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https://youtu.be/D9uNeSHKtr4 #ParashasVayakhel #ParashatVayakhel #DvarTorah #TorahCommentary

https://youtu.be/1YrUBM839f4 “Oh, Lord, guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking falsehood; and to those who slander me, let me give no heed. May my soul be humble and forgiving to all.” Three times a day we close our silent standing prayer, i.e. the “Amidah”, with this sentence. It is noteworthy that in the Torah, the commandment to not murder is cited only twice. The commandment to not talebear or bear false, on the other hand, is cited about eight times in one form or another. There is a purpose to everything that is in the Torah—the order, the specific words, and yes, the amount of times something is discussed. And yes, the fact that the former is mentioned twice and the latter is mentioned eight times is significant. Gossip, “L’shone HaRah” (Evil Tongue), has been described as being sort of a living death. When a person is dead, they’re dead. That’s it. When someone’s reputation is maligned, it affects every faucet of their life in a negative way. If people have a bad image of someone, they are very likely to not do business with them. This affects their ability of make a living, and maintain shelter from the elements and put food on the table and clothe themselves, etc. These people would invariably have to leave their home and settle somewhere else where people don’t know them and they can start fresh. In the Torah, there is the case of a husband who suspects his wife of adultery. The woman is put through tests and when she passes those tests, her husband and her community are commanded to act as if it never happened. She is vindicated. This is a negative commandment, a commandment in which we are told NOT to do something. There is a positive commandment that may be considered to be the converse of this. That would be to “love your neighbor as yourself”. If you are loving your neighbor as yourself, what would make you want to demean them? During the High Holidays, we’ve chanted the “Ashamru”, the list of insults that we’ve committed as we strike the left side of our chest with our right fist. Interesting, by the way, that, according to Kabbalah, we are striking the “judgement” side of our body with the “mercy” side. We recite such sins as “we’ve gossiped” and “we’ve lied”. What would make people gossip and slander and demean people? Consider that it’s an attack. It’s a way of belittling someone. Of course we’re looking to hurt them. It’s also very cowardly because people are talking about other people behind their backs, when they’re not there to defend themselves or set the record straight. This is the whole point. The people who are demeaning the others don’t want a fair fight; they just want to hold all the cards and not be confronted or challenged. They also don’t want to be held accountable for their statements. This has even spilled over into social media. How many people—kids, actually—have been bullied even to point of suicide by people posting untrue declarations about them? Gangs of kids attacking other kids for really no reason, just because. Why? They want that power. There are people who make their living, gossiping about famous people. These people sit in judgement of others, discussing in a lot of cases, their problems and weaknesses ostensibly to reveal the “truth” about these people. Many people believe that this is OK, because since these are public figures, they have implicitly accepted this “occupational hazard”. Some famous people have even given up their celebrity rather than bear this situation. Judaism would not condone this; a commandment is a commandment. Consider that there is a larger picture. Politics, today, has devolved into a battle of wits, and contest of insults, what we used to call—in grade school—a big rank out session. No longer are elections about policy or how candidates are going to make life better for their constituents. Rather, it’s about how bad the other person is and all the terrible things they’ve done. In fact, as many of us have seen, some of those things that politicians are purported to have done aren’t even real and are the stuff of fiction. During the last presidential election, it wasn’t about problems facing our country and who is best capable of fixing them. It was about someone’s wife, or someone else who was crooked or a liar or their honesty in business. Etc. Name calling and accusations. And we love it. It’s the best reality show on air! People are talking about it all the time. Journalists, many of whom have won prestigious awards, are visibly uncomfortable attempting to treat this childish nonsense in an intellectual capacity. The problem is that after years of this, it’s become the new normal. People have accepted this and are now making their voting decisions based on who can rank out their opponent better. L’shon HaRah at its absolute worst. Asking forgiveness for our sins does not come cheap. When you repent, you have to mean it. It’s been said that if you repent and ask forgiveness for a sin, HaShem will put you in the same situation again to give you the opportunity to show that you are sincere in wanting to change. The only way we are going to be forgiven is not accept gossip and not listen to slander. Beyond that, we shouldn’t allow others to talk bad in our presence. Confront them with facts, suggest that if they have an issue with someone, rather than talk about them behind their back, they should approach that person and resolve the issues. If they’re not willing to do that, then they shouldn’t say anything. As it has been said: Evil flourishes when good does nothing. #Gossip #FridayNightSermon

