Why computers should be considered masculine:
1. They have a lot of data but are still clueless.
2. They are supposed to help you solve your problems, but half the time they are the problem.
3. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that, if you had waited a little longer, you could have had a better model and for much cheaper.
Why computers should be considered feminine:
1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic.
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
3. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
As we marked this week the Yom Hashoah Holocaust remembrance day and the return of our nation to Israel I will employ once of the most majestic prophecies of Isiah (chapter 60) about the time of our imminent redemption, the era of Moshiach, when all of the Jewish people, with no exception, will return to our eternal homeland.
Who are these, who fly like a cloud, and like doves to their cote-windows nests?
Let’s reflect on this last verse. The prophet describes the Jewish people returning to their eternal homeland, the Land of Israel, in two ways: flying like a cloud and flying like doves returning to their dove-cotes.
What is the significance of this?
There is a fundamental difference between a cloud and a dove. A cloud moves from one place to another place only because the winds move it along. The cloud has no particular desire or passion to “fly” to this place; it is the wind that carries the parcel of cloudy air along. The dove, on the other hand, does not fly to his or her dove-cote, because the wind blows it there but because it wants to go home! It must fly out in order to find food for itself and its young, but the dove longs for “home sweet home.” The dove yearns to be back with its mate and its young. It is driven by its deep genetic and emotional attachment to its home and family.
In fact, the dove is unique even among other birds and animals.
The Talmud states that if the Torah had not been given, we would have learned how to be loyal to our spouses from the behavior of doves. There are even certain doves who mourn the death of their mate, not easy choosing a new partner.
And this is how the Baal HaTurim at the beginning of this week's first portion, Tazria-Metzorah discusses the offering every Jewish woman would bring during the Temple days following the birth of a child. This offering, representing post-birth healing and dedication, was brought forty days after the birth of a male, and eighty days after the birth of a female.
The type of offering depended largely on the financial means of the family. Here is how the Torah describes it: "She shall bring a sheep within its first year for an elevation offering, and a young dove or a turtledove… and she shall become purified."
In the case of a woman offering only one dove, the Torah is urging us to avoid taking a single mature dove as an offering, since we might be depriving its partner of his or her mate which has ascended to G-d. The preference must be the young dove which has not yet begun to mate.
It conveys, for one, a profound lesson on the sensitivity the Torah demands of us toward feelings of animals, even toward a bird left over after its mate has been offered to G-d. Certainly, it tells us how we must honor the dignity and feelings of a fellow human being. How much more must we deeply honor and cherish the emotions and experiences of our partners in life.
But it also allows us to understand the profound words of the prophet concerning the Jewish people returning to their homeland: “Who are these, who fly like a cloud, and like doves to their cote-windows nests?”
There are, and were, two reasons and motives for the Jewish people to return to their homeland. One is like a cloud being carried by the wind; ones like a dove seeking love and intimacy.
There were the Jews who were “pushed” to come to the land because the “winds” of anti-Semitism, the dark stormy winds of the Holocaust, pushed them out their homes and countries and forced them to find refuge elsewhere.
When Pope Paul VI criticized Israel's "fierceness" during a private audience with The Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir, she replied: "Do you know what my earliest memory is? A pogrom in Kiev. When we were merciful and when we had no homeland and when we were weak, we were led to the gas chambers."
While visiting Israel, a Jewish leader encountered an American minister who started badgering him with hostile questions and comments about Israel, and finally asked him, “What is it that you Jews really want?"
He responded with the following story:
At Stolpce, Poland, on September 23, 1942, the ghetto was surrounded by German soldiers. Pits had been prepared outside a nearby village where the Jews would be led and then shot. The Germans entered the ghetto, searching for the Jews. A survivor by the name of Eliezer Melamed later recalled how he and his girlfriend found a room where they hid behind sacks of flour. A mother and her three children had followed them into the house. The mother hid in one corner of the room, the three children in another.
