Thursday's Parsha Tidbits - Parshas Pikudei

The following is a brief summary of some of the thoughts said over by R' Frand on the parsha this evening. I have attempted to reproduce these vorts to the best of my ability. Any perceived inconsistency is the result of my efforts to transcribe the shiur and should not be attributed to R' Frand. 

In Shemos 38:24 it computes all the gold which was used for the work in the Mishkan. R' Frand noted that Parshas Pikudei is an accounting of all that was donated to the Mishkan and that this pasuk identifies the gold that was donated. 

The Seforno explains that all the gold, silver and copper that was donated to the Mishkan was a pittance in comparison to the amount which was used in the First Beis Hamikdash and much less than Herod used in the rebuild. Notwithstanding this fact, the Shechinah was present in the Miskhan much more often (proportioned to the amount of time the Mishkan existed) than the First Beis Hamikdash and certainly more than the Second Beis Hamikdash. 

The Seforno teaches that we we can derive a lesson from this that the Shechinah does not dwell in the most opulent places, instead it chooses those places where the people have Yiras Shamayim and are respectful to one and other. 

R' Frand tied this into a pasuk in Isaiah where Hashem asks - where will I reside? I will look to the humble person, the person who has Yiras Shamayim. 

R' Frand next quoted the Maharal who cites a Gemara in Nedarim that a person should be careful of the students who are poor, because they will be the next leaders of the Jewish people. The Maharal explains that the Torah resides in these poor people because they are humble and this is where the Torah prefers to go. 

R' Frand illustrated this story by quoting a story told by R' Aharon Soloveitchik about his "great great" grandfather, R' Moshe Soloveitchik whose son was the Beis Halevi and from whom the Soloveitchik dynasty began. R' Moshe had a profitable lumber business, but he lost everything. This was very traumatic to the people in the town, many of whom had been employed in the business. It became such an important issue that they convened a Beis Din to look into his actions in order to see what would be the reason that he lost everything. The Beis Din examined many issues but could only come up with the fact that he violated the rule against giving too much charity as he gave more than 20% of his assets. 

R' Chaim Volozin rejected this answer and said that a person could not lose his fortune for giving too much charity. He explained that after R' Moshe lost his fortune, he sat and learned in the Beis Medrash. Because Hashem directs the Torah to those who are not wealthy and sit and learn, R Moshe was zoche to have children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who were gedolei Torah. This was the reason that he lost his fortune. 

R' Frand next quoted R' Meir Shapiro (the originator of Daf Yomi) who explained that Torah comes from students who are poor, because the students see how their parents struggle to pay for their tuition. The students realize and understand how important it is to their parents that the children go to yeshiva and the sacrifices that their parents make to pay for their studies. Because the children see this and appreciate that it is so important to their parents that they learn, the children excel in their limud of Torah. 

R' Frand closed the vort by telling a story he had recently heard about the father of a man (R' Morris Esformes) who is a great financial supporter of Torah. When R' Esformes was in yeshiva in Keren B'Yavne in the 1960s he stayed there for two years and did not call home because it was prohibitively expensive to do so. As such, he was unaware of the story of what happened to his parents while he was in Israel. Many, many years later R' Esformes learned that while he was in Israel, his father lost his business and the bank foreclosed on their home. His father and mother worked menial jobs and even took on second jobs washing pots and pans overnight in a bakery, just so that they would be able to pay for R' Esformes and his sister's yeshiva/Beis Yaakov tuition. This was their priority because they wanted their children to learn Torah and they would sacrifice to accomplish their goal. They were certainly successful as the name Esformes can be found on the donation walls in many yeshivas around the world.

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Monday's Musings on Sports - What Comes First - the Olympic Edition

There is a scene in A Few Good Men (one of my favorite movies of all time) where Tom Cruise is interviewing a client who is charged with murder and the solider begins to talk about the "code". One of the other officers asks him about the code and the soldier responds "Unit, Corps, God, Country." Cruise responds "the government of the United States wants to charge you two with murder. And you want me to go to the prosecutor with unit, corps, God, country?" The solider responds "that's our code."

The scene from A Few Good Men was rolling around my head over the last week, but not because I had watched it recently. It was the order of priority in the code that made me wonder what comes first in the Olympics.