https://youtu.be/dXa8wwH_2as #ParashatKiTisa5779 #ParashasKiSisa5779 #DvarTorah #TorahCommentary

https://youtu.be/G06zuQvK2XA There are many stages in life, and each contains its own unique emotional challenges. Erik Erikson was a psychologist who looked at the various challenges of these particular “stages”. He categorized each of these stages as pertaining to the psychosocial development at that stage. For me, I am getting to the point in my life in which I am known as a “senior citizen”. Of course this depends on which business is willing to give a discount at a specific age. Some are a little older, some are a little younger. Either way, I’m at the point where I get an invitation to join AARP just about every other day, it seems. Approaching these “Golden Years”, as a senior citizen, I am at the point of looking back at my life, wondering if I made the right choices and pushed myself as much as I could to accomplish things in life. As one tends to look back on their lives, we wonder if they did the right thing. Anybody have these same feelings? Erikson called this final stage, “Ego Integrity vs. Despair”. Do we see our lives as productive? Or do we feel guilty about our past, dissatisfied with what life threw at us, wondering if somehow we could have done better? To extend this a bit, do we feel that somehow life was unfair, always challenging us yet not letting us reap any rewards for any hard work we put in? It’s a tough call. Now, even though Erikson confined this stage to older people, I’ll bet that there are many younger people, maybe even teenagers, who ask themselves these questions. I submit that most decisions we make in life come with the afterthought, “did I do the right thing, make the right decision?” It’s probably more a part of human nature than we think. Time machines do not exist. We can’t go back in time and change things, or see how this decision would have worked out. I listened to a lecture by a rabbi on “Torah Anytime”, and he made the comment that it’s a good thing that we live finite lives. There’s a sense of urgency to accomplish things since we really never know how much time we have or how we’re going to end up. So we have to confront our challenges in life the same way and know that we made the best decision we could have for that moment. So what if we’re concerned that we made the WRONG decision? Consider that HaShem loves “Teshuva”. HaShem loves it when we feel that we’ve strayed from the path, the “derech” and returned to His commandments. So too, we can always “return” to what may be a better path after making a less-than-efficacious decision. One of the things that people who ruminate on their life’s paths tend to ignore is how much they’ve grown. They say that “hindsight is 20/20”. Looking in the rear-view mirror, we can always see the bigger picture. What people don’t seem to give themselves credit for is the fact that whatever those previous decisions were, they gave us more wisdom, and the insight to evaluate our previous actions in a brighter light. RATHER THAN BEAT OURSELVES UP FOR NOT HAVING THAT KNOWLEDGE THEN, LET’S USE OUR NEW-FOUND WISDOM, THE WISDOM WE ACQUIRED THROUGH THESE PAST DECISIONS, TO DRIVE OUR LIVES WITH MORE MEANING GOING FORWARD! Right? Finally, let’s look at the 10th Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s belongings”. In other words, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. How about bringing this closer to home? Don’t covet your own imaginings either, the better life that you think you would have had with a different decision. One of the reasons that stealing is an offense against G-d is because He apportioned everything for everyone according to His wisdom. By stealing, we are really going against His Design. We have what we have because G-d gave us what we needed, what we deserved, and what would motivate us to push ourselves. By coveting another life, we are going against G-d’s plan, questioning His Divine Knowledge. Let this then answer your question. G-d put the challenges in front of you, and you did the best you could with what you had. Sure we may think we could have, would have, wanted something better, but we got the best we could and did the best we could under the circumstances. So if you ever consider that somehow you’ve failed, you probably are selling yourselves short. Imagine how your life would have turned out if you didn’t have the insight to question?

