My soul shall weep in secrecy for you pride (Jeremiah 13:17).

This teaches that G-d has a concealed place called “Mistarem” (secrecy), where He weeps over the pride of Israel that was stripped from them and given to the nations of the World. Some say G-d weeps over the Divine glory which has been concealed from this world.

But how can we say G-d weeps, are we not told that strength and rejoicing are His Presence? (Chronicles I 16:27).

No, this is not a contradiction! On the inside (in secret) G-d weeps; in the outside, He appears to rejoice (Chagigiah 5b).

The Maharal explains that the location of G-d’s secret hideaway is within the soul of every Jew and that the fundamental soul of man cries constantly over the Destruction of the Temple. The average person is not in touch with his inner soul, with his real self, so he is oblivious to this weeping. The average person is aware only of his external facade where everything appears to be fine and growing better with – abundant strength and rejoicing. (From the Art Scroll Tisha B’Av Service.

Many of us have trouble with tears on Tisha B’Av. Rabbi Dovid Schwartz has provided us with an mp3 file, where he goes through many of the kinnos of Tisha B’Av in order to give us a deeper understanding and help us get closer to the tears needed for redemption.

The audio file can be listened to on Tisha B’Av since a person is allowed to learn explanations of the Kinnos, even though there is a general prohibition against learning Torah on this day. If one is able, it’s probably best to prepare before hand and listen to the audio this week.

The tinok shenishba is the “kidnapped Jewish child”.

Question: Who is he kidnapped from, his parents?

Answering that question yes or no would be missing the point. After all,the parents might well be the kidnappers. The tinok shenishba is the Jew who has been kidnapped from Hashem, kidnapped from the vital knowledge requisite to understanding one’s role before G-d. In our day and age it is usually the case that the parents of a tinok shenishba themselves fall into the category of tinok shenishba. One cannot teach what one has never known.

At this moment I am thinking of a particular tinok shenishba. He is a baby, only months old. There is a blood lusting monster who wants this little baby dead and will stop at nothing to see him dead, and this is real. There is no stopping this monster and it intends to scavenge every cranny of every house until it finds this baby and murders him.

The desperate parents know the monster is coming. They take a gamble that offers the baby little hope for survival, but little is better than nothing. A broken-hearted mother waterproofs a basket, gently sets her baby inside, and places the basket amongst the reeds at the edge of a river. The mother’s neshama cries to the high Heavens as she turns around and walks away.

Who would have believed that the deadly monster had a daughter who would find the baby in the river, care for him, and raise him as her own?

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The Omer period begins the night following the initial Seder and is designed for continuous movement up the 50 rung spiritual ladder between the impure and the pure. At the end of seven weeks, 7 x 7 days, the pinnacle of our journey is reached. Next stop: Day number 49 + 1: Shavuous.

Moshe Rabbeinu, the ultimate tinok shenishba, had ascended to the 49th level of purity during his lifetime.

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The numbers 49 and 50 appear to be highly significant and closely related. I am going to speak briefly about Hashem’s Torah codings. First however I have to blow some chaff away from the grain. There are essentially two kinds of Torah Codes, esoteric and clear.

Too many times I have seen the people using esoteric examples to try and discredit the clear codings. One may as well use examples of lamb chops to try and discredit broccoli. They are not the same thing. An esoteric code, for a wild example, might be used to try and discover what color socks I’m going to wear next Tuesday. The clear codes are of a different ilk, as we shall see…and with an Omer bent.

One of the many varieties of Torah codes is known as ELS, or Equidistant Letter Spacing.

I hope you will participate in the rest of this post. Knowledge of the Hebrew alef-beis will be a prerequisite however. Take out a Chumash, and open it up to the first Verse of Bereishis (Genesis). Go to the letter “tav” in the very first word, which is Bereishis. NOW, keep your place, but turn to the first Verse of the second Book of the Torah, Shemos (Exodus). Again look at the “tav” in the beginning, in the word “shemos.”

From both “tavs” count 50 letters. Each time you will arrive on a “vav.”
From both “vavs” count 50 letters. Each time you will arrive on a “reish.”
From both reishes count 50 letters. Each time you will arrive on a “hei.”

Tav – vav – reish – hei spells Torah, and you used the Code of 50 to get there in each case.

I hope you agree when you look at this that there is nothing accidental here. It is clear. It should not be lost on anyone that 50 also matches the 49 + 1 count of the Omer period, as well as the 49 + 1 count that carries us to the Yovel (Jubilee year), when Eretz Yisrael is required to have a Yovel year.

The Code of 50 seems to be the key coding system in the Torah.

