Hi Everyone,

There are an unusual number of messages this week, so please read to the end! We also have the pleasure of a Dvar Torah by Jeremy Friedman.

Participant News

• Behatzlacha to Aharon Arazi and Ben Druce who are beginning their service in Tzahal. Thanks for protecting us! We wish you much success and a speedy, safe return home!

• Heartfelt condolences to Benjy Gottesman and his family, on the loss of his grandfather. Hamakom yenachem etchem betoch shaar avelei tzion viyerushalayim.

Change in connection info for Men's Hilchot Shabbat

Sorry for the incovenience, but in order to assure stability we have changed the connection info for men's hil. shabbat:

Connect Online - https://www1.gotomeeting.com/join/654665889

Or, call in using your telephone - dial 630-869-1014
Access Code: 654-665-889
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting

Meeting Password: emet
Meeting ID: 654-665-889

Shabbatonim

We are hoping to have some face-to-face programming in the course of the winter!

1. Would you like to participate in, or help plan or sponsor, a shabbaton in the US for Presidents' weekend? Please let us know!

2. Would you like to participate in, or help plan or sponsor, a shabbaton in Israel, around the end of December? Please let us know!

Audio Recordings

Audio recordings of all of the shiurim are now built into the mekorot pages on http://orachmishor.org. You can also see a list of all recordings at http://video.orachmishor.org/shabbat and http://video.orachmishor.org/contemporary. They may be posted up to a week after the shiur.

Please still do your best to come live :)

Teaching Opportunities

A number of you have expressed interest in finding opportunities to teach, either in writing or in person. Here are some options:

1. If you would like to write a dvar torah for our weekly email bulletin, just submit it before Thursday night Israel time.

2. If you would like to write an article to be published on the website, and if you'd like help with research etc., please just let me know.

3. If you'd like to teach a shiur in a shul, campus, or other in-person venue, please let me know; we are lining up some in-person speaking engagements for participants.

Survey and Brainstorming

One of the challenges of our chosen medium is that it doesn't give participants a natural forum to make suggestions and requests about how to steer the course of the program. To provide that opportunity, we'd like to solicit your informal feedback on a number of issues. Please email your thoughts on some or all of the questions below to info@orachmishor.org. Suggestions that are off-topic are also welcome.

How do you find the current online shiurim -

Is the time convenient?

Is the content convenient to access before (mekorot) and afterwards (recordings and summaries).

Have you encountered technical difficulties? Have they been resolved?

Has the amount of material per shiur been appropriate? What about the level of difficulty of the mekorot?

The shiurim have focused almost entirely on absorbing information. Would you prefer an increased focus on building reading or congnitive skills?

Do you think there is a need for more group discussion?

Do you think the real-time broadcast format is important, or would you prefer a pre-recorded shiur that can be listened to at your convenience?

Do you prefer that the men and women's shiurim for Hilchot Shabbat be separate, as they are now, or would you be equally happy / happier if they were merged?

In terms of expanding the offerings of shiurim, which of the following would interest you:

Guest online lecturers on special topics (please specify lecturer and/or topic)

Series of Shiurim on tanach, midrash, or other subjects (please specify)

Opportunities to volunteer in educational or chesed capacity

Training or classes in how to be a Jewish leader (rabbinic or lay-leader) from people with experience

Do you know of chesed and educational venues in which our participants could volunteer?

Do you have long-term community-building vision

Divrei Torah for Parshat Chayei Sarah

Why Buy When You Can Borrow (or Steal)?

Rabbi Aharon Frazer

It's very unusual when the Torah gives us an in-depth description of a seemingly inconsequential event. This week's Parsha opens with what appears to be an inordinate emphasis on the financial dimension of Sarah's funeral. After telling us in a single verse that Avraham "came to eulogize and cry for Sarah", the Torah then devotes a lengthy passage to the transaction between Avraham and Efron, through which the burial cave of Machpelah was purchased. Is this really such an important component of the story?

It is interesting to note that the Torah always tells us when the forefathers bought land (and, by extension, when they didn't).  We don't find our forefathers buying land in Haran or Egypt, although they did travel there. By contrast, we find Avraham buying the cave of Machpelah, Yaakov buying a field in Shechem. We don't find Yitzhak buying land with money, but he does invest effort in digging wells, and only keeps those to which he has undisputed rights. This also seems to be a legal form of land acquisition in Israel.

The choice to buy land is a long-term choice; it represents an intention to remain in a location forever. This is particularly true in the case of burial land; one chooses an eternal resting place in the vicinity of one's descendant's expected home. In this sense, the decision of the forefathers to buy land and to bury in Israel represents an act of faith in God's promise to give the land of Canaan to their descendants. They are confident betting their money and the accessibility of their graves on the fact that this promise will ultimately be fulfilled. Even when the Jewish return to the land looked most remote, at the end of Yaakov's life, he and even Yosef, an Egyptian government official, both insisted on being buried in Israel. Certainly, taking this step represented a deep belief that God's plan for the Jewish people would come to fruition.

But there is another dimension to this behavior as well. We find that the forefathers insisted on acquiring land in Israel through unquestionable legal means. This is apparent in the case of Avraham in our Parsha; though he could have "borrowed" the land for free, he insisted on acquiring it in a fully legitimate transaction. (In part, this might have stemmed from a desire to assert his identity over the land. While the Bnei Cheit offer him to bury his wife in "the best of our graves", he wants to bury Sarah in his own land.) Yaakov could certainly have camped in Shechem without buying a field, yet he did so. Yitzhak provides the starkest example; he seems to have abandoned many wells that were legitimately his, but were unreasonably disputed by the Plishtim, in order to avoid confrontation or untoward appearances. Instead, he dug alternative wells that were manifestly his own.

