Succoth: the holiday of peace and game theory

The holiday of Succoth is named after a small shed-type building with an unstable roof, called Succah. Religious Jews go out to the Succah to eat, and in warmer places (f.e. Israel) also to sleep for 7 days. This reminds us the 40 years of wandering in the desert, and not having stability.

We refer to the succah as "succath shalom", the succah of peace. How is the succah connected to peace?
When we leave our houses, and  enter the succah, we are going to a less material, more spiritual place. A house is a stable material building, while the succah is an unstable construct. Of course, it is still material (you can touch it), but because of its instability it is less connected to the material world, and our reason to eat (and in warm places to sleep) there is purely spiritual (the Torah commends). So we are moving away from materiality, and approaching the spirituality.

Materiality is a world of fights. The resourses are constant. When I give something to you, I have less, you have more, when I take, then you have less and I have more (using game theory terms it is a sum-zero, or win-loose situation). Spirituality is a world of cooperation, since one cannot loose. If you teach me something, I have more, but you don't have less. In fact you'll have more too, since teaching is a very effective form of reviewing. We both end up having more (Win-win sitation)
In a world, where there are only win-win situations, there is no reason to fight. That's why Succah represents peace. It symbolizes a reality where only win-win situations exist.

The Need of Balance

The main suspect of last week's terrorist attack in Bulgaria had a quite big file of involvement in activities of different terrorist groups. He was held for 2 years in Guantanamo, but - being a Swedish citizen - he was sent back to Sweden, where charges were not pressed against him. The Swedish authorities probably didn't find him dangerous enough to keep him in jail or custody in order to protect innocent people from him. The result of this decision is seven dead and several injured people, whose only sin was going on a vacation by the Black Sea, or being a busdriver. I am sure, the Swedish authorities were trying to make a responsible decision, and avoid the conviction of someone who  has probably not killed anyone yet. The freedom of the individual (liberal value) gained priority over the security of the community (conservative value).

In the beginning/middle of the last decade, when the second Intifada reached its peak, Israel has built a system of fences and walls in order to prevent Palestinian terrorists from getting into Israeli cities. Some might say it is only a coincidence, but as the fence was built up, the number of terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens dropped radically, leading to the end of the daily violence, thus saving many lives on both sides. On the other hand, tough security measures hardened the freedom of movement for many Palestinians, including the peaceful ones. The security of the community gained priority over the freedom of the individual.

Sweden is glorified in the World as one of the leading countries in human rights and freedom.
Israel is criticized in the World as being an oppressor and using "excessive force".


The 13th century Jewish polyhistor, Maimonides teaches, that one of the most important principle is to walk the golden middle way. The Hebrew word "Emet" means truth, but it also means balance. It consists three Hebrew letters: aleph (the first one in the alphabet), mem (the 12th one in the middle), and tav (the 22th or last one). The two extremes on the sides, but in the center, the golden middle one. Truth = Balance.

If we lose balance we'll eventually fall

3000 years ago in the Middle East slavery was common. In Babylon slaves had no rights, they had to work all the time, the law didn't secure their life, rather entitled their masters to kill them if they didn't need them anymore. Same in Egypt. There was only one nation which recognized the basic rights of the slaves: Israel. The Torah prohibits the masters to kill their slaves, who even received a day of rest every week! In those times and place the Torah represented unbelivable social rights and liberalism.

Nowadays, the leading media and organisations in the World judge countries and societies based on how "Western", how liberal they are.

In the Western cultures less and less children are born, but proportionaly more and more of them are born to single mothers. Besides many useful sources, all kinds of unhealthy material is easily accessible to children. Even though, freedom of speech in most countries doesn't apply on incitement and racism, it is nearly impossible to enforce those prohibitions. In fact, Western societies idolize individual freedom even when it poses a great danger to society.

