Talmud

Recipes not always required

Were you part of the pandemic sourdough bread baking craze? I’ve been baking bread for around 40 years, but I’m not a sourdough baker. Maintaining the starter was something I couldn’t manage. Although I’ve made many kinds of bread, including weekly challah (twin teens eat a lot!), I found using store-bought yeast was fine. Besides, my biology professor husband disliked the colourful, dangerous things he saw growing when I tried to maintain a starter long ago. He supports our bread habit as we buy one pound of dried yeast at a time.

My approach isn’t exact. However, I produce bread that rises and tastes good even without a recipe. I don’t use all the technical terms that I saw on the internet during the pandemic bread-baking phase. I stick to basic ingredients and easy methods. Bakers have used these successfully for thousands of years.

All this seemed familiar when I started studying the Babylonian tractate of Menachot. Menachot delves into the exact ways the rabbis thought meal (grain) offerings should be measured, cooked, burnt and sacrificed in the Temple in Jerusalem. The rabbis who discussed this mostly lived long after the Temple was destroyed. They’d never seen Temple offerings but they still discussed detailed recipes and techniques for proper sacrifice.

I remember the many online discussions about sourdough science. These were often people who, while baking beautiful pandemic sourdough, had never made bread previously, as I had. Of course, all of us would be shamed before our ancestors who, using a wooden bowl ripe with wild yeast, turned out bread consistently, day in and day out, to feed their families.

You might think, well, this isn’t for me if I don’t bake bread. Perhaps you never have worried about the ancient grain offerings in Jerusalem, or the “shrewbread” that became our modern equivalent, challah. All these discussions came to a head in Menachot, page 18a.

A question arises about whether a specific offering is fit (acceptable) and why. First, we learn about a meaningful teacher-student relationship between Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua and Yosef the Babylonian.

Yosef the Babylonian learns something from Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua that doesn’t seem entirely right to him. He questions his teacher several times. After multiple repetitions of a simple answer, Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua finally gives Yosef the Babylonian more information. He recalls another contradictory teaching from Rabbi Eliezer that agrees with what Yosef the Babylonian remembers.

Yosef the Babylonian erupts in joy. Both men are emotional, moved by the experience they’ve had, where careful analysis brings them important understanding and resolution. Yosef the Babylonian is relieved – he had worried that what he’d remembered was a mistake because he couldn’t find anyone else who recalled what Rabbi Eliezer had taught. Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua cries, filled with wonder. They celebrate Torah study, which maintains an intellectual genealogy of teachers and students by the historic transmission of knowledge. It’s a careful recounting of discussion and disputes, rather than just a simple, reflexive answer.

Menachot 18a, like bread-baking, shows that, if we get bogged down in the technical details, we can also be swept up in the transformation that occurs when we get everything – that we study or bake – right. This story is about mistakes, forgetting, misinformation and complex opinions. This tractate might describe how to do defunct sacrifice recipes correctly. It’s also about how we transmit important knowledge. We need to keep the facts straight, without forgetting anything, and synthesize complex opinions.

This is relevant today. We’re struggling daily to keep track of what’s happening in the world. Is it legal? Is it ethical? How does it affect us? In an age of “instant” information, diminished international reporting, social media disinformation campaigns and simplistic interpretations, it’s no wonder that we need to work hard to figure out what’s happening. It’s just as important now to do one’s own footwork. We must ask questions and analyze information carefully, just as when Yosef the Babylonian sat with his teacher, Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua, sometime between 135 and 170 CE.

We can get swept up in the technical aspects of our lives, whether it’s sourdough baking or legal proceedings. Yet, we also have that practical compass that guides us. I know intuitively, after decades of practice, how to throw together flour, salt, water and yeast, when to add sweetness, oil or eggs, and why. It’s a gut feeling, as deep as my internal moral compass that reacts when I see something wrong happening. Perhaps it’s how Judaism, my family or my community has shaped me, just as environment shapes all of us. Perhaps it’s an innate sense of the worth of each human being, as we are made in the image of the Divine. We know when things are going off the rails, and when we need to keep asking the hard questions to make change.

You could infer that all this refers to the current US upheaval, but it also relates to many other issues. For instance, at home, recent research found that Canadian Jews weren’t wrong about the CBC’s bias in reporting on the Israel-Hamas war. Statistical analysis indicates that yes, headlines, interviewer choices and perspectives lacked objectivity. If you, like me, questioned the CBC’s reporting over the last two years, just like Yosef questioned Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua, this information is reassuring.

Farther away, Israelis care passionately about democracy. Israelis ask their government tough questions, including protesting its poor record in protecting Arab citizens and its failure to provide a sufficient inquiry concerning Oct. 7. Regarding Iran’s upheaval, the Islamic regime’s repression means protesters risk murder, injury, torture and rape. Brave questioning of authority and pursuit of truthful information aren’t specific to one culture or country.

Yosef the Babylonian doubted himself. He repeatedly nudged his teacher. He worried that he’d made a mistake, but then bravely sought clarity to understand the bigger picture. We, too, can be so persistent that authority figures, like our teachers and government officials, must answer with thorough responses. Let’s not get bogged down in the technical details. It’s not whether you say that your bread dough rests, or uses an autolyze. Rather, listen to your gut. Go for the big questions. Think hard. Act to take the moral high ground. We all deserve something better. Let’s hope soon to break bread together, in peace and safety, with emotional, deep discussions.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

When boundaries have shifted

The beginning of January has not been easy in Winnipeg. We’ve dealt with hate crime graffiti, including swastikas, on Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, Kelvin High School, the Abu Bakr Al-Siddique Mosque, as well as a hookah café, residential properties and street signs. For my household, it was personal. It hit our congregation and my kids’ school. It marred street signs near where we live. It defaced a mosque where I know one of the members. This is a lot to deal with. The police triumphantly made an arrest, but, from what I’ve heard, it seems unlikely that this individual did all these crimes. The story is familiar to Canadians at this point. Here it is.

Hate crimes happen. “Oh!” our leaders say. “Hate crimes are horrible. This isn’t Canadian. We will seek justice!” Then, an intermittent flow of outrage and misinformation follows. Suddenly, there’s an arrest. Everything’s solved. Canadians live happily ever after.

