Boys under 13 and girls under 12 years old are exempted from fasting today.

Nursing women and pregnant women do not fast today.

A person who feels sick , for example, someone with fever or an individual who has a chronic disease like diabetes, should not fast.

In times of a pnademic you should extreme our precaution and avoid this fast if because of your age or medical history, you are considered at a higher risk. Ask your doctor. BEING SAFE, HEALTHY AND STRONG SHOULD BE YOUR FIRST CONCERN THIS YEAR.

לא יהיה כלי גבר על האשה ולא ילבש גבר שמלת אשה כי תועבת ה ‘ כל עושה אלה

Nowadays, many people tend to dress up on Purim. Obviously, there is no Mitsva or even Minhag to do so. It is just a popular practice that was accepted in many Jewish communities (although many Hakhamim like the Shela haQadosh rejected it completely!), especially with children. However, we must know, and inform others who do not know, about the prohibition of cross-dressing, or the use of clothing or items designed for the opposite sex, which is an explicit prohibition of Tora, (Deuteronomy 22: 5): “A woman should not wear men’s clothing, nor should a man wear women’s clothes …”. When a man dresses (or disguises) “to look like a woman”, wearing a skirt or a wig, or wearing makeup, etc., or when a woman is dressed in men’s clothes to look like a man, they are transgressing this Biblical commandment. This prohibition also applies during Purim. Rabbi Obadia Yosef z “l was very strict on this point and clarified that cross-dressing is forbidden even when one disguises as the other gender “just for fun”.

יב וַיָּשָׁב מָרְדֳּכַי, אֶל-שַׁעַר הַמֶּלֶךְ; וְהָמָן נִדְחַף אֶל-בֵּיתוֹ, אָבֵל וַחֲפוּי רֹאשׁ

Chapter 6 of Megillat Esther tells us that after the first banquet that Queen Esther prepared for Ahashverosh, and for an unexpected guest, Haman, the king was not able to sleep. The King is consumed with jealousy or suspicion, thinking that Haman might easily find allies among the guards who had access to the king, or among the servants who could poison his food, etc. In his unusual insomnia, the King requests to bring the book of the Chronicles, the official historical records that were written by the historians of the Empire. The King was interested to find the records of his rewards to those who had protected him, informing about possible attacks on his life. Being generous with the informants loyal to the king was essential for others to imitate this gesture. And the king wanted to make sure that in these uncertain moments, the King’s subjects knew of his generosity. Thus, the King finds out that five years ago, Mordekhai, the Jew, uncovered the plot of Bigtana and Teresh, two treasure guards who sought to poison the king. The King asked if Mordechai had been rewarded in any way for this, and his servants told him “no”. At dawn, just before the King gave the order to reward Mordechai, Haman arrives at the palace. What was Haman doing so early in the palace? In the previous chapter we saw that Haman was consumed with rage upon seeing Mordekhai not kneeling before him. The main reason for celebrating Purim is that the mega-revenge that Haman plans to retaliate against Mordechai, the extermination of his people, was miraculously thwarted . And the wicked Haman thought that his revenge would be more pleasant if Mordekhai saw with his own eyes the death of his people, and that is why he left him alive. But now Haman confesses to his wife and friends that he can no longer bear the presence of Mordekhai. His wife, Zeresh, suggests Haman to go and see the King in the morning and “denounce” Mordekhai, so that he would be immediately executed. But what was Haman going to accuse Mordechai of? The text does not provide us with any details. According to Professor Yonathan Grossman, Haman was advised by his wife Zeresh to accuse Mordekhai of “high treason”. Where can we see a hint to this? Grossman shows the similarity between the words the text uses when Zeresh speaks to her husband Haman, and the words that Izebel used when speaking to her husband King Ahab (I Kings 21: 4-7).

