This article first appeared in United Synagogue's Daf Hashavua 

One of the most enigmatic heroines in the Tanach is Esther.  She has two names, no close family, conceals her national identity and may or may not be beautiful.  Yet she is one of the seven named prophetesses, highly regarded as the heroine of the Purim story and is a favourite Purim costume for little girls worldwide.  Let’s look at the passage in the Gemara (Megilla 13a) discussing Esther: “She is called Hadassa and she is called Esther.  If Esther is her name, why is she called Hadassa?”  The Rabbis say that a person’s name represents their essence, so if Esther had two names, each of them must tell us something significant about her.

The name Esther is generally taken to come from the root meaning “to hide” – Esther knows how to hold her tongue and not reveal her nationality to Achashverosh. The Gemara also points out that it is close to Ishtar – the Babylonian fertility goddess, so that the local people would recognise the owner of the name as beautiful, like the moon.  On the other hand, Hadassa means “myrtle” and the Gemara says that her appearance was average – like that of a myrtle – not tall and not short.  More unusually, another rabbi says that she was actually green like a myrtle! It seems unlikely that this is meant to be taken literally, but rather to be interpreted figuratively - perhaps that she was sallow.  The rabbi’s comment continues, that God “extended to her a strand of chesed,” in other words, people found her appealing.  In fact, according to the Megillah itself, Esther is “beautiful [of] form and fair to look at.” Hadassa also refers to tzadikim, righteous people, as described by the prophet Zechariah.

Either way, although good looking, she would not have won the king’s beauty contest on her appearance alone, but she was blessed with “chein,” that indefinable quality which inspires affection in everyone the owner meets. She won over Hegai, the guardian of the harem, who provided her with every beauty necessity without her asking for it, then captured the heart of the king. Even having fasted for three days, at which point she probably did look green, she was still appealing enough that Achashverosh welcomed her unscheduled visit.

Regardless of her external appearance, Esther’s strength was internal, as symbolised by her name.  Once she had accepted the mission to try to save the Jewish people, she did so with all her might.  The Maharal of Prague points out a number of reasons why it was relevant that Esther, as the redeemer, was an orphan.  Despite the care of Mordechai, she would undoubtedly have sometimes felt lonely and turned to God to comfort her, just as the Jewish people cried out to Him when they went into exile in Babylon.  She had such a close connection that she was able to break through the shallow glitter of the king’s palace and use her hidden, Esther, wisdom and sensitivity to become the catalyst for the redemption of the Jewish people, fulfilling her destiny as Hadassa, a righteous person.

This article first appeared in United Synagogue's Daf Hashavua

Purim ! At last – a chance to make a lot of noise in shul, wear fancy dress and get drunk. How wonderful: all the things that are frowned on the rest of the year suddenly become acceptable! But surely this is not what the rabbis intended when they instituted Purim as a celebration of the downfall of Haman and the overturning of his plans to wipe out the Jewish people “young and old, infants and women on one day”?

There is a medrash, which describes Haman visiting Achashverosh to set his evil plot in motion. He complains about a particular people, scattered across the empire, saying that they spend all their time eating and drinking, regularly celebrating Shabbat or yom tov.  God responds to this accusation, saying “You wicked man, who begrudges them their festivals! I will overthrow you and add yet another festival to celebrate your downfall.” Haman’s complaint is not just a case of playground spite, but rather a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Jewish connection with the physical world. Reb Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin comments on this, tracing its roots back to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. He points out that it is possible to use physical pleasure as a means of achieving closeness with God, as we do when we celebrate Shabbat with tasty meals, combined with divrei Torah and zemirot.

But if on Purim we are taking the physical and using it to become closer to God, why the need to use it to excess and become drunk? Perhaps this story answers the question.  A man is travelling across the country, with a driver.  They stop for a break at an inn, where the man meets his long-lost best friend from childhood.  They are delighted to see each other, but just as they settle down to catch up, the driver says it is time to leave.  The man buys the driver a drink, and then another drink and then ensconces him with a bottle of whisky, enabling the two friends to spend the whole night talking and enjoying each other’s company.  In the morning, when the driver has sobered up, the friends are able to part, having re-established their connection.  The two friends represent God and a person’s soul, whose close connection with each other is sometimes hampered by the driver - the body.  By taking the body out of action, the soul is able to achieve a truly close connection with God.  There are two ways of doing this – by ignoring the body’s needs, as on Yom Kippur, or by anaesthetising the body, as on Purim.  It is no coincidence that the two days are often linked – with Yom Kippurim described as Yom K’Purim, a day like Purim.  Both days, at opposite ends of the physical spectrum, offer unparalleled opportunities for closeness with God and revealing one’s inner beauty. This is a true celebration of the victory over Haman and his worldview.

