In the 1960’s and ‘70’s, there was a dynamic rock and roll group called, The Supremes. They were led by the long and lovely Diana Ross. One of their greatest and earliest hits was called, “I Hear a Symphony”.  As the music builds to a crescendo, Diana becomes overwhelmed with emotion as she contemplates the love of her life and croons, “I cry not for myself, but for those who never felt the love we share.”

When we stop to think about the miracles of science, the wonders of the human body, the joy and happiness of Jewish holidays, of the lasting pleasure of living a life of meaning, it should fill us with uncontrollable feelings of gratitude and love for the Creator of the universe Who has provided us with all of those opportunities to get closer to Him.

Alas, there are many who appreciate what life has given them but never see it as the Hand of God. They can witness the birth of a child and intellectually understand it as the natural outcome of the reproductive process and nothing more.

Others look at their own success or failure in life and look at it as the result of their intelligence and tenacity, or shortcomings, and fail to see that there is a higher purpose in all that happens to them.

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto wrote in the most important book of Jewish philosophy, “The Path of the Just”:
“The purpose of creation and the greatest happiness in life is rejoicing in the closeness to God”.

Judaism says that God is our Father in Heaven. He wants to be close to His children and shower them with His goodness. He stands ready, slowly hinting to us of His great bounty.

Perhaps that’s what Diana Ross meant when she sang: “As You stand holding me, whispering how much You care, a thousand violins fill the air”.

I must confess. I hear the symphony and I cry for those who never felt the love He shares.

“I got odds”.

“I got evens”.

“Once, twice, three, shoot!”

“Evens. I got Billy.”

“I got Tom”.

“I got Freddy.”

“I got Jim.”

“Um, I got Herbert, you can have Eugene.”

Growing up in Brooklyn, that was how we chose up sides for a basketball game. The best players got picked first, the worst, last.

It’s likely that if we were choosing sides for a debating team, Herbert and Eugene would have been tops on the list, but not for basketball.  (And chances are someone else would have been doing the choosing).

The Jews have been called the Chosen People. Does that mean that we’re better than everyone else? Are we racist, superior to all the other nations?

Well, that depends on what “game” we’re playing and who was doing the choosing.

God was looking for a nation who would accept His Bible and bring the message of goodness to the world. He offered it to the children of Ishmael. He offered it to the children of Esau. They said, sorry, that’s not our game. The children of Israel said – we will do and we will listen.

And so we became God’s Bible players. We’re the centers, the forwards and the guards. It’s a big responsibility because we have to show the world how the game is supposed to be played. We can hit the 3-pointers but we might also commit the fouls.

But unlike a Brooklyn choose-up game, anybody can join. And over the millennia, many have – blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics. Unfortunately, over the same millennia, many have quit and joined other teams.

Wanna play? All are welcome – even those who have temporarily left. But there are rules – no running down the court without dribbling, no standing in the lane for more than 3 seconds, no eating meat and milk together and a whole lot more. They’re all written up in the rule book. Grab a copy and join the team. But you gotta play hard and you gotta play right.

Are you game?

I used to think that the only thing you needed a nose for was to hold up your glasses. Boy was I wrong.

Now that the cold weather is once again upon us, I learned that the nose performs the very necessary function of keeping frigid air out of your lungs. It does that by leading to a series of winding passages, known as your sinuses, that twist and turn inside your head until they eventually lead to your throat, your bronchial tubes and your lungs. The sinuses are generously lined with blood vessels that warm and moisten the air and protect your lungs against freezing.

If that were not enough, they also have another important job. Even if you live in a relatively clean city like Los Angeles or Calcutta, there are always impurities in the air. The sinuses are lined with a sticky substance, called mucus, that helps trap all the dirt particles before they get inside your body and cause infections or diseases.

And what do your sinuses do with all that gunk? It would defeat the purpose if it got into your blood stream through all those blood vessels that warm the air! So your body gently coats all that bad stuff with a slippery paste that glides it down, passed your throat into your digestive system to be disposed of through normal channels.

Too much dust to be s-l-o-w-l-y guided out? No problem. Ah-ah-ah-choo! There. You’re done.

But that’s all your sinuses.

What about your nose?

Why is it protruding out of your head over your mouth?

Number One – so you can still breathe at night even while you’re snuggled up under your blankets and pillow. It’s not too hard so that it wakes you when you wedge it into your pillow and not so soft that it would easily collapse and get covered.

