How To Get Your Kabbalah Fix While Skiing Down a Mountain

The Spirituality of Outdoor Winter Sports

By Anna Goldenberg for The Jewish Daily Forward

It turns out that I’ve underestimated the spiritual importance of chairlifts.

Give people a Rorschach test with an Austria-shaped ink stain (a spoon tilted to the right with an oversized bowl and a short handle), and skiing is likely to be among the terms associated with my alpine native country. Every winter holiday while I was growing up, my family would fill several suitcases with thermal underwear and we would travel west, from the top right corner of the bowl, where Vienna is located, to the beginning of the handle, or mountainous Salzburg.

Never much of an athlete, I saw skiing as one of the few national duties I had to fulfill (watching “Sissi,” a three-part movie screened every Christmas on TV that offers a heavily romanticized depiction of the life of Austria’s former empress, played by Romy Schneider, was another one). But I always looked forward to the breaks. They came in the form of chairlift rides. Among my favorite activities on the 10-minute trip up the hill were: eating the chocolate my aunt had stuffed in the pockets of my skiing jacket, singing Beatles songs off-key with my cousins, and shouting ‘Mama’ or ‘Papa,’ and seeing if any of the people skiing on the slopes underneath me would reply.

It came as somewhat of a surprise when I recently learned that there are more constructive things to do on the chairlift — like learning about Judaism and strengthening my Jewish identity.

Joshua Segal, a skiing instructor and retired rabbi of Congregation Betenu in Amherst, N.H., offers a program called Ski Kabbalah. On the chairlift ride up, Segal gives his participants a task related to kabbalistic concepts, to be performed while skiing. He says that elements of the Tree of Life, the central mystical concept of Kabbalah, correspond with parts of the human body, and thus kabbalistic concepts such as balance could be directly translated into skiing.

“For example, if you were to take away one thing, what do you have to do to compensate?” he asked. I always dreaded when skiing instructors demanded that I go without sticks, but Segal told me that he only takes skiers who are able to meet these sorts of challenges anyway.

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Telling the Story of Israel's Trees

By Michael Cohen for The Jew and the Carrot

Following his successful Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel leading Israeli environmental lawyer and activist Alon Tal has produced another must read for anyone interested in learning more about the land of Israel; in this case the trees that call that land home. His latest book, All the Trees of the Forest: Israel’s Woodlands from the Bible to the Present reads like a combination of a Sherlock Holmes novel filled with characters working to solve the case of what is best for the land of Israel when it comes to trees, and a tractate of the Talmud where divergent issues are explored that all add to a deeper understanding of the issue at hand.

While the focus of the book is Israel, with only “1/60,000 of the wooded area of the planet,” the information and lessons presented are, as Tal points out, both universal in nature and scope. As Tal writes, “In 1948, the planted stands and remnants of natural woodlands occupied less than 2 percent of the area of the State. By 2005 that figure had increased t some 8.5 percent, and should easily cross the 10 percent mark before stabilizing in a couple of decades. A land that was synonymous with erosion, desertification, and human neglect, is enjoying an environmental makeover.” He then continues, “This exercise in ecological rehabilitation occurred in a country where 97 percent of the ground is classified as ‘drylands,’ making it particular relevant for half of the planet where water will be scarce.”

Not that this has been an easy journey.

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The Purpose of Kashrut

Reprinted from ReformJudaism.org

Kashrut reminds us again and again that Jewish spirituality is inseparable from the physical

"You are what you eat' the common expression goes. One might think of this saying in relation to kashrut (that is, keeping kosher). What do the choices that we make about what we eat reveal about who we really are? Many Jews today view kashrut as an outdated vestige of ancient Israelite practice, expanded upon by rabbinic Judaism, bur no longer relevant to modern day life. However, the presentation of the prohibitions associated with kashrut in Parashat Re'eh challenges us to consider anew the purposes of kashrut.

Deuteronomy 14 tells us what animals, fish, and birds we can and cannot eat. It instructs us not to boil a kid (a young goat) in its mother's milk, an injunction that became the basis for the rabbinic separation between milk and meat (14:21; see also Exodus 23:19 and 34:26). While many Jews today believe the biblical prohibitions against certain meat and fish to be for health reasons, Parashat Re'eh (Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17) makes no such claim. In fact, if this were the case, the explicit permission to give the stranger and the foreigner the foods we are forbidden to eat (14:21) would be frankly immoral. Rather, Parashat Re'eh, as the Torah does elsewhere, identifies the articulation of eating prohibitions strictly as part of the Israelites' particular path to holiness: "for you are a people consecrated to your God Adonai" 14:21). What is it about these prohibitions that can make us holy? Interestingly, the prohibited foods are identified as tamei lachem--ritually impure "for you" (14:7, 8, 10). For this reason, it is perfectly acceptable for other people to eat them, just not for the people Israel.

A Spiritual Discipline

Traditional and modern commentators have offered various explanations as to why particular fish, poultry, and animals are considered tahor ("ritually pure") and therefore acceptable to eat. But perhaps more important than the meaning of each of the details of the prohibitions is the simple fact that we are given a list of dos and don'ts that govern what we are to consume daily. According to the Torah, God asks that we abstain from eating certain foods, not because they are unhealthy or intrinsically problematic, but simply as an expression of our devotion. As with other chukim (laws that the rabbinic sages define as being without rational explanation), these prohibitions are like the requests of a beloved: we may not understand them, but we are, in essence, asked to follow them purely as an expression of our love. Daily, the observance of kashrut calls us back to a personal relationship with God.