https://youtu.be/_2TRhmsAUYY #ParashatTetzaveh #DvarTorah #TorahCommentary

https://youtu.be/deB-znCprXY Why do we need commandments? Ever consider that? Why do we need to have a Torah? Why, in fact, is even religion necessary? Why should we even believe in G-d? On the surface, these questions are sacrilegious and border on heresy. Here we are in a sanctuary of G-d praying to him as we do every day and now there are questions as to why. Stop and think for a minute and as we’ll see, these philosophical questions will lead us to a potentially disturbing realization. As a species, we need rules and they need to be enforced. Most people take that for granted. We all live in society and we have to have standards in order to get along and be able to fulfill ourselves without having to worry about devastation or attack. The potentially disturbing realization is that humans are not intrinsically good. At first blush, this comment is very cynical, negative and misanthropic. But true. People will skirt rules, lie, cheat, steal and even kill to get want they want. That’s why Torah is not just necessary, but critical. In fact, in the Tractate of Shabbat in the Talmud, one sage lamented that without Torah, Hebrews would have destroyed the world. Many people will be indignant at this consideration. They will state emphatically that humankind is intrinsically good. Hate, they say, is learned, and they will show you a picture of two kids—one white, one black—who cut their hair exactly alike so their teacher wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. So where did all the bigots come from? Their parents? Were they born innocent and then get brainwashed by bigoted parents? What happened when they became adolescents and gained, according to a famous psychologist, creative thought processes? They couldn’t figure it out themselves that skin color is an extremely small part of a person’s physiology and has no effect on any other part of their cognitive functioning? Look around the world. Some egotistical hypocrite schemes his or her way to top of a political heap and enslaves their people. In fact, that’s not good enough for them and they go after other peoples. Never do they consider, hmmm, I love a challenge, let’s turn this country into a veritable Utopia. When you look at the commandments, they seem to just make sense. Don’t kill? Yes, it’s pretty final and violent what right do you have to take a life? Don’t steal? Same concept, and besides, it’s not your stuff. Mother and father? They raised you, be grateful. Adultery? You made a promise, stick to it. And so on. OK, so we humans need rules. We’re not perfect and we’re all works in progress. G-d created us not perfect so he can proud of us that we made something of ourselves and grew to be good people. Consider our natural tendencies. Most of us wake up in the morning, still tired despite how much sleep we got and craving that cup of coffee, the first of many. Things happen in life, like the car doesn’t start, we’re out of our favorite cereal and we forgot to get more, we fight traffic, have to go through an imperfect system to get anything and all this puts us in a bad mood. And now we have to go out in the world and be polite to people when all we really want to do is go back to bed. For a week. That’s why we need to have commandments. So we can be good. So that as we go through life and get stressed dealing with imperfections, we remember what it’s all about. Sure, other people may not be so virtuous or honorable, but we can be. Many people are influenced by other people’s actions. Someone is mean to you, you’re mean to them back. What the commandments do is show us how to behave when we don’t want to. The praying and tzitzis and mezuzot are reminders. We study Torah each week to drill it into our heads. Prophets and Writings are the commentary and the Talmud answers just about any question we would have on how to apply those principles. We study Torah so that acting rightly becomes second nature. We study so that it becomes instinct between our first and second cups of coffee in the morning. We study so that if just happen to take over a country, we know how to behave. And we know, first and foremost, that Hashem is watching over our shoulder waiting for us to make Him proud. #FridaysSermon #FridayNightSermon