That is, until a new crime pops up. When that’s reported, the response sometimes is, “Well, this isn’t fitting into our narrative. We don’t know how this happened.” It even extends to, “Oh, we (police or officials) don’t clean up graffiti, so you can go ahead and do this yourself.” Essentially, another episode is swept under the rug as inconvenient.

I learned about the Overton Window in a social science class years ago. However, when it came up in reference to societal change and antisemitism, I had to review its meaning. The term is neither positive nor negative. It defines something that we have all experienced. Imagine you have a spectrum of beliefs: about school choice, disabilities, tolerance and diversity, human rights, whatever. The term was originally designed to describe how a politician might use a “window” to define policies on this spectrum. Occasionally, it’s used to say where someone’s beliefs fall on the political spectrum. We can shift the Overton Window; for instance, towards increased accessibility for those with disabilities. Some shifts are good, some are not. This term helps describe what’s happening with respect to antisemitism.

As the police described their arrest of the suspect in this recent series of hate graffiti, they said something like they “would have to examine the motive behind the crimes.” I was flummoxed. How could a swastika on a minority’s place of worship or a public school be anything other than an act of hate? Discussion followed about the suspect’s mental health situation, as he is unwell. Soon after he was released from custody, he was arrested again, for breaking into a home and violating the conditions of his release.

Many people have mental health issues, but going out in the dark at 4 a.m. to paint swastikas isn’t a normal, common expression of those challenges. People who perform hateful acts should face consequences. The Overton Window of what is considered “acceptable” antisemitism seems to have shifted.

I’m guessing there are multiple people committing this hate in our city. Yet the narrative here indicates that “Hurray! We’ve got the culprit” and no more effort is being made to resolve the bigger issues.

Meanwhile, I concluded my Daf Yomi (daily page of Talmud study) of Tractate Zevachim, on how sacrifices worked in the days of the Temple in Jerusalem. I’m lucky I didn’t start my learning with this – it felt like a slog. However, I continued studying the tractate, even while I found it somewhat dry and lacking in fun aggadah (stories).

Zevachim examines questions like when is a religious ritual sacrifice acceptable? What is the right physical and mental space for doing these holy rituals? When is it considered transgressive because it’s done wrong? When is it accepted even if it is not done in quite the right time or place? What rituals are exempt from repercussions, even if they are not done exactly right or considered acceptable practices?

These questions are intellectual exercises. We have no Temple in Jerusalem. The rabbis quoted in this approximately 1,500-year-old text didn’t have a Temple anymore. We Jews in modernity don’t do ritual sacrifice. Still, questions about what feels acceptable or forbidden, exempt or meaningful, have real-life repercussions. When the rabbis discussed different parts of ritual, they considered shifting their Overton Window about what they could see as correct, acceptable, exempt from punishment, or such a violation that one was cut off from the Jewish people.

Historically, the Overton Window about what’s considered appropriate discourse or hate speech has also shifted – multiple times. Slurs and crimes against Jews are commonplace throughout millennia. We’ve also had some golden eras, when things felt safe.

This January was another shift in Winnipeg. It’s been horrible, but we knew it was coming. It’s part of a worldwide shift of what’s considered “acceptable” antisemitism. I’ve been asked what can be done. I suggested giving this hate a broad, inclusive definition. Re-read the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition. Nothing good is intended when someone spray paints a swastika on a synagogue door. It’s even more of a threat when it’s on a classroom whiteboard or hidden in a Jewish kid’s locker, as was the recent case.

We must educate people about history, including how to avoid antisemitic hate. Make that education required. With definitions and education, our window of what’s acceptable or a crime firms up.

These experiences have felt like a terrible personal violation. It feels threatening and unsafe. Yet, our congregation responded with courage and love. We welcomed many non-Jewish supporters at our Shabbat services afterwards. We responded with pride and inclusivity.

The kid was so brave. He took a photo of the graffiti on his locker, asked a parent for help, went to the school office. Now, there’s a police report, all his classmates know what happened.

The kid also faced extended questioning from administrators about “if he’d told the whole story.” He was told that “everyone makes mistakes.” One lesson the kid learned is that maybe reporting the hate crime itself was a mistake, because, instead of supporting him, the approach involved the suggestion that the victim did the graffiti to begin with. This is bad news, and a familiar type of antisemitism, where Jewish victims are blamed for having “brought it on themselves.” We shouldn’t say this to any victim. It’s not OK. If this is treated as being OK, it means that victims may trust institutions less, and report less often.

Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Actions like education and transparency can clean up and eradicate hate. We don’t know who did this, but we know who we are. We’re Jewish. We’ve been here before. We’re made of stern, proud stuff. The Overton Window has shifted. It’s time to ask our allies to all lean in to help shove it back again.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Give yourself the gift of love

A friend shared her plans for a “great” day off. This included a deep dive into her refrigerator to clean things out. This household task is necessary. Food safety is important, but that doesn’t make it fun. When the kitchen is completely clean and there’s nothing growing where it shouldn’t, it’s a relief. I also feel much better after a big clean up, even when it’s an effort.

I’m studying the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Zevachim, which is about how sacrifices must be done in the Temple, including what is prohibited. It’s mostly an intellectual exercise. The rabbis discussing this all lived after the destruction of the Second Temple. They were ironing out the minutiae, even when the whole sacrifice infrastructure no longer existed. Some see this debate as a grand effort of the imagination. Others read it to witness ancient legal debate in action. Many ask what we draw from these rabbinic texts today.

Since I’m a mom with twin teenage boys who eat a lot, I think about it practically. The concept of piggul pops up often. This is a disqualified offering, a sacrifice that cannot be accepted because the priest’s plan is to eat the sacrifice after the correct time for doing so. In modern terms, imagine purchasing food for a family gathering with deep spiritual meaning, but intending to wait to cook and serve it after its “best before” date. “Here, beloved relatives, please have this expensive roast that I chose to spoil before cooking!” It feels like a rabbinic prohibition that says: “It’s disqualified and forbidden to make a holy sacrifice this way because it’s wrong to give people food poisoning.” It’s bad housekeeping.