 

On Sunday evening, we were privileged to hear the Gateshead Rav speak at a fundraising dinner for the school attended by some of our children.  I very much enjoyed what he said about the challenges facing parents and teachers today.  I was particularly struck by the second part of his speech in which he used a section from the Shabbos davenning to show how these challenges have changed over time.

The Rav said that the phrases "Kadesheinu be'mitzvosecha, v'sein chelkeinu be'Sorosecha, sabeinu mituvecha - Sanctify us with Your commandments, and give us a portion in Your Torah, satisfy us with Your mitzvos"  show the progression of struggles in Jewish life over the last century.  In the late 19th/early 20th century, particularly in America, it was very difficult to keep Shabbos.  One hears stories of people who were sacked every week when they did not turn up on Shabbos, and had to start again on Monday morning, looking for another job, which they would almost certainly only hold for the rest of the week.  It is almost impossible for us to imagine the pain and inner struggles that these brave men (for it was mostly men) must have faced.  For those who could not face the toil that shemiras Shabbos took on their families - no welfare state then! - there were even minyanim that began and finished early on Shabbos morning, so that people could at least daven with a minyan and hear the leyning, before sadly going to work afterwards.  The Rav told a moving story to illustrate this.  He said that in Brooklyn everyone would visit the beautiful sukkah of the late Bobover Rebbe, R' Shlomo Halberstam. One year, the Rebbe observed that his sukkah was "not only not the most beautiful sukkah in the world, but not the most beautiful sukkah on the street!" He directed the fascinated listeners down the block to the sukkah of an older man.  This man had always kept Shabbos, even when he was being fired each week for doing so.  Each week he collected a pink slip, a dismissal document., which he kept, and now he had covered the walls of his sukkah with his pink slips - a physical testimony to his mesirus nefesh for Shabbos.  The Rav said that nowadays keeping mitzvos like Shabbos and kashrus are mostly quite easy - kadesheinu be'mitzvosecha.

Then he said that although in previous generations there were individuals who were great talmidei chachamim, the majority of the people did not have the opportunity to learn very much.  However, now, more people are learning whether full time or in "spare time" than ever before - v'sein chelkeinu be'Sorosecha.

This generation's challenge is "sabeinu mituvecha" ensuring that our children and talmidim are so full and satisfied with Yiddishkeit, Torah and mitzvos that they do not feel a need to look elsewhere for gratification.  This means that we need to ensure that what they are learning and experiencing is fulfilling and satisfying, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.  The Rav told a story about the Chafetz Chaim, who set up kosher food distribution in army camps (presumably the Russian army?) during the First World War. After a  while the organisers came and told him it was a waste of time because the Jewish soldiers were eating the kosher food and then going and eating the non-kosher food afterwards.  The Chafetz Chaim suggested that maybe the portions were too small, but the organisers replied that no, they had left overs. "In that case," said the Chafetz Chaim, "the food is not tasty enough and the soldiers aren't satisfied."  He said that if a yiddishe neshama is fully satisfied with something kosher, it will not go chasing after something which is not kosher.  This would apply across the board - food, activities, intellectual pursuits.  

Authentic Torah Judaism provides an incredibly rich range of experiences, filling all categories - emotional, intellectual and spiritual. It is our responsibility as parents and educators to facilitate our children appreciating this.

Last week, I read an article by Azriela Jaffe, reprinted on JewishMom.com.  I went to have a look at Azriela’s website to see what else she does, and found a link to “Making Chatzos”.  Intrigued by the idea as I often find preparing for Shabbos unstimulating, which is why I make different food (OK, not that different, but not exactly the same each week) and postpone doing it.

