Like with the Passover seder, we realized that we would possibly have more to say about after the holiday than before; one of the discussions we heard stuck with us: Ruth and the concept of being a stranger/foreigner/outsider. Tradition has it that we read the story of Ruth on Shavuot because her voluntary acceptance of Judaism is analogous to the Israelites’ acceptance of the Torah at Sinai.

But Ruth’s story is transcendent of a particular time and place. Her story of being an outsider within a close-knit community with a unique set of rules, and carries twofold inspiration. The first applies to the outsider himself, with Ruth being the example of a person evolving past his outsider status to become the cornerstone of the community — as Ruth does when she marries Boaz, the community leader, and ultimately mothers the grandfather of the future Israelite king.

It is the second lesson, however, that really stuck. Ruth not only inspires outsiders, but she changes for the better the community she joins. Ruth brings with her vitality, freshness, commitment, charity and inspires the local community.

How often do we welcome newcomers — but only superficially? Are we truly open to their ideas? Do we stick too closely to our accepted practices because we believe them right, or because they are familiar? Ruth’s story demonstrates the importance of paying attention to newcomers. And Ruth’s case is even more stark, for she is a convert. Presumably her knowledge is far less than that of the locals’. Yet it is this ’stranger’ who inspires the community with her commitment to the Torah and her acts of loving kindness, or hesed.

The Torah instructs us 36 times to welcome the stranger; why so many times? Probably because it not an easy thing to do, yet if we avoid doing so we not only fail our humanity, but also potentially fail ourselves. Sometimes it’s exactly those fresh perspectives that inspire us to develop.

Share your Shavuot insights with us! Did you hear any divrei Torah that you found inspirational?

• Ode to a cheesecake started off our quest: Here you’ll find a classic New York cheesecake from the source itself — Junior’s in Brooklyn. We opted for a crustless version, assuaging our guilt by swapping out carbs for calorific cream cheese.
• After the indulgence of 24 oz of full fat cream cheese, we decided to try out a slighlty less fattening version, a Sicilian cheesecake using a mix of ricotta and cream cheese, though truth be told we ended up substituting mascarpone for ricotta, so while we retained the Italian element, the low fat element was less present.
• Finally, after several years of cheesecake, we decided that perhaps it was time to move on and experiment with a new set of ingredients. We still kept dairy at the core, but with condensed milk instead of cream cheese taking center stage. For our Key Lime Pie we tried out a crust made not from graham crackers, but from gingersnaps. Together with the tartness of fresh lime juice and zest, the zing of ginger perfectly complemented the sweetness and creaminess of the chilled condensed milk.

You may be noticing a recurrent theme, which is that all of our Shavuot recipes are desserts. We noticed that proclivity too, so last year tested out an onion lovers’ pizza, courtesy of kosher cooking guru Jamie Geller. With all those onions, however, even this “savory” recipe had a touch of sweetness!

What type of cheesecake will you be preparing this Shavuot? Or are you one hunt for something different? Our Shavuot edition (out today), features a recipe for a raspberry flan, so like our key lime pie, dairy but not cheese-based.

Happy cooking and Chag Sameach!

Let’s back up; first a quick overview. WoW is an Israeli organization that aims to secure the rights of women to pray aloud, read from the Torah and wear religious garments at the Western Wall; their actions have upset members of the Orthodox Jewish community, particularly those who operate the Kotel, and in several instances, women who are part of the group have been arrested at the Kotel for violating “local customs”.

The overwhelming majority (62.5%) of people who participated in our online poll are clearly in favor of the Kotel becoming more inclusive of different strains of Judaism. A smaller percentage (15.6%) say they support gender equality, but think retaining tradition is important, and an even smaller group of people (12.5%) say that WoW represent a small group of people and shouldn’t override prevailing tradition. The Kotel has always been run by Orthodox authorities and any sort of compromise with groups like WoW does present a sharp divergence from tradition.

But it is a divergence gaining support from both Diaspora Jewry and the Israeli government, which just ruled that women participating in WoW’s monthly service are not breaking the law. And Natan Sharansky has been hard at work on his Robinson Arch compromise, which entails expanding the area already set aside for egalitarian prayer.

The surprise of our survey, however, is that only 9.4% believed that Sharansky’s plan is a good one. So we’ve got a follow up question for the 62.5%, who would like to see a change at the Kotel:

What kind of change to you envision? What should prayer at the Kotel look like?