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The Curious History of Kosher Salt

How a Jewish Product Cornered Culinary Niche

By Rachel Tepper for The Jewish Daily Forward

Consider kosher salt: large, flaky, white grains that dissolve slowly in cooking. If you like to cook, you probably have a box of Morton or Diamond kosher salt in your cupboard, and if you are a chef, a small mountainous peak is likely sitting in a crock that you keep within arm’s reach in the kitchen at all times. It is one of the most ubiquitous ingredients in the cooking world — but it’s also one of the most misunderstood: All salt can be kosher (if it’s produced under kosher supervision) but not all kosher salt is kosher.

Salt has been used since ancient times to preserve food, and Jews have used it since the time of the Temple to remove blood from meat or “kasher” it, according to Gil Marks, author of the “Encyclopedia of Jewish Food.” Specifically large-grain salts were used as they could be washed from the meat’s surface without making it too salty.

Despite its status as a luxury product elsewhere in the ancient world, this type of salt was abundant in ancient Israel. The salt mines and salty seas of the region helped establish it as a center of the salt trade.

The term “kosher salt,” however, is a 20th-century American construction. “Jews were obviously using the product long before,” Marks said. “It’s not really ‘kosher salt’ — it’s koshering salt.” Up until the 1950s (when packaged kosher meat became available) kosher-keeping home cooks purchased this coarse salt to use in their kitchens to remove blood from the meat they served to their families.

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Volunteer Kosher Supervisors Help After LA Scandal

By JTA

A volunteer board of rabbis has been regularly inspecting Los Angeles businesses already certified as kosher by the Rabbinical Council of California.

The Kashrut Vaad of LA — five local rabbis not affiliated with the rabbinical council — has been making inspections since late last year, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal reported.

Its formation comes less than a year after the scandal at Doheny Glatt Kosher Meats, the largest kosher meat supplier in Los Angeles, which was certified by the council. The store’s kosher certification was revoked following the revelation of an undercover video showing its owner directing his employees to unload unsealed boxes of chicken from his car while the kosher supervisor was absent.

The certification was withdrawn the day before Passover in March 2013. The store was sold and later reopened with a new owner and management.

The Orthodox Union’s kashrut division conducted an audit of rabbinical council-certified shops and made recommendations, which have been implemented, to provide stronger kashrut standards, increased inspections and more transparency, the Journal reported.

The vaad grew out of an ad hoc group of local independent rabbis recruited by the rabbinical council to inspect its clients.

Agriculture in Israel

By Joshua Mitnick for MyJewishLearning

Reprinted with permission from The AVI CHAI Bookshelf.

My family had the Sukkah de rigueur when I was a kid. There was enough room for four folding tables to seat 30. The walls were brown burlap to complement the pine branches overhead. Decorations of orange and yellow gourds along with purple and browned cobs of corn hung from above. And although I enjoyed their autumnal colors and strange shapes, the significance of the dangling vegetables was lost on a suburban kid who thought anything could be found in the supermarket.

Reclaiming the Land

In Israel, however, the agricultural motif of the holiday isn't missed, whether you're from the city or the country. It's part of the history here. For the many Zionist pioneers who first settled in the Land of Israel at the beginning of the last century, the most important theme of Sukkot was found in a biblical passage that called for a week long thanksgiving at the end of the harvest season:

"You shall hold a festival for the Lord your God, seven days, in the place the Lord will choose; for the Lord, your God will bless all your crops and all your undertakings, and you shall have nothing but joy" (Deuteronomy 16:1).

Still, farming meant much more than providing a daily sustenance for Israel's founders. They wanted to reclaim what they saw as a barren country and realize the vision of a "land flowing with milk and honey.'' At the same time, the kibbutz movement spread its agricultural communes along the frontiers of the land in order to set up outposts that would one day be used in defense of the Jewish state. So when Sukkot came, the relevance of the holiday went beyond religion. It gave Israelis a chance to celebrate the agrarian enterprise and the national socialist values of the settlement movement.

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Coal: The Dirtiest Fuel

Originally printed on COEJL

By Benjamin Kahane

Depending on how much pressure and temperature to which it has been subject, coal is a sedimentary or metamorphic rock comprised mostly of carbon. Coal is a fossil fuel used primarily in the generation of electricity. To turn coal into electricity, the rock is pulverized then combusted in a furnace, the heat from which converts water into steam used to spin turbine blades to create electricity.

Coal is mined from the Earth in one of two basic methods: surface mining and underground mining. Surface mining — or strip mining — is the most economical way to extract coal if it is located close to the surface; it’s also the most ecologically devastating method, since the surface of the land, complete with trees, topsoil and all plants, are removed. This method is particularly common in the Appalachian Mountains, where the entire tops of mountains are removed, with debris pushed into valley streams.

Underground mining accounts for about 60 percent of world coal production and is the preferred method when the coal seams are too deep or the land is protected. Strip mining accounts for the remaining 40 percent. However, in the United States the numbers are reversed, and surface mining dominates.

There are many negative environmental impacts to using coal. Although coal is comprised mostly of carbon, smaller quantities of sulfur, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other heavy metals including mercury also exist in the coal we burn. There are higher and lower qualities of coal, just like petroleum, however the use of lower quality coal is widespread due to more widespread availability. If these harmful byproducts are not removed before or during combustion, they can lead to damaging events such as acid rain, background radiation exposure and cancer in humans and animals. Carbon dioxide emissions are also a cause for concern since carbon dioxide is a major contributor to climate change.

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