Judaism refers to the Jewish people as light for the nations. Jews should be the examples of living by truth, in the right balance (unfortunately we sometimes fail to succeed in this). When it is normal in the World to treat certain people as objects or working machines, we should show, that every human being deserves the basic human rights! Similarly, when the World has gone too far in worshipping individual freedom, we should show that the golden middle way for the community is a bit (but not too much) back towards the conservative side.



This post is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Burgas terrorist attack:

Maor Harush (24) Acre, Israel
Itzik Kolangi (28) Petah Tikva, Israel
Mustafa Kyosov (36) Yurokovo, Bulgaria (bus driver)
Amir Menashe (28) Petach Tikva. Israel
Elior Preiss (25) Acre, Israel
Kochava Shriki (42) Rishon LeZion, Israel (pregnant)

May them be the last ones who had to die due to the lack of Emet in the World.

Growth and Peace - From the Same Root

"Attitude is a little thing that makes a big differene." - Sir Winston Churchill

 Positive reactions are usually much more encouraging than negative ones. Negative comments - even if they meant to improve the person - generate frustration or opposition, but rarely the will to improve. Positive ones on the other hand make the listener feel able to do well, and brings him to put more efforts. 

Another - not less important - effect of positive reactions is peace. Peace comes from relating to others by their positive sides. Everyone has postive and negative, good and bad character traits. If we want to, we can find good - as well as bad - in everyone. The question is: what do we decide to focus on? On the bad - that leads to lowering one's self-esteem, blocks their growth, and generates fights; or the good - which leads to encouraging the other one to be even better, and this way we make peace. It is a - not always easy - decision to make every time we open our mouth. The power of our words, and even our non-verbal actions are incredible. We can use them to change people in both directions, as-well-as to create war or peace. We should use them carefully!

Purim of our days

Purim is coming in a few weeks. This holiday is the celebration of a miraculous salvation of the Jewish people. But why did it hapen?

The Second Temple was destroyed because of the worst sin, baseless hatred. Therefore redemption will come when we'll repair this, and stop the habit of hating each other.
Current situation of Israel is far from being easy. Iran is swearing to destroy the country with its almost-ready nuclear force, Hamas and Hisballah on the borders of the country are getting stronger and stronger. Previous allies, like Turkey and Egypt are becoming less friendly, political Islam is gaining power. The Jewish state has no allies anymore in the region (maybe Jordan, but that is the weakest country in the Middle-East). The outcome of the uprising in Syria is unpredictable. Meanwhile the West is in an economic crisis, for which they could use the old, proven solution: speeding up the economy with military spendings. This all can very easily lead to an all-out war in the Middle-East with Israel in the center of it.
Meanwhile what is happening in Israel? A crazy, religious-looking charedi person is spitting on a non-religious girl for not being dressed modestly, women are insulted on certain buslines, some settlers are threatening Palestinians and left-wing Jews. These are the acts of a few idiots, who don't behave the way the Torah teaches us. Many Orthodox rabbis expressed their condemnation. And some journalists of the left-wing media are using these events, exagerate them in order to create enmity between different groups of the Israeli society. Which is the bigger sin?

In the Megilla (the book of Esther, which we read on Purim), when Haman, a Persian minister, the enemy of the Jewish people speaks with the king, he says: "There is a people scattered and separated from each other" referring to the Jews. He brings the most powerful claim: separated. Not supporting each other, not accepting each other, viewing each other as enemies. The decree comes immediately: Haman can do with them whatever he wants.
Later on in the story, Esther tells Mordechai, her uncle, the head of the Jewish community: "Go and gather the Jews". Gather...not physically, but make them friends, brothers. Stop the hostility, make them fast together. And when the Jews did, the king soon changed his decree, and the Jewish people was saved. Gathering was the solution.

What do we learn from this? When we are separated, when we see each other as enemies, when we spit on each other, and when we use this spit for our political motives, then we get into big trouble. All of us. But when we are able to raise above these issues, and not sink into the swamp of hatred, then our troubles go away. It doesn't matter if we are religious or secular, liberal or conservative, zionist or anti-zionist. We are all in the same boat, and if we make a hole under someone else's cabin, the whole boat will sink. We should repair the sin of baseless hatred, and then these troubles will go away.

