Maryland Rabbi Menachem Mendel Bluming

Let’s do a simple exercise.

Think about the blessing you need right now.

Acknowledge the obvious fact that G-d, being all powerful, can solve your problems and fulfil your needs with the click of a finger. One phone call, one ‘chance’ meeting, one turn of events can change everything. You may not be able to imagine how your life could turn around, but G-d is not limited by your imagination. G-d can do anything.

You know all this. That’s the easy part. Here’s the challenge. Take your faith to the next level. It’s not enough to know it in your mind. You have to feel it in your heart.

Feel calm and relaxed, right now, even with your issues yet unresolved and your needs not met. You are in G-d’s hands, and G-d is good. Your problems will go away and everything will work out. So why wait until then to enjoy it? Start celebrating now. Feel the peace and comfort of knowing that everything is good, even before you can see it. Smile and be happy. It’s all done.

When you bring your trust in G-d down from the mind into the heart, and actually feel calm in the face of chaos, you expand faith from an intellectual belief into an emotional conviction. That makes it real. And real faith invites real blessings to come down. 

Let’s be clear, this is no magical formula to get whatever you want. In the end, G-d does what’s best. But when you feel your faith, you open yourself up to whatever good awaits you. And may it be sweet and plentiful always!

What is the big deal if I make a quick call on Shabbat? It isn't such hard work to dial the number and talk. Will the day of rest be totally disturbed by my 30 second call??

Here's a thought...

You are out for a romantic dinner, just the two of you. You make a reservation at a fancy restaurant, a quiet table for two in the corner. Gentle music is playing, lights are dimmed, and the ambiance is just perfect for an evening of romance.

You resolve not to talk about work, not to talk about the kids, rather to take the time to really connect and enjoy each other's company. You laugh together, chit chat, and give one another complete focus and attention.

Then suddenly you say, "Oh, I just remembered something." You take out your phone and call your business partner to remind him to send a report you are waiting for. It all took no more than fifteen seconds. You quickly put your phone away and smile at your wife.

But she's not smiling. You just ruined the moment. You destroyed the atmosphere. Until now it was all about the two of you. As soon as you took out your phone, the ambiance was shattered. You brought the outside world into your intimate space.

You could try explaining that it was just a little phone call and is really no big deal. Good luck with that. If you think you can make a business call on a date night, you just don't get what it means to create an intimate ambiance.

The Shabbos laws are all about creating an ambiance of rest, a moment of spiritual intimacy. The short call, as insignificant as it may seem, would change the ambiance and ruin the moment.

Someone who has never fully kept Shabbos may find this hard to understand. But if you've tasted the profound sense of restfulness that Shabbos can bring, you know how even a slight interruption can make a difference.

We all need date nights and we all need Shabbos. And we need to protect the intimacy of these sacred moments.

Torah teaches that Hebrew is the original language. The world was created with the Holy Tongue. When G-d said "Let there be light" He said it in Hebrew: "Yehi Ohr". Adam was given his name because he was made from the ground (Adama), and Eve (Chava) because she was the mother of all life (Chai). These word plays only work in Hebrew.

All other languages are translations of the original, their vocabularies a series of made up words. A cow is called a cow in English because we all agree to call it a cow. But it is called a Parah in Hebrew because it really is a Parah. The Hebrew word for things is their actual name.

There could be scholarly backing for the concept that it all started with Hebrew. Linguists have been able to trace words in multiple languages back to their Hebrew roots. For example, the Hebrew word Derech (way/road), can be found in Daroga (Russian), Derecho (Spanish), Durch (German) and Doro (Japanese), as well as our own English word, Direction. Some offer this as evidence that all roads lead to Hebrew.

But whatever the scholars may say, the Torah is our ultimate source. And the Torah teaches that Hebrew is G-d's language. This is why we still pray in Hebrew. We are using the very words that G-d used to create the world. The very words have power. Even if we don't understand what we are saying, our soul does. Hebrew is the natural language, the underlying vibration of the universe, the code that G-d spoke into creation.

Have you ever tried snapping out of a bad habit only to find yourself falling right back into it? I don’t think you should quit your bad habit entirely. That seems too much, and apparently hasn’t worked for you in the past. 

I suggest you quit just for one day. 

This would be manageable. I’m sure you can control yourself for a single day. Especially when you know that it isn’t forever. You can go back to your vice tomorrow. But today, just today, you are over it.

