Parshat Mishpatim-Shekalim February 14, 2015 25 Shevat, 5775 Artscroll, 416 Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on Parshat Mishpatim Hertz, 306 Jobbik, otherwise known as himself discovered what was being begins early. Even newborn the Movement for a Better said and decided to check whether the babies cry when they hear Maftir Hungary, is an ultra- claims were true. They were. After another child cry. We have mirror Artscroll, 484 nationalist Hungarian political Auschwitz his grandparents, once neurons in the brain that make us party that has been described Orthodox , decided to hide their wince when we see someone else Hertz, 352 as fascist, neo-Nazi, racist, identity completely. When his mother in pain. Homo sapiens is the and anti-Semitic. It has was 14, her father told her the secret moral animal. HAFTORAH accused Jews of being part of but ordered her not to reveal it to anyone. Szegedi now knew the truth Yet much of human history has Artscroll, 1212 a —cabal of western economic interests“ attempting to about himself. He decided to resign been a story of violence, Hertz, 992 control the world: the libel from the party and find out more oppression, injustice, corruption, otherwise known as the about Judaism. He went to a local aggression and war. Nor, MEVORCHIM CHODESH ADAR Rabbi, Slomó Köves, who at historically, has it made a Molad Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fiction created by first thought he was joking. significant difference whether the 11:59:2 pm Nonetheless he arranged for Szegedi actors in this story have been Wednesday evening members of the Czarist secret service in Paris in the late to attend classes on Judaism and to barbarians or citizens of a high Rosh Chodesh 1890s and revealed as a come to the synagogue. At first, civilization. Thursday Feb. 19 forgery by The Times in 1921. Szegedi says, people were shocked. and Friday Feb. 20 On one occasion the Jobbik He was treated by some as —a leper.“ The Greeks of antiquity, masters party asked for a list of all the But he persisted. Today he attends of art, architecture, drama, Jews in the Hungarian synagogue, keeps , has poetry, philosophy and science, Times government. Disturbingly, in learned Hebrew, calls himself Dovid, wasted themselves on the the Hungarian parliamentary and in 2013 underwent circumcision. internecine Peloponnesian War elections in April 2014 it between Athens and Sparta in the Candle Lighting 5:08 pm secured over 20 percent of When he first admitted the truth last quarter of the fifth century the votes, making it the third about his Jewish ancestry, one of his BCE. They never fully recovered. Friday Mincha 5:10 pm largest party. Until 2012 one friends in the Jobbik party said, —The It was the end of the golden age of its leading members was a best thing would be if we shoot you of Greece. Hashkama 8:00 am politician in his late 20s, so you can be buried as a pure Csanad Szegedi. Szegedi was Hungarian.“ Another urged him to Fin de siècle Paris and Vienna in Parsha Shiur 8:30 am a rising star in the make a public apology. It was this the 1890s were the leading comment, he says, that made him centers of European civilization. Main Shul 9:00 am movement, widely spoken of as its future leader. Until one leave the party. —I thought, wait a Yet they were also the world‘s minute, I am supposed to apologize leaders in anti-Semitism, Paris Beit Midrash 9:15 am day in 2012. That was the day Szegedi discovered he for the fact that my family was killed with the Dreyfus Affair, Vienna Youth Minyan 8:30 am was a Jew. Some of the at Auschwitz?“ As the realization that with its anti-Semitic mayor, Karl members of the party had he was a Jew began to change his life, Lueger, whom Hitler later cited as Shiur 4:05 pm wanted to stop his progress it also transformed his understanding his inspiration. and spent time investigating of the world. Today, he says, his Mincha 5:05 pm his background to see focus as a politician is to defend When we are good we are little whether they could find human rights for everyone. —I am lower than the angels. When we Shabbat Ends 6:18 pm anything that would do him aware of my responsibility and I know are bad we are lower than the damage. What they found I will have to make it right in the beasts. What makes us moral? Sunday Feb. 15 7:30/8:30 am was that his maternal future.“ And what, despite it all, makes grandmother was a Jewish humanity capable of being so Mon. 6:35/7:45 am survivor of Auschwitz. So was Szegedi‘s story is not just a curiosity. inhumane? Plato thought that his maternal grandfather. Half It takes us to the very heart of the virtue was knowledge. If we know Tues., Wed. 6:45/7:45 am of Szegedi‘s family were killed strange, fraught nature of our something is wrong, we will not during the Holocaust. existence as moral beings. What do it. Aristotle thought that virtue Thurs., Fri. 6:30/7:45 am Szegedi‘s opponents started makes us human is the fact that we was habit, learned in childhood till spreading rumors about his are rational, reflective, capable of it becomes part of our character. Mincha 5:20 pm Jewish ancestry on the thinking things through. We feel David Hume and Adam Smith, two internet. Soon Szegedi empathy and sympathy, and this intellectual giants of the Scottish Latest Times for Shema/Shemoneh Esrei Kiddush is February 14 9:31/10:24 am sponsored by February 21 9:26/10:20 am David and Diane Rein Next Shabbat in memory of her mother, Terumah Helene M. Fink z“l Candle Lighting 5:17 pm on the occasion of th Mincha 5:20 pm her 10 yahrzeit. 26 Old Mill Road, Great Neck, NY 11023 (516) 487-6100 Shabbat Announcements Parshat Mishpatim-Shekalim 5775