This food poisoning reference is meant in jest! Yet, sometimes we forget to be grateful and celebrate the amazing foods and gatherings that our families and friends offer us. One of my teens is taking a food and nutrition elective at school. This wasn’t a class he rushed to sign up for but he’s learning a lot. When he missed classes due to a field trip, he cooked at home instead. This kid likes to be our salad chef, but now he’s learning to make muffins, cakes and pancakes. He’s suddenly aware of how much goes into making meals. He now feels bad when he sees that I’ve produced (yet another) dinner without help, or when his dad stays up late frying eggs or making pancakes for breakfast the next morning. We don’t want our kid to feel bad. It’s both our duty and gift to our kids to feed them well, but I’m thrilled that he’s learning what goes into this labour so he can contribute, too.

I’m a “maker.” I find meaning in making things by hand, whether it’s sewing clothing, spinning yarn and knitting sweaters, or baking bread. The calm and focus I feel while making things is one of my life pleasures. Still, the drudgery of producing endless meals or sewing 10 pairs of pyjama pants for fast-growing twins can seem less pleasurable.

Since I have high standards for how things are made, my household often claims it is hard to buy gifts for me … so they don’t. (Note: I give them lists, I point out things I admire by other artisans and even voice when something is too expensive!) This past week, I gave myself a gift instead.

First, I came up with easy meals. I arranged grocery pick up so that the rest of the household could do it and then put the items away. Next, I lined up several necessary, but enjoyable, making activities that I wanted to do when I didn’t have work deadlines. As the week unfurled, I spent hours at the sewing machine and hand-sewing. I knitted and read. I took long dog walks. I relished wearing new flannel PJs that I’d just made myself and using new dishtowels I’d sewn. I even sewed a new, natural-fibre oven mitt rather than shop for a subpar one.

On Friday, I scheduled a walk by myself to two well-regarded artisan markets. I didn’t buy much. I came home with a new pottery service piece (for family food production), an industrial sweater pin made by Cloverdale Forge, a blacksmith, and a lot of inspiration for future creativity.

My weekend was also a big present. Our incredible cantor, Leslie Emery, was formally installed at Congregation Shaarey Zedek, though she has worked in our community for many years. My children and I chanted Torah at her installation Shabbat service. We heard amazing music at a Saturday night concert. We celebrated our cantor as a community. It was full of love.

The congregational installation guest was Elana Arian, an accomplished Jewish composer, performer and educator. It turned out I knew who she was. When I attended and worked at what used to be called UAHC Kutz Camp – the international leadership summer camp for Reform Jewish teenagers in Warwick, NY – Elana was one of the children running around. Her parents, Rabbi Ramie and Merri Arian, often came to teach at Kutz Camp. It was a full-circle moment to hear this Jewish musical talent at my congregation. I remembered the joyful little kid she’d been at summer camp, too.

Elana Arian taught us a song from her new album, If We Loved Like That, which is based on the talmudic teaching to “love your neighbour as yourself.” First, Elana pointed out – we need to love ourselves. Sometimes, making time to do this great service, to love ourselves, feels like too much. It’s too hard to offer ourselves a clean refrigerator or a staycation of rejuvenating creative work. It’s too much work to learn to chant a new Torah reading. Fact: we often don’t make time to go to bed early or sleep late, make and eat healthy food or take a long walk. Yet, these are the greatest gifts we can offer ourselves.

Don’t do “piggul” and eat spoiled meat. Carve out time, when you need it, to honour yourself and do things right. By extension, those chores for family, community and the world will feel easier. As one of Elana’s famous songs goes, “I have a voice. My voice is powerful. My voice can change the world …” – but to be the most powerful you? You need to fill your own cup up first.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Cheshvan a great month, too

The Hebrew month of Cheshvan, or “Mar Cheshvan,” is the second month on the calendar after Tishrei. It comes right after all the fall holidays end. The rabbis called it “mar,” or bitter, because it doesn’t have any holidays or special mitzvot (commandments). This mom has an entirely different take. I’m very tired … and relieved.

This doesn’t take away from any of the meaning, pomp or special parts of the fall Jewish holidays, which are all fantastic. I’m still holding one moment as dear: sitting in my sukkah, I could see the clear sky, with a few clouds floating past, see and hear the migrating birds, smell and see the fall leaves, and embrace the chill in the air. It was a fabulous family meal moment, only topped by the solitary lunch I ate on the back porch, in the sukkah sunshine. I had the newspaper, along with a big plate of food. I was warm. There were no wasps. A true triumph, considering it often rains or snows in Winnipeg during this harvest holiday.

Yet, I’m also worn out, and not just from two years of worry about the war. If you live outside big Jewish population centres and you want celebratory holiday meals, the options are limited. In Winnipeg, if you want kosher food, there’s only catering from two or three places. If you’re OK with kosher-style food, there are more options, but, for instance, a beautiful big challah is not always easy to procure at the last moment. Even if you’re not strictly traditional, purchasing and putting together a holiday meal can be expensive and time consuming, even if you don’t cook it.

Challah is a good example. If you want a buy a single challah, it costs somewhere between $6 and $12 in Winnipeg. I like to cook and bake. From what we’ve observed, my recipe is richer and has a higher food cost than these commercially produced challahs. In the past, I used to make one batch (about three pounds) using my bread machine and produce three loaves. One would go into the freezer for a future Shabbat or holiday. Two would go out on the table and last the weekend. I now have twin teenage boys. All three challahs might last through Sunday lunch. Doubling the recipe and doing it all by hand results in more loaves to freeze for another day, but I receive grumbling from the peanut gallery because it doesn’t taste the same.

The person in charge of food prep in your household is well-aware of the grocery planning and food preparation time needed. They’ll even know the time it takes to set a holiday table and get everything out onto it before a holiday starts. Yes, it’s sometimes easier if others help, but sometimes it results in bellyaching and goes slower than if the most efficient person does it all by themselves.

In recent years, this effort has been given a few names: mental load is one. I’ve carefully tried not to gender this task. However, just as women’s pay rates in Canada still don’t equal men’s, it’s also true that women tend to shoulder much of this unpaid burden. Yes, there are exceptions, absolutely. There are women who’ve never left the workforce to have children, haven’t married or compromised in any way for a man’s career, and never been a caretaker. These women might make an equal wage for their work, and that’s great. It’s also true that there are men who shoulder most household tasks. Just like the example of Golda Meir as Israel’s prime minister, simply because an exceptional woman has achieved equity or high office doesn’t mean we’re “there” yet in terms of equality and equity for everybody.