Then do the same thing again tomorrow. 

And the next day. 

This is an old hack to fool the Yetzer Harah - the evil urge inside us that pushes us to do the wrong thing. When you say that you are quitting forever, your evil urge fights back ferociously. But if you reassure it that you’ll be back to your devious ways tomorrow, and you’re just taking a day off, it doesn't feel threatened and leaves you be. 

After one vice-free day, you have reclaimed a tiny bit of control over your urges. Now you have your foot in the door. You are that little bit stronger, just enough to stretch it another day. And then another. And so on. Before you know it, that urge loses its hold on you. And it all started with just one clean day.  

This is the meaning of what we say in the Shema prayer: “These matters I command you today.” G-d only tells us to be good today. That’s it. He never asked us to be good forever. Forever is too daunting. A day is realistic. We can handle that. 

Conquer one day, and give yourself credit for doing it. Even if you fall again, don’t beat yourself up about it. You'll live to fight another day. 

This is one of the biggest secrets of life. Good doesn't always taste good. But not-good often looks and tastes good. 

It has to be this way. Imagine it was the other way around. If good always felt good, and bad just felt bad, who would do bad? Our challenge is to make the right choices in life. But for that we need a choice. 

There are two paths to choose from: the path of good and the path of no good. One path leads to true happiness, the other is a dead-end leading nowhere. And it isn’t so easy to tell which is which.  

G-d wanted to make it fair, so He let bad look good. The bad path has nothing to offer, so G-d gave it good PR. The wrong path is so much more tempting. Unhealthy food is the yummiest. And doing the wrong thing seems so much fun.

But that’s just looks. The good path is where real enjoyment lies. The choice is between superficial good or real good. As our sages wisely said: “Don’t look at the packaging, look at what's in it.” Don’t fall for the glitter, dig for real gold. Don’t do what feels good, do what is good. You’ll see, there’s nothing yummier. 

I remember at school a friend failed his end of year exams and had to repeat a grade. He stayed back for a year and was no longer in our class, but rather the class below. We all moved on but he was held back.

Some think reincarnation is like repeating a year at school. While some souls graduate to the next world after their life in this world, others are sent right back down to get things right in another life.

That is not quite how Judaism teaches that it works.

A better metaphor would be a mobile data rollover plan. The phone company gives you 15GB of data per month. Any part of that data you don't use in one month rolls over to the next month. So if you only used 14GB in May, that 14GB is gone, but the remaining 1GB comes back for you to use in June.

Your soul has multiple gigabytes of spiritual energy and divine potential. This is the power G-d has invested in you to fulfill your mission in life. You use that potential by doing good deeds, performing mitzvot. Every mitzvah activates another gig of your soul energy. You have been given an allotted number of days in this word to utilize your gigs for good.

At the end of the billing cycle, when your time comes to leave this life, the activated parts of your soul go up to a higher place, because that part of you has completed its mission on earth. But if you have unused soul potential, if you didn't activate all of the energy invested in you to do good, then that unused part of your soul comes back again in another body to finish the job.

So when someone passes away, we pray that their soul should find rest in heaven, because that's where the already used part of the soul is found. As for the unused part of the soul, it will come down for another gig.

A convert can marry a Jewish king. A convert can marry a prophet. A convert can even marry a rabbi. So there must be some reason for a Kohen not being allowed to marry a Kohen.

Here is Kabalistic thought:

When the Torah forbids a marriage, it is never because one party is not good enough for the other. It is because both parties are not matched to each other. They are simply not soulmates. In the case of the Kohen and the convert, their soul dynamics clash, their spiritual energies contradict, and so they can't marry.

The holiness of a Kohen is hereditary. If your father is a Kohen, then you are a Kohen. Priesthood is a birthright that is not achieved through a person's effort nor deserved through a person's righteousness. It is bestowed at birth.

The holiness of a convert is the exact opposite. It is completely earned. The convert was not born Jewish. They chose it. They achieve Jewishness of their own initiative and with their own hard work. They are self-made souls.

So these two souls, the kohen and the convert, are moving in opposite ways. The kohen receives their power from above. The convert creates their own soul energy from below. The Kohen has the ability to bring down blessings to others, just as their soul was given to them as a blessing. The convert has the power of innovation, of initiative, of creating holiness from the ground up. They are going different directions. For this reason, their souls are not a match.

