There is no word in Hebrew for ‘coincidence.'”
— Rabbi Yitzchak Zweig
“Cheap Astronomy”
NOT ALL AMATEUR STARGAZING can, or even should, be done with equipment.
Sometimes, you look up at the stars and wonder while taking out the trash. Or you might look up and wonder what that bright steady light is: a UFO/UAP? Hovering helicopter? Planet? Or you might even ponder that most mighty of imponderables: “Where did this all come from – and what’s out there anyway?”
Enter “Cheap Astronomy (Explore the Universe on a Shoestring),” a website (and state of mind) from our plucky Down Under astro-siblings. Written in typical dry-witted, no-nonsense Australian style, their articles and podcasts are listed under the following headings: “Naked Eye Astronomy,” “Fun with Binoculars,” “Cheap Telescopes,” “Too Cold Outside,” “Cheap Cosmology,” “Reader Contributions,” and others. Though mostly focused on observing from the Southern Hemisphere, even we Northerners can find ample material to marvel over and apply to our own hobby/lifestyle*.
Cheap Astronomy’s approach to skywatching may be mildly tongue-in-cheek, but truly, there’s much serious fun to explore here. So what’s keeping you? Check ’em out today – or tonight!
* That question – “Is amateur astronomy a mere hobby, or an all-consuming lifestyle?” – is an old and shifty one. Take a good look in your inner mirror before answering.
Rear Window
“Your spirituality is none of my business.” –Anon
How do we understand the Divine in our lives?
That’s the question answered by this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash (Genesis.44.18-47.27). Joseph is reunited with his brothers, and informs them that indirectly selling him into slavery was actually part of G?d’s plan. Without that act, he would not have risen to second-in-command of Egypt and been able to save his family from the seven years’ famine predicted by Pharaoh’s dream.
Torah is teaching us an important point: that spiritual hindsight is 20/20 vision. Only by seeing how events have unfolded can we discern the G?d of our understanding; as G?d is later to tell Moses, “You may see My back … [but] you cannot see My face, for no one may see Me and live.” It was up to Joseph to see G?d’s hand in matters, but as the Torah later tells us, his brothers never accepted that explanation.
When someone in our lives is struggling in any way, it may seem like a kindness to tell them that what they’re going through is “all part of G?d’s plan.” But we know that’s not appropriate. Pirkei Avot tells us not to comfort someone when their dead lies before them; comfort is in the heart of the beholder. Whatever we experience is not for others to interpret as to cause and effect.
After all, all we really know is the G?d of our understanding. And who’s to say we got It right?
Righteous Rage
THEY WANT US TO FEAR.
That’s not going to happen.
The 15 Jews martyred in Sydney are a cross-section of the Jewish world: Two rabbis. A Ukrainian survivor of the Holocaust. A pre-Bat Mitzvah girl. An Israeli. And ten others. All killed for the “crime” of being Jewish in public.
There are no words to express our shock, anger, and grief at this vicious and hateful turn of events, because you know them all anyway, because they’ve all been said before, again and again and again.
What I will say is this: We are not leaving. We are not cowering. We are not giving up our identity. We are who we are, as we’ve been for millennia, and will be – G?d willing – for millennia more.
We are an eternal people, and we will survive.
Deal with it.
Cat Whispering
IT’S NOT ACTUALLY hard to become a Cat Whisperer, if you just follow these field-tested and foolproof steps:
1. When you first behold the cat, sweet-talk it: e.g., “Who’s the nice cat?” or “Hey, beautiful boy/girl!” or simply, “KITTY!”
2. Let the cat approach you instead of vice-versa, lest it bolt. (The first Rule of Thumb in any feline encounter: NEVER MAKE A CAT AFRAID OF YOU.)
3. Present to the cat the back of your motionless hand, without trying to reach out for it. (See Rule of Thumb above.)
4. Should you be blessed by having the cat rub its face on your hand, keep your hand motionless and enjoy its warm attentions for the duration.
5. When the cat, sensing your good intentions, rubs its side against your hand, shift your hand to its rump to give a few experimental skritches. Let the cat’s tail slide (loosely!) between your thumb and forefinger as it passes.
6. If the cat turns and makes a beeline for your hand, repeat steps 3-6 until your new friend tires of these familiarities and leaves.
7. If, when you next see the cat, it runs to greet you, congratulations.
8. See?
Instant Souk
THERE IS SOMETHING about cardamom-spiced coffee that’s intoxicatingly irresistible – floral, sweet, bitter, whispering sensuously caffeinated secrets previously known only to the ancient folk of the Middle East. And if it takes just a few easy minutes? Even better. Here is a simple recipe, perfected over a brief period of trial and error:
1- Fill a standard 12-ounce coffee cup with water, then pour the water into whatever piece of cookware you use to boil water for hot beverages (a teakettle, say, or small saucepan).
2- While it comes to the boil, spoon into the now-empty cup a good and proper amount of your favorite instant coffee (I favor a rounded tablespoon of Cafe Bustelo Instant Espresso for its bold flavor and electric effect).
3- Add – and this is MOST important – a level 1/8 teaspoon of ground cardamom. Add also your desired amount of sugar.
4- Pour in boiling water, leaving enough room for cream if you like that sort of thing. Stir thoroughly.