• He ia a ‘9/11 Truther’, which means he questions Al-Qaida’s involvement in the horrific attacks on the Twin Towers, and instead suggests that the attack was a US-led ‘inside job’. For this he was condemned by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in 2011.
• Also in 2011, Falk published an anti-Semitic and anti-American cartoon on his website. When questioned about the cartoon, Falk first denied publishing it, before deleting it, and finally apologized for “unintentionally” posting the cartoon, which was condemned by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, as anti-Semitic.
• Falk was recently removed from his board position at Human Rights Watch, officially because of a conflict of interest, but in truth because his anti-Semitic and extremist record (which includes expressing support for Hamas) conflicted with HRW’s values.
• In April, following the Boston Marathon bombings, Falk wrote an article that went some way in justifying the attacks, positing that the bombings were retribution for US actions in the Middle East and Central Asia, and that “Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.” And just for consistency, Falk made sure to throw Israel into the mix, somehow arguing that Tel Aviv’s close relationship with Washington is to blame for the lack of peace and justice worldwide. For his views, Falk was condemned, once again, by Ban Ki-Moon.

These are just a few of the things we know about Falk. At a minimum, we have determined that Falk has been condemned (or in HR speak, received verbal warnings) by his own employer on multiple occasions - and from within different departments of his organization, including from the very top. So why is Richard Falk still working at the UN?

**Information largely gathered from UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog NGO sponsored by the AJC. Keep up the great work!

Let’s break it down from the top. Lag b’Omer is the 33rd day of the Counting of the Omer, the seven-week period between Passover and Shavuot. (Lag is an acronym comprised of the Hebrew letter Lamed, for 30, and Gimmel, for 3, hence 33.) From there follows two essential elements for understanding Lag b’Omer’s many traditions: 1) The Omer period is considered one of semi-mourning (incidentally another tradition whose origins are murky), and for the 33rd day only, mourning restrictions are lifted; and 2) Lag b’Omer is the yahrzeit of Shimon Bar Yochai, author of kabbalah’s core text, the Zohar.

You’ll find that all the Lag b’Omer traditions related to one (or both) of these elements.

Bonfire: In Israel, one of those heartwarming moments when one knows their in a Jewish country, is when boys begin collecting wood for the Lag b’Omer bonfire. Bonfires are lit throughout Jewish communities worldwide, but the tradition originates at the gravesite of Shimon Bar Yochai, in Meron in Northern Israel. It’s said that the light of the fire symbolizes the light Bar Yochai brought to the world through his kabbalistic teachings.

We couldn’t find proof of this, but our guess is that at one point someone decided to throw a steak on that fire, and voila, the Lag b’Omer barbecue was born.

Athletics/Sports: Our Lag b’Omer Maccabiah-style competitions originate in kids playing with bows and arrows. Why archery? you may ask. According to the Midrash, rainbows (which are arch-shaped) did not appear throughout Bar Yochai’s lifetime. Why is this important? you may further wonder. In the Bible, rainbows represent G-d’s promise to us that he won’t destroy the world by flood; Bar Yochai’s saintliness protected humanity, and as such rainbows were unnecessary.

Boys’ First Haircut: On Lag b’Omer, the gravesite of Shimon Bar Yochai is crowded with three-year-old boys getting their first haircut, known as the upsherin. This one comes from the lifting of mourning restrictions, one of which is not cutting one’s hair. The plethora of weddings on Lag b’Omer follow this same logic, as do concerts with live music.

We mentioned above that the reasons for the Omer being a mourning period are not altogether clear. The most common reasons given are the failure of Bar Kochba’s rebellion against Roman forces and a fatal plague that struck the students of the Talmudic sage, Rabbi Akiva.

And here’s a last bit of trivia: For Sephardim, the big celebration is the day after Lag b’Omer, or Lad b’Omer.

Did we get our explanations right? Or are there any we left out? Let us know!

And don’t forget that many such events are taking place locally, from picnics to barbecues to concerts. Visit our Community Calendar for more details of Lag b’Omer events!

The occasion is also marked by the dedication of Warsaw’s new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which is located across from the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes (pictured right) in the area of Warsaw that once housed the notorious ghetto.

A few weeks ago, in the context of Holocaust Memorial Day, we blogged about the theme of hope and how one can learn the power of maintaining hope from the Warsaw Ghetto fighters. Even when faced with what was surely a losing battle, they resisted, because, as we wrote at the time, “Hope dwells in uncertainty, or in that belief that one day things may get better.”

We also posed the philosophical question of whether it is worth taking a (life-threatening) stand if one knows one will fail; if we take the lesson from the resistance fighters, the answer is unambiguous: Yes. The stakes were too high to remain passive. Or, as Zygmunt Stepinski, director of Warsaw’s new Jewish museum, commented: ”They wanted to decide themselves how to die.”

Taking a stand in the face of opposition restores to us our individuality, and our liberty, even when we are doomed to fail.