Ahab, one of the Kings of the Kingdom of Israel (ca. 900-850 BC) desired the vineyard of his neighbor, a Jew named Naboth. The King offered to pay for Nabot’s land, but Nabot did not want to sell his inheritance. Ahab became depressed, and his wife Izebel — a Phoenician woman who did not respect Jewish laws at all — bribed two witnesses to falsely accuse Nabot of cursing the King, an act of treason against the King. Taking advantage of the prevalent corruption of Ahab’s government,  Izebel managed to get the judges to condemn Naboth, execute him and confiscate his vineyard, which became now available to the King. (הרוגי המלכות, נכסיהן למלך).

Grossman explains that although the text of Esther does not mention these details explicitly, we can deduce from the allusions to the text of Ahab that Zeresh and Haman had in mind a similar plan: to falsely accuse Mordekhai of treason, and proceed to his immediate execution. When Haman arrived in the morning to the palace he was probably with a couple of false witnesses, ready to execute his plan. Haman was so sure of the success of his mission, that before leaving his house he ordered to erect a pole 25 meters high, to execute Mordechai.

Incidentally, the traditional form of execution of traitors in the Persian Empire was not the gallows, as it is usually understood from the conventional translations, but “impalement”. This terrible form of execution consisted in piercing the body with a sharp stick, and leaving the victim to bleed to death (see THIS). This horrible form of torture/ execution was practiced by the Assyrians and later adopted by the Persians. A few reliefs have been found that illustrate this execution

Apparently Bigtana and Teresh were also executed in this way. Haman wanted to execute Mordekhai in this way. The kind of execution and the unusual height of the pole — the height of an eight or nine story building— are an additional evidence that Haman’s plan was to accuse Mordekhai of high treason. Keeping in mind that the Empire wanted the execution of the traitors to be as public as possible, so that nobody would dare to act against the King.
In the end, as we read in Megillat Ester, venahafokh hu, everything turned upside down for the enemies of Israel. Haman was subjected to the same horrible execution he wished for Mordekhai, in the same pole that he prepared for Mordekhai. And the evidence of Haman’s treason? Ahashverosh (falsely? mistakenly? childishly?) accused Haman of “courting his wife”, Queen Ester. And that’s high treason; punishable by impalement

בור כרה ויחפרהו, ויפול בשחת יפעל

 מתוך התוכן : 

https://tora.us.fm/tnk1/ktuv/mgilot/70.html

TO LOVE OR TO FALL IN LOVE?
Love is not infatuation. Love should not be seen as a spontaneous feeling that happens or does not happen to you. Loving is a voluntary act. And it is extremely important to know, especially in marriage, that “love”, the noun, is the result of our willingness “to love”, the verb. Learning to love, by trying to know better the way my spouse needs me to love her, does not take away the sincerity of the act of loving. It is for this reason that our Tora presents love as an “obligation”, it tells us to love our neighbor, the stranger, ourselves and God. And it also teaches us how to do it.

FROM DIFFERENT PLANETS
Modern society has made a tremendous effort during the last 50-60 years so that men and women enjoy the same rights in society, have the same opportunities in the job market, etc. But you must understand that emotionally we are, and will continue to be, very different (in the vast majority of cases). The way a man expresses love or perceives love – or the absence of it – is very different from the way a woman expresses and perceives love. Being unaware of these psychological and emotional differences can be very damaging to a marriage.

Let’s now see one simple example

HOW TO LOVE YOUR WIFE ?
Very often a wife might feel the need to chat with her husband, expecting that both of them would open up emotionally and share their feelings. In these types of emotional conversations, one expresses what bothers or hurts him or her as a way to unwind and release tensions, and when articulating conflicts in these conversations, no solution is sought, just relief and support. When a wife opens up emotionally, what she needs from her husband is attentive and empathetic listening, and the effort to understand her. This type of therapeutic conversation helps a woman to feel understood, that is, supported and validated in her feelings. And then she feels loved.

HOW TO LOVE A MAN?
For most men, the goal of a conversation where a problem or a conflict is discussed is not about sharing emotions or relax, but to find a solution to those problems. In the world of men, you don’t share your emotions when you want to vent. On the contrary! For a man, “opening up and articulating his problems” might be like psychological torture. Why? Because when a man talks about his problems he “lives” them again. When a man is tense he would rather unwind privately and quietly in one of “his caves”, as John Gray describes it. How? Doing something that turns his mind into automatic pilot and distracts him from the problem, like listening to the news, watching a sports event, etc. This private space helps him to stop thinking about his problem and in this way he would eventually feel more relieved. Thus, when his wife generously provides him with this private space, and helps him relax in his way, the husband feels grateful and loved.

