Answers for the People of Chelm and Any Other Curious Souls

Below are the answers from the year 2023. Click here to return to the People of Chelm page.

.November 2023

Here in the United States, Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is among the most widely observed Jewish holidays. Naturally a lot of glorious traditions have grown up around it. Yes, it is true that the first eight-day period was specified by the priests and elders, the Sanhedrin, for the rededication and purification of the Temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by the Greeks back in 165 BCE. This account is found in both the Mishna and the Books of the Maccabees; these books are not, however, included in the Hebrew Bible, though they are in the Catholic Bible. These Books of the Maccabees, written shortly after the events they describe, make no mention of the miraculous oil, though the Talmud, written centuries later, does.

It is no accident that Hanukkah and Sukkot are both celebrated for eight days. One of the themes of Sukkot was the annual rededication of the Temple. In 165BCE the Maccabees retook Jerusalem and the Temple a few months *after* Sukkot. Since the war prevented the people from celebrating the rededication of the Temple during Sukkot, they quite naturally adopted Sukkot as the example for rededication. As Sukkot lasts eight days - so does Hanukkah. But unlike Sukkot, this festival is not mentioned in the Torah - or anywhere in the Tanakh for that matter - since Hanukkah recalls events that occurred after the periods described in the Jewish Bible,.

August 2023

Obviously item E, volunteering for Beth Elohim Clean Up day, is hardly a practice of mainstream Judaism, so this is clearly the most recent. But if you and your family want to participate, by all means please sign up HERE to volunteer on Sunday morning on September 10. For the other traditions associated with Rosh Hashanah, the oldest is C-blowing the shofar, B-the Book of Life, A-study and preparation, and most recently D-Tashlich..

Chapter 23 of Leviticus mandates a celebration on the first day of the seventh month (Tishri) and calls for the blowing of the shofar. The suggestion is one of rest and renewal, though the day is not yet called Rosh Hashanah. By the time of the codification of the Mishnah in the first centuries of the Common Era, the day had come to mark the new year and the passing of judgment on the world, when our fortunes are written in the Book of Life.

Not much later, during Talmudic times (200-500 C.E.), Babylonian Jews began to treat Elul - the month before Tishri - in a special way. They studied, thought, and prepared for the renewal in their lives for forty days, the thirty days of Elul plus the ten days of Tishri through Yom Kippur. The custom of Tashlich originated last of all. Tashlich comes from the Hebrew "you will cast" and this is quite descriptive as we cast out the contents of our pockets and throw bread into a nearby body of water. According to Aurthur Waskow, in his wonderful book on Jewish holidays "Seasons of Our Joy", there is no mention of Tashlich until late Medieval times. Then it spread from Europe to the Sephardic regions in the sixteenth century, primarily through the influence of the mystical Kabbalists of the town of Safed in Galilee.

May 2023

It is indeed impressive how much of everyday English speech can be traced to Shakespeare and to the Bible. The playwright's insights into human nature come through crystal clear to us more than four hundred years after he wrote. It is even more amazing that the Bible's wisdom also resonates so deeply, across our much different cultures and a temporal distance of more than two thousand years. Of the examples given, A. matches to 4. - "There is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9); B matches to 3 - "Man does not live by bread alone." (Deuteronomy 8:3); C matches to 1 - "A voice crying in the wilderness..." (Isaiah 40:3); and D matches to 2 - "Pride goes before a fall." (Proverbs 16:18).

April 2023

Passover is indeed a profound observance. It captures a timeless message of liberty for all of us. Each year we ourselves, not some remote ancestor, are the ones escaping from Egypt and slavery. So when was the first Passover celebrated? After a little reflection, you may remember that day got its name when the avenging hand of the Lord passed over the homes of the Israelites. As instructed, they had smeared their doorposts with lamb’s blood to avoid the consequences of the tenth plague, the death of the first-born. Chapter twelve of Exodus recounts all this and also includes the details of how the Passover lamb is to be selected and prepared. Then in verse 11, the community is commanded to “eat it hurriedly: it is a Passover offering to the Lord”. So the first Passover occurred in Egypt, on the night before the Israelites fled from Egypt. If we accept the historicity of this event and the scholars’ best guesses on dates, this first Pesach occurred sometime before the end of the reign of Pharaoh Rameses II in 1225 BCE, over thirty-two centuries ago. Though the Israelites were commanded to celebrate this every year. The second Passover was not observed again until 40 years later, when Joshua brings them into the Promised Land after the travails of wandering in the desert.

February 2023

Today’s fundamentalists often ignore the long common history of Judaism and Islam. There have been periods of tension as today, but also there have been times of great mutual prosperity and tolerance, as in the flourishing Muslim-dominated societies of medieval Spain or the hundreds of years when the Ottoman Empire was ascendant. However the history is interpreted, the common Semitic origin of the Qu’ran’s Arabic and the Bible’s Hebrew is indisputable.

Mary LaHaj, an American Muslim woman who spoke at a Beth Elohim brotherhood breakfast years ago, pointed out two very striking examples of this common linguistic heritage. The consonant group ShLM (Shin, Lamed, Mem) appears as the greeting “shalom”, or peace in Hebrew and also forms the core of the Arabic words “salaam” (peace) and “Islam”, the religion of peace or surrender to God’s will, and of the word “Muslim”, one who surrenders. You can also recognize the same root in the Arabic name for God, Allah, and our own “Elohim”. El is the generic Semitic name for God. Even before the periods of Abraham and Moses, back in the Akkadian language of the very early second millennium BCE, there are references to Ilu.

And please note Beth Elohim’s Na’aseh group has been involved with the resettlement of a wonderful Afghan Muslim family, the Mohammads. They escaped just as Kabul fell to the Taliban and had to leave everything behind. Na’aseh has teamed with the United Church of Christ in Boxborough in working with the six members of the family for over a year now.

January 2023

Reverend Martin Luther King had a very special affection for Jewish people, and the feeling was mutual. In fact, during the heyday of the civil rights movement in the 50’s and 60’s, it is estimated that Jews contributed about half of the support funds – far out of proportion to their numbers in the general population or even the progressive community. It is worth noting that Dr. King also had a special connection with the Boston area. He received his doctorate at Boston University. His use of nonviolent civil disobedience to achieve social goals earned him a Nobel Prize as he further developed this great tradition, rooted in the writings of Concord’s Henry David Thoreau, that India’s great Mahatma Gandhi brought to the world’s attention.