All year long, the overwhelming majority of the players on the 12 national Olympic hockey teams play for teams in various professional leagues. The most prominent of the leagues is the NHL, but there is a sizable contingent from the Russian KHL, the Swedish Elite League and some other European professional leagues. Just like the players on the United States and Canadian Olympic Hockey teams are a mix of players from various NHL teams, the players on the European teams come from many sources. By way of example, the Czech Republic has sixteen NHL players on its roster, while twenty four of the twenty five players on the the Swedish team come from the NHL. Even Switzerland has six or seven NHL players on their roster.

During the two weeks of the Olympics, these players join together with their countrymen to attempt to medal for their respective homelands. The allegiances can be strange as players who are on teams which are bitter rivals during the regular season are now teammates, if not linemates in the pursuit of a medal.

I heard a  great interview with a former player (I can't remember who) on NHL radio last week. He said that during the 1984 Canada Cup series when the USSR played Canada in hockey, there was friction between the Islander and Oiler players on Canada's team and they did not want to play together. The teams had just played against each other in each of the last two Stanley Cup finals and there was a fierce rivalry. The former player being interviewed said that Larry Robinson of the Montreal Canadians had to make peace between the Oiler and Islander players before they would play together.

The real question is - what happens when a regular season teammate now becomes the adversary in Olympic competition. Although the player wants to win a gold medal, he also knows that when the Olympics are over he wants to win the Stanley Cup and he needs that teammate to be able to perform. Would the player not check him in the Olympic competition? Would he come to his aid if he was fighting with another player who wears different colors?

The concept of where one's loyalty lies and the order of progression of "Unit, Corps, God, Country" hit home when I paid a shiva call over the weekend. I was visiting by the F__ Family and one of the mourners was talking about his maternal grandfather who had fought for Germany in WWI. The man said that when his grandfather was in battle against the French, he was an infantryman and had been issued a rifle with bayonet. One day when he was in hand to hand combat he was about to stab an enemy soldier when the soldier yelled out "Shma Yisrael" as he clearly thought that he was going to die. My friend's grandfather disarmed the enemy soldier and sent him on his way.

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Sunday Night Suds - Samuel Adams Escape Route

This week's Sunday Night Suds looks at Samuel Adams Escape Route.

As New York experienced a brief respite from our extremely harsh winter, it is a fitting week to review the Samuel Adams Escape Route.

I first tried this beer on Thursday Night after I came back from the Rabbi Frand shiur and a shul meeting that followed the shiur. My first bottle of Escape Route was so memorable that when I sat down to write today's SNS post, I could not even remember what it tasted like, so I had to have another tonight.

Although the name of the beer does not let on what style of beer it is trying to emulate, the good folks at BA have been charitable enough to pin it down as a Kolsch. The beer poured a medium yellow with little carbonation and no hops to speak of. The flavor was like a slightly amped up lager with some malts and a little breadiness, but not much else.

This beer would be best described as a summer BBQ beer - something to drink with a burger when it is blazing hot outside and you don't want a beer that is too heavy or alcoholic. I would not recommend this beer for any serious main course/entree as the flavor is so mild it would not compliment the food. 

The Samuel Adams Escape Route has a Star-K on the label, but is not listed on the December 2013 LOC on the Star-K website. To see what the experts on Beer Advocate think about this brew, please follow this link - beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/35/109554.

As always, please remember to drink responsibly and to never waste good beer unless there is no designated driver. If you've tried this beer or any others which have been reviewed on the kosher beers site, please feel free to post your comments (anonymous comments are acceptable).

If you have seen this post being carried on another site, please feel free to click www.kosherbeers.blogspot.com to find other articles on the kosherbeers blogsite. Hey its free and you can push my counter numbers up!

Thursday's Parsha Tidbits - Parshas Vayakhel

The following is a brief summary of some of the thoughts said over by R' Frand on the parsha this evening. I have attempted to reproduce these vorts to the best of my ability. Any perceived inconsistency is the result of my efforts to transcribe the shiur and should not be attributed to R' Frand.

In Shemos 35:30, Moshe tells the Jewish people that they should see that Hashem has called Betzalel the son of Uri the son of Hur of the tribe of Judah. Moshe further explains that Hashem has given Betzalel the wisdom and insight to craft the Mishkan.

(At the time that Betzalel was selected to work on the Mishkan he was 13 years old!)

The pasuk itself is reminiscent of another pasuk in Parshas Ki Sissa (Shemos 31:2) where Hashem tells Moshe that Hashem has has called Betzalel the son of Uri the son of Hur of the tribe of Judah. Moshe again explains that Hashem has given Betzalel the wisdom and insight to craft the Mishkan.

