SEASONS of the MOON The Jewish Year seen through its months =========================================================================== Issue #1 Vol #3 Tishrei 5758 / October 2, 1997 - November 1, 1997 =========================================================================== This publication is available in Adobe Acrobat format from The Ohr Somayach Home Page: http://www.ohr.org.il =========================================================================== We wish all our readers a Gemar Chasima Tova. =========================================================================== Yom Kippur is almost here -- Sukkos is not far behind it. Stay on top of them with Ohr Somayach http://www.ohr.org.il/special/roshhash (for Rosh Hashanah AND Yom Kippur) http://www.ohr.org.il/special/sukkos =========================================================================== The following is a message from the Deans of Ohr Somayach: (Seasons of the Moon appears below this letter) Dear Friend, On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Jews traditionally wish one another: "May you be inscribed for a Good Year." To our Internet Subscribers - members of the Ohr Somayach family - we would like to personally offer this blessing to you and your loved ones. And as family, you can send a special greeting to the rest of the Ohr Somayach family, to Jews throughout the world, the countless thousands participating in Ohr Somayach programs in a dozen centers on five continents. You can wish a good year to over 680 students discovering their Jewish roots at our main campus in Jerusalem and to more than 600 Russian families in the redeveloping Jewish communities in Odessa... wherever the light of Ohr Somayach radiates, your blessing will shine forth. All it takes is your generous contribution to our Rosh Hashanah Campaign. Your encouragement will enable us to reach many thousands more and bring them back to their Torah, their land and their people. They are waiting to hear from you. Please send in your gift today and earn the heavenly reward of a good year filled with health, happiness and success. Ksiva V'chasim Tova, Rabbi Nota Schiller Rabbi Mendel Weinbach P.S. Please send your generous gift *today*. Your gift will be translated into a good year for the tens of thousands more we can reach. Join us in meeting this historic challenge. 22 Shimon Hatzadik Street, POB 18103, Jerusalem 91180, Israel tel 972-2-581-0315, fax 972-2-581-2890, e-mail rabbis@ohr.israel.net =========================================================================== THIS MONTH'S SIGN Libra / Moznaim The seventh is always holy. The seventh day is Shabbat, the seventh year is Shmitta. So too, the seventh month - Tishrei - is sanctified with more mitzvot and Yamim Tovim than any other: Rosh Hashana; The Ten Days of Return; Yom Kippur; Succot; Shmini Atzeret; Shofar; Lulav; Etrog; Hadassim; Aravot; Succah; etc. The sign of the month of Tishrei - Libra - is called in Hebrew "Moznaim" which literally means "balances." It's not difficult to see the connection between the symbol of the balances and the month of Tishrei, for the first day of Tishrei is Rosh Hashana - a day when the future of the world and all its inhabitants literally hangs in the balance The Rambam (Maimonides) writes that a person should see himself and the whole world as being on a knife edge, precisely and exquisitely balanced - half meritorious and half culpable. If he does one sin, he tips the balanceof his own life and that of the whole world to the negative side. However, with just one positive action, he can alter the balance of his own life and that of the whole world to the side of blessing and life! =========================================================================== THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED Anyone who is prepared to admit that he lived long enough ago to remember the sixties, will recall a unique period in modern history. It seemed for a few years that there was a new idealism. There was something in the air... A whole generation was finding its cultural feet through a revolution in the world of music. Black folk music, the music of slavery, was adopted and adapted by a young white audience. The simple, inexpensive, acoustic guitar was transformed from an instrument that could fill a small room to a juggernaut that could out-blast the largest symphony orchestra. At the same time there was an equally sweeping revolution in the recording studio: Instead of merely pointing a microphone at a sound source, sound recording achieved the sophistication and flexibility of an aural motion picture. Who Writes The Songs? Wasn't it Daniel O'Donnel who said "Let me write the songs of a nation, and you can write its laws"? If ever there was a generation that expressed itself through Music, it was the generation of the sixties. There was a feeling that "All you need is love" and "With a little help from my friends," "The times" would be "a'changing." However, there came the day the music died. An entire generation woke up to find that its pot-induced reverie had turned into a Lysergic acid nightmare which had ruined or corrupted maybe hundreds of thousands of lives. And yet, like all great lies there must have been a single pure note of Truth in all the excess and immorality. Nothing can exist which is entirely false. It cannot have a foothold in this world. In every lie, there must be a grain of truth. What was single note of truth that became distorted into the great lie of the sixties? When the Holy Temple was standing, there was an event of great joy that took place during the festival of Succot. Water was brought up from the Gihon Spring south of the Temple Mount with great ceremony and procession. It was poured on the Altar and from there the water would descend to the depths of the earth. The Talmud tells us that if you never experienced the joy of the Simchat Beit HaShoeva, you had no idea what real joy was. At night, the water-drawing ceremony was accompanied by music and dancing of incomparable joy. Massive candelabra, taller than a house, shone out into the night. There was not a courtyard in Yerushalyaim that was not bathed in their light. And they danced. They danced and they danced. And who was it that danced. The ordinary people? The young? No. The greatest Torah sages, the Talmidei Chachamim, were the ones that danced, for it was only they who were certain to harness this tremendous excitement and direct it to the service of G-d. The chapter of the Talmud which describes this celebration is HaChalil - `The Flute.' The word chalil is related to chalal meaning `an empty space,' for the sound of the flute comes from the empty space inside it, from the vibrating column of air. But the word chalil is also connected to another word in Hebrew, chilul - `desecration.' That empty space, that column of air, is like a sound canvas on which the sounds of holiness, of the greatest simcha can be painted. However, that chalal can also generate a music which can be a spiritual vacuum, a drainpipe into which thousands of lives can vanish. Music can be a stairway to Heaven, but it can also be an elevator ride in the other direction. All You Need Is Love? The Talmud teaches us that the Second Holy Temple was destroyed because of Sinat Chinam, which is usually translated as `baseless hatred.' The cure for baseless hatred - Sinat Chinam - is Ahavat Chinam - unconditional love. The literal translation of Sinat Chinam is `free hate' and the literal translation of Ahavat Chinam is `free love.' If your memory serves you well, you'll remember that that was the slogan of the sixties - `Free Love.' Of course, `free love' in the mouth of the pop philosophers turned out not to mean unconditional love at all but rather unconditional taking and unbridled indulgence. There was one note of truth in the distorted strange brew of sixties' philosophy: All you need is Love. But without a Love of G-d and an acceptance of the yoke of Heaven those echoes of messianism were doomed to vanish into a purple haze of selfishness and immorality. =========================================================================== The Scales Of Justice An earthrise underglobe Tilts, Swaying the axis in excruciating Slow-motion From side to side And finally - so finally Aligns. All the world is quiet now Waiting for the word. It is coming, Unleashed like an arrow Across the light-years. In which cup will it land In the Scales Of Justice? =========================================================================== Sources: Talmud Succah, Perek HaChalil, Aruch Hashulchan, Rabbi Mattisyahu Glazerson, Rabbi Moshe Averick; =========================================================================== "I'm looking for the E-Mail address of a student at Ohr Somayach..." 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