A well-known midrash about the dispute between Avraham and Lot's shepherds calls attention to this attitude. It says that the dispute was about the validity of allowing sheep to graze on land currently owned by the Canaanites. Lot's shepherds engaged in this practice, reasoning that, ultimately, the land belonged to them, as God had promised it to them. Avraham's shepherds, by contrast, considered this to be theft. It is noteworthy that, as a result of the dispute, Lot opted to move to Sedom, where perhaps the standards of conduct were more consistent with his shepherds' attitude.

We see that the forefathers had a nuanced attitude toward the land of Israel. They did believe it to be their ultimate inheritance, and did not shy away from investing money in it or even burying their dead there. On the contrary, they went out of their way to be buried there even when it was not convenient, and to buy it even at high prices. God's promise meant that it would certainly be theirs in the future.

Yet they resisted the temptation to make the logical leap that God's promise made it legally theirs now, that it waived the usual principles of civil law or exempted them from honoring the claims of the contemporary owners. This was not out of a lack of faith; they were certain that it would ultimately be theirs, but they also understood that it was not theirs right now.

This obviously has relevance for our attitude to the land of Israel, and its non-Jewish inhabitants, in our time. But in truth, it has far broader relevance to how we understand the appropriate implementation of religious faith in the real world. There are many times when we may be tempted to stray from "rational" behavior in the name of religious conviction. To some degree, this is warranted. We do, at the end of the day, believe there is more to the world than that which can be measured with hard science. Yet we need to be wary of religious approaches that encourage us to act in ways that countermand apparent morality, under the allowance of a hypothesized theological loophole.

Our forefathers were very holy people, yet they knew how to navigate a very messy real world. Their commitment to God and his teachings was always a means to elevate them above their contemporary morality, never an excuse to stoop below it. They did not embrace an approach in which the current reality is irrelevant, and actions are chosen solely on the basis of an abstract religious ideal of how the world should be. As their descendants, we need to learn from their faith, but also from their healthy respect for reality, both on pragmatic and ethical matters.

Dvar Torah by Jeremy Friedman

At the beginning of this week's Torah portion (Genesis 23) Abraham's wife Sarah dies and Abraham mourns her death.  Afterward, he goes to bury her but he must first by a burial plot from the Hittites.  Efron the Hittite offers to give Abraham the field and cave that he requested for free but Abraham insists on paying and ends up paying 400 silver shekels for the property.  Whether you think that Abraham paid a resonable price for the land (Onkelos) or whether you think Efron ripped Abraham off by overcharging (Rashi quoting Midrashei Chazal) there are two very important lessons to learn from this encounter.

1:
The Rambam at the end of his laws about gifts (Hilchot Zakaiyah Umatanah 12:17) states that the truly righteous people of the world who go above and beyond don't dislike taking gifts from people and avoid doing so.  This story of Avraham and the fact that earlier (Genesis 14:21-24) Avraham refused to profit from the war losses if Sedom demonstrate his self-sufficiency.

There is an idea in Economics that states that if a person has a choice of whether to work (expend effort) or not to work, he/she will naturally chose not to work (assuming that is in some way sustainable).  Unfortunately the resources of the world are limited.  If everyone relies on the wealth/effort of others and doesn't produce anything themselves, eventually the usable resources in the world will evaporate (this calls to mind the recent economic crisis).  Thus from the example of Abraham, it is imperative on us to contribute to the world in a meaningful way.   In some instances this simply means getting a job.  Unfortunately this is not always sufficient.  Besides getting a job (and especially if you can't get one for some reason) it is also necessary to volunteer our time.  This can be done officially through an organization but often can include contributing your skills and resources unofficially to people who need help through your work or community.  A simple example for
people in school is to take some of your free time to help someone else out with their homework and/or understanding concepts from class.  For those people in the work place, some ideas that come to mind: carpooling, helping someone else out when they get behind in work, helping people with finding resources or connections.

I don't intend here to shun people who "take gifts," i.e. take advantage of the kindness and resources of other people (although it may be more complicated to relate to people who always take and never/rarely give back).  I think we always find ourselves in a situation where we have to rely on someone else in some way (which is not necessarily a bad thing).  Nevertheless, in our own lives it is important to be aware of the amount of time/money we spend on ourselves in relationship to others.  Sometimes (when possible) it is good to set aside a fixed amount of time in week/money/resources to spend on other people.

2:
Rabi Eliezer (Bava Metzia 87a) criticizes Efron for saying a lot but doing little and praises Avraham for saying little and doing a lot for his actions in last weeks portion (Genesis 18) when he told his three guests that he was going to feed them bread and then continued to bring them calf meat, curd, and milk in addition to bread.

Despite the fact that charisma and discussion has its place (thus I write these long emails), the best way to affect change is to actually take action.

Methodologically, I think this is a human characteristic that is evident in the world.  When judging people it is easy to misunderstand/be mislead by what they say.  Sometimes people don't reveal the whole story or speak very cryptically (short of flat out lying).  It is thus much easier to judge/understand a person by his/her actions because we express our values in action.  This has many ramifications for how people communicate and how people interact with each other.  A simple example (that I think Sarah told me a long time ago) is that you can understand what a person is thinking better not by what they say in a conversation but by what topic of conversation they chose to discuss in the first place.