Check out Haveil Havalim #138. Haveil Havalim is a weekly blog carnival for Jewish and Israeli bloggers.
Soccer Dad, whose dedicated efforts ensure that Haveil Havalim continues, has changed the deadline to Friday. But don’t wait until the last minute; submit your best posts for the week here. I will be hosting the upcoming edition.
Here are topics from the current edition:
Blogging
Antisemitism
Culture
History
Israel
The Rabin Assassination
Judaism
Politics
Torah
Kiruv
I was surfing mommy-blogs last week when I spotted Around the Island, by an American-Israeli mother of two. (You’ll have to visit to understand the title.) When the blogger, Robin, commented on my blog I recognized her email–we’d had an exchange about formula advertising that very morning. I’ve known Robin since she showed up at a breastfeeding group six years ago with her three-week-old son, Itai. And now she’s studying to become a lactation consultant.
Robin’s kids haven’t gotten to the teenage stage yet. Yet this moving post about her own adolescence may comfort some of you who are struggling.
I’ve been reading Marilyn Johnson’s book “The Dead Beat” about obituaries and obituary writing. Apparently newspapers pride themselves on their obits, and the best writers even have fans. You would expect a book like that to be incredibly entertaining, but I couldn’t finish it. I think the author needed to distance herself more from the writers. My husband says it’s because there’s not much you can say about obituaries beyond giving examples. But I will be paying more attention to obit style in the future.
Every Wednesday I receive a complimentary copy of the haredi, Hebrew-language newspaper Yated Neeman. Last week a headline about shmitta referred to the rabbanim “dalim.” This term, which I have never seen elsewhere, refers to the religious zionist rabbis. It’s a play on words because d”l is the abbreviation for dati-leumi (religious zionist), and the Hebrew word “dal” means poor or inadequate.
So I skip the “news” and go straight to the readers’ letters (there’s no obituary page). You won’t find letters like these in any secular Israeli newspapers. The letters of Yated Neeman reflect an innocence and sincerity that seems anachronistic. My favorite was about an unlabeled cake delivered to the writer’s home one Friday afternoon. There was no illness or new baby in the family that week, or any other reason for a cake. The writer, who included his phone number, wanted YN readers to know that the cake was now in the freezer, ready to be claimed by either the baker or the intended recipient.
Often the letter-writer wants to make amends for inadvertently causing damage to someone’s property, usually on a bus.
A lively discussion some months ago centered around proper etiquette for young couples who borrow apartments for Shabbat. In one case the hosts found 5 shekel on the table, and a ruined sheet, rolled up into a ball, in their children’s bedroom. Another couple was told that their guests wouldn’t be needing the refrigerator. Nevertheless the guests set the refrigerator to the Shabbat setting (disabling the thermostat) and forgot to reset it afterward. The hosts returned on Tuesday to find the appliance damaged beyond repair.
This week features a letter in a highlighted box reminding fathers that the latest time for recitation of the Shema prayer is around 8:30 am this time of year. Therefore, the tinokot shel beit rabban in the various talmudei torah (religious elementary schools) will miss this important mitzvah “that cannot be corrected.” (Presumably they get to school too late, but I don’t understand this because I thought they start at 8:00.) He encourages fathers to say Shema with their sons in the mornings, and recommends that the schools send a notice to the parents.
One writer’s wife gave birth the week of Rosh Hashana, with the family scheduled to move to a new apartment the very next day. Mrs. Wechsler, a staff member from the Bnei Brak hospital Maayanei Hayeshua, heard about the situation. She found some volunteers and together they set up the house for the holiday and helped the new mother recuperate. Mrs. W.’s husband installed light fixtures and mezuzot in the hours before Rosh Hashana. And the recipients were left with the feeling that the helpers enjoyed themselves and were happy to be earning merit for the Day of Judgment.
Many letters describe a medical condition in the hope of learning from others with similar experiences. Sometimes a letter about a “miracle cure” prompts another letter warning readers to be skeptical.
My favorite letter this week is entitled “Mysterious” Explosion. Many letters are written in a literary style making them hard to translate.
