Shammai Engelmayer
Jonathan Pollard: What the CIA said
From the start, innuendo and veiled threats clouded the truth
The date was Nov. 21, 1985.
A 31-year-old civilian U.S. Navy intelligence analyst specializing in counterterrorism and his wife were inside the gates of the Israel embassy in Washington, D.C., seeking asylum. The embassy guards refused them entry into the building, instead ordering them to leave. No sooner did they exit the gates than agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation descended on them and arrested the analyst, Jonathan Jay Pollard. Soon thereafter, he was charged with passing on sensitive intelligence data to a foreign government — the State of Israel.
Celebrating Simchat Torah
The day that isn’t really a day…
Simchat Torah is almost here.
Perhaps, though, because of the frivolity associated with it (vigorous dancing, singing, some horsing around, and in some shuls, even some drinking), most people who celebrate the day will know only in a vague way what it is they are celebrating. Or how the various parts of what they are doing on that day came about.
Sadly, though, most Jews will not be celebrating and probably will not even know that it is Simchat Torah, much less realize that there is a very important reason for it not to be ignored. That is a Jewish tragedy of epic proportions that, in a sense, Simchat Torah was meant to avoid.
Naturally relevant
Of all the “antiquated” customs in Judaism, the ones related to Sukkot probably are the most embarrassing for modern Jews.
Imagine, goes the reasoning, having to participate in such “ludicrous rituals” as waving palm branches decorated with willows and myrtle, and connected, no less, to the world’s most expensive “lemon,” the citron. Leviticus 23:40 states, “And you shall take on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.” Yet, say the naysayers, not only does the way this law is observed smack of some pagan tree-hugging, but the Torah probably never meant for its words to be taken in this way.
Better living through Judaism
Healthy halachah
One of the things a rabbi hears all too often is that Judaism is a 3,500-year-old religion with rules and regulations that were designed for another time and another place. Traditional Judaism has little or nothing to say to the Jews of the 21st century.
That is what we hear — and, as I said, we hear it all too often.
It is not true, of course. Judaism has a lot to say that is relevant and even necessary in our day. You just have to be willing to listen — and to understand.
Part of the problem is that much of what Judaism has to say is found in the Torah, and to a lesser extent in the remainder of the Tanach, the Bible. Those texts are from another age, and too many of us tend to think of them as having been written for their time only.