Making chatzos means having everything ready for Shabbos by halachic midday, which, last week, was 12:11 in London, about 3 hours before Shabbos actually came in. Ideally one should have the table laid, urn, hot plate and slow cooker set up and possibly even have showered.  Having the house clean was no problem as our cleaning lady comes on Friday and although she wouldn’t have finished by 12:11, she would be on the last stages.

I planned out a menu, shopped on Wednesday rather than Thursday and started baking on Wednesday afternoon. The rest of the family were completely underwhelmed! On Thursday I spent quite a lot of time cooking, leaving myself only the amount of cooking that I knew would fit into the morning for Friday. 

The idea  of being ready by chatzos is to have a calm and pleasant entry into Shabbos,  and to bring Shabbos into the rest of the week.  The chatzos website suggests that one tries it gradually, so although I thought it would be nice to lay the table, I concentrated on getting the food ready first.

I discovered several interesting facts:

1.    I had suspected for some time that if you spread out your Shabbos preparations over a longer time, you won’t actually end up doing the other things you would have done instead, had you just made Shabbos on Friday. I have now discovered, that at least in my case, it’s true.
2.      Our children need an adrenalin rush! When they came home and I was almost ready for Shabbos, they said, “What shall we do? This is really boring!”  They created their own adrenalin rush by postponing showering till the last minute...
3.      Whilst I am not a very physically brave person, I also need an adrenaline rush...
4.      I am a very last minute person – I thrive on deadlines, which is why I enjoy working for a newspaper.  Chatzos was an artificial deadline, not like Shabbos, so I found myself at a loose end on Friday afternoon and decided to cook another couple of things anyway – one of the main pitfalls the Chatzos website warns against.
5.      It might have been better to try this in the summer, when there was actually an afternoon to enjoy rather than just a couple of hours. 

My husband is not a last minute person and I know that he finds my attitude a bit stressful sometimes.  I had thought that he would appreciate a calmer Friday, but when I told him what I was doing, he asked, “Why would you want to do that?”

 In fact the only person who actually appreciated my efforts was our Shabbos guest, who is herself a Chatzos lady. Having said that, I think I will try it again, although I’m not sure I want to commit to doing it every week. Aiming for 12:13 this week...

Time for some menus:

Bas Mitzvah seudah (rather late!)

We had an orange theme – so black tablecloths with black and orange paperware and serviettes – looked very effective.

Starter: Humus, tuna dip, Moroccan olives, cucumber salad ( yes, I know that’s not orange!)

“Orange soup” – sweet potatoes, carrots, potatoes, onions etc and baked beans put it just before it’s blended

Paprika chicken with potatoes, sweet and sour red cabbage, green beans with garlic and lemon

Chocolate brownie with chocolate sauce, peanut butter icecream, mango icecream

Tonight we are hosting an Italian Friday night for women who attend my husband’s shiur at the JLE. This is what we’re eating:

Garlic bread

Salmon with green sauce, spicy potato salad

Pasta and bean soup

Chicken cacciatore, potatoes with rosemary and garlic, caponata (like ratatouille with aubergines and olives), roast onions, broad bean stew

Oranges in syrup, chocolate cream cake

All recipes from Claudia Roden, either Book of Jewish Food or Italian Cooking

I seem to have gone from trying to post at least once a week to being lucky if I post once a month!  Still plenty to say, but not such a lot of time to say it! In the last month we celebrated our third daughter’s becoming a bas mitzvah.  Now that all the celebrations have concluded, with the return of my husband and our daughter from a trip to Israel, (I can’t quite work out why when he works full-time and I work part-time, it’s easier for him to get away...), I’ve been able to put some thoughts together.

When our children began to reach halachic adulthood, we were very conscious of the fact that our third and fourth children are boy/girl twins and that we did not want our daughter to feel that she was undervalued in comparison to her brother.  A friend of ours, who grew up in a very chareidi community, told us that when she became bas mitzvah, she had a few friends round for tea, but when her brother became bar mitzvah a year later, he had a whole weekend of celebrations.  Given that this was still bothering her several years later, we did not want the same thing to happen in our family.  So, we have made a similar celebration for each of our daughters so far to that which we hope to make for our sons, beginning next year, iy”H.