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Now that you’ve seen the obvious, I’m going to paint a little picture. It’s my picture, so you can like it…or not like it…agree with it…or not agree with it. I think it’s flawless, but you are now the art critic, not me. Here we go.

I own an ELS computer program. Assuming I am using the program correctly, the WORD Torah is found IN THE TORAH 32 times in the Code of 50. 19 of those 32, Torah is spelled forward (Tav-vav-reish-hei), and the other 13 times, Torah is spelled in reverse (hei-reish-vav-Tav). That’s not very many, and we have already seen two of them in the first two words of Bereishis and Shemos.

I’d also like you to know that the word Torah is found only 15 times in the Code of 48, 16 times in the Code of 49, 15 times in the Code of 51, and 16 times in the Code of 52. It seems far more than coincidental that the Code of 50 doubles these numbers: 15 – 16 – 32 – 15 -16. There is much more I can write about this, but I’m trying very hard not to make this piece too
long.

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Let’s move on. We look at BaMidbar 8:1, concerning the Menorah in the Mishkan – “…kindle the lamps toward the face of the Menorah…”

That is, the flames on the right are to face toward the left, and the flames on the left are to face toward the right. The flame in the middle is not to join with either side, but acts to bring all the lights together as a unifying force.

I am going to apply this thought to our word Torah by the Code of 50.

The Book of Vayikra is the unifying force in the middle. Indeed, the word Torah is not encoded anywhere around the beginning of Vayikra, neither written forward nor in reverse.

In the next Book, BaMidbar, we return again turn to the very first Verse, this time to the word, “Moshe.” From the “hei,” in Moshe, count every 50 letters. You will again spell Torah, this time in reverse, hei-reish-vav-tav. This would be consistent with facing the middle flame.

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This brings us to Devarim. Devarim has a unique and significant difference from the rest of the Torah. Sometimes the Torah is considered to be two volumes. Volume 1, the first four Books, the Word of Hashem, and Volume II, the fifth Book, Devarim, the word of Moshe Rabbeinu.

Devarim, Chapter 1, Verse 1 – “These are the words that Moshe spoke to kol Yisrael…”

You will not find the word Torah in the Code of 50 in the first Verse of Devarim, as you will in Bereishis, Shemos, and BaMidbar. It needs to be taken into account that Devarim is the BOOK OF MOSHE, and Moshe reached the 49th level during his lifetime, not the 50th.

As Moshe’s Book, the fifith book, we turn to Chapter 1 of Devarim, but Verse FIVE. The word Torah is found in the Code of 49, written in reverse, as with Bereishis, Shemos, and BaMidbar, this Devarim code is also facing the center flame. To find this code in Devarim, go the word HaTorah in the 5th Verse (naturally). Now count every 49 letters.

Last week was Pesach Sheini, the “raindate” for bringing the Korban Pesach for those who were ritually unclean when the first date came around. It wasn’t until I sat down to write this, more than two decades after accepting the yoke of the mitzvos on myself as a young adult with a secular background, that I realized what a profound metaphor this is for baalei teshuva. But every year Pesach is, for me, a watershed of realization of just how much has changed — and how much more there is to do.

That there’s always more to do I understood even before I understood what it meant to be a Jew. I had cut out the quote from Pirkei Avos 2:21, “It is not upon you to complete the task, but you are not free to desist from it,” and posted it on my dormitory door even before I knew where it came from. (No, I am not suggesting the Sages were talking about Pesach cleaning!) The fundamental truth of it spoke to me, as did the implicit insistence that life has meaning, purpose, a goal behind personal achievement and fleeting pleasures. Ironically, Pesach Sheini seems to contradict that message by its apparent focus on a ritual whose moral meaning we don’t readily comprehend. But Pesach has a unique way of reminding me of a very accessible lesson about keeping the Torah. Perhaps we can say it is about bitul — nullification. No, I don’t mean nullifying one’s pride, or one’s ego; I am not the one to preach on that topic. But do let me explain what I mean.

Let me first ask you: Did Pesach just seem to whiz by this year? It did for us. When it comes out the way it did this year, with “no chol hamoed” as we say — there’s an erev Shabbos in it, and an erev yomtov, and another day stuck in there, but by and large they don’t even bother promoting special chol hamoed fairs and concerts — it’s just over as soon as it starts, isn’t it?

Well, when I was a kid we kept a kind of Pesach. Besides our fast-motion sedarim out of the Workman’s Circle Haggadah, there was also the chometz issue. In our family, we didn’t eat bread or bread-like products. As far as we knew, that was observing something. So right until my first visit to yeshiva I was meticulous about eating matzah on Pesach, right up to and including eating a matza-borne cheese steak in college, in which I took great pride of a sort and saw no fatal contradiction.