I recently pitched a class for Limmud (an international program offering Jewish learning, where everyone pays to attend and shares the cost) about positive tips for raising Jewish kids. Many of the tips I thought of relate to this situation: special foods or cooking together, holiday celebrations, Jewish stories, activities or events, and Jewish learning and home life. Again, many of these tasks often fall to women, even though there’s no essentialist reason why they should. If a mom wants to do some quiet quitting and pull back to regain some time for herself, her work life or other pursuits, it doesn’t always follow that the other partner will jump into action to fill the void.

While mainstream Jewish organizations bemoan the cost of Jewish life, it’s rare that the supports exist to make this kind of unpaid labour easier. One exceptional example is when Jewish preschools provide parents with a way to order challah for Shabbat. Every Friday or holiday when school was in session, we were able to bring home challah affordably. It made a huge difference.

This isn’t, of course, a new phenomenon. I recently read about the requirements of the priests’ clothing in the Babylonian talmudic tractate Zevachim. Essentially, in the days of the Temple in Jerusalem, if the priests’ clothing wasn’t appropriate, it could make a person’s animal sacrifice invalid. To do a sacrifice, a person incurred a lot of costs: raising or purchasing an animal, getting to Jerusalem, and more. An invalid sacrifice could result in a horrible outcome for the person and their family, the priest and the community. Yet, no one discussed in this section how the priests got the clothing in the first place. Other information indicates that predominantly women spun all this yarn (on spindles, by hand) and wove the fabric and likely sewed it all together for the priestly garb. This effort was thousands of hours of unpaid work behind the scenes.

I’m looking forward to a hopefully peaceful and easier Cheshvan ahead. It’s a time that some may find bitter, but, like a bitter coffee served with dessert, sometimes a little less hoopla might be a nice, restful contrast. It also might give families time to reflect on who provides all that planning and labour to make your home celebrations special and your holidays a reality – there are many ways to alleviate that burden. Further, we should stop using examples of truly exceptional cases – that woman with nine kids who works full time and makes all the meals – to shame everyone else. A better outcome would be more equitable distribution of these Jewish tasks – to increase holiday or Shabbat joy in every household.

Grammar insight on holidays

This year, I volunteered to help during High Holidays at my congregation. As a result, I became one of the “ticket ladies” on Rosh Hashanah. I used a cellphone that scanned bar codes on service tickets. When I first saw this being done on a holiday, I was surprised because of the technology use at a Conservative congregation on a day when some might not carry a phone. My family chose to print out our tickets, but times change. Even though everyone in my family had a printed ticket, we carried our cellphones anyway as we volunteered. It seemed safer to have our phones while walking to synagogue and while we were there. After all, that’s what the tickets are for, too. They indicate that the person belongs or has a spot and that the person is “safe.”

The police and private security guards asked where they should position themselves. More than once, they indicated that being indoors in the lobby might be a good spot. Instead, they were asked to stand outside, in autumn’s sunny weather, guarding the doors and/or directing traffic. I heard only one incident of loud, angry shouts on the street, near the police officer there. That was enough for me. I was relieved police were there, and that there were master lists of everyone who might be in the building that day, just in case.

While outsiders might think that this security is new, this is just the usual necessity at Jewish gatherings, though admittedly now more than ever. At odd moments between ticket scans, I thought of a dear family friend named Marge, who passed away in her 90s. Marge was a venerable and respected volunteer at the temple where I grew up. She was famous for her High Holiday ticket lady efforts. Marge was all business at the front door, a big smile for those she knew as they flashed their tickets. Yet, even if Marge knew you for 50 years, if you forgot your ticket, that grin vanished. A stern reprimand ensued. Marge kept us safe, and she wasn’t playing. She took that job seriously.

The congregation where I grew up, Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Va., is right near Washington, DC. Rodef Shalom started out small in the 1960s, when my paternal grandparents were founding members. It grew rapidly, along with the Washington area. My mom started its preschool, ran the entire education program, and ended her career there as the administrator/executive director. As a Jewish professional’s kid, I knew where the emergency alarm buttons were and that synagogues near DC were frequent targets of hate. Congregation members who worked for the FBI or CIA formed part of the volunteer security patrol for the High Holidays, too. Everyone smiled as they said that “no-nonsense” Marge ran a tight ship. She was their best line of defence.

Nobody knew this history in Winnipeg when I was given the ticket lady designation. I’d emailed with Marge right up until her passing. I tried to see her at every family visit. She loved to tell me about her Canadian grandfather, a fur trader whose family came from Sault Ste. Marie. The whole holiday, in between wishing everyone gut yontif, shana tova or sweet new year, I longed to tell Marge all about how I was a ticket lady now. I knew she’d love it. When I mentioned this to my mother, we both smiled over the phone. I’d never be as good at it as Marge was, but my mom also said, “Don’t worry, I’m sure Marge knows. She’s proud of you.”

Being a ticket lady was an education. I’ve been in Winnipeg 16 years, so I recognized many names on the tickets, but definitely not all the faces. As people rolled in, I also recognized how diverse we are as a people. Some of us are early, others right on time – and then, there are the rest.

This experience let me greet new people and hold on to lifelong connections. It made me think about a grammar term that’s fallen out of use. I wondered at how, as individuals, we are also dependent clauses. For years, we have seen news, books and other sources where the editing allows a sentence to start with “and” or “but” in a way that’s clearly dependent on the prior sentence. When I see this, I want to chastise, just as Marge might have. To me, that editorial choice still grates, but the volunteer experience made me see how the Jewish community works together. At the best of times, we are an enormous team, dependent on one another to function at our best.

Volunteering is an important part of Canadian identity. It was a required topic to study for my Canadian citizenship test, and I wondered why more congregants hadn’t volunteered. It was a vital part of my holiday this year. It reminded me how reliant we are on one another, as well as on our allies, our laws and law enforcement. Dependent clauses aren’t full sentences on their own. We, too, must remain connected to maintain meaning as Jews in Canada.

