[Avodah] a troubling halacha

[T613K at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/23/2008, afolger at aishdas.org writes:

>>But beyond that, I'd like to point out that it seems that  shidukhim 
between 
shtetls that were at least one day solid walking away,  or even several days 
walk, was a standard occurence. FWIW, in each  successive generation, my 
ancestors on the paternal line (the Galicianers)  lived in a different city, 
ostensibly because their respective wives were  from different cities. My bet 
is that they saw each other  rarely.<<

Kol tuv,
-- 
Arie  Folger



>>>>>>
If you read a lot of Jewish history  you can't help but be struck by the fact 
that throughout the  centuries, Jews were /constantly/ on the move, either 
traveling for  business, or traveling to learn in a yeshiva in another city 
(e.g., Rashi  learned in Germany), or they were running away from war or from 
pogroms, or they  were expelled from here and had to go there, but then they were 
expelled from  there and had to go somewhere else.  Our whole history is a 
history of  moving, moving, moving.  Wherever Jews landed they tried hard to 
achieve  stability and permanence, but inevitably after a while they had to pull 
up roots  again.  "A while" could be anywhere from a few months to a few years 
or  even a few generations, but nothing was as inevitable as Jews moving.  Not 
 for naught do we have the timeless image of the "Wandering Jew" and BTW my  
Wandering Jew plant is the only plant in my garden that thrives despite my  
neglect.  It just can't be killed off.
 
And speaking of shidduchim, my grandmother and my grandfather were cousins  
who lived in Polish towns a day's travel away from each other  (before  cars, 
obviously) and they never met each other until they were  adults.  When they 
met they got married.  Also when my grandparents  moved to America, my 
grandfather's brother moved to Argentina and it was decades  before they saw each other 
again.  They only saw each other once or twice  again in their lives.
 
The constant wandering and moving is the fulfillment of the curse (and  
hidden blessing) of "ve'eschem azareh bagoyim" (Vayikra 26:33) -- the curse  being 
that we are constantly scattered and scattered again, we are never  secure 
anywhere in the world, we can only rest for a while but never really put  down 
roots -- and the blessing being that wherever in the world a Jew has to run  to, 
there are Jews already there waiting to take him in and help him.  This  
cosmic aspect of Jewish history was already foreshadowed (ma'asei avos siman  
labanim) when Yosef went down to Egypt to pave the way for the Jews to survive  
there in galus.
 


--Toby Katz
=============
"If you don't  read the newspaper you are uninformed; 
if you do read the newspaper you are  misinformed."
--Mark Twain
Read *Jewish World Review* at _http://jewishworldreview.com/_ 
(http://jewishworldreview.com/) 
**************One site has it all. Your email accounts, your social networks, 
and the things you love. Try the new AOL.com 
today!(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212962939x1200825291/aol?redir=http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp
%26icid=aolcom40vanity%26ncid=emlcntaolcom00000001)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20081123/77cd1aef/attachment-0002.htm>