But my, how long these Pesachs were!

Eight. Endless. Days. Of. Negation.

No bread. No pizza. I’m a carbohydrates guy, see? I felt this negation of desire. Perhaps it buoyed me in a way for my future as an orthodox Jew. The discipline of it, after all, was fairly unique in my life. And I mentioned the pride inherent in eating this traife matzah thing in the middle of a Princeton eating club; that’s a good thing too, right? You can build on that; orthodox Jews have to get used to being oddballs in galus (exile). On the other hand, I remember not enjoying this time. Eight. Endless. Days. Of. Negation.
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I am thinking of a man by the name of Ben Kalba Savua.

Ben Kalba was a wealthy Jew who made a fortune in both the meat and textile industries. One of his employees was a JFB, which means a John Fitzgerald…oops…excuse me..it means a Jew From Birth. I don’t know how frum this Jew could have been. He was the son of a righteous ger, but his knowledge of Yiddishkeit was severely lacking. He couldn’t even read the alef-beis. In fact, this man was not only an am ha-aretz by the standards of his day, he would likely be considered an am ha-aretz even by the vastly dimished standards of our day. On top of this, he had a genuine distaste for real Torah scholars.

With this information one should not be surprised to hear that Ben Kalba, who wanted to match his daughter with a Torah scholar, was not a happy camper on the day he was informed that she was intent on marrying this… nobody. Ben Kalba reacted by cutting his daughter off from inheriting any of his fortune.

What could have caused a child of the rich and well meaning Ben Kalba to make such an irrational and irresponsible decision? The answer is that her motivations were neither irrational nor irresponsible. Ben Kalba’s daughter was no ordinary woman. She understood that there were commodities in the world of far greater importance than wealth or luxury. In fact, for some people, wealth and luxury occupy a very low rung on their ladder of priorities.

On the outside, Ben Kalba’s daughter saw a man unique in his gentleness of manner and in his modesty, and she also saw an untapped wellspring of Torah potential inside the man. A wellspring that lacked only an avenue through which it could flow and flourish.

Against her father’s wishes they were married.

In case you haven’t yet figured it out yet, the subject of this piece is Rabbi Akiva along with his aishes chayil, the tzadekes Rachel. They married and had a son named Yehoshua. Part of the agreement that Rachel made with Akiva was that at an appropriate time, he would leave home in order to attend yeshiva and learn. In my humble opinion I don’t think very many Jewish woman would be willing to make such a demand upon their husbands.

Akiva took his son Yehoshua and they left for yeshiva together. In the beginning they even learned together, starting with the alef-beis. Soon however they had to learn separately as each would progress at his own speed. How wonderful it would be if yeshivos today would admit the sincere baalei teshuva to learn with the yeladim and bachorim, at whatever level they needed to help them catch up on what they missed growing up… AND allowing them to skip ahead according to the ability and perseverence of each individual. We might find mini versions of Rabbi Akiva suddenly appearing out of nowhere throughout the Jewish world. That is my personal definition of loving my fellow Jew, however impractical it may seem.

Akiva spent 12 years in concentrated study and came home having risen to incredible Torah heights and having established a large following of his own. After spending time at home with Rachel, it was the desire of his dear wife that Akiva again leave home to continue the rewarding work he had begun. Akiva departed for another 12 years.

What I have related is only one piece of the life of a Torah giant who not only reached for the stars…but actually touched them. Between purity and impurity there are 50 levels. Moshe Rabbeinu had ascended to the 49th level of purity during his lifetime. Rabbi Akiva had entered the realm of level number 50.

One of Rabbi Akiva’s life achievements was a sefer he wrote called, “Osios d’Rabbi Akiva,” in which he explained deep mystical understandings for each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alef-beis.

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Up to this point I have brought out various insights and information. I am now going to attempt to take these ideas apart and reassemble into a new picture I’m going to call, “The Omer.”

Ready?

The divisions of the Torah Verses, known as pasukim, come from Sinai. There are 5,846 of them. I verified this myself by counting and numbering every Verse from Bereishis 1:1 to Devarim 34:12. For example, ask me to cite Verses 2,447 and 2,448 and I should be able to do so in less than 30
seconds.

Actually I already decided on those two Verses because they coincide with the timeline of the Makkos (Plagues), followed by Yetziyas Mitzrayim, the Omer period, and culminating with Har Sinai on Shavuous. Unfortunately the Egel Hazahav found its way into this time period as well. All of this occurred in the Hebrew years 2,447 and 2,448.

