We are taught to be the masters of acceptance. All that G-d does is for the best, Judaism teaches us repeatedly. Yet we do not become comfortable with death, internally we do not accept it. When Jacob was faced with the tragic death of his precious son Joseph, the Torah tells us, “Vayimaen lihisnachem” (Breishis 37), he refused to be comforted. Some understand that to mean that he had an inkling that his son was really alive, and he was indeed right. Others say that this is a general rule for the Jewish approach to refuse to be comforted or to accept the “reality” of death, because our loved ones are never really dead. Yes, the body is buried and that is very tragic and painful. Yet if we used 3 words to describe our departed loved one it would rarely describe their body. Kindness, thoughtfulness or happiness are not properties of the body they are expressions of the soul. The soul doesn't die when the body is buried and we instinctively know that and therefore refuse to ac...
In honor of Rosh Hashanah a Jewish newspaper interviewed me. Not that many read that paper :) so I figured that I would post the interview. Here goes: “So Rabbi Bluming is it true about your congregation as well, that Jews seem to come out of the woodwork for the high holidays?” “Yes,” replied Menachem Mendel Bluming, “it is truly incredible and heartwarming.” “Heartwarming?”, we asked. “It seems that it is just Jewish guilt. After all, where are they all year?!” “Jews used to feel a lot of guilt. That is so last century.” Mendel Bluming asserted. “Really? We thought that guilt is as Jewish as bagels and lox!” We asked Bluming. “In my experience Jews see themselves as good people, not sinful people. They are right. After all after communism and the Holocaust and the previous generation that to a large extent gave them little or no Jewish education the mitzvot that they do are so incredible! How can they be called sinful?” Menachem Bluming shared. “So to wh...
The new pictures from the James Webb telescope are nothing short of incredible. We understand so little of the vast universe before us. With all the unprecedented scientific and medical knowledge and even with this incredible ability to see crisp pictures from a telescope placed 1 million miles away, we are still left in the dark. Do we know why there are 925,000 species of insects on earth? Why these billions of stars and galaxies exist in the vast universe? For me the lesson is humility. I know and understand so little of the vast universe before us and therefore for me to become conceited or arrogant is so out of place. Mendel (Menachem) Bluming