https://youtu.be/M2jGLumYBJo Shabbat services this week @ Congregation B'nai Chaim, Murrieta, CA: Ma'ariv Services Friday evening, February 8 @ 7pm. Shachrit Saturday morning, February 9 @ 9:30am Services Parshas Terumah / פרשת תרומה Shabbat Services the following week: Bar Mitzvah of David Wallace, led by guest Rabbi Joshua Ginsberg-Margo Ma'ariv Services Friday evening, February 15 @ 7pm. Shachrit Services Saturday morning, February 16 @ 9:30am Services Parshas Tetzaveh / פרשת תצוה #ParashatTerumah #DvarTorah #TorahCommentary

https://youtu.be/XXISIikbKU4 This week’s portion is “Mishpatim”. We now start to get introduced to the other commandments after Moses received the initial Ten Commandments. We now drill down into further levels of G-d’s teaching as we see how to act and behave in His Universe. The first of the post-Ten Commandments commandments deals with slaves. These are indentured servants who are paying off a fine for thievery. Further on into the portion, there are discussions of an unbetrothed woman who is attacked, burglars that invade a home to steal, persecution of strangers, false reports about people, and people’s livestock who are in trouble owned by someone you may not like. Before discussing these, consider that there are various concepts that we use to analyze and understand Torah. In the Torah, nothing is random. Every sentence is in a specific place by design. It is interesting, then, that these are presented where they are. The Ten Commandments are, of course, the most important. It stands to reason, then, that what would immediately follow those are next in importance in the grand scheme of things. There are other commandments mentioned, but these seem to have something in common: they all protect those most vulnerable in society. This also says something about Judaism and tells us on what we, as a people, need to focus. A few years ago, I was spending part of the day running errands and was, as usual, in a hurry I had stopped at one particular store where the credit card terminals had just stopped working. I, of course, was getting very impatient and angry at how these people were inconveniencing me. Meanwhile, the clerk/manager was doing everything she could to take my card manually. As I watched her, I started to come out of myself and see her frustration and almost intimidation as she struggles to get the job done. I settled down, almost feeling ashamed of myself for my nasty thoughts. I relayed this story on social media and someone mentioned that you can always tell the character of someone by how they treat a waitress. There are some people who like to be in control over others. This makes them feel superior. These are people who have low self-esteem and they are compensating. The problem is that they do it at someone else’s expense because typically they are forcing their “power” over them. This is why these commandments are necessary, to prevent abusing others. The most vulnerable people in society are slaves or indentured servants. Judaism demands that even these people, on the lowest rung of society, get treated with respect. It is so important, that right after the discussion about the rights of slaves that Torah introduces us to lex talionis, the law of the tally, or measure for measure. Even slaves get justice. We also see the laws of gossip. Many may be thinking, oh, no, not again! Not yet another discussion of gossip! Does the Torah really mention it so many times? Yes, it does, and for good reason. The commandment here admonishes us not to join in the company of those who gossip or give a false report. The idea of false witnesses is critical because the results can be devastating. In the justice system, a great many cases are decided on the basis of testimony from witnesses. In Judaism, two witnesses are needed to convict someone. People may get together and plot to discredit someone by embellishing the truth. As a check to this, the Torah provides that if at least two other people come forward and dispute the first two witnesses’ testimony the defendant is vindicated. This prevents the devastating situation of an innocent person suffering an unwarranted judgment. Furthermore, if the first two witnesses are discredited, they receive the punishment that would have been meted out to the accused. A very harsh consequence for those who prefer power and control to honesty and integrity. We need to treat people with respect. Hillel knew this concept. When his future protégé showed up at his door and asked to be taught Torah while standing on one foot, how did Hillel respond? He didn’t say “The L-rd our G-d took us out of Egypt to be our G-d” or “Honor the Sabbath”. He talked about the best way to treat others by not doing to others what is hateful to yourself. Let’s all remember that. #FridayNightSermon

