My task this evening is to install the new administration of our Kodimoh. Looking over the list, I discover that there are a total of seven units that must be officially charged and installed. And I do not regard this as a mere fortuitous coincidence. The number seven is a ”magic number" in Jewish life. It is above all the number of days of the week, the symbol of the creation of the world, and therefore the symbol of creativity as such. It is my hope and my prayer that this administration will fulfill that function of creativity on the pattern set down before it. For the work of the officers of a synagogue is much like the study of Torah - Im yom taazvenu yomayim yaazveka, neglect it for a day and it neglects you for twice that time. You cannot keep the status quo in a shul - it’s either ahead or backwards, either creative or, chalilah, destructive. Our installation, this evening, of each and every one of the new administration is based on that proposition, the proposition that you must determine to be creative, else you harm this holy work זזhich you have undertaken• Let us proceed then, with the installation, on the pattern of the first seven days in which God created this Universe.2 .On the first day, G-d created Heaven and Earth - and He also created Light, and Darkness. The ability to distinguish between Light and Darkness, the duty of spreading light and subduing the forces of darkness, is a sacred one. In the first of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls discovered recently, an ancient Megillah whose authorship has not yet been determined beyon doubt, tells of the battle between the BNEI OR and BNEI CHOSHECH, the Children of Light and the Children of ^arkness. The members of the Board must consider themselves the true BNEI OR, Children of Light. Upon you we will rely to bring great light into the congregation whom you are priveleged to serve. Upon you depends the future of the administration, and hence the future of Kodimoh. Apathy, indifference, pettiness and lack …

Beginning new year studies — Torah and Madda...Appropriate ask selves question that has not only theoretical but also existential value: what, if anything, relates them to each other in a substantive way, i.e., other than their existence in one curriculum at YU or being pursued by same student? There are, of course, a number of answers But today, at threshhold of a new year, I ish moral focus on one of them: the goal of both Torah and Mada.Torah: אמר רב: מה לי שחיטה מן ה3ואר\ מן העורף? אלא לא ניתנו המצוות אלא לגרוף .בהן את הבריות — thus: moral ends to Torah study.Secular Studies (מדע, דרך ארץ, חכמה). Same answer:גמ׳ ברכות די"ז . — תכלית חכמה - תשובה ומעשים טוביםThus: purpose all our studying = development moral character. Primary element: חסד — עשיית הטוב.Granted חסד as goal, question is: what is its roin human life? Is man fundamentally good or evil?' Is חסד an integral part of his nature, or is it acquired from wi thout?In Western thought, two major tendencies: Freud - the Id, libido — all יצר הרע. Jean Jacques Rousseau — "the noble savage", basically good, but society corrupts. Judaism: man possesses both propensities, יצ"ט ויצה״ר, and their struggle for conquest of his soul is the greatest drama of his life — his agony as well as his glory.However, that's not altogether clear. Question: we find man's penchant for evil in Genesis — יצר לב האדם רק רע מנעוריו, but what of his better nature, capacity?חסד, טוב forAnswer: that too. Commend insight of R. Yaakov Zvi Meklenburg, author "הכתב והקבלה" — we know man created in צלם אלקיט, but do we know about Him? Most emphatic in 6 days creation: כי טוב, His creation is good. But that's only creation; what of Creator?וירא אלקים = הראה אלקים.... כי טוב־ כי ה׳ הוא :9.Answerטוב ומטבע הטוב להטיב אל הזולת. Thus, since Gad is goad, and man is in His image, then man has goodness ingrained in him.Kabbalah: this quality is known as חסד —overflowing of טבע, kindness, existence itself.Thus, Halakhah: if happy at new acquisition, make…

The meaning of טוב (“good”) in the early chapters of Genesis – where at the end of every segment of Creation we read וירא אלקים... כי טוב – is tantalizingly obscure. What does “goodness,” a term usually associated with moral acts or psychological satisfaction, have to do with the natural order? If, as some maintain (e.g., Maimonides, Guide 2:30, 3:13), טוב here denotes the production of an entity whose existence conforms to its purpose or the successful execution of the divine will, then why, on the final day of the Six Days of Creation – with the emergence of man (Gen. 1:31) – does God declare that Creation is טוב מאוד, “very good”? Is it even meaningful to speak of greater and lesser degrees of success in the implementation of a divine decision to create?Ask ChatGPT The problem becomes more acute in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Paradise). Before the creation of Eve, we read that Adam's condition was not good: לא טוב היות האדם לבדו, it as not good that man should be alone (2:18). If טוב is a moral or psychological category, the verse is understandable; but then the כי טוב repeated in the creation narrative in chapter 1 presents apparently insurmountable difficulties. And if the טוב of the first chapter refers to the full execution of the divine will, then the phrase לא טוב היות האדם לבדו is problematical, although not insuperably so.The question becomes more acute, however, when we turn to the story of the עץ הדעת טוב ורע (the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil). Man is warned not to eat of this tree, for "on the day that you eat thereof you will surely die" (Gen. 2:17).After the creation of Eve, the serpent ensnares her and persuades her to violate the divine command. But the serpent persists, and informs Eve that "for God knows that on the day you eat thereof your eyes will be opened and you will be like the powerful ones who know good and evil" (Gen.3:5). (Our use of "the powerful ones" follows the Aramaic translator, Onkelos, as opposed to…