MEN ARE NOT FROM VENUS
Most of us, men and women, are not very knowledgeable or aware about these differences. On the contrary: we live in a society where political correctness pushes us to ignore the innate differences between the genders. Therefore, we do not get many opportunities to learn and recognize that wives and husbands show love and want to be loved in different ways. Now, f no one teaches a wife that a man’s way of unwinding is completely opposite to a woman’s, she will naturally try to “help” her husband in the only way she knows, and “out of her sincere love for him” will try to push him to tell her all about his problem. The wife offers her ear and her time, with the best of intentions. Just as she would like her husband to act in that situation.  When this happens, and her husband refuses to talk and vent out his problems with her, she would probably feel that he is rejecting “her”. And she would probably believe that he does not accept her emotional support because he does not love her enough…. From the other side, it is quite possible that the husband would interpret her behavior not as an act of love but as an attempt from her side to deprive him of his own space.

LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS
This is just one example of how things can go wrong despite our good intentions and in spite of love for each other, simply because “we don’t know how to love our spouse”.  Learning to love your spouse means in the first place that a husband or a wife must do whatever they can “to educate himself” and learn how each one expresses his or her love and needs to be loved differently.
Finally, it is also critical to understand that “knowing” is the first step, but it is not enough. Just because we learn something new, we cannot transform ourselves immediately and automatically. Acting upon new knowledge, particularly in the area of emotions, might take a long time to happen. To make it part of you, you have to keep trying until you find the delicate balance between what you are and what you know that you should do.

To be continued

אמר רבי אלעא: אין העולם מתקיים אלא בשביל מי שבולם עצמו בשעת מריבה, שנאמר: תולה ארץ על בלימה

“The world is sustained by the merit of those who control themselves and do not escalate a conflict “

YOU WILL NEVER WIN
Many times in our closest personal relationships, particularly in a husband and wife relationship, we face a difficult decision: to convince the other side that we are right, or to give in and live in peace. I first realized the nature of this type of choice as a teenager when I read Dale Carnegie’s famous book “How to Make Friends and Influence People.” Carnegie shows that when you argue you always have the risk of losing. Why? First, because it is possible that you would lose the argument. And second, because when you win the argument you might lose a friend. The possibility that the person with whom we are arguing will change his or her mind when hearing our argument is very small. Most people are guided by emotions rather than reason, especially in personal conflicts. It is highly unlikely that the other side, even a spouse, will say: “Thank you for enlightening me with your wisdom” or “You are right, now I understand your point of view.”

BEING HAPPY OR BEING RIGHT?
Many couples fall into this trap: we cannot resolve our conflicts because I want to prove that I’m right! However, if we think with a little more humility, we will recognize that in every conflict each side is “a little right” and “a little wrong”. There is no single way of looking at things. It is not rational to think that only “I” know what I am doing, and only “I” understand the situation. To achieve this change in attitude and be willing not to focus so much on “being right” it is convenient that we remind ourselves that our main objective in marriage is to live in peace and enjoy the happiness of being married and having a family. To have a happy life I have to be willing to make some compromises. In marriage, in particular, I often need to sacrifice my ego to be happier …

WHY DO “I” HAVE TO APOLOGIZE?
Many years ago a friend from Mexico, Mr. Jacobo Sofer, taught me something I will never forget: in Japan when two people argue, the one who is right is the first to apologize. In that culture, apologizing is not an admission of guilt: it is an admission of responsibility. Whoever apologizes first takes responsibility for improving the current challenging situation and shows that he or she is willing to put the ego aside. This is not just a very smart attitude; it is also a deep act of love. By apologizing, even when I feel I am right, I am showing that I value the other person, and or my marriage, above anything else. Im conveying that I care about preserving our relationship and that is why I am willing to focus on the relationship instead of focusing on the conflict (I clarify that I am not referring to discussions about values or moral principles, but rather banal and everyday situations: poor communication, isolation, interpretation of what I or she said or meant, etc.). In marriage you have to choose between “being right of being happy”. You usually cannot have both at the same time.