Enlightenment, thought that morality came from emotion, fellow feeling. In Rwanda, Hutus called Tutsis inyenzi, cockroaches. Dehumanize the Immanuel Kant believed that it came through rationality. A moral other and all the moral forces in the world will not save us from evil. principle is one you are willing to prescribe for everyone. Therefore, for Knowledge is silenced, emotion anaesthetized and reason perverted. example, lying cannot be moral because you do not wish others to lie to The Nazis convinced themselves (and others) that in exterminating the you. All four views have some truth to them, and we can find similar Jews they were performing a moral service for the Aryan race. Suicide sentiments in the rabbinic literature. In the spirit of Plato, the sages bombers are convinced that they are acting for the greater glory of spoke of the tinok shenishba, someone who does wrong because he or God. There is such a thing as altruistic evil. she was not educated to know what is right. , like Aristotle, thought virtue came from repeated practice. Halakhah creates habits of That is what makes these two commands so significant. The Torah the heart. The rabbis said that the angels of kindness and charity argued emphasizes the point time and again: the rabbis said that the com- for the creation of man because we naturally feel for others, as Hume mand to love the stranger appears 36 times in the Torah. Jewish law is and Smith argued. Kant‘s principle is similar to what the sages called here confronting directly the fact that care for the stranger is not some- sevarah, —reason.“ thing for which we can rely on our normal moral resources of knowl- edge, empathy and rationality. Usually we can, but under situations of But these insights only serve to deepen the question. If knowledge, high stress, when we feel our group threatened, we cannot. The very emotion and reason lead us to be moral, why is that that humans hate, inclinations that bring out the best in us œ our genetic inclination to harm and kill? A full answer would take longer than a lifetime, but the make sacrifices for the sake of kith and kin œ can also bring out the short answer is simple. We are tribal animals. We form ourselves into worst in us when we fear the stranger. We are tribal animals and we groups. Morality is both cause and consequence of this fact. Toward are easily threatened by the members of another tribe. people with whom we are or feel ourselves to be related we are capable of altruism. But toward strangers we feel fear, and that fear is capable of Note that these commands are given shortly after the exodus. Implicit turning us into monsters. in them is a very radical idea indeed. Care for the stranger is why the Israelites had to experience exile and slavery before they could enter Morality, in Jonathan Haidt‘s phrase, binds and blinds. It binds us to the Promised Land and build their own society and state. You will not others in a bond of reciprocal altruism. But it also blinds us to the succeed in caring for the stranger, implies God, until you yourselves humanity of those who stand outside that bond. It unites and divides. It know in your very bones and sinews what it feels like to be a stranger. divides because it unites. Morality turns the —I“ of self interest into the And lest you forget, I have already commanded you to remind your- —We“ of the common good. But the very act of creating an —Us“ selves and your children of the taste of affliction and bitterness every simultaneously creates a —Them,“ the people not like us. Even the most year on Pesach. Those who forget what it feels like to be a stranger, universalistic of religions, founded on principles of love and compassion, eventually come to oppress strangers, and if the children of Abraham have often seen those outside the faith as Satan, the infidel, the oppress strangers, why did I make them My covenantal partners? Em- antichrist, the child of darkness, the unredeemed. They have committed pathy, sympathy, knowledge and rationality are usually enough to let unspeakable acts of brutality in the name of God. us live at peace with others. But not in hard times. Serbs, Croats and Muslims lived peaceably together in Bosnia for years. So did Hutus and Neither Platonic knowledge nor Adam Smith‘s moral sense nor Kantian Tutsis in Rwanda. The problem arises at times of change and disruption reason has cured the heart of darkness in the human condition. That is when people are anxious and afraid. That is why exceptional defenses why two sentences blaze through today‘s parsha like the sun emerging are necessary, which is why the Torah speaks of memory and history œ from behind thick clouds: You must not mistreat or oppress the stranger things that go to the very heart of our identity. We have to remember in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once strangers in the land that we were once on the other side of the equation. We were once of Egypt. (Ex. 22: 21) You must not oppress strangers. You know what it strangers: the oppressed, the victims. Remembering the Jewish past feels like to be a stranger, for you yourselves were once strangers in the forces us to undergo role reversal. In the midst of freedom we have to land of Egypt. (Ex. 23: 9) The great crimes of humanity have been remind ourselves of what it feels like to be a slave. committed against the stranger, the outsider, the one-not-like-us. Recognizing the humanity of the stranger has been the historic weak What happened to Csanad, now Dovid, Szegedi, was exactly that: role point in most cultures. The Greeks saw non-Greeks as barbarians. reversal. He was a hater who discovered that he belonged among the Germans called Jews vermin, lice, a cancer in the body of the nation. hated. What cured him of anti-Semitism was his role-reversing discov- GNS Yoetzet Halacha Dena Block ery that he was a Jew. That, for him, was a life-changing discovery. welcomes your questions about mikvah, observance The Torah tells us that the experience of our ancestors in Egypt was of taharat mishpacha (halacha relating to married life) meant to be life-changing as well. Having lived and suffered as strang- and women's health, as it connects to Jewish law. Reach ers, we became the people commanded to care for strangers. The best out to her at: way of curing anti-Semitism is to get people to experience what it feels Phone: (516) 320-9818 like to be a Jew. The best way of curing hostility to strangers is to re- Email: [email protected] All conversations/ emails member that we too, from someone else‘s perspective, are strangers. Memory and role-reversal are the most powerful resources we have to cure the darkness that can sometimes occlude the human soul.