Both the Kohen and the convert have awesome holiness. It is a great privilege to be gifted with the soul of a Kohen. And yet, the self-made soul of a convert has a depth of experience that inherited holiness cannot compete with. Neither are second class souls. 

The Kohen is crowned with a legacy from past generations. A convert creates their own legacy for future generations. The Jewish people is richer for both of them.

Mendel (Menachem) Bluming

Question: My Dad drags me to synagogue and insists that I stay with him for 20 minutes. The prayers mean nothing to me, so why should I comply?

Here's a thought, I challenge you to try this.

When it's time for the prayers, sit with your prayer book open and start reading. For the next twenty minutes, try not to take your eyes off the book. Try to maintain focus and concentration for the entire duration of the prayers.

I don't mean to have mystical intentions or to meditate on anything in particular. Just look at the letters on the page without lifting your eyes.

It will be excruciatingly hard. At first you might only be able to last half a minute. But over time, if you persist, you will be able to hold focus for the entire twenty minutes.

This powerful brain exercise is much needed today. We live in a time of shortened attention spans and over-stimulated screen addictions. Most people would not even be still reading as far as this paragraph without getting distracted. By looking at your prayer book daily you will get a huge head start in life. Focus, discipline and persistence are tools that every successful person must have. You will not learn these skills from your phone. You will learn them from your prayer book.

Now you might argue, if I'm going to spend twenty minutes focusing on one thing, why not focus on a game or something that interests me, rather than a prayer book that doesn't interest me at all? Well that's the whole point: to focus on something that is not your thing. It's not your interest, it's not fun, it is something out of your norm. The discipline and self-control required to do something you are not in the mood of doing is itself an achievement, and a vital life skill.

This is actually the true purpose of prayer, to transcend yourself for a few moments a day. It will make you a better person. Believe it or not.

Many see prayer as a wish list. It’s as if G-d is some supernal vending machine, and prayers are the currency you drop into the slot to get what you want. If that were the case, this vending machine needs repair.

But that’s not what prayer is. Prayer is a practice of gratitude and humility. We give thanks for what we have received, and humbly ask for what we need. We recognize that all we have is a gift, and whatever we lack can only be fulfilled by G-d, the source of all. He may give us what we ask, or He may not. We know that from the start.

A person of faith knows that nothing is random, nothing is meaningless, and ultimately G-d is in control. This doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen. Prayer gives perspective to know that there is a bigger picture, strength to know that even hard times can have hidden blessings, and humility to know that we can’t control what happens, only how we react to it.

I would call that a prayer that works.

There is a story told by the great chassidic teachers, and it goes like this. 

There was once a simple villager who won the lottery. In the olden days, this meant literally winning a pot of gold. So with excitement and anticipation, he set out on foot for a three day journey to the big city to collect his winnings.  

When he came to the lottery office and saw his prize, he realized he could not possibly carry such a heavy pot of gold home. So with some of his new wealth he hired a wagon driver with a strong horse to carry him and his pot back to the village.

The journey took several hours. Along the way they stopped off at the side of the road for a little rest. The wagon driver parked the wagon in what seemed to be a safe spot and the villager had a little nap under a tree.  

Refreshed and ready to go, they jumped back onto the wagon to continue the journey. But after a short while the wagon driver stopped and said, "I think your pot of gold has been stolen." The villager quickly went to check. To his great distress he saw that indeed the pot was gone.

The villager immediately turned suspiciously to the wagon driver and asked him accusingly, "How did you know that the pot was stolen without even looking into the back of the wagon?"

The wagon driver answered, "It was obvious. When we were traveling earlier, before we stopped for a break, the horse was struggling under the heavy load. But since we resumed our journey the horse is galloping so easily and effortlessly, I could tell that he's not pulling a heavy weight any more. Only an empty load is easy to carry. When you have a pot of gold in your wagon, it takes effort to carry it."

The same applies to us. When life seems tough, when we need to put in effort and struggle to keep on moving, it means that we are carrying a treasure on our back. The smooth and easy times may be pleasant, but they are not as rewarding. The riches of life come from hard work.

So keep pulling the load. And be thankful for it. Only a horse is happy with an empty wagon. A life of Torah and Mitzvot is a full life, like carrying a pot of gold. 

A fish out of water does not die immediately. In fact, a fish out of water seems quite lively. It flips and flops and dances around, seemingly more active than it was before. An ignorant observer may think that the fish is better off on dry land, free from the confines of the sea. Just look how vibrant and energetic it has become!