But their deaths were not in vain. The Ghetto fighters inspired similar uprisings in other ghettos, as well as the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 led by Polish forces (itself also unsuccessful). The Ghetto heroes inspired the emerging State of Israel, just a few short years later. And their resistance continues to be an inspiration to people today who resist in the face of overwhelming odds.

Their remarkable bravery in the face of certain defeat teaches us that even if the war will be lost, the battle isn’t futile. May their actions and memories be an inspiration to us all. May G-d rest their souls.

Read more about Warsaw’s new Jewish museum

The occasion of Israel’s 65th anniversary is a natural point for reflection. And it is astounding how significantly both the discourse and reality have changed over the past 40 years.

Think back to 1973. It was the year of the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was attacked by a solid and united Arab front from all directions. Fast forward to 2013. The Arab-Israeli conflict – in its classical form – no longer really exists. Instead of an Israel versus the Arab world model, the paradigm has shifted: Israel now conducts its neighborhood foreign policy on a largely bilateral basis. The experiment of Nasser-style Arab nationalism failed miserably, and the Arab world, especially considering the current fissures, no longer even feigns a sense of unity. Alliances in the Arab world today are formed more along religious lines, and Iran, a non-Arab nation in the heart of the Middle East, has evolved in the interim into both a major threat to regional stability and security as well as a powerful leader.

Through the disintegration of the classic Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel has gained the flexibility to conduct and conclude bilateral peace negotiations (such as with Egypt and Jordan), which means the Jewish state is no longer surrounded by enemies in the way it once was.

Another incredible change, upon reflection, is the mainstream perception of Palestinian Arabs among Israeli (and Diaspora Jewish) society. Once upon a time, and not that long ago, Palestinians, as an entity separate from the blanket “Arab nation” did not exist – at least in the eyes of most Israelis. In 1969, then Prime Minister Golda Meir famously told The Times that “there is no such thing as the Palestinian people”, a sentiment which though some may still agree with, is certainly no longer the widespread view among Israelis. When Meir expressed her opinion, it wasn’t controversial, it was mainstream.

That the acceptance of a Palestinian people – and consequently a future Palestinian state – would one day become the norm was perhaps inevitable, but certainly not predictable. This recognition on the part of Palestinians was earned through a mix of terrorism and politics and, in no small part, support from the international community.

Israeli leaders, too, played a role, one that is in hindsight sometimes viewed through rose-tinted spectacles.

Take Yitzhak Rabin, for example, the Israeli leader most associated with the peace movement and a name that to this day is often touted by peaceniks and leftists as the last great hope of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. If only we had a leader like Rabin, it’s often lamented, the implication being that he was unique in his commitment to peace with the Palestinians.

Yet, Rabin, despite the (in)famous handshake with Yasir Arafat, and his receiving of the Nobel Peace Prize, never publicly advocated for an independent Palestinian state. As defense minister under Yitzchak Shamir, Rabin first proposed ‘limited self rule’ for Palestinians, and remained committed to that principle until the end. In 1995, at the Ratification of the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement, Rabin said to the Knesset:

“We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.”

(As an aside: In the same speech Rabin also affirmed Ma’ale Adumim, the area currently being protested by Palestinian tent encampments, as part of the State of Israel, and authorized construction on E-1, the very corridor that in recent months has come under particular scrutiny. He also supported the incorporation of settlement blocs into the State of Israel and the retention of settlement blocs in the new Palestinian ‘entity’.)

He, like every other prime minister since, stood for an undivided Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. As one of Jerusalem’s liberators in 1967, and a Jerusalem native, one can imagine this carried a particularly emotional weight for him.

None of this is to underestimate Rabin’s significance. His handshake with Arafat and recognition of the PLO was revolutionary. From today’s perspective, when relations between Israeli and Palestinian leadership have become somewhat normalized, it’s difficult to imagine just how revolutionary this was. Betrayed was how many Israelis felt. How could Rabin shake the same hand that bore the blood of innocent Israeli lives?

Rabin also refuted – in the same Knesset speech mentioned above – Golda Meir’s absurd, but widely held, assertion that no Palestinians were removed or resettled during the process of Israel’s establishment.

But inasmuch as Rabin was revolutionary, he was a product of his time, and limited by his experiences and reality. He was the leader Israel needed in 1993, but Israeli society has moved far past where Rabin stood in 1995. This reality is reflected in the fact that the rhetoric of Benjamin Netanyahu, perceived as a hardline hawk, is more inclusive of Palestinians than Rabin’s ever was.

The discourse and reality have changed. Forty years ago, in 1973, Israel was fighting for its survival in a war with a bloc of Arab nations. Twenty years ago, in 1993, Israel signed the Oslo Accords and recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Today, in 2013, while question the durability of Oslo, the fundamental changes in mindset that the agreement brought are still in place.