R' Frand noted that the pesukim were odd in that not only was Betzalel's father mentioned, but his grandfather was identified as well. R' Frand also quoted Rashi who underscores that Hur was the son of Miriam. R' Frand then asked why did Rashi need to tell us this as it is well known that Hur was Miriam's son?

R' Frand first addressed the mention of Hur by quoting the well known Medrash on Vaykhel which states that Betzalel received the honor in the merit of his grandfather who refused to bow to popular pressure when there was a swell of support for building the Golden Calf.

R' Frand then asked - in hindsight, was it proper for Hur to stand up against the masses when they did not listen to him and ultimately killed him for saying no? R' Frand answered that Hur did do the right thing, because sometimes a person needs to stand up for what he believes in, and even if he does not think that others will listen to him.

Where did Hur learn this from? The answer is that he saw this in his mother Miriam.

R' Frand identified four specific moments that Miriam stood up for ideas, even though unpopular and they seemed unlikely to succeed.

The first event was when Amram divorced Yocheved because Amram saw all the Jewish babies being killed by the Egyptians. Although Amram was the lead Rabbi for the Jews in Egypt, his toddler daughter Miriam reproached him for divorcing Yocheved and told him he was worse than Pharaoh. Although Miriam could not have believed that she would succeed in convincing her father, she knew that he was wrong and that she needed to try to influence him.

The next event took place when Moshe was placed by Miriam in the basket in the water. After Miriam saw that the daughter of Pharaoh had retrieved Moshe, Miriam approached her and told her that she should give the baby to a Jewish midwife. Again, this must have seemed like a longshot - why would the daughter of Pharaoh listen to a slave girl? Still Miriam stood up and spoke about what she believed in.

The third event involved the singing after the Jews crossed the Yam Suf. The women were upset and expressed to Miriam their displeasure in not being able to sing. The Tosafos Harosh explains that Miriam picked up a tambourine and encouraged them to sing - because she knew that they wanted to sing and that the noise would drown out their singing.

The final event involved the spinning of thread for the Mishkan. The gemara relates that the women spun thread into wool while it was still on the sheep. Miriam actually taught them to do this because the women wanted to participate, but were concerned that they would be unable to do so if they were niddos. To solve the problem, Miriam taught them to spin thread while it was still on the sheep and not capable of becoming tamei.

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Sunday Night Suds - Saranac Legacy IPA

This week's Sunday Night Suds looks at Saranac Legacy IPA.

Every so often there is a beer that comes along that I covet, but can't bring myself to buy. Often the resistance is the price for the beer, but sometimes it is not the cost of the beer itself, but the "value added" package that it comes in. For the longest time, the Saranac Legacy IPA was just such a beer. But no longer...

Often times, a brewery will release a beer in limited quantities. The most prevalent form of limited release are the seasonal beers that can only be bought a few months a year. Common examples are Oktoberfests, Summer or Spring Ales.

Another limited quantity marketing maneuver is the seasonal mix box which will contains some of the brewery's year long product and two, three or even four seasonal beers. For years, I used to look forward to winter so that I could buy the Samuel Adams winter box and get two of the Old Fezziwig and Holiday Porter. Of course, I did have to find someone to take the Cranberry Lambic off my hands, but I could usually give them away before spring. 

Last year, Saranac began to market its Legacy IPA in an even more exclusive fashion. Saranac began to insert one can of the beer in its Brewers Dozen - Trail mix box. This marketing scheme frustrated me to no end. Because Saranac produces quality Pale Ale and IPA, I really wanted to try the Legacy IPA, but I could not bring myself to buying a 12 pack of other beer, even good quality Saranac product, just to get the one can of Legacy IPA. Even when Saranac started to insert a single can of the Legacy IPA in twelve pack boxes of the Pale Ale (my favorite Saranac), I still could not pony up for the 12 pack just to get one Legacy IPA. 

I don't know if the good folks at Saranac were inundated with comments from people like me (I did not even attempt to contact them), but news broke in late Fall that Saranac would soon be selling the Legacy IPA in special edition four packs. So when I went to Beverage Barn in Garden City Park to buy beer for the Daf Yomi siyum earlier this month and saw the Legacy IPA, I knew that this was the beer to buy for the special occasion.

The beer poured a rich orange and after I poured it and brought it near my face, I could smell the hops. The first few sips were all about the hops and did not disappoint. There was some citrus to the brew and pine notes as well. Although the beer is 6.5% abv, the alcohol flavor is not prominent and it is a well rounded IPA. 