I feel obligated to share something that happened to us, from which homemakers can learn to be wary as it is written “from the sharp comes the sweet.”A few weeks ago I lit my oven to bake something. The oven worked for about half an hour, until a tremendous explosion caused the glass door to fly some distance and shatter. There’s no need to add what a great miracle it was that with God’s help, no one was hurt.
When I checked the oven to see what caused the explosion it turned out that a can of vegetables had been “hiding” inside. The food in the can reached the boiling point and exploded. It would never have occurred to me to look for such a can in the oven.
Because children like to play with cans
[MiI: mine like to make a store], the obvious conclusion is, before turning on the oven, for one to check carefully that no can or any other dangerous container is “hiding” there. It’s very important that this matter be publicized in order to prevent a similar occurrence, and this will be my reward.
M.S., Jerusalem
Remember (lehavdil) Beverly Cleary’s Ramona, who pretended to be Gretel and pushed the “witch” (a rubber doll) into the oven and ruined her sister’s birthday cake?
Mo’ah kemo Efro’ah has been nudging me to do a post on shopping during shmitta. So on my last trip to the “shmitta store” catering to the religious public, I brought my camera. I can’t possibly explain all of the political, religious, economic, and practical implications of this mitzvah; check out ADDerabbi or Rafi for more posts on the subject. Oh, and say Mazal tov to Rafi and his wife on the birth of baby #7.
Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand. You are not alone.
I’ll take a stab at it anyway.
During the seventh year, the Torah requires the land and people of Israel to rest. Any produce that grows without cultivation (most fruit, or vegetables planted during the sixth year and harvested during the seventh) is (theoretically) shared among everyone and has a special status (kedushat sheviit, literally sabbatical holiness). This produce can be collected and distributed through a mechanism known as otzar bet din. The product of cultivation during the seventh year may not be eaten.
The rabbis have devised several ways to prevent hardship during shmitta. The only solution sanctioned by the haredi rabbinic leadership is to import produce from outside the country or from non-Jewish farms within Israel. Religious Zionist rabbis allow a fictional sale of the land, (similar to the selling of chametz, leavened bread, before Passover). But if the Israeli rabbinate were to prohibit farming altogether, not only would farms lose income for the current year, but those dependent on overseas markets would risk losing their customer base permanently. Also, buying vegetables from Gaza, for example, might end up funding terror activities.
Many religious Zionists do not want to rely on this sale, known as heter mechirah (HM), for philosophical reasons, because it involves “selling” holy land. Our rabbi emphasized that the sale is valid in any case; if heter mechirah is indeed prohibited, the farmer, not the customer, is in violation.
Last shmitta, the government gave a kashrut certificate to any store or hall that relied on the HM. If a business wished, it could get more stringent supervison. This year, the rabbinate in some cities, with the support of the Israeli rabbinate, decided they wouldn’t give supervision to any business relying on HM. The result is that many stores won’t bother to get kashruth supervision at all and the general public won’t observe this important mitzvah.
This year the religious Zionists banded together and promoted an organization called Otzar Haaretz. Otzar Haaretz supervises and distributes HM and other permissible seventh year produce. If you join, you contribute NIS 50 per month, entitling you to a voucher for that amount to redeem at a store selling Otzar Haaretz produce. We also get a voucher for an extra “benefit.” This month it was one and a half kilograms of eggplant. I hope to have a monthly cooking feature on the topic, but I am already a month behind! I wonder what we will get this month. . . 
In our town the rabbinate worked out some kind of bizarre compromise to allow sales of heter mechirah produce. The kashruth certificate above is from the organization that supervises HM produce and “otzar beth din” (see above). The certificate reads:
PERMIT The fruits and vegetables in this store are under the supervision of Rabbi Yaakov Ariel and Rabbi Dov Lior [from the religious Zionist community: MiI], the instruction and supervision are through the rabbis of “Machon Torah Vehaaretz.” The fruits and vegetables with “kedushat sheviit” must be treated according to instructions available at the store. This permit is in effect from Tishrei 5768 until Tevet 5768. The permit may not be copied and is the property of Machon Hatorah Vehaaretz.