Lichtik ליכטיק: Bilam and the flotilla

Lichtik ליכטיק: Bilam and the flotilla

Bilam and the flotilla

 

This week's parasha (Torah portion) tells the story about a king called Balak, who hires a prophet (Bilam) to curse the Jewish people. He did this, because he saw, that the Jews recently won the war against the nations of Bashan and Emor through miracles. He was also preparing to fight the Jews, so he was afraid, and thought he has to first destroy the spiritual power of the Jews in order to be able to defeat them physically. For this he needed to curse them.



Let's look at modern history now:
When the State of Israel was established in 1948, the neighboring Arab countries immediately attacked to destroy the new non-Arab country. They couldn't reach their goal. Those countries tried it again a few more times, but always failed. Not only on the battlefield, but also morally: the Western World was supporting the small, democratic country against the bigger dictatorships. The Arab leaders realized, this way it will never work. So they came up with a new idea: to transform the picture from the "big dictators against the small free country" to "the poor occupied ones against the rich occupiers." Since 1973 Arab countries directly didn't attack Israel, but the 2 intifadas broke out. Through the media coverages the whole World could see the poor Palestinians with stones against the Israeli soldiers equipped with the most state-of-the-art weapons. The World opinion started moving against Israel, but still as the Palestinians using the method of terrorism, especially suicide bombers killing innocent people, it was close to balanced. Now they even stopped that (except the rockets fired from Gaza), to create a totally anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian sentiment in the World. The new method is the "flotilla-techniqe". Ships packed with food, medicines, human rights activists and reporters are set to sail for the Gaza strip. If it was really a humanitarian aid, if their goal was to send food and medicines to the poor Palestinians, they would send them through the legal borders, where Israeli border policemen would inspect it, and in case of not finding any weapons, they would let them in. But the senders know, that Israel has no choice not to check it, since smuggling weapons is very common at the borders of Gaza. And if they refuse to allow the inspection, the process can easily turn violent, and Israel might seize the ships. They tried this a year ago, and it succeeded. The World media was filled with pictures and coverages of Israeli soldiers "attacking" and seizing a "humanitarian-aid" ship... This was a very powerful attack against Israel. The moral picture of the Jewish State was probably at its lowest point ever.

This week, when we are reading in the Torah about our enemies trying to destroy our spiritual-moral state in order to defeat us, "humanitarian" flotillas full of reporters are about to leave the ports of Greece, Cyprus and Turkey to reach the Gaza-strip, to provoke Israel, and to destroy again its moral picture in the World!

But we can be optimistic. Bilam gets embarrassed by his donkey, when the animal refuses to move (those ships also have some problems), and when he finally gets to the place, his curse turns into a blessing! Maybe parallelly, instead of making the World see Israel as the devil, this time the provokers will be embarrassed and the curse will turn into a blessing, as the real intentions will be evident. What do we need to do? I am sure, that besides trying to wisely communicating the situation, our moral deeds can help too. If we help each other, and stop the enmity among us, if we stop saying lashon hara (bad things about others), and if we control our negative emotions, like anger, envy or selfishness, and turn them into positive ones, like empathy, giving, and altruism, we can show God that we are still fitting for turning the curse into a blessing, the moral destruction into a moral victory!

a very short wort (simple, but very important)

After the shacharis (morning prayer) we recite the quote from the Talmud: "Talmidei chachomim marbim sholaym boaylom", which means: "Knowers of the Talmud increase peace in the World.
How do they increase peace? My favorite interpretation is: One, who knows only a little, and sees someone doing something differently, than how he learned, starts arguing, and tells him, that he is doing wrong. If a person who knows a lot sees someone doing it differently, he doesn't argue, because he knows that what he knows is not the only possible way, the other one can be right too...