Mindfullness

In this week's parsha, Bo, God commands Moses to hold out his rod over the land of Egypt. God drove an east wind carrying a plague of locusts to all the crops in Egypt, which devoured everything green and darkened the land (Exodus 10:15). Pharoh, who was accustomed to ruling a country that served as the bread basket of the entire Middle East, now had to wonder where his next meal was coming from. Pharoh quickly summoned Moses and Aaron saying, "I stand guilty before the Lord your God, and before you. Forgive my offense, just this once, and plead with the Lord your God that he remove this death from me." Because pharoh lived on the banks of the Nile surrounded by his agricultural lands, when he saw the locusts he knew immediately that he was doomed. However today, we are so far removed from the farm that most of us don't realize that this warm winter we're having means that certain insect populations will be flourishing this coming spring because we haven't had enough frosty nights to reduce their numbers. If you've ever been hungry, you know that we can't take food for granted.
On Wednesday when our students were leaving religious school, we saw the new moon of the Hebrew month Shevat rising over our fields, which reminded us that the new year for the trees (Tu B'Shevat) will be here in a couple of weeks. This gives us an opportunity to focus on the source of our food. We are all becoming more mindful of which foods that we eat are kosher, nutritious, organic, and harvested locally. At our Tu B'Shevat program we'll be saying our prayers to God and thanking him for the produce and fruits of the earth. Every time we put something in our mouth we have an opportunity to say a blessing. In addition to keeping kosher, many of our students have food allergies so we pay close attention to food preparation in our synagogue and school (sorry, Mr. Peanut). Recently I became a Rabbinic Fellow for Hazon, a Jewish environmental society (http://www.hazon.org/). If you go their web page you will find lots of suggestions for ways in which we can become closer to God through what we eat.

L'Chaim

I always thought of l'chaim as the classic Jewish toast and assumed that it meant to life, but it turns out it means that and more.  I toasted my family l'chaim last Saturday night over the Havdallah cup, before we went out for New Year's and then again over champagne later on in the evening as 2012 approached.  And tonight we will share a l'chaim as we always do at our 8:00 minyan when we raise our glasses and welcome the Sabbath.

It turns out the Ashkenazi Jews got the custom to say savrei maranan to which the response is l'chaim from the Sephardic Jews of the Middle East.  They in turn got it from the Jews of Spain in the Middle Ages.  In his 14th century Spanish prayer book Rabbi David ben Josef Abudarham sought to explain the province of the custom. He said that it was because Jews waiting to be executed would be given a glass of wine before their capital punishment  and we do not want to become condemned prisoners ourselves, and so we say, "to life."  Alternatively, Rabbi Abudarham hypothesized that in the Garden of Eden the forbidden fruit that Adam ate was a grape, and not an apple. After Adam ate the fruit of the vine, he was punished with mortality.  So we say "to life" before we drink as a counter measure to the Angel of Death.
While I appreciate these rather fanciful explanations, Rabbi Tigay writes in The Forward that the original source of the custom lay in ancient Babylonia, where the Jews spoke Aramaic and they said l'chayei instead of l'chaim. One Jew would raise a glass and in preparation to saying the blessing borai perie h'gofen, he would turn to his friends and say savrei maranan, "Gentleman, what do think? Is everyone ready for the blessing?" And they would answer with the archaic Talmudic expression, l'chayei. "Yes, alright fine." 

So as we prepare for this first Shabbat of 2012, let's lift our Kiddush cups and say savrei maranan... l'chaim. TO LIFE!