What Does Building the Mishkan Have To Do With Kashrut?

By Susan Esther Barnes

An imaginary conversation with God:

Interviewer: Baruch ata Adonai, blessed are you Adonai our God, ruler of the world, who has agreed to speak with me today about the end of the book of Sh’mot (Exodus) in the Torah.

God: Thank you for asking me to be here today. Of course, I would have been here today anyway, since I am everywhere all the time. Still, I’m making a special effort to be heard right now because you have a question for me that really needs to be answered.

I: Thank you. It means a lot to me, as well as my readers. As you know, we have just finished reading the book of Sh’mot. A question that often comes up around this time is why, at the end of this book, are there these chapters with so many repetitive, detailed instructions about the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle)?

G: Kashrut.

I: Bless you.

G: I didn’t sneeze. I said “Kashrut.”

I. I don’t understand. What does kashrut, the dietary laws, have to do with the building of the Mishkan?

G. I created the world and all that is in it, including human beings. Humans, some more than others, have a tendency at times to be a bit obsessive compulsive. So when I wrote the rules for building the Mishkan, I indulged those who want to engage in that behavior. I said what colors of yarn to use, and what kinds of metals, gems, hides, and wood. How many cubits long this should be and how many cubits wide that should be. Where each thing should be placed, how many of each thing there should be, etc. You get the picture.

I. Yes.

G. Does all that obsessive compulsive detail remind you of anything?

I. It reminds me a lot of the halacha (Jewish law) about kashrut. All those rules about separate dishes and ovens, and trying to figure out how much rennet is in the cheese, which heckshers it’s okay to rely on, etc.

G: Exactly. That’s the problem.

I. What’s the problem?

G. I know people can get obsessive in general, and that they often get obsessive about food in particular. That’s partly why I wrote Devarim (Deuteronomy) 4:2 and 12:32.

I. “You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of Adonai your God which I commanded you,” and “Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to nor take away from it.”

G. Right. So the point of all the detail about the Mishkan is to show everyone, “You want details? I can write details. Here they are. All the details you will ever need, and more.” And when I write, “Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk,” do you know what that means?

I. The rabbis tell us it means don’t serve any dairy products with any animal, including (probably) birds, and –

G. No. It means “Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” I never wrote anything about separate dishes, or birds with cheese, or any of those other details people have added over the years. I don’t know how I could have been any more clear about it. I showed you that I didn’t want a bunch of extra details read into to the laws of kashrut by demonstrating that when I want you to follow a lot of specific details, I will say so, like I did in Sh’mot when I wrote about building the Mishkan. If that weren’t enough, I followed it up by explicitly telling you not to add to my laws.

I. So all those laws about kashrut…

G. The laws about kashrut are in the Torah. The way I wrote them. All the rest is just commentary, written by you loveable, fallible people. Now go study.

My Heart Live! On Screen!

By Susan Esther Barnes

When I was in college, I received a letter saying I had been randomly selected to participate in a medical study called Cardia which was being conducted in four cities in the US. The purpose of the study was to learn about how heart disease develops in young adults.

What they didn't tell us at the time, or perhaps I wasn't paying attention, was that if they could get ongoing funding, their intention was to keep track of us throughout our lives, testing us every few years, and seeing who among us was developing heart disease so they could compare their test results with those of us whose hearts are still going strong.

This explains why, recently, I found myself in the room pictured above, with the cool lions should lie down with lambs poster, getting an echocardiogram. Rather than just the boring test we've all seen that produces nothing more than a wavy line on a piece of paper, this test included the use of sound waves to show the structure and functioning of my heart on a computer screen.

So I got to lie there, looking at the different chambers in my heart pumping, and my heart valves opening and closing, in real time. They also do some cool color coding so I could see the speed and direction of the blood flow (just with sound waves, without pumping any yucky stuff into me), so I could actually see the blood flowing from my lungs into one chamber, the valve closing, and another valve opening while the chamber contracted and pushed the blood out into my body. Too cool.