The Germans entered the room and discovered the children. One of the children, a young boy, began to scream, "Mama! Mama!" as the Germans dragged the three of them away. But another of them, only 4 years old, shouted to his brother in Yiddish, "Don't say 'Mama.' They'll take her, too."
The boy stopped screaming. The mother remained silent. Her children were dragged away. The mother was saved.
"I will always hear that," Melamed recalled, "especially at night. 'Don't say Mama.' And I will always remember the sight of the mother. Her children were dragged away by the Germans. She was hitting her head against the wall, as if to punish herself for remaining silent, for wanting to live."
After concluding the story, the Jewish leader told the minister, "What do we Jews really want? Well, I’ll tell you what I want. All I want is that our grandchildren should be able to call out 'Mama' without fear. All we want is that the world leaves us alone."
As all of Europe became a “killing field” of the six million Jewish people, the winds of hatred, have pushed the clouds to one little region in our world, called Israel, where we can protect ourselves, with G-d’s grace, and protect our brothers and sisters the world over.
But there is another experience that this Holy Land offers—and it is another reason to come to Israel: It is my home. It is our home. I come to Israel because, like a dove, I am seeking love. I am yearning for intimacy with the Divine, I am yearning for holiness, for the full expression of my soul and my Jewishness. Israel is an organically holy land; it is the soil G-d designated for the Jewish people and for the Jewish soul.
Israel, the land where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob walked; where Moses dreamt to come into; the land where Isiah, Jeremiah, Amos shared the word of G-d; where King David weaved his Psalms and where the Divine presence dwelled in our eternal capital Jerusalem; the space of the two Holy Temples, and the home for the Divine presence.
The Noble Laureate of the Jewish People, the Spanish Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (circa 1070-1141), wrote a poem to Zion during a time when the land was conquered by the Crusaders, and only a few hundred Jews lived there. It is read in all synagogues on the 9th of Av When we truly mark that day too as a Holocaust Remembrance day:
"If I could only roam in the places where G-d revealed Himself to your prophets and messengers. Who will create for me wings so I can fly away [far from Spain], and place the pieces of my heart between your fragments; I would fall on my face upon your earth, embrace your stones, and cherish your earth.”
This is how a 12th century Jew living in Spain wrote about Israel…
Rabbi Yehuda Halevi made his way to the Land of Israel, around 1140. After many tribulations, he arrived there. He entered Jerusalem, kneeled down to kiss its earth. And, according to one story, was singing this above-stated poem Just then, an Arab horseman trampled him to death.
He died, but his poems, his love for the land, and its people, never subsided. In fact, his most famous line about Jerusalem, “I am a harp to your melodies,” has made it into the melody Yerushalayim Shel Zahav: “lekal sherayich ani kenor.” The love of the people of Israel to the Land of Israel never ceased for a moment.
When such a Jew, comes to the Holy Land, he is not a cloud blown by the wind; he is a dove coming HOME. He is a dove seeking love, a dove who wants to be back in its organic nest, where it can unite with its soul, its family, and its Creator, in the deepest and most potent way.
When Israel is merely a country of refuge, we got no other place to go, it often fails to give us the confidence we need to defend our homeland. So many of Israel’s great leaders stumbled when criticized by the Arabs and by their sympathizers. “Just because you suffered a Holocaust, does not give you a right to displace other people.”
But when we are not like clouds, but like doves, we appreciate that Israel is our homeland. We are not thieves. This is our nest—the nest created for us by the Creator of the world. Our presence in that land is moral, right, just, and healthy. It is what our children, students, and the world must know.
One of the great rabbis of our time was Rabbi Yisroel Zeev Gustman. His meteoric rise from child prodigy to the exalted position of religious judge in the Rabbinical Court of Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski chief Rabbi of Krakow, Poland was also known as the Jerusalem of Europe. While a long productive career on the outskirts of Vilna could have been anticipated, Jewish life in and around Vilna was obliterated by the pain and fear of World War II. Rabbi Gustman escaped, though not unscathed. He hid among corpses. He hid in caves. He hid in a pigpen. He somehow survived.