Number Two – your nose is not only your first line of defense against dirty air, it’s also your best defense against spoiled food. What’s the first thing you do before you pour the milk onto your corn flakes – you smell the container! Unless your milk has already turned green, there’s no better way to tell how fresh it is than by smelling it.

Number Three – your nose is your first step in the digestive process. Digestion? Yup. As soon as your nose detects that tantalizing smell of a summer barbecue or steaming hot marinara sauce, it automatically triggers your salivary glands to start secreting saliva in preparation for what’s about to follow.

And finally(but not finally at all), when Spring returns and the trees and flowers have started blooming, there is nothing like the smell of that fresh elixir of air to delight your sense of smell and lift your spirits.

So whether you have a hook, a pug, a ski-slope or a Pinocchio nose, you’re still a winner. By a nose!

The Bible tells us that the Jewish people have a patriarch by the name of Abraham. According to tradition, he lived about 3800 years ago. God made a promise to Abraham that his descendents would be an eternal nation. If you have been following this column or the other articles, videos and audios on this website, you would know that we are, in fact, eternal. We have survived against unspeakable odds while nations and empires greater than us have disappeared off the face of the earth.

In this week’s Bible portion, God makes an even more astounding claim. He tells Abraham that He will bless those who bless the Jewish people and curse those who curse us. We have been chosen by God to be His messenger and He is telling the world that He will go out of His way to protect us (as long as we don’t forget to deliver His message).

Has this also come true? Let’s take a look at a few examples:

In the Middle Ages, Spain boasted the most powerful navy in Europe. It controlled the trade routes and sent its explorers around the world. The 1300’s was known as the Golden Age of Spain, not only for the Spanish but especially for the Jews. In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain. When was the last time you heard of Spain as a world power?

In the early 1500’s , shortly after the Inquisition, the king of Poland invited the Jews of Europe to come to his country to help build the economy. He issued a warning that anyone who harmed a Jew would have to answer personally to the king. Then came the Chmelnicki pogroms of 1648 and 1649 killing over 350,000 Polish Jews. Poland has since been defeated in every war it has ever fought.

Germany was the most sophisticated, technologically advanced country in Europe in the 1700’s and 1800’s. As Jews became emancipated and more prominent members of society, German anti-Semitism eventually came to the forefront. By 1935, the Jews had become totally disenfranchised. Germany lost World War I followed closely by World War II.

The Jews of America have had unprecedented rights and freedoms. America continues to be the number one economy of the world. If we continue to give Americans reason to bless us, we have every reason to expect that God will continue to make good on His promise.

On a more personal level, the Bible gives us a way to bless each other. It is called the Blessing of the Cohanim. (The Cohanim today are the priestly class, direct descendents of Moses’ brother Aaron, who was the first Jewish High Priest).) It goes as follows:

“May God bless you and guard you.
May He cause His face to shine upon you and sanctify you.
May He raise His countenance upon you and give you peace.”

It is the blessing that parents give to their children on Friday nights. If your children are blessed, then you are surely blessed. It is also recited every day during the morning prayers and twice on Saturdays.

It’s what I call, The Bless Express.

You may have heard of the famous fairy tale about the elf/grinch/monster named Rumplestilskin who could spin straw into gold. At $1,800 an ounce, I’m sure he would be a pretty popular guy nowadays. Unfortunately, no one has ever been able to do this. Even if they could, frankly, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I can do things much more wondrous than that.

Last night, I ate piece of cake. Actually two pieces of cake preceded by a plate of meatballs and spaghetti and a bowl of lettuce and tomatoes. I changed the whole thing into flab. (I’m not sure that’s the technical name for it but I could show it to you if you like). Actually, I’ve been carrying it around on me for quite some time already. And I did all that simply by doing - nothing.

My brother has a neat trick. He uses his skin cells from right below the surface of his epidermis and changes them into long, flowing, blonde hair. He doesn’t do it as much as he used to, at least in the front of his head. I think he forgot how.

My wife has a real talent. Each time one of my children is born, she begins changing her blood into milk. Not all of it, of course, just where its most useful. She starts off slowly but after two or three months, she’s in full swing. She can even produce a thirty minute supply as soon as its needed. She’s succeeded in changing all my kids from crying babies into, well, whining teenagers. Not only that, my kids take that milk and change it into flesh and bones and muscle. I think they use the same process that I use but they haven’t yet perfected how to turn it into flab. That’s okay, they’re still young.