In the Babylonian Talmud’s tractate of Zevachim, which I’m now studying, there’s a lot of time spent on what happens when a Temple (animal) sacrifice goes wrong. If the priests in the Temple had the wrong intention or person in mind when performing a sacrifice, it could mean the person’s sacrifice wasn’t valid. We don’t sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem anymore, but our intentions, towards ourselves, the community and the world, still matter. Volunteering wasn’t a sacrifice for me. It felt like I was fulfilling my role with the best intentions while I depended on others to keep me safe at that open door. Instead of any kind of sacrifice, it was a High Holy Day bonus.

Be more solution-oriented

Leaders are simply people, of course. And all people have strengths and weaknesses. Just like the traditional approach to weaving Persian rugs with an intentional mistake, we must remember that only the Almighty is perfect.

But some leaders become lionized and celebrated, their human failings swept under the rug (sorry). However, we’re in a political moment where some leaders’ mistakes are all too obvious. No need to name anybody. Many fit this description. It’s upsetting and confusing to realize that even those chosen as “the best” or “brightest” fail sometimes. It’s a useful learning experience, too.

Awhile back, I was discussing politics online with other Canadians. I came upon something that stopped me cold. A poster criticized a political leader. I asked what she saw as solutions. The questions I asked were how, if she were in charge, she’d do things differently.

Her response surprised me. She said the only thing she could do was vote and complain. That, essentially, it was her right to find fault, but not her obligation to offer solutions. Her opinion was that she wasn’t passive because, well, she voted consistently and complained vociferously.

From a Jewish perspective, we have plenty of examples of whiners. Remember the Israelites, wandering in the desert, who wanted to go back to Egypt because they didn’t have meat, fish, onions, garlic, leeks or cantaloupes? (Numbers 11:4-5) It’s a normal response to crave foods when you’re unable to get them. As a high schooler studying abroad, I craved M&Ms so much that my mother brought them when she visited. They were superfluous, but I wanted them.

The opportunity to complain is always available, but it’s unattractive, especially if there’s something you can do to fix the problem yourself. Since that high school moment, I’ve lived many places where I’ve craved food but couldn’t buy it locally. As a result, I’ve become a more creative cook. When traveling, it’s good to “load up” on cravings if they’re available. Not to hoard, but just as an extra pleasure.

Worldwide political upheaval made me study the Babylonian Talmudic tractate of Horayot with more interest. It’s a small part of the Talmud but it’s about how people in charge (kings, high priests, judges, teachers, etc.) can make amends or do the right sacrifices or actions to atone for their mistakes. This text assumes that there will always be errors in judgment. People in certain important positions have societal roles to play, and that means their atonements to seek forgiveness for errors must be bigger sometimes than if they were private citizens.

This may sound irrelevant but consider the role of a teacher. Teachers make mistakes. The best resolution to this would be a public acknowledgement of the error and a demonstration of how to fix it. We might shrug and get on with things after a private math mistake. Yet, if a math teacher makes this error in front of the class, the best lesson is having a student find and correct the error. Then, the teacher can perform the act of learning from their error, thank the student, and acknowledge that no one is perfect.

In our lives, even if we are not teachers, parents, supervisors, or in any authority roles, it’s a great idea to try to practise this approach: to remember that no one is perfect and that it’s all our jobs to find solutions. As Rabbi Tarfon teaches, “that it’s not upon us to complete the work, but neither are we free to stop doing it.” (Pirkei Avot 2:16)

This sounds simple. But, in the tractate of Horayot, there’s a very powerful ending about how our pride and ego can get in the way. It’s about three rabbis and their leadership roles: Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel (Rashbag) was the leader of the Jewish community in the Galilee during the late second century, after the Bar Kochba Revolt; the head of the court was Rabbi Natan; and a great scholar at the time was Rabbi Meir.

Rashbag is upset with a lack of protocol in the Torah academy. He wants everyone to stand when he comes in until they’re told to be seated. Rashbag suggests that, for Rabbi Natan and Rabbi Meir, who he perceives as less important, those studying should rise when they enter, but students can sit down again right afterwards. Rabbis Meir and Natan try to put Rashbag to an intellectual test to prove that he isn’t above them, but Rashbag finds out in advance and bests them.

Rabbis Meir and Natan are expelled from the Torah academy and forced to study outside. However, the academy couldn’t continue without their expertise, so there was the ancient equivalent of paper airplane communication happening. The expelled rabbis would throw questions into the academy, students would try to answer. If the students couldn’t, they’d ask for more help.

Obviously, this was a bad way to learn. Rashbag was forced to readmit the scholars, but only with the proviso that their rulings couldn’t be under their own names. Essentially, the glory of Torah was more important than the glory of Torah scholars. This remained true for all except for Rashbag and his descendants, who insisted on maintaining their grudge and hereditary leadership and denying these two learned men their due.

Where does that lead us? Leaders are fallible. Each of us has the potential to uplift, lead and find solutions. When necessary, we need to stop being passive and lead more. Sometimes, that means trying to avoid big egos or coming up with creative responses to difficult problems. It can feel uncomfortable to raise our voices and act, if we’re used to letting others do the hard work. Also, we need allies to help make change. This means building connections with others, particularly outside the Jewish community.

The pressing example for the Canadian Jewish community is our political leaders’ refrain after antisemitic incidents: “This isn’t who we are as Canadians.” Well, in fact, it is who we are, as evidenced by the dramatic rise in hate crimes. We have leaders who aren’t acting to solve this problem. It’s getting worse. In response, we must step up and ask our allies to do so, too. Nobody’s perfect. People make mistakes. That said, we must hold leaders – and all those passive followers – to account if we expect to remain safe in Canada. It’s time to find solutions. Complaints alone don’t cut it.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

What to do with all our stuff

Recently, I was in the car with one of my twins and we were discussing how easy it is to accumulate too much stuff. We’d just had a conversation with a neighbour who mentioned that his sibling had moved into their parents’ house as an adult. It was a large, old home, now sadly so full of stacks of papers and other belongings that one had to turn sideways to navigate some of it.

I commiserated with my neighbour, misunderstanding the level of hoarding. I imagined how hard it must be to move, as an adult with a household, into a home already full of one’s parents’ belongings. Alas, our neighbour said, it was a mental health issue. It’s sometimes referred to as a hoarding disorder or Diogenes syndrome. It was serious.