I. ANGER: Our halakhic discussion revolved around כעס and the question of whether such outbursts of anger can be considered constructive (תיקון) or destructive (קלקול). Clearly, however, anger is ethically repugnant – as straight halakhah according to most Rishonim, and as halakhic musar according to Rambam. This dimension of כעס is often accompanied by similar phenomena (מידות מגונות) such as pride (גאווה) and disputatiousness (מחלוקת), as well as other such traits. We shall therefore proceed to discuss anger and then one or two of these related character defects that emerge from a study of how Judaism views the range of negative human emotions. The Rav’s axiological explanation of כעס: that the definition of idolatry is who or what stands at the center of my existence, and that anger reveals that my ego is that center. Proof of the Rav’s thesis: Rambam holds that there are only two individual exceptions to the law of moderation (מידת הבינוניות, שביל הזהב), and they are כעס and גאווה – common denominator: ego at the center. This is not as self-evident as it may seem. Thus, contemporary ethicists, under the influence of modern psychology, encourage the expression of anger as a catharsis, a voiding of noxious emotions that might otherwise becloud our judgment. Mental and physical health thus require free expression of anger. To put this in halakhic terminology, psychologists hold that because כעס can sometimes be technically considered תיקון – because it provides נחת רוח לנפש – therefore it is commendable. Thus, they consider anger a neutral phenomenon; like hunger, it is neither good nor bad. It is best to express resentment immediately rather than let it fester. Small angry encounters protect the individual against stagnated, unexchanged feelings. (This is in keeping with the phenomenon one notices, especially with patients of therapists who are philosophically and ethically mediocre, that their original symptoms may recede or disappear, but they are immediately r…

Our halakhic discussion revolved about קורע בחמתו, one who tears a garment in anger, and the question of whether such outbursts can be considered constructive (מתקן) or destructive (מקלקל). Clearly, however, anger as such is ethically repugnant – as straight halakhah according to most Rishonim, and as halakhic musar according to Rambam. This dimension of kaas, anger, is often accompanied by similar phenomena such as pride (גאוה) and disputatiousness (מחלוקת), as well as other such traits. We shall therefore proceed to discuss anger and then one or two of these concomitant character defects that emerge from a study of howJudaism views the range of negative human emotions.I once heard the Rav שליט״א offer an insightful axiological explanation of the dictum of the Sages identifying anger with the sin of idolatry: הכועס כאילו עע״ז. But if idolatry is basically fetish worship, how does that relate to us? After all, the Sages taught that historically the temptation of heathenism came to an end with the destruction of the First Temple. Yet, if idolatry is irrelevant to our modern experience, how account for the attraction of the Prophets for all ages, our own included; do not the Prophets rail against idolatry above all other sins? The Rav answers that one must first understand the nature of אמונה or faith in God: this means, he avers, that it is God who must occupy the very center of my concerns, my values, my very existence. If God is only peripheral to some other being or value--whether money or sensuality or any of the isms so ubiquitous in our times—we are by definition idolaters. Now, if one loses his temper and submits to anger, it is usually because his ego has been injured, and because that ego is his central, transcendent value. It is he himself who stands at center of his existence, and that kaas is therefore tantamount to idolatry. The validity of the Rav's thesis is evident from the fact that the Rambam holds that there are only two exceptions to the Law of M…

The advance of science and technology has resulted in extensive harm to the environment. While there is considerable controversy as to the extent of this injury, and as to whether this artificial imbalance is significantly more than nature's own traumatic eruptions, it is widely accepted – ever since Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring – that there is indeed a very real problem that must be attended to. To take but one example – the elimination of species from the earth: In the next half century – less than one human lifetime – the Earth could lose blue whales, giant pandas, tigers, black rhinoceroses, and millions of lesser-known species. Entire ecosystem types could be damaged beyond repair. Humans are only one of the Earth's 10, 30, or even 100 million species. The world is always changing. We are now in a period of extraordinary biodiversity loss. In The Diversity of Life, Harvard University's Edward O. Wilson estimates that 5–20% of tropical forest species will be extinct in the next 30 years, or somewhere between a half million and 20 million species. A paper in the July 21, 1995 edition of Science estimated that current extinction rates are 100–1,000 times their pre-human levels. – from “Threats to Biological Diversity: A Scientific and Political Overview,” COK/L/Summer 1996As Jews we should be particularly sensitive to the disappearance of whole species, because one imperiled species of the family of Homo sapiens is – the Jewish people...The environmentalist movement, like all other high-minded and serious efforts to improve the lot of mankind or the world as such, tends to become overly fashionable, and falls into the hands of moralizers and cause-seekers who do not fear exaggeration or one-sidedness. As a result, there is developing a reaction against the alleged excesses of the movement – as, for instance, the advocacy of recycling garbage. In an article in the New York Times Magazine of June 30, 1996, John Tierney writes:Believing that there was no more r…