THE THREE MOST IMPORTANT WORDS
It takes emotional maturity to prioritize a good relationship over the need to feed the ego. And the people who have the most conflicts are those who “are willing to go all the way” to prove that they are right. This psycholgixl “need” to be always right is more common in people who have a low self-esteem. For an individual with low self-esteem, apologizing is a mission impossible. Because by admitting that one is wrong it seems to him that his “inner security”, “the image of herself” colapeses. To make matters worse, people who have a hard time to apologize often “blame the other person” for their own mistakes. And blaming your spouse and never admitting your guilt is unfortunately the perfect formula for living miserably and in permanent conflict. On the other hand, mentally healthy people should have no problem apologizing and taking responsibility, even when they feel —or know— that part of the blame is not theirs. Probably the three most important words in marriage are not “I love you” but “I was wrong” (so long as these words are said sincerely!), because they convey the message that my main concern is not to protect my ego, but to maintain a good relationship with my spouse.

HIS CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION

Rabbi Ben-Zion Cuenca was born in the old city of Jerusalem in 1867. His surname, Cuenca, corresponds to a province of Spain in the area of ​​Castilla-La Mancha. The family was part of the Jews expelled from Castile and Aragon in 1492. The family settled in Thessaloniki (Greece) and lived there for 3 centuries. His father, Abraham Cuenca, emigrated to Erets Israel around 1850. Before he was ten years old, the rabbis and teachers considered the young Ben-Zion as an ‘iluy (a child prodigy) and allowed him to wear the Tefillin at that age given his extraordinary knowledge and maturity. Aware of his son’s ability, his father devoted his resources to hiring the best teachers and mentors who also provided his son with a vast secular education, especially in the fields of Jewish history and languages.

RABBI OF RABBIS

Rabbi Cuenca got married at 15, something that was not uncommon in those days, to Esther, a second cousin, and they lived in the old city of Jerusalem. Then they moved to Yemin Moshe, the first Jewish neighborhood built outside the walled city sponsored by the famous philanthropist Sir Moshe Montefiore. At the age of 30, Rabbi Cuenca established a Yeshiba “Tiferet Yerushalaim”. In this Yeshiba, which also included general studies,  were educated among others Israel’s chief rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hay Uziel, the famous Sephardic Hebrew writer Yehuda Bourla, and Rabbi Moshe Nissim, the father of another Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Isaac Nissim. Rabbi Cuenca was also very active in the religious Zionist Mizrahi movement. He was the Head of the Rabbinical Court of Jerusalem and excelled also as a community leader. He founded, raised the funds for and directed the first Sephardic Nursing Home in modern Jerusalem.

THE MASSACRE OF 1929

The second holiest city in Israel is Hebron –acquired by Abraham Abinu 4,000 years ago–  which is the burial place of our patriarchs and matriarchs. In the 1920s, about 800 Jews and about 20,000 Arabs lived in Hebron. In August 1929 the Arabs spread false rumors in their communities saying that the Jews were carrying out “mass killings of Arabs.” Until that moment Jews and Arabs had lived in relative peace.  Sepharadim lived in Hebron for centuries (see below the testimony of a survivor). And the Ashkenazi Jews had recently arrived and established the famous Slabodka Yeshiva, also known as Yeshivat Hebron. On August 23, 1929, a Friday night, a massacre against the Jews began that lasted for three days. Shouting “Death to the Jews” thousands of Arabs armed with knives and axes looted Jewish houses, destroyed the Synagogues; tortured and murdered 67 Jews in cold blood: men, women and children, including rabbis of the two communities. The survivors moved to Jerusalem, and Hebron was left without Jews for the first time in hundreds of years.