In the car with my kid, we found ourselves understanding how people get to this point. He said, quite astutely, that our society pushes “more, more, more.” We both agreed that it is hard to resist the siren song of acquisition that we’re constantly hearing. Choosing to stop, clean, tidy and cull things and acknowledge what we don’t need is even harder than resisting new acquisitions.

I was faced with my own “hoarding” scenario. My personal, free email account is more than 20 years old. Suddenly, I got a warning about a month ago that the storage on these accounts would be slashed dramatically. I could choose to pay a fee every month or delete a lot of messages. My husband got a similar warning, but his account was not as old or big as mine. Even so, we commiserated, because deleting some of these saved emails felt painful. Save the baby photo elsewhere and then delete the message? One by one, it didn’t seem to make a dent. Eventually, I figured out how to move older messages to a folder on my computer and I didn’t have to delete messages from people I’d loved who have now died; I didn’t have to cull every family photo.

Still, this exercise made us look around. My kids, about to start high school, decided that they didn’t need about 75 books on their shelves, acquired over the years from Scholastic book fairs, PJ Library and elsewhere. They are making plans to sell or donate the books.

Each kid, getting ready for a new school year, worked to empty out enormous middle school binders. They recycled tons of paper. They acknowledged that we no longer needed a Grade 5 workbook leftover from those pandemic days of learning at home. Both kids realized we needed to make space in their backpacks: for new intellectual growth and a new school year.

As my kids grow physically this summer, I’m knitting as fast as I can to make them new sweaters for winter but I’m knitting a sweater now out of “stash” yarns that I acquired when they were infants. Both kids are now bigger than me. The sweaters I make from now on will likely be too big for me when they outgrow them.

This is a balancing act, of course. It’s normal in our household to get some new things for a new school year, even if we reuse the old stuff, too. This celebration of something new even has a word for it in Modern Hebrew. We might say “Tithadash!” or “May it renew you!” when you see someone with new belongings.

At the same time, I’ve been studying the Babylonian tractate of Avodah Zarah. It explores how Jews are to interact with non-Jews or those who might worship idols. One of the concepts it covers is whether one can reuse anything that might have been used by someone who engaged in idol worship. This is a complicated topic. It involves both “decommissioned” idols and whatever was used to sacrifice to the idol. One also must consider whether any of these items might be ever “reused” in Jewish worship or sacrifice, in the days when the Temple still stood in Jerusalem. It goes even farther, examining what one does about an idol created by Jews in the first place, like the Golden Calf. The tractate is sometimes confusing because it’s in so much detail.

That said, I returned to something else the text seemed to be telling us. In some cases, these items can be reused. The underlying message explores what we waste or throw away, versus how we can give things “new lives” even if their first use wasn’t ideal.

Nobody is worshipping idols at our house, but we’re discussing reuse, as well as the acquisition of new things for the upcoming school year. I see 14-year-olds evaluating their lunch bags and considering making themselves new ones. There was a pile of shirts in the give-away pile after we cleaned up today. I even saw a completely tidy sock drawer. This may never happen again!

I’m not sure how to always resist or even push back against our consumerist culture. However, the talmudic debate over physical leftovers from idol worship and what might be used again and/or refurbished made me realize that this struggle isn’t new. Just as we hope our kids are off to learn more with each school year, we also hope they’ll hold onto the good, sweet things that they embodied at younger ages, too. New, shiny ideas and things are tempting, but there’s something powerful and potentially meaningful about reuse, too.

Love learning, stay curious

My household’s really into learning. It doesn’t stop during the summer, when there’s no school. Even on vacations, we’re always trying to nurture our kids’ curiosity and feed our own.

When our kids were in preschool, and just toilet-trained, we took a long trip to a friend’s northern Minnesota cottage. I say “long” because Google Maps told us it would just be a few hours across the US border. Eight hours later, we’d been slowed by the border crossing, construction and stops at every unnamed exit along a dirt road off the North Dakota highway so the kids could go to the bathroom. It was an excruciating trip. Three days later, it was just as long on the way home to Winnipeg.

Yet, we remember parts of the trip fondly. This historic family cottage contained a mostly functional pump organ, books filled with spidery copperplate handwriting and an empty fish tank. In between long play sessions in the sand by the lake, our friend created new wonders for us to explore. Using a net and years of experience, he gathered a selection of lake life into the fish tank. Once indoors, with the tank now full, the friend and my husband, two adult biology professors, casually called over the kids to investigate.

Neither adult studied lake aquatics professionally. Instead, four heads poured over fish and fauna guides from years past, discussing what they thought was in the tank. The kids made observations, and the adults’ heads bobbed as they looked and agreed. Once the science mysteries were solved, the tank got dumped back into the lake. The next day, it all happened again.

We also visited the remains of an old gristmill, complete with a playground nearby. We then had a kite-flying break. Years later, my kids still wonder when we might ever get invited back to that magical cottage. The truth is, for the adults, it was a lot of effort: to open and clean the cottage, get and cook enough food for several days, and pack and travel there and home. This doesn’t include the many loads of laundry (toilet training!), or the lost items left in the dryer by mistake, which had to be mailed home internationally.

The “vacation” exhausted me. Still, when I put a photo background on my iPad, the obvious choice is an image of my small twins, in swim gear and floppy sun hats, playing on the rocks near the lake’s blue water.

These summer experiences weren’t fancy or expensive. They laid the groundwork for other adventures over time. One weekend in July, we went raspberry picking at a farm about 45 minutes away from home. Now, my kids, 14, are at a day camp learning to fence, do archery and play racquetball. They came home tired but also stretched by exotic activities that they’d not considered before. To my surprise, one of them stopped multiple times to thank me for arranging these outings. Now that he’s older, he texts constantly with school friends. He sees that our experiential learning isn’t the same as others. (And I hear about this all, too, because I wouldn’t take him to the folk festival during a 10+ wildfire air quality warning, or to the shopping mall!)

We try hard to hold onto this love for learning and intellectual curiosity even if the education system can cause one to lose enthusiasm. As our family hits the milestone of high school entry, we’re in limbo. The closest public high school, where their cohorts and friends will attend, is out of catchment for our children. We’re hoping to get our sons into that nearby school, but so far have not gained access through the provincial “school of choice” legislation. Another private high school looks to be a challenging, interesting academic option, but it’s pricey. It also means giving up on the small dream of attending the closest public school with beloved classmates.