Of course I started by describing the most fun part, and skipped over some other parts, like the four multi-page consent forms I had to sign, the multiple vials of blood they took, and the glucose tolerance test that includes drinking a bottle of sickly sweet orange drink which probably had about 8 million calories and left my stomach feeling angry for hours.

On the upside, though, the lab staff was great, and kept me well distracted while they were taking my blood. Which is a good thing, because if they let me brood on what they're doing, my blood pressure drops, and in past years they've had to stroke my arm to try to squeeze enough blood out into the tubes. And we won't talk about the one year when they assaulted me with smelling salts.

This year they didn't do anything like they had in the past to try to raise our blood pressure to see how high it would go. The most effective method they have of doing this is the treadmill test, which keeps raising the angle and speed until you cry "Uncle!"

One year they tried to make us play the (not so old at the time) "Breakout" video game (basically using a "paddle" to make a bouncing "ball" break a "wall"), but so many of us were so bad at the game we lost before they had time to take our blood pressure. Another time, they had us hold our arm in a bucket of icewater for 60 seconds. It may not sound like a big deal, but you try it some time. It was so painful a bunch of the study participants threatened to never come back, and they had to promise us they would never do it again.

As they like to remind us from time to time, the longer the study goes on, the more precious and irreplaceable we are. There is no other group they can draw from that has this same pool of data from the last 25 years.



Yes, at the risk of dating myself, as the T-shirt says, this study has been going on for 25 years now. But they're not always testing the same things. For instance, the heart function test I mentioned above tested for some factors that are now known to be indicators of heart disease, but included some new measurements they think might be predictive, and are gathering data on now.

This year, for the first time (that I recall), they did a congnitive test, which included asking me to listen to a long list of random words and then repeat back as many of them as I could remember. They did this a few times with the same list of words, and then did it once with a second list of words. Then they got all tricky on me asked me to go back and say as many words as I could from the first list without me saying any of the words on the second list.

Lucky me, it turns out that I qualify for a brain MRI test they also want to do, so I get to go do that and a CTI scan of my heart next month.

It's all a bit inconvenient, but it's a mitzvah, I do get to see some cool test results, and I feel good about contributing to medical knowledge that could help future generations live longer (and has already resulted in a bunch of publications). Plus, I can't say enough about how professional, helpful and friendly all the Cardia staff are.

So stay healthy, and the next time you read about a study that shows a new way to predict or prevent heart disease, think of me!

Simchat Torah 5771

By Susan Esther Barnes

When I arrived at the synagogue at about 10 minutes to 6 pm, there were a few bottles of spirits, as well as some cold water, on a table near the front door. I had my first taste ever of peppermint schnapps. I suppose that’s one way to loosen people up for dancing, particularly people like me who don’t drink much or often.

A little after 6, we went into the sanctuary. Most of the chairs had been removed. There was a line of chairs along the outer wall facing in, and a couple of tables with some chairs around them in the center.

We sat down at the center tables, and studied the last couple of chapters of the Torah. It was pretty hot in the sanctuary (we don’t have any air conditioning), so we turned on a couple of large standing fans. The fans made it harder to hear each other, but the breeze they created was welcome.

Some of the “regular” Saturday morning Torah Study group was there, but there were quite a few others as well. When you’re studying Torah, you never know what’s going to come up. For instance, last Saturday we read the part in which Moses asks to see God, and God says (I’m paraphrasing here), “You can’t see my face but I’ll shield you in the crevice of a rock with my hand as I pass by, and then you can see my back.”

We were talking about why God would do it that way, when it suddenly occurred to me how well that describes what happens when we’re in distress, like Moses was after he learned he wouldn’t live long enough to make it to the Promised Land.

In times of trouble, we generally don’t see God coming, but we are shielded by God’s hand during the worst of it, and it isn’t until later that we see God receding and are able to be thankful for the strength and comfort God gave us while we were suffering the most.

At any rate, a little after 7 we concluded our study and removed the tables and chairs from the center of the room. Children and others who wouldn’t mind doing so were invited to sit on the carpet in the middle of the room, while others sat on the chairs along the walls.