The guys in my Daf Yomi group enjoyed this very much, but I still managed to save a few cans for the house. Mrs KB has not tried it yet, but maybe I will follow up with her comments at some later date...

Saranac Legacy IPA is under the Kosher Supervision of the Va'ad of Detroit as is every other beer produced at the Matt Brewery plant in Utica, NY. Keep in mind, Saranac has begun to brew some of its High Peaks series off site and these bottles do not have kosher certification from the Va'ad of Detroit.

To see what the experts on Beer Advocate think about the Legacy IPA, please follow this link www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/99/96250.

As always, please remember to drink responsibly and to never waste good beer unless there is no designated driver.

If you've tried this beer or any others which have been reviewed on the kosher beers site, please feel free to post your comments (anonymous comments are acceptable).

If you have seen this post being carried on another site, please feel free to click www.kosherbeers.blogspot.com to find other articles on the kosherbeers blogsite. Hey its free and you can push my counter numbers up!

Thursday's Parsha Tidbits - Parshas Ki Sissa

During the winter months, this post is generally a brief summary of some of the thoughts said over by R' Frand on the parsha. As R' Frand was travelling this evening, the Thursday Night shiur was given by R' Dovid Heber. I have attempted to reproduce R' Heber's vort to the best of my ability. Any perceived inconsistency is the result of my efforts to transcribe the shiur and should not be attributed to the maggid shiur.

R' Heber quoted the Sefer V'Dibarta Bam which notes that the Rama on Shulchan Aruch begins Shivisi Hashem L'Negdi Tamid and the Rama on the last siman of Shulchan Aruch (697) which contains the laws of Purim Katan, ends with the statement - "V'Tov Lev Mishte Tamid." We see from this that the Shulchan Aruch begins with the concept that we should have yiras Shamyaim constantly and ends that we should be happy in our worship of Hashem constantly. The life of the Jew should be tamid in this line - Yiras and Ahavas Hashem.

R' Heber more fully developed this thought by explaining that a Jew has certain mitzvos that are tamid, like mezuzah or issurim such as not eating certain foods. However, there are other mitzvos that are infrequent - such as those related to the holiday. This shows that there are certain mitzvos that come once in a while to reinvigorate us, but we cannot live as Jews as once in the while observance, so we have daily mitzvos as well.

R' Heber next quoted the Chasam Sofer on Gemara Megilla 6b which discusses whether it is better to jump to do mitzvos or to wait and do them in a more honorable fashion. The question arises in the context of Purim in a leap year where we see that we could observe Purim in Adar I, but instead it is kept in Adar II -- so that the redemption of Purim will be close to the redemption from Egypt which is celebrated on Pesach. The Chasam Sofer explains that even though Purim is celebrated in Adar II, there is a jumping to do the mitzva in Adar I as we do not have fasts or eulogies on Purim Katan.

R' Heber then quoted the Arguas HaBosem who asks - how is this keeping the miracle and observance of Purim? All we are doing is refraining from fasts and eulogies, but there is little to differentiate it from the day before when we also did not fast or have a eulogy, although the day itself was not anything special.

The Arugas HaBosem answers by noting that there is a minhag to have a little extra in our meal on Purim Katan and we see this in the language of the Rama who says eat the extra food and "Tov Lev Mishte Tamid." A Jew is happy all the time, so what is done on Purim Katan? The extra is a little extra food which is consumed to celebrate Purim Katan.

R' Heber then tied this into this week's pasha through a vort from R' Mordechai Rogoff (sp?). The Torah notes that the luchos were written the same on each side (mizeh u'mizeh haim kesuvim) - this teaches that a Jew must be the same in the house and on the street. The person who is careful to keep kosher at home must carefully keep kosher outside. And the person who makes sure to have a proper self image outside of the home should not disregard his obligations to do mitzvos when he is home and he thinks that no one is looking.

R' Heber also tied this to the megillah where Esther says to Mordechai "Ladas Mazeh V'al Mazeh" - Esther says to Mordechai that inwardly the Jews were keeping the mitzvos, but when they went out they were compromising their religion to impress the Persians, by taking part in Achasveros' feast. 

The Megillah closes with the phrase that the Jews had Orah Simcha Sasson V'Yikar - the gemara learns that the mitzvos including bris millah and tefillin were kept. These were mitzvos that were very private and unseen (millah) and very public (tefillin). The Jews were saved based on mitzvos that were done publicly and privately.

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