January 2004 - טֵבֵת .. שְׁבָט תשס״ד Tevet..Shevat 5764

Here is part of the Rabbi's column from our last yearbook:

When I was an undergraduate, the Yale varsity football team had to travel to Providence, RI, for a rare game there. The Yale band could not afford to bring its members to the game, so the drum major and a friend borrowed a car and drove to the game. The friend went up into the press box to announce the half-time show and played canned Sousa marches while the drum major marched all over the field by himself. The announcer proclaimed that these were very difficult and rare formations. First the drum major performed a “polar bear in a snow storm” and then “an ink blot in the dead of night.” The drum major marched up and down the field apparently oblivious to any reality outside of his marching. Then the announcer said: “And now for a formation never ever attempted in history -- ‘the face of God’.” I laughed and laughed, but apparently some of the alumnae did not think it was so funny. After all, God says in the Torah: “You [Moses] cannot see My face, for a person shall not see Me and live,” (Ex. 33:20). The drum major was relieved of his position and the band was suspended from playing at the next game. God's presence or face may not be accessible to humanity, but the Jewish tradition has a very different tradition about our faces. In the Babylonian Talmud, the Mishnah asked “From what time may one recite the Shema in the morning?” The Gemara then reports that: “Rabbi Meir says: ‘The morning Shema is recited from the time that one can distinguish between a wolf and a dog;’ Rabbi Akiva says: ‘between a donkey and a wild donkey.’ Others say: ‘From the time that one can distinguish a friend at a distance of four cubits (six feet).’ The halakhah is as stated by those Others.” (Berakhot 9b)

—Rabbi Harry A. Manhoff, Ph.D.

December

Index

February