5- Enjoy. With feeling.
Wide Open
“How can we live among so many wonders and not be overwhelmed by the sheer mystery of existence?”
— Robert Anton Wilson
Differential Calculation
THE FAITHFUL pray; mystics experience. Q.E.D.
Learning Curve
In youth, one learns to talk; in maturity, one learns to be silent. This is our problem: that we learn to talk before we learn to be silent.”
— Rabbi Nachman of Breslov
Reading Assignment
WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING RIGHT NOW, stop – and order from your favorite bookseller Liel Leibovitz’ How the Talmud Can Change Your Life (Surprisingly Modern Advice from a Very Old Book). It’s a breakneck-speed, 272-page survey of Jewish history, bringing to life the key sages and lively times of the Talmud like never before, with illustrations drawn from Aldrich Ames and Billie Holiday and Weight Watchers and the Dewey Decimal System. I read it in three days, only grudgingly taking time for sleep and meals; it’s mildly profane and very learned and joyful and engaging and funny and sweeping and heartbreaking and really, really, real. You owe it to yourself, and to your understanding of Judaism, to read this book.
Seriously. Do it now.
The Handshake
THE UBER DRIVER’S HAND was warm and calloused, but its electric charge was unexpected.
It shouldn’t have been, though, since for the past forty-five minutes we had free-associated on topics that don’t lend themselves to easy or uncomplicated conversation: God, mind, the uselessness of AI, Self-realization (not a typo) and ego-death, gurus, the constancy of change, the Indian fashion-industry, meditation, capitalism, health and healing, life’s unpredictability, Hindu holyman Ramana Maharshi.
His car was a late-model Tesla – ironically, since we also agreed we shouldn’t colonize Mars – enroute to a faraway hospital, where my copilot was undergoing heart surgery. I told him this toward the end of the ride, and he reached back a ringed and metal-braceleted hand to take one of mine.
“Aw, man,” he said. “Blessings come from God.”
That was when something unexpected passed between us.
“For her,” he said with earnest intensity.
We conversed a bit more before pulling up to the hospital.
“Thank you,” I told him as I got out. “And thank you for your blessing.”
“Aw, man,” he said. “Blessings come from God.”
“Yes,” I replied. “But thank you for being the conduit.”
A few minutes later I stood next to my copilot’s bed. She had just come out of surgery, pale and weak-voiced and pained of expression. Her escape from the Beyond had been a close one, but her doctors were skilled. With a why-not-it-couldn’t-hurt shrug, I touched her leg with the hand the driver had grasped. Nothing unexpected this time, just a loving gesture of comfort.
Mind you, I am a skeptic in the original sense of the word: an open-minded soul who doesn’t chase after explanations of the inexplicable. And really, earnest handshakes are common enough. But over the next few hours, as she went from colorless and tentative to walking with me about the cardio unit, beaming a delighted smile at everything we passed, I wondered.
Perhaps that’s the way her sort of surgery is supposed to work. I like to think it does.
But on the other hand, every little bit helps.
Never Enough
AS A TEACHER of Jewish children and adults, it’s my job (and joy!) to soak up as much Torah as I can – in the broad sense of “Torah” as “the entire corpus of the Jewish textual tradition.”
Fortunately, there’s no end to it, which makes for some pretty challenging (and rewarding!) job security.
What dwells among those who study Torah together?
But Torah isn’t meant to be studied alone. As it happens, I am blessed (or, if you prefer, lucky) to be involved with a tightknit community of very learned and dedicated individuals, some of whom I’ve known for years, who continually teach me more than I can ever impart to them. Please allow me to introduce you.
The first group of Torah scholars hails from 2001, when my copilot had the great idea to study the weekly portion with our co-congregants on the Shabbat mornings that we weren’t studying with our rabbi once a month. We all met in our living room, and though many no longer walk this planet, others have taken their place, and the dozen-or-so of us now converse online (thank you, COVID) for ninety engrossing minutes every Saturday.
Around 2014, a handful of would-be learners commenced living-room meetings on Thursday mornings at the behest of RM, who wanted to study Mussar (Jewish ethical spirituality). Once again thanks to the pandemic, we shifted Zoomward for an hour on Wednesday mornings and collected a small number of fellow students. Though we’ve now worked our way back to Mussar, we’ve also tackled the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ezekiel, as well as the pithy rabbinical wisdom of Pirkei Avot.
Then there’s the hourly dive into various texts with two veterans of the preceding collectives: Thursday mornings with RT (a wise and humble night-owl with whom I’m now learning one of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks‘ Torah commentaries), and TR (a brilliant and outspoken mathematician-philosopher with a taste for Maimonides) on Monday afternoons. For nearly two years, it has also been my great pleasure to study by phone for fifteen minutes on Wednesday mornings with BE, a hyper-articulate professional writer, as part of the ongoing program Partners in Protection. And just this past Wednesday, my longtime convalescent friend RR and I took up the weekly Torah portion – partly to learn, and mostly to take her mind off her poor health.
Our rabbis tell us that whenever people speak words of Torah together, the Shekhinah (Divine Presence) dwells among them. Whether or not that’s true, I do know what dwells among those who study together: joy. And isn’t that the same thing?