So let’s look at Torah Verse # 2,447 and Torah Verse # 2,448, which land us on Shemos, Chapter 32, Verses 11-12 – “Then Moshe supplicated before G-d, his G-d, and said: For what purpose, O G-d, should your wrath flare against your people who You have brought forth out of eretz Mitzrayim, with great power and with a mighty hand?…Turn back from your glowing wrath…”

I don’t know about you but I am startled by this seemingly uncanny synchronicity between the events of 2,447-48 and the Verses 2,447-48. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel compelled to tell you that matching up Torah Verses with Hebrew years has startled me many times.

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The Omer period, which begins the night following the initial Seder, is designed to be a time for a continuous spiritual climb up the 50 rung ladder, away from all that is impure, and toward all that is pure. At the end of seven weeks, 7 x 7 days, the pinnacle of our journey is reached. Next stop: Day number 49 + 1: Shavuous.

If I have written understandably to this point and you are still with me, let’s now move into one of countless tangents which are found everywhere when studying the Torah. My rabbi once told me that of the 5,846 Verses comprising the Torah, only two contain all 22 Hebrew letters. I found this information very exciting, but that’s just me. If anyone knows of any other such Verses I would be most interested in hearing about them.

Here are the Verses:

VERSE 1 – Shemos (Exodus) 16:16 – “This is the thing that G-d has commanded, ‘Gather from it (the manna from Heaven), for every man according to what he eats – an omer per person – according to the number of your people, according to whomever is in his tent shall you take.'”

VERSE 2 – Devarim (Deuteronomy) 4:34 – “Or has any god miraculously come to take for himself a nation from amidst a nation, with challenges, with signs, and with wonders, and with war, and with a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with greatly awesome deeds, such as everything that the Lord, your God, did for you in Mitzrayim (Egypt) before your eyes?”

Notice that these two Verses are directly linked. In the first G-d has just drowned the Mitzrim in the Yam Suf and the mon is about to fall from the sky. This will provide the Jewish people with the sustenance they will need for their sojourn in the midbar. In the second Verse Yetziyas Mitzrayim has become a memory. On the Seder night however we are to reminisce those events as if we were going through it at that very moment.

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When I was first made aware of these two Verses containing all 22 Hebrew letters I felt compelled to do something. I couldn’t wait I raced to count how many letters were in each Verse. I don’t know why but I just had to know. To say that I was startled (again) would be an understatement. The Torah startles me all the time.

There were exactly 70 letters in the first Verse, the number given for the nations of the world. There were exactly 120 letters in the second Verse, the years of life for both Moshe and Akiva. The first Verse talks about the total reliance the Jews would now have on G-d. We add 50 letters, the number of rungs from the bottom to the top of the ladder, and we reach the 120 letters of the second Verse. The second Verse is a constant reminder to us of where we came from and where we have ascended. It is the central theme of Pesach. Dayenu!

Oh…and Ben Kalba Savua did teshuva and gave Akiva and Rachel half his fortune.

Our friends from Argentina, Leandro Katz and Matías Duek sent in the following contribution:

The High Holidays are coming and we have our opportunity to evaluate ourselves. What you think and what you say show how connected you are to the religion.

Take this test and read your results.

1) Your aunt who lives far from your house offers her house for the Rosh Hashana dinner. What do you do?
A) You say: “I don’t travel during Rosh Hashana”.
B) You say: “Why don’t you come home?”
C) You go on foot, it takes you 2 hours and then you go back home by taxi.

2) You are in the Synagogue and the Rabbi starts to blow the Shofar. What do you think?
A) Your senses sharpen and you are 100% connected.
B) Although you don’t know what you have to do, you relax and try to feel the Shofar sound.
C) You think: Gee! How long can he hold his breath?

3) At the Rosh Hashana dinner, your cousin starts to talk about sports. What do you do?
A) You say: “This is not a subject to discuss tonight”.
B) You use sports as a metaphor to share Torah words.
C) You join the conversation: “People say that Pete Sampras’s grandfather was a Jew.”

4) It’s 10 minutes before the end of Yom Kippur. What do you think?
A) I hope that in 10 minutes I will be sealed with a year of Torah and Mitzvot.
B) You try to take advantage of the last minutes but you get nervous when the cantor makes the prayer longer.
C) Yummy, pizza…

5) You are in the synagogue on Simchat Torah and everybody is dancing with the Torah. What do you think?

A) Clapping, maybe. Dancing, no way.
B) If my friends saw me dancing with the Rabbi…
C) Everything is cool, but the Torah is really heavy.

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