Of course, as the parent facing the school division board of trustees, I looked to Jewish text to find strength, solace and direction. In the Babylonian Talmud tractate of Avodah Zarah, Daf 19a, there’s an examination of learning Torah with many nuggets of wisdom. Rava, who lived in the 4th century CE, says, “in accordance with the statement of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi: A person should always learn Torah from a place in the Torah that his heart desires, as it is stated: ‘But his delight is in the Torah of the Lord.’” This advice, to study what you love, feels timeless.

Rava encourages learners to gain a broad understanding of the text before returning to analyze it. Further, for those of us who study and fail to understand, Rava encourages review and repetition as helpful techniques to gain access to basic understanding.

The next tidbit is one that I hold dear. Rava quotes earlier rabbis, such as Rav Sehora and Rav Huna (3rd-century CE), who suggest learning a little bit each day, studying and reviewing, to retain more Torah and more knowledge. Rav Nahman bar Yitzhak, a contemporary of Rava’s, responds in the next paragraph (and possibly in person), saying: “I did this, as I studied little by little and regularly reviewed what I had learned, and my learning has in fact endured.”

Experience and learn it and then decipher it; work away at it, a little every day; review it to retain more knowledge. These are still basic study skills. This guidance is the same that educators use today. These are ancient and Jewish ideas – Ben Bag Bag (Pirkei Avot, Sayings of our Fathers, 5:22) says, when referring to Torah: “Turn it and turn it, for everything’s in it.”

The rabbis took an expansive view, feeling that we could gain information about just about anything in the world if we studied enough Jewish texts. This even includes the funny tale of Rav Kahana – the student who hid beneath Rav, his teacher’s bed, to “learn” from him and his wife about marital relations – which is in the talmudic tractate Berachot on page 62a. While we would see this as Peeping Tom behaviour, the student says, “Rabbi, this is Torah!”

I’m not recommending my kids hide under anybody’s bed. I am, however, hoping they can maintain their wonder and enthusiasm about learning, wherever it takes them, a little bit each day, even when the going is difficult or there are obstacles in the way.

Summer’s the time, no matter our ages, to explore new skills informally, from lake water studies at a cottage to fencing. Little by little, I hope we can all find joy in learning more – about the world, Judaism and one another.

Finding hope through science

The organizer of a conference panel I’m going to be on asked me some questions ahead of the event. He asked how to find hope from a Jewish perspective amid challenging times. I responded with both academic Jewish content and personal information about my sons’ recent big success at a science fair. This person, a male academic, quickly grasped the personal narrative I provided – he thought it was about being a mother. Let’s not be “essentialist,” I suggested. My ability to provide information about hope doesn’t stem from reproduction alone.

If one looks at what is going on in the United States, where there’s interest in limiting women’s reproductive rights, including motivating women to have more children and boost the birth rate, one might think that is what women are mostly for: reproduction. Yet, all sorts of data indicate that, for example, in a country like Israel, which has a high education rate and good possibilities for women, a high birth rate is also possible.

Perhaps choosing to have multiple children is easier with better health care, reliable social networks and support and maternity leave, and in a country that ranks high in terms of happiness on a global scale. Countries without birth control or proper education for women have high birth rates, but there are also high mortality rates. Focusing on women’s reproductive capabilities alone misses the boat. If women are educated and engaged in their country’s workforce, they contribute more than their biological value – the quick response of a male academic to traditional rhetoric about mothering left me disappointed.

This notion of maintaining hope during challenging political moments can be approached in many ways. I’m still sorting out what I’ll say in the five-minute slot on the conference panel. However, something I learned yesterday in the Babylonian Tractate of Makkot, on page 20b, made me think further about these issues.

Makkot 20b is about haircuts and ritual cutting as a mourning practice. First, Jews are not supposed to cut their hair in certain ways. Second, self-harming through incisions or ritual mutilation isn’t considered an acceptable mourning practice – self-harm isn’t OK.

While I studied this, I was also checking out the Canadian election results. My father, in the United States, was surprised that we hadn’t let our kids stay up late to watch what was happening. I explained that we’d voted early, and that our kids had voted in a school mock election. Also, we wouldn’t know the complete results until later anyway. More importantly, my kids needed sleep to cope with other activities later this week. Sleep felt like more important self-care.

It struck me that much of our tradition, and Jewish law, tries to maintain a complicated form of self-care. Even in dire circumstances, Jewish tradition encourages us to practise resiliency, intellectual curiosity and hope. Each day, the sun will rise, our souls will return and we will have what we need, like clothing and food, and feel grateful for it. As I write this, I hear Omer Adam’s popular musical version of the traditional prayer said on rising, “Modeh Ani.” (Google it, it’s good!)

While we also pray for our country and its leaders, sometimes we jokingly invoke the words that Tevye quotes his rabbi as saying in Fiddler on the Roof: “A blessing for the czar? Of course! May God bless and keep the czar … far away from us!”

My household felt strangely conflicted about voting. We knew for instance that the Conservatives, in the past, cut funding for research and science, which worries us. Choosing parties that maintain or grow science funding is important to us personally, since my husband is a science professor. His lab needs funding to do research. Good science research can protect us. However, the Liberals have a poor track record of protecting Jewish Canadian citizens. Our local NDP MP has expressed something akin to real hate in my dealings with her. So, again, we can think like Tevye’s rabbi: we bless the outcome of a democratic election – no matter how it goes – while hoping those in charge don’t get close enough, through their actions, to do us any harm.

Similarly, the rabbis acknowledged that mourning causes us great psychological pain. This might encourage some to self-harm. Ideally, we should control that impulse. Self-care is a balancing act. It’s not always clear how to make safe choices.

Locally, I watched politicians’ interactions with the Jewish community with interest. In one case, an incumbent Jewish Liberal MP of a riding known to historically have a “big” Jewish community mentioned that perhaps only 5% of his riding was Jewish. His efforts made to support the Jewish community and offer allyship to Israel were an expression of his conscience. That choice likely didn’t help his chances and maybe even was an impediment to his campaign, but that decision to act conscientiously offered me hope, too, even if I couldn’t vote for him because I don’t live in his riding.