But we know the truth. This tragic dance will not last. All that intense movement is not an indication of good health, it is a desperate and hopeless grasp at life.

A Jew without Torah is a fish without water (teaching of Rabbi Akiva, Talmud Brochos 61b). We can flip flop for a while, jumping from one ideology to another, this save-the-universe cause or the next, but it won't last. You can only stay Jewish without Torah for a generation, maybe two. Then the flipping and flopping stop altogether.

This is not about being orthodox. It's about being immersed in genuine Judaism. And that is open to anyone. In your own way, with your critical mind and passionate heart, engage in the conversation of Torah and bring Jewish observance into your home. That will ensure the Jewish future, just as it has defined the Jewish past. Everything else is just flip flopping.

Mazel tov!

If Jews believe in Divine Providence (fate), why do we always use the word mazel which means luck? Isn't that a contradiction of belief?

Actually, mazel is usually mistranslated as luck. The correct meaning of mazel is "a drip from above". Which is probably why people just translate it as luck. It doesn’t quite sound right to say, "Wishing you a good drip from above on the occasion of your bar mitzvah".

Your mazel is your pipeline from heaven. In heaven there is abundant blessing waiting to come down to us. But as those blessings descend to earth, they can become corrupted. The freshest water can be polluted if the pipes are dirty.

Good mazel means the flow from above reaches us unadulterated, in the form of positive and happy experiences. If the flow is blocked or contaminated, that’s bad mazel, and things don't come out as blessings. When we say Mazel tov on a special occasion, we are wishing that the blessings should flow freely from above. 

There are ways to unblock your pipes. Do more mitzvahs. Give more charity. Be kind and generous and forgiving. That will keep the pipes clear and the flow smooth. But being stingy and mean, vindictive and petty can clog up the passages and spoil the waters.

Luck is random and anonymous. Mazel is targeted and personal. It's not just dripping down from nowhere. It is from G-d. He wants to give you blessings. Open your pipes to receive them.

Wishing you lots of mazel,

Mendel (Menachem) Bluming

The choice of words the Torah employs to describe the role of the spouse — "a helper against him" — seems contradictory. If a wife is supposed to serve as a helper to her husband, she is obviously not poised "against him?"

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi explains that the woman becomes a "helper" for her husband by sometimes being against him. For a husband to become the maximum he can be, he must profess the courage to welcome the ideas and feelings of his spouse which may be "against" his own.

Some men cannot tolerate their wives disagreeing with them, and conversely, some women cannot handle another opinion. They grow angry and frustrated, exploding or imploding. What often transpires, as a result, is that the woman, or the man, in order to maintain a peaceful atmosphere in the home, remain silent. Or, to avoid confrontation, they just drift away from each other emotionally. Conversely, the arguments and fighting never cease.

The Torah is teaching us a different option. Each of us needs the help of our partner to be healed from our egos, insecurities, blind spots, and wounds. When a man and woman learn to genuinely embrace the otherness of his/her spouse, they can develop a true bond and reach their own deepest core.

This does not mean, of course, that it is a biblical injunction upon every woman and man to disagree with their spouse 100 percent of the time.  What it does mean, though, is that we must learn to respect and truly listen to the voice of our second half.

In the days of the Holy Temple the entire nation would gather to hear the Jewish king read from the Torah on Sukkot after the Sabbatical shmitah year. It was exactly at this time.

Each mitzvah has continuous application even those that we no longer keep in their original form. By gathering together this year in your home or in your sukkah, in your office or wherever it might be and sharing the values of the Torah together you continue this important tradition and link yourself with the entire Jewish people keeping the Hakhel tradition this year.

Covid lockdowns and isolations have taken a toll and the antidote is Hakhel, joining together to rejoice and celebrate, to study and connect.

The Torah uses numerology, a method of connecting concepts via numbers. Every Hebrew letter has a numerical value. The first letter, Aleph, has the value of one. The second letter, Beit, is two, and so on.  When the letters of two words have the same value, it indicates an inner connection between them.

So if “nut” and “sin” add up to the same number, there is something in that. Which is one reason why the Code of Jewish Law (Rema, Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 583:2) discourages eating nuts on Rosh Hashanah.

The problem is, they don’t add up.

The Hebrew word for nut is Egoz אגוז, whose letters add up to seventeen.