I don’t think my family is the only one getting into the act.  I understand that everyone does this stuff. Not only people, but animals do this also.

The cows I know (and I know quite a few) eat grass and change it into meat, milk and leather. That I KNOW I can’t do. I have no idea how THEY can do it. I also can’t eat grass and hay and change it into wool the way lambs do. Not that I’m jealous, but it would be a whole lot cheaper than paying for a wool suit or coat at Macys or Bloomingdale’s if I could grow my own wool.

There are dozens of transformations that are just as miraculous as changing straw into gold. Food to flab, skin to hair, blood to milk, milk to leather, grass to wool - natural, everyday miracles.

Next thing you know they’ll be changing Democrats into Republicans.

Well, maybe not.

As we begin again the next weekly cycle of Bible portion reading, we are told about the early days on earth. The Bible, in Genesis, says that God spoke to the waters and the land and commanded them to bring forth living beings.  That’s it - one statement about the origin of life on our planet - God said so.

Volumes have been written in the scientific and philosophical journals about the origin of life. Everyone from Socrates to Aristotle and Plato to Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawkins have put forth their theories about how life began.

Let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment (you know him - Satan, the angel of death, the great avenger, the evil inclination). Let’s take his side and look at the non-Biblical view of life’s beginnings and see what it implies.

Scientists speak of the primordial soup of amino acids that randomly combined to form the earliest living cells. The most widely accepted theory states that for many, many, many years, all of the organisms that existed on earth consisted of just a single cell. No Venus fly traps, no Chilean bass and no dinosaurs. Just complex one-celled beings that contained the same components that exist in the cells of all living organisms today - rhibosomes, nuclei, chromosomes and more. And as these cells consumed more of the nutrients surrounding them, they grew ever larger, fatter and obese.

As they perused their environment, they realized that fat wasn’t where it’s at so if they wanted to continue to survive, they would have to make a decision - either lose weight or divide themselves into two.

Lucky for us, they chose the latter.

Suddenly, during what is called the Cambrian explosion, every genus and phyla that we have today (and perhaps some that are no longer around), came into being. That included, according to science, the “potential” for every variety of plants, fish, birds and animals.

Only one problem - who made that decision?

Do we think that an unthinking mass of protons, neutrons and electrons decided that existence was worth existing and then on its own, developed the capability of reproducing itself?

That would imply that life, at all levels, is worth perpetuating; that the continued survival of each specie, and in fact, every individual cell, serves some purpose that transcends its own intrinsic existence. Otherwise, why bother?

The smallest cells “knew” this. Somehow, deep inside, we know it too.

The Bible commanded all beings - “Be fruitful and multiply.”

You see? When God speaks, even CELLS listen!

I am constantly amazed at the pace of new technological developments taking place in the world today. It’s been said that there have been more scientific advances in the last 100 years than in all of human history combined.

Cell phones, the internet, the atomic bomb, landing a man on the moon, COLOR television (I’m going back a LONG way now). These inventions were unheard of and unimaginable by our grandparents and great – grandparents. What the future holds, nobody knows.

But think of it on a more simple level. Imagine living in a world without indoor plumbing, or central heat and air conditioning. Imagine living in a hut instead of a high-rise. Think of a world without email or texting. Unbearable! Most people are not even aware that a “cc” on an email means “carbon copy” because that’s how we used to make a copy of a page – by slipping a waxy sheet of black carbon between two pieces of paper and pressing hard when you wrote. “Make me a xerox” was an unknown phrase.
Now take it back to an even simpler level. Imagine living in a world without bread.

Who was the genius who discovered all of the steps necessary to convert a wheat seed into the food staple of mankind? It was certainly NOT just common sense.

First he had to plow a field, then plant a seed, then water it and cultivate it. When the stalks of this strange looking plant were fully grown, cut them down and throw them into heaps. Thresh the stalks by beating them against something hard to separate the husks from the stalks. Winnow them by blowing air at them or by throwing them up into the air to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Grind the wheat until it was as soft as powder.

Mix with water.

Add yeast (whatever that was) otherwise he would wind up with matzoh not bread.

Bake in the oven until golden brown.

Who would have thought of all that? I wouldn’t. Fortunately, someone else did.

And now take it back to its most simple level.

Imagine living in a world without wheat seeds.

Now Who thought of that?