Rabbi Natasha Mann

  Lessons From a Pencil (Vayeira) In 1958, Leonard Read wrote an utterly charming essay in a magazine about economics. But you’ll have to forgive me - because if this is your first encounter with the essay, you’re going to learn nothing about his perspective on the economy. The reason Leonard Reed’s 1958 essay is so charming - and what I am interested in talking about - is that he wrote it from the perspective of his pencil.  It is usually referred to by the title “I, Pencil”. The full title that Read wrote, however, is: “I, Pencil: My Family Tree, As Told to Leonard Read.”  You may wonder - writes Pencil - why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. ... But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background.  Read’s pencil tells his readers: I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove.  It asks us to consider its consti...

The King of the Forest  (And the Story of Everything) Rosh Hashanah 5787 I would like to tell you a story.      Once upon a time, the trees of the forest decided that they needed to appoint a king. First, the Tree Committee decided to approach the Olive Tree. “Rule over us,” said the trees. But the Olive Tree replied: “I am not finished with yielding my oil, through which even God is honoured. Why should I go and wave above the forest?” And so the trees said to the Fig Tree: “You come and rule over us!” But the Fig Tree replied, “Am I done with yielding sweet and delicious fruit? Why should I go and wave above the trees?”  And so next they tried the Vine - but the Vine was busy yielding grapes for wine; she too was unwilling to rule over the forest. And then the trees asked the Thornbush: “Will you come and rule over us?” And the Thornbush accepted: “If you want me to rule over you, then come and take shelter in my shade. But if not, then I will bring a great fi...

  Between the Shtetl and the Web It is a brave new world. The community we interact with on a regular basis is bigger than it has ever been before. Our ability to interact, to seek information and communication, is broader than it has ever been before, and it is seemingly only getting bigger.  And yet… With more information at our fingertips, we somehow seem to know less. And with more people available to us for connection, we are somehow less connected. I’m sorry to say it, but we are increasingly isolated even though our ability to connect is also increasing.  This is the slipperiness of the web: it looks like it is expanding our world, but it is actually contracting it. We have more access to connection, and yet we are less connected.  There are multiple layers to how this has happened. More people means more anonymity. More time speaking online means less time looking into one another’s eyes. One reason I think Shabbat is so important in our world is that it requ...

  Not According to Plan… Probably the most famous Yiddish saying is: Der mentsh trakht un got lakht. Or, in sadly unrhyming English: Man plans; God laughs.  (Incidentally, if I ever write an autobiography, I think that would be the title: Mann Plans; God laughs. “Mann”, of course, with two Ns.) It’s a saying we often use to express something about the unpredictability of life. The later version from Robert Burns, perhaps more popular as an English phrase, is: “The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.” We spend so much of our time making plans, but have little control over the actual outcome. Though Burns has a different feeling to his statement: “ The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry / And leave us nothing but grief and pain. ” The Yiddish proverb, on the other hand, leaves God laughing at the idea that we set the plans in the first place - that we keep setting them, despite how little we can actually predict. It’s not presented as tragedy, but as a...

  The iron gates at the Crossbones Graveyard. What Makes Holy Ground  It is commonly understood amongst Jews that there are ritual items that we cannot simply throw away. A siddur, or a Torah scroll, or really anything that has the sacred name of God, must be dealt with in a special manner: we put it into a genizah for safe-keeping, and then we take those items and bury them. We do the same with certain ritual objects, even if they do not contain the name of God. It is logical, of course, that we are careful around objects that hold sanctity.  But what happens to something that's too big to put in a genizah , like a holy place itself? The Mishnah addresses this question directly, but I think the first thing that is useful to understand is the principle מַּעֲלִין בַּקּוֹדֶשׁ וְלֹא מוֹרִידִין - we go up in holiness, and we do not go down . We can make things more sacred, but something that is considered holy cannot then be used instead for mundane purposes. There is no ritu...

  Stained glass from the Or Torah Synagogue, Acre But Don’t Tell the Jews (A Sermon on Heretical Truths)           I’m going to share with you a strange piece of advice I was given once, by a very well-respected halakhic thinker on Kashrut. We were learning about materials of vessels - which materials receive the status of food, which don't, what happens with admixtures - and he had just said something that caught my classmates and I off-guard. We asked why everyone seemed to know a different, more strict version of that rule, and his response was this:           “This is the halakhah (the rule), but don’t tell the Jews.”  I think about that advice probably more than it warrants, certainly more than the actual halakhic question warrants. I understand what he was trying to say - that should we teach the more lenient-and-complex version, then people are more likely to end up doing it incorrectly. Sometimes, being stri...

  Helix by Godfrey Kurari The Great Helix of History           If I asked you to map out three Yom Kippur evenings – the earliest you can remember, last year, and next year – you would probably draw me a straight line. Back there lies the deep past, close to us lies the recent past, here we are right now – and over there somewhere is the uncertain future. That is the model of time that is the most apparent to us. Time, after all, is linear. There is a past, which is over, and a future, which has yet to begin, and we are perched in the ever-moving present, filtering the future into the past to be gone forever. However, this is not the model of time that was the most apparent to people in the ancient world. Many ancient cultures thought of the existence of time as a wheel. Everything that had happened would happen again, over and over, for all of eternity. This is a model that’s easy to see in nature: day becomes night becomes day, the tree gives a see...