The Hebrew word for sin is Chet חטא, which adds up to eighteen.

Oops.

Well, there is a possible explanation. The last letter of the word Chet is a silent Aleph. It isn’t pronounced as part of the word. So it isn’t counted. Aleph is worth one, so if you take the Aleph out of Chet, you get seventeen, not eighteen.

But that itself seems a stretch. Can you delete a letter just because it doesn't fit in with your calculation?

Yes, in this case you can.

Silent letters are extremely rare in Hebrew. Unlike the English language, where silent letters abound in words like knee, through, tongue etc. In Hebrew, every letter is pronounced. Even the letter Aleph, that has no sound of its own, is almost always read as a vowel sound.

One of the very few exceptions is the word Chet, sin. It has a silent Aleph hiding at its end. The fact that the word for sin has a silent Aleph must be significant.

Aleph is the first letter of the alphabet, with the value of one, and is unpronounceable on its own. These attributes also apply to G-d - the One, the First, and the Ineffable. A silent Aleph represents G-d.

Of all places, where do you find this silent Aleph? At the end of a sin.

After we have done something wrong, we have a choice how to react. We can try to ignore it and pretend we didn’t do it. We can beat ourselves up for being so bad. We can make up excuses and justifications for what we did. But all of these options are unhealthy.

The right reaction to sin is to see it as an opportunity to go deeper, improve ourselves and learn how to get up again. You can find G-d after you fall, and that discovery takes you to an even deeper place than where you were before the fall.

This is the meaning of the silent Aleph in the word for sin. After every mistake we make, there is the silent voice of G-d inviting us back. Every time we stray from the path, even when we think we are far, G-d is near.

So we don’t eat nuts on Rosh Hashanah. Because the word nut equals the word sin, but only without the Aleph. And a sin that is not followed by seeking G-d, truth and deep reflection… is just bad. We don’t want anything to do with that attitude. We want to find the Aleph in every fall, the lesson in every mistake, and the closeness that follows distance.

View your mistakes as doorways to growth. See your weaknesses as openings to living deeper.

Find G-d in sin. How nuts is that?

I wish you a sweet, happy and healthy new year, full of joy and many Aleph moments.

Do you know the song that is sung over and over again over Rosh Hashanah: "Zachreinu Lichaim Melech Chafetz Bachayim..." Remember us G-d for life, we pray over the High Holidays.

The basic meaning of it is a prayer to G-d for life in this coming year, undoubtedly a critical prayer, especially during a lingering pandemic.

There is a deeper meaning too. Zachreinu can mean remember us and REMIND us. Zachreinu Lichaimn can thus mean "G-d please remind us to live this year!"

Please G-d don't allow this to just be a year during which I wait for Covid to end and the S&P to improve. A year during which on Monday I look forward to Friday...

Protest the time that is robbed from you, that slips through your fingers.

Time is so precious... Our lives are so fleeting.... If you are reading this note you are the oldest that you have ever been in your life... and the youngest that you will ever be!

In every stage of life we look forward to the next stage because then we will really make it... Remind me G-d to live today!

Don't let me be alive just because I haven't died yet... Don't allow me to forget this year how precious my life is and how valuable every moment is.

Zachreinu Lichaim. Remind me G-d to LIVE FULLY this year!

Old age is not so easy to define. For a professional football player, forty is already over the hill. On the other hand, there are budding authors in their eighties publishing their first book. So who is old?

We do need a clear answer. There is a mitzvah to “rise before the aged, and give deference to the old.” (Vayikra 19:32) This means more than just offering old people a seat on the bus. It means listening to what they have to say and taking their words seriously. 

The mere fact that a person has been around for a while gives a level of credibility and weight to their opinion. Of course there are some very foolish octogenarians, and there are some very wise millennials. But nothing beats life experience. Elders deserve respect just because they have seen a lot.

But how old is an elder? 

The most authoritative opinion in Jewish law (Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Deah 244:1) states that you are an elder and must be accorded honor from the age of 70.

But a most delightful definition of old age is found in the Talmud tractate Niddah 9b. It says that if people call you “oldie” and you take it as an insult, then you aren't old. But if you don't mind people calling you old, then you have earned the title of elder. 

This is brilliant. As long as you are stuck in the cult of trying to stay young, you haven't reached the age of respectability. The sign that you have attained the level of mature wisdom is that you are comfortable being old. It's not an insult, it's an honor. 

So let's test you, oldie.

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