Mendel Bluming | Blogger

Thought by Menachem Bluming… Yom Kippur had ended and the Chazzan, the cantor, was the last one out and about to lock the door so that he could go home to his family when an older man came rushing to the door. “Why are you locking the doors?” The man pleaded. “Let me in, I am here for Kol Nidrei!” First the chazzan thought he was kidding but quickly realized how serious this man was. “Please let me in I have never missed a Kol Nidrei!” The chazzan patiently explained that the man must have mixed up the dates because Kol Nidrei was 25 hours earlier… The man looked away and broke into uncontrolled sobbing… “Woe is me… My father told me that as long as I hear the Kol Nidrei each year I will remain connected with the Jewish community and with being a Jew and what will I do now?...”  he sobbed and cried. The chazzan was touched deeply by this outpouring of Jewish connection and longing and so he told the man that he would not miss hearing the Kol Nidrei that year. “Come with me...

Don’t you love the feeling of being in control? You have your morning routine, your customized workout, you control every dial and setting and speed that you possibly can. Amazon delivers almost before you press the order now button. Texts are responded to instantly, calls are picked up before they ring and you expect that. You are in control of your life! Don’t you enjoy and depend on order and predictability? But control is an illusion. I may feel like I’m in control, but when it comes down to it, I am absolutely not. And if there’s any indication of that, it’s 9/11, Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma and so many other natural disasters. Weather forecasters can identify the storm. They can track it, measure its force, estimate its trajectory and somewhat predict its impact. But they, and we, are powerless to stop or redirect it, despite the tremendous technological and scientific advances we have seen in the last few decades. In the Torah we read about the mitzvah o...

Q: I dropped my faith a while ago. To be honest, I don't feel I am missing anything with G-d out of my life. If anything I am more free. It has made me wonder, if I lose my religion, have I really lost anything worthwhile?  Here's a thought: People often make the mistake of thinking that if you take away religion, you just get rid of believing in G-d. This is not true. You lose much more than G-d when you drop religion. Something else you lose when you drop religion is the idea of family. Family is a concept that cannot be taken for granted. The family is built and sustained on a belief system, a set of values, a worldview that sees marriage as a sacred covenant and parenthood as a moral responsibility. Without these supporting beliefs, the family is a baseless ideal that will erode with time. And these beliefs are religious. Only religion can provide a meaning to life that is higher than me. I was created with a purpose that is beyond myself. I am here to serv...

Here’s a thought:  I will leave the resolution of this conundrum to others while I focus on a more fundamental aspect of the matter. A statue, any statue, is purposely made to look solid, imposing and, above all, enduring - able to withstand the vicissitudes of time and even to seem immortal, as the very word monument (a lasting public tribute) implies. But, in reality this is all only an illusion. As powerful as these monuments may seem, the truth is that they are ephemeral and transient. What is now being so powerfully demonstrated, is that these monuments only last as long as the ideas they represent endure. The moment that societal sensibilities shift, they can be unceremoniously taken down and shipped off to the dump. This is not just a contemporary condition but has been the way of history from time immemorial. Have you ever wondered why there are no Jewish monuments? Even King David, who fought and was victorious in many wars and secured the land of Israel, ...

Question to R' Menachem Bluming this week: I like the idea of a day of rest. But why should I start my day of rest at a prayer service? Aren't there better ways to start my weekend? Here’s a thought: We each have our own way of spending the weekend. Some play sports, others watch television, paint, write or just vegetate. But often we find that even though we are chilling out, somewhere in the back of our minds is that nagging feeling that we still have a pile of work waiting for us. We indeed left work, but work didn't leave us. Even while we are enjoying the weekend we are already dreading Monday morning. There needs to be a transition. It is not enough to stop working; we must leave work behind. We can't simply collapse into the weekend; we have to welcome ourselves into it. Only by consciously stepping out of our work week and ushering in our day of rest can we truly relax and rejuvenate. Then we will be ready to face the coming week with renewed pu...

Question to Rabbi Menachem M Bluming: We haven't officially named our firstborn daughter yet. We have a problem. I always wanted to name her after my grandmother. But my wife doesn't like that name. She wants some other name which is nice, but I think it lacks any real meaning for the family. Doesn't it say somewhere that the father has the right to choose the firstborn's name?  Here’s a thought:  I'm not sure you want to know the answer to that.  There is indeed a custom in some communities of alternating the right to name a child between the parents. According to one Ashkenazi custom, the mother names the firstborn child, the father the second and so on. But some Sefardi communities have the father choosing the name for the first son, and then the mother the second son, while all daughters are named by the mother.  In your case, following either system, your wife gets to name this child.  But there is a different approach. These systems we...

Menachem Mendel Bluming received this question this week: I have to admit, I am angry. I was brought up Jewish, attended a Jewish school, and have only known Judaism as my religion. Now I am told I have to convert, because my mother never formally became Jewish. Isn't it a little unfair that all my life I was more Jewish than my friends, was subjected to anti-Semitism, and then I am told I need to convert?  Here’s a thought: I completely understand your frustration. It can't be easy to hear that you need to convert to your own religion. But please don't take it personally. This is not a reflection on you. The entire Jewish nation went through exactly what you are going through now.  After leaving Egypt, where they suffered as slaves and were tormented for being Jewish, the Israelites reached Mount Sinai. There they were told they had to formally accept the Torah, and convert to Judaism by immersing in a mikvah.  They could've had the same complaint ...