https://youtu.be/ewe7vOW_Jgo #ParashatShoftim #DvarTorah #TorahCommentary

https://youtu.be/eewNUIcJ-GM One of the things I noticed when praying Shachrit the other day is the nature of the prayers. The great majority of them tend to be prayers of thankfulness and acknowledgement of Hashem’s grace, power, knowledge and watching over us. Many of the prayers end with the acknowledgement of G-d bringing us, his chosen people, out of the bondage of Egyptian slavery to be our G-d. Consider that many people pray because they want something. People typically pray for good or better health, more wealth or prosperity, or guidance to navigate life’s problems. Many people also only start praying when there’s an emergency and things seem very challenging. Having said that, there are personal prayers at the beginning of the Shachrit (morning) service. These are prayers that acknowledge G-d for having done things for us, like giving us guidance, strength and good health. There are also prayers asking for us to not come in contact with obstructions or negative situations or people. Many people seek spirituality because of life’s challenges. They are looking for personal guidance to help them succeed and overcome problems. They want something that will basically tell them what to do in times of trouble. It would seem as of Judaism is lacking in this. While we can look for some of these messages in our daily liturgy and some comfort in some of the psalms and proverbs. People can also look toward the Talmud; while it is a compendium of Jewish laws or halacha, there are some parts of it that have personal application. They’re not so evident, however, they need to be searched out. This is probably why a lot of people, Jewish people especially, are investigating Kabbalah. They see that it is involved in Jewish “mysticism” and deduce that it has the answers to life’s tough questions as well as, as one would expect, the answers. They feel that the wisdom of life is there, but it is couched in mystery. All we have to do is figure out the magic formula based on some combination of Hebrew letters or words and voila, all your cares and troubles vanish. Such couldn’t be further from the truth of traditional Judaism. If nothing else, we have 613 commandments. A “commandment” is to DO something. Judaism is a philosophy of action. The commandments tell us how to behave, when and where. They tell us what to do an what not to do. Very simple. Yet those prayers, which are really religious affirmations, are very broad. They address concepts and attributes of Hashem, such as mercy, power, and justice. There are also psalms of praise for Hashem. The real question, then, is what do we do with this? How do we apply them to our own lives? How do find comfort in these prayers and most important, how do we use them as guidance? Ultimately, that’s really all there is. Some may find it frustrating, but it is quite simple. We just go with the program. The frustration is involved because we as humans can be quite insecure about our lives and the decisions we make. How do we behave in a job or a relationship that gives us no satisfaction? The answer is really quite simple. This is why we study Torah. There is probably no question or concern that we have that the Torah doesn’t answer or address. The bottom line is that it is about doing what we are supposed to be doing by following the teaching of Hashem. The prayers, then, are really for comfort while we are living. Perhaps we are in a trying situation and need a resolve. Hashem acts in a perfect timing that may elude us. So while we are waiting for the resolution, the prayers are there to give us comfort. In the final analysis, it is really quite simple. We adhere to the commandments which tell us how to live a righteous life; we wear the tzitzi and tefillin and put mezuzot on our doorposts as reminders to keep doing it; and we pray for the daily comfort and reinforcement that Hashem has our backs. It doesn’t get any easier than that. #FridayNightSermon #PowerofPrayer

https://youtu.be/QCXd9HsrIPo Shabbat services this week at Congregation B'nai Chaim, Murrieta, CA: Ma'ariv Services Friday evening, January 25, 2019 @ 7pm. Shachrit Saturday morning, January 26 @ 9:30am Parshas Yisro – The Ten Commandments The Reiter Family will sponsor bagels, lox, licorice, pretzels and VC to memorialize her sister’s yarzheit. Shabbat Services the following week: Ma'ariv Services Friday evening, February 1, 2019 @ 7pm. Shachrit Saturday morning, February 2 @ 9:30am Parshat Mishpatim / פרשת משפטים #ParashatYitro #TorahCommentary #DvarTorah

https://youtu.be/B1ovQqyncWc #ParashatBeshalach #DvarTorah #TorahCommentary