We sang some songs, and then two of the Torah scrolls were removed from the ark and completely unrolled. Adults held the parchment while children were invited to come up close to get a good look at the writing.

Over the past couple of years, people from the Torah study group have participated in the “pasuk project.” A “pasuk” is a verse. As we read through the Torah, when we were struck by a particular verse, we would write down which verse it was and why it meant something special to us, and this information was then posted on the wall in the room where the Torah study group meets on Saturday mornings.

I like the project for a number of reasons. First, it helps us to personalize what we’re reading, and to show how it is relevant in our lives today. Second, the room is used for various other purposes throughout the week, and the verses on the wall remind others of the importance of the Torah and learning in everything we do at the synagogue and in our daily lives.

We also used the project in our Simchat Torah celebration this year. After the Torah scrolls were unrolled, all of us present who had picked a verse stood near that verse on one of the scrolls, and one by one we told the congregation which verse we had picked and why.



Then it was time for the dancing. While the two scrolls were rolled back up, the remaining scrolls were taken from the ark, the band started up, and the dancing began, with one Torah in the center of each group. I was happy to see a Torah being carried to those still sitting because they are not able to move around easily, so they could participate too.

Later, one of the groups danced around a number of elderly people sitting in chairs, and another group danced around the sukkah outside. I heard yet another group danced out the front doors, and may have even made it into the parking lot. During the last dance, the woman next to me exclaimed, “This is the best Simchat Torah ever!”

When the dancing was over, we gathered on the bimah (or as close to it as we could get) while the white High Holy Day mantles were removed from the Torah scrolls and replaced with the mantles they wear for most of the year. As the last Torah made its way up to the ark, on an impulse I reached out my hand to kiss it, and was pleased to see several others, both adults and children, follow my example.



On the way out, we were treated to bowls of apples for a sweet new year, and we had our last chance to stand in the small sukkah out front before it and its big brother in the back are taken down and stored away again.

As one congregant remarked on the way out, “It’s not a bad way to start the new year, is it?”

Studying Lashon Hara

By Susan Esther Barnes

Last night we observed Shavuot, the holiday during which the Jewish people celebrate the giving and receiving of the Torah. I have read a number of posts online lately about how this holiday is generally not observed by Jews in America, so I was pleased to see a good number of people at the synagogue last night. The tradition is to study all night, but I’m afraid I didn’t even come close to making it that far.

At any rate, there were several different study sessions throughout the evening (punctuated by breaks for ice cream and cheesecake since traditionally we eat dairy products on this holiday), and I was lucky enough to attend a conversation with Rabbi Chai Levy on lashon hara.

Literally, lashon hara means “evil tongue,” and is generally described as gossip, libel, slander, lying, etc. This sort of thing is a big deal for Jews. It is said that God created the world and the things in it by using speech, as in, “God said let there be light and there was light,” and that the world and the things in it can be destroyed using speech as well. So what we do or don’t say can have serious consequences.

Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan wrote a book, published in 1873, on the subject, called “Chafetz Chayim,” or “Seeker/Desirer of Life,” which Rabbi Levy used as a reference for the discussion. The rules regarding lashon hara in this book are detailed, and cover many different situations.

The group last night was quite engaged in the discussion, which covered subjects such as how to respond if someone asks for a job reference about someone else but you don’t feel you can honestly give a positive recommendation, what action to take if you see someone doing something wrong (and how to go about doing it in a constructive way), and what to do if a friend is considering marrying a man and you have heard bad things about him (such as that he is violent) but you don’t know whether the things you heard are true.

Some of it may seem like common sense, but some of it involves trying to strike a delicate balance between protecting the interests and/or safety of an employer or a friend vs. not wanting to say unkind or possibly untrue things about someone else.

Part of what I enjoyed about the discussion was the desire of the people in the room to engage earnestly in the conversation. There is so much lashon hara in the public arena today, with political attack ads, celebrity gossip, and the like. Without discussions like this one, it might be easy to forget that the majority of people truly care about the feelings of the people around them, and want to do the right thing.

We are lucky to be the recipients of a book and a heritage we can refer to when questions about permissible speech arise.