, but clearly, I did not make it up!

Strangely, or not so strangely – I don’t judge, in his entry for y-r-h Clark makes all the connections to throwing and casting but says absolutely nothing about teaching, as if he doesn’t see this as the root for teaching at all. That idea only comes from the parenting word.

But I wasn’t satisfied with just being right; I wanted to add more to the idea. So I thought about the Aramaic words again. The word for pregnancy is ועדיאת so I looked up possible Aramaic words in Jastrow. My Aramaic is incomplete especially as it relates to grammar and while this might hamper one of any sort of integrity, it frees me up to make connections which the scholar might dismiss. So connect, I did. Jastrow (page 1043 http://www.tyndalearchive.com/TABS/Jastrow// ) has the Aramaic word derived from the root for “pass by,” “remove” or “carry” which lead to the woman carrying a fetus. But the source letters of ayin-dalet are the root for “proof” or “witness.” The pregnancy is proof of something. Jastrow has the root of alafa meaning “to join” and “to train” (there, page 72). The root is also the same one as the word for “thousand”. To train others is to increase knowledge from one person to more than one.

This process of growth, from being a parent (proving that you can pass along your genetic material, in most cases, to one other person) to teachers (who increase knowledge substantially and in most cases, to many) also seems to be present in the injunction repeated in Pirkei Avot. In both 1:6 and 1:16 we are commanded to “aseh lecha rav” establish for yourself a teacher. But what is the word for “teacher”? Rav, which also means “many.” We are told that we need to make our singular knowledge more widespread – we have to join others and increase information. The teacher casts information out for all, expanding on the parent who only produces a limited number of witnesses.

So, to answer you, Jesse, the concepts of parents and teachers are very inter-related and the logical link goes beyond just an overlapping etymology into an intellectual progression making the internal external and the local, universal. We can’t keep it to ourselves to we have experts who make sure that it gets out there.

Casting a shadow

 I don't mean to belabor the whole Shylock topic -- I know I have written about him as character and as Jew elsewhere and I know that I have made reference to current controversy regarding a particular actor playing the role but I was struck with an idea this morning and it was too good not to share.

Let's assume that an acting troupe has the ability to play A Comedy of Errors. That play has within it 2 sets of twins. Leverage that in the casting of Merchant. Have two twins play Antonio and Shylock, and the other two play Bassanio and the Prince of Morocco (have those two be a bit swarthier in general appearance, or at least well tanned).

Then, for the Shylock character, don't have him wear anything that would make him externally associated with being Jewish. Don't have him "act" Jewish, or don ritual clothing. Have his Jewishness be a function only of what others say about him. Same for Morocco -- when he says that he is considered good looking where he lives, that will be doubly powerful if he looks like the person whom Portia "fell in love with" based only on those same looks.

There is nothing that I can recall, other than the labeling of the characters, that identifies Shylock as Jewish. Yes, he has a beard. I assume that that wasn't unique to Jews at the time. Yes, he says he will go to a synagogue, but that is external to who he is -- it can't be seen on him when he walks the streets. He is a money lender, but in a sense, so is Antonio. Yes, he wore gaberdine. Unless someone wants to make the case that this was a fabric reserved as a clothing for Jews (or if it is the fabric from which a yellow star is crafted so that there is some ability to differentiate between Jew and non-Jew) the calling it "my JEWISH gaberdine" would make the label the only distinguishing point.

Have characters put the stress on the one factor -- the name. Have them say it slowly and with derision, trying to force to "Jewishness" in to its sound (I recall anti-semites referring to me as "Shlomo" though that is not my name, because it sounded Jewish enough that they could say it as an insult). Have Shylock say his and his friends' names quickly and with little that would make them sound any different. True, Tubal, Chus and Shylock are not classic Italian names so they would naturally sound alien, but they can be glossed over (seasoned in the charge, if you will) so that they need not be a focus. But the non-Jews drag them out to make their point.

If we, as readers, want to see the true insidiousness of anti-semitism, wouldn't the best proof be exactly what Shylock argues -- that Jews are EXACTLY like non-Jews? Then the hatred is only about names and labels, not anything that really is part of the character! And Portia's racism (judging based on geography and association with a skin color which might not, were it associated with another area, be problematic) is laid bare.

Instead of trying to show that the Jew is visibly different, let's show that your average, run of the mill Jew, looks, sounds and lives much like those around him. He tries to blend in and even assimilate, at least in public, and yet it does him no good. He holds a hatred partially based in the same use of labels (hating because they are Christian) but he can also point to actions whereas they cannot.

To my mind, this would present a much more damning picture of the racism, anti-semitism and blind and blunt meanness of the Characters in the play. It would create a more resonating expose on how and why people hate when they hate without cause, distilling their venom through nothing more than a label, one that cannot be corroborated or correlated to any actions by the named "Jew."

You want a version of the play that blows the lid off of evil, try it this way.

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Bassanio and Morocco never appear on stage together. The same actor can be used for both roles. No change in clothing.