Shabbes and the tree of knowledge

My father Leo was what I call a ba'al she'ela, 'one who questions'. For those unfamiliar with Hebrew, this is a play on words, a pun, on ba'al tshuva, or one who returns to the fold of the devout, essentially a born again Jew. Whence the pun? Well, tshuva means 'answer' as well as 'return', so anyway...

Yeshivish till he was 18, Leo began to spend too much time with his handful of buddies at the Brooklyn Public Library, reading all sorts of apikorsus. The ringleader and poisoner was a certain Jerry Eckstein who began to whisper in their tender ears all sorts of sexy new ideas, and lead them to the forbidden books, the tree of knowledge. This leader of the teen delinquents would eventually become an esteemed philosophy professor at SUNY Albany. Hard to believe that whole bunch of 'em are all about 80 years old today -- All except for my father who died 14 years ago.

Leo learned many interesting songs at pirkhey, which he passed down to me, and I figured I'd share with you one for Shabbes and mitzva night:

Down the ol' Canarsie line,

Down the ol' Canarsie line,

For ev'ry hundred people,

The Jews were ninety nine,

So on a hot Yom Kippur day,

All the Jews, they stayed away,

So the BMT went bankrupt

On that Yom Kippur day!

Rivkeh my dahling,

Rivkeh my love,

Hop into my pushcart,

And I will take you home...

Shabbes, is coming,

We'll eat gefilte fish,

But Rivkeh, my dahling,

You ah my fayvrite dish!

Rivkeh my dahling....

Today in the life of the Jews: The arrest of Jews in France by Philip Augustus in 1180. His father Louis VII was more tolerant, but even before Louis died, Philip was find of persecuting landsmen. One Shabbat he whisked a large number of Jews from synagogue into prison. They were liberated only upon payment of a ransom of 1500 marks of silver, which incidentally didn't protect them from the general expulsion of 1182. At this time however, the domain of the French king was rather small, but the territory under French control gradually expanded, and Jews were expelled from any new territories that came under their control.

Sabbath without gravity

I've been riveted by the thousands of beautiful images being transmitted to Earth from the Cassini space craft orbiting Saturn, each resembling a masterful abstract painting.

Many of you know that Cassini launched a smaller minicraft (known as Huygens) at Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Titan is a complex world in its own right, similar in many ways to primordial earth as it existed (with apologies to devout readers) billions of years ago. Huygens snapped many photos as it parachuted down to Titan's surface.

You'd see something like this if you were gazing out an airplane window over the lake regions of Minnesota, southern Finland or northern Quebec. In fact the lakes in this picture are filled with liquid methane and dot Titan's northern latitudes.

Titan is just one of several moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter which may be home to primitive alien life forms. And we haven't mentioned Mars. Astronauts will visit these places one day.

There are many Jewish laws which will face challenges if and when religious Jews ever leave the orbit of planet earth.

But I'd like to focus on the question of Shabbat. How does a devout Jew observe Shabbat, or daven in space? Let's assume a devout Jew in the year 2037 moves permanently to a base on the moon, which doesn't spin. How would one daven three times a day in an environment where day and night don't alternate? And what if our little frum astronaut friend gets transferred to a space station orbiting Saturn, which revolves around the sun once in almost 30 years. What would that do to our (24 x 7 x 365 earth schdule) weekly parsha reading?

On this day in the life of the Jewish people in 1784: the poll tax was abolished in France by Louis XVI. Until then, Jews living in the eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine (just an FYI -these regions are a mix of German and French cultures) were required to pay a special road toll upon entry or departure from all cities. Known as Impot de Pied Forchu (poll of the cloven foot) this tax was identical to one imposed on every animal going to market. It's worth noting that despite the delay to full emancipation for the Jews of England, degradation was always much worse in most countries on the Continent, as late the French Revolution.