Today’s Israel is one where the Palestinian right to self-determination is not only accepted, but also widely supported. Today’s Israel hopes for peace with its neighbors, and demonstrates a readiness to undertake difficult steps to achieve this.

Just this one (albeit vital) aspect – Israel’s evolving view of its neighbors – demonstrates the young country’s flexibility and ability to not only reflect on itself and but also apply the results. These are qualities Israel can be proud of as it celebrates 65 years of independence.

When we discussed insights from the Passover seder last week, we discovered that hope is also a crucial element to the story of Passover, that hope is the first step in the process of redemption. As such, it seems like no coincidence that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on Passover evening. Or indeed that Israel’s national anthem is called “HaTikvah”, the hope.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising also raises the philosophical question of undertaking fruitless battle: Is it worth taking a (dangerous) stand if one knows one will fail? The resistance fighters knew how slim their chances were against the evil Nazi machine. But that’s the incredible thing about life: at any given moment, we never know how things will turn out. And that’s exactly where hope dwells, in that uncertainty, or in that belief that one day things may get better.

Yom HaShoah is an incredibly difficult day. Speaking about the staggering human, cultural and societal losses and hearing from the survivors who went through hell is emotionally very challenging. Perhaps this year, however, we can also carry with us the kernel of hope that sustained people in many different and horrific situations throughout the Holocaust, even as hope failed to ensure their survival.

There are many, many memorial events (detail on the IJN’s Community Calendar) happening in Denver, but also in Boulder and beyond - in Wyoming and Albuquerque too. Please take the time to join your community for this important day of remembrance.

The post-Passover chametz party is one focused more around fantasy and salivation. What’s that food you’ve found yourself dreaming about for eight long days? It makes perfect sense that most people tend to zero in on the direct opposite of chametz - bread, or bread-like items. Bagels are a classic, complete with lox and shmear dotted with capers. Another is doughnuts, yeasty deep-fried goodness. In other words, those items, that no matter how many eggs and how much matzah meal, cannot be duplicated in a kosher for P kitchen. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say, I think I’ll “break” Pesach on a nice bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce - because it’s not bread. Another post-Passover favorite is breakfast cereal, which, though not bread-like, is extremely difficult to replicate.

So now the big question: What bit of chametz were you fantasizing about throughout Pesach? And on what did you “break” your Passover? Or, are you the nostalgic type that actually continues to munch on matzah and butter, long after the kosher for Passover for dishes are boxed up and back in the attic for their year-long hibernation? (Full disclosure: for lunch today I had matzah brei!)

Over on our Facebook page, most people seem to be going for the classics, although a gluten-free fan opted for rice noodles as her post-Passover treat.

What was yours?

Read our earlier posts about chametz parties here and here

We thought we’d share some of the insights we heard over the two seder nights - and we’d love to hear yours.

The power of imagination

One was inspired by David Hartman, founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem who passed away only recently. Quoted in the Family Participation Haggadah, Hartman points to the miracles in the story of the Exodus seeming, on the surface, as mythological. The ten plagues (and splitting of the Red Sea) could be perceived as a “ancient superstition”. But it’s the element of the fantastical - belief in the miracle - that forms the core of hope for those seeking liberation. To hope means to engage the imagination, and fantasize. People don’t hope for what they already know, they hope for what seems unachievable, or even unimaginable.

It’s why the story of Exodus has for millenia inspired people who are suffering, and people in bondage. Exodus inspires people to hope regardless of the conditions surrounding them. And, in turn, it’s the ability to believe that the miraculous can happen, that inspires people to stand up for the change they want to see.

‘Do not rejoice in the downfall of your enemy’

Another insight we enjoyed spun off from the ritual of spilling wine when reciting the ten plagues (okay, there is some overlap here!), which, according to Don Isaac Abarbanel we do to recognize that others suffered in our redemption. Although these Egyptians, according to Scripture, deserved divine punishment, one should not “rejoice at the fall of your enemy,” as it says in Proverbs 24:17.

Rabbi Meir Simcha Cohen of Dvinsk, Latvia (1843-1926), says that Torah doesn’t mention joy in relation to Passover as it does to Shavuot and Sukkot. And aside from the first day, we do not recite the full Hallel service on Passover, again, as is done on the two other pilgrimage feasts. Why? Like Abarbanel, Rabbi Cohen points to the proverb, “In the downfall of your enemy, do not rejoice.” We celebrate the Exodus, our redemption and liberation, but not the downfall of the Egyptians.

It’s an incredibly important and transferable life lesson, and when boiled down, is really a message of focusing on the positive - and on progress - than on the negative.

Were you inspired by any stories or commentary you heard at the seder?