At the invitation of the previous Rebbe, in 1946, he became the Rosh Yeshiva, at the central Lubavitch Yeshiva at “770.” Later he moved to Jerusalem, where he founded a yeshiva.
One of the regular participants at his Talmudic lectures was a professor at the Hebrew University, Robert J. (Yisrael) Aumann.
The year was 1982. Once again, Israel was at war. Soldiers were mobilized, reserve units activated. Among those called to duty was a reserves officer, a former student of the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, who made his living as a high school teacher: Shlomo Auman, the son of Prof. Yisroel (Robert) Aumann. On the eve of the 19th of Sivan, in particularly fierce combat, Shlomo fell in battle.
Shlomo was married and had one child. His widow, Shlomit, gave birth to their second daughter shortly after her husband was killed.
The family had just returned from the cemetery and would now begin the week of shiva -- mourning for their son, brother, husband, and father. Rabbi Gustman went to the funeral, then to the cemetery, and from there went straight to the home of the broken family for a shiva call. He entered and asked to sit next to the father, Professor Robert Aumann. The father said, "Rabbi, I so appreciate your coming to visit… but you have spent all day with our family, feel free to go back to the yeshiva. I am sure the students are waiting for you.”
Rav Gustman spoke, first in Yiddish and then in Hebrew, so that all those assembled would understand:
"I am sure that you don't know this, but I had a son named Meir. He was a beautiful child. He was taken from my arms by the Germans and shot in front of my eyes. I survived. I later bartered my child's shoes so that we would have food, but I was never able to eat the food -- I gave it away to others… My Meir is a Kadosh -- he is holy -- he and all the six million who perished are holy."
Rav Gustman then added: "I will tell you what is transpiring now in the World of Truth in Heaven. My Meir is welcoming your Shlomo into the minyan and is saying to him 'I died because I am a Jew -- but I wasn't able to save anyone else. But you -- Shlomo, you died defending the Jewish People and the Land of Israel.' My Meir is a Kadosh, he is holy -- but your Shlomo is a Shaliach Zibbur -- a Cantor in that holy, heavenly minyan."
Rabbi Gustman continued: "I never had the opportunity to sit shiva for my Meir; let me sit here with you just a little longer…"
42 years after the death of his son, Rabbi Gustman sat shiva together with the Aumann family…
Professor Aumann listened to the story. And then he said silently: "I thought I could never be comforted, but Rebbi, you have comforted me."
Rav Gustman and his wife would attend an annual parade where children would march on Jerusalem in song and dance. A rabbi who happened upon them one year asked the Rabbi why he spent his valuable time in such a frivolous activity. Rav Gustman explained, "We who saw a generation of children die, take special pleasure in a generation of children who sing and dance in these streets."
A student once implored Rav Gustman to share his memories of the ghetto and the war more publicly and more frequently. He asked him to tell people about his son, about his son's shoes, to which the Rav replied, "I can't, but I think about those shoes every day of my life. I see them every night before I go to sleep."
On the 18th of Sivan 5751 (1991), Rabbi Gustman passed away. Thousands marched through the streets of Jerusalem accompanying Rav Gustman on his final journey. As night fell on the 19th of Sivan, exactly nine years from the moment that Shlomo Aumann fell in battle, Rabbu Gustman was buried on the Mount of Olives.
On December 10, 2005, Professor Yisroel, Robert J. Aumann, the father of Shlomo (may G-d avenge his blood), an observant Jew with a long white beard, was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, because of his incredible contribution to the Game Theory of Economics.
This is the story of the Jewish people, and it is the story of Israel. We never forgot our home, and we never forgot our G-d. And today, our brave holy soldiers protect the romantic doves who have come home.
And very speedily, we will all experience the fulfillment of the words of Isiah:
Lift up your eyes all around and see, they all have gathered, they have come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be raised on [their] side…
We are these, who fly like a cloud, and like doves to their cote-windows nests!
Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Tom Peacock wrote...