Great Neck Synagogue 26 Old Mill Road, Great Neck , NY 11023 516-487-6100

Dale Polakoff, Rabbi Ian Lichter, Assistant Rabbi Dr. Ephraim Wolf ,z“l, Rabbi Emeritus Zeev Kron, Cantor Eleazer Schulman, z“l, Cantor Emeritus Rabbi Sholom Jensen, Youth Director Zehava & Dr. Michael Atlas, Youth Directors Mark Twersky, Executive Director Dr. James Frisch, Assistant Director Rabbi Avraham Bronstein, Program Director Ari Lipsky, Rabbinic Intern Dr. Hal Chadow, President Harold Domnitch, Chairman of the Board Dena Block, Yoetzet Halacha 516-320-9818 GNS February Chesed Collection Don’t know what to do with medical supplies you no longer need? DONATE THEM To help underserved people, clinics and hospitals, in US, Israel, Haiti, and Africa. FEBRUARY 3RD œ FEBRUARY 23RD LEAVE SUPPLIES BY FRONT DOOR: 13 CHURCH STREET GREAT NECK

WE ARE COLLECTING: wheel chairs, canes, walkers, commodes, eyeglasses, bandages, cribs, drains, tubing, face masks, gloves, catheters, IV kits, soap, autoclaves, shower seats, raised toilet seats, hospital beds, crutches, sutures, braces, etc. NO PRESCRIPTION MEDS NO POST EXPIRATION DATES

Donations will be distributed by: www.afyafoundation.org FOR MORE INFO, CALL Nechama 516-773-3572

ANNOUNCEMENTS Rabbi polakoff‘s shabbos drasha through 5775, WITHIN OUR FAMILY is dedicated in memory of PINCHAS BEN YOSEPH For other such opportunities please contact Mazal Tov to Lilliane & David Benrimon on the Howard Wolf 212-686-9800 Ext 220 engagement of their son Alexander to Shaina Andrews from Memphis, Tennessee. SUNDAY BREAKFAST Breakfast is sponsored by Adina & Mark Abraham in memory of his Mazal Tov to Helen & Harvey Ishovsky on the birth of father Shalom Yitzhak ben David Abraham. a granddaughter, born to their children Avi & Dr. Barrie Weinstein.