STARTING OVER

Nine months after the massacre, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Abraham Kook and Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yaakov Meir signed a statement calling for volunteers to return to Hebron: We call on “… all the people of Israel to support our request and rebuild the great Jewish community Hebron … For the holiness of our nation and for our establishment on this land, we are required not to let the blood of our brothers be spilled in vain: we have a duty as the people of Israel to respond to this call by rebuilding and reestablishing the city of the patriarchs”. In 1931 the Jewish settlement of Hebron was resumed and the rabbi who bravely lead that community was Rabbi Ben-Zion Cuenca. He lived in Hebron until 1936. That year the violent conflicts were renewed and the Jews had to leave. They only returned to Hebron 31 years later, after the Six Day War.

HIS LITERARY WORK

One of Rabbi Cuenca’s most important contributions was the creation of the extraordinary Halakha Journal called “haMe-asef,” a collection of halachic studies and articles by hundreds of rabbis, Sephardi and Ashkenazim from Israel and the diaspora. Presenting so many rabbis of different origins united in the same Journal was a very important positive innovation at that time. Rabbi Cuenca was in charge of all the stages of this publication, which was published for 19 years. The first volume appeared in 1897. Rabbi Cuenca was, of course, one of the main contributors. Two themes stand out in HaMeasef.

The first, everything related to the precepts associated with agricultural work. These commandments only apply in the land of Israel (terumot, ma’aserot, shemita, etc.) and therefore this theme remained dormant for centuries. But now, as the establishment of the Yehudim in the Yeshub of Israel took hold, these laws had to be applied again.

The second topic that interested Rabbi Cuenca was to give a rabbinical response to new inventions (electricity, new means of transportation, etc.). An example that can be seen in this link is the Rabbi’s response to the use of the train on Shabbat or Yom Tob.

At the beginning of each article Rabbi Cuenca introduces a brief biography of the writers, which given the tremendous lack of information we suffer from, especially about the Sephardic rabbis of the late 19th century, constitutes an invaluable contribution to modern Jewish history.

FINAL WORDS

Rabbi Yehuda Fishman Maimon wrote: “Rabbi Cuenca was a fervent Zionist, an extraordinary Rabbi and a man of the deepest faith… an illuminated Sage in Tora and Wisdom, who professed a tremendous love for the Creator and for humanity. And I think it would not be an exaggeration to say that there is no one left to replace him or no one who can imitate him…”.

Rabbi Cuenca died in Yerushalayim in 1937 and is buried in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, Har HaZetim.

Testimony from a survivor of 1929 Hebron Massacre, Miriam Sasson (Hebrew)

1. HOW ARE THE SEVEN DAYS CALCULATED? The seven days of mourning begin when the burial has ended. Therefore, the day of the burial is considered as the first of the seven days even though a whole day of 24 hours did not pass,  provided the burial was completed before sunset,  Likewise, the seventh day will conclude during the morning of that day, after the Tefila of Shacharit. For example: if a person died on a Monday night or Tuesday morning and was buried on Tuesday, as long as the burial finished Tuesday before sunset, Tuesday would count as the first day. And the coming Monday will be considered the seventh day. In this case, the Seventh Day mourning period will be concluded Monday morning, after the Tefila, prayers,  of Shacharit.         

2. THE EVE OF THE SEVENTH DAY: The Sephardic tradition is to have a session of Tora studying and Tora sermons on the last evening of the Seven Days of mourning (in our community, this is called the “haft”).   This session is followed by a Seuda or meal. Originally, this Seuda was served as an act of Chesed and Tsedaqa to feed the poor and the needy in memory (leiluy nishmat) or a loved one that passed away. 

3. THE MORNING OF THE SEVENTH DAY: Once the mourning is concluded, after the prayers of Shacharit, it is customary to visit the cemetery to do an informal memorial (Patach Eliyahu) the recitation of Kaddish (only if ten men are present) and the Hashkaba.

4. RETURNING FROM THE CEMETERY: Upon returning from the cemetery, the mourners remove their mourning torn cloths. From that moment the mourners can wash, bathe, wear leather shoes, change his clothes, go to work, study Tora, etc.

For the laws of the 30 days, see here