Under pressure, the local chief rabbi authorized another local rabbi to supervise HM produce. The letter, on plain paper, reads:
I hereby inform you that even though you (the store owners) purchase fruits and vegetables in the town’s wholesale market where all the vegetables are HM and tithed according to strict Jewish law, and with no question of “Orla” (prohibited fruit from a tree less than four years old), [this is in addition to the vegetables of "Otzar Haaretz" (see certificate above) that are from the Otzar Beit Din, and as such must be treated with kedushat shviit (see above)] I am sorry that because of the local rabbinate’s policy not to give a certificate to businesses which sell HM vegetables, the management [lit. anshei haminhalah] may not issue a kashrut certificate for 5768, the sabbatical year. Signed, Rabbi of the western part of the city. CC: The local chief rabbi
In other words: It’s kosher, but we can’t say so officially.
I enjoyed shopping in the large store, where signs marked the status and price of each item. Outside, the produce was reasonably cheap. Monster sweet potatoes cost NIS 2.49/kg. The sign notes “shishit,” (sixth) meaning they were harvested before Rosh Hashana, in the sixth year of the sabbatical cycle (5767). Other signs said “sheviit” (seventh) or “heter mechirah.”
The HM produce was significantly cheaper than the “otzar bet din/Otzar Haaretz/sheviit” salad vegetables inside the store. Peppers were a whopping NIS 8 per kg., compared to 2.49. Odd because we are not supposed to be paying for the actual produce, only the overhead.
Fruit picked now is sixth-year produce, because what counts is when the trees blossomed. Vegetables gain status according to when they are picked. So far we have been buying fruit and some vegetables such as potatoes, which aren’t harvested this time of year anyway, at the shuk (open-air market). I bought some fruit at the shmitta store, because my husband the shuk-shopper was out of the country. I found a bargain table where I picked up some delicious peaches and misshapen cucumbers.
My biggest disappointment was taking home the measly, bug-free celery that cost about a shekel a stalk and discovering a label reading “yevul nochrim” (non-Jewish produce; a code word for imported). I thought the whole point of Otzar Haaretz was to avoid importing. And who needs bug-free celery that is so old that they had to cut off the leaves? Yuck.
The grocer wanted me to show a picture of his delicious melons, which came from Kibbutz Ein Yahav in the Arava. They are grown by Israelis, but because the Arava is not part of biblical Israel, shmitta laws don’t apply. If you have been following, you might be asking why melons are a problem since they are fruit. But melons are annuals; according to Jewish law fruits are perennials which grow on trees.
I seem to have gotten to the end of this incredibly long post, appropriate for shmitah because a) this Jewish leap year contains an extra month and b) fruit will be more of an issue in 5759. It will be a long time before we can go back to worrying about simple things like tithes, orlah, bugs, and what to cook for dinner.
Josh Henkin, guest-blogging on Jewess about his new book Matrimony:
I dated non-Jews over the years, but most of my serious relationships were with Jewish women, and the woman I married is Jewish. She fits none of the stereotypes of the Jewish woman—she’s not a Jewish American Princess, nor is she pushy or overbearing—stereotypes that, in any case, I think they are unfair or, at the very least, aren’t examined critically enough.
Am I the only one to find this offensive? If he married a Pole, would he need to mention that she was intelligent, or that his Asian wife was not docile? He doesn’t need to bring his wife into the picture. As my mother would say, “Comparisons are odious.”
By praising his wife in this way, he subtly condones intermarriage (as he apparently does in the book). Because there probably aren’t enough non-pushy, non-JAPpy, non-overbearing Jewish women to go around for discerning Jewish men like himself.
Here’s the comment I left:
Interesting that Henkin needs to prove that while he preferred to marry a Jewess, he would never have married a “stereotypical” Jewish woman. The qualifying statements only make it worse. Sign me,
Proud to be a pushy, overbearing, brunette JAP.
Update: Jewess responded here, but so far no word from Henkin.
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