Our shul has very kindly marked the girls’ bas mitzvahs with a communal seudah shelishis – see here for a report of the most recent one.  We have made a seudas mitzvah, on their birthday or as close as possible to it, for our family and friends and the children have been treated to a trip to Israel, with as much touring and sightseeing as possible.  See here for my husband’s article about the reason for this.

While I appreciate that in some circles, a bas mitzvah is marked with little display, we feel that our daughters are as entitled to their “moment in the sun” as our sons.  Some people would say that this happens for a girl when she gets married, but these days, who knows when (or even, if) this will happen.  Also reaching adulthood is just as significant for a girl as for a boy – she now has an obligation to do mitzvos, just as he does – so why not welcome her to the adult world with some fanfare?  In circles, such as ours, where women have a serious religious and secular education, and have the potential to pursue fulfilling and satisfying careers in whatever field they chose (and I’m including homemaking and bringing up children in that) to distinguish between the level of celebration for boys and girls seems archaic and unnecessary.

Our daughters have all spent some time during the year preceeding their bas mitzvah learning with my husband, following which they have prepared a dvar Torah to present at the seudas mitzvah/seuda shelishis.  In order to convince our oldest daughter that she really did have to speak, I had to offer to speak as well, at both events, which I have continued to do for our other daughters.  I’m hoping not to do this at the bar mitzvahs!  But I think it is important for the girls to see that both men and women can speak in public and share Torah ideas.  It’s also an opportunity to focus on each child’s positive characteristics and give them a tailor-made bracha for the future. I hope that our daughters were able to take away something meaningful from the speeches at the seudos, and if not, mine are saved on my computer!

This afternoon my sister and my mummy and my baby and me went to Northala Fields. It is on the way to the airport. There were ponds and we took my scooter and a bike. When they rebuilt Wembley Stadium, the rubble was made into mounds. There were lots of fields and grass. We went to the playground, which was a good one, and played for quite a long time. There were swings and a fireman’s pole and there was a toy that had a pole that had two poles going down each side and you put your legs on each side and slid down.  Whilst I was getting in the car, I picked up some stones to bring home. Then we  drove home.

Editor's note:

The most striking feature of the park is four huge conical mounds which we have driven past many times on the way to Heathrow, but never knew what they were. Some time ago our youngest daughter went to a park with a friend and had a really nice time - she told me that it had circular paths and it was past IKEA, but we couldn't work out where it was, and the friend didn't know what the park was called. Last week, she came with me to collect my husband from the airport, and suddenly called out, "That's where we went!" So now both mysteries are solved.

One often hears of hachgasha pratis (divine providence) stories, in which, for example, someone was miraculously saved from a terrible event because they were unexpectedly delayed, either due to a surprising phenomenon or the performance of a mitzvah. Some people say that these stories, whilst inspirational, are of little value by themselves since there are undoubtedly an equal number of people who experience the disastrous consequence, because they were delayed unexpectedly by the performance of a mitzvah or who missed it because they were busy doing an aveira.  So just to balance out any positive hashgacha pratis stories you might have heard this week, here’s a negative one:

I often pop out in early in the morning to buy bread for the children’s lunches.  Since I’m very nearby, only out for a few minutes and most of the children are usually still in bed, I rarely, if ever, take my mobile phone with me.  One day last week my phone was next to my keys and I just grabbed it and put it in my pocket on the way out.

At this point in a classic HP story, either one of the children would have needed me urgently and been able to phone me, or I would have been unavoidably delayed and able to phone home, or a disaster would have happened on the Golders Green Road and I would have been able to alert the emergency services.  However, this is a negative HP story and so this is what happened:

While I was out, I checked the phone was still there and it was. However, when I came home and went to take it out of my pocket…it wasn’t there.  I checked in the car – no phone.  Called it and got my voice mail.  So, I zoomed back down to the shops and saw my phone, lying face down in the road, next to where I had parked.  Great! No one had stolen it – maybe there’s a happy ending after all?  But no, when I tried to turn it on –sadly, it had died.  There was no obvious damage, but it was more scratched than it should have been, just from falling out of my pocket and it seems that my poor phone had been run over.