Sometimes, our choices aren’t as clear as we’d like them to be. It can be hard some mornings to rise full of hope and gratitude amid the political chaos and death we hear about each day. Given that, we need the reminder of ancient, traditional Jewish prayer and thought, too. There are days when I feel praying is a rote practice. Other days, I remember that we’re doing this in a way that brings us connection with ancestors who maybe didn’t have enough food, who suffered with terrible plagues or physical danger. In many ways, things are so much better for us than they used to be. This alone is worth our gratitude.

When the rabbis warned long ago against cutting oneself, they lived in a world without antibiotics or effective medical care. My conversation about finding Jewish hope wasn’t simply about reproduction, my maternal pride, but rather my pride in the kids doing good science. I have hope because I don’t only believe in blind faith, I also believe in science. Whether it’s Israel’s Iron Dome, Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine, or other discoveries, doing science is another form of self-preservation.

The world can be a painful place. We must make compromises to continue as a small minority ethno-religion. Those choices require us to acknowledge what’s happening, to make nuanced decisions based on what’s best in the moment, and to build a better world each day.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of my children, whatever they do, but I’m filled with hope because my Jewish kids won all sorts of accolades at a divisional science fair. To me, that’s Jewish self-care for the future. Yes, it’s also a political statement, too.

Flying camels still don’t exist

We’ve been getting a lot of weird phone calls lately. The caller ID says it is from our credit card company or the bank. Yet, the person on the phone seems a little off. What we realize, before giving away any important information, is that it’s likely some new kind of scam. The person calling knows our names, or knows where we shop or bank. Maybe that person has seen our mail. Maybe they work at the store and noticed our info when we ordered online. Maybe the information has been sold to them. No matter, it becomes clear it’s a scam. We hang up. Later, we might log on and check our accounts. Is everything fine? Is someone stealing money or information?

This is well worth asking because, sometimes, there is theft happening. If you read the news, there are often articles saying “Caution! Look out! There’s a new scam out there, beware!” Like everything we read, it’s helpful to think critically about this. Criminals are always upping their game to catch new victims. This isn’t a new phenomenon.

I’ve just started studying a new tractate of the Babylonian Talmud, Makkot. So far, it’s mostly about how a court of law rules and doles out punishment. I’ve learned about “conspiring witnesses.” That is, witnesses who arrange in advance to lie about something to the court. For instance, imagine there was a crime in Saskatoon and there were witnesses to it. The conspiring witnesses might swear that, in fact, the criminal was in Winnipeg that day, and not in Saskatoon. It’s clear to the court that the conspiring witnesses were lying, due to the testimony of others. How should the court punish those conspiring witnesses? How are they held accountable for lying?

This topic continues for awhile, but my absolute favourite moment happens on Makkot 5a. The situation is as follows, in summary:

Rava says: If two witnesses came and said, So-and-so killed a person in Sura on Sunday morning and two other witnesses came to court and said to the first witnesses, on Sunday evening, you were with us in Nehardea – if one can travel from Sura to Nehardea from the morning and arrive by the evening, fine, nobody is misleading us. If not? They are “conspiring witnesses.”

The Gemara (later commentators) say: This is obvious. Don’t be concerned that these witnesses traveled via “flying camel” – that is, using a magical or impossible way to travel with great speed. You don’t have to take that kind of thinking into account.

In practical terms, Sura and Nehardea were both places in Babylon with Jewish academies of learning, but they were far apart. Nehardea was destroyed in 259 CE. More than 1,766 years ago, the Mishnah described this. Later rabbis advised students not to be taken in by somebody lying outright in court. After all, these lying witnesses didn’t travel by “flying camels.”

It often feels like that we’re struggling with ever new and complicated scams. The pace and amount of information via the internet and social media is astounding. Yet, I sometimes hear the most interesting things close to home, in the old-fashioned way people have always communicated. When is that? Well, when I’m visiting with friends, having a cup of coffee after lunch on Shabbat, or at synagogue.

Both world news and “true accounts” are only as good as the people who tell them and how much trust we have in those sources. If those sources rely on witnesses who like to offer bald-faced lies, well, that’s not a good source. If we have trouble with the veracity of someone’s account, we must ask: What flying camel did you ride in on?! How were you in two places at once, that you witnessed both these things?

Jewish tradition is amazing. We have these ancient sources to remind us that “there’s nothing new under the sun.” The bigger point is a modern one: we must get out of our usual news bubbles or coffee klatches. We are so easily lulled into believing some versions of the “truth” when we trust our sources without question. For example, some Canadian news outlets suggest that Israel is targeting specific Gazan locations with a vengeance. Yet these same outlets fail to mention the Hamas rocket fire that came from that location just before the Israeli response. So, if the story conveniently fails to mention why the Israeli army is firing at a specific location, the news article may not be an objective source of war coverage.

In the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper, I read about a new lecture series created by professors supposedly concerned about freedom of expression. Their invited speaker, a professor from York University, brought up the suspension of her colleague, who had been charged with “vandalism of a bookstore.” Notably, the article did not mention which bookstore. My household strongly suspected it had been the incidents targeting Indigo, when Jews and Israelis were targeted by protesters. Further, the article didn’t mention that freedom of expression doesn’t mean freedom to commit crimes against businesses.

The article’s tone was matter of fact. A person could read such an article and feel that the professors were rightfully concerned about the loss of freedom of expression. To me, it seemed like the example given before, of the distance between Sura and Nehardea. If you don’t know the particulars, such as the distance between these two locations, you can miss the absurdity of the situation. In the guise of defending free speech, the professors wanted readers to bemoan the suspension of a professor who was charged with vandalism – a crime.

Sometimes, when someone presents a news story or a court defence that seems so smooth and practised as to be suspicious, well, perhaps that’s because it is. Likewise, the tidbits we gain at Kiddush lunch after services may also vary in their reliability. We may have faster transportation and cellphone connections today, but, sometimes, things still aren’t as they seem. As much as things change, much is still the same. Yes, a juicy bit of news is an interesting truth to ponder, but a lie is still a lie. We still have conspiring witnesses to contend with and, even now, we still don’t have flying camels.