RABBI POLAKOFF-OPEN OFFICE HOURS COMMUNITY NEWS Rabbi Polakoff is in Israel till Feb. 19th NSHA DIAMOND JUBILEE JOURNAL DINNER , MARCH 24TH Rabbi Polakoff will have open office hours each week on Tuesday from Celebrating 60 years, honoring, Daniel and Marcy Aharon & Jonathan 10am - noon and on Thursday from 1:00pm - 3:30 pm. Barring any and Stefanie Hazghyian. There will be a memorial tribute to its emergencies, he will be in his office during these times so please feel Honorary Dean and First Principal, Rabbi Dr. Ephraim & Rebbetzin free drop by to shmooze, discuss issues about GNS, share personal Elaine Wolf, its long time former Principal, Rabbi Nathan Horowitz concerns or learn some Torah. He can be reached at other times and its long time former Dean Of Students, Rabbi Aron Sternberg, z"l. through the synagogue office (516-487-6100), through his cell phone Those wishing to help, please contact Glenn Zuckerman or Laura 516-637-3674 (call or text) or through email at [email protected]. Cohen. They are asking for any old photos of Rabbi & Rebbetzin Wolf, Rabbi Horowitz or Rabbi Sternberg from their yearbooks, old journals or YOUTH EVENTS personal photos that will help in the video tribute chaired by Sharon Saturday night, Feb.14 6th-9th grade Basketball skills competition, Goldwyn, Judy Blatter and Debbie Hollander. For further info, to 8:30 pm in the Shul gym. $10 entrance fee. place an ad and/or to make a reservation, please contact Arnie Flatow at [email protected] or call the Business office at 487-8687 x2. MATAN BAT MITZVAH PROGRAM If you are interested in participating in the, please contact Rabbi Lichter at [email protected]. In order for the program to take place, there needs HAZKHARAH LE‘ILUY NISHMAT HADASSAH BEN-ZVI to be interest of a minimum of ten girls. An invitation from her children: Nomi, Roy, Benyamin, Libi and Leah. Please join us to celebrate the memory of our loving mother, who was an inspiration to all. February 12th at 7:30 pm at the Young Israel of GN. MEN‘S CLUB SAT. FEB. 21, 8:00 œ 11:30 PM Join us for the first TENNIS EXTRAVAGANZA run by both Men‘s Club and Sisterhood. Additional sponsor Yonni Mrejen, KOSHER ALERT: LAMED VAV RESTAURANT Tennis, Food and Good Friends, Singles, Men‘s Doubles, Women‘s Please note that the Lamed Vav Restaurant is no longer under the Vaad Doubles, Mixed Doubles. Please let us know if you are a Beginner, In- Harabonim of Queens termediate or Advanced. Come to Play. Prices for Couples, $75 for Food & Tennis, $50 for Food. Prices for Singles, $37.50 for Food & Tennis, MAGAZINES $25 for Food. Play and Eat or Just Socialize & Eat. For info: Jack Lipsky Still collecting for N.S.U. Hospital. Must be no older than three (3) (516) 384-1482 [email protected]. months. Please cut off your name and address labels (do not rip off) SUN. MAR 15, 10:00 AM: Breakfast and talk by authors and bring them to shul office. Hershey Friedman and Linda Weiser Friedman on their new book, God Laughed: Sources of Jewish Humor. Saturday, 25 Shevat SUN MAR 29, 9:30 AM: The Annual Rabbinic Dialogue to be held at Mark Abraham for Shalom Yitzhak ben David Abraham Temple Beth El this year. Miriam Bader for Lena Bader SUN MAR. 29, 5:00 PM: Join us as the Islanders Hockey team play David Birnbaum for Andor Jack Birnbaum the Detroit Red Wings at the Coliseum. Tickets $40 (for paid-up Men's David Goddard for Norman Goldberg Club members). Contact Steve Blumner 639-8941. Louis Goldstein for Minnie Goldstein Abraham Krieger for Tonia Krieger Sunday, 26 Shevat DIARIES Y Diane Rein for Helene Marcia Fink This year we will not be mailing the Jack Herskowitz Emergency Ruth Seif for Hadassa Dolinsky Fund Diaries as in the past. We have them available in the office for A Monday, 27 Shevat pick-up where you can drop off your donation and get it at the same time. Sharon Herman for Joseph Adler H Uri Rosin for Miriam Aldouby Morris Seidman for Mala Seidman R Tuesday, 28 Shevat PURIM CARDS Frank Bachrach for Ludwig Bachrach The Sisterhood will once again have Purim cards. Please email Judy Oded Daskal for Dov Daskal Lillien at [email protected] or call 516-487-6845 to place your order. Z Shulamid Gavronsky for Israel Kopelowitz You may call the shul office as well. Cards are 10 for 25 dollars or 3 Howard Lorber for Ronald Lorber dollars each. There is a limited supply. Don‘t be left out. E Wednesday, 29 Shevat Ben Jampel for Henry Jampel I Murray Rabinowitz for Lea Rabinowitz SECURITY Stephen Rabinowiitz for Lea Rabinowitz In an effort to improve security in accessing our building, the code to Judith Weinstein for Fanny Weisman enter the building has been changed effective 1/13/15. To obtain the T Thursday, 30 Shevat new code, please email [email protected]. or [email protected]. Victor Ancelson for Carolina Galateanu There are a limited number of key fobs available (no need to enter a Kenneth S. Magida for Abraham Bilsky code if you have a key fob). The cost is $25 to obtain a key fob: George Schuman for Bernard Schuman Contact Jim Frisch in the office. Friday, 1 Adar Ada Berkowitz for Aliza Hass Ronald Braun for Emil Braun AIPAC CONVENTION Paul Brody for Rabbi Abraham Brown The AIPAC Policy Conference will take place March 1-3 in Wash. Paul Brody for David Brody DC. Rabbi Polakoff will be leading our delegation. Joyce Dacher for Marvin Wolfman Visit aipac.org/pc to register and take part in this historic event, Hindi Lunzer for Ruchel Mermelstein