So there’s the negative HP story – the one morning when I decided to take my phone with me, it became the victim of a hit and run driver.  So now you can relax and enjoy the regular HP stories, confident that they have been balanced out.

On the bright side, the phone company were great and within a couple of days, I had a nice shiny new phone, which will not be coming with me to buy bread in the mornings!

We had an amazing time on our recent break in Israel, visiting both familiar places (and restaurants) and new places (and restaurants!)

Sightseeing highlights included a walk at Ein Gedi, which was greatly enhanced by fascinating ibex and hyraxes and where we saw the remains of  a fifth century shul; a trip to the Ramon Crater, with its stunningly beautiful and unusual scenery, and a Nabatean cavaranserai; the very clever audio visual presentation at the Herzl Museum.

Best restaurants:  RYU for Asian comfort food, Benny Dagim (not surprisingly, for fish) and Moise for a great French restaurant experience. Don't forget excellent website eluna for recommendations and money off vouchers for many restaurants.

We also had quite a few “only in Israel” experiences.  On our drive along the shore of the Dead Sea, we visited Qumran, home to the Essenes, authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  I was delighted to see several bus loads of Christian pilgrims there and in fact there were many pilgrims and other tourists everywhere we visited – the tourist part of the Israeli economy has certainly bounced back.  Before you look at the ruins at Qumran, there is a short film about the community who lived there.  The guided tour who arrived at the same time as we did were of Oriental appearance, so we weren’t surprised when having been told to go into the film, the guide came and told us “It’s in Korean!” Since the film largely consisted of hairy men wearing tefillin badly, and it had Hebrew subtitles, watching it with a Korean soundtrack was a novel experience.

On Friday morning we decided to take a bus to the market in Machane Yehuda and pick up a few bits for Shabbos.  The bus arrived when and where it was supposed to, but as we were driving along, there was a thud, as though it had hit something – we thought maybe a bollard, until we saw a man somersaulting past the windows!  The bus stopped, everyone got off, the bus driver called his company, and ambulance came and took away the man, who by this time was sitting up and having a drink of water, and we didn’t go to the market.

Also interesting to see that despite the constant slurs of apartheid against Israel, there were, as ever, many Arabs strolling around in central Jerusalem, riding the new Light Railway, and even eating in kosher restaurants, including one place where we saw a lady with a hijab and her husband, sitting at the next table to a man with a big kippah serugah/"settler" stereotype with no apparent concern on either side.

We are always amused by the poor standard of English translation on the signs in Israel, particularly given that there are millions of Israelis for whom it is their first language, and millions more who speak it well as a joint first/second language.  We were particularly struck on this occasion by a sign for “(Name) Rrestaurant”, taking the rolled “r” to extremes, but the winners were on Har Herzl, where we found, next to Herzl’s burial place, a sign which said in Hebrew “Kever Herzl” and in English “The Grove of Herzl.”  My husband was so disbelieving that he really thought they meant a grove,until I pointed out that there were no trees anywhere nearby!  And my favourite, also on Har Herzl, where the signposts directing people to different areas of the gardens had one arrow labelled “Zionist Leaders Plot.”

Thanks as ever to all those involved in childcare and to the children for managing without us!

I haven’t blogged recently, simply because I’ve been too busy…my husband and I went away for our annual “marriage recharge” without the children (that’s another post), and this is what I did on the day before we went.

6:30 – 8:30am Sent off emails of photos for the week’s paper, made 6 lunches and sent 6 children off to school

8:30 – 10am Breakfast, straightened up kitchen, wrote 2 short articles

10-11am Visited shiva with my husband

11am – 1pm Brent Cross for “negative shopping” (taking back things) and collecting currency for trip, Tesco’s to stock up on food before we go away

1-2pm Lunch

2 – 3pm Bank etc

3 – 4pm Packing

4 – 6:30pm  Collect children, spend time with them, make supper

6:30 onwards – Supper, put children to bed (ha ha!), pack some more, write instructions for childcare

11pm Call from “boss”: “Are you sleeping?”  “No. If you thought I was sleeping, why did you phone??” Write last article, as paper goes to press.

Whole day interspersed with sorting washing, running washing machine, folding and distributing washing...