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Answers for the People of Chelm and Any Other
Curious Souls
Below are the answers from the year 2022. Click here to return to the People of Chelm page
December 2022
The best answer as to why Hanukkah is not a major holiday is that it is not
mentioned in the Torah. Only the holidays mentioned in the Torah - like
Pesach and Shabbat – are generally deemed major holidays and may require
cessation from ordinary activities. The Books of the Maccabees are not part
of the Hebrew Bible although these books are included in the Catholic
Bible. The Books of the Maccabees
describe the retaking of the Temple in a revolt against Greek rule by led by
Judah Maccabee in 165 BCE, more than 300 years after the last of the Davidic
line was king in Jerusalem. Judah Maccabee and his family were not
descendants of King David or of David’s tribe of Judah, but the Hasmonean
dynasty that the Maccabees founded ruled in Jerusalem for over a hundred
years.
After the Romans under Pompey conquered Jerusalem in 63 BCE, they installed
client rulers who came to be called the Herodians, a line of kingship that
included Herod the Great. Though the
Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) is silent on Hanukkah, the first Book of Maccabees
describes the eight-day rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem but nothing
about the miracle of the oil. Only the
Talmud, written centuries after the event, contains the story of the one-day
supply of oil miraculously lasting eight days.
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November 2022
You should be congratulated
for getting any of these. Here are the Laureates, the Nobel Prize category of
their award, and the year it was awarded. One tricky angle, there was no
Chemistry winner, but there were two Physics awardees in
the list.
Henry Kissinger – Peace 1973 – worked as US Secretary of State to bring about
a cease-fire in the Vietnam War. No less than three 3 Israeli heads of state
have been given the Peace Prize – Menachem Begin
(1978), Shimon Peres (1994), and Yitzak Rabin (1994).
Andrea Ghez – Physics 2020 - became the fourth woman to be awarded the Nobel
Prize in Physics for collaborating on the discovery of a supermassive compact
object (i.e., a black hole) in the Milky Way's galactic center. She is a 1987
MIT graduate and her role model was her high school
chemistry teacher.
Robert Horvitz – Physiology or Medicine 2002 – is a 1968 MIT grad and current
MIT professor who received the award for “discoveries concerning genetic
regulation of organ development and programmed cell death”. His primary
research subjects were not zombies but nematode worms!
Arthur Ashkin – Physics 2018 – is the oldest person – at 96 years of age - to
receive a Nobel Prize in 2018 for his invention of "optical tweets’,
which have revolutionized eye surgery. The Nobel committee does not award
posthumous prizes.
Bob Dylan - Literature 2016 – the famous, iconoclastic American singer-songwriter was
awarded his prize "for having created new poetic expressions within the
great American song tradition".
Ben Bernanke – Economics
2022 – was awarded for “research on banks and financial crises". Ben was chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve
during the economic and financial-sector crisis of 2008-2009, an economic
collapse that could have been much worse. Ben received his PhD in Economics
at MIT in 1979.
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October 2022
The Jewish tradition is
to pray three times every day, not just on Yom Kippur or other Holy Days. So there is a service for each period of the day when
prayer should be recited. These services are Shacharit, or morning service; Mincha, the afternoon service; and Ma’ariv,
the evening service.
Yizkor is a memorial service that is included on Yom
Kippur and other important days. The name appropriately derives comes from
the Hebrew stem “Zakhor”, meaning “to remember”.
Kol Nidre is the opening prayer of the first service on Yom Kippur. Kol Nidre
means “all vows” because at this time we declare that all personal vows made
to God in the preceding year are annulled, so we can start over again. Yom
Kippur closes with the Ne’ilah service. This name
comes from the Hebrew word “to lock,” referring to the symbolic closing of
heaven’s gates and the “book of life”.
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September 2022
“Jewish Wisdom”, another of Rabbi Joseph Telushkin’s
wonderful works on Judaism, opens with an explanation of the four probing
questions from the Talmud’s tractate Shabbat. These are the four that are to
be asked each of us when we go before the heavenly
court for judgment. They are also questions we can reflect on at times
like the upcoming High Holidays or when creating New Year’s resolutions.
The first and most important question is “Did you conduct your affairs
honestly?”. The Talmud clearly asserts the primacy of ethics and fairness in
life. In another passage, it is written “If one is honest in business
dealings and people esteem him, it is accounted to him as though he had
fulfilled the whole Torah”. The next question should be no surprise - “Did you
set aside regular time for Torah study?”. In other words, did you study and
continually seek to expand your knowledge. Next is “Did you work at having
children?”. In today’s world, this may also mean did you help in raising
children as a relative, teacher, or simply as a caring friend. And
finally, “Did you look forward to the world’s redemption?”. The wording may
seem strange; it might translate today as “did you do your part in repairing
the world
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July 2022
The beloved Rabbi
Hillel almost always seemed to carry the day in his debates with the austere
Shammai. There is a legend that, when asked if it were possible to state the
essence of Judaic Law while standing on one foot, Hillel lifted
up one foot and responded with the Golden Rule, saying "What is
hateful to you, do not to your fellows; that is the whole Law; the rest is
mere commentary. Now go learn!" This learned and saintly man was born in
Babylon, and later moved to Jerusalem where his period of leadership extended
from about 30 B.C.E. to his death in 10 C. E. Hillel is widely credited with
laying